by Robert Ward
Two years into the marriage, it was all over. The fight, the screaming matches, the furniture throwing.
And then one night, when he got home, Jack found Kevin asleep in an empty house and a note on the kitchen table. She’d cleaned out the checking account and left for Baltimore.
Jack stared down at Julie. She looked . . . what was the word . . . beatific? Yeah, that was it. He knew that any attractive woman could look like an angel when sleeping, but in this case he felt that maybe this time . . . he really had gotten lucky.
But even so . . . even now he felt that there was something waiting, something that could come and wipe out his dreams. And the worst thing was that maybe it was Kevin. Kevin, who didn’t trust any woman right now. Kevin, who disappeared until four in the morning, two weeks ago, a feat which nearly sent Julie around the bend.
Maybe Julie wasn’t ready to handle a volatile teenager.
Jack felt his head bursting with negative thoughts.
He had to get some sleep. Clear his mind. Things were okay. He’d nailed Steinbach . . . everything was good.
Even so, after he finally took a quick shower and hopped into bed, he couldn’t sleep, but watched and waited for something to happen . . . something really bad. He could almost feel it as it edged toward his house.
3
HE WISHED HE’D BROUGHT his shades. The sun was in his eyes as he tried shielding them with his left hand. Kevin, dressed in his new uniform, was walking toward the plate, and Jack felt a lump in his stomach.
Jesus, he was so overprotective, worried all the time. He hadn’t really been all that freaked when he was undercover with Stein- bach, where one false move could have put a bullet through his head, but out here, in the sunlight with all the other moms and dads, he was supernervous for Kevin.
He looked down at third base, at Charlie, who was flashing Kevin the signs now. Jack watched as the pitcher threw in the last of his warm-up pitches. He was a big guy, with a Cardinals uniform. A lot bigger than Kevin, and Jack had seen on the radar gun that he was throwing about 73 miles an hour. But Kevin was fine . . . knocking the dirt out of his cleats, waving his bat slowly back and forth.
Jack sucked in his breath.
Looked across the field at the old Pacific Park and thought for a second that he wouldn’t watch the first pitch; he would just pretend to watch, and instead keep his eyes on the old gym . . . The new one was over the other side of the hill, it was going to be something . . . he’d think about that, and . . .
But who was he kidding? He was going to watch. And his kid was going to be just fine.
He looked down at Charlie, who was keeping up a steady stream of chatter.
“Come on, Kev. You can do it, boy. Get a hold of one, Kev.” The big pitcher went into his windup, lifted his front foot, and
fired the ball toward Kevin.
A fastball, and right away . . . the split second it left his hand, Jack could see that it was going right toward Kevin’s head.
And worse, Kevin was slow to react . . . frozen in fear.
And now Jack was up off his seat as the ball hit Kevin’s batting helmet with a sickening thud, and his son went down as though he’d been hit by a sniper’s bullet.
And Jack was up, his mouth opening but no noise coming out and he was leaping down off the stands, and running toward home plate, and Charlie was running alongside them and Charlie was saying, “Oh, Jesus!”
Jack was running but the plate seemed to be receding into a kind of sickening yellow mist . . . and no matter how much faster he ran he couldn’t seem to get any closer. And his son lay there, blood gushing from his nose and ears.
Jack woke up, screaming.
“Kevin . . . Kevin!”
He sat bolt upright in bed, and Julie was up with him, saying, “What . . . what is it?”
And Jack heard his heart beating in his ears, his breath coming hard, as he fell back on his pillow.
“Nothing,” he said, still gasping for breath. “Just a bad dream. It was nothing at all. Go back to sleep.”
“Nothing at all? Going undercover for months at a time trying to catch that scum Steinbach? By, the way, baby, I heard you got him. It was on the news.”
“Yeah, we got him,” Jack said.
Julie rubbed his back.
“I wish you’d have called me, Jack,” she said.
Jack shook his head, then hugged her. “Sorry, we had to do the paperwork, then hustled down to Charlie’s for a couple of drinks.”
“I understand,” she said. “But I was worried about you.”
“I know,” Jack said. “I’m sorry . . . I should have called you right away. Guess I’m still not quite used to having to think of anyone else.”
Julie smiled and kissed Jack’s neck. “It’s okay, baby. Just try and remember next time. I want to be in on every part of your life.”
Jack managed a smile.
“You will be,” he said. “From now on. I promise.”
She smiled and slid back down under the quilt.
“You need a serious vacation,” she said.
“Vacation?” Jack said. “Never heard that word before. What’s it mean?”
Julie squeezed his bicep.
“It’s when you go to a beach and you relax, and the water comes rolling in and the sand is warm . . . and there’s no cell phones at all.”
“Really?” Jack said. “Tell me more.”
“Tomorrow,” Julie said. “I’ll tell you all about it. And then you’ll go in and request one of your vacation days, and we’ll take a long weekend down in Todos Santos.”
Jack smiled.
“Now you’re talking, professor,” he said.
He kissed her cheek softly and fell back in bed.
Soon he heard Julie’s soft regular breathing. She was back asleep. But Jack lay there, tense, until dawn.
4
MOST OF THE FBI offices at 11000 Wilshire Boulevard were purely functional, with only a few homey touches — a picture of an agent’s family, a baseball signed by the Dodgers at a special game — thrown in. But Supervising Agent William Forrester’s of- fice was filled with photographs of Hollywood stars. As Jack and Oscar sat in his office waiting while Forrester droned on and on with a call to Washington, Jack looked at the pictures behind Forrester’s desk. There was Supervising Agent Forrester with Arnold Schwarzenegger back in his superhero days. And there was Supervising Agent Forrester with Clint Eastwood, on the Line of Fire set, and there he was again, in all his glory, with Harrison Ford on some Tom Clancy project. His arm around the leading men, his phony smile plastered on. It occurred to Jack that Forrester might actually think he was a leading man and that all the other agents at 11,000 Wilshire were just small, supporting players. There to support the one-and-only Forrester, the most dedicated, the most brilliant, the most photogenic agent anywhere.
Finally Forrester slammed down his phone and looked across his perfectly neat teakwood desk at Jack.
“Good morning. Perhaps you know why I’ve called you two in for this little talk.”
“Let me guess,” Jack said. “You want to congratulate us for catching Karl Steinbach.”
Oscar scrunched up in his chair a little. He didn’t believe in provoking assholes. Especially when the asshole in question was your boss.
“Afraid not,” Forrester said. “I brought you two in here to tell you that a full investigation into the City National Bank robbery is proceeding apace.”
“Hmmm . . . Proceeding apace,” Jack said, turning to look at Oscar.
Not able to help himself, Oscar let a jagged smile break across his wide face.
“Keep it up, you two,” Forrester said, getting up, walking to the wall and straightening out a picture of himself with his arm wrapped around Rambo.
“Keep it up. But one day — and that day will not be long in coming — you both will take the fall, along with your partners Zac Blakely and Ron Hughes. That I swear to you.”
“Bullshit,” Jack said. “
You know we never touched that money. We were only backup in that case, anyway. We wouldn’t have been there at all if we weren’t down so many agents.”
“So you say.” Forrester dusted off a picture of himself holding Julia Roberts in an awkward embrace. The look on Julia’s face was that she would have rather been hanging off the rack in an Inquisition prison than be in a clinch with Forrester.
“But,” Forrester went on, “I know how you people think. Like Robert Hansen did. The Bureau is old hat, has lost its powers, and you are here to turn it into your private investment firm. But that will never happen. I’ve called you in here today to give you one more chance. Blakely and Hughes are going to be indicted for stealing $200,000 and you will go down with them, unless you maker a deal before they do. You know how this works, Jack. You and Oscar can still save your own butts and I would strongly advise you to do so, before it’s too late. Turn in the money now and you will be doing yourselves a huge favor.”
Jack felt his temperature rising.
“Let me ask you this, Forrester: If you’re so sure we stole that money, how come you haven’t stripped us of our badges, taken our guns, and put us on suspension. That’s what usually happens when bad agents are discovered. They disappear.”
“Well, maybe we will do that,” Forrester said. “I mean, if you’re so anxious for it to happen. Then why not?”
“Okay, do it,” Oscar said. “You play that game and we’ll open a civil suit against you personally and the Bureau that will be so freaking big that ——”
Oscar was so exasperated, he couldn’t even finish the sentence.
Forrester cleared his throat a little but, other than that, seemed unmoved.
“We are gathering evidence. It’s my job to rid the Bureau of any and all subterfuge, and I intend to do exactly that. There are over fifty agents in this building, and only a handful of them have compromised the integrity of the Bureau. I’m going to root them all out, starting with you two and your criminal mentors.”
“Criminal mentors,” Jack repeated.
“Man’s got a really extensive vocabulary,” Oscar said.
“Very impressive,” Jack said. “You mind if we go back to work now, boss?”
“You’re both excused. But the investigation is ongoing. If you have anything to tell me, you better do it before it’s too late.”
He turned and dusted off a picture of himself with Daniel Craig, sighed, and then answered his phone.
“Yes? . . . Who is it? . . . Oh, Steven Spielberg . . . well, please put him on.”
Jack and Oscar walked out of the room, past Forrester’s secretary, Sue, an older dumpy woman who dressed in funereal black.
“Why does he think Blakely and Hughes took the money?” Oscar asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “But we’ve got to distinguish the man from his job.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, just because the asshole is a buffoon and a starfucker doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous to us. Lesser assholes than him have ruined people’s careers before. He really thinks that Blakely and Hughes took the dough. He really thinks we might have helped them. He’s a maniac when it comes to internal affairs, and he’s coming after us. We have to find out why.”
“You think they really could have taken the money?” Oscar said.
Jack thought of all the ways Blakely had schooled him when he was new in the department.
“I don’t like to think it,” Jack said. “Man, I really don’t. But we got to ask around.”
“Okay,” Oscar said. “I’m going to get into it. But personally, I would totally vouch for both those guys. I just don’t believe it.”
Jack nodded his head. “I read all the reports. They logged in the money, but two days later, when the evidence steward looked for it, it was gone.”
“And nobody had checked it out?”
“Nope. But somebody said they’d seen Blakely down there near the locker.”
“So why wasn’t he busted?” Oscar said.
“Because . . . because he passed a lie-detector test, and there was no evidence against him. I got another question, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Why is Forrester so anxious to pin the stealing of the evidence on Zac and Ron?”
Oscar gave a low whistle.
“Funny, I was thinking the same thing. You know, when I was in training, they always taught us that when somebody went bad, they almost always got caught by living the high life. Cars, secret bank accounts . . . hanging out with a fast crowd.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “And who likes to do that more than Supervising Agent William Forrester?”
“Maybe we ought to have a look at Billy-Boy’s bank accounts,” Oscar said.
“Uh-huh,” Jack said. “Maybe we should. But I got a feeling he’s defended them with some serious firewalls.”
“Yeah,” Oscar said. “But we’ll figure out a way around that, because we are superagents who brook no shit from pendejos with pictures of movie stars in their office.”
“This is true,” Jack said. “There’s no denying it. We fucking rule.”
5
THE ROOM WAS BLACK, and the air smelled of oil, musk, urine, and death. Kyle felt as if something was cutting into his chest, and when he opened his eyes and looked down, he saw the ropes. Christ, he was tied up. He wanted to call out, scream for help, but it seemed he was gagged, too. He looked through the dark gloom, and saw a lump a few feet away. What the hell was that? He couldn’t really tell. He tried to blink away the cobwebs over his eyes. Jesus, what the hell? They weren’t real cobwebs, but there they were nonetheless, like spider legs crossing his eyeballs.
He looked over at the inert ball a few feet away from him, but still couldn’t quite make out what it was. The blackness was deeper in the corner there, even than it was where Kyle had been dumped.
He tried to move his legs, but of course they were tied, too. How could this have happened? What the hell were he and . . .
that other person (if it was a person and not a dead animal or something) doing in this shithole, anyway?
The last thing he remembered was that he was at school, and that the driver had come for him . . . a little early, it seemed, and he’d climbed in the back and started talking on the cell phone to one of his friends, Sam, and they were driving . . .
The pirate standing in front of him suddenly broke off Kyle’s musing about what happened. The guy was about six feet three and he had on a freaking pirate hat, and an eye patch, and he wore one of those old coats — what did they call them . . . greatcoats, with fancy turned-up collars, all made of leather — and the guy had a beard, and when he smiled, he was missing a few teeth.
Kyle couldn’t breathe.
The guy was smiling at him, and waving to him, and Kyle felt as though his bowels were going to loosen. And the guy, who now seemed to have a huge cutlass in his right hand, was walking toward him, laughing and pointing at him, though utterly silent.
And Kyle was scared shitless.
But then the pirate, all six foot three of him with giant gleaming sword . . . was freaking gone.
Like that. Bingo. Gone.
Kyle fell back against the wall, terrified.
Not only was he kidnapped, but he was losing his mind, too . . .
He was . . . had to be . . .
And then he thought of drugs.
No, he wasn’t exactly losing his mind. Though he was out of it.
Drugs. It had to be drugs. Someone was drugging him — had drugged him — and the pirate was just a hallucination.
But so detailed, though. And so huge, hovering over him . . .
And what of the ball over in the corner?
Was that a hallucination, too?
He looked over at it . . . tried to whisper, but all that came out was a muffled sound.
Hey, who you? Hey . . .
Hard to even make it out as speech.
But the ball moved a little (or did
he?) . . .
Yes, it seemed to. Moved a little.
Heeeehhhh!
The ball scraped around on the cold stone floor.
Kyle saw the ball sit up. Turned out not so ball-like after all. Even with the gag, and the scratches on the cheeks, even with
the dark cutting into his eyes, it was a face Kyle knew very well.
It was his younger brother, Michael.
He looked over at him and tried to shuffle across the floor. Got maybe three inches — and then something pulled him
back. He looked down at his feet, and realized the rope was tied to an old heating unit.
Somehow that detail made Kyle want to cry. Chained like a dog, or an animal.
Both he and his brother.
Now he felt the fear descend down on him like a lead sheet. He looked over at his brother. He could see him a little better
now. Guess his eyes were getting used to the dark.
He could see Mike’s eyes, and he wished he couldn’t. Because there was such terrible fear in them. Worse than himself. Far worse.
And there was something else, too.
Anger, fury. As though it was somehow Kyle’s fault that they were in this horrible situation.
Like he had anything to do with all of this. For Christ’s sake!
But it would be just like his younger brother to hold him responsible for . . .
Now he heard a noise. Coming from the back of the room.
A door creaked, footsteps, oh, Jesus Christ . . .
This wasn’t any icy hallucination. This was a real person heading toward them.
He looked up and saw this huge bearded guy hovering over him. A guy with deep black eyes and a balding head. And a scar under his eye.
A guy with huge, powerful hands who grabbed Kyle and ripped off his shirtsleeve with one swipe.
And then Kyle saw the needle in the guy’s hand. He tried to pull away, but there was no escaping . . . and he felt the needle burn into his arm, felt something oozing out of it and into him, like a snake going through his innards.
He wanted to cry and he wanted to scream. But he could do neither.
All he could do was fall back against the wall. He was sleepy, so very sleepy, and then . . . he was gone.
