Gail knew without asking that the other chair, separated from Alice’s by a table dedicated to porcelain cats, was Ken’s so she didn’t bother to veer in that direction. She assumed that she was their first guest in a very long time. There was no place for her to sit.
“Guests get the chair,” Ken said, pointing with an open hand to blue La-Z-Boy. The tone was one of resignation.
“No, I couldn’t,” Gail said.
“Sure you could,” Alice said, settling back into her spot. She produced a remote from the seat cushion and put it on the table.
“But what about Ken?”
“Ken’s perfectly comfortable on the New Yorker,” Ken said, dragging the three-foot bound stack a little closer to the chairs. When he saw that Gail was still standing, he pointed with his chin. “Seriously, sit. Say what you got to say and let us get on with our lives.”
“Ken!”
He rolled his eyes at his wife’s scolding tone.
Alice said, “How can we help you, Ms…”
“Gail. First names are fine with me, too.”
Alice smiled. Perhaps that had been a test.
“Do the names Frank Schuler or Jeremy Schuler mean anything to you?”
“Are they the boys who were kidnapped? The ones in danger?”
“One of them is. Jeremy. Frank is his father. He’s in prison now for killing his wife, Marilyn, who worked for your brother.”
“Who once worked with a person who dated a girl who cleaned Kevin Bacon’s windshield,” Ken scoffed. “This has no relevance to us at all.”
He was starting to piss Gail off. Every time she got close to starting a useful conversation, he was stepping in to derail it. “Ken, if you could just-”
He shot up his hand for silence. “Don’t even think about lecturing me,” he said. “If you’ve done your research, then you know all the shit that man has put us through over the years. We’ve had mobsters threaten us, and we’ve had FBI agents threaten us about not telling them about the mobsters. Look, we know he took a lot of money, and we know that he’s probably living the high life somewhere, but that’s neither our business nor our problem. So whatever platitudes you’re about to drool out of your mouth, let me tell you loud and clear that I don’t give a shit.”
Gail stared as she stalled for time. She’d just learned new information, and she didn’t know how to play it. She decided to try full disclosure. “What money?” she said.
Ken scowled, shot a look at Alice, and then came back to Gail. “Bullshit,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I said bullshit. You’re going to tell me you don’t know about the money?”
Gail shrugged. “I guess I am, because I don’t.”
Another glance to Alice, and this time, Gail followed him. “I don’t know anything about money, Alice. All I know is that Marilyn Schuler worked with your brother.”
Alice wasn’t buying. “Why does that matter? I’m sure she worked with a lot of people. She probably had good friends and brothers and sisters. Why come to us? Why is my brother more important than the others?”
“Because your brother was an attorney for crooks and murderers,” Gail said. Her inner police officer had bloomed, and she was tired of walking carefully. “Given the brazenness of the kidnapping, it wasn’t that big of a stretch to think that the mob connection might be relevant.”
“I had nothing to do with that nonsense,” Alice said, appropriately defensive. “Neither one of us did.”
“I’m not suggesting you did,” Gail assured. “But I’m hoping that you can help me find your brother.”
“You and everybody else with a cause or an empty wallet,” Ken grumped.
Gail took a deep breath. Settled herself. “Look, I’m sorry if I came on too strong, but a little boy’s life hangs in the balance here.” She dug into her pocket and found the picture she’d planted there in anticipation of a moment like this. Jeremy Schuler’s smile carried an all-American wholesomeness that would melt anyone’s heart. “I think your brother has important information that will help us identify the people who kidnapped this child.”
“It’s not our responsibility to protect the world,” Ken said.
“He’s only thirteen,” Gail said. She turned in her chair to face Alice, betting that a maternal instinct burned inside every woman. “If you have any clue where your brother might be…” There was no need to complete the sentence.
“Don’t say a word, Alice,” Ken warned. “This could very well be a trick. How many times have they tried this in how many ways? If anyone so much as thinks that we know anything about Bruce-and I’m not saying we do-we’ll never be left alone. If the feds don’t put us in jail, those mob assholes will put us in graves.”
Gail raised a hand this time. “Why would they do that?” she asked. “What am I missing here? Is this about the money you were talking about?”
“Do you really not know?” Alice asked.
“Alice, don’t,” Ken said.
“I really don’t,” Gail said. “Things are happening so quickly now that I haven’t had a chance to do the kind of research I need to. Eight hours ago, I was visiting Frank Schuler on death row in Virginia. He mentioned the connection with your brother, and a colleague was able to get me your address. I found a plane, and here I am. Please share with me what you know.”
Ken leaned in closer. “Alice, you don’t have to say anything. I still say this could be a trap.”
Gail snapped, “Of course it could be a trap. I could have been an assassin with orders to kill you all. I could have been here with a surprise inheritance. There are any number of things that I could be, Ken. But the fact of the matter is I’m a former police officer and a former FBI agent, and right now I’m doing my best to save a little boy’s life. You can believe whatever you want of that, but why don’t you try-just try-to believe the truth and help me do my job?”
“You’re not the first, you know,” Alice said, her tone soft. She waved for Gail to put the picture of Jeremy away. “Everybody assumes we know where Bruce is, or if we don’t, that we know where the money is, but it’s been long enough that they’re convinced that we’re not lying.”
Gail heaved an exasperated sigh. “What money? What was it for?”
“It was mob money,” Alice explained. “Bruce was the middleman. That’s what he did. There was a payment supposed to be made, but it never arrived. It was a lot of money-a couple hundred thousand dollars. He says he never got it, but he had to run because the mob would assume that he had, and they’d come after him.”
Ken chimed in, “So instead, the asshole just runs away anyway, confirming in their minds that he did exactly what they thought he did. The feds think it, too.”
“What was the money for?” Gail asked.
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know,” Alice said. “I’m ashamed that he would have anything to do with such things.”
“But you know where he is,” Gail guessed.
“I don’t.”
“Then how do you know that he didn’t, in fact, take the money? How do you know he was the middleman?”
Alice gaped.
Gail closed the noose: “You said, ‘He says he never got it.’ That means you’ve talked to him since he disappeared.”
Ken growled, “Damn it, Alice, I told you that we never should have answered the door.”
Alice looked stunned. Her mouth worked as if to speak, but she produced no words.
Gail moved to seal the deal. She leaned forward and put her hand on Alice’s knee. The other woman jumped, but Gail kept her hand in place. “I swear to you that I am exactly who I say I am, and whatever you tell me will remain in the strictest confidence.”
Gail thought she saw cracks in the wall. “Sooner or later, you have to trust someone. Everybody does. Given the stakes-a child’s life-don’t you think that this might be a good time to start?” As she invoked Jeremy Schuler yet again, her thoughts went back to the anguish in his father’s
face as he envisioned a scenario that was far worse than the reality, and she again fought a pang of conscience. Manipulating the truth to gain a greater truth was a part of her job to which she would never fully adjust.
Ken stood. “It’s time for you to leave.”
Gail kept her eyes on Alice. “You know what’s the right thing to do. Just let yourself do it.”
“Don’t make me throw you out,” Ken said.
That got her attention. Gail eyed the man with gentle amusement. “Ken, with all respect, if you lay a hand on me, I’ll put your head right through one of these plaster-lathe walls. Please sit down.” One thing about being a woman on the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team: you learned how not to get pushed around by people who were bigger than you. The only hyperbole in the threat was the part about sending his head through the wall. Chances are it would have gotten stuck somewhere in the middle.
Ken looked like he’d been smacked. He looked to Alice for backup, and when it didn’t arrive, he turned to huff out of the room.
“Please stay with us,” Gail said. Her tone made it clear that the word please only softened a stark command. “You’re upset. I don’t want to worry about you going to get a weapon and sneaking up on me.”
He hesitated.
“I’m almost done,” she promised. She gestured back to his pile of magazines.
He hesitated, and then he sat.
Gail turned to the woman on her right. “What do you say, Alice? Are you willing to share what you know?”
Alice’s face was a mask of conflict, that mantle of troubling self-doubt that precedes every confession in every interview room in every police station in the world.
When she finally started talking, it turned out that she knew a lot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Brandy Giddings needed rest. Lack of sleep was part of it, but the kind of rest she needed went far beyond going horizontal and closing her eyes. She craved a few consecutive weeks-even a few consecutive minutes would be a nice start-when her mind could be free of the terrible things that had been polluting it these past few days. She found it all debilitating, and the fact that she felt that way made her feel inadequate-like she was failing the secretary.
She worked for the man who told the president how to fight wars. Violence was supposed to be a part of her psyche. She knew every military branch’s chief of staff by name. She should be tougher than this.
Still, when the phone on her desk trilled, she jumped. The caller I.D. confirmed that it was Pat Bachelor, SecDef’s executive assistant, and her stomach fell. She’d asked to be put onto Secretary Leger’s schedule as soon as possible, but that had been three hours ago.
“Secretary Leger can see you now,” Pat said. “But I warn you that he has tickets for the Kennedy Center tonight, so you’d best be quick.” Washington was chock-a-block with official reporting chains and protocol-driven rules of propriety, but in the Pentagon, everyone knew that Pat Bachelor outranked everyone but the Secretary himself. She’d never actually ordered anyone into combat, but Brandy had no doubt she could pull it off if she tried.
The source of her power had nothing to do with her ties to Washington. Rather, her loyalty lay exclusively with Jacques Leger, whose assistant she had been since the invention of the wheel.
Pat didn’t like Brandy much; if there’d been any doubt in the past, the leer she delivered as Brandy walked by her desk made it clear today. Brandy wrote it off as old-and-fat dismissing young-and-beautiful, but she could never say it out loud.
The lock on the heavy mahogany door buzzed as Brandy approached, and she stepped into Secretary Leger’s elaborate ceremonial office. It was in here that medals were occasionally pinned, and reporters were occasionally feted, but the real inner sanctum was nestled on the far side of the ceremonial space. She knocked, and when the secretary’s muffled voice told her to come in, she opened the door and stepped into what was regarded throughout Washington as one of the most beautiful offices in all of government.
Secretary Leger’s office presented a commanding, unobstructed view of the Potomac River in the foreground, and the famous monuments of the nation’s capital beyond. Intricate moldings inlaid the twelve-foot ceilings, and the walls displayed a collection of Copleys and Sargents from the National Gallery of Art.
Conspicuously absent from Leger’s personal office, Brandy thought, was any significant homage to the armed services. Having never served himself, he’d said that he wasn’t comfortable choosing favorites, and to include every branch would make the place look, in his words, “like a castle keep.” Instead, he surrounded himself with landscapes and still lifes that brought him a sense of peace.
“What can I do for you, Ms. Brandy?” Leger asked, looking up from the work on his desk, but not rising to meet her.
Navigating her way across the carpet was like walking on a cloud. “Good evening, Mr. Secretary. It’s, um, about that matter we’ve been discussing.”
She though she saw the secretary’s shoulders stiffen as he turned back to the work on his desk. “I trust that it has resolved itself?”
When he moved his eyes away, she stopped advancing on his desk. She clasped her hands in front like an errant schoolgirl and shook her head. “No, sir,” she said. “There’s actually been some more information.” She paused, hoping that she might pique his interest enough to look up again. When he did not, she added, “We’ve found Bruce Navarro.”
That did it. “ The Bruce Navarro? He of the nine-year disappearing act?”
She came close enough to hover near the guest chairs in front of his desk, but knew better than to sit without an invitation. “Yes, sir, the very one.”
He scowled, clearly trying to decide whether or not to believe her. Finally, he gestured to a chair with an open palm. “I’m all ears,” he said.
You can’t sit in the presence of that kind of power and not be jostled by the wave of awe that comes with it. Brandy was speaking one-on-one with one of the most recognizable faces in the world-a man who held one of the planet’s most important positions. She took a deep breath to settle herself.
“I received notification several hours ago from a company called Triple-S-Special Surveillance Specialists. They said that a long-dormant listening station picked up key word combinations and kicked back into active mode. They monitored a lengthy conversation from an address in Jersey City, New Jersey.” She opened a leather portfolio and handed him the twelve-page transcription of the conversation. “That’s the address right there at the top of the page.”
Leger shushed her with an abrupt wave of his hand, giving himself time to read through the document.
Brandy had only recently learned that “bugging” a residence or a business was a nuanced task. It had never occurred to her that a listening device could live forever. Of course, it would be impractical to have a live person perpetually on the other end, twenty-four-seven listening to every word, so instead, smart devices could be programmed to “listen” passively for a certain combination of words, and then awaken itself to active mode. She imagined in this case that “Bruce Navarro” was the key phrase, but she had no way of knowing that for certain.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” the secretary said, looking up from the report. “Who’s the person on the other side of this conversation?”
“We don’t know for sure. Apparently, introductions were finished before the device went active. I have to assume, though, that it’s Gail Bonneville, the private investigator who visited Frank Schuler in prison. It doesn’t appear as if they were friends.”
Leger laughed. “Hardly. It looks like the husband was ready to throw her out on her ass.” He glanced through the pages one more time with an expression of mild amusement. “All these years of stonewalling, and it all comes down to one stranger promising to save a life. I’ll be damned.”
“The level of knowledge shown by the visitor is concerning,” Brandy said.
Leger’s look of amusement continued. “Concerning,” he repeate
d. “How about damned troubling? The population of knowledgeable parties is multiplying like rabbits.” Something arrived in his face behind the amusement. Fear, maybe? His eyes bored through Brandy as he waved the sheaf of papers. “Who else knows about this?”
“From me? No one. Just you.”
He continued to stare, gauging her. Then he started through the papers again.
“There’s more, sir,” she said.
“From the look on your face, I was guessing there might be.” He continued to read.
“It’s about the investigator, sir.”
“The one who works for the company that somehow continues to get the better of us.”
“Yes, sir.”
Finally, his eyes rocked up to see her. “Despite the fact that we have access to some of the best talent in the world.”
Brandy’s stomach flipped. “I suppose so, sir.” If she layered the “sirs” on thickly enough maybe he wouldn’t explode in his chair.
Leger waited for it.
“Well, Mr. Secretary, at first we thought she was a nobody, you know? A retired sheriff from somewhere in the boonies of Indiana. Well, then we looked a little deeper and we found some disturbing facts. For example, she’s retired FBI. And she was tangentially involved in that big terrorist raid last year in Pennsylvania. You know, the one that involved the chemical weapons?”
The secretary’s shoulder sagged a little. He recovered quickly, but not in time for Brandy to miss it. “What does ‘tangentially involved’ mean? And we both know that that incident had nothing to do with terrorism.”
Brandy felt herself blushing. “Yes, sir,” she said. That incident had occurred during the early days of the transition between the past administration and the current one, and it had exposed the Department of Defense to huge embarrassment. “By tangentially involved, I mean that she was there at the farm in Pennsylvania. The original terrorist raid-excuse me, you know what I mean-happened in her jurisdiction.”
Hostage Zero Page 20
