When he paused to take a deep breath, Wanda said, “Are you done?”
“I’m done with the crash,” he told her.
“What else is there?” she asked.
“You have a meeting scheduled with Chuck Billings.”
She didn’t exactly do a double take. But it was close. “Jesus, does everybody know everything that goes on in my office?”
Thinking of Bruno Pecozzi, but deciding to keep Bruno’s awareness of FBI activities quiet for the moment, Justin said, “More than you might think.”
Wanda shook her head. “I’m meeting with Chuck tomorrow morning.”
“Do you know what it’s about?”
She stared at him, undecided about how to answer. Finally she decided to go with the truth. “No. I mean, I assume it has something to do with the Harper’s bombing. He was very mysterious, didn’t want to talk on the phone. Just said it was urgent.”
“It is.”
“You know, it’s starting to piss me off, Jay, that you know everything before I do.”
“I’m happy to share my info, Wanda. Although Chuck’s going to have a lot more details than I have.”
“Let’s hear what you got.”
So he told her about his disturbing conversation with Billings that morning. How Chuck felt that the FBI was not just hiding something, they were actively preventing any attempts to get to the truth behind the attack.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she said when he was finished.
“I know. But he’s very convincing.”
“What possible reason would we have for hurting the investigation?” When Justin shook his head, she furrowed her brow and rested her chin on the palm of her left hand and said, “You think the two events are connected?”
“The plane crash and the bombing?” Justin threw his hands up. “I don’t see any connection. Nothing logical jumps out at me. But suddenly we have two. . events. . and we’re not talkin’ New York City here, East End Harbor is not exactly the center of international intrigue. . and the FBI, along with God knows who else, seems to be doing their damnedest to make sure neither of them gets investigated properly.”
“Look, your crash is one thing. Who knows why they want this hushed up, but I could come up with reasons. Maybe the pilot’s an ex-agent, maybe the guy’s wife is best friends with the director’s wife. Who knows? But Harper’s. . I don’t believe it. It’s fucking terrorists, for Christ’s sake, Jay. This is what we live for. It doesn’t jibe. I think Chuck’s being paranoid.”
“Maybe. You’re probably right.”
“Don’t condescend to me, you asshole. I want to know what you really think.”
“I think,” Justin said, “that I came up here to get some specific information to help me along in what I think is a murder investigation. And I think that’s as involved as I want to be with anything. Why don’t I just let you and Chuck handle this other matter. But I do think you should hear him out, although I’ll be surprised if he shows up in the morning.”
“Why?”
“Because he was supposed to fly up with me and he stood me up. My guess is he’s entangled in a whole lot of shit with your pals back in New York.”
“As long as you remember that they are my pals,” she said. “That’s who I work with. That’s who I work for. I’m not here for the sole purpose of giving you or Chuck Billings inside information.”
“I know you’re not,” Justin said. And then he said, “So do you have the pilot’s name?”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
After another long silence, Justin just said, “Wanda?”
She sighed. “I don’t know why the information’s being blocked. But keeping it secret has been labeled top priority. Something nasty is going on here and I can’t figure out what it is.”
“It’s not your job to figure it out, is it?”
“No,” she said. “But it is yours.”
He nodded.
“The pilot’s name is. . was. . Hutchinson Cooke. People called him Hutch.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“No, no, please don’t thank me for risking my job to give this to you.”
“Thank you. Is there anything else I should know?”
“He was an Air Force pilot.”
“When he died? He was in the Air Force?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What does that mean?”
“He was definitely Air Force. And there’s no record that he was discharged.”
“So he was still in.”
“There’s also no record that he served anywhere. At least for the past eighteen months.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because we have access to records of all military personnel and where they’re stationed. And he hasn’t been stationed anywhere for the last year and a half. He just seems to have disappeared.”
“Was he still drawing a salary?”
“Air Force? Yes.”
“Okay, what aren’t you telling me here?”
“Christ, Jay, don’t you believe in doing any work on your own?”
“Wanda, I have a feeling there’s going to be plenty of work to do here after you give me everything you can.”
She sighed. “Two strange bits of info. He flew government officials.”
“What do you mean, government officials?”
“I couldn’t get his log. It was frozen. All I can tell you is he didn’t get as high as Air Force One. That log I could check. But that seems to have been his assignment for years, piloting whoever needed piloting to and from D.C. Other than that you’re on your own.”
“All right. What’s the second thing?”
“He was still receiving his Air Force salary, right? But he was also getting paid by someone else.”
“Who?”
“A company called Midas.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Don’t know. I didn’t have time to dig that deep. And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t particularly want to.”
“It’s not illegal to be getting a civilian salary while you’re in the Air Force, is it? I mean, I imagine it happens all the time when rich guys go into the service. If any rich guys ever actually go into the service.”
“No. It’s not illegal. It’s just that. . this guy was a lifer, Jay. That’s what his records show. He wasn’t rich. And he wasn’t getting paid by Midas until eighteen months ago. Right at the time he seemed to disappear from the Air Force.” She cocked her head to the right and narrowed her eyes. “What the hell is going on here, Jay?”
Before Justin could respond, there was a firm knock on the den door. Both Justin and Wanda jumped a bit at the noise.
“Jay,” Justin’s mother called in. “Billy’s on the phone for you. He says it’s important.”
“Billy DiPezio?” Wanda asked, and for some reason she asked it in a whisper.
Justin nodded, leaned over to the other side of the couch, and grabbed the phone. “Billy,” he said. “What’s up? It’s too late for a free dinner, if that’s why you’re calling.”
“That’s not why I’m calling,” the Providence police chief said. “I’m over at Chuck Billings’s house.”
“Give him a message for me, please,” Justin said. “Tell him he’s an asshole. He’ll understand.”
“I can’t give him the message, Jay. I’m with his wife.”
“Well tell her to give him the message, please. I’d appreciate it.”
“Chuck’s dead,” Billy DiPezio said.
“What?” Justin found himself stammering. “When?. . How. .”
“Late this afternoon. He was driving up here, got off the I-95 for some reason, probably to find something to eat, and his car spun out of control, hit an oncoming car. Both cars were totaled.”
“What do you mean, he was driving up?”
“I mean he was driving from Long Island back home. He was supposed to get in tonight.”
“No, he wasn’t. He-”
“Jay, what the hell’s your problem with this? I spoke to him this morning, he was driving up. The local cops called me, said it looks like he fell asleep at the wheel. What the fuck are you arguing about this with me for?”
Justin heard Billy’s muffled voice-he must have put his hand over the speaker in the phone-apologizing to Chuck Billings’s wife for his language.
“Jay,” Billy said, quieter and calmer, “I’m calling you because when I spoke to him, Chuck said he was going to see you this morning. It means you were the last one to see him alive. The last one of us. I thought you might want to come see Katy, that’s Chuck’s wife. Thought there might be something you could tell her about your conversation.”
“Of course,” Justin said. “I don’t have much to report, but I’ll come in the morning. I’ll do whatever I can.”
He took down Katy Billings’s address, told Billy he’d talk to him in a few days, and hung up the phone.
He turned to Wanda Chinkle, told her about the conversation he’d just had with Billy. He realized his own nails were digging hard into his palm, causing the skin to turn a blotchy red and white. “It doesn’t look like Chuck was being paranoid.”
“Billy said it was an accident,” Wanda said slowly. “Don’t go off half-cocked, Jay.”
“He wasn’t going to drive. He was flying up with me.”
“Maybe he changed his mind.”
“Or somebody changed it for him.”
“Jay. .”
“Be careful, Wanda,” he said.
“Careful of what?”
“I’m not sure,” Justin Westwood said. “But right now, just to be on the safe side, be careful of everything.”
12
Muaffak Abbas was not afraid. He was, however, angry.
He felt that the man who had paid him so much money didn’t really trust him. Wouldn’t let him do the job he was being paid to do. Abbas felt some shame in this fact. And dishonor. But by the time he reached his destination, he realized that shame and dishonor in this world were of no importance. Soon he would be covered in glory. He would never feel worthless again for he would be meeting his God and spending eternity bathed in His light.
The feeling made him lightheaded. He felt as if God were already nearby, gently pulling him toward His eternal reward.
Thinking about his place in heaven, even Muaffak’s anger dissipated. When he walked into the small Italian restaurant on West 22nd Street in the evil city of New York, in the sinful borough of Manhattan, he felt nothing but peace.
His mother had received the money. Fifty thousand dollars. Money that would be spent feeding the poor and caring for the sick. The money was nice. But he was not doing this for money. Neither he nor his mother cared about physical rewards. They cared about their people. And the purity of their own souls.
She was proud of him, he knew. Proud that he was about to become a martyr for Allah. A martyr to help rid the world of sin and evil and Jews and Americans. How could a mother not be proud?
Muaffak Abbas looked at his watch, waited for the second hand to tick off thirty more seconds, then he walked into the restaurant. Went straight past the hostess without so much as a nod or acknowledgment of her existence. He did not acknowledge insignificant, godless insects. He walked right up to the man at the table, the man whose picture he had studied. The man who sat alone at a table for two, waiting for his luncheon partner. Waiting for someone who would never arrive.
Abbas stood in front of the man, who looked up, confused. The man’s eyes narrowed when Abbas threw his hands out, a grand gesture to God, welcoming Him as he would soon be welcomed in return.
He screamed out the words, realized that he was in America, that these people would not know what he was saying, and he wanted them to know, wanted them to understand. A final moment of vanity. So he screamed the words out again, this time in English: “I am ready!”
It took another few seconds. Abbas stood there, arms outstretched, the man at the table staring up at him, the restaurant silent.
He wished they had let him do this himself. He wished they had trusted his strength. And then he wished for nothing more.
Because that’s when his cell phone rang.
And Muaffak Abbas was, at last, bathed in light and glory.
And flesh and blood and bone and devastation and death.
He had received his reward.
Somewhere his mother was smiling and her heart was glad.
13
The morning after his dinner with Wanda Chinkle, Justin’s chartered plane left the Providence airport at nine-thirty. At eight o’clock, he’d gone to pay his respects to Katy Billings and tell her of his final conversation with her husband. He didn’t feel as if he was much comfort. He told her that he and Chuck had spoken about work, about the bomb at Harper’s. He recounted the gist of the conversation-she did not seem very interested in the details-and then he told a small lie. He said that Chuck told him he was happy he was leaving East End Harbor earlier than expected because he’d be so happy to see his wife. He couldn’t tell if Katy believed him. He hoped so. By the time he left, he was certain that she did. If there was one thing he knew from his years of talking to witnesses and to victims, it was that people ultimately believed what they wanted to be true.
When he touched down at the East End airport, he went straight to his house. The first thing he did was call Reggie Bokkenheuser and tell her she had the job. She tried to play it cool but couldn’t. She was too excited. When he hung up the phone, she was still telling him how he’d never regret this. He told her he didn’t expect to regret it. And he told her to report to work the next day.
Justin walked to the station after that. He needed the three-quarters of a mile or so of fresh air. The conversation with Katy Billings and the flight in the small plane had felt stifling and confining, emotionally and physically claustrophobic. It felt good to be out in the cold; it refreshed him to see his breath billow out in front of him as he walked. By the time he got to the station it was twelve-fifteen, his hands and face were turning red, and he felt both awake and alive.
When he got settled, he motioned for Gary and Thomas to come over to his desk. He gave them the name Hutchinson Cooke, told them to find out where the man lived. When they stared at him, baffled, he told them it was the name of the pilot who’d crashed in the small plane, the Piper, told them he needed as much background material as they could provide, and then he realized they weren’t staring because they wanted more information about the assignment, but because they simply didn’t know where to begin. So he said to start in Washington, D.C., check the city and every suburb within thirty miles for an address and phone number. He told them to use the Internet, to check Air Force bases around the country, any Air Force records they could get their hands on, anything it took to find out where he lived and anything else about him, no matter how much time they had to devote to it. They nodded, took one step away, then Justin cleared his throat, which meant they were supposed to stop and pay attention. When they stopped and paid attention, he said, “I hired someone. A new cop.”
“Cool,” Gary said. “Who is he?”
“He’s a she.” They gave that same confused stare and Justin said, “Her name’s Regina. Reggie. Reggie Bokkenheuser.” And then, for some reason, he said, “That’s Danish.” They nodded, satisfied, turned to walk away again, and Justin said, “She’s got a lot of experience. She’s going to be second in command here.”
This time the two young cops didn’t just look confused, they registered some hurt. Justin said, again, “She’s got a lot of experience.”
Neither Gary nor Thomas said a word. They just nodded one more time, went back to their desks, and began working the phones and the Net.
Justin thought, Hey, that went pretty well. As he started to go through the mail, mostly junk or crank mail that came in to the police chief-unsigned notes complaining about barking dogs, angry letters decrying the mess left by the weekend tourists-he decided, May
be this management thing’s not as bad as I thought.
The smug feeling didn’t last very long. In fact, it lasted less than a minute, because that’s when Justin looked up and saw the man in the dark gray suit standing in the front door of the station house. The guy was wearing a dark overcoat, unbuttoned, so it flapped open. He was in his late forties to mid-fifties, hard to tell exactly because his hair was light and cut too short to reveal much gray, and dark sunglasses hid his eyes. He was tall, a little over six feet, and lean; he didn’t look as if he could have weighed more than one-seventy, one-seventy-five. The muscles on his neck were taut, and Justin had a feeling the rest of him was probably just as taut. A Fed, Justin thought. And after that he thought, I already don’t like him.
The man didn’t hesitate, walked over to Justin’s desk and stood over it.
“Justin Westwood?” he asked. And when Justin nodded, the man said, “Hubbell Schrader, FBI.”
“You guys should think about neon,” Justin said. “It’d be a little less obvious.”
Hubbell Schrader grinned. “It’s in the handbook,” he said. “We have to look like this.”
Justin had to return the grin. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Schrader said. “I thought I should check in with you, though.”
“About what?”
“For one thing, Chuck Billings. I was dealing with him and he was a good guy, damn good at his job.”
“So this is a sympathy call?”
“I know all local cops are supposed to hate us Feds, but maybe you can give it a rest for a while. I don’t have any hidden agenda here and I’m not looking to bust your balls.”
Justin’s warning light came on. He remembered what Billings had said about this guy: an asshole. And worse, an asshole who didn’t want to get to the meat of the case. He’d basically told the bomb experts what to think and what to say. The warning light glowed only brighter at the words “I don’t have any hidden agenda.” That meant that Special Agent Schrader was out for blood. He was a magician masquerading as a cop: anything that was revealed was going to be fake; anything he placed in plain sight was not going to be real.
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