About a minute later a tall, bald guy with a shaved head and cauliflower ears limped into the room.
I smiled when I realized who it was.
Curtis Schmidt was wearing jeans and a black sweatshirt. On his left knee was a complicated-looking orthopedic brace with buckles and hinges and Velcro straps. He had a gun holstered on his hip. His deep-set eyes glittered when he saw me.
I’m fairly sure he smiled, too.
He approached, limping, both fists balled.
“You’re not seriously going to hit a guy who’s tied up, are you?” I said.
He took a few steps closer.
“Isn’t that cheating?” I said. “How about we make this even and you—”
Schmidt assumed a boxer’s stance, his hobbled left leg forward, his right foot back, pivoting. His elbows in, his left hand up by his chin, he threw a right cross directly from his chin to my abdomen.
My adrenaline surged, and in that moment, everything slowed down.
I saw his fist coming at my stomach and I knew I had to relax my abdominal muscles, not tense them. I exhaled sharply through my mouth at the same instant that his fist slammed into my stomach. Schmidt grunted loudly.
The pain was staggering.
Everything went white and sparkly. I gasped. For a long moment I couldn’t breathe. My diaphragm spasmed, paralyzed.
I heard Schmidt chuckle.
When I finally was able to draw air into my lungs, I panted a few times. Then I said, “That all you got?”
But it came out in a high whisper, almost inaudible. Schmidt couldn’t make out what I was trying to say.
He leaned in, close enough that I could smell his rank breath. “Huh?”
I whispered again, “That all you got?”
But it was still hard to understand, and he cocked his head, moving in close, listening, smiling. “Trying to say something, Heller?”
What I did next required every last bit of my remaining strength, and there wasn’t much of it left.
I clenched my teeth, tucked in my chin, stiffened my neck muscles. Leaned back and abruptly snapped my head forward, crashing the crown of my head into his nose.
The crunch was audible.
All of a sudden there was blood everywhere. Blood streamed down his face as if someone had opened a faucet. It was a curtain of blood. He roared with pain and staggered backward, then crashed to the ground, his left leg straight out like a toppled bowling pin.
His hands flew to his face. He screamed, surprisingly high in pitch. Sprawled on the ground, he howled in pain, but I think it was something more than pain. It was humiliation.
Then he drew his Glock and, as he crabbed unsteadily to his feet, he pointed it at me.
The door opened and a second later I heard a voice barking: “Stand down, Schmitty!”
It was Thomas Vogel. He was still wearing his navy suit and red tie, and it looked like he’d freshened up. With his gray-flecked black hair, parted sharply on his left side, and his brushy mustache, he looked officious. He could have been a maître d’ at an expensive restaurant or the manager of a Mercedes dealership. But there was something in his swagger, something about his barrel-chested physique that bespoke the confidence of someone physically imposing, someone who was used to getting his way.
Schmidt lowered his gun at once. His left hand gripped his ruined nose. The blood kept flowing.
“Can I have the room, please?” Vogel said. His voice reverberated, adenoidal and powerful.
He looked at me, shaking his head slightly, while the two men exited, Schmidt trailing blood. Vogel looked amused and maybe a little embarrassed.
When the door closed, he said, “My apologies. I really should send Schmitty to anger-management school.”
I had a headache, and I was still finding it hard to get air in my lungs.
“So you’re Nick Heller,” he said.
“I’d shake your hand but . . .” I managed to say.
“I know all about you. You’re an interesting guy.”
I took a few shallow breaths, the best I could do.
“A man of paradoxes, I’d say. I’m familiar with your army records. I know what you did at Kunduz. The blood on your hands.” He shook his head again, and I couldn’t tell whether it was with disapproval or admiration.
He was talking about an episode in my past that I never discussed and preferred to forget.
“You do what you have to do,” he said. “You understand that, I can tell.”
“What do you want?”
“Just a little talk. We’re both busy men. We’ll keep this brief.”
“Okay. How about getting these cuffs off me?”
He nodded. “Sure. Soon.” He scuffed the toe of his brown calfskin brogue at the edge of a little creek of blood that was already starting to dry. “You know, in our line of work, there’s the sheep and there’s the shepherds. Guys like us, we’re the shepherds. We take care of the sheep. We protect them and make sure they live quiet, safe lives. Isn’t that really what they pay us for?”
I looked at him and said nothing.
He went on, “You and me, we don’t have an issue here. You may think we do, but we don’t. We’re like Germany and France—mortal enemies during the Second World War, and a few years later they’re trading partners. History of the world.”
“Do you have a point?”
He smiled. “We may do things differently, you and me, but ultimately we’re on the same side. The problem comes when clients—civilians—distract us. Set us against each other. There’s no reason for us to be at each other’s throats.”
“Is that right.”
“Look, Heller, you have your soft targets. We both know that.”
I just looked at him.
“There’s that woman who works for you, Dorothy something. There’s that nephew you’re really close to. The reporter from Slander Sheet. Hell, there’s even your mother, back in Boston. Soft targets.”
“Don’t even think about it, Vogel.”
“Man, I hate like hell to be talking like this. We should be working together, what I’m saying. Keeping the sheep safe.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You don’t want to be on the wrong side of me, Heller. We work this out, same time next year I’ll be sending you clients.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We don’t? Get yourself a black suit. You’ll be going to a lot of funerals.”
His cell phone rang, and he took it out of his pocket. “Vogel,” he said. “Yeah. Got it. I’m on my way.” He turned around, called out, “Rafferty, let’s go.” Then to me he said, “I’m sorry, I’ve got a meeting.”
He took out one of his metallic business cards and slid it into my shirt pocket. He waved vaguely at me, at the chair and the zip ties and everything. “We’ll give you some time to think it over.”
67
For a long time I sat there, zip-tied to the aluminum chair, thinking.
Vogel had left me alone in the empty warehouse, probably figuring that it would take me most of the day to get free. Maybe several days. I’d been bound with an excess of zip ties, one looped to another, which made it particularly challenging.
Not impossible, though.
Or so I told myself.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t use Vogel’s metallic business card, since I couldn’t reach my shirt pocket. I looked around the room, poring over the metal desk and coat tree and floor, looking for scissors or knives or anything sharp. The desk had a drawer, and that demanded a closer look. So how to move around? My ankles were zip-tied to the front chair legs. I shifted my feet and discovered I had a little bit of play. Enough for me to lift my heels and push against the ground with my toes. That moved the chair only a few inches, though, and I had twelve or fifteen feet to travel to the desk drawer. But it was something. The j
ourney of a thousand miles . . .
A kind of dazed calm settled over me, like a blanketing fog. A very useful sort of calm. Once I was helping my nephew, Gabe, assemble a fiendishly complicated play-set model of a hospital, and he cried out in frustration. That was when I taught him how to let the calm wash over you, and to focus on one piece at a time, breathing in and out, placid, calm. It probably took the two of us three hours to assemble this damned hospital, but high-strung, short-tempered Gabe stayed with it, and when the hospital was finished, he glowed with pride. So whenever he was faced with something perplexing and intricate, a physics problem set or a difficult math assignment, I would say to him, “Remember the hospital,” and he’d instantly smile and nod, as if to say, I got this. When I’d see him about to blow his stack over an impossible jigsaw puzzle, I’d just say “hospital,” and he’d smile and nod and try harder.
Now I said to myself hospital, and I smiled. I can do this. It’ll be arduous and slow, but I can do this. I made myself enter the zone. Calm. I lifted my heels, pushed off with my toes, scraped the chair legs another two inches closer to the desk drawer. Two down, one hundred and seventy-eight to go.
My cell phone rang in my pocket.
As I slow-scuttled along the floor, the phone ringing, I worked on my hands. They were looped to each other at the wrists, and then each loop was connected to the chair’s vertical struts. If you thrust in a downward direction with enough force, you can snap the cable tie’s locking head and free yourself. But that wasn’t an option.
Lift heel, press toes, and shove. Another two inches closer. Nothing was impossible. Hospital.
I had to get the hell out of here.
The phone continued to ring. I counted thirteen rings, and then it stopped for a moment, and then it started to ring again. Insistently, it seemed. Someone was trying to reach me with some urgency. Mandy? Dorothy?
Only then did it occur to me that my fingers were free to wiggle and move, and that was something.
Working by feel alone, I tugged at one of the cable ties with my fingers, a loop that connected the loop around my wrists to one of the struts. I was able to pull it around so that its locking head was nearest my fingers.
Now I inserted a fingernail into the tiny plastic box that forms the lock. Inside that little box is a pawl, a pivoting bar that engages with the notched end of the strap and locks it in place, keeps it from moving. With my fingernail I was able to pry the pawl upward to release the tension. Then, tugging with my fingers, I loosened the cuff, pulling and pulling until the end of the strap came loose.
Success! It felt like a major victory, like winning an Olympic gold medal. I didn’t think about the fact that my wrists were still tightly bound together and my ankles were still looped onto the chair legs. That was negative thinking and wouldn’t help me. Focus on one tiny victory at a time. Hospital.
The phone stopped ringing.
I crabbed the chair along the floor toward the desk drawer, another couple of inches.
Now I was able to grab the other loop with my scuttling fingers, pulling it around until I grasped the locking head, then I probed it with the fingernail of my middle finger until I felt the little locking bar. I pushed it up with my fingernail while, with the fingers of my other hand, I tugged at the strap and managed to pull it loose. My hands, though bound, were now free to range around behind my back. That was something.
Get the hell out of here.
I scraped a few inches more. I looked at the desk drawer and wondered what implement it might contain. Maybe scissors, maybe a sharp letter opener, maybe even fingernail clippers. Anything that could cut through the nylon straps and free me. Even a paper clip would be useful.
Eventually—it may have been another three quarters of an hour—I was close enough to the desk that, by thrusting my hands back and over, I was able to grab hold of the center drawer’s handle and yank it open a foot or so. Slowly I turned around to look.
And the drawer was empty.
I cursed aloud.
I was frustrated and annoyed and out of ideas. The best I could hope for was that someone would come along, one of the Centurions, and I could attempt to strike a deal.
Then I noticed something interesting. The corner of the metal drawer came to a sharp edge. It was a design flaw, and no doubt it had, over the years, inflicted countless injuries upon anyone bumping into the open drawer.
But sharp edges were good.
I shoved the chair back another couple of inches. Finally the backs of my wrists rested against the steel drawer and I slowly maneuvered my hands around until a length of nylon strap rested against the sharp burr. Then I moved my hands back and forth, back and forth, rubbing against the burr. I continued like this for maybe two minutes more, the steel edge abrading the nylon, until the strap had been worn through enough that I was able to jerk my wrists apart and snap the plastic strap open, and my hands were free.
I pulled them out from behind my back and massaged each hand with the other until the numbness began to recede. Then I reached down and pried open the locking bar on each loop around my ankle. Pulled each zip tie open.
Then I stood up. Free. And as I reached into my pocket to retrieve my phone it started ringing again.
Mandy.
I answered it.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “You’re there. Where are you?”
I told her. “Where are you?” I asked.
Another call was coming through now. Washington MPD homicide. I let it go to voice mail.
“On my way to talk to that retired police detective. Remember—?”
“Wait. Meet me back at the hotel. We’ve got to talk.”
“After I’ve talked with him.”
“No. Before. Now.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not safe,” I said.
“Heller, I . . . Okay, thanks.” And she ended the call.
68
I had three voice mails on my phone: from Mandy, from Dorothy, and from Balakian, the hipster cop I’d started to think of as Kombucha. I’d already talked to Mandy, and I knew that if there was anything urgent, Dorothy would have texted me. So as I pulled the silver Chrysler into traffic on Rhode Island Avenue, I called Kombucha back.
“There you are. Heller, we need to talk.”
“I’m kind of busy. What’s this about?”
A pause. “We may have a suspect.”
“Who is it?”
“We need to talk,” he repeated.
“Give me an hour.”
“Sooner if you can, please.”
“Okay. Homicide branch in Southwest?”
“Uh, no. Let’s not meet at headquarters.”
“Okay.” Strange, I thought. “Who’s the suspect?”
“We can talk about that when we get together,” he said. “The sooner the better.”
Kombucha was maddeningly cryptic. It occurred to me, fleetingly, that the suspect he had in mind was me. But he wouldn’t handle it this way, with a polite request to come in. He’d have shown up at my hotel with a squad of officers.
Then what questions could he possibly have? And why did he not want to meet at police headquarters?
—
Back at the hotel suite, I arrived to find Dorothy beavering away on her laptop. She was wearing jeans and a blouse in a deep shade of oxblood. Her fingernails were the same color. Her bracelets rattled as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
“Where’s Mandy?” I said.
“I think she’s at her apartment,” she said, not looking up. “She called me looking for you.”
“Shit.” I’d asked her to meet me at the hotel, where I could feel confident she was safe.
“Hey, what happened to you?” she said, staring at me. “My God.”
“I had a disagreement with one of the Centurions. Name of Curti
s Schmidt.”
“Can I get you something?”
“I’ll grab some Advil. I’m okay.”
“You wanted me to find Thomas Vogel’s home address.”
“You got it?”
“It’s a hell of a thing. No, I can’t find it.”
“That’s impossible. He’s got to live somewhere.”
“There’s one Thomas Vogel in Virginia, and he’s not the one. Three in Maryland. None of them is an ex-MPD cop.”
“He has to own a house or an apartment. A mortgage, a lease, utilities—you’ve checked all the usual places?”
“Nick, give me a little credit.”
“Sorry.”
“I assume his house is in the name of some corporation. The guy’s a ghost.”
“He’s got to have a PO box somewhere.”
“Probably, but I can’t find it.”
“I have his phone number. On his business card.”
“Then you have more than me.”
I handed her the metal card. She looked at it, then typed some more. After a few seconds, she said, “Nothing.”
I looked for a phone number on my phone, then touched the number and the phone started dialing.
“Garvin.”
“Art, Nick Heller again. I’m looking for Thomas Vogel’s address.”
“The man himself?”
“We’re not turning up anything on the Internet.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. He keeps a very low profile.”
“Why?”
“The story he puts out is that the narcos he busted have friends who want to track him down and give him his own personal retirement package. So he keeps himself unfindable.”
“The department must have a good address for him somewhere.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Can you look?”
“I’ll look. No promises.”
“Thanks.”
I ended the call, gave Dorothy a glance, shook my head. “That was my retired detective friend, Art Garvin. Doesn’t look good.”
“I’m not giving up.”
Guilty Minds Page 25
