by Gene Riehl
My cell phone rang.
Brodsky’s voice was urgent, but remained flatly professional.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said. “Wax just came outside, got into the van, and drove it into the parking garage under his building. It’s got a security gate. I can’t get in there, I can’t see him anymore. I don’t know if there’s a back way out, and if I check he could disappear on me.”
He hung up but his words lingered.
Wax was out of pocket.
The man with orders to kill was out there on his own.
I watched as Finnerty clapped his arms around himself and stomped his feet, suffering from the cold. He pointed at the judge’s Volvo, and they walked to it together. Brenda Thompson opened the door and slipped into the driver’s seat. Finnerty went around and got in the other side.
Now what?
Do they drive? Again what I’d do. Or do they stay?
As though reading my mind, Lisa started the van’s engine and we waited for the judge’s car to move out.
It didn’t.
I could hear through the supersensitive mike in Finnerty’s backseat the sound of the Volvo’s engine starting, but a moment later it died again.
I turned to the laser tech. He had his gadget trained on the Volvo’s driver’s-side window. He put his fingers to his lips, then reached to turn up the volume. Suddenly the voices in the Volvo were not only clear but immediately recognizable. I glanced at the tape machine next to the interferometer console and nodded to the tech as I saw that he’d already turned the recorder on.
“No, I won’t!” Judge Thompson was saying. “I won’t move this car one inch until you tell me what this is all about!”
“Suit yourself,” Finnerty said, his own voice dead calm. “We can talk about Brookston just as well right here as anywhere else.”
“Brookston? You want to talk about Brookston now? Hours from my confirmation? What the hell is wrong with you people?” She paused and her voice got angrier. “I gave your agents this information twenty-four hours ago. Why wait till now to bring this to me?”
“My agents?”
“Monk and Sands, the agents handling my investigation. They must have reported it to you by now.” Her voice turned icy. “I cannot imagine why you’re talking to me about it tonight … and here. Since when does the bureau conduct business like this in an automobile?”
“You’re fortunate we’re in this car. If I had my way, we’d be talking in a jail cell.”
“Are you crazy? Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Fortunately I do. What you are is a baby killer, Judge. A murderer. Not a goddamned thing more than that.”
A pause.
“This meeting is over,” Brenda Thompson said. I saw her car door swing open before she said, “I’m leaving. I want you out of this car when I get back.”
“Close the goddamned door!” Finnerty shouted. “This meeting isn’t Over until I say it is.”
The door swung closed again. I could hear the solid clunk as it engaged the latch.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” she said, breathing hard. “What I did became legal a few weeks later. I’ve already told your people about it,” she repeated. “You’ve already told the president. He hasn’t said a word to me.”
“Nobody told the president anything, Judge. Nobody will tell him now. Not now, not ever.”
“Than what’s the point?” She paused again. “You can’t be serious. This can’t be what I think it is.”
“It would be a mistake to believe that.”
“You don’t know me very well, do you, Finnerty? How could you imagine I’d allow you to blackmail me like this?” She paused again, just barely this time. “The president will have my letter of resignation in the morning.”
“He will not. I will destroy you if you tell him.”
“You’ve already destroyed me. You’ve made sure I’ll never be a Supreme Court justice.”
“When I’m finished you won’t be any kind of judge at all. You’ll have to move to the Third World to keep people from pointing and staring at you.”
“And the alternative is what? Waiting around for your next order?”
“You’re a quick study.”
“I’ll see you in hell first.”
“You can do that. Of course you can, but you’d be overreacting, Judge. You’ll never see me in person again, never even talk to me. When it’s necessary to enlist your help, you’ll know it without me having to tell you.”
She said nothing. The silence grew until Finnerty broke it again.
“In fact, we’re finished here tonight,” he said, “and you’ll feel differently in the morning. Trust me, Judge. In the morning you will understand.”
THIRTY-SIX
It was pretty damned quiet in the van afterward.
Even though we’d known it was going to happen, exactly how Kevin Finnerty was going to extort the judge, the reality of his crime had been infinitely more brutal than we’d expected.
But we didn’t have long to think about it before Finnerty was back in his own car. Before he could move, we heard the sound of his car phone ringing. I glanced at Lisa. The microphone behind his backseat hadn’t been a total waste after all.
Our eyes were riveted on his car as we listened.
“You found what?” he barked into the phone. “How long’s it been under there?”
We couldn’t hear the other voice, but there wasn’t much doubt whose it was … or what he’d found.
“But that’s ridiculous. My car is alarmed to make sure that doesn’t happen … that nobody can plant a bug in it. Who in the hell would have been able to …”
His voice died in midsentence.
I heard him toss the phone aside. I could see him twisting and turning as he looked through the car. I saw his door open, the ADIC hurry around and open the passenger door, crouch while he searched that side. He left the door open and stepped to the back door, yanked it open, crawled into the backseat. A moment later we heard the harsh sound of a hand closing over the head of our microphone. Then a single sharp curse word. Then nothing.
I turned to my team. No one said a word. I grabbed my phone and called Brodsky. No answer. I tried again, just to make sure. Still nothing. I chewed the inside of my cheek, troubled, but only for a moment. We didn’t need to worry about him. Besides, Vincent Wax’s whereabouts no longer concerned me. I might not know where the killer was at the moment, but it wouldn’t be long before I did.
I started for the front seat, then stopped and turned back to Gerard.
“Your man can go home,” I told him. “No more need for high-tech. From here on in, it’s going to be about as low-tech as it gets.”
He nodded, then climbed down out of the van just as my phone rang.
“This is no good,” Brodsky told me. “I haven’t seen Wax since he stuck his van in the garage downstairs. No way to tell if he’s even here anymore … and it’s too damned dark and wet … I have to keep my window rolled down to see anything at all. I can’t stand out on the sidewalk either. If he’s still around, he’s sure to spot me.”
“Burn off,” I told him. “We don’t need to be on Wax anymore. I’ve got a better way to find him.”
“Where do you want me?”
“Head toward the house. Get me on the phone when you’re in the area.”
“I’m on my—”
His voice stopped in a strangled gasp. The hair on my neck stood up as I stared at the phone.
“Brodsky? What the hell’s going on?”
He didn’t answer, but suddenly he was screaming in pain.
“Brodsky!” I shouted. “Damn it, Brodsky, talk to me!”
I pressed the phone to my ear. I heard the crashing sounds of two big men locked in combat, then a loud thump as the phone hit the floorboard.
I spun toward Lisa. “Wax has Brodsky! At the apartment! Call 911 … now!”
I reached for the ignition key, but pulled back. Patrol cars were everywhere
in that section of Washington. MPD would be there before we could go five blocks. Whatever was going down over there, we couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
I snatched the phone to my ear again. The fighting had stopped. Now they were talking. And that was even worse.
“… know what the fuck you’re talking about!” Brodsky croaked, his voice virtually gone. “Who the hell are you?”
I heard the unmistakable cough of a silenced automatic, followed by a scream that seemed to wrap its icy hands around my throat.
“Brodsky!” I yelled. “Wax, you son of a bitch! Don’t do this. You want me, come and get me … but don’t do this!”
I heard moaning, a half sob of pain. Wax—it couldn’t be anybody else—had shot Brodsky. From the sound of his cries, in the gut, maybe a kneecap. The pain had to be mind-numbing.
“Let’s try it again, Brodsky,” Wax said. “Where are they going? What are they going to do?”
I could hear Brodsky struggling to respond, gagging on his own blood, sick with pain and fear. What seemed like an hour passed with his gasps for enough air to speak. Then the surprisingly strong sound of his voice.
“Fuck you, Wax.” A pause for more air. “All the way to hell!”
There was a second cough, another bullet, but no shriek at all this time. Not a sound.
The three of us didn’t speak until we were halfway to Finnerty’s house. Brodsky’s murder had made the air so heavy it was impossible to speak, difficult even to think. Finally I broke the silence. It was no time to sag, I told Lisa and Gerard. Brodsky was still with us, I said. He’d be there all the way to the end.
They nodded. Professionals often have to wait to grieve, and they knew that as well as I did. I briefed them on the next phase of the operation, my voice quiet.
“But how can we do that?” Lisa wanted to know. “Go back to Finnerty’s house? He’s bound to get back there before we do.”
I shook my head. “He’s not going back there, not yet. There’s only one thing that matters to Kevin Finnerty now. And to get that, to get us killed, he needs Vincent Wax more than ever.”
“So how do we find them? How do we know Wax won’t just split for good?”
“He won’t split. Not when he realizes what’s at stake, what his part in this whole thing is going to cost him.”
“Finnerty’s wife, then,” Lisa said. “She’s in the house right now, and that’s just as bad.”
I shook my head. “You saw her, Lisa. We both know what happened when Finnerty left her alone. The second he was gone, she was into the next bottle of wine, the one he wouldn’t let her have at dinner.”
“Good point. You’d have to set off a stick of dynamite to wake her up now.”
Gerard broke in. “What can I do to help?”
I gestured toward the equipment behind us in the working compartment.
“Get back there and start making copies of what we just heard. Two copies, save the original for your own files. And hurry, Gerard. From here on in, the only thing that counts is speed.”
Twenty minutes later, I pulled the French van into Finnerty’s circular driveway. Lisa and I got out to make our entry. There was no way I was going to leave her out here on the street without me, but I also knew she wasn’t about to let me go back into the house without her. Besides, I needed her to operate the bureau portable radio she was carrying just in case we needed it. I turned back to Gerard, who’d taken my place behind the wheel.
“Get back out of sight,” I told him. “You can watch on the monitors. You’ll know when to come back and pick us up.”
He nodded and drove off, leaving us standing at the red front door.
I might as well have had a key this time, as quickly as Finnerty’s front door fell open under my picks. I pushed the door open and we went through.
Again the alarm tone sounded, even louder in my ears than the first time, but this time exactly the sound I needed to hear. It wouldn’t be long until my failure to enter the proper code hit the WMFO switchboard. The phone in the house would ring, I would ignore it, and the office would reach Finnerty on his cell phone or car radio. All I had to do was wait for the ADIC and his goon to come after us.
Not a lot of time, but enough for us to get ready.
The shrill tone ended, Lisa and I both watching the staircase ahead of us for any sign of the wife. The phone rang. Four times before the answering machine picked up. Again we looked for the wife, again she failed to show. Then we hustled toward Finnerty’s office down the hall.
Inside the office I took the audio copies Gerard had made on the way over, laid them squarely in the center of Finnerty’s desk. Then I moved to the bookcase we’d seen Finnerty swing aside earlier, just before the ADIC entered his vault. I didn’t bother trying to find the latch. I had enough adrenaline pumping to make it unnecessary.
I took hold of the bookcase itself with both hands, wrenched it away from the vault door. The latch gave way with a sharp crack, plaster came away with it and fell on the floor at my feet.
I turned to Lisa, motioned for her to follow as I hustled back through the office door and back toward the living room, to the windows we’d be using to spot the man when he showed up.
We’d barely left the office when we heard voices.
Red leader, red six.
Go, red six.
Voices clear enough to be in the next room.
Or outside in the front yard.
I stared at the radio in Lisa’s hands. The voices had come from her radio, the FBI radio she’d tuned to a secure channel no one else but the bureau should have been using. My heart began to race, my stomach to tighten. Lisa turned up the volume.
Drive-by negative for vehicles, red leader. Checking nearby streets for bucars.
Ten-four, red six. I’m getting out of my unit, be on my hand-held.
Roger, red leader.
My throat constricted as I admitted my mistake.
I’d known Finnerty would send Vincent Wax.
I couldn’t possibly have known he’d send an entire SWAT team.
I stared at Lisa as I tried to figure out why. Surely he wasn’t interested in arresting us. Our testimony in court would kill his Brenda Thompson scheme just as dead as if he let us go altogether. He and Wax would end up in the same prison cell.
Red four, red leader.
Go, red leader.
Target inside residence. Prepare for insertion at back door. Victor Whisky on his way. Advise when ready.
Roger, red leader.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. Now it made sense again.
Now I knew exactly what Finnerty was planning.
The SWAT team was only here for one reason. They didn’t even know why, not the real reason anyway.
Their job was to prepare for the entry, to surround the house to make sure Lisa and I were trapped inside. To prepare the killing ground for Vincent Wax. The killer would be first through the door. We wouldn’t be alive to see the rest of them come in after him.
And that’s where Finnerty’s plan turned brilliant, although Wax himself probably wouldn’t think so.
If Wax made it inside and killed us, Finnerty would win. If we killed Wax on his way in, the rest of the SWAT team would cut us to ribbons, and that would be even better. Resisting arrest, having killed an FBI agent, we would deserve no less. There wouldn’t even be an inquiry into the shooting. Headlines for a day or two—another scandal about wayward FBI agents—but nothing after that. Life for the ADIC would go on without a hitch. Life for my partner and me would not.
“Puller,” Lisa said. “What can we do? How can we …”
Her voice died as she realized there was no point asking.
For all its deadliness, the issue was incredibly simple.
If we ran, Wax would kill us. If we stayed, Wax or the SWAT team would kill us.
And that made our solution just as simple.
We couldn’t be inside when they came in.
We couldn’t let
them see us running away.
Simple.
All we had to do was make it happen.
I visualized the layout of the house, then the big backyard and the chest-high wall surrounding it, finally the trees filling the yard back there. I could see in my mind the opposition. They would follow bureau procedure, bureau rules of engagement. Two men at the back door off the kitchen, two at the front door, two more on the side lawn, outside the French doors in the TV room, probably one or two on the other side of the house next to the garage. We had only one asset, darkness, and it wasn’t much.
It was dark in the house. Outside, the night sky bore a crescent of new moon, moving in and out of the gathering clouds above the tops of the trees surrounding the yard. Reaction is always slower than action, and in the dark it would take them fractionally longer to react than for us to act. If worse came to worst, we could try to run for it and hope for the best.
I tried not to picture the last part, Lisa and I sprinting to avoid their bullets, but the scene flooded my mind anyway. I reached to her, touched her arm.
“You ready?” I asked.
She nodded, then opened her jacket to reveal the Sig Sauer in the holster on her belt and I saw that as usual she’d been right inside my head with me.
“Let’s do it, Puller,” she said. “Let’s just get it over with.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Red six, red leader. Report your status.
Victor Whisky onsite, red leader.
Stand by for insertion, red six. Command code Foxtrot.
I grabbed Lisa’s arm and pulled her into the darkness of the TV room. The code wasn’t a tough one to break.
Vincent Wax was here and ready. All he was waiting for was the command from Foxtrot. But Foxtrot wouldn’t be here, of course. Finnerty wouldn’t be anywhere near the scene of our murders.
