“You do not want to play such games.”
Boldt knew he was supposed to feel the chill of such a statement, but it struck him as amusing instead. He allowed nothing to be revealed from his expression. He couldn’t be sure Svengrad wouldn’t conceal a tape recorder to later try to use to extort him, so he had to tiptoe around outright admission. Then again, LaMoia’s machine would erase such tapes as well. “Still looking for that money. Is that it?”
“I wired that money out of the bank myself,” Svengrad said, at which point Boldt knew no tape recorders were operating. He felt free to talk openly now.
“I know that.”
“Where is it?”
“You’re the one who wired it. You just said so yourself.”
“The police intercepted it. That was not part of our agreement.”
“If we’d intercepted it, you’d be wearing orange coveralls. It would be front-page news, and I would know about it. But you know that as well, so I’ve got to think that the first thing-the first name-that popped into my head also popped into your head.”
Svengrad opened a desk drawer and placed a black videotape on the blotter in front of him. “We had an agreement,” he said, sliding the tape toward Boldt, who didn’t believe the gesture for a moment.
“This, and how many more copies?”
“The only copy.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Svengrad shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“What is it you want?”
“No,” Svengrad said. “It’s what you want.” He met eyes with Boldt, glanced over to make sure the office door was closed, and said softly, “I’ll give you Alekseevich. Physical evidence, also. You give me immunity, I’ll even give you a witness to the tortures.”
This was an unexpected and exceptional offer, but Boldt showed nothing of his surprise. He eyed the videotape, wondering if it could possibly be the only remaining copy. “And in return?”
“His location. Hayes. Anything you know about where he is. That, and if you have him, then you call off the dogs for a few minutes. Send them out for coffee.”
“You think he did this to you again? Intercepted the wire transfer? Would he do that? He’s not stupid. And even if he did, do you think he’s anywhere any of us could find him?” Boldt allowed a grin. “He did it again?”
Svengrad was not amused. “You know where he is.”
Boldt shook his head.
“You have him in custody. Why else did you lock up Foreman? Hayes is cooperating with you.”
“Foreman is being held by Treasury for questioning, nothing more. No charges have been filed. In the end they’ll determine he has done no wrong. A little overeager is all. Clearing this case took him over. He beat the tar out of Hayes to get to the truth, and then tried to cover his tracks. It happens.”
Svengrad wore a look of contempt. “I’d hoped we could help each other.” He placed his hand on the videotape and drew it back toward himself.
“Let me ask around.”
“It’s the original tape,” Svengrad said, picking up on Boldt’s line of sight.
Boldt knew that already. The neatly typed surveillance title on the spine of the videocassette told him as much. “I thought you were giving it to me. The prior agreement.”
“It’s still possible, but you will have to do this other thing for me.” Boldt suspected this would go on the rest of his career. The tease, the request for another favor. Again he considered LaMoia’s device.
“How would Alekseevich be handled?” he inquired, offering Svengrad the first glimmer of hope.
“However you want. We’d let you know where to find him. You’d pick him up. I’d deny any accusations. I’d need the letter of immunity beforehand.”
That was never going to happen, but Boldt nodded as if it might. The identity of the government snitch would remain protected. “I can make some inquiries.”
“A location for Hayes is all I need. One phone call.”
Boldt retrieved his weapon and cell phone and left. He walked out to LaMoia’s Jetta through a light mist and sat down into the passenger seat.
“So?”
“Blackmail. He wants Hayes. The wire never reached his account.”
“Imagine that,” LaMoia said, knowing Boldt had arranged this, had kidnapped Hayes from the warehouse in order to accomplish this.
“It’s only the two of us. You understand that.”
“Three of us. You have to include Hayes.”
Boldt nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “For a minute there, I debated giving him up. He offered me Alekseevich in return.”
“A lot of good that would do us,” LaMoia said, as angry and frustrated about the protection surrounding Alekseevich as Boldt.
“He was incredibly calm about it,” Boldt said. “I thought he’d be much angrier. Violent, even.”
“That’s good. That means he hasn’t connected it to you or Liz.”
“He’s going to use the tape,” Boldt said. “I sat there, and I looked in his eyes, and I knew that he’d take me down at the first opportunity. He wants to believe Hayes did this to him, but he’s not one hundred percent convinced, I don’t think. He’ll burn us, just to get back at me in case I had anything to do with it.”
“It was a hell of a stroke, Sarge, manipulating him to input that account number himself.”
“It’s the only thing saving us. He can convince himself that Liz didn’t cross him because he typed in those numbers himself.”
“And who else but Hayes could intercept that wire?” LaMoia said, admiration for his lieutenant in his voice.
“Right.”
“I found an outlet,” LaMoia said. “There are a couple on the west side of the building. Do me a favor and go home and spend a night with your family. Don’t do anything on this until tomorrow.”
“You can’t take this kind of risk alone, John.”
“Message received. Just go home and sleep on it, would you?” He added, “Listen, if I do this, the Sturgeon General will be sure it was Hayes. You know he will.”
“The grand jury will sit Thursday. Alekseevich testifies. A week or two from now and Svengrad’s in lockup.”
“So take a vacation.”
“I don’t want you doing this alone.”
“I heard you the first time. So?”
“So,” Boldt said, after a moment of thought, “I’m coming with you.”
“What’s going on?” Liz asked from the warm side of the bed.
Boldt, in the familiar act of dressing into street clothes in the dark, said, “I’ll be back within the hour.”
“Are you going to tell me?” she asked in a groggy voice.
“No,” he said. “Better if I don’t. Better that you could answer questions honestly.”
“Questions from whom?”
“Internal Investigations.” That silenced her for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sensing her own role in whatever it was he had planned.
“Me too,” he said. “But maybe this is the end of it.”
“If only,” she said. “Is it dangerous?”
“I don’t think so. Not particularly.”
“It’s not worth it if it is.”
He stood over her at the side of the bed. He could just make out her face in the gray light that leaked around the perimeter of the window blinds. “You never woke up,” he said. “Never noticed me missing from the bed.”
“If you’re trying to scare me, it’s working.”
He left the room, stopping in the kitchen to make a traveling cup of tea.
LaMoia’s Jetta was parked behind an art supply store in Ballard, as planned.
“Yo,” the detective said, as Boldt slipped into the passenger seat. LaMoia looked like it was twelve noon.
They drove to within a hundred yards of Svengrad’s warehouse in complete silence. Then LaMoia pulled over and withdrew a “drop gun” from the glove compartment. Not SPD issue, and if shots were thrown, it woul
dn’t be traceable to LaMoia.
“I don’t like the look of that,” Boldt said.
“Get over it.”
“You’re nervous.”
“I have no idea what that thing in the trunk is going to do. What I do know is that I’m not parking anywhere near that warehouse because cars these days are all about computer chips, and that thing fries computer chips. So here’s the deal: You’re the wheel man. You drop me off, wait exactly two minutes, and return to pick me up. I can’t keep a phone or radio on me, the thing will fry them too, so it’s all about timing. You hear shots fired, I’d appreciate some backup.”
“You’ve got the roles reversed,” Boldt said. “If anyone’s putting himself at risk, that would be me.”
“I got briefed on the operation of this thing,” LaMoia said. “Besides, you’re technically challenged operating a toaster, for Christ’s sake.”
“Two minutes,” Boldt said. He came around the car. LaMoia popped the trunk so that it was already open, and Boldt drove them toward the warehouse.
He glided the car into position, LaMoia directing him with hand signals. LaMoia flew out the passenger door, lifted the trunk, then left it unlatched as he slapped the car to signal Boldt’s retreat.
As Boldt pulled away, he saw LaMoia struggling with what appeared to be a very heavy metal box. It looked like a miniature window-mounted air conditioning unit. Three blocks away he reversed the Jetta so it aimed back toward the unseen warehouse. One eye tracked the second hand on his wristwatch while he divided his attention, focused on the darkened street before him.
All at once, Boldt heard a loud explosion, and his foot went to the accelerator faster than conscious thought. He removed his weapon and laid it in his lap as he drove at a breakneck speed down the rough, potholed roadway. He caught sight of the orange glow in the sky and the smudged black plume of smoke billowing from what turned out to be a phone pole. An electric transformer on the pole was afire, raining viscous drops of flame down onto the crusted blacktop below like some medieval cauldron.
Boldt saw LaMoia by the side of the building, embracing the bulky steel device in both arms. The car rocked as LaMoia deposited the device into the trunk. The detective hurried around to the passenger side and said, “Go,” although he was only partially inside.
Boldt hit the accelerator hard, and the Jetta raced off. No sign of any trouble behind them, as both men strained toward their respective door-mounted mirrors.
“Shit!” LaMoia said. He was sweating and breathless. “Little kink they’re going to have to work out. I hit the button and that transformer blew like it was part of the plan.”
“So it worked,” Boldt said, somewhat astonished.
“Apparently so.”
“The transformer. That could help us. Whatever happened in that warehouse, maybe it gets blamed on the transformer’s problems.”
“You think it’s designed to do that?” LaMoia asked, suddenly beaming behind a smile. “Yeah, I suppose that’s possible,” he said. “Power company gets blamed for it. I like that. That’s what they get for raising our bills every six months.”
Only then did it fully dawn on Boldt that the master videotape of his wife’s indiscretions was now erased, and that at the same time Svengrad’s import company had been dealt a serious setback, losing all their business data.
He heard sirens behind them, responding to the burning transformer.
“Thing scared the shit out of me when it blew like that,” LaMoia said, reliving the moment. He was twisted around in his seat trying to get a look toward the fire. But he gave up and came back around, facing the windshield.
“Definitely not something we want terrorists to have.” He explained himself, saying, “The way I see it, I was just doing a little homework.”
“John LaMoia, the good student,” Boldt suggested. “Why doesn’t that work for me?”
“Give it a rest, Sarge.”
As Boldt drove, the sun brightened the eastern horizon. Boldt would be in bed before it was fully dawn.
“Thank you, John.” Said to the windshield, but as sincerely as he could make it.
“I love shit like that. Blowing stuff up. Setting shit on fire. My pleasure, Sarge, believe me.” LaMoia chuckled to himself. “Besides, what are friends for?”
Boldt searched the papers the following morning for any mention of an unexplained power outage in south Ballard. He found a paragraph about the transformer fire. He’d been placed on administrative leave pending a full review of the Special Ops at the theater and WestCorp Center. Pahwan Riz and Marc O’Brien were too experienced not to recognize internal interference when they saw it. Proving it would be next to impossible, given the loyalty of Daphne, John, and Bobbie Gaynes. Boldt would ride it out, as he’d ridden out other challenges in the past.
Danny Foreman was taking early retirement, no charges filed.
Liz returned from a meeting at the bank that Tuesday afternoon, Boldt having gassed up the car and packed it for the drive to Wenatchee. They were to pick up the kids there and keep driving. Sun Valley. Yellowstone, with the tourists gone. They would loop around on one of the most beautiful highways in the country, on the western border of Montana, and on up to Coeur d’Alene, where they’d spend most of the next week doing nothing. Boldt didn’t know how it would go; he wasn’t great at doing nothing.
Liz was quiet for the early part of the drive. She’d climbed in with a stack of papers, her purse, and a newspaper.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m not going to be offered a contract with MTK.”
“You’ve been fired?” This news hit Boldt in the center of his chest. Not only did Liz love the job, but she’d been one of the top five officers in the bank. There’d never been any question of her being worked into the merger.
“The tape, maybe,” she said. “You think?”
Again, he felt the wind knocked out of him. “No?”
“Or maybe Danny got me in trouble trying to save himself.”
“I would have heard about that,” Boldt said, though he wasn’t so sure all of a sudden. “Fired?”
“Phillip doesn’t trust me-that’s at the bottom of it. Nor should he! I’ll get a good letter. I keep the pension. It’s an honorable discharge,” she said, trying to make light of it.
He knew how devastated she had to be, and admired her for her display of courage. “I seriously doubt it was the tape,” he said. Then asked, “Are you okay with this?”
“No. But I am ready for a change. Consulting, maybe. More time at home afternoons.” She added philosophically, “You never fully undo something like this. If there’s one overriding lesson, for me anyway, it’s about the repercussions of our actions. Maybe there’s some closure now. I’ve carried this-we’ve both carried this-for a long time. It would be nice to get it behind us.”
Boldt glanced into the rearview mirror, the road receding behind them, and he nearly mentioned the symbolism to her but thought better of it. He kept it to himself. He hoped Svengrad would be jailed over tax evasion, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever stop looking over his shoulder. Svengrad had a long reach. He kept this to himself as well.
Liz was quiet for a few minutes, looking out her window as if the sights there were new to her. Then she reached down and unfolded the newspaper and opened it, fingering through to the business section. “Did you read this morning’s paper?”
He had, but he claimed not to have. Nothing got past her.
She turned it over to below the fold. “Tell me about this.”
Boldt kept driving, eyes on the road.
“An adoption agency, an inner-city soccer program. Was I supposed to miss this?”
He adjusted the rearview mirror, still saying nothing.
“Six million dollars in anonymous donations between the two. How much longer until another eleven in similar donations makes the news?” She said, “You must have forced David to do it, because this isn’t like him.”
“We neg
otiated certain conditions to his receiving protection, it’s true. Testimony on Danny’s behalf is part of it. Danny wasn’t trying to make himself rich; he was trying to clear a case that no one else cared about. He went about it the wrong way, but Hayes overheard some important statements that Danny made-some, while beating him. Geiser will roll on Svengrad. It’ll come down like a house of cards.”
“You didn’t rescue him to save him,” she said, figuring some of it out on the fly. “You needed him to intercept the wire for you.”
“You make adjustments as you go.”
“All seventeen to nonprofits?”
“Let’s just say that KPLU will be playing jazz for a long, long time.” He switched on the radio. Oscar Peterson. He felt Liz staring at him, could hear her mind churning as she debated what to say, what to ask. Finally, she just sighed, opened the paper, and began reading. “The adoption agency was a nice touch,” she said. “It’s the one Beth and Tony used.”
“Yeah,” Boldt allowed. “I thought that sounded familiar.”
“You’re never going to admit this,” she said, “even to me?”
“When the statute of limitations has run out, we’ll talk.”
“Seven more years together,” she said. “I like the sound of that.”
“Me too,” Boldt admitted, taking the wheel firmly in hand and changing lanes.
TWENTY-FIVE
BOLDT HAD NOT FELT THIS nervous since the birth of their first child, who now sat inside the room behind them. They’d flown down as a family. Liz’s sister’s kid, in her last year of graduate work at UC Berkeley, had offered to take Sarah to the Exploratorium, leaving Boldt and his wife on an uncomfortable wooden bench in a hallway that reminded the lieutenant of waiting outside a courtroom.
Liz had busied herself with projects since leaving the bank. The garage was spanking clean. When she offered to index his jazz albums he knew it was time she found work again. For his part, he was back at work, though staying behind his desk. He’d even booked himself back into the Joke’s on You, playing jazz piano during Happy Hour. He felt at peace each evening from five until seven.
The Body of David Hayes Page 28
