by Mel Odom
January set up the pursuit pace, trailing casually behind the woman.
“How do you want to handle this?” Valentine asked. Dressed as he was in faded black jeans, a baseball shirt with CHICAGO CUBS printed on the pocket, and a midthigh-length khaki-colored safari jacket, he didn’t stand out in the crowd thronging the marketplace.
“I think we should stop somewhere short of a flesh wound,” January replied dryly.
When Browser’s had opened up earlier that morning, Valentine had wanted to go inside and flash his badge at the clerk and demand to know where Hollister lived, not thinking that the clerk might call as soon as they left and tell Hollister about the two FBI agents who’d just stopped by asking directions to her home.
The kid had a lot to learn about subtlety, and he wasn’t going to be a willing student. Nothing about Valentine appeared to be subtle. January grinned to himself as he thought about it. Valentine was only six or seven years younger than himself, and he was thinking of the guy as a kid.
Instead of bracing the clerk, January had found a pay phone, called Browser’s, and asked to talk to Hollister, saying he was supposed to talk to her about a book she was going to order for him. The clerk had told him that she was coming in at a quarter to eleven to help with the noonday lunch crowd and tourist rush.
“I’m getting kind of tired of the bum’s rush you guys seem to enjoy dishing out all the time,” Valentine said.
“That’s because you don’t know how to just go with the flow. This isn’t like what they teach you back in the Academy. You’ve done time on the streets. You know that badge in your pocket don’t amount to crap when somebody pulls a gun. You keep wanting to rush in where angels fear to tread. There’s a natural rhythm to every investigation. It’s your job to figure out what it is, then step in cadence to it. The name of the game is pursuit, and the only time you should make a move that’s going to make your quarry recognize you is when you figure it’s too late for that person or persons to stop you.”
Knowing his height already made him stand out among most passersby, January had learned to stoop when he walked, dropping almost three inches from his height. He was dressed in warm-ups colored with swatches of purple, red, and white. The jacket was cut loose enough to conceal the Delta Elite in its shoulder rig. The T-shirt belonged to his high-school basketball days.
“So what have you got in mind?” Valentine asked.
“We lean on her. Tell her if she doesn’t know where Dodd is we’ll let her parole officer know she’s been shacking up with a felon. She knows about violations, knows all that guy has to do is yank the string and she’s back in a correctional facility like a yo-yo. She won’t put Dodd’s safety and security over her own.”
Hollister had spent some time inside prison and jail on counts of prostitution and check kiting. She’d just gotten out almost a year earlier after an eighteen-month stay, and wouldn’t be ready to take a chance on a trip back.
“Cindy!”
January didn’t know where the voice came from.
Hollister came to a stop and looked back over her shoulder.
“Keep walking,” January said in a harsh whisper. He followed his own advice, closing on the woman as the voice hailed her again from behind them.
A confused smile spread across her face, then she turned and walked back toward the FBI agents.
January let her pass, then dropped to one knee beside the wall of the North Market building to retie his shoe. Valentine came to a stop beside him. As January watched, Hollister ducked through the crowd and homed in on a man almost running toward her.
“Dodd,” Valentine said.
“I see,” January replied.
Dodd was lean and lanky, with shoulders almost too wide for his frame. He needed another thirty pounds to look healthy. Greasy locks of dark hair blew over his face and he hadn’t shaved in days. He took Hollister by the elbow and guided her to a spot under a pair of short trees out of the way of the heavy traffic areas. As he talked, he kept throwing furtive glances in all directions around him.
Gazing through the sea of faces that flowed between Hollister and himself, January saw the woman’s face go from ecstasy to uncertainty to fear. She nodded, then reached into her purse and took out a handful of currency. Dodd took the money, then grabbed her by the shoulders, kissed her, and started to move away. She called him back long enough to give him the bag of hot dogs.
“He’s running,” Valentine said.
January nodded. “Let’s take him. Easy. No guns unless you don’t have a choice. This guy doesn’t have a record that shows him carrying heat.”
“What about the woman?”
“Let her go. We can pick her up later if we need to.” Reaching under his jacket, January took out a pair of disposable cuffs and hid them in his palm . He moved out, a couple steps behind Valentine, flanking his partner and finding his own way through the crowd.
Dodd careened through the crowd, still glancing in all directions and ignoring the sharp invectives that followed him.
Almost at a trot himself, January straightened and took advantage of his size. The crowd parted before him. He reached into his jacket pocket for the T-jack, then adhered it to his face. He blew on the mike. “Quinn.”
“I’m with you.”
Dodd pulled to one side of the cobblestoned thoroughfare. A quick turn, and he was running through one of the narrow alleys flanking Faneuil Hall, stumbling through the press of patrons carrying their lunches out of the line of small shops inside the building.
January’s feet slapped against the smooth pavement of the alley as he ran inside. The sound echoed hollowly in the enclosed environment. On the other side of the alley, Valentine had broken into a full run as well.
Dodd glanced over his shoulder and saw them coming after him. He dropped the brown bag and charged forward.
“Dodd!” January yelled with authority. “We’re FBI! You’re under arrest! Halt, now!”
Ignoring the command, Dodd cut inside Faneuil Hall and disappeared.
January was on the man’s heels, a half-step ahead of Valentine as his partner made the swing back across the alley. He pushed himself through the crowd, scattering apologies in the general direction of anyone who might be listening. Ahead of him, he saw Dodd’s head bobbing through the press of human beings.
Abruptly, Dodd came to an uncertain halt as three Asian men in dark suits stepped out from a doughnut stall in front of him.
“Quinn.”
“I see them.”
January kept moving, closing the distance. There was less than thirty feet between them when one of the Asian men put an arm on Dodd’s jacket and dragged him forward. One of the men noticed the FBI agents and alerted the other two. The one holding Dodd turned and yanked the medtech toward a side door, leaving his two comrades to cover their retreat. Both of the men reached under their jackets as people between them and the FBI agents screamed, cursed, and got out of the way.
“Gun!” January roared, intending it more as a warning for the marketplace patrons than for Valentine. Still on the run, he scooped a five-pound smoked ham from a large tin barrel at his side in the center of the floor. He cocked his arm back, thinking back to his days on the college gridiron, then threw the ham like a short, over-the-line pass with all his strength.
The ham caught one of the Asian men in the face and knocked him backward against a fruit display. Carefully stacked oranges rained down on him as he crashed to the floor. The pistol he’d been reaching for went skittering away, immediately drawing another series of screams from the people still trapped inside the marketplace.
Valentine went airborne in a flying kick. His opponent ducked under the attempt as Valentine went over, and came around in a roundhouse kick that January knew was going to nail his partner. But instead of landing on his feet, Valentine let himself collapse to the ground, showing that the telegraphed flying kick had only been a feint.
Swiveling on the ground, Valentine slipped one foot b
ehind his opponent’s pivot leg as the roundhouse kick came nowhere near him, then lashed out with his other foot at the man’s knee. Bone and cartilage splintered with a nasty, rending sound, punctuated by the man’s screams of pain. When the man fell, Valentine was on top of him, rolling him over and slapping the disposable cuffs in place.
The man January had put down with the ham was struggling groggily to get to his feet. January dropkicked him in the face and splayed his unconscious body out. He blew into the T-jack’s mike, switched frequencies to the one used by Boston patrol cars, and called for a back-up unit and an ambulance.
“I’m relaying your request now, Agent January,” the dispatch officer said.
“How long will it be?” January slipped through the display cases and tables strewn across the middle of the floor and crouched at the doorway where Dodd and the remaining Asian had exited.
“I can’t say. The units in that area are busy.”
“Doing what? I’m in the middle of a firefight here.”
The woman’s apology sounded cool and professional.
When January attempted to peer around the corner, a pair of bullets ripped long wooden splinters from the door frame. He ducked back inside and drew his pistol. Valentine dropped into place behind him as he triggered the SeekNFire circuitry. The adrenaline flowed through his veins as the programming locked into his reflexes.
“Cover me,” January said, letting Valentine move into his place.
Valentine took a two-handed grip on his pistol, then gave a tight nod.
January bolted from the entrance, racing for the Dumpster on the other side of the street against the building. A couple of rounds whined off the pavement and another caught him in the ribs with enough force to throw him off-balance. Managing to turn his fall into a dive, he rolled up behind the Dumpster with his back to the sheet metal. He checked his abdomen, making sure the body armor had stopped the round. It had, but he still felt like he’d been kicked by a horse.
He glanced down the street and saw the Asian man hustling Dodd toward a dark blue sedan that came to a rubber-screaming halt with two wheels over the curb. A pair of gunners stepped from the passenger-side door and one of the rear doors. Machine pistols yammered and 9mm parabellums chewed into the sheet-metal sides of the Dumpster, driving January back to cover.
“Dispatch, this is Special Agent January of the FBI. How long on that backup at Faneuil Hall Marketplace?”
“There are no units available, Agent January. I’ll notify you as soon as there are.”
January cursed and peered over the top of the Dumpster as he brought the Delta Elite up. He fired as quickly as he could, letting the SeekNFire circuitry home in on his chosen targets. He put three rounds into the back of the man shoving Dodd into the vehicle and knew from the way the man acted that he was wearing Kevlar under his jacket. The other five shots took out the right rear tire, the back glass, and caught the port side gunner in the neck well enough to drive him to shelter.
The quick bark of Valentine’s weapon sounded in a rapid drumroll as it emptied.
Shoving a fresh clip into his pistol, January looked around the Dumpster and saw the man on the starboard side of the sedan going down with his black sunglasses embedded in the bloody flesh that had been his face.
The sedan pulled away from the curb rocketing into the street and catching a red subcompact by surprise. Metal ground as the vehicles crashed. Without breaking pace, the sedan continued to surge into the smaller car until it slid out of the way and the big car moved forward again.
Vacating his position behind the Dumpster, January ran in pursuit of the car, swinging his arms hard at his sides as he lifted his knees up high like he was back in preseason training. For a moment it looked like the heavy traffic might be able to hold the car long enough for him to close the distance. Then the sedan went up over the shoulder and sped away despite the flat tire.
The faint sounds of approaching police sirens were only now beginning to color the street noise.
Valentine was kneeling over the man he’d dropped. He glanced up and shook his head. “No ID. Bet it’s the same with the two we got tied up back in the market.”
“No bet,” January said in disgust. He turned and walked back through the mass of spectators starting to ease cautiously out into the street. Dodd’s name had been in the paperwork Wilson had given Police Commissioner Isaacs less than two hours ago, and Dodd must have known someone had ratted him out. It would be hard to point the finger, but January didn’t like the way things were shaping up. It was no stretch of the imagination that DiVarco’s organization had infiltrated the Boston PD, but he had to wonder how high up the payoffs went.
*
“I want to see Avery Hobart,” Maggie Scuderi said.
The secretary regarded her for a moment, then said in a precise voice, “Is he expecting you? May I have your name?”
Scuderi took her badge case from her purse and let it drop open to expose her shield. “Agent Scuderi. FBI.”
“Do you have an appointment, Ms. Scuderi?” The secretary made a show of examining the list she’d retrieved on her computer.
The office was on the main floor of the Whesphal Bank on Marlborough Street in the downtown section. Through the bulletproof windows on two sides of the spacious cubicle, regular banking business was taking place in single-file orderliness. Three blue uniformed security guards armed with shotguns formed a rough perimeter on the three sides of the floor that weren’t teller cages. Plants grew beautifully in floor pots and hanging baskets.
The secretary was silver haired and colorless, almost fading into the simple blue dress she wore. As she waited for an answer, she reminded Scuderi of dozens of other secretaries who vigilantly defended the integrity of the powerful men above them, primarily because part of that power rubbed off on them.
“No, I don’t have an appointment,” Scuderi said, squinting to make out the name badge pinned to the woman’s dress, “Ms. Fulton. However, I do have a warrant for Mr. Hobart’s arrest.”
The secretary blinked. “Mr. Hobart is in a stockholder’s meeting now. He can’t be interrupted.”
Scuderi leaned over the desk. “He’s going to be interrupted. Tell me where I can find him.”
“Fourth floor. The conference room. Four-thirteen.”
“Who’s the head of security?”
“That would be Mr. Ebersol.”
“Get him in here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Scuderi straightened and glanced at Mac who stood beside the door, wearing a gray suit with no tie. After the meeting with Isaacs earlier, Scuderi had changed into jeans, boots, and a plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up over a red long-sleeved sweatshirt, which concealed the slim-line body armor underneath.
Hobart’s name had surfaced in the files they’d been able to break in the core dump from the office of Nelson Aikman in Atlanta. According to the information they’d retrieved, Hobart had been responsible for laundering money from the jackal network back through legitimate enterprises owned by DiVarco.
In less than two minutes, Ebersol was in the room with them. The man looked like an ex-cop to Scuderi. Ebersol was of medium height, with a belly starting to show the effects of too many beers in front of the sports channel. He had a round face with deep-set dark eyes, thinning hair that was carefully brushed back, and a gunslinger mustache. He didn’t go with the athletic warm-ups he wore.
“So what’s going on?” Ebersol asked.
“FBI,” Scuderi said, then introduced herself and Mac. “We’re here to arrest Avery Hobart.”
“Can I see the paperwork?”
Scuderi handed it over.
After a brief inspection, Ebersol handed the papers back and said, “Laundering money?”
“Yeah,” Mac replied.
“I never did trust that guy,” Ebersol said, “even after they made him a senior partner.”
“Mr. Ebersol,” the secretary said, “your disloyalty will be noted-�
�
“And duly filed in triplicate. Yeah, yeah.” Ebersol waved the threats away. “Stick a fork in it, Wilma. The guy’s dirty. The FBI don’t go around arresting innocent people. Jeez o’cripes.” He reached to his hip and adjusted the pistol he had holstered there. “C’mon, let’s go get your bad guy.”
They took the elevator to the fourth floor and followed Ebersol’s lead. The conference room was at the end of the hall. At the doorway, Ebersol had Scuderi and Mac wait, then went inside and whispered to Hobart while the meeting continued. Hobart followed the security chief out into the hallway.
“What’s this all about?” Hobart asked.
“Sebastian DiVarco’s jackal network down in Atlanta,” Scuderi said. She captured the bank president’s arm, pulled it behind him, and secured the cuffs.
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“You were laundering profits for him.” The other cuff snapped easily into place. “We’ve got enough evidence to put you away.”
“There must be some mistake,” Hobart insisted. He was a slight man, balding and showing the beginnings of a paunch despite the best efforts of his tailor.
“No mistake,” Mac said. “We’ve got enough on you to send you away for a long time.”
Ebersol was smiling as he trailed along behind.
“Look, maybe we can work some kind of deal,” Hobart said. “Mind you, I’m not admitting to anything here, I’m just free-associating possibilities.”
Scuderi punched the button for the elevator. “We want DiVarco. We can get you, but so far we can’t touch him. The prosecuting attorney is interested in bigger fish, so if you scratch our backs, we can scratch yours.”
Hobart’s face hardened but seemed on the verge of crumbling. “I want to speak with my attorney.”
Grabbing the man by his shirtsleeve, Scuderi pulled him into the elevator. ”No problem.”
Mac and Ebersol boarded the elevator as well, then the security chief punched the button for the main lobby. The doors closed and the cage dropped with a mechanical whine.
