Last Man Standing

by David Baldacci

  “Since you have them with you, should I assume you’ve been taking them recently?”

  “I’m on a job, Claire. No pills. So I deal with the insomnia and the pain you sometimes get with two big holes in you and half a face.”

  “So why do you have them?”

  “Security blanket. You’re a psychiatrist—you understand that and thumb-sucking, don’t you?”

  Claire took out the pills and examined them one by one. They were all different. Most she recognized, some she didn’t. She held up one of the pills. “Do you know where you got this?”

  “Why?” he asked suspiciously. “Is there something wrong with it?”

  “Perhaps. Did you get these pills from O’Bannon?” she said doubtfully.

  “It’s possible, I guess. Although I thought I finished his prescription a long time ago.”

  “Well, if not O’Bannon, who, then?”

  Web became defensive. “Look, I had to get off the painkillers they were giving me for my injuries, because I was growing dependent on them. And then I couldn’t sleep, for like a year. Some HRT guys have the same problem. It’s not like we’re doing illegal drugs or crap like that, but you can only go so long without sleep, even at HRT. Some of the guys have given me pills over the years. I just collect them in a bottle and take them when I need them. That pill might have come from one of them. What’s the big deal?”

  “I’m not blaming you for taking medication to help you sleep, Web. But it’s stupid and dangerous for you to take an oddball assortment of pills, even from friends, when you have no idea what drug interactions might occur from their use. You’re very lucky something serious hasn’t happened to you. And maybe it did. In the alley. Maybe this odd method of pill taking is the reason you froze.” Claire was also thinking that the traumatic events surrounding Raymond Stockton’s death might have bubbled to the surface at the worst possible time—when Web was in that alley. Perhaps, as she had thought earlier, seeing Kevin Westbrook had triggered something in Web, disabling him.

  Web covered his face with his hands. “Shit! This is unbelievable. Unbelievable!”

  “I can’t say for sure that’s the case, Web.” She looked at him sympathetically, but there was something else she needed to know. “Have you reported the medication you’ve been taking to your supervisor?”

  He uncovered his face but didn’t look at her.

  “Okay,” she said slowly.

  “Are you going to say anything?”

  “Are you still taking them?”

  “No. As best I can recall, the last time I took one prior to the mission in the alley was a week before. That’s it.”

  “Then I have nothing to report.” She held up the same pill again. “I don’t recognize this medication, and as a psychiatrist I’ve seen just about all of them. I’d like to get it analyzed. It’ll be on the QT,” she quickly added, as he looked alarmed. “I have a friend. Your name will never come up.”

  “Do you really think it was the pills, Claire?”

  She stared at the pill before pocketing the vial and looking back at him. “Web, I’m afraid we’ll never know for certain.”

  “So was the hypnosis a bust?” Web asked finally, though Claire could tell his mind was clearly on the pills and their possible implication in what had happened to Charlie Team.

  “No, it wasn’t. I learned a lot.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like Harry Sullivan was arrested during your sixth-year birthday party. Do you remember talking about that?” She was reasonably certain he might recall that from the hypnosis session. But not the event with Stockton.

  Web slowly nodded. “Actually, I do. Some of it, anyway.”

  “For what it’s worth, before the arrest, you and Harry were having a great time. He clearly loved you very much.”

  “That’s good to know,” Web said, without enthusiasm.

  “Often situations that are traumatic are repressed, Web, sort of a safety valve. Your psyche can’t handle it, that level of confrontation, and you basically bury it so you don’t need to face it.”

  “But that’s like burying toxic waste,” he said in a low voice. “That’s right. And it sometimes seeps out and does considerable damage.”

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Do you recall anything else?”

  He shook his head.

  Claire looked away for a moment. Web, she knew, was in no shape to hear the truth about his stepfather’s death. She looked back at him and managed a tiny smile. “Well, I think that’s enough.”

  She looked at her watch. “And I need to get back.”

  “So my dad and me were really getting along?”

  “You were singing songs, he was carrying you on his shoulders. Yes, you were having a great time.”

  “It’s starting to come back to me. So there’s still hope for me, right?” Web smiled, perhaps to show he was partly kidding.

  “There’s always hope, Web,” Claire replied.

  39

  Sonny Venables was off duty and out of uniform as he sat in an unmarked car and surveyed the area. There was stirring in the backseat as the big man who was lying on the floorboard stretched out his long legs.

  “Don’t get antsy, Randy,” said Venables. “We got some time to go yet.”

  “Trust me, I’ve waited dudes out a lot longer than this, and from places a lot shittier than the backseat of a car.”

  Venables nudged out a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, lit it, cracked his window and blew smoke out.

  “So you were telling me about your meeting with London.”

  “I covered his backside even though he didn’t know it at the time. Good thing too, though I don’t think Westbrook would have really killed him.”

  “I heard about that guy, but I’ve never run into him.”

  “Lucky you. But let me tell you there’s a lot worse than him out there. At least Westbrook’s got a little code of honor. Most dudes out there are just flat-out nuts. Kill you just to kill you and brag about it. Westbrook does everything for a real good reason.”

  “Like maybe take out HRT?”

  “Don’t think so. But he delivered a message to London about the tunnels under the building that was HRT’s target. That’s apparently how the guns came in. London checked it out with Bates. And I heard that he was right.”

  “From what you’ve told me about Westbrook, he doesn’t sound like a message boy.”

  “He is if the person he delivered the message for has somebody he cares about, like his son.”

  “Gotcha. So that person was behind what happened to HRT?” “That’s my thinking.”

  “So where’s the Oxy come into to all this?”

  “That’s the op I saw in the building that night. They even had some of the product there. No coke bricks, just bags of pills. And I saw computerized records that laid it all out. Millions of bucks in business. And in two days it was cleared out.”

  “Why all that trouble to set you up? Why wipe out HRT? That just brings the Bureau down on them like a ton of bricks.”

  “It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Cove agreed, “but that seems to be what happened.”

  Venables stiffened and flicked his cigarette out the window. “Show time, Randy.”

  Venables watched as a man left the building they’d been watching, walked along the street, turned right and headed down an alley. Venables started the car and it moved slowly forward.

  “Is it the guy you were expecting?” asked Cove.

  “Yep. You want some info on new drugs coming to town, this boy will know it. Name’s Tyrone Walker, but he goes by T. Real imaginative. Belonged to three or four different crews over the years. Time in jail, time in the hospital, time in drug rehab. He’s about twenty-six and looks ten years older than me and I don’t look all that good for my age.”

  “Funny I never ran across T before.”

  “Hey, you don’t have a monopoly on information in this town. I might just be a lowl

y street cop, but I get around.”

  “Good thing, Sonny, because I’m tainted goods right now. Nobody will talk to me.”

  “Well, old T will, with the right persuasion.”

  Venables pulled around the corner, hit the gas, then turned right onto a street that ran parallel to the one where they had been parked. As soon as they turned the corner, T emerged from the alley, which cut through to this street.

  Venables looked around. “Coast looks clear. You want to do your thing?”

  Cove was already out of the car. Before he knew what was happening, T had been searched expertly and was lying facedown in the backseat of Venables’s car, with one of Cove’s big hands on the back of his neck, keeping him there. Venables drove off while T loudly cursed them. By the time he calmed, they were two miles away and in a better part of town. Cove pulled T to a sitting position. The man looked first at Cove and then at Venables.

  “Hey, T,” said Venables. “You looking good. Been taking care of yourself?”

  Cove could sense T was about to make a lunge out the other door, so he clamped his arm around T’s shoulders. “Hey, we just want to talk to you, T. Just talk.”

  “What if I don’t wanta talk?”

  “Then you can just get out of the car,” said Cove.

  “Is that right? Okay, stop the car and I’m getting out.”

  “Whoa, there, T, he didn’t say anything about me stopping the car before you got out.” Venables cut the wheel, entered an on-ramp, and they pulled onto Interstate 395, crossed the Fourteenth Street Bridge and they were in Virginia. Venables pushed the accelerator to sixty.

  T stared out the window at the traffic streaming by and then sat back, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Now, my friend here—” began Venables.

  “Your damn friend got a name?”

  Cove tightened his grip on T’s shoulders. “Yeah, I got a name. You call me T-Rex. Tell him why, Sonny.”

  “’Cause he eats little T’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said Sonny.

  “And I just want some information about some new product in town. Crews buying it up and stuff like that. No problems. Just a couple of names and we let you off right where we picked you up.”

  “And trust me, T, you don’t want to piss this man off,” added Venables.

  “You cops, you ain’t doing nothing to me ’less you want to get your ass sued off.”

  Cove stared at the man for a moment and then said, “Right now, T, you better be real nice to me. I’m not feeling good about things, and I don’t give a shit if somebody sues me or not.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Sonny, take the next right. Head to the GW Parkway. Lot of quiet places there,” he added ominously.

  “You got it.”

  In a few minutes, they were on the George Washington, or GW, Parkway, heading north.

  “Take the next turnoff,” Cove said.

  They pulled into a sightseeing lot that provided a beautiful view of Georgetown and, far below, the Potomac River. A stone wall served as a buffer from the steep drop. Day had turned to dusk and there were no other cars parked in the lot. Cove looked around, opened the door and pulled T out with him.

  “If you dudes arresting me, I want my lawyer.”

  Venables got out too and looked around. He eyed the drop, glanced back at Cove and shrugged.

  Cove grabbed the smallish T around the waist and lifted him up. “What the hell you doing, man?”

  Cove climbed over the stone wall and down on the other side while T struggled in vain. There was a narrow strip of ground and then a drop of about a hundred feet into the river, which was filled with rocks. Down the river and on the opposite bank were a number of buildings housing local boating clubs. They were painted bright colors and their members rowed the waters in canoes, sculls, kayaks and other assorted watercraft that required muscle rather than combustion engines to make them move. There were several of them on the water right now and T was given an inverted view of that picturesque scene because Cove was holding him upside down, by the legs, over the drop.

  “Holy shit,” screamed out the flailing T as he looked down to oblivion.

  “Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, and you’re gonna have to decide real quick, because I’m out of time and patience,” said Cove.

  Venables squatted on top of the wall and kept a lookout for other cars. “Better listen to him, T, the man doesn’t lie.”

  “But you guys are cops,” wailed T. “You can’t do this shit. It’s fucking unconstitutional.”

  “I never said I was a cop,” said Cove.

  T stiffened and then glanced over at Venables. “But, damn it, he is.”

  “Hey, I’m not my brother’s keeper,” said Venables. “And I’m getting ready to retire anyway. I don’t give a shit.”

  “Oxy,” said Cove calmly. “I want to know who’s buying it in D.C.”

  “Are you one crazy-ass mother or what?” screamed T.

  “Yes, I am.” Cove let his grip slip a bit and T went down about six inches. Now Cove had hold of only the man’s ankles.

  “Oh, God, oh, sweet Jesus, help me,” whimpered T.

  “Don’t be talking to Jesus, T, not after the life you’ve led,” answered Venables. “He might just send a lightning bolt, and I’m standing way too close.”

  “Talk to me,” said Cove in his calm voice. “Oxy.”

  “I can’t tell you nothing. Then folks come after my ass.”

  Cove let his grip slip again. Now he was holding on only to the man’s feet. “You’re wearing loafers, T,” he said. “Loafers slip right off.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Cove let go of one of the feet and now was holding T by one foot with both hands. He looked back at Venables. “Sonny, I think we better drop this one and go get us somebody else who’s a little smarter.”

  “I got just the person. Let’s go.”

  Cove started to let go of the foot.

  “No!” screamed T. “I’ll talk. I’ll tell you.”

  Cove remained motionless.

  “No, I mean put me down and I’ll tell you.”

  “Sonny, go start the car while I throw this piece of crap in the Potomac.”

  “No! I’ll talk, right here. I swear.”

  “Oxy,” prompted Cove again.

  “Oxy,” repeated T, and he started talking fast, telling Cove all he needed to know.

  Claire pulled her Volvo into her driveway and cut the engine. It was a nice neighborhood, not too far away from her office and she had been fortunate enough to buy into it before housing prices soared. She made a good enough income, but the cost of living in northern Virginia had become ridiculous. Builders were cramming places on any scrap of land they could find and yet there were more than enough people willing to buy them.

  Her house was a three-bedroom Cape Cod with a nice patch of lawn in front, flowers in window boxes, a cedar shake roof and a two-car garage attached to the house by a breezeway. The street was tree-lined and the neighborhood contained a nice mixture of young and old as well as professional and working-class people.

  After being divorced for so long, Claire was close to accepting that she would forever remain single. There were few eligible men -->