The Patriots Club

by Christopher Reich

  Guilfoyle had programmed Cerberus to monitor all the phone lines indicated on the link map on a real-time basis. Automatically, Cerberus would compare the parties speaking with a voiceprint of Thomas Bolden taken that morning. Guilfoyle didn’t have enough manpower to stake out all of Bolden’s acquaintances. With the link map, it didn’t matter. Should Bolden phone any of these numbers, Guilfoyle could listen in. More important, he could get a fix on Bolden’s location.

  The problem was that Bolden was a sharp operator. He had learned firsthand that his phone had been bugged and that using a cell phone meant risking capture. The link map was therefore a waste of time.

  Guilfoyle rubbed his eyes. Over a hundred monitors running floor to ceiling occupied another corner of the room. The monitors drew a live feed from exterior surveillance cameras around Midtown and lower Manhattan. The pictures switched rapidly from location to location. Software analyzed the faces of all pedestrians captured by the cameras and compared them to a composite of three photographs of Thomas Bolden. Simultaneously, it analyzed the gaits of the subjects, and using a sophisticated algorithm, compared them to a model established from the video of Bolden striding down the corridor at Harrington Weiss earlier that morning. It wasn’t the walk it was analyzing as the exact distance between his ankle and knee, knee and hip, and ankle and hip. The three ratios were added together to yield a composite number that was as unique for every man, woman, and child as their fingerprints.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news was that snow, rain, or any kind of moisture in the atmosphere degraded the picture enough to render the software program ineffective.

  For all the money the Organization had poured into Cerberus, for all the millions of man-hours the brightest brains in the nation—in the world, dammit—had spent developing the software to run it, Cerberus was still a machine. It could gather. It could hunt. But it could not intuit. It could not guess.

  Guilfoyle removed his glasses and set them delicately on the table. The discipline that had governed his entire life fell round him like a cloak, smothering his irritation, dampening his anger. Still, it was only by the utmost self-control that he did not shout. Only Hoover noticed the tick pulling at the corner of his mouth.

  Machines.

  Wolf Ramirez sat quietly in a dark corner of his hotel room, drawing the blade of his K-Bar knife across the sharpening stone. A clusterfuck was what it was, he thought, as he reversed direction and drew the blade toward him. Too many people running in too many directions trying to get the simplest thing done. Well, what did they expect? You didn’t send a pack of hounds to do a wolf’s work.

  Wolf’s eyes lifted to the cell phone he had set on the table in front of him.

  After a moment, he concentrated on the knife again. To hone the blade as sharp as he liked, he needed to work on it for a solid hour. Only then would it be truly razor sharp. Sharp enough to slip into the skin as easily as a needle and cleanly separate the dermis from the sheath of fat below it. Only then could he lift the six layers of tissue off a man as neatly as if he were filleting a trout. Straight, unfrayed lines. That’s what he liked. Precision.

  Wolf didn’t like to leave a man messy. When he was finished with the bad guys, he wanted their souvenir of their time with him to be a work of art, geometric in its precision. The pain would soon pass. But the scars would be with them forever. Wolf was proud of his skills.

  He stared at the phone.

  This time it rang.

  He smiled. Sooner or later Guilfoyle always came back to him.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Can you find him?”

  “Maybe. But you have to level with me.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Just one thing. Tell me what you don’t want him to discover.”

  40

  Bolden walked past the entrance to Harrington Weiss’s world headquarters. Tall glass windows allowed him an unobstructed view inside. At one-thirty, the lobby was moderately busy, a thin but steady stream of people flowing in and out of the building. By now, Weiss’s body had been removed, the office cordoned off, and hopefully cleaned, witnesses interviewed, and reports taken. Other than the usual building security, he didn’t see a single police officer.

  Like a messenger who’d overshot his address, Bolden turned right back around and walked inside. A white marble floor, high ceilings, and stout granite piers gave the lobby the look and feel of a train station. He presented himself to the reception desk.

  “Ray’s Pizza. Delivery for Althea Jackson. HW. Forty-second floor.” He plopped the brown paper bag holding the pizza and soft drink on the counter, and slipped a business card he’d taken from Ray’s along next to it.

  “Let me make that call,” said the security guard. “Althea on forty-two?”

  Bolden nodded, and looked around.

  Less than ten feet away, a dozen uniformed police officers stood huddled around two plainclothes officers, listening intently to their instructions. He kept his face turned away from them.

  After seeing his picture on TV, he’d spent the last of his money on a cheap baseball cap and some even cheaper sunglasses. He had no doubt that Althea was in the office. Any normal place of business you’d get the day off after seeing a man’s brains blown out. The whole firm might be expected to shut down, if for no other reason than to show respect for the boss, a founder no less. But investment banks were anything but normal. No nine-to-fivers need apply. Currencies did not halt trading when a country defaulted on its loans. Deals didn’t fall out of bed if a principal dropped dead. The march of finance was unsympathetic and unstoppable.

  Bolden was point man on the Trendrite deal. He might be MIA, but the deal had a momentum of its own. He was certain that Jake Flannagan, his immediate boss, had taken up the reins, as he had on a past occasion when a senior partner had suffered a heart attack and been put out of commission for a week. Jake would be all over Althea to supply him with the proper paperwork and phone numbers, and generally to bring him up to speed.

  “I don’t care if you didn’t order pizza,” the security man was bellowing into the phone. “Someone ordered it. Now, come and get it, or I’ll eat it myself. Smells good, hear what I’m saying?” He lowered the phone and looked at Bolden. “What kind?”

  “Pepperoni.”

  The guard repeated the words. “Darned right you’ll be right down.” He hung up. “She’s coming.”

  Bolden threw an elbow onto the counter. On one of the napkins, he’d written Althea a note. It read, “Don’t believe a thing you hear or SEE. I need a favor. Do a LexisNexis search on Scanlon Corporation and Russell Kuykendahl. 1945–Present. Meet me in front of the kiosk at the southwest corner of the WTC subway station in an hour. I need $$$!!! Believe in me!” He signed it “Tom.” As much as he wanted to leave the bag and the pizza inside with the security guard, he had to stay to get paid and collect his tip.

  Behind the counter, a ten-inch television was tuned to the news. The station was showing the footage of Sol Weiss’s murder over and over, with short breaks to discuss it with an analyst. A few guards gathered, watching with something between enchantment and horror. Someone tapped on Bolden’s shoulder. “Hey.”

  Bolden turned and looked at the policeman.

  “Got any extra slices? Outside on your bike or something?”

  Bolden shook his head. “No, Officer. I’m sorry. You want to place an order, here’s the number.” He handed the business card to the cop.

  The policeman pulled Althea’s bag toward him and opened it. “Smells good,” he said, rooting around inside the bag. “Sure she don’t want to split it?”

  “Ask her. I’m just the delivery guy.”

  “Jesus!” shouted the cop. “It’s him. It’s the fuckin’ doer. Guys, check this out. Got the doer cold.”

  Bolden froze, then realized a moment later that the cop had just gotten sight of the television. Another cop ambled over. When he figured out just what he was watching, he whi
stled and yelled for his buddy to get his ass over there. Pretty soon all ten police officers were crowded in a horseshoe around Bolden watching the television.

  “Guess he didn’t get the bonus he expected,” said one.

  “Naw, he wanted that corner office.”

  “Hey, boss, here’s what you can do with that evaluation form.”

  The laughs grew louder with every comment, the policemen pressing him against the reception desk. The tape ended, and was replaced by a full-screen photograph of the suspect. Trapped, Bolden stared at himself. He kept his face down. He didn’t look around him. At any moment, he expected one of the officers to nudge him in the shoulder and say, “Hey, pal, isn’t that you?”

  Glancing to his side, he caught Althea doing her power walk, barreling across the lobby. He couldn’t risk her reaction when she recognized him. Any attention could prove disastrous. “Excuse me, Officer,” he said, grabbing the bag and trying to shoulder his way through the policemen. It was like wading through concrete. The cops stood firm, their eyes locked on the television, waiting for the promised replay.

  And then it was too late.

  Althea placed her elbows on the far side of the desk. “Who placed this order?” she asked the security guard. “Wasn’t me. I didn’t order any pizza.”

  “Ask him,” said the guard, a finger pointed at Bolden.

  “I said, who placed the order? I most certainly did—” Althea’s words dropped as cleanly as if they’d been chopped off by the guillotine. “Oh yeah,” she added. “That’s me, all right.”

  Fighting clear of the swarm of policemen, Bolden handed her the bag holding the slice of pizza and soft drink. “That’ll be four-fifty. Plus a dollar delivery charge. Five-fifty total, ma’am. Something in there from the manager.”

  Althea opened the bag and cocked her head to get a look inside. Slipping in a finger, she freed the napkin and read the note. One of the cops had good radar. Sensing something wasn’t kosher, he walked over and looked at both of them. “Everything all right, here?”

  “Just fine, Officer,” said Althea, closing the paper bag. “Boy messed up my order, that’s all. Sometimes I’m surprised they can even find the building.” She fished inside her purse for her wallet and handed Bolden a twenty. “Got change?”

  Bolden looked at the bill. He’d spent his last dime on the hat and sunglasses. He reached for his wallet, anyway, aware of the policeman’s intent gaze. “Just for a ten,” he said, lying. “Slow day.”

  “No sweat,” said the cop, reaching into his hip pocket and pulling out a gambler’s wad. He ripped off two tens from the middle of the stack and traded them for Althea’s twenty. “And you,” he said, yanking down Bolden’s sunglasses with a finger and shooting him a do-not-fuck-with-me look in the eye. “Pay closer attention next time. Don’t go screwin’ up the lady’s order.”

  Not caring to wait for a response, he sauntered back to the others.

  Althea handed Bolden a ten.

  “Jenny’s hurt,” he whispered. “She’s being treated at a hospital somewhere in lower Manhattan. I can’t explain, but I need you to check on her.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Find out!”

  Althea nodded her head, but said nothing.

  “Get my list?” He was referring to the list he’d asked Althea to compile of all companies that his clients had bought and sold over the past ten years. It was the only place he might find a clue to who might have been involved with a military contractor. Althea frowned. “It slipped my mind.”

  “I really need it. And your phone.”

  Althea dug into her purse and handed him her cell phone. “Don’t be calling Australia,” she whispered. “I’m on a budget.”

  “One hour,” said Bolden. “Get my list!”

  Before he could thank her, she had turned and begun her march back to the elevator. Nobody needed to teach Althea Jackson how to act in front of the police.

  41

  Detective John Franciscus drove slowly down the street, checking the addresses of the clapboard colonial homes. A light snow fell, adding a fresh layer to lawns already covered with six inches of the stuff. Icicles hung from bare branches that swayed in the wind. It was going to get worse before it got better. The forecast called for the brunt of the storm to hit the New York metropolitan area sometime that evening. Anywhere from six inches to two feet was expected. He turned up the heater a notch.

  The hamlet of Chappaqua belonged formally to the city of New Castle. Though an NYPD detective had jurisdiction throughout the state, it was common courtesy to alert the local shop that he was paying a visit. Even so, Franciscus hadn’t phoned ahead. Crime folders, like Bobby Stillman’s, didn’t go missing without a reason. Men due to be arraigned did not commonly walk out of jail leaving no trace behind them. Other eyes were watching. It was best to be invisible for a while.

  He pulled the car to the curb and killed the ignition, listening to the engine tick and the wind scuff the windshield. A look in the rearview to make sure his teeth were clean. A check of his necktie. A breath strip, and he was ready to go.

  Franciscus climbed out of his car, checking for any ice on the pavement. Sixtieth birthdays and broken hips went together like beer and pretzels. Next house over, a man about his age was getting a snowblower out of his garden shed. Seeing Franciscus, he waved and shook his head disconsolately, as if he’d had enough snow for this winter. The image of the red-faced man struggling with his snowblower stayed with him. In a year, that would be him. Then what? What would a Wednesday afternoon hold in store for him?

  Done clearing the snow, he’d go inside and take a shower. He’d come downstairs smelling of baby powder and aftershave, pour himself a Bud, and grab a bowl of Japanese rice crackers for some nibbles, before settling into the La-Z-Boy for a long, slow night in front of the tube. He’d end up watching reruns of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched. At some point, he’d fall asleep in his chair, only to wake up half out of it, dazed, and bleary-eyed, wondering how in the hell he’d gotten there in the first place. Not in the chair, but how he’d gotten to be sixty-three, retired, with a gold watch, a pension, and a zipper running down his breastbone that promised him twenty more years of the same.

  Franciscus rang the doorbell. An attractive brunette in her mid-forties opened the door a moment later. “Detective Franciscus?”

  She was a knockout, tall and willowy with hair cut short, nicely styled. Kovacs had been thirty-one when he’d called it quits. Franciscus had assumed his wife to be the same age. Put the word “widow” in front of a woman’s name and she became sixty, frumpy, and about as comely as a sack of potatoes. He returned the smile. “Mrs. Kovacs?”

  “Please come in.”

  “Call me John,” he said, stepping past her, into the cool of the foyer. “I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “Not at all. When you mentioned my husband, I was glad to make the time. Please, call me Katie. Why don’t we sit in the den.”

  Katie Kovacs led the way across the foyer, past an open kitchen and down the hall. Franciscus couldn’t help but notice that the place was tricked out with all the latest gadgets and gizmos. There was granite in the kitchen, a stainless-steel fridge, and a PC in the work nook. Immediately, he began working out what kind of money she had to be making to live in this kind of style. It was a professional hazard. A salary of eighty-five grand a year left you with a sizable chip on your shoulder.

  “Here’s Theo,” she said, pointing to a framed photo hanging in the center of the wall.

  So that was Kovacs, thought Franciscus. The picture showed a young policeman in his blues, his peaked cap worn soberly. Trusting eyes, toothy grin, chipmunk cheeks. Franciscus pegged him as the cheery, indomitable type. The guy who took KP three nights running and didn’t complain. He didn’t look like a cop who’d end things by eating his gun. But then, no one started out that way.

  They continued down the hall. Katie
Kovacs pointed out her office. A sleek desk ran along two sides of the room, dominated by three large flat-screen monitors on which a blizzard of red, green, and white symbols flashed like Christmas lights. Documents were stacked in several piles. A few stray papers littered the floor. She smiled apologetically. “I clean up every evening.”

  Franciscus observed Kovacs’s business attire. She was dressed in navy slacks and a starched white blouse. “I hope I’m not keeping you from an appointment.”

  “No, no,” she said. “I work out of the house. I like to dress to keep me in the right frame of mind. Otherwise, I’d be snacking all day and watching TV.”

  “I doubt that,” said Franciscus as they continued down the hall. “May I ask what you do?”

  “I’m a municipal finance specialist. I help cities around the state raise money. Just small issues: anything under a hundred million dollars.”

  “Sounds exciting,” said Franciscus, meaning, It looks like you’re making some dough.

  Kovacs chuckled. “It’s not.”

  They sat on a long white couch in the den, under the watchful gaze of a forty-two-inch plasma screen. She had set out a tray with a coffeepot, cups, and saucers, and a few cans of soda. He accepted a cup of coffee and took a sip. He noticed that she didn’t serve herself anything. She sat across from him, perched on the edge of her chair. Her smile had disappeared.

  “As I said on the phone, something’s come up that concerns your husband,” Franciscus began. “One of the suspects wanted in the bombing of Guardian Microsystems and the murder of Officers O’Neill and Shepherd has popped up on our radar. We’re calling her Bobby Stillman, but she went by a different name back then.”

  “Sunshine Awakening, if I’m not mistaken.”