“Here’s what you’d get if you crossed Jay Leno and a silverback,” Clayton said. “Stanley Smoot, Jr., who goes by the very original tag of Buck. Peanut’s firstborn. Twenty-nine and trouble with a capital ‘T.’ Graduated high school at twenty due to a few teachers he couldn’t scare the crap out of. Tried team sports, but Buck was prone to collecting personal fouls and generally considered a negative influence on his teammates. He could have been a poster boy for the Young Sociopath Club if there’d been one in his high school.”
Buck bore a striking resemblance to his father, Peanut, but the son’s scalp was accented by mogul-like waves—as if the skin on his skull was doing an impression of wavy hair. Buck’s face was filled with small skin eruptions. He wore three heavy steel hoops in his left ear. His head was supported by a neck so thick that it would have looked at home on a rutting elk. He reminded Winter of a maniacal version of a long-jawed simpleton cartoon character from Mad magazine.
“This picture was a police-sponsored portrait to commemorate the occasion of an arrest for aggravated assault, charges dropped.”
“Who’d he assault?” Winter asked.
“Exotic dancer by the name of Kitty Breeze. Kitty initially told the cops that Buck bit her nipple off, flattened her nose, broke her jaw, and shattered her eye socket. After he was arrested and placed in a lineup, she couldn’t identify him and said the man who actually did it was a Mexican.”
In a surveillance shot, Buck was standing beside a truck in his boxer shorts. Buck’s shoulders rippled with muscles; his arms and hands were massive. Below the muscles, Buck had a swollen belly, his legs were amazingly thin, and his feet appeared to be too small and narrow to support him. It was as if he’d been put together out of the parts of two people and one of them had been a middle-aged accountant with a penchant for beer.
“Four months in the Marine Corps before they kicked his ass out. Seems the Corps didn’t pay proper attention to his psychological profile. Except for thumping heads and scaring people, Buck would be jobless. He’s a product of blending suspect genetic material, the brain of a Neanderthal, physical exercise, and chemical abuse. Suspect in at least a dozen killings for hire, and more than that many young ladies over the years—all of whom his family was associated with on some level. Dancers, prostitutes, employees of shady businesses.”
The next set of pictures was of a very large pair of men in football regalia. Feature-wise they resembled Buck and Peanut, but each was half again Buck’s size.
“These young men are the Smoot twins, Burt and Curt. This is a newer picture.”
In the next photo, the twins had obviously turned their backs on the weight training that had given them their impressive high school figures, and hadn’t stayed ahead of the results of consuming copious amounts of carbohydrates and beer. Winter couldn’t help but wonder if the twins smiled like idiots all the time, or just when they were in the presence of a camera. They certainly got their share of the Smoot genes.
Clayton sucked on his pipe loudly. “They were linemen. Big college programs courted them, but they had problems with a lack of motivation, and their SAT scores sucked.
“These two aren’t explosive, like Buck, but they aren’t any less dangerous. To the best of their abilities, they do what Daddy says.”
Next Clayton tossed out a picture of a woman, who looked enough like Buck in a wig to be comical.
“This breathtaking vision of southern womanhood is Dora Jeanne Smoot, known affectionately as Dixie. She is Papa’s little angel. Dixie’s into body sculpting.”
“She’s a lot like her brothers,” Alexa said.
Clayton said, “She collects money, keeps Papa’s painted women in line, and furnishes steroids to gyms, coaches, and her brother Buck. Dixie can do pretty much whatever the boys can. She was born with brittle teeth, so she had them all pulled and wears porcelain choppers.”
“The woman with dentures on phone taps,” Winter said.
“Almost certainly,” Clayton agreed. “No voice pattern for Dixie on file. Our dentally challenged mystery woman always uses pay phones, and Dixie does the same. She is suspected of committing at least seven prostitution-related murders on her father’s behalf. Problem pimps, a few whores. Dixie’s one very nasty piece of psychotica.” He turned over another picture. “And this is Ferny Ernest Smoot, called Click by his family and friends.
“Inherited the family brain trust. No arrests. Had some minor behavioral problems in school, but otherwise Click’s probably as harmless as you can be, given his blood and nurturing.”
“He doesn’t look like a member of the same circus,” Alexa said. “He’s normal looking, sort of in a Civil War tintype way.”
“If his hair was cut, he wouldn’t look like the lead guitarist for Led Zeppelin,” Clayton said.
“We still have to find them,” Alexa said. “We can start by checking out their listed addresses.”
Winter lifted the picture of the youngest Smoot. Something about the face tickled a memory, so he studied the eyes visible through the curtains of wavy red hair. He knew them, the skinny neck, slumping shoulders. And he knew where he had seen the young man before.
“Don’t need an address for this one,” Winter said. “I know where he was twenty minutes ago.”
Alexa and Clayton looked at him.
“He was sitting in the lobby when I got here. Without the curly locks. Wearing khakis, a button-down shirt under a collared Polo jacket, and buckskin oxfords. Looked like a preppy student.”
“How the hell can that be?” Clayton said. “You sure?”
Winter nodded.
“Of course he’s sure,” Alexa said. “Coincidence?”
“No,” Winter said. “He was settled in. And I thought at the time he was paying me a lot of attention. When I arrived in the lobby, he was there with a computer open in his lap.”
“How the hell could he be onto us?” Clayton asked.
Winter said, “I just know he was watching me when I came in.”
“He must have followed Hailey Fondren here when he came here for lunch,” Alexa said, obviously angry with herself.
“Why did you insist on meeting the judge in the damned restaurant?” Clayton said.
“Click doesn’t know who I am,” Alexa said.
“He can’t know about my association with either you or Fondren,” Clayton told her. “We arrived at the hotel separately. I’ve never spoken to Hailey Fondren period, or to you in public.”
“How did he latch onto me?” Alexa said, frowning. Thinking.
“I’d bet he was following Judge Fondren. The judge came here, Click saw you, and he stuck on you to check you out. Maybe someone else is following the judge.”
“What can he know about me? I’m registered under my name, but not as an FBI agent. All he knows is that I had lunch with the judge,” Alexa told Clayton. “If the kid was watching the dining room, we all left separately. You and I went up in separate elevator cars.”
“You know,” Clayton said to Alexa, “I think he was at a table in the dining room. Had a backpack by his foot. Hailey came in after you and I were already seated at different tables. I’m not sure when the kid showed up. I was watching for the judge and you, but I’m sure he wasn’t there when I came down.”
“Christ. Christ. Okay, let’s think this through,” Alexa said. “Did I look at you? I can’t remember. Did the judge? I think he might have turned to look at you.”
“I was monitoring you through a reflection in the glass. I never looked directly at you.”
Alexa was freaking out, which was not at all like her, Winter thought. He smiled reassuringly. “Relax, Lex. Click’s just snooping.”
“Relax? If they know the judge called the FBI in, Lucy and Elijah are dead.”
“You’re thinking that Click being onto you is a bad thing?”
“He saw you, too,” Alexa reminded him. “Of course it’s a bad thing. What the hell could be good about it? We don’t know what he knows.”
<
br /> Winter smiled. “And he doesn’t know that we know about him. Seems like a good thing.”
21
Peanut Smoot’s back was killing him, and his dislike for Sarnov was a full-blown hatred. There wasn’t any repairing the #3 NASCAR jacket, but that wasn’t nearly as bad as the fact that the Russian bastard had made Peanut look like a fool in front of Mr. Laughlin. No matter how much plain-sense talk Mr. Laughlin came up with about business necessities or how dangerous the Russians were, Peanut was going to deal Sarnov a hand of slow death. Damn the whole bunch of Russians. Their business would go on no matter where the buyers came from, because the merchandise was in demand and profitable to their buyers.
What was one more hole in the good earth? Who could prove it was Peanut who did anything to Sarnov? Accidents happen and people go missing all the time.
Planning the bastard’s end made Peanut feel better. Wasn’t going to be as simple as a twelve-gauge root canal. It was a fact that Serge Sarnov had a dirt nap in his close-up future.
There were so many possibilities for dealing punishment out that a man would have to flip a coin all day to figure which one it was going to be. For example, you might wrap a little foreign bastard in sheets soaked in blood and let a brace of dogs go to work on him for a while to get him screaming and begging. Then, while he was just scared good, you could hang him up in the skinning shed and use lopping shears and take him apart a piece at a time. No, there was no shortage of ways to pay a feller off who’d wronged you.
Peanut checked his rearview religiously as he drove. Fixes or not, you could never be too careful when it came to the cops. And that wasn’t just the Feds, who were always looking for some new way to stick their noses into your business. If old Judge Fondren did go to the FBI, and they were looking for the woman and that baby, there just wasn’t any way they could tie a Smoot in on it. Only members of Peanut’s immediate family knew about the judge’s daughter and her baby, and not a one of them would ever tell anybody squat. Mr. Laughlin was one secret-keeping son of a bitch. Sarnov and Randall knew some of it, but, they had more to lose if the cops solved it than anybody. So let old Judge Fondren do whatever the hell he wanted, and let him tell everybody he could find—it wouldn’t do him a little bitty bit of good.
Once Bryce was cut loose, there wasn’t nothing that anybody could do no matter if Fondren said he was forced or not. Double jeopardy wasn’t going to happen, because there wasn’t no proving that Bryce was part of anything.
Peanut was starting to feel better. His back was going to have a hell of a sore spot where the gun had been tucked in his belt, and he’d have to get a new jacket to replace his personally autographed #3, but Dale sure couldn’t sign it. . . .
Peanut picked up the cell phone and dialed Click.
“Yeah?”
“Anything?”
“Naw.”
“Okay, then get on out of there,” Peanut told his son. “I’ll call if I need you for anything else.”
“Like when?”
“Like when I damn well please,” Peanut snapped good-naturedly.
“To do what?”
“Wait and see, son.” Peanut closed the phone. Most of the time, Peanut was fond of all his children. Click was the special one. And not just because he was the baby and all. He was as smart as any contestant on Jeopardy, spoiled rotten, and too good-looking for his own good. But once Peanut was out of the picture—and that wouldn’t be very soon—that boy was the future of the Smoots. The others would either accept it when the time came or they’d end up like all those hairy elephants that got stuck in the ice way back when. Extinct.
Truth be told, once Peanut was dead, it wouldn’t really matter if the whole bunch did piss away everything he had accumulated for them that Mr. Laughlin had legitimized. Not like any of them appreciated any of it anyhow.
Peanut slammed his Johnny Cash at Folsom CD into the player, turned the volume up, and sang along to the music.
Click would be all right.
And to hell with the rest of them hairy-ass elephants.
22
The second he was released from his spy duty, Click Smoot shoved his laptop into his backpack and rushed to the parking garage to get his car. He planned to spend the rest of his day burning holes in other people’s credit in a few choice stores.
He got into his new Nissan Z, laid the backpack on the passenger floorboard, and drove out of the garage. The rain was falling heavily, so he flipped on both his headlights and his wipers.
Click reached under the dash and pressed a button opening a secret compartment large enough to hold two packages of credit cards each joined with a rubber band. Each package included two or three credit cards in an actual name and a driver’s license also in that name but with a recent photograph of Click on it.
Click used his intellect to make money the modern way and was already expanding the family’s take despite their amazing technological ignorance. Robbing, hijacking, illegal gambling clubs, whores, drugs, extortion, insurance fraud, murder for hire, and all the rest of what the family was into was the old way, and Click wanted no part of it. He wasn’t interested in being killed over some whore, or drugs, or a failed hijacking because some driver belonged to the NRA and had a gun he wanted to fire at some criminal so he could get written up in their magazine.
Click was concentrating on a future that few of the people in the family’s business could grasp. As far as his siblings were concerned, anything that was computerized, digitized, or involved something they couldn’t fold and hold was too abstract for them. The average Smoot’s capacity for grasping new technology was akin to a cat’s ability to appreciate fine art.
Click wasn’t like the other Smoots. Once upon a time the difference had been painful, but as he grew up he had come to appreciate how lucky he was. He had an I.Q. of 160. He had discovered early that a clean-cut young man was practically invisible.
Click didn’t hate his family. He just felt sorry for and was overwhelmingly embarrassed about them. He had come to the conclusion that the only thing he had in common with them was a larcenous gene. Like all Smoots, Ferny Ernest was repelled by legitimate work, was greedy, and, like a Gypsy, got an almost orgasmic thrill when he was stealing from outsiders. Only a stolen quarter was worth spending and only a sucker depended on a steady paycheck.
Click had explained to his father that the family could make more money using keyboards than they could with an army of soldiers. And Peanut was smart enough to realize that Click had something different and had supported his son’s forays into the world of computer-related crime.
When he was ready to make his big move, he would work a dozen big-dollar scams simultaneously, snatch millions, and be cashed out and long gone before anybody saw him coming. He had targeted banks and investment firms that moved millions daily. He would stand beside a flowing river of funds and, using a few keystrokes as his explosives, blow a hole in the levee. He would let the river flow into his canal a bit, then plug the hole and watch the canals he had built, each moving a tributary’s worth, join together and make a river of his own.
Soon.
Peanut’s latest interest in Click’s computers was as an avenue for selling pornography, which he was sure he could generate, and in collecting credit card information from the horny hordes that subscribed. For example, you set up a website for bait, and you chose a subject that rich people would be looking at. They visit, you run into their computer and plant a seed in it that collects their financial information from their hard drives. You didn’t even need to ask for credit card numbers, because people usually had that information on their drives.
Click had to admit that the porn thing would work, but it would attract the mob’s attention since the mob controlled porn and they would demand a big slice. Dixie had all the male and female prostitutes they would ever need. Buck wanted to be a producer, but that would be like hiring a wino to work in a crystal shop and putting him up on stilts.
He parked in front of
the Media Warehouse. Ferny Ernest looked at the credit cards again, decided on an American Express card that belonged to Edmund C. Kellogg, and put the others back in the secret compartment.
“Another day, another dollar,” Click said as he opened the car’s door.
23
Thanks to Clayton Able’s intelligence-gathering, Winter and Alexa knew who the kidnappers were. And thanks to Winter’s knack for remembering faces, they had a subject to focus on.
After years of recovering federal fugitives, Winter had developed an ability to memorize primary facial features. The shape of the jaw and chin, the nose and the eyes, remain constant, where hair was the first thing people altered. The second change was of their style of dress and by utilizing distractions of one sort or another like hats, glasses, and items of clothing. In the real world, very few fugitives had the means for or the access to reconstructive facial surgery. Despite what movies wanted you to think, there were a limited number of plastic surgeons who fabricated new faces in their secret clinics or the kitchens of hideouts.
Alexa had cell phones for herself and Winter, connected by speed dial both to each other and to Clayton, who would remain in the hotel room hooked up to his sources. Alexa had acquired a GPS tracker in case they needed to follow a vehicle. Now, since there was moving-target surveillance to be conducted, and the target had seen the members of the covering team, Winter had decided to tag Click’s car and see where he led them.
Alexa’s tracking unit had a five-mile range. The receiver was similar to the sort of handheld GPS outdoorsmen used, the small screen showing named lines for streets.
Since they probably wouldn’t be returning to the hotel for a good while, Alexa and Winter took Clayton’s files on the Smoots, and the equipment they figured they might need. To avoid coming out into the lobby, they used the fire stairs, going through a side door that opened into the parking deck. Alexa unlocked her rental car and put everything inside it before she positioned herself near the mouth of the deck, which gave her a view of the entrance.
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