“But they sent you to her?”
“She was my closest relative, she put her hand up, she got me. She must have wanted the money; my dad had insurance from his job. She was divorced, no kids. She worked at a law firm, lived in an apartment on the North Side, the rich part of Chicago. But she’d always had a coke problem, and the insurance made it worse. Took her six months to burn through the money and then she started looking around for what else she could sell.”
“Allie.”
“Think I’m pretty now, you should have seen me then. A twelve-year-old with a twenty-year-old’s body. She let me try coke. Of course I loved it. She told me we’d have fun—she’d do it, too, we’d be like sisters—the men were rich, they’d take care of us. I should have said no, Tom. I let her, I did. I wanted it—” her voice sliding now like a Ferrari on ice.
He wrapped his arms around her, and she shuddered against him. “You were twelve.”
“Yeah, it started a week before my thirteenth birthday. I’ll never forget, this apartment high up, taking off my skirt, looking out the window at Lake Michigan, and the wind was blowing, rattling the glass—”
“I’ll kill her.”
“You can’t.”
“I was a sniper, Allie, I’ll shoot her from a half mile away and she’ll be dead before she hits the ground.”
“She’s dead, Tom. OD’d years ago.”
“I’ll kill her again.”
She smiled in the dark, wrinkled herself close to him.
“We got on the circuit.”
“The what?”
“It’s funny, I forget sometimes you can’t read my mind. All over the Midwest and the South, guys who would pay five or ten thousand for a night with me. I never saw any money, but I heard Terri talking about it. There were politicians. And religious guys, too—”
“Religious guys?”
“I remember two different—what do they call them?—megachurches, and one bishop, Catholic, Terri told me to call him Bishop, said he liked it. He’s actually a cardinal now. I mean, I don’t want to exaggerate, it wasn’t hundreds, maybe thirty guys. Forty. I stopped counting. One day, I woke up and realized it was my fifteenth birthday, and I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I would throw myself out the window or cut my wrists, whatever, but I was done. I told my aunt I would tell the police. She told me no one would believe me, they’d say I was troubled, a druggie looking for attention. They’d lock me up in a crazy hospital. I guess I believed her.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Allie.”
She started to cry again. “I should have told someone, not just for me, because right now, this week, this month, there’s another girl getting broken in. That’s what my aunt said when we were riding the elevator up that first time: Don’t worry, they’ll break you in easy.”
Miller thought of his rifle, sighting down the scope.
“I stole a thousand dollars and two of her rings and I took a bus to L.A. Been running away from myself ever since. But, you know, wherever you go, there you are. The worst part is, I still see some of them on television sometimes. They got famous. They made me into this and nothing happened to them. They have their lives and their families, and they’re probably still doing it.”
“Who are they?”
“I told you.” Her voice small and desperate.
“Names, Allie. Who’s the one you saw on TV in Sioux Falls?”
She must have heard the murder in his voice. “Doesn’t matter—”
He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “Tell me.”
“Please. Tom.” Her voice was calm, but her eyes were wide and panicked.
“If you didn’t want me to do anything, why come back? So you could live here until you freak out and take off again? I didn’t know I was such a good lay.”
“Please—”
“I’m on your side, Allie.”
The pistol was on the table by the couch. She stood, grabbed for it, aimed it at his chest. A two-handed grip. A professional grip. One of the few mistakes she ever made, though he didn’t realize at the time. He watched, not moving, as she eased off the safety.
“Do it. Doesn’t scare me. You leaving again, that’s what scares me.”
The pistol drooped in her hands until finally she put it down and knelt on the floor in front of him. “Maybe you’re not scared, but I am, Tom. I hear them laughing every day.”
“Then let’s make them stop.”
At the end, he’d realize what a perfect mark he’d made, how perfectly she’d played him. She’d even said no when he first offered to kill. She’d led him as easily as a child.
Even at the time, though, he felt a glimmer of doubt. An interstate sex ring that played on preteen virgins? An evil cokehead aunt? The convenient lack of any other relatives? He could have checked her story, he knew. He could have asked for details.
But when she looked at him that night, he knew he wouldn’t. Something terrible had happened to Allie. She’d come to him for help. Wasn’t his place to question her. The others had called her crazy. Not him. He would believe her. He would protect her.
He would be her knight.
TWO
10
DALLAS
Shafer caught a morning Dulles-to-Dallas flight, rented a car, drove straight to the address Jeanelle Pitts had given the FBI. Just before noon, he found himself in East Dallas, an L-shaped, two-story brick apartment block called Parkside Gardens. Though Shafer saw neither park nor garden, only dumpsters at the end of a cracked parking lot.
Jeanelle lived in apartment 224, according to the FBI interview form. The top end of the L. Shafer heard a television as he approached, Judge Judy’s nasal voice blaring. He jabbed the buzzer. He hadn’t called Pitts in advance, hadn’t wanted her to know he was coming. He wondered if he’d made a mistake. The door notched open, and a shirtless black man in his early twenties peered out, scratched his chin. “What you want?”
“Jeanelle here?”
The guy shook his head as if Shafer were speaking Hebrew.
“Jeanelle Pitts. Lives here?”
The guy reached up to close the door. Shafer stuck a toe inside.
“Don’t do that.”
“I have this as her address.”
“Don’t live here. Me and my girl do. Now, go on before I get upset.” The guy opened the door enough for Shafer to see the pistol stuck in the waistband of his shorts. Texas.
Shafer stepped back, peered around the guy into the apartment. He glimpsed a pair of black legs stretched out of a blue dress. “Jeanelle?”
“My name Quintana,” the legs said.
The man put his hand on the butt of his pistol. “Come on.”
“One more question, I’ll stop bothering you.”
“Quick. She gonna say who won.”
Meaning Judge Judy, not the woman on the couch, Shafer assumed. “When did you move in?”
“Last year. All right?”
“Any idea where I can find Jeanelle? Did she leave a forwarding address?”
“She win the Powerball. Live in Preston Hollow now. Over by Bush.” The guy closed the door.
“I can pay!” Shafer yelled. He wished he’d made the offer sooner.
No answer. Shafer lifted a fist to knock once more, changed his mind. The property management company would surely have a forwarding address.
On the way to the manager’s office, Shafer checked his phone, discovered Preston Hollow was the fanciest neighborhood in Dallas. Shafer would bet the farm, the house, and his rented Ford Escape that Jeanelle Pitts wasn’t living there.
The office was tucked under the building’s main stairway. The waiting area was hot, no air-conditioning, and empty aside from three metal chairs and a desk with a few application forms stacked in a basket. Two posters provided the only decoration. One featured an ov
erhead shot of the building and promised PARKSIDE GARDENS: A GREAT PLACE. SECTION 8 ACCEPTED. The other announced RENT DUE 3RD OF MONTH. NO EXTRA TIME! DON’T ASK!
“Hello?”
“Hold on.” A man, from the inner office, his voice strained. “Give me a few—”
The office door was closed. William Powdy, Property Manager, a brass nameplate proclaimed in script far too fancy for this room. Beneath it, a hand-lettered sign warned KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING! Shafer had seen enough of Parkside Gardens. He knocked and simultaneously pushed open the door. The lock held for a second, but Shafer shoved until it gave.
He found a lean white guy in a white T-shirt staring at a laptop whose screen showed three men engaging in carnal acrobatics.
Powdy’s jeans were around his ankles. He was somewhat busy, too.
“Mr. Powdy, I presume,” Shafer said. “Bad time?”
Powdy saw Shafer, twisted away. “Get out!”
“When you’re ready.” Shafer closed the door.
Two minutes later, it swung open. Powdy stepped into the doorway, pants buttoned. “You can’t read, mister?” He was in his late forties, with a country face, narrow and lined and weather-beaten, the solid shoulders of a man who worked with his hands.
“Didn’t realize self-love was on the job description.”
“Fucking asshole.”
“Ironic, considering what you were watching.”
Powdy stepped into the waiting area. Now Shafer saw the rage in his dark eyes, the expandable police baton in his right hand. And the wedding ring on his left. Shafer doubted Powdy’s wife knew of his fondness for gay porn. Powdy most definitely was not in on the joke. He was humiliated. And furious.
After a career of mouthing off, Shafer had made the wrong guy mad. He was in trouble, he saw.
He lifted his hands. “Sorry, buddy. My bad.”
“Not your buddy. You looking for an apartment?”
“No—”
“Didn’t think so. You ain’t from Texas.” Powdy moved toward Shafer as if being from another state was an offense punishable by death. His whole body vibrated with rage. Shafer wondered what else had gone wrong for him today. Maybe his wife had filed for divorce. Maybe a Mercedes cut off his pickup. Maybe the Mexicans at the drive-thru didn’t get his order right.
Probably nothing. Shafer was enough.
Shafer took a half step toward the door, looked over his shoulder. No one could see in here. The stairs shielded the office from the parking lot outside. He wondered if he should run.
“Not another step. You lefty or righty?”
“Righty.”
“Put out your left hand. Palm down.”
“Please.”
“Put it out or I’ll shove this baton up your ass. You already admitted you weren’t here on legitimate business. My door was locked. That’s breaking and entering. I can shoot you, if I like.”
“In the middle of the day, in an open office?” Even now, Shafer couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“You don’t know much about this state, mister.”
Shafer wished he could blink three times and summon Wells to take care of this closet case.
“Three . . . Two . . .” Powdy raised the baton. “One—”
Shafer turned away and broke for the door. He didn’t think Powdy would hit him in public.
But Powdy moved to intercept him. Too late, Shafer realized Powdy had wanted him to try to run, an excuse to hit him in the back—
No, Officer, he broke into my office. He saw me, took off. I hardly saw him, didn’t know how old he was—
He heard the baton whistling behind him—
Lightning at the back of his skull—
And nothing.
11
QUITO, ECUADOR
Wells pulled up outside the arrivals hall at Quito’s international airport as a thickly muscled black man in wrap shades stepped through the sliding glass doors. He carried only a laptop case and a backpack, no bags. Packing light. Once a Marine, always a Marine.
Wells leaned over to open the passenger door. He was driving an old Toyota compact, faded green paint, no power doors, standard Ecuadorian plates. Nice and low-profile. “Winston Coyle. As I live and breathe.”
“Cuánto a Quito, señor?”
“For you, my friend, on the house.”
Coyle tossed his stuff in back, sat beside Wells. The sun was a few minutes from disappearing behind the vast ridge of mountains west of the airport, Mariscal Sucre International. It had opened in 2013 after one-too-many close calls at Quito’s original in-town airfield.
“Buenas tardes, Juan Wells.”
Wells was surprised how glad he was to see Coyle. Maybe he thought of Coyle as lucky after their long-shot success in Paris. This mission needed all the help it could get. “You could pass for a native. If the natives were black and could bench four hundred pounds.”
“Solo tres ochenta. Todo el crédito a Taco Bell. Delicioso y sano!” Coyle spoke with the exaggerated precision of a pitchman on Univision.
“Yeah, sure. But, unfortunately, Spanish is not in my skill set, so let’s make America great again and go English only for now.”
“Sí, señor.” Coyle grinned. “Time to get to business, as the white folk say.”
“You know I’m white.”
“I’m not sure what you are.”
When they spoke two nights before, Wells had told Coyle only that he was headed to Ecuador and needed help. You know I’m still at the Farm, right? Coyle said. I won’t let Ms. Ratched send you to the principal’s office, Wells said. That fast, Coyle promised to be on the next plane down.
But with Coyle here, Wells found he wasn’t ready to talk about Enrique Martinez and Hector Frietas just yet, explaining the mess he’d made in Bogotá. For a few minutes, he wanted to keep the fiction that they were on a South American road trip, Johnny and Winston’s Excellent Ecuadorian Adventure. Childish, but even Wells needed a break from the truth once in a while.
“How’d you like the Farm?”
The Farm—the agency’s famed training base at Camp Peary, in southeastern Virginia—had changed in recent years to align with the agency’s new focus on the War on Terror. Case officers spent less time practicing cocktail party recruitments, more on survival exercises and drone handling.
Still, the place retained its summer-camp-like quality. Recruits lived and ate together. Even those who would spend their entire lives behind desks at Langley practiced at the firing range. Like all initiations, the exercises were designed to build cohesion among diverse recruits. In less fancy terms, the agency hoped new officers would leave Camp Peary thinking that the CIA was cool.
Wells visited the place once a year to take questions about deep-cover work. The trips were his last formal connection with the agency. Recruits were told only he was a former field operative who had spent time in Afghanistan, a true but wildly incomplete version of his résumé.
“Farm’s all right. Lots of toys. You know, you’re a legend down there.”
“Hope not.”
“You think that aw-shucks routine works with me?”
“The fewer people who know me, the safer I am.” Anne and Emmie, too, Wells didn’t say. Foreign intelligence services like the SVR rarely targeted the families of CIA officers. No one wanted to start a cycle of retaliatory attacks. But groups like the Islamic State didn’t care. With Coyle’s help, Wells had narrowly thwarted a Daesh attack during his last mission. Anonymity was his best protection.
“These are our guys, John.”
“And?” Wells reminding Coyle of the secret they shared: An agency mole, a senior officer, had betrayed the CIA to the Islamic State.
“Point taken. Gonna tell me why I’m here, or should I guess?”
“Let’s drop your stuff at the hotel, take a walk, I’ll sho
w you what you need to see.”
“Long as the room has two beds. You brought me down here hoping I’d be your rent boy, we’re both gonna be sorry.”
They came over a ridge, and the lights of Quito came into view. “How did you know?”
Quito was one-fifth the size of Bogotá, and five times as nice. The Ecuadorian capital occupied a narrow valley ten thousand feet above sea level. Mountains and volcanoes surrounded it on three sides. The city center dated to the Spanish Colonial era, and, unlike La Candelaria, it was largely safe, even after dark. Ecuador was poorer than Colombia, but Ecuadorian culture was much less violent than its northern neighbor’s. The country’s murder rate was one-fourth Colombia’s.
The travel guidebooks and magazines had taken notice. Quito was a regular stop on the Lonely Planet backpacker circuit. Wells spoke quietly as they walked southwest from their hotel toward the city center. He didn’t want to chance an American overhearing them, likelier here than in Bogotá. On the other hand, the tourist population meant that he and Coyle stood out less.
“Wish you’d called a week ago,” Coyle said after Wells finished explaining what had happened in Bogotá. Including the death of Antonio Guerro, a/k/a Tony from Tampa. Meaning: You screwed up, but it’s done now. Just try not to get anyone else killed down here, John-O. Especially me.
Best part of talking to a Marine who’d fought in Afghanistan was what didn’t have to be said. “Me too.”
“This guy Guerro, his family under control?”
“Looks that way so far.”
Tarnes had ordered the chief of Bogotá Station to tell Guerro’s parents he’d been in El Amparo on agency business. The CIA couldn’t say anything more about what had happened because it was still investigating, and Guerro’s mission was classified. Meantime, Mom and Dad would come to Langley to see a star for their son added to the CIA’s Memorial Wall. Lies upon lies. And the station chief wasn’t happy covering for an operation that he hadn’t known about, Tarnes told Wells. But at least Guerro’s parents would believe he’d died a hero.
The Deceivers Page 15
