by Larry Crane
“Copeland will be bringing your suit, Einstein,” Stanfield said.
“That’s good of him.”
“Shut up.”
“The mouth of the operation. No brains. What happens to you when the brain decides you know too much?”
“Nobody makes unilateral decisions.”
“Joined at the hip.”
“Shut up,” Stanfield said.
Chapter Forty-One
Lou saw the lone high-rise building, a circular shaft of illuminated glass, from a long way off. Sydney maneuvered the car through the twists and turns of Fort Lee’s streets until they came to a stop at the base of the thirty-story tower. It was a ridiculous place to pull off a murder: a thousand gravel roads led into the woods, a hundred dirt paths into the meadowlands. Yet, they had chosen this place?
He stared up at the building from the side window. All of the apartment windows were dark. What he had seen from the distance were the hall lights that glowed with the same low-watt intensity on every floor to the top. The wind blew steadily with clawing fingers. A whole page of newspaper tumbled across the blacktop parking lot, got entangled beneath a car. Lou was alert despite the lack of real sleep he’d been able to snatch over the past two days. The palms of his hands were moist. He felt a steady thumping in his chest.
Sydney seemed to know the way and led the parade. Lou followed her across the lot, in and out of the darkness between the overhead lamps, cringing against the bullet he expected to pierce his skull at any moment. The wind blew directly into his face, burning his cheeks.
Sydney walked quickly and confidently to the glass entry door, never looking back at him or glancing to the side. Lou followed. He had a chance to run for it. Stanfield would probably never hit him if he broke and ran and dived into the shadows. But it was no good. In the woods, when the shock of the firefight still enveloped him, when he was still operating on the adrenalin of the survival instinct—yes. But this had been his plan after all: to lure Stanfield and Copeland to a place and time of his choosing—the perfect time to play the video card and record the smoking gun conversation.
If it hadn’t been for Kilmartin’s agents and his plan, Lou might’ve succeeded in surprising Stanfield when he first showed up at the Battery. Then it would’ve been Stanfield stumbling around in the dark, not him. Might have. There was nothing to do now but play it out to the end, whatever it would bring.
They entered the elevator together and stood silently with Sydney at the door. It stopped at the twenty-fourth floor.
“If either of you do anything foolish, it’ll be your last,” Stanfield said, unlocking the door.
“They’ve got it stocked with booze and beer, Lou. Which do you want?” Sydney asked, unbuttoning her coat and striding for the wet bar across the room. She flipped the tan raincoat onto a chair.
“Bourbon and water,” he said.
From the window, he could see the lights of Bergen County sprawling out to the west, and in the other direction, neon across the river. He stood and stared at the blackness outside. He imagined he could see Glen Rock out there and his own stucco cape with a light burning on the front
Chapter Forty-Two
As soon as she closed the door behind Kilmartin, Maggie strode into the kitchen, took out the tape, capped the ice cream, and threw it back into the freezer. She hurried to the living room.
“Boys, listen to grandma, okay? I’m going outside. I’ll be back in a minute. Stay in this room. Did you hear me? What did I say, Jory?”
“Stay in this room, grandma,” Jory said.
She slid the tape into the slot on the top deck VCR, hit Rewind, pushed a blank tape into the bottom deck, and then pressed the Copy button.
She scurried to the back door, trotted across the back yard. If they saw her, so be it. She was at Hazel Compton’s kitchen door in less than thirty seconds, and so was Hazel, her bronze face lined with worry.
“Maggie, what’s wrong. You look stricken. Come in.”
“We’re in very deep trouble, Hazel. And I need your help. I’m sorry to do this to you.”
“Don’t be silly. You know I’d do anything for you guys. Sit down. Have a cup of coffee. You’re frantic.”
“I don’t have time for anything, Hazel. I want you to take the boys. I want you to keep them here until you hear from me. It may be hours, days, I don’t know.”
“Of course. Bring them over.”
“No. It has to be done in a certain way. I’m sorry. Just listen to me.”
“My God, Maggie, what in the world happened?”
“Listen to me! I’ll call you from the house, as if I hadn’t told you this. I’ll ask you to take the boys. You’ll say yes and come to the back door to get them. Understand? Now, I need to use your telephone.”
“Right here,” Hazel said, wide eyed.
“Hello? Virg? This is Maggie. Hi... I’m fine. But never mind that, just listen. I’m sorry, Virg. Shut up and listen! I have to insult you by shouting this way for a good reason, my dearest friend. Lou and I are in deep, deep trouble and I need your help. Just listen. Listen! This is literally life and death. It sounds theatrical and phony, but it’s not. I need you to carry out an assignment. I need you to act as if we’re both characters in a cop series. Don’t laugh, Virg. Don’t fail me, please. Tonight, eight o’clock. Go to the Elks Club, to the auction. I’ll be there. You don’t recognize me. You don’t know me. Work the hall, check out the antiques, blend in. At exactly eight twenty-eight, go into the ladies’ room. It’s in the front, to the side of the stage. At eight thirty, I’ll come in. I’ll have something to give you, some instructions, either written or verbal— I don’t know right now. It has to do with your newspaper training, Virg. I know I can count on you. Please play the role as if you’d been there a hundred times in the past. Goodbye Virg.”
Maggie ran out of Hazel Compton’s kitchen, across the back yard, and through the open kitchen door. The doorbell was ringing.
“Mrs. Christopher, I’m officer Riegelhaupt. I’ve been assigned to stay with you for your protection twenty-four hours a day.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Sydney came up behind him and spoke softly: “Pretty view, isn’t it?”
Stanfield was right behind her; and when he had the two of them together at the window, he handed Lou a pair of handcuffs and stepped back, revolver in hand. “Joined at the wrists. Do it, bright boy.”
Lou turned and took the tumbler she held out to him. He let a swallow scratch his throat on the way down, and then locked himself and Sydney into the cuffs, one hand free.
“They have everything up here, even fixings for a sandwich,” she said.
“I could eat a cow.”
“Would you settle for a ham and cheese?”
They walked together to the kitchenette, Sydney with long, sure strides. Lou took another long pull on the Wild Turkey. It tasted raw and strong, but he liked it this time. At the counter, he let his right hand be pulled along by her left as she threw together a stack of ham and cheese sandwiches. The last gulp went down easily. He led the way to the bar and fixed himself another, while Sydney waited at his side with the pile of sandwiches.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I’ve learned to like Johnny Walker Red,” she said.
“Okay, Stanfield. You’re the boss. What are we doing here?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Stanfield said from his seat at the window.
Lou and Sydney sat together on the sofa facing Stanfield. Lou killed the Wild Turkey before he took his first bite of sandwich. He was pleased with the sudden, slight dizziness that washed over him.
“I might just grab one more of these,” he said, standing.
“I had you figured for a control freak,” she said. “You’re shooting your image all to hell.”
They went together to the bar again. He watched Stanfield through sagging eyelids. Her steps went one before the other in a straight line, her skirt swishing around her knees, her free ar
m swinging in a wide arc. She splashed a couple of fingers of Wild Turkey into the glass on top of the ice cubes and sloshed some water on top of that, mixing it with her finger. Back at the couch, Lou reached into his pocket for the Toshiba—the pocket tape recorder he’d purchased earlier—as he sat. He pushed the toggle to record and then discretely dropped the compact device into the vase on the side table.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“We’re in it together,” she said, tilting the glass of Red.
“You’re lying.”
“Okay. I’m lying.”
“Why then?”
“Fuck you.”
“Thought I was just going to run up and grab you in the station, right? Fall all over myself...”
“I wasn’t betting on it. Think of it my way, commander. I’m screwed, coming and going. If I don’t pay back what I owe, I wind up in a Dempsey Dumpster somewhere in Newark. If I don’t go to the end of the line with these guys, I wind up dead in the Meadowlands somewhere. I’m one of those women who can’t seem to get out of the way.”
“So you do what they say. Good story. But so ordinary. Couldn’t it have been a little more creative?”
“Fuck you again.”
The door opened suddenly and noiselessly, and Copeland quickly entered the room. The surprise of his sudden entrance seemed like a ploy to prevent anyone hiding behind the door from ambushing him. He went straight to the window and looked down into the parking lot. Then he walked slowly across the darkness and slouched in the chair across from them.
“Unhook them,” he said to Stanfield.
Stanfield flipped the key in the general direction of the couch. Sydney snagged it with her right hand and freed them.
Copeland pulled out a cigarette. He used his fingernail to flick a match, and then cupped the flame against some imaginary wind, letting smoke dribble slowly from his nose as he gently shook the match until the flame died. He dropped the dead match into the brass ashtray next to the sandwiches.
“I just came from a meeting.” His voice was low, soft, and eerily calm. “You two were the subject.”
Sydney almost involuntarily inched closer to Lou on the couch.
“The rats are jumping overboard. Peter Jennings is already predicting a landslide loss for Bliss. For you, win or lose is immaterial. Us, we don’t want any loose ends hanging around. You’re loose ends.”
Stanfield dropped some ice cubes in a glass and clinked the neck of the scotch bottle against the glass, breaking the tension.
“How about something over here?” Standfield said.
Copeland wagged his smoking ember. “We want you out of the way.”
Neither of them said anything or moved. Copeland continued in a low, soft monotone.
“You two are in luck. Everybody wants this whole rat fuck to dissolve along with this joke of an election. They want no more blood, no more dirt, and no more chances for exposure. They see you two as dead meat if you stay in the country. A matter of a couple of days before the Feds scoop you up, and then the rest of your life spent staring at a concrete ceiling; that is, if you escape death row. But that’s a risk for us; that you... But, you’d never expose us, would you? Anyway, you’re leaving the country. As soon as I can get you out of here. There’ll be no messy little problems this way.” He crushed the cigarette into the ashtray and took one of the sandwiches. “You board a plane tonight out of Kennedy. The 11:45 for Quito, Ecuador. From there, you’re on a bus through the mud to Montalvo, where you hang out with the peasants and live on coffee and bananas. You pick up your passport and ticket at Kennedy along with twenty thousand in cash.”
Lou began to chuckle and he couldn’t stop. It came from down deep in his gut. Ecuador. Come on. The clichés never end.
“But you never show your face in this country again,” Copeland said. “You drive to the airport in the Audi. You’ve got thirty minutes to get down to the car and still catch the flight. Change your clothes.
“Your wife will receive a typewritten letter in the mail informing her that you cut out with your lover. She’ll get a little check every month for the next year, postmarked from various cities around the country.
“I’m out of here,” Copeland said.
“Take it or leave it, right?” Lou demanded.
“You got it, pal.”
“What’s to keep me from coming back from fucking Ecuador?”
“You... you fucking phony. Who do you think you are anyway? You had a chance to scratch the whole thing right in the beginning. You could’ve gotten out way back there at the motel and you know it. But the deal looked too good. You could see all that green rolling in every month. And all you had to do was bang bang, in and out. Now if you’re smart, you’ll take the fucking hush money, and the broad, and lay low like a good boy. That’s all you got left. Take it and run.”
“Take it and run, huh? Take it and run,” Lou growled. “Well, Copeland, remember what I told you about cover, before this rat fuck began? I recorded a little story on videotape. Talked all about Bear Mountain Bridge, Patty Buck, and Bliss, before it ever got off the ground. Named names, dates. If I don’t show up in the next twenty-four hours, every TV station in the country...” Lou lurched up from the couch instinctively, but the booze was strong in his veins. He pitched forward to the floor.
Copeland stood, smiling. He walked slowly to where Lou lay face down; put his foot on his ear.
“You crummy sot. You have no cover. A videotape? It’s an allegation, fuck face. An allegation of what? Conspiracy to rig an election? It’s your word against... whoevers. Is that too much for that little military mind of yours? All you fucking Army turds think linear—like it takes fifty cannons and a thousand grunts to make anything happen in this world. Napoleon at Austerlitz, Hannibal crossing the Alps. Might makes right. Do this, get that. Well, it’s the other way around, asshole. It’s a little prick named Oswald with a cheesy rifle in Dallas. It’s Sirhan Sirhan, Squeaky Fromme, John Hinckley. A loose screw and brass balls. One spark and a can of napalm.”
He gave a mock salute, and slammed the door on the way out.
Chapter Forty-Four
Agent Riegelhaupt jerked the handle on the Elks Club swinging glass door and let Maggie and Kilmartin precede him. Mag led the way down the hall beside the public telephone and the bar and into the auditorium. The room was brimming, people gliding around and between the tables and inspecting the assembled antiques, near-antiques, and household junk that jammed every corner and spilled out into the aisles. She strode to the small table in the far corner to get her bidding card. Kilmartin and Riegelhaupt were right behind.
The elderly man at the registration table slid Mag’s card, number thirty-seven, under the address sheet she had filled out unconsciously, automatically, as she had dozens of times in the past. She turned and came face-to-face with her friend, Virg, her familiar rusty hair rising in mini-tornados all over the top of her head, her blazing blue eyes boring into Mag’s. As they slid by each other, Virg’s eyes instantly shifted away from Mag’s, and she blended into the crowd.
“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to sit in the back when the auction gets going. I’ll need a chair to hold my coat. If you’re intending to sit there with me, you’d better do the same. The chairs’ll go quickly,” Mag said to Kilmartin.
“We’ll stand over to the side, Margaret,” Kilmartin said.
Mag slid the shoulders of her coat around the back of the folding chair in the far left corner of the seating area. Ignoring the two men, she began to maneuver through the crowd toward the front of the room. Looking up momentarily from a cut glass pitcher, she saw Virg disappear into the ladies’ room beside the stage. Mag turned away and opened the drawer of an old, cherry wood, jelly cupboard, inspecting it for signs of real, true human wear. Riegelhaupt was at her side; Kilmartin stood in the back.
“I’m going to the ladies’ room, officer,” she said. “You can come if you’d like.”
“I’m sorry, m
a’am, but if you’re not back out here in three minutes, I’m coming in,” Riegelhaupt said.
Maggie walked quickly to the door and pushed it open. Inside, she turned to make sure the door was closed and that she was alone with Virg. She grabbed the slight woman’s shoulders, pushed her into one of the two stalls, and latched the door. Straddling the toilet, the hem of her dress pulled to her waist, Maggie plucked the videotape from the front of her panty hose.
“Virg, let me do all the talking. I have about two minutes. You are a brave, wonderful friend to do this for Lou and me. It is very dangerous. It is beyond anything I could convey to you in the time we have here. Take this tape home and look at it. It’s self-explanatory. It links to the Bear Mountain Bridge thing that’s in the news right now. Unfortunately, Lou’s right in the middle of it. It’s all very sinister and mean.”
