Ringo’s father was so loud that, when combined with the extra-powerful speaker Walt had installed on the kitchen phone for Dot, his voice easily carried to where Noah sat.
“Well, now, I thought you was calling yourself Ringo or something equally foolish these days,” Starrett drawled.
“Noah and I need a ride to the hospital, sir,” Ringo told him. “You know I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t a matter of life or death—”
“You hurt?”
“No, sir. But Noah’s grandmother was taken to the hospital by an ambulance right before we got home from school—”
“You haven’t come home from school yet,” he said.
Unbelievable. Roger Starrett Senior knew good and goddamned well that Noah’s grandmother was his very own sister. Ringo had just told him she was in the hospital, and he was messing around with semantics.
“Excuse me, sir,” Ringo said instead of Fuck you, you mean-spirited prick. Noah couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He couldn’t believe Ringo was doing this for him. And it was for him. To get him a ride to that hospital, Ringo was willing to ask this man that he hated for a favor.
“I meant to say,” Ringo continued, “before we got to Noah’s house.”
“I thought I made it clear that I didn’t want you going over there.”
“Pop,” Ringo said, desperation making his voice crack. “Didn’t you hear what I told you? Aunt Dot might be dying.”
There was silence on the line, then, “Considering she’s been dead to me for forty years, it’s about time she was put in her grave—end the embarrassment she’s brought to her family. Get yourself on home, boy. Now.”
“I am home,” Ringo said quietly. “I won’t be bothering you anymore.”
He hung up the phone, and Noah heard him start to cry. He was trying not to, trying to hide it—typical of Roger.
Noah dried his own eyes on his sleeve, stood up, and went into the kitchen.
Ringo heard him coming and stuck his head under the kitchen faucet, letting the water run on his face and into his mouth.
“You okay?” Noah asked.
“Yeah.” Ringo pretended to be all right as he dried his face on the kitchen towel. “Lookit, I just had an idea. If I cut my hand open with one of Uncle Walt’s cooking knives, you could call an ambulance, and they’d take us to the hospital.”
He was serious.
Noah’s mouth was hanging open. “Roger, that’s completely insane.”
“So what? It’ll get us there. Fast.”
“I’m not going to let you do that,” Noah told him. “Cut yourself? It’s bad enough that you went and called your father—”
“Aw, shit, you heard that?” Ringo was beyond embarrassed.
“You shouldn’t have called him.”
“I thought . . .” He worked hard to keep from crying again. “Maybe he’d do something decent for once, you know?”
Noah did know. He knew that Roger was almost unbearably ashamed of his father, ashamed to be the man’s son.
“I mean, Jesus,” Ringo continued. “Even Darth Vader apologized to Luke for being such a dickhead.”
“Darth never gave Luke a ride to the hospital.”
“Luke wouldn’t have asked,” Ringo pointed out. “He didn’t need a ride anywhere. He had a speeder.” He stopped. “That’s it!”
“We’ll blow up the Death Star,” Noah mocked him, “and then when the ambulances come, we’ll get a ride to the hospital.”
Ringo laughed, which had been Noah’s intention. “Shut up, fuckhead, and help me find Uncle Walt’s car keys.”
They were, of course, in the key box.
Ringo held out his hand for them, but Noah didn’t hand them over. “This, too, is insane.”
“Everyone always says that we both look much older than fifteen.”
“Driving in a parking lot’s different than driving on the street,” Noah told him. “I wouldn’t want to do it.”
“Well, I would,” Ringo said with complete conviction. “I want to. If you want, I can go by myself and then call you from the hospital once I find out if Dot’s okay.”
Noah handed him the keys. “Like I’m going to let you do that.”
“I would,” Ringo said, heading for the door.
“Yeah, I know,” Noah said, hefting Walt’s bag and locking the door behind them.
They got into the car, and Ringo adjusted the seat and the mirrors, the way Walt had showed them.
He had to be scared shitless, just like Noah. But he put the key in the ignition, and turned it, and the engine roared to life. Ringo was going to get them to the hospital if it was the last thing he did.
“Luke Skywalker’s proof that paternity amounts to squat,” Noah told him. “And you are too my brother.”
“Fasten your seat belt,” Ringo said, and pulled out of the driveway.
The band had started playing early, at seven, so by nine-thirty, Gina was more than ready for another break.
Fandangos was filled, and she had to squeeze her way through the crowd to get to the bar.
Max wasn’t there.
The musicians were set up on a platform with a direct view of the front door. As she’d played, she’d been able to see everyone who came in or left.
Max had done neither. Unless he’d come in through the kitchen.
There was this one spot, back by the rest rooms, where it was really dark. She was sure she’d seen an extra shadow there while she was playing. But when she looked now, no one was there.
“Hey. How’re you doing? Gina, right?”
She found herself staring up at Detective Soul Patch.
He was holding a beer in his left hand and he held out his right for her to shake. “Ric Alvarado.”
“Ric. Right.”
“I didn’t know you were a musician.”
Yeah, sure. As if Max hadn’t sent him over here. All of her hopes crashed and burned. He was never going to give in. He’d gone so far as actually to send over a replacement . . . a real replacement this time—not just Jules Cassidy.
“You okay?” Ric asked.
Gina forced a smile. “Yeah, it’s just a little too crowded in here. I get claustrophobic sometimes.”
“I know what you mean. Hey, so far no luck in my search for your underwear,” he said, and then laughed and rolled his eyes. It was too dark in there to tell for sure, but it was possible he blushed. “Oh, man, I’m such an asshole. I can’t believe I actually said that.” He looked around the room. “It is crowded tonight. Wow. Hot, too.” Another eye roll. “Look, can I buy you a drink? Something frozen, maybe?”
“Actually, because I’m in the band, I drink for free.”
“Oh. Well, that’s . . . sweet.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess.”
Sweet. Her last college boyfriend, Trent Engelman, used to call everything sweet.
Ric Alvarado himself was pretty damn sweet—at least as far as replacements for Max went. Dark hair, heavily lidded brown eyes, killer cheekbones, broad shoulders, trim waist. Younger than Max, but older than Gina. She’d bet that he was a good dancer, too.
“Well.” Ric looked embarrassed, as if he were about to back away, as if she’d given him a brush-off instead of an honest response about that drink. So she grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him closer to the bar.
“Hey, Jenn,” she called to the bartender. “This is Ric. He’s going to make sure my wineglass is never empty during the next set, okay?”
Jenn pushed a refill in Gina’s direction.
“I think we can take that as an affirmative,” Gina said to Ric, whose embarrassment had turned to nearly palpable hope. Oh, come on. Didn’t Max mention she was a sure thing? She made herself smile back at him as she took a healthy sip of her wine. “You don’t mind being my slave tonight, do you, Ric?”
Someone bumped into her, and she had to hold her glass out to keep it from spilling. Ric steadied her with a hand at her waist. A hand he didn’t bother taking
away again. “Absolutely not,” he said.
“So tell me,” Gina said, determined to play this through. If this was really what Max wanted . . . “How far are you willing to go in your search for my underwear?”
Cosmo Richter’s right leg was in traction.
As Tom went into the SEAL’s hospital room, a tight-lipped nurse was coming out. “Tell him he doesn’t have to be a superhero,” she snapped, before marching off down the hall.
Cosmo’s face was almost the same color as his eyes. Kind of pale bluish-gray.
“He’s refused to take any pain meds until he’s talked to you,” the senior chief said quietly into Tom’s ear.
“Sir,” Cosmo said to Tom. “I’m at fault. Chief Karmody ordered me to stay with Kelly, to keep her safe. I should have—”
“You should have expected a car bomb? In suburban San Diego?” Tom shook his head. “No, Cos. You got her out of the house.” Stan had told him that Don DaCosta, the man who lived there, hadn’t fared so well. “On a broken leg,” he added. Man, there was a cast on Cosmo’s left ankle, too. “Two broken legs.”
Once again, Stan and Jazz had a chair for him. Tom sat, part of him still upstairs, in surgery with Kelly.
“Can you start at the beginning?” Tom asked. “Why were you over there in the first place?” Stan had also told him that this Don DaCosta lived next door to the house Sam Starrett had shared with Mary Lou before they separated. DaCosta was mentally ill—a shut-in who never left his house.
“Kelly had these videotapes from somewhere, I don’t know exactly—”
“The library parking lot?” Tom asked.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Cos said. “Card wrote a computer program to help her check to see if Mary Lou Starrett appeared in any of the tapes, and she did.”
Chief WildCard Karmody could do things with a computer that would have made him filthy rich, were he not employed by the U.S. Navy.
“He printed out a bunch of pictures of Mary Lou with this guy—some guy Kelly recognized.”
“Sweet Jesus.” Tom hadn’t thought she’d actually find anything from the information gathering she had been doing.
“She said he came into her office a coupla times. He was selling drugs. You know, not the illegal kind, but—”
“A pharmaceuticals rep,” Tom said. Kelly had told him that salesmen and women from drug companies came into the clinic on a daily basis, pushing various antibiotics and prescription medications, encouraging doctors to prescribe their company’s brand of pills.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Cosmo said. “This was about six weeks before the Coronado attack.”
“And Kelly found a picture of this same man talking to Mary Lou Starrett,” Tom clarified.
“Yes, sir.”
“Mother of God.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where’s the picture?” Tom asked.
“Card’s making copies right now—he’s sending it as a download to everyone on the team to share with girlfriends and family and such,” Cosmo reported. “He was in here just about a half hour ago, and we suddenly realized if this guy is one of our tangos—” He used the radio-code word for the letter T, which stood for this decade’s version of trouble—terrorists. “—he may have contacted other people close to the team, and they may be in danger, too.”
Tom looked at Stan and Jazz. “I want a copy of that picture,” he ordered. “ASAP. And we need to get this information to the FBI.”
Stan left the room as Jazz said, “Cosmo’s already spoken to Peggy Ryan. She’s XO of Max Bhagat’s CT team.”
Tom nodded. “Good.” He knew Peggy. She was no Max, but she was good. He turned back to Cos. “So what the hell were you doing at DaCosta’s house?”
“Kelly was in touch with the other wives and girlfriends,” Cosmo told him, “looking for someone just like this guy—someone who’d maybe been sniffing around, looking for access to the base. You know, so he could smuggle those weapons in.
“Lieutenant Muldoon’s wife, Joan, is Don DaCosta’s sister. Joan told Kelly that her brother had some FBI agents camping out in his house. He’s in the habit of seeing aliens in the shadows, and he told Lieutenant Starrett that an ‘alien’ he used to see lurking around Starrett’s house had come back. From what I understand—and I’m not sure I’ve got it entirely straight, sir, it’s pretty freaking confusing—DaCosta recently saw this same alien following some Middle Eastern gardener who used to work in their neighborhood—”
“Ihbraham Rahman?” Tom asked. God damn, Kelly really had been on the right track.
“That sounds right, sir, but, it’s been a hell of a day, and I was paying more attention to the other guy. The guy in Kelly’s picture. That’s why we were at DaCosta’s—because Kelly wanted to show him the picture, to see if this guy was his alien.” Cosmo nodded. “And sure enough, DaCosta IDed him. I mean, as much as someone who’s mentally challenged can make a positive ID. But as far as I’m concerned, the words, ‘That’s him, that’s the alien,’ makes me think we probably have a photo of a man who may have helped set up the Coronado attack.”
Tom ran his hands down his face. He’d never thought . . . It had never occurred to him that Kelly might be in danger—that she’d actually get close enough to the truth. . . . He looked at Cosmo. “What happened? You got there, you went inside, Kelly showed DaCosta the photo, and then what?”
“One of the agents got right on the phone—this picture is a very major deal as far as the investigation goes,” Cosmo said. “We got what we came for, so I wanted to get out of there. I was spooked. I don’t really know why. I was just . . . The hair on the back of my neck was standing up—you know how that sometimes happens? But Kelly was trying to calm down DaCosta. The picture got him really worked up and she didn’t want to leave him like that.
“She was telling him he was safe, because the FBI was there, and I was there, and I was a SEAL. He’s got this hero worship thing about SEALs. And he was telling us about how Lieutenant Starrett always came over to watch the game on TV, and I was thinking, Shit, he’s a better man than I am. I was thinking that it was the closed windows that were freaking me out.
“And the second FBI agent—the one who wasn’t on the phone—suddenly goes, ‘Are we expecting more visitors?’ I look up and he’s over by the window, and he’s got the blinds open, and I can see there’s a car pulling up, right out there. And someone gets out and starts running, and Christ, Commander, I knew. Kelly was sitting across the room, on the sofa, next to DaCosta, much closer to that side of the house than I was. I should have been right next to her. But I wasn’t, and I shouted to get down. But she didn’t and aw, fuck, it blew, and the force just picked her up and I couldn’t do a fucking thing.”
“Except carry her outside on two broken legs,” Tom reminded Cosmo quietly.
“I didn’t know they were broken, sir. I just knew they didn’t work the way I needed them to.” He shook his head. “I tried to go back in there for DaCosta and the others, but I couldn’t do more than crawl, and then the fire truck was there and they pulled me back. I had to hit some dumbfuck in the face to make him stop dicking around with me. Kelly obviously needed more immediate attention. Those guys got there fast, but I’m telling you, they need a refresher course in triage.” Cosmo’s eyes were red.
Tom knew his own eyes must’ve looked the same. “She’s going to be okay, you know,” he told the petty officer. “She’s going to pull through.”
Cosmo nodded. “I’m praying for that, sir.” He paused, his face working as he tried not to cry. “But oh my holy God, sir, you need to know . . . I saw the way she hit that wall, and . . .”
Cosmo Richter, the man with the reputation of being one of the coolest, most deadly operators in SEAL Team Sixteen, covered his eyes with his hand and cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sam stared up at the patterns of light on the ceiling, light that had sneaked in past the heavy motel room curtains.
Alyssa had talked him into comi
ng here after they’d run out of AA meetings to visit.
That was kind of funny—Alyssa having to talk him into going to a motel. Of course, they did get separate rooms, which made it considerably less funny.
If this had been a Hollywood movie, every motel and hotel in the city would have been filled up—except for one last place that had one last room with one king-sized bed. Real-life people didn’t have the same kind of luck as people did in the movies.
Real-life people also didn’t have the kind of luck that would make them walk into the one AA meeting attended by someone who actually knew Mary Lou well enough to know where she was hiding. Sam hadn’t even had any luck finding someone who admitted just to seeing Mary Lou at one of these meetings.
He didn’t know whether to feel panic because she wasn’t attending meetings, or admiration. If she truly had listened to what he’d told her about hiding, she would have changed her regular habits upon coming to Sarasota, and he might never find her. Of course, the people who were looking for her wouldn’t find her, either.
But could she really stick to it? Hiding like that meant never returning to old ways, never calling or visiting old friends, never letting Haley see her father. Never could last a hell of a long time. Besides, Mary Lou had obviously slipped up somewhere, since someone had found her and killed Janine.
Sam stared at the ceiling. Checking AA meetings was getting them nowhere. They had exactly zero leads. They could start over again tomorrow, because, hey, it was possible that Wednesdays were the days Mary Lou was always too busy to go out.
But maybe they should back up, put this investigation into a mental reverse. Maybe, instead of trying to find Mary Lou, they should focus on finding the fuckers who were trying to kill her. The end result would be the same—Mary Lou and Haley would be safe.
So okay. Sam should try to figure out who, besides him, had had Mary Lou and Janine’s address after they moved out of Clyde’s house.
Clyde hadn’t had it, that was for sure. Although wasn’t it interesting that right after he tracked down Janine, possibly even that same night, she’d been killed? Holy fuck. Sam sat up in bed. Maybe someone had been watching Clyde, knowing that sooner or later he’d lead them to Janine, and therefore to Mary Lou.
Seal Team 16 06 - Gone Too Far Page 37
