by Chris Holm
Thompson pounded the table with her fist—a gesture of celebration, of vindication. Coffee sloshed everywhere. The other diners turned as one to look at them. To Hendricks, whose survival depended upon being as inconspicuous as possible in any given environment, their attention felt like the sun’s rays focused through a magnifying glass. He glared witheringly at Thompson and said nothing until, one by one, the other patrons turned around and resumed their conversations.
“I shouldn’t have to remind you what it would cost the both of us if we’re seen talking,” he said finally.
“I know. I’m sorry. But you have to understand, the Segreti Walk-In is the stuff of legend around the Bureau. Most people figure he was just puffing himself up with crazy stories, exaggerating or even outright inventing his intel so we’d agree to protect him. You can’t blame them for being skeptical—the idea that an organization of that magnitude could operate without the Bureau’s knowledge seems like a stretch, and the guy just walked in cold.”
“You believe him, though.”
“I saw firsthand what he was capable of. And once upon a time, I got it in my head there was a new hitter on the scene, someone hell-bent on wiping out his competition. The Bureau brass thought I was nuts. They said no one man could take out so many pros all by himself. Turns out I was right. I guess you could say I’ve learned to trust my gut.”
“Your gut was wrong about me. I’m nothing like the men I killed. They were monsters, plain and simple. The world is better off without them in it.”
“That’s not really for you to decide, though, is it?”
Hendricks shrugged. “I stopped them when you couldn’t. My conscience is clear.”
“Is it?”
“About those deaths, yes.”
They fell silent then, the ghost of Lester Meyers haunting them both. If only Hendricks hadn’t brought him into his operation. If only Thompson had reached him before Engelmann did instead of shortly after.
Hendricks cleared his throat self-consciously and said, “So, Segreti walks in and promises you the moon. And yet,” he says, nodding skyward, “there it hangs, just like it always has. What went wrong? How’d you get from there to here?”
“The safe house was compromised. Someone blew it up before we even finished debriefing him. Four Bureau agents died in there. Three U.S. Marshals. Two state’s attorneys. And, we thought, Segreti. The blast reduced most everyone inside to ash, but we were able to pull his DNA from some of the remains. It matched samples taken from the gauze we’d used to bandage his wounds while he was in custody at our Albuquerque field office. We’d kept it when we changed his dressings so we could run it through CODIS and see if any relevant priors popped. At the time, we didn’t know if he was legit.”
“I imagine someone blowing up your safe house went a long way toward validating his story.”
“Yeah, you could say that. But over the years, when we failed to turn up any evidence of Segreti’s phantom organization, those who—unlike me—weren’t directly involved in his case just sort of forgot about it.”
“The blast…do you think you had a mole? Someone who could’ve ratted on you to the Council?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s hard to say. No one skipped their shift that day. There’s no record of any outbound calls from the safe house. His security detail’s cell-phone records came back clean.”
“Absence of proof—”
“—isn’t proof of absence,” Thompson finished. “I know. But it’s just as likely the Council was tracking him somehow. We know nothing about how they operate.”
Hendricks thought that was a stretch. The Council trucked in loyalty and fear. They’d be more likely to lean on someone than rely on fancy gadgetry. But Thompson believed in the rule of law and in the institution for which she worked, so she was unwilling to face the fact that somebody on her side of the fence was crooked. Hendricks sympathized. Once, as a young soldier, he’d felt the same.
“Look,” Hendricks said, “this is a fascinating story, but I confess I’m still not clear on why we’re sitting here together.”
“Segreti’s face was on every TV in the country. You think the people who tried to kill him seven years ago aren’t going to see him and decide to finish the job?”
“Of course they’re going to. Which means they’ll be exposed. Considering the fact that you work for one of the most powerful law enforcement agencies on the planet, that should present you with more opportunities than problems. Scoop him up on the quiet. Lay a trap. Dangle him as bait. Roll up anybody who comes after him, and lock ’em somewhere deep and dark until they talk.”
“You think I haven’t thought of that? There’s nothing I’d like more. The problem is, the Bureau brass won’t hear of it—they’re too focused on the attack. Trying to pick up Segreti is such a nonstarter, I can’t even get my boss to run it up the flagpole.”
“Isn’t your boss Kathryn O’Brien? I thought you and she were…” He trailed off, unsure how to end the sentence.
Thompson’s expression darkened. “We are,” she said in a way that strongly suggested Hendricks drop that line of questioning. He couldn’t blame her. Last time they’d met, he’d threatened O’Brien’s life—and the life of Thompson’s sister, Jess—in order to convince her to put Evie into witness protection. It was a bluff; Hendricks had no intention of hurting them. But, as he knew all too well, loved ones made good levers.
“So you responded by coming to me?”
“Protecting people with bounties on their heads is kind of your MO,” she said. “And it’s not like I had a lot of other options. Besides, in this one exceedingly unlikely instance, our interests are aligned.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “How do you figure? Normally, I’m well paid for my services. I’m guessing neither you nor Segreti have enough socked away to cover my fee.”
Thompson’s mouth quirked into a tired smile. “Since I have you here, I’m curious: What is your fee? In all my interviews with Evie, numbers never came up.”
They wouldn’t have, Hendricks thought. When he was forced to confess to Evie that he’d spent the past several years working as a hired killer, he tried to play up the whole helping-people-marked-for-death angle, and he’d glossed over the charging-them-boatloads-of-money side of things.
“Ten times the bounty on their heads,” he said.
“And if your would-be clients can’t afford you?”
It was a loaded question, one Hendricks had asked himself a thousand times. “Then at least they have a heads-up so they can run.”
“That’s pretty fucking cold.”
“That’s life. Most of the people I protect aren’t saints. And I never kill without good reason.”
“Sounds to me like bullshit semantics, if money counts as ‘good reason.’”
“Most of that money went to Evie,” he said. “Not that she knew where it came from. She thought it was part of a wrongful-death settlement against a manufacturer of faulty body armor. The rest, once operational costs were taken care of, went to Lester.”
“Oh, I suspect you’ve got a little set aside for a rainy day.”
“I did,” he said. “But this past year, it’s been pouring.”
“Why? Nobody in need of saving?”
“It’s not that,” he said. “My mission’s changed, is all.”
“Let me guess: From redemption to revenge?”
“I prefer to think of it as justice. I got sick of nipping at the monster’s heels. Decided my time might be better spent aiming for its head.”
“Yeah? How’s that going?”
“Slowly,” he admitted. “But then, I shouldn’t have to tell you that. The FBI’s been trying to stamp out organized crime since before it was the FBI.”
“True enough,” she said. “Which is why Segreti resurfacing is a stroke of luck for both of us.”
“Yeah? How so?”
“When I first saw the video, I remembered what he’d said when he walked in. That you couldn’t eve
n move a kilo without the Council’s say-so. And then I asked myself, if the Council is for real, wouldn’t they have to’ve been the ones to give the order to have Michael Hendricks whacked?”
Hendricks said nothing. His body remained still. His face showed no reaction except the subtle clenching of his jaw. But it was enough. Thompson saw it and knew that she was right.
“Do you understand what you’re asking? You expect me—a wanted man—to wade into one of the largest investigations in U.S. history and attempt to locate a man who will doubtless do everything in his power not to be found. Then—if I’m very lucky and actually manage to find the guy—I’m supposed to protect him from the most powerful criminal organization in the world.”
“Yes.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I? Think of the damage you could do to the Council with Segreti’s help!”
“Assuming his intel’s still worth a damn,” Hendricks replied. “Say, for the sake of argument, I find him. What makes you think I’d hand him over to you?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure you will. But at least with you on his side, he’ll stay alive long enough for me to have another crack at him one day. And who knows? Maybe you will hand him over, if for no other reason than you’re unlikely to bring the Council down all by your lonesome.”
“You underestimate me.”
“No. I don’t. I just think you’re smart enough to understand the value of a strategic alliance.”
“Is that what this is?”
“For lack of a better term.”
Hendricks fell silent. Steepled his fingers in front of his face, his elbows resting on the table. Pondered. Thompson watched him intently but said nothing. Finally, he put his palms down on the table, looked her in the eye, and said, “No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said no. This whole situation’s lousy. Lots of opportunities for it to go sideways and damn few for it to go well. And that’s if you’re telling the truth. If you’re lying, my odds of survival get even worse.”
“Why would I lie? If I knew Evie had a way to draw you out, why go to the trouble of pointing you toward some random old man when I could just have this place surrounded and arrest you here?” She saw him tense up and added, “Relax. I’m just saying.”
“Look, with Lester dead, all I’ve got left to rely on is my gut—and my gut says this is a bad idea.”
“Segreti’s going to die out there, you know. The Council is going to find him, and when they do, they’re going to make him pay. They’ll take him apart slowly, piece by piece, until his body finally fails. Is that what you want?” She was playing on his sympathies by reminding him what Engelmann had done to Lester. The ploy was as underhanded as it was obvious. Hendricks wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of rising to the bait.
Hendricks shrugged. “If he dies, he dies. That’s on you for losing him in the first place. Besides, if everything you’ve said is true, the guy’s as dirty as they come. My guess is, no one’s gonna miss him when he’s gone.”
He finished his coffee. It was bitter. He winced as it went down. Then he stood and reached for his back pocket. Thompson flinched, her right hand ducking beneath the table, toward the piece Hendricks knew she must have secreted somewhere. But when he removed his wallet from his pocket and tossed some bills onto the table, she relaxed.
“Coffee’s on me. I don’t want you thinking I owe you anything.”
“Here,” she said, fishing a business card and a pen from her purse, her movements slow, deliberate, unthreatening. She scrawled a number on the back and offered the card to him. “In case you change your mind and need to get in touch. The one in pen’s my personal cell.”
He took it. Looked it over. Then he crumpled it and dropped it into his empty mug. “I’m not going to change my mind,” he said. “Don’t contact me again.”
17.
FRANK SEGRETI SAT with Lois Broussard on her living-room couch. Her house was lit only by the flickering glow of the television. It was after midnight. The curtains were drawn. Lois’s dog, Ella, snored at Frank’s feet. Sirens droned in the distance, sometimes rising, sometimes falling, but never passing too close by. The house was not on a major through street.
A smattering of empty glasses, plates, and takeout cartons covered the coffee table. Two empty bottles of white wine sat on the floor beside it. Thanks to Frank’s encouragement, Lois had polished off most of the wine herself and—with an assist from whatever pharmaceuticals she’d taken before he arrived—wound up sloppy drunk. His plan had been to keep her drinking until she passed out so he’d have the run of her place until the heat died down.
As the evening wore on, Lois careened wildly between manic oversharing—about her childhood in Gulfport, Mississippi; about her garden; about some old jazz record he absolutely had to hear—and long jags of tense silence during which Frank could feel the hitch of her quiet sobbing through the couch. When the second bottle ran dry, he told himself he should go grab another, but the truth was, he’d begun to worry about her. So instead, he raided her fridge and laid out an elaborate spread of all the leftovers he could find.
He’d figured if he could get some food into her, he could sober her up some. The fact that he hadn’t eaten since first thing this morning didn’t even occur to him. Adrenaline had suppressed his appetite. But when he caught a whiff of cold Hunan pork, he started salivating. They both dug in with gusto, wolfing down enough food to sustain twice their number, and Lois even perked up for a while.
Now she dozed fitfully—brow furrowed, whimpering occasionally—while, on her television screen, Jimmy Stewart fished a despondent Kim Novak from San Francisco Bay, two miles and sixty years from where Frank and Lois sat. The bridge towered over them, its supports blissfully undamaged. The choreography of the scene was quite formal by modern standards. Novak dropping flowers one by one into the water before she leaped took on a ritualistic air, and when Stewart emerged slowly from the water with Novak in his arms, it seemed less a rescue to Frank than a baptism.
A few hours ago, Frank had cleaned himself up in the downstairs powder room and—at Lois’s insistence—changed into one of her husband Cal’s sweat suits so she could throw his clothes in the wash. The house was too damn quiet with the television off and Lois wouldn’t let him put on CNN, so Frank was idly flipping channels when he came across his all-time favorite movie—Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. If Frank were being honest with himself, it’s why he settled in San Francisco. There was something haunting and romantic about the way Hitchcock shot the city; the first time he saw the movie, as a teenager, he fell in love.
Turned out, Vertigo was one of Cal’s favorites too, so they left it on.
“He should have been home by now,” Lois told him more than once, “but his flight was grounded…because of what happened.” Always the same euphemistic phrase, always delivered at a stage whisper, as if she couldn’t bring herself to fully acknowledge it.
Lois told Frank that Cal’s construction firm was putting up a new hotel in Reno, and he’d been out there all week supervising their progress. It was obvious she was having trouble coping without him, and in her medicated, booze-soaked stupor, she found Frank an acceptable enough replacement. He worried about what she’d think of him being here when she finally sobered up—or what Cal would think if Frank was still around when he got home.
Lois shifted on the couch, her eyes active behind closed lids. Then, without waking, she leaned toward him and placed her head on his shoulder. Her cheek was warm against his neck. Her breath was honeyed by the wine. Her hair smelled faintly of apples. Frank’s pulse quickened. His face grew hot. It had been a long time since he’d been this close to a woman.
Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, he cleared his throat, and Lois opened her eyes drowsily. She regarded him with an unfocused gaze that made him feel as if she were looking past him—or through him, as if he were a ghost. Her expression indicated neither recognition nor fear.
&nbs
p; “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s put you to bed.”
“Yes,” she said, fighting through her mental cloudiness, the strain evident in her face. “That’s probably a good idea.”
Lois tried and failed to get off the couch. She could barely hold her head up, much less stand. She leaned heavily on Frank the whole way upstairs, Ella trailing close behind. Occasionally, Lois’s knees would buckle and she would stumble, then brace herself on the banister while Frank struggled to set her right once more. By the time he got her into bed, he was sweating, and his bum knee was on the verge of giving out. He took her slippers off and tucked her in.
Lois’s eyes focused briefly on Frank, lucidity sparking behind them, and then widened. “Wh-who are you? Where’s Cal?”
“Cal’s stuck in Reno, Lois,” Frank said gently. “Because of what happened, remember? I’m Max. You know me.”
“Max,” she echoed, eyes tearing up a little. “Of course. Will…will you stay the night?” Then she colored, her face a boozy caricature of embarrassment. “Not, uh, here…I didn’t mean…it’s just, the house is so quiet with my Calvin gone…”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. And it looks like Ella’s more than happy to steal Cal’s spot.” The tiny dog hopped in place, trying in vain to get on the bed. “Do you mind if I help her up?”
But Lois’s eyes drooped, her moment of clarity dissipating as her adrenaline waned. In seconds, she was unconscious. Frank shrugged and set Ella on the bed.
Just leave the lady be, Frank thought. She’s not your fucking problem. But he couldn’t shake the notion she was going to feel like hell tomorrow morning.
He sighed and picked up the empty glass on her nightstand. Then he ducked into her master bathroom to get her some water.
The bathroom was spacious and dramatic—white walls, ceiling, and vanity, with an original wood floor painted glossy black and a white shag rug. There was a freestanding shower in one corner, and a claw-foot tub tucked into an alcove at the far end of the room.
