Shakedown

by Joel Goldman

  Ammara said, “Marcellus was killed before we could track the money from his operation. Suppose Tanja used her New York connections to open up in Kansas City. She could have supplied the local dealers like Marcellus, Javy Ordonez, and Bodie Grant.”

  “Thomas Rice could have washed the money through deals like PEMA Partners,” I said.

  “And Tanja’s New York in-laws would take a healthy cut,” Ammara said. “Wouldn’t have left much for Marcellus.”

  “I think it’s time we talked to the Andrijas,” Yates said.

  Troy stood. “You and me, Ammara,” he said.

  Watching them leave, I was numb. Troy had been right that someone on our squad was dirty, even if Colby hadn’t tipped Marcellus to the surveillance camera. Troy was willing to look for answers in the dark places where it hurt to be right. My dependence on smoking guns to prove guilt had shut my eyes to crimes masked by human subtlety.

  As much as I wanted to believe that Tanja and Nick would use Wendy to make a deal, I knew that it could as easily go the other way, especially if Troy came at them with a lot of firepower.

  He wouldn’t go after them alone or in a hurry. It would take time to get warrants, map out a plan, and assemble a backup team. That gave me a window in which to work. Yates stopped me as I headed for the door.

  “Is this what you wanted from Rice’s file?” he asked, handing me an Excel spreadsheet.

  The spreadsheet contained a list of people who had invested with Rice but had not sued him. They were the lucky ones, the ones who’d made money with Rice. To his credit, it was a long list. It was also alphabetized. Petar and Maja Andrija were near the top.

  “That’s it. I saw them sitting in their kitchen last night. They were frail and frightened. When Tanja showed up, they looked more frightened. She must have used them to hide her money the same way Rice used his wife to hide his.”

  I was finished. I couldn’t bring myself to add that it was the same way Colby Hudson had used my daughter.

  I took a slow walk around the room, brushing my hand along the wall. The tables, chairs, carpet, and whiteboards were all fungible. You could find them in ten thousand offices in a thousand office buildings. I came to the door and stood for a minute, my hand on the brass knob, certain that I’d never come back. Leaning my head against the door, I felt Ben Yates standing behind me.

  “I’m sorry, Jack.”

  “Me, too.”

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  There is a moment in every case when you can feel the end coming. Momentum builds off a series of breaks, large and small. People pick up their pace, forgetting how tired they are. Phones ring louder. Doors slam. A surge carries everyone to the finish, whatever it turns out to be.

  Our computer geeks were dissecting Wendy’s hard drive. Wyandotte County officials were being yanked off the golf course and quizzed about the county’s underground history. Agents in New York and Kansas City were connecting the dots between Tanja Andrija and her late husband’s family while Troy Clark passed out bulletproof vests.

  Even with everything coming together, the dull reality was that it might be too late to save Wendy. I may have persuaded Ben and Troy that she was more likely a victim than a perpetrator, but there would be little comfort in saving her reputation if I lost the rest of her to a bullet or a prison cell.

  If presented with these facts in any other case, my professional judgment would be that she was most likely dead. Wendy had been missing for two days. She had become a pawn and pawns die unless both sides want them.

  Marty Grisnik had promised to call me. I decided to use the time until he did to visit Kate.

  It was late afternoon by the time I drove back to the KU Hospital. The day had gotten colder, the pale sky deepening to dirty gray, pressing toward the ground like a ?atiron.

  Kate’s room was at the end of a long hall, voices echoing through her open door. She was propped up in bed surrounded by people I knew but had never met. They were her family, names she had mentioned more than once. I had no trouble putting names to faces.

  Her sister, Patty, had the short, frizzy hair Kate had once described as steel wool on a bad day. She stood on the near side at the head of the bed, her features a rough match of Kate’s, her face lined with worry as she and Kate whispered to one another.

  Kate’s son, Brian, leaned on the other side of the mattress, idly playing with a handheld video game, which was a thirteen-year-old boy’s way of dealing with the world. His eyes jumped back and forth from the screen to his mother.

  Her father, Henry, who had raised her from micro expression guinea pig to professional partner and who Kate had said was nearly eighty, stood at the foot of the bed. He had a thick body, white hair, and blotchy cheeks, his stubby hands clutching at the memory of cigars he’d been forced to give up. Kate’s ex-husband, Alan, balding, thin, and dressed in a runner’s sweat suit, was next to him, the two men locked in an intense, animated conversation, the few words I caught as I stepped into the room sounding like shoptalk.

  It all stopped when they saw me. Kate rolled her eyes and smiled at me, a look that was half happy and half anesthetic hangover.

  Her family’s faces widened with recognition and then dismay, eyes and mouths narrowing in collective disapproval. Patty turned her back to Kate as if to shield her. Brian straightened, edging closer to his mother. Henry and Alan slid toward Patty, the three of them forming a human barricade cutting me off from Kate.

  It was clear that I wasn’t the hero of whatever story Kate had told them about what had happened. I knew she would have given them a version unadorned by exaggeration, rich with responsibility for her own actions, and gratitude for mine. But they were her family and were having none of it. There was nothing hidden in their micro expressions. I read in their faces their indictment of me, the FBI agent who’d led their loved one into danger and nearly cost them someone they held dear.

  I didn’t blame them because it was true, Kate’s likely protest notwithstanding. That’s the way it’s supposed to be with families. Members were to be protected, taken care of. Anyone who threatened one of them threatened all of them. Anyone who failed in their duty to protect one failed all of them.

  I couldn’t argue and I didn’t. No one spoke. It wasn’t necessary. I nodded at them, turned around, and left. Kate called my name from behind their backs but I kept on walking.

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Ammara Iverson called me as I was leaving the hospital. It was dusk, the air dry and charged.

  “We hit the jackpot with Wendy’s computer,” she said. “The important files are encrypted but we’ve been able to break into some of them. We’re still working on the others. So far we’ve got some offshore accounts and names.”

  “Was it Tanja’s show?”

  “Locally, but she was working for her in-laws. Colby joined up late last year.”

  “That was when he and Wendy had gotten married. How do you know?”

  “He included a confession of sorts, called it his insurance policy, and said he hid it on Wendy’s computer. It said that he would probably be dead by the time anyone read it. He says he knows that he fucked up and he’s sorry. He also says that Wendy had nothing to do with it.”

  True or not, Colby had tried to protect her, though he wasn’t much of a character reference at this point. I thought of her, wondering where she was and if I’d ever see her again.

  “Doesn’t help much.”

  “I know you, Jack,” Ammara said. “I know what you want to do and I’m begging you not to do it, especially not in your condition. We’re going after them and we’ll find Wendy.”

  My phone beeped with another call. It was Marty Grisnik. “I’ve got to go.”

  “I just got a tip from one of my CIs,” he said. “It might be something. It might be nothing. We should check it out before we go see Tanja.”

  I wasn’t ready to tell him about Tanja, uncertain how he would take it, wondering whether he would give her a head start, knowing th
at I’d be tempted to if I had the history with Tanja that Marty did.

  “A tip about what?”

  “I told you that I’d put the word out about your daughter. One of my guys calls me. Says he saw a man and a woman in Matney Park last night around midnight. Saw them go into a shed back in the woods. Says the man left and didn’t come back.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “Never saw her again. Says it was like she disappeared. That’s why I’m telling you it might be something and it might be nothing.”

  “How reliable is this guy?”

  “Like most of them. If they bat their weight they’re doing good.”

  “What’s he doing hanging out in the park?”

  “Getting high. You don’t want to check it out, we can let it ride and go have a drink with Tanja. You can ask her if she’s the drug kingpin of Strawberry Hill. If she says she is, you can arrest her. If she isn’t, you and I go get drunk. Your call.”

  A tremor hit me in the gut and I bent over, one hand on my knee. It took me a moment to catch my breath.

  “Hey, Jack! You there?”

  “I’m here and I’m in. Tell me where and I’ll meet you.”

  “You know how to get to Matney Park?”

  “No clue.”

  “Better I come to you. Where are you?”

  “I’m just leaving the KU Hospital.”

  “Wait for me in the circle drive. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  The entrance to the hospital is on the east side of the complex. It faces a five-story parking garage. My car was parked on the third level. I retrieved my gun, stowing it beneath my jacket against the small of my back.

  Traffic to the hospital ?ows from Thirty-ninth Street onto Cambridge, which runs past the entrance, where there is a circle drive to drop off and pick people up. A steady stream of patients, visitors, doctors, nurses, and staff ?owed in and out as I paced along the curb. A moment later, Grisnik pulled up, his passenger window lowered. He leaned toward me as I opened the door.

  “Hurry it up,” he said as I got in. “I don’t got all night.”

  “Where the hell is Matney Park?”

  “West and north, maybe thirty minutes from here.”

  He took Thirty-ninth to Rainbow Boulevard, turning north and staying with it as it turned into Seventh Street. He took the ramp westbound onto I-70, chasing the last bit of daylight ahead of us. I leaned back against my seat as a wave of mild tremors swept across my body.

  “Still got the shakes,” Grisnik said.

  “Lets me know I’m alive.”

  “Amen, brother. Another day on the green side is always a good day.”

  Grisnik looked like hundreds of other cops and agents I’d known over the years. His eyes were lit up and there was a determined set to his jaw. It was how we all looked when we were on the hunt.

  “You ever been wrong about people you think you know?” I asked him.

  “Never,” he said, “unless you count my ex-wife, and half the people I work with, and I’m not too sure about everyone else.”

  “If you’re wrong about Tanja, what then?”

  “Look, Jack. I’m a cop. Just like you. Doesn’t mean we don’t have family and friends that fuck up. You and me, we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do.” He was as sincere as a parish priest. “But from what you’ve told me, all you’ve got on Tanja is smoke and guesses. What’s Troy Clark say?”

  It was like I was playing Russian roulette, holding a gun to my head, pulling the trigger until I shot myself with a lie.

  “He’s like you. He thinks it’s bullshit and that I should have collared Colby when I had the chance.”

  Grisnik laughed. “That’s the kind of guy I want covering my back. He’d second-guess what you had for breakfast.”

  We let it drop and fifteen minutes later we pulled into Matney Park. It was a small stretch of faded grass and hard-packed dirt with a ball field, picnic shelter, and swing set. Home plate had been stolen and the pitcher’s mound had eroded to a thin, scarred slab of rubber. The shelter was deserted; the last crumbs had long since been picked clean by squirrels. The bowed swing seats hung empty and still, no memory of a child’s soft hands tightly grasping the chains while slender legs pumped hard, reaching for the sky.

  We drove past the diamond and followed a gravel road that wound through a stand of trees before dead-ending in a small clearing. A redbrick building twelve feet square with a ?at roof, no windows, and a single door facing us stood against the back edge of the clearing, another stretch of woods behind it. Grisnik killed the engine.

  “Let’s check this out and then I’ll take you to apologize to my godparents for saying bad things about their little girl.”

  I followed him to the door to the brick building. “What is this place?”

  “County built it years ago, probably used it for storage.”

  The door was unlocked. A yellowed lightbulb split the empty room in to light and shadows. A manhole cover six feet in diameter was set in the center of the concrete ?oor, a tarp bundled in one corner.

  “Marty, what the hell is this?”

  “An empty room.”

  “Except for that,” I said, pointing at the tarp.

  It was blue, made of heavy-gauge plastic. I grabbed a handful and pulled it off the ?oor. A desktop CPU lay underneath. The side panel had been removed, exposing the motherboard and other components except for the hard drive, which was missing. I stared at it for a long minute, remembering that Wendy’s computer was missing when Troy had searched her apartment.

  I lifted the CPU, exposing the metal plate where the manufacturer had embossed the serial number. Wendy’s name was etched below it in neat block letters, just as I had engraved it. The only surprise was that I didn’t start shaking.

  “It’s Wendy’s computer. It was in her apartment when I was there on Thursday. Troy said it wasn’t there when he searched the apartment yesterday. The hard drive is gone.”

  “Looks like my CI has earned his Christmas bonus,” Grisnik said. “If the woman he saw was your daughter, that’s why she never came out,” he said, pointing to the manhole cover. “Give me a hand.”

  We knelt on the ?oor, inserting our fingers into slots around the edge and lifted the cover, dropping it on the ?oor. We stared down a pitch-black shaft that smelled dank and stale. Round, ridged climbing bars had been bolted into the wall of the shaft like a ladder without handrails.

  “You know where this goes?” I asked him.

  “Down.”

  We went back to the car. He opened the driver’s door, grabbed two ?ashlights, tossed one to me, tested the beam on his, and waved it like a lightsaber. I held mine at my side, rooted to the ground by unspeakable fear, memories of Kevin shackling my legs.

  “Jack,” Grisnik said softly, “we don’t have a choice. We’ve got to see what’s down there.”

  Chapter Seventy

  Grisnik took the lead. I put my light on him, and watched him descend, keeping a couple of body lengths between us. The ceiling light above the entry to the shaft faded quickly. Outside the beams of our ?ashlights, the darkness was absolute. Anyone observing our descent would have thought they were witnessing an invasion of mutant glowworms.

  The shaft was too deep to be part of the sewer system. It had to be a remnant of an underground mine. I hoped that it was at the top of the list Troy and Ammara were assembling, though it was far removed from Latrell Kelly’s stomping grounds.

  The climbing bars were made of cold steel and ridged for traction. Each one was a foot apart. I counted them as I climbed down, keeping track of how deeply belowground we were going.

  The air got cooler the farther we went. The sides of the shaft were dry at first but began to show traces of moisture that gradually increased until the round walls were slick and wet. My count reached 120 when Grisnik shined his ?ashlight at me.

  “I’m down,” he said. “There’s a ladder from the bottom of the shaft that ends about five feet above
the ?oor.”

  They were the first words either of us had spoken since we began our descent. I kept my light aimed at him, the ?oor quickly coming into view, looking like a ?attened moonscape. Grisnik pivoted in a tight circle, pointing his ?ashlight outward, then turned it off and vanished in the darkness.

  I quickly covered the remaining ten feet inside the shaft, emerging into a large, rough-hewn, dome-shaped cavern. The ladder was anchored into the mouth of the shaft. The concrete securing the bolts had eroded and crumbled, causing the entire span to sway like a rope bridge.

  “Marty! Where are you?”

  He didn’t answer. I swept the cavern walls with my ?ashlight until I found the outer perimeter, and took my bearings. It was a wide-open space, big enough to park half a dozen cars.

  I shined my light at the base of the ladder, tracing lines in four directions and hitting the stack of boxes and trash bags I’d last seen being loaded into Nick Andrija’s pickup. I continued my survey until the beam spread out like a fan, re?ecting off a mirror made of water instead of glass. An in?ated raft with a small outboard motor was beached at the edge of an underground lake.

  “Come on in, the water’s fine,” Colby Hudson said.

  The echoes in the chamber made it impossible to pinpoint his location and I had no better luck chasing the sound with my ?ashlight.

  A red dot materialized on my shoulder, tracing a path to my heart, where it stopped.

  “I’ve got a clear shot at you, Jack, so unload your gun and drop it. If I don’t like the way you do it, I’ll shoot you. And that would be a shame because there’s someone down here who’s dying to see you.”

  Colby had used Grisnik to lure me into a trap. “Marty! Where are you?”

  “Do as he says, Jack,” Grisnik answered. “He’s holding all the cards.”

  “Wendy!” I shouted, “It’s okay, honey. I’m here!”

  She didn’t answer. I was suspended in midair, too far from the shaft to climb back into it and too far above the ground to drop and roll. I emptied my Glock and let it go.