Long Way Down

by Michael Sears

  I hated giving him information without getting some back. “I may have stepped on some toes.”

  “You’re not giving me much to go on, pardner. Make a report.”

  “The NYPD can’t keep me safe. Or my family.”

  “Neither can I, if I don’t know what’s going on.”

  I wasn’t getting what I wanted. Maybe I could get something else.

  “Just give me a ride uptown. In return for past favors.”

  “Oh-ho. The FBI now runs a car service?”

  I gave up. “On the way, I’ll tell you a story.” Or at least part of one.

  Virgil raised his eyebrows. I made reassuring motions and continued.

  “The Haley case has a big hole in it,” I said.

  “It’s not my case.”

  “It’s a good story.”

  “It had better be.”

  32

  So what are you going to do now? I mean, right now?”

  Brady and I were sitting in the back of an FBI motor pool Crown Victoria—I half expected the windows to have roll-down handles.

  “Make my family safe. I have some ideas, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t share them. I seem to be having a hard time keeping important information confidential. No offense.”

  “None taken, but be careful. These people seem to have the kind of resources usually reserved for governments or multinational corporations.”

  The fact that there were two more armed agents sitting in the front seat gave me a rare feeling of invulnerability, but my concern was primarily for those who might be used as targets in place of me.

  “There’s not much I can do, you know. I’ll pass your information along, but Haley is not my case—either for insider trading or for murder. I have zero pull with the SEC and the white-collar-crime guys in our office.”

  Brady had once been one of the white-collar-crime investigators in the FBI New York office. Moving over to the interagency drug task force had been a major career boost. He had gone from a third-tier forensic accountant to a rising star with an impressive arrest record.

  “And the Nassau County DA’s office might as well be on foreign soil. They’ll listen to Haley’s defense attorney before they’ll take my call.”

  “As soon as they identify that Rolls-Royce, they’ll release Haley. How many can there be in the New York area?”

  “That’s a joke, right? I’d guess tens of thousands for a start and those are just the ones with local license plates. Now add in all the tax dodgers who keep an address in Florida. Without the plate number, they have no chance of finding this guy.”

  “What about following up on the connection with the banker?”

  “The dead guy?” he asked by way of answering my question.

  “It’s too convenient that he just happened to OD right after signing off on that bogus account.”

  “Oh, it was murder all right. Fentanyl is not your garden-variety recreational drug. It’s much too dangerous.”

  “So is heroin,” I said, more to elicit information than to argue the issue with an expert.

  “Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid and about one hundred times more powerful than heroin. They give it to terminal cancer patients. Every once in a while we get cases of junkies OD’ing on it. Some low-level dealer who’s trying to hawk heroin that’s been stepped on one too many times might add a small taste of fentanyl to boost the high on his product. But killing your customer is generally considered to be bad for business, even in the street-level drug trade. If some idiot made a speedball of coke plus that stuff, it was manslaughter. If he had a brain, it was murder. There is no way to reverse the effects of an overdose. The respiratory system shuts down first. The guy would have suffocated within minutes.”

  “Is it hard to get hold of?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “We live in a capitalist society. Supply will always meet demand. The only variable is price.”

  Economic lessons from the FBI. “I should go,” I said. “There’re things I need to get started on. If you don’t hear from me in a few days, start looking.”

  “Where shall I start?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll leave a trail.”

  The feeling of invulnerability disappeared the moment I stepped out onto the sidewalk. I felt cold, tired, bruised, and much too visible. I walked quickly toward the doors to the Ansonia.

  I saw the man coming out of the corner of my eye. Raoul, the doorman, saw him, too, and came out to head him off.

  “Hold up, Jason,” the man called in a hoarse whine.

  I didn’t stop, but I turned my head to look him over. He knew me—or my name, at least. When I examined him, he looked a lot less frightening. Unpleasant, but not threatening. He was a bone-thin, gray-bearded man in an ancient trench coat and filthy sheepskin bedroom slippers. Though he looked like he had survived on the streets for years, a well-aimed gust of wind would have sent him flying like a page from yesterday’s newspaper.

  “Fuck off, pal.” Raoul stood between us.

  “I got a message,” the old man said, holding out a small envelope. “The man said you’d give me five bucks for it.”

  “Not fucking likely,” Raoul said. “Now move off.”

  “Just a sec.” I dug in my pocket and pulled out a bill. “Give me the letter.”

  “You can’t encourage these guys, Mr. Stafford.”

  “That’s okay, Raoul. You can help most by getting me inside as quickly as possible.”

  The old man and I exchanged our bits of paper. He turned and immediately began shuffling toward Broadway.

  “Is this from Dr. McKenna?” I called after him.

  “Don’t know the man. Said his name was Kimble.”

  I knew that game. “Richard Kimble?” The Fugitive.

  He was still moving away. “Dunno. Said he was a doctor.”

  Raoul had the door open. I rushed inside before opening the message.

  RUN

  Followed by a ten-digit number beginning with 917. A cell phone.

  33

  I tipped Raoul a twenty and borrowed his cell phone. McKenna was frightened, but in control.

  “Get rid of your phone. Destroy it. Same with your computer.”

  “I just bought that laptop.”

  “Have you signed on to any Internet sites as yourself?”

  Not more than a few dozen. “I’ll toss it.” I told him about my two would-be assassins.

  “And my FBI tail disappeared this morning,” he replied. “They’ve been replaced. The new guys aren’t watchers—they’re hunters.”

  We talked for almost an hour. He didn’t frighten me—the two men that morning had already accomplished that—but he did give me the tools and knowledge I needed, starting with his ten basic rules for vanishing. I told him to keep working on the Arinna computer system and asked him how we would keep in contact.

  “When you’re ready to come look for me, I will find you,” he said before the line went dead.

  DR. BENJAMIN MCKENNA’S TEN BASIC RULES FOR VANISHING

  1)Tell no one.

  2)Change your habits. All of them.

  3)All cash, all the time.

  4)Create false trails.

  5)Take nothing but cash. Nothing.

  6)Unplug.

  7)Use disposable prepaid cell phones—lots of them.

  8)Change your physical profile.

  9)Wear hats.

  10)Avoid eye contact.

  —

  I followed my father’s Olds out the LIE to Veterans Highway, hanging back a few hundred yards and watching to see if anyone else was tailing him. Pop changed lanes, slowed ridiculously in the center lane, and played with his blinkers almost constantly. He was having fun. By the time we reached the turnoff for the Islip airport, I was comfortable that the only dri
vers who might have wanted to kill any member of my family were the poor souls directly behind him.

  It had been a long weekend, calling in favors, making arrangements to keep my family safe. They needed to disappear, too, only not in the same direction as me. Skeli had put up the most resistance, until she convinced herself that keeping the Kid safe had to be her responsibility, at which point she turned into my greatest advocate. Virgil arranged for the plane. Matt Tuttle lent us the house, saying only, “I won’t be using it for a while.” I had violated McKenna’s first rule of vanishing, but I believed that my family would be safe. None of us went out all weekend. We ordered in food, clothes—including a new Burberry overcoat for me—and spent any downtime trying not to fret. Sometimes we succeeded.

  Pop dropped Skeli, Estrella, and the Kid off at the private-jet offices, a few hundred yards from the main terminal, then he took the car to long-term parking and left it all the way in the back. I pulled up next to him as he waited for the shuttle bus.

  “Going my way?” I called.

  “Jeeesus! Hell on rye, son. You scared the piss outta me.”

  “Come on, hop in. There was no one following you.”

  “I didn’t think so. If there had been, I would have driven ’im stark raving.”

  He slid into the front passenger seat and I pulled back out onto the main drive.

  “How’s everyone holding up?” I said.

  “Good. Good. Wanda’s been telling backstage Broadway stories and keeping us in stitches. Speaking of which, did you know Hugh Jackman’s married? I mean to a woman. He’s not gay.”

  “How’s my boy?”

  “Good. He’s going to be fine. Wanda’s great with him. He trusts her. We’re going to be fine.”

  “Just don’t let her cook, okay? Not even cold cereal.”

  “You always say she’s perfect.”

  “She is perfect. She just can’t cook. And my standards in that area are pretty low.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  I dropped him at the corner, leaving him a short walk to the small gray building. “Here, take these.” I handed him a plastic shopping bag with six of the prepaid cellular phones. “Use one to call me when you get to the house. Then smash it and throw it in the ocean. Deep ocean. Save the others for emergencies.”

  “What do you do now?”

  “Stop asking me, Pop. I’ve got a plan.”

  He leaned in the window and kissed me on both cheeks. “Take care.” He turned and hurried off.

  Ten minutes later, I heard the whine of the Lear’s engines start up and a few minutes after that I watched the jet take off. I stayed there until I lost sight of the plane, carrying almost everyone in my world, until it disappeared in the wintry southern sky.

  —

  My next stop was in a sleepy village on the North Shore and the tiny First Bank and Trust of Long Island. The first step in my own disappearance.

  “May I help you?” The speaker was a pleasant-looking gray-haired woman who appeared to be in her early sixties. She was wearing a heavy brown cardigan sweater over a ruffled silk blouse and a plum-colored woolen skirt. A pair of reading glasses on a gold chain around her neck was her only accessory. She might have been running the thrift shop at an upscale church.

  “I’m interested in opening an account.”

  “Oh!” she said. This was obviously an unusual request. “Are you new to the village?” she asked, trying to regain control of the situation.

  “I’m thinking of relocating,” I said. This was true. I was thinking of moving to another apartment if I was still alive in the new year, and in the meantime, I was thinking of going into hiding.

  She helped me fill out paperwork for a checking account and a charge card. I could have saved a fair amount of time by filling out the paperwork without her help, but then what would she have done for the rest of the day?

  “We’re quite proud of our clearing system. If you deposit a check today for up to one thousand dollars, we can have funds available in just two days. How much were you planning to deposit?”

  “I want to wire in fifty thousand. And I’m going to need almost immediate access.”

  “Oh!” she said again, flushing a bright red across her cheeks and forehead. “I may need to make a phone call for that.”

  Thirty minutes and a half dozen phone calls later, I walked out of the little storefront bank with five thousand in cash, a book of blank checks, and a temporary debit card. The credit card and my account documents would all be sent to my father’s old address in College Point. By the time the post returned them, I would have corrected my “mistake” or I would be dead.

  I gave my tic free rein and plotted three separate routes to get myself to LaGuardia Airport, weighing and rejecting, until I decided upon Northern Boulevard to the Cross Island to the Whitestone Expressway to Grand Central, instead of either the LIE or Northern State. There were lights and traffic on Northern Boulevard, but I would avoid the possibility of getting stuck in a major tie-up. I had a plane to catch.

  The shuttle bus driver at the rental-car park wanted to wait until he had a few more passengers. I offered him a twenty to leave immediately. He took it.

  When whoever it was who was after me tracked me out to the bank and back, they’d see it as a simple dodge and not look into my further trip out to Islip. The private-jet crew had filed a flight plan to Miami, and wouldn’t request the change to Puerto Rico until they were less than an hour out. Even if someone saw through the whole thing and set up an ambush in Miami, they’d have no time to rearrange and beat the plane to Puerto Rico. My family would be safe in Saint Thomas by dinnertime, and then leave for the British Virgin Islands first thing in the morning.

  Next I had to provide a reasonably believable alternative for the killers to pursue. My false trail.

  The departures board at LaGuardia Airport showed the usual number of delayed flights, another two that were currently boarding, and six flights that were leaving within the hour. Minneapolis, Boston, and Chicago—too cold. Not Miami—I was trying to misdirect, not target. Dallas. I could fly to almost anywhere from Dallas. On the other hand, the carrier was Spirit Airlines and no one would believe that I had flown on Spirit Airlines if there had been any other alternative. I chose Santa Fe. I had never been there. The name sounded warm.

  I bought the last seat on the flight, inadvertently cheating some frequent flyer out of the upgrade to first class. I paid with my new debit card and made it to the gate with minutes to spare, despite being profiled and pulled out of line by security. No checked baggage and a last-minute purchase. Who else but international terrorists would travel in such a manner?

  The flight to Santa Fe was risky but necessary. Though I had to look like I was setting up a real getaway for the Kid and me, if they were already monitoring flights, I was giving them seven whole hours to set up a trap for me when I arrived. They and them had already entered my mental vocabulary and sounded frighteningly normal. The trip was a calculated risk, but I had made a career out of calculated risks. I thought the odds were with me.

  —

  The setting sun outpaced us, and as the plane dropped down toward the Santa Fe airport, we fell through dusk, then evening, and landed at night. I was up front—seat 3B, on the aisle—and felt the dry cold reach in and wrap itself around my ankles the minute the flight attendant opened the door. Why had I expected Santa Fe to be warm in winter? The pilot informed us that we were still seven thousand feet above sea level and that the thermometer was reading in the low twenties and still falling. I sneezed.

  I was second in line at the car rental counter and missed their only remaining full-sized sedan.

  “I can put you in an SUV for the same price,” the young man with the eyebrow stud said in an encouraging voice.

  “I was hoping for something a bit more inconspicuous,” I said. “A white Ma
libu maybe?”

  “This is Santa Fe. If you want inconspicuous, you want an SUV.” He checked his computer monitor. “I’ve got a Ford Escape in black or a Chevy Traverse in white. Your pick.”

  “Anything with a bit more pep?”

  “For another eight dollars a day, I can put you in a BMW X3.”

  “What color?”

  He raised both eyebrows. “Dark blue.”

  “GPS?”

  He checked the computer. “No. But I can rent you a handheld,” he said, his eyes brightening.

  “Keep the GPS. I’ll take the BMW.” I reminded myself to take a picture of it for the Kid.

  He then tried to sell me three different kinds of insurance.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m allergic to it. Just the car, please.”

  “You want the fuel option?”

  “Doesn’t it have fuel in it already?”

  He brought out a chart, sealed in plastic, to demonstrate the fuel option. I stopped him before he got started.

  “I think I’ll take my chances on being able to find gas for sale somewhere here in town. Thanks.”

  The cold hit me again as soon as I stepped outside. The skin on my bare face and hands felt tight and dry and my eyes watered. For a moment, I couldn’t see. I brushed a hand across my face. On the far side of the parking lot, just past the halo of the overhead lights, was a white Jeep Wrangler. Exhaust was coming from its muffler. I couldn’t see past the reflected glare of the windshield, but I was sure that someone was sitting behind the wheel—watching me.

  The rental cars were all lined up along a chain-link fence. I had no trouble finding mine. I jumped in and started it up. Despite the cold, the powerful engine started immediately, and the fan began pushing out lukewarm air. In less than a minute, it was hot. I sat watching the Jeep. Other cars, trucks, and SUVs moved around the lot, taking away the other passengers. I didn’t want to be left there alone with the man in the Jeep. I pulled out and joined the queue for the exit lane. I checked the mirror. The Jeep pulled into line three cars back.

  I had been followed before and I had driven with the FBI when following someone else. Losing a tail is not an impossible task. All it takes is a bit of creativity, and an utter disregard for safety and sense.