Born to Run js-7

by James Grippando

“Men’s or women’s?”

  They answered simultaneously, Sofia saying “Men’s” and Theo saying “Women’s.”

  The pizza chef looked at the two of them as if they were the strangest couple he’d ever seen, and he handed over both keys. Theo led Sofia into the men’s room and locked the door. It was a small room with a pedestal sink and a single toilet. Sofia put the lid down on the toilet and took a seat. Theo checked his cell and found a missed call from Andie. He dialed her back.

  Andie said, “I have three minutes to get Sofia on the line with her ex-husband.”

  “You’re in luck,” said Theo. “She’s right here with me.”

  “Thank God. Stay on the line, I’m going to do a three-way. Oh, one other thing, I’m going to identify you as Agent Knight. You’re Sofia’s assigned bodyguard.”

  “Sofia says he won’t trust her if he thinks she’s with the cops.”

  “Just trust me on this. No time to explain. Can you put your cell phone on speaker?”

  Theo laid the phone on the sink and hit the speaker feature.

  “How’s that?” he said.

  “Good,” she said. “Sofia, this is Agent Henning. Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she said weakly.

  “You’ll need to speak up. I’m going to do a three-way conversation with you, me, and Demetri. I have about fifteen seconds to coach you, so listen to what I’m saying. You cannot promise him anything. You should ask him to surrender, and that’s it. If things start to go badly, I will drop you from the call. Understood?”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice even weaker.

  “I can hardly hear you,” said Andie. “Theo, take the phone off speaker and get back on the line.”

  He switched off the speaker and spoke, just the two of them. “It’s me.”

  “You think she understands?”

  “I do,” said Theo. “She really wants to help these hostages.”

  “Okay. Hold on.”

  Theo listened as she dialed up the three-way call. The next thing he heard was Demetri’s voice on the line.

  “You better not be stalling, Henning.”

  “I have good news. We have Sofia. Would you like to speak to her now?”

  Theo could almost feel the release of tension on the line. The change in Demetri’s tone was a complete emotional turnaround.

  “Yes,” he said. “Put amore mio on the line.”

  “Agent Knight,” said Andie. “Give her the phone.”

  Chapter 58

  “Sofia?” said Demetri.

  He had her on speakerphone, leaving him free to hold his pistol in one hand and the dead security guard’s gun in the other. Jack could hear both ends of the conversation, and he was close enough to Demetri to get a sense of what he was feeling as well. The hot spotlights above the set were taking their toll. Jack was sweating, and Demetri was having an even harder time with the heat, the back of his shirt stuck to his body with perspiration. Demetri looked upward to the catwalk. Jack subtly followed his gaze. The Greek was clearly on alert to a possible SWAT maneuver, but he was determined to talk to Sofia even as he kept watch.

  “Demetri,” she said, her voice quaking over the speaker on the news desk. “I want you to put down your guns and give up.”

  “I can’t do that, love.”

  “Please.”

  “No. And don’t ask me to do that again. There’s work to be done here.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

  He paused, and even though it probably didn’t come across on television, Jack was close enough to see him swallow the lump in his throat. Whether she was trying to push his emotional buttons or not, Sofia clearly had a hold on him.

  “It’s all I got left,” he said.

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is,” he said. “From the day you left, I had nothing. Now I got something. And I’m going to use it.”

  “I have it, too, Demetri. The same power. But you don’t see me using it. It’s wrong. You’re destroying a man’s life.”

  “They destroyed our life!”

  “This isn’t going to fix that.”

  “Those bastards-”

  He stopped himself and looked up. Something had drawn Demetri’s attention up to the darkest shadows in the catwalk, and it wasn’t just the paranoia of a stressed-out gunman. Jack had heard the noise, too.

  Demetri climbed up on the news desk and redirected one of the suspended spotlights toward the newsroom. The beam of light swept over the maze of office cubicles and up into the catwalk.

  “Are you sending someone in, Henning?”

  “No, Demetri. There’s nothing going on.”

  “I heard something. You heard it, too, Swyteck. Don’t lie. You heard that noise, didn’t you?”

  Jack could have lied, but he didn’t want to antagonize him. “Buildings can make all kinds of sounds,” said Jack.

  “Not like that one. They’re up to something.” He climbed down from the news desk and stepped closer to the speakerphone.

  “Tell them to back off, Henning. Back off right now.”

  Sofia said, “Please, Demetri. Just give up.”

  “Stay on the line, love. We’ll talk. Just as soon as I deal with this pest.”

  Andie muted the landline to the newsroom and dialed up Sergeant Figueroa on her other phone.

  “Please don’t tell me that MDPD has a sniper in the catwalk.”

  “All right, I won’t tell you,” said Figueroa.

  “Damn it, Manny. Stop working against me.”

  “Cool your jets. He couldn’t get a shot. Too many obstructions. We pulled him.”

  “Are you redeploying him?”

  “Are you telling me not to?”

  “I’m asking for a little interagency cooperation,” said Andie. “One more rattle from anywhere up in that catwalk and we are going to have one ticked-off gunman on our hands.”

  “One more reason to have a sniper in position.”

  “We’ve got it covered.”

  “Your tactical team has a shoot-to-kill order?”

  “I said we’ve got it covered.”

  Demetri was still studying the catwalk, even as he spoke. “Sofia, this might not play out the way I want it to tonight. But it will all turn out for the best.”

  He looked at Jack and said, “Tell her, Swyteck.”

  Jack withdrew. “Tell her what?”

  “Tell her what we did about the money that’s coming.”

  Jack took a moment. Demetri was giving him the opportunity to speak, maybe his last chance to take control of the situation. Jack had to make it count.

  Demetri walked over and put the gun to Jack’s head. “Tell her!”

  “Okay, no problem,” said Jack. He was waiting for Demetri to lower the gun, but it remained fixed against the back of Jack’s head.

  “Sofia,” he said, “this is Jack Swyteck.”

  “I know. I can see you on the TV.”

  Demetri nudged Jack’s head forward with the gun. “Stop stalling.”

  “Right,” said Jack. “I’m a lawyer, so Demetri asked me to help him make a will.”

  “What for?”

  “Just like everyone else, he wants to make sure that he has control over where his possessions go after he dies.”

  “Demetri, stop this,” said Sofia. “It’s scaring me.”

  “Love, just listen to this. Go ahead, Swyteck.”

  The gun at the back of his head made it tough for Jack to think clearly, but a second chance to talk his way out of this mess would probably never come. He had to go for it.

  “Demetri and I got to talking about what’s important to him,” said Jack, laying on a little schmaltz. “He wanted everything to go to you.”

  The Greek seemed pleased with the way Jack had characterized it.

  “Did you hear that, love?”

  “You see,” said Jack, keeping himself involved, “a married man doesn’t even need a will for everything to go t
o his wife. But you two were divorced, so it’s different. If Demetri didn’t have a will, it might go to nobody. Or it might go to another heir. Maybe even an heir he didn’t know about. Do you understand what I’m saying, Sofia?”

  She didn’t answer, and her silence told Jack that he was on to something-something that had been percolating in the back of his mind ever since Sofia had confided in him about the terrible night in Cyprus that had changed everything for her and Demetri.

  “Love, did you hear what he said?” said Demetri.

  Jack said, “Of course, none of this surprised me-”

  “Enough, Swyteck.”

  “-after what you told me about Demetri.”

  Jack’s words hung in the air. He’d planted the seed, and he waited. Demetri bit.

  “What did she say about me?”

  Success. Jack almost smiled to himself, but that simply wasn’t possible with a loaded gun pointed at his brain.

  “Sofia, do you remember what you told me?” said Jack.

  She didn’t answer immediately, which again told Jack that he was on the right track.

  “Yes,” she said finally, her voice laden with reluctance.

  “We talked about that night in Cyprus,” said Jack. “We talked about what happened after those men threw Demetri off the building and came back into the apartment.”

  “Don’t go into that,” said Demetri.

  “Do you know what happened?” Jack asked him.

  “Of course I know,” said Demetri. “I told you.”

  “Sofia,” said Jack. “Demetri thinks he knows what happened after he was thrown off the building. Does he?”

  Demetri pushed the gun even harder against Jack’s head, so hard that Jack feared it might go off.

  “I told you not to go into that!”

  “No,” said Sofia. “He doesn’t know.”

  Jack breathed. Demetri froze.

  “What?” said Demetri.

  Jack said, “He’s got the wrong idea, doesn’t he, Sofia?”

  Jack could see himself and Demetri on the television screen. Demetri looked ready to hit someone, and if Sofia bailed out on Jack now, it could be deadly.

  “Sofia?” said Jack. “He’s wrong, isn’t he?”

  The line was silent, and Jack worried that his gamble was about to backfire. Finally, Sofia answered.

  “He was misled,” she said.

  Demetri was speechless for a moment, as a wave of anger slowly washed over him.

  “How do you know what happened?” he said, jabbing the other gun into Jack’s spine.

  Jack measured his words, careful not to make Demetri look or feel stupid on television. That, too, could have been deadly.

  “I’m a criminal defense lawyer,” said Jack. “People have told me terrible stories-things they did or things that were done to them. Each of you told me in our own words what happened that night in Cyprus. Demetri, you told it like someone who believed it. Sofia, you told it like someone who wanted others to believe it.”

  “That’s a crock,” said Demetri. “How did you know?”

  “It was a process,” said Jack. “But the moment it came clear to me was when Sofia came to my office. Do you remember that, Sofia?”

  “I remember being there. But I’m not sure what moment you’re talking about.”

  Jack said, “Somebody was tracking you down to kill you because you knew something about the president-something so powerful that it could end his presidency. You wouldn’t tell me how you got that information. At first I thought you were protecting yourself. Then I thought you were protecting Demetri. Then I realized I was completely off base.”

  Demetri said, “What are you saying?”

  Jack ignored him, speaking to Sofia. “You were concerned about someone else entirely,” said Jack, “weren’t you?”

  “Who?” said Demetri. “Who else knows? Sofia, did you tell someone else?”

  Jack softened his tone a bit, but he stayed with Sofia, ignoring Demetri.

  “What was it that finally convinced you so many years later, Sofia? Was it DNA? Was it the birthmark on his forehead? Or was it the same thing I saw when I met you face-to-face-the way he has your eyes, your mouth, your entire persona, really.”

  Demetri was suddenly silent, stunned, it seemed, that Jack knew.

  Sofia said, “Does it really matter?”

  “No,” said Jack. “All that really matters is what you did after you figured out the truth. Demetri used it to make a buck. But you went completely the other way. You handled it only the way a mother would handle it. A birth mother who discovered that the child she had brought into the world was-”

  “The son of rapists,” said Demetri.

  Sofia was sobbing on the line. “I’m so sorry, Demetri.”

  “It’s not your fault. You were raped.”

  Sofia said, “You tell him, Jack.”

  “I don’t have to,” said Jack. “She already told you, Demetri. There was no rape.”

  “Then why did you say there was?”

  “Don’t you see?” said Sofia, a hint of anger in her cracking voice. “They threw you off a building for stealing fifty dollars a week. Do you think I wanted to raise a son to grow up in that world? I told you that I was raped so that my baby could have a chance. So you would want to give him up for adoption. I was so depressed, pregnant with you in the hospital. Who knows if I would have made the same decision if I had to do it all over again? But that’s what I did. I’m sorry. And I’m not sorry. Look what he grew up to become.”

  Demetri stepped away, muttering in disbelief. “I blackmailed my own son.”

  Jack could see him slipping. He needed to reel Demetri in.

  “You had no idea he was your child,” said Jack.

  “I sold his secret. I made him a puppet to Big Joe Dinitalia. I told the fucking mob that he was born in Cyprus. Do you know what that means? Swyteck, you’re a lawyer. Do you know?”

  Jack didn’t answer.

  “Tell them!” he shouted, gesturing to the camera. “Tell the idiots at home what it means if the president of the United States was born in Cyprus.”

  “He can’t be president,” said Jack. “He’s not a natural-born citizen.”

  “My son,” said Demetri, his face ashen. “I took this away from my own son. This can’t be happening.”

  “Demetri, it’s over,” said Jack.

  “That cannot be my child.”

  “He is,” said Sofia, “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no!” he said, screaming at the top of his voice. He threw a desk chair across the set, then another. The second one flew all the way to the weather set and knocked down the green screen.

  “You bitch! How could you do that to me, trick me into giving away my own flesh and blood?”

  He went to the news desk, grabbed the handwritten will, and tore it into pieces.

  “This changes everything! You hear me? Everthing!”

  He walked around to the front of the news desk. Shannon cowered, thinking he was looking to take it out on a woman-any woman. But he pulled Jack to his feet.

  Jack made fists to conceal the nail file, but Demetri noticed the blood.

  “What you got in your hand?” he said.

  Jack didn’t answer.

  “Open ’em,” said Demetri.

  Jack obeyed, and the nail file dropped to the floor.

  Jack braced himself for the kind of beating Pedro had gotten earlier, but Demetri restrained himself.

  “You’re lucky I need you,” he said coldly. “Or I’d kill you right now.”

  Demetri rummaged through the first-aid kit on the news desk and grabbed a roll of white medical tape. Then he pushed Jack forward to face the camera and came up behind him. He put the pistol to his head, pressed the sticky end of the tape to his gun hand, and started unrolling.

  “Don’t try this at home, folks,” he said.

  The tape went around Jack’s head, and covered his mouth, and then it wrapped back around D
emetri’s gun hand. He continued the same motion over again, securing his wrist to the gun, and the gun to Jack’s head.

  “Do you see what I’m doing here, Henning?”

  “This is a big mistake,” said Andie.

  Jack clenched the tape in his mouth like a bit, tasting the adhesive. Demetri kept unrolling it, this time going up around Jack’s forehead, then wrapping it back around his gun hand. He continued the same motion over and over again, alternating between the mouth and forehead, securing his wrist to the gun, and the gun to Jack’s head. When he’d finished, the gun was fixed in position and aimed at the back of Jack’s head.

  “Perfect,” said Demetri, as he tossed what remained of the roll onto the desk. “We’re like Siamese twins now.”

  Jack started gnawing at the tape in his mouth, grinding his teeth back and forth.

  “Henning, listen to me good,” said Demetri, his voice rising. “I’m walking out that door right now, and I’m leaving this building. Maybe some trigger-happy SWAT guy thinks he can get a shot at me, but take a good look at what I’ve rigged up here. If a sniper drops me, this pistol is going off, and Swyteck loses the top of his head. You see that?”

  “I see.”

  Jack kept gnawing at the tape.

  “Good. Here’s the deal. Have a car waiting in the parking lot with a full tank of gas. If it’s not there when I walk out, Swyteck dies. And remember this: I don’t care about anyone or anything no more. Not the money, not the hostages, not even you, Sofia. Especially not you.

  “Come on, Swyteck, you’re my ticket out of this-”

  Demetri stopped himself, then checked the tape. Jack could feel the wiggle room in Demetri’s contraption.

  “Damn you! You bit clean through it!”

  Andie said, “I don’t like what I’m seeing, Demetri.”

  “Too bad,” he said as he reached for the roll of tape.

  “I really don’t like what I’m seeing,” she said.

  “I really don’t care.”

  Jack glanced at the television. Demetri was assessing the damage that Jack’s teeth had done to his gun rig, and he seemed to be trying to figure out how to repair it with the small amount of remaining tape.

  “I see this as a big problem,” said Andie.

  “For you it is,” said Demetri.

  “Yes, I see everything clearly now. I see we are going to have to do something quick. Very quick. I can see that.”