“Yes. I’m sorry I said that, but at the time John gave me the number, I didn’t get the impression you lived together. I thought you were his uncle.”
A slight chuckle confirmed her suspicions. “My dear friend, we have lived together in my house for ten years now. John and I are lovers, didn’t you know?”
“I knew John had a partner, but I didn’t know his name. Please forgive me.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“I guess not.”
Then she thanked him, said good-bye, and hung up, suddenly realizing she might have made a fatal mistake. She had called Uncle Danny because she needed Bugatti. She truly believed that if there was anyone besides T who could cast doubt on her father’s guilt, it was he. John could help stop the madness and gain a stay of execution. Yes, maybe even help to finally exonerate him. She had called Danny in the belief that he was neutral territory. Someone who could not be connected easily with John Bugatti and whose phone wasn’t likely to be bugged, a distant family relative who served as a kind of mailbox for a nephew who was constantly on the move. Instead they were a couple who had lived together for years. Having just heard Bugatti’s voice on Jumper’s program now offered little consolation. The government’s well-oiled intelligence machinery had surely had no difficulty identifying Bugatti and had immediately proceeded to tap all the telephone numbers that could have any connection with him—if he hadn’t already been captured.
She should have known who “Uncle” Danny was, dammit!
She pounded her fist on the steel floor. This meant they knew her cell phone number as well. In a minute they’d call it so they could cross-scan her exact position. If so, it would all be over in a matter of moments. She could either turn off the phone or wait for it to ring—simple as that. She began counting the seconds.
When she reached two hundred, she exhaled slowly. Okay, she would meet Bugatti tomorrow—if he got her message and if it were at all possible for him to come. She would explain her theories and listen to his; then they would have to try to get Wesley to somehow slip them into the White House.
It wasn’t a brilliant plan, but it was all she’d come up with—and then the phone rang.
CHAPTER 28
Saturday afternoon T. Perkins met a convoy of military vehicles a few miles past the Fort Pickett base that must have been in combat quite recently. He eased off the accelerator and passed it slowly, so he was able to see the dead expression in the soldiers’ eyes. There were deep bullet holes in most of the vehicles, and the machine guns’ muzzles were black with spent gunpowder. The militiamen down in North Carolina must have lost some of their cockiness.
He turned on the police radio and scanned back and forth, but could pick up only static, even on the police frequencies. But what the hell had he expected? Everything was slowly grinding to a halt. Then he picked the police technician’s cell phone off the seat and quickly tried to orient himself on how to use the thing. It was the fourth cell phone he’d had to figure out in one short week, and this was definitely more than a brain assembled over sixty years ago felt like dealing with. When he was a boy, there wasn’t even a light switch out in the toilet, so why the hell should he be forced to spend his old age plowing through one electronics manual after the other? It was totally absurd.
He pushed some buttons with his thumb, praying he’d hit Beth Hartley’s number.
“I know, I know,” he parried when she answered, before her inevitable sigh had a chance to immobilize him. “Just a couple of more completely normal bits of information. I’m sure you can find them in some kind of database. The intranet is still functioning, isn’t it . . . ? Hey, Beth, are you there?”
Then the sigh came, anyway. He could clearly imagine the enticing trip it had made, up through Beth’s lovely, warm lungs.
“What now, T? Where are you?”
“Don’t worry your pretty little head with that. Just give me five minutes, okay?”
“Five minutes?” She gave a scornful laugh. “Okay. Five minutes, then. We’re about to have a meeting with the chief. There are problems all over the place, in case you didn’t know. Haven’t I already told you that once today, by the way?”
“Listen, Beth, this is the information I want, if you can get it: first, the data sheet on a Secret Service agent by the name of Ben Kane. He’s head of operations for the White House security force, as far as I know. And I’d like to find out about Thomas Sunderland’s military career, if possible. Yes, and by the way, I also want the telephone number of an NBC4 cameraman named Marvin Gallegos. Can you do that for me, do you think?”
“Did you say five minutes? You’re completely hopeless, little T.” She sighed again and lowered her voice. “Do you have any idea what that painting you gave me is worth?”
“Like I told you, I’ve heard the sum of one hundred thousand dollars mentioned. Is there something wrong?”
“A hundred thousand dollars? Listen, sweetie, that’s very nice, but I think I could get a sack of gold for just the frame, if it were framing that picture.” She gave a dry chuckle. “Okay, I’ll try. Where do I get hold of you? On your cell phone?”
T lit a cigarette—he had to, to keep himself under control. Was the painting really worth so much? No, she must be mistaken. If true, then why in the world had he spent the last thirty years racing around like someone possessed, trying to apprehend all kinds of losers? Why had he and his wife patched up and repaired their pathetic little house, summer after summer? Why hadn’t they adopted the children they’d been longing for? It might have taken a couple of hours to have the painting properly appraised. Why the hell hadn’t he done it ages ago? He felt his forehead getting sweaty and dried it off with his handkerchief. So much money. Now this case really mattered. “What? My cell phone number?” he said tonelessly, looking at the phone in dismay.
Now, how the hell did one find that out?
He beamed up the cell phone’s menu and looked despairingly at the endless number of options.
“Just a sec . . .” he said, and chose the icon that looked like a telephone book. Nothing happened. The damned thing didn’t work.
“I think the guy I borrowed this phone from has locked the menu with a PIN code. Can I call you back in ten minutes, Beth?” he asked.
“Let’s say a quarter of an hour.”
He called Beth back as he turned down the main road to Waverly. She’d been busy.
She hadn’t found out much about special agent Ben Kane, but he’d expected as much. Some years of active military duty, and prior to that, all the usual info about high school and a couple of decent, completely normal parents, way out in the sticks—that was all. Even though it had been a few years since Kane had left the Secret Service to start his own security firm, data about current and previous Secret Service employees was inaccessible.
“What about Thomas Sunderland?” he asked.
“Well . . . It kind of looks like his data files have been through more than one filtering process, T. There are bits and pieces here and there that seem out of context, but of course I can’t be sure. In any case, when it’s information about the country’s vice president, there are probably some security procedures involved that I’m not familiar with. Things change fast these days, you know.”
“Yes, I know. But isn’t there anything about his service in Grenada? He received a medal, I know. They haven’t deleted that, for God’s sake, have they?”
He heard her fingers on the keyboard in the background. “You’re clairvoyant, my love,” came the reply. “That’s practically all that’s mentioned from his early days. There’s a little about the military academy but no exam scores. It also says he was custodian at the George C. Marshall Museum in Lexington while he attended high school.”
“Get to the point now, Beth,” he said. Traffic was moving nicely at the moment, and at this rate he’d be at the turnoff to the state prison in
ten minutes. He was damned if he was going to stop to hear about museums in Lexington.
“Okay, okay . . .” She began reading to herself out loud. “‘Served with the US Army Rangers . . . rank of captain. . . . Embarked for Grenada from Hunter Army Airfield in Georgia, October 25, 1983. As a result of active participation in this military operation, hospitalized various times with different wounds. . . . No special circumstances upon discharge from hospital. . . . Declared fit for active duty. . . . Decorated February 2, 1984, with a medal for bravery in action. . . . Operation Urgent Fury cost a total of nineteen American lives in Grenada, with one hundred sixteen wounded.’” She cleared her throat and raised her voice. “Look, this is all pretty general information, but it says here that eight men were wounded and one killed under his command, and that he personally got three enlisted men out of the line of fire. There’s nothing else about the episode.”
“Which battalion was he attached to, can you tell me that?”
“It says the Second Battalion of the Seventy-fifth Rangers.”
“Can you also tell me where Ben Kane served?”
She muttered a little to herself as she worked the keyboard. Sometimes he ought to remind himself how much he actually enjoyed hearing a woman’s chatter in the background. He stuck out his lower lip. Maybe he could still manage one more ride on love’s carousel—and maybe not. How in the world should he know, when the first thing he did whenever he got off work was kick off his boots and throw his legs up on the table? Not the best way to pursue life’s earthly pleasures.
“How’d you know about that, T?” Beth chuckled. “You are clairvoyant, ha-ha! It says here that Ben Kane was a sergeant in the same battalion as Sunderland. It’s good for a vice president to have a security officer he can trust, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, I would.” So Kane and Sunderland had been together in Grenada—that damn well figured. And Kane wasn’t a Secret Service agent; he was hired directly by the White House. “Beth, just one more thing . . . No, two things: You forgot the information about the NBC4 cameraman, plus I’d like some facts about a murder case.”
“Sorry, T, they’ve come to fetch me now. The meeting’s already started. It’ll have to wait till Monday. Monday or Tuesday—then I can help you. Okay, honey?”
She hung up abruptly. Shit! he thought. This was just what he fucking needed.
He swung off the main road into a much more densely forested area. Why the hell did they always have to place the country’s grimmest institutions in the most beautiful surroundings?
He stared at the asphalt and tried to concentrate. A number of things were clearer now, at least. Like that Sunderland and Kane had served in the military together, so now he could build his theories based on that. “Bonds between buddies are thicker than blood and whisky,” as his drunkard of a father used to declare.
He dialed the number of the sheriff’s office, hoping that Dody was still on duty.
The crabby switchboard lady took the phone. He could never remember what her name was. “Hell, T, why don’t you use the walkie-talkie?” she asked with a mouth full of chewing gum. “Oh, you’re too far away, okay . . . No, Dody’s gone home. Tell me, did you appoint her to take charge while you cruise around the countryside? ’Cause some of the boys are good and pissed off, in case you didn’t know.”
“Yeah, really? Then you tell them that’s the way it goes when one’s deputy sheriff goes and gets shot. They ought to be able to understand that. She was next in the line of command, for God’s sake, wasn’t she?”
The woman muttered something. She wasn’t so bad, but she sure was stubborn.
“Listen, isn’t there anyone in the office?”
The chewing increased in tempo at the other end. “So I’m not anyone, huh?”
“Sure, sure, point taken. But if Dody isn’t there, you’ve got to do me a favor. Pull Leo Mulligan’s file. It’s in the green metal cabinet behind the door. Look under M.”
“Under M. Really, T? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
He could hear the clattering of her chair and the banging of file cabinet drawers before she picked up the receiver again. “Okay” was all she said.
“Try and read me the general description of the psychologist’s impression of Leo Mulligan’s home life in the period before he bashed his wife’s skull in.”
“‘Try’ this and ‘try’ that. This thing’s at least fifty pages long. How do you expect me to find that part?”
He took a deep breath. “Try page one, for example. There’s a list of the contents, and you look under mental examinations. It’s pretty far towards the end.”
There was page turning and gum chewing in the background. Then her telephone rang.
“Hey, just let it ring,” he barked. She obeyed.
“How far down shall I read, T?”
“Can you find the section called something like ‘social’ something-or-other ‘and mobility’?”
“Yeah, here it is: ‘Social Status and Mobility.’” He could just see her, moving her finger over the page, one word at a time. “There’s not much here, you know. Just four lines.”
“Would you read them, please?”
“Okay, it says . . .” She began a monotone recitation: “‘Leo Mulligan grows up with two sisters on the farm on which he was born. . . . Takes over farm and operates it alone until parents’ death, after which he marries a grocer’s daughter, who—according to several depositions—believes she has married beneath her social status. . . . Wife pushes her son to get ahead in school and ridicules her husband publicly for not having accomplished anything in life. . . . Threatens him with divorce and with showing him “her full potential.” . . . That her son “will make it to the top a thousand times further than his father” if only they can get away from him. . . . That one fine day he will experience the truth of her words. Leo Mulligan, who was born to farm life and commonplace values then apparently lost faith in his life’s work and the hope that it would be passed on to the next generation, as was the family custom.‘” The nameless switchboard operator cleared her throat. If that was four lines, she’d sure taken her time reading them.
“Then there’s a section called ‘Consequences.’ You want to hear that, too?”
“No, no, that’s all right. That’s plenty for now. But maybe you can find me the address of a cameraman named Marvin Gallegos, from NBC4. You know how, don’t you?”
“Aww, Jesus, T. Give me a break.” The phone was ringing again in the background. “Can’t I take the phone?”
“You just find that address for me.”
He studied the countryside outside the patrol car window as he drove, waiting for his last bit of information. There were tall, swaggering trees, completely covered in tangles of parasitic growth. It was like some kind of bewitched forest that beckoned travelers farther and farther into darkness and perdition—not such a bad description, considering his destination. He looked down the next straight stretch of road and thought about all those for whom this was the last image of the outside world. You could call it a kind of via dolorosa. He looked up at the enormous spiderwebs that connected the trees and had hung in precisely the same position, almost like cocoons, for as long as he could remember. In a little while he’d be coming to a marshy area, and then he was almost there.
“Yes, chief, here I am again.”
“Okay, great. That sure was quick.” He meant it this time.
“If it’s the same Marvin Gallegos we’re talking about, he’ll be hard to get hold of.”
T pounded his steering wheel. What now? “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you sure it’s the right man? Is he a television cameraman?”
“I’ve got the police report here, T . . . ‘Marvin Gallegos, 341 9th Street. Born November 16, 1970. Photographer for National Geographic: 1995–2002. Thereafter employed by NBC.’ Wanted by the police since the day before
yesterday—that is, March twenty-sixth—‘for having distributed video recordings of military encounters with militias.’”
“Why would that be? That’s his job, isn’t it?”
“Beats me, chief. Maybe he filmed something the authorities didn’t want publicized. People being assaulted or tortured, summary executions—what do I know? Our armed forces aren’t exactly behaving themselves too well these days.”
“He’s been reported to the authorities, and . . . ?”
“He’s wanted in every state. ‘Presumed to have gone underground or left the country.’”
“Yeah, or captured,” grunted T, his eyes on the road. Sussex’s watchtowers and huge concrete buildings appeared a couple of hundred yards ahead to the right, behind a large, grassy area with a grass-covered rampart.
“Listen,” he said, “can you tell me the name of that police technician from Richmond who always keeps a pair of tweezers behind his ear? He’s got red hair. He’s called Joe of John or something. His name begins with ‘Jo,’ in any case.”
“Don’t know him. I never get to meet the weird ones. Why?”
“Because I’ve got his cell phone and would like to know what his number is.”
“Jesus, chief!”
T frowned. “What?”
“I’m sitting in front of a display that’s about twenty inches wide. You ordered it yourself. And on it I can see who calls, and from what number—clear as day. This here’s a police station, remember, chief?” She read him the number, and T scribbled it down on a scrap of paper with one hand, the other on the wheel and phone held between ear and shoulder. The man’s name was Joe Simmons, so he’d been on the right track.
“I have a couple of messages for you, T. Do you want them now?”
“Just a sec. Hang on.” One of Sheriff Kitchen’s men was standing fifty yards ahead in the middle of the road, motioning for him to stop. He was black, just like 62 percent of the inhabitants of Sussex County, and T knew him well. Behind him and his patrol car, several national organizations against capital punishment were deployed, with earnest-looking demonstrators and the usual protest signs, and along the roadside stood dozens of tents. Their protest had apparently turned into a permanent state of siege.
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