“How did you find me, Scarface?”
“The name is Commander John Magee.”
“Whatever,” Cole answered insolently. “How did you get here?”
“Yeah, you probably thought you lost us for good when you ditched our man at La Guardia. That was a neat trick, I have to admit.” Magee waved the gun at Cole. “But you forgot about your pal.”
“What are you talking about?” Cole’s eyes narrowed.
“Bennett Smith.”
Cole turned his head slightly to the side. “What?”
“Somehow Bennett knew exactly where you were. We trailed him up here yesterday after he took a late flight from Newark to Minneapolis. He spent last night right here in the boathouse.”
Of course, Cole thought. The message he had left on Bennett’s answering machine in Washington had been specific about the Albion estate in Hubbard. They had canoed past it last week and Cole had pointed it out. Bennett had gotten the message after all.
“He was sleeping like a baby,” Magee continued, “until I smacked him on the head about an hour ago.”
“Bennett’s here?”
“Right over there.” Magee pointed toward a mound in a far corner of the boathouse. “Beneath the tarp.”
“Christ!” Cole kicked at a slat of wood.
Magee smiled. “It must be very frustrating to lose that tape to me twice.”
Cole glanced up at Magee. “The public needs to see this thing.”
“Maybe,” Magee responded. “But they won’t. National security, you know.” He smiled wickedly. “Now give it to me.”
“You don’t know this is what you’re looking for,” Cole pointed out, stalling for time. “This tape could be footage of anything.”
“I watched you go up to the loft and take it off the top of the beam in the corner,” Magee answered confidently. “I’ll take my chances. Now hand it over.”
“Come and get it.”
Magee laughed. “I don’t have to. I’ll just shoot you.”
With a flick of his wrist, Cole sent the cassette case sailing past Magee’s ear. It was a trick Cole had learned from his junior high school basketball coach. Whip the ball just past someone’s ear and for a split second they’re paralyzed. There was something about the eye following a projectile and freezing the rest of the body. As the ploy had worked on the basketball court many years before, it worked now. For one second Magee was paralyzed as the cassette case flew past him, and in that second Cole was on the smaller man like a big cat. He smashed into Magee’s chest and they tumbled off the dock into the water together. As they hit the surface, Cole grabbed onto Magee and dragged the smaller man down. Even beneath the surface, Cole could hear Magee sputtering as he sucked water into his lungs. Cole had knocked the wind from Magee, and Magee’s body was running on instinct, trying to resupply the lungs with air even as he was under water. Magee struggled but Cole overpowered him, pushing him further down into the black water. Finally Magee’s body went limp.
When Cole believed Magee was unconscious, he brought the smaller man to the surface, pulled himself up onto the dock, then turned and hoisted Magee up as well. As Cole dragged him to safety, Magee swung feebly at Cole, a pathetic attempt to turn the tables. Cole swung back out of reflex with a hard right fist that caught Magee flush on the scar, and he crumpled to the wooden floor.
Cole rose to his feet, dripping wet, and stripped off his down parka. The coat would do him more harm than good now. It would freeze around him in the cold air and weigh him down. He moved quickly across the boathouse, retrieved the cassette case and Magee’s gun, then jogged to the tarp in the corner. He yanked it back and found Bennett Smith, hands and feet bound and a piece of duct tape covering his mouth. Cole placed the cassette case and the gun on the floor, ripped the tape away from Bennett’s mouth and began cutting the rope around his wrists with a switchblade he had borrowed from Billy.
“I’m glad to see you, kid,” Bennett gasped.
“I bet you are.” Cole took several deep breaths. It was cold as hell. He ran a hand through his hair. It was already beginning to freeze. He had to get out of here fast.
Bennett shook his head. “What an asshole I am.”
“You’ll get no argument from me.” Cole used a sawing motion and the sharp knife quickly sliced through the twine immobilizing Bennett’s wrists. “You’re losing your touch if you can be followed so easily by that idiot.” Cole nodded at Magee lying on the dock.
“I know.” Bennett held up his hands and squeezed them over and over, forcing blood back into the fingers. “I’m sorry, Cole,” he apologized, rubbing his head where Magee had hit him.
“It’s all right.” Cole reached down and cut the ropes around Bennett’s ankles.
“Thanks,” Bennett said, struggling to his feet.
Cole was already back beside Magee. With a length of rope he had taken from a hook on the wall, Cole secured Magee’s wrists and his ankles, then bound his ankles to his wrists. “That ought to hold him.” Cole turned to Bennett, his expression grim. “Where is my father, Bennett?”
“What?”
But Cole saw Bennett look away. “Where’s my father?” he asked again, more forcefully.
“Dead. I told you.”
“Don’t give me that,” Cole snapped. “The note you slipped under the door of my hotel in New York was written by his hand. I matched the handwriting on the note to a letter my father wrote my grandparents telling them my mother had died. My father wrote the note that was slipped under my door. And you put it there after you got me out of that scrape in Brooklyn with the Mafia.” Cole searched Bennett’s face for a reaction but saw nothing. “You told me my father died in Colombia seven weeks ago,” Cole continued. “You told me you buried him beside a river, but you couldn’t have. The note slipped under my hotel door was written on a piece of a newspaper dated November first, which was well after the day you said he died.”
“I don’t know anything about a note slipped under any hotel room door,” Bennett hissed.
“It was a note that directed me to this boathouse. Don’t tell me you didn’t look at the note.”
“I told you, I don’t know about any note.”
“Why won’t you be honest with me?” Cole asked. “After all this.”
Bennett stared at Cole for a long time before speaking. “I kept the secret of the film all these years and your father never offered me one red cent from the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” he said softly. “I never told anyone he had the thing, and I promised to deliver that envelope to you and to watch out for you after I did. I was his best friend, but he never offered me a penny. But I don’t know anything about a note.”
Cole swallowed hard as he saw Bennett bring a gun up from behind his back. “I’m sorry, son.” It was Magee’s gun. Bennett had picked it and the cassette case up from the floor where Cole had placed them before slashing the ropes binding his wrists and ankles. “I really am. I honestly liked you, and I can’t say that about too many people.”
“Don’t do this, Bennett,” Cole pleaded. “You’re too good a man.”
“I thought I’d lost you back in New York,” Bennett said, ignoring Cole’s entreaty. “I thought I’d lost my chance to retire happy.” A faraway expression came to Bennett’s face. “If your father had just offered me a little piece of the action, I would have been satisfied and none of this would have happened. But he wanted to keep everything for you. He was greedy.”
“I’ll split what I get for it with you,” Cole offered, ready to negotiate if that would buy him time. “I mean it.”
“You’re not in much of a bargaining position right now. It’s not as if you’re the registered owner of this thing. Possession is ten-tenths of the law in this case.” He held the tape up to prove his point. “I’m not sharing this with anyone. I guess it’s true what they say. You can
never have too much money. Besides, I’m going to need a lot of it to stay one step ahead of that guy’s boss for the rest of my life.” Bennett pointed at Magee, who was just beginning to regain consciousness.
Cole shook his head. “All that stuff about me being just like my father. Was that all crap?” he asked.
“Every word. I wanted you to feel you were like your father, and to hear it from me. I wanted you psychologically dependent on me. And it worked,” Bennett said smugly. “I never saw your father gamble a day in his life. He was a hard man. He never gave in to those kinds of vices, but he heard you did. Your aunt told him during a phone call one night that you were betting on pro football games while you were in college. He was furious. He almost went to see you, but then he didn’t. He figured it wasn’t his place to discipline you after all those years.”
“And the naming thing?” Cole asked, annoyed with himself for so easily falling for Bennett’s line of bullshit. “My father naming his gun and his boots?” How stupid and gullible could one individual be in a single lifetime? “Was that a lie too?”
“I made that one up on the spur of the moment.” The crow’s feet around Bennett’s eyes and mouth appeared as he broke into a self-satisfied grin. “It’s those little details that make people really believe your story. Of course, it was pretty easy to convince you, because you wanted to believe my story so badly. I could see that in your eyes right away that first day on the river, at the campsite. You wanted to connect with your father so badly.”
“And you wanted me to trust you.”
“One hundred percent.”
“So I’d call you in Washington. So I’d keep you informed.”
“Yes,” Bennett confirmed.
“You were trying to get the tape that first night in Manhattan, weren’t you? When you chased me down Fifth Avenue.”
“Absolutely.”
“But then he and his accomplice showed up.” Cole gestured at Magee.
“Unfortunately.”
“When you shot the woman and chased Magee, you were going after the tape, not protecting me.”
“True.”
“And when you didn’t get it, when Magee eluded you in Manhattan, you decided to stick to me, because you knew there was a second tape. My father had told you that.”
“Right on the money, Cole. You should have gone into intelligence.”
Cole put his hand on a thick wooden timber supporting the boathouse’s main beam. It was all so obvious now. “You stuck to me like glue. You figured if you followed me, sooner or later I’d lead you to the second tape. You saw the Mafia guys throw me in the limousine and you followed us to Brooklyn because at that point you were protecting an investment, not me.”
“So to speak,” Bennett agreed.
“But you really seemed worried that those guys were involved. That they were after the tape.”
“I wasn’t certain of anything at that point. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all to find out that the Mafia was trying to get hold of it. The top Mafia people probably know this recording is around somewhere.” He nodded down at the tape. “They have every reason to try and suppress it, just as the government does.”
Cole spread the fingers of his left hand, then slowly contracted them into a fist as he moved his other hand higher up on the timber. “So honor and loyalty were never part of the equation,” he said. “Your whole act was just part of a con designed to get to the tape. It was all for money.”
“And what are you here for, son?” Bennett sneered. “To make certain history is rewritten, to make certain people know there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy? I don’t think so,” he answered himself. “If you still had the Dealey Tape and the highest bid came from people within the DIA when you ran your auction, you wouldn’t care. You’d take their money in a heartbeat and let history stand. You’re here for your piece of the pie too. You’ve got debts you want to get out from under. That’s why you’re willing to risk your life. There’s nothing altruistic in your motivation, so don’t try to lay anything like that on me.”
“I wouldn’t sell out a man I’d worked with for thirty-six years,” Cole said tersely.
“Then you’re a nicer guy than I am. But nice guys end up at the bottom of the trash pile.” Bennett raised the gun. “The Q and A session is over, kid. This is the end of the line.” He aimed the barrel at Cole’s chest and squeezed the trigger.
* * *
—
Nicki’s eyes fluttered open as the man clamped the rag down over her mouth and nose while two other men pinned her arms and legs to the bed, immobilizing her. The fumes surged into her lungs, and as she stared up into the man’s eyes, his features blurred in front of her and she was unconscious quickly.
The man who had pushed the rag over her face pulled back, then signaled to the others to get Nicki out to the car parked in front of the Andersons’ home as quickly as possible, while people in the neighborhood were still asleep. Then he turned and retraced his steps to the parents’ room where they lay side by side, secured tightly to the bed. He knelt down and whispered his instructions to Nicki’s mother one more time, then asked if she understood.
Wild-eyed, she nodded.
* * *
—
At the instant Bennett raised the gun, Cole loosened the end of a rope knotted to a brass cleat bolted to the timber beside him. The other end of the rope was attached to a ring at the bow of a rowboat suspended from the boathouse ceiling for winter storage. The rope whipped away from the cleat and through a hook screwed into the beam above Bennett’s head, whining as it tore through the air. The bow of the rowboat dropped instantly and dealt Bennett a glancing blow to the side of his head just as he fired the gun. The bullet grazed Cole’s arm and knocked him to the floor, but he was up again quickly. Bennett lay on his back, the gun at the end of his outstretched fingers. Cole leaped toward the weapon just as Bennett rolled and reached for it too. Their hands grabbed the gun at the same time, but Cole managed to get his finger on the trigger. He squeezed it over and over, spraying bullets into the boathouse ceiling. Finally the trigger simply clicked over and over. The gun was empty.
Blood was pouring down Bennett’s face from the gash inflicted by the rowboat. He was groggy and dazed by the impact, but he was a horse of a man even with his faculties only partially intact. He slammed his body into Cole’s, knocking Cole over, and was on him instantly, hands tightening around Cole’s neck like a vise.
Cole grabbed Bennett’s face with his left hand, digging his fingernails deep into Bennett’s skin, but Bennett only squeezed harder. Cole felt himself beginning to black out. He dug his right hand into the wet pocket of his pants, pulled out Billy’s switchblade, snapped it open and thrust it deeply into the back of Bennett’s thigh.
Bennett screamed and lifted up, reaching behind his leg for the knife handle with both hands. As he did, Cole punched him and he tumbled away, still screaming madly.
Cole was on him again right away. With a huge effort he rolled Bennett across the dock and over the edge. Bennett splashed into the water and disappeared beneath the black surface. Cole scanned the dock quickly and saw the cassette case protruding from beneath the rowboat. He scrambled across the wooden floor, grabbed the tape, rose to his feet and darted for the door. Behind him he heard Bennett resurface, arms flailing.
The wind had risen to gale force now and the snow was blowing almost horizontally as Cole emerged from the boathouse, still dripping wet. He shielded his eyes for a moment, identified the path leading up the slope to the mansion and raced toward it, the Dealey Tape in the crook of his right arm. His boots were filled with water and felt like lead weights as he ran.
“Come back here, you bastard!” Bennett shouted. He had pulled himself from the water and was now moving forward through the snow in the same slow-motion gait as Cole.
The path up to the mansion wa
s only a few feet wide and was now covered by almost eight inches of snow. Cole felt as if his lungs would burst as he labored through the snow, but he kept going. Suddenly he slipped and tumbled back down the hill, breaking his fall by grabbing onto the stump of a tree. He pulled himself up and loped back over his own footsteps, finally breaking into virgin snow again. Bennett was only thirty feet behind, and Cole could feel his strength failing. His clothes were almost frozen stiff and he could barely put one foot in front of the other.
At the top of the hill Cole stumbled toward the mansion. If he remained outside, Bennett would catch him. It was as simple as that. Bennett would simply follow his tracks even if he could make it to the woods, and he didn’t have the strength to fight off another of Bennett’s onslaughts.
Cole aimed for a first-floor window, ran as hard as he could over the snow-covered lawn toward it and dove over a hedge. He smashed through the glass and wood of the window and landed on a carpeted floor, then quickly staggered to his feet and headed for a stairway leading up from what appeared to be a large family room in a finished basement. He shivered as he raced up the steps. It was warmer in here, perhaps fifty degrees, enough heat to keep the pipes from freezing over the long winter. Only fifty degrees, but suddenly that felt tropical.
At the top of the steps, Cole lifted a ski jacket from one of the hooks lining the wood paneling of the stairway. As he did, he noticed the blood dripping from the wound where the bullet had grazed his arm. He heard a loud crash from the basement as he slipped into the jacket. That had to be Bennett coming through the window. Cole sprinted left down a hallway and into the kitchen, grabbed a long knife out of a butcher block on the counter and headed up the back stairs. At the top of the stairway he stopped and listened, but he heard nothing, only the whistle of the wind from outside.
He moved quietly down the second-floor central corridor, twisting and turning past doorways. Bennett could be anywhere along the corridor, behind any door or around any corner. Cole stopped as he saw the corridor open onto the main staircase ahead, then slid along the wall until he reached the steps. Checking back over his shoulder, he leaned around the corner. The main door was down there. If he could slip out without Bennett hearing him, maybe he’d be able to make it to the Jeep and get back to Billy’s lodge. Even if Bennett realized he had left and followed his tracks to where the Jeep had been parked, it wouldn’t matter, because at that point he’d be long gone. Cole began to move quietly out around the corner toward the top step.
The Legacy Page 23
