by Glen Carter
Malloy stared at him earnestly then returned his attention to the box at the centre of the table. “How many people have handled it?”
“Why?”
“It’s evidence,”Malloy replied.
“Myself, Tommy, and Kaitlin.Three of us.”
Malloy stared at the box, mesmerized. “Latents aren’t an issue anymore, not after all this time.And you say there’s no way to open it.”
“No. It’s some kind of trick box. Kaitlin had one as a kid. She says it’s from Japan.”
Malloy carefully picked it up, brought it close to his face.Gently, he shook it. “Feels like there could be something inside.”Malloy spent five minutes studying the box, turning it over in his hands. He managed to move a slat or two but was clearly out of his element. “Never been any good with puzzles.”
“Hate ’em,” Jack said. A moment later he turned at the sound of the front door opening.The plunk of shopping bags on hardwood.
A minute after that, Kaitlin walked into the kitchen. Her smile immediately vanished.
“How was your day,” Jack said, dryly.
“I’m confused.” Kaitlin stood still as a mannequin.
Jack got up, kissed her on the cheek, and suggested she sit. He walked to the refrigerator to retrieve three beers.
Kaitlin looked from Jack to Malloy. “First things first. You’re not a real estate agent?”
“Sorry,”Malloy said.
“You’re FBI.” It sounded like an accusation.
“Retired actually, but yes.”
Kaitlin cocked an eyebrow, held up a palm. “OK. Let me get this straight. You lied to get inside our house because you’re investigating some Ukrainian woman who was Alvin Gumb’s housekeeper way back whenever.”
“That’s part of it.” Malloy gulped his beer and swallowed, waiting for Kaitlin to find her way. “It’s complicated,” he added.
“And you want us to believe that this woman—Helena...?”
“Storozhenko.”
“Yes, Helena Storozhenko was a witness to what happened in Dallas.”
“Maybe the best there was.”
Kaitlin folded her arms and looked at Jack, who sipped his beer and shrugged. “Why should we believe any of this?” she said.
It was time for Jack to fill in some of the blanks. “I checked him out. He’s FBI. Retired like he says. Living on a boat in Florida, right, Ed? Gee-man.”
“Panama City most of the time.Hardly ever get back to Montana anymore.There’s only an old farmhouse there now and I’m thinking of selling. Know any good real estate agents?”
A chuckle escaped Jack’s throat.
Malloy grinned.
Kaitlin shot Jack a look.They were both apparently having a great time.
“Sorry,Ms. O’Rourke, the situation is—”
“Call me Kaitlin,” she said, sternly.
“Very well. As I told your husband, I apologize for having to deceive you this morning but I felt it necessary at this early stage of the investigation, as unofficial as it is. My purpose was to determine whether Helena Storozhenko is, or should I say, was legit. In order to make that assessment I needed to get at least a cursory look at the premises, to compare what I saw with what Storozhenko wrote and sketched in her diary. Had the diary proved a fraud, I simply would have disappeared and you would never have heard from me again.”
“And?”
Malloy and Jack looked at each other. “It all fits,” Jack said. “But we need you to do something for us.”
The box was in the middle of the table.
“Can you open it?” Malloy asked.
“Was it hers?”
“We believe so. Yes.”
“Really?” There was a pause. “What the hell. I love puzzles.” Kaitlin took the box in her hands. It took her a couple of minutes to get the rhythm. She flipped the box this way and that, pushing and tugging at the smooth inlaid slats of fine Japanese wood.They both watched as she paced the kitchen, occasionally stopping to stare through the window. Ten minutes passed.
Jack got up for refills and then walked into the parlour to put on some music. “I eventually plan to wire the place for sound,” he told Malloy.
“Good idea,”Malloy said. “I’m a Charlie Parker fiend myself.”
“Love his stuff.”
Kaitlin stopped to glare at the two of them.
“Sorry,” Jack said.
Kaitlin counted aloud. Fourteen, twenty, and twenty-seven. On the fifty-ninth move, Kaitlin allowed a long breath to escape her lips.
Finally, the box slid open.
Kaitlin handed the box to Malloy,who placed it gently on the table. It took him a second to retrieve a digital camera from his briefcase. He began to snap pictures, covering every angle until he was satisfied with the results.
Kaitlin and Jack sat quietly.
Next, Malloy took a pair of latex gloves from his briefcase and snapped them on.
A smile crossed Kaitlin’s face. “So now it’s Doctor Malloy.”
Malloy ignored the jab, concentrated instead on what he was doing.There was something made of cloth inside the box, its colour faded but still showing hues of pink. Malloy gingerly withdrew the item and studied it. It had been neatly folded. Maybe silk, maybe pretty once. Suddenly, his face lit up.Afewwords were spoken under his breath.
Jack wanted to reach out and touch it, but kept his hands flat on the table.
“Unbelievable,”Malloy finally said, aloud.
“What is it,” Jack said.
“In a moment,” Mallow replied. Carefully he unfolded the cloth. It was about twenty inches square. “Bloody unbelievable,” he whispered.
Jack tweaked to it then. “It can’t be.”
Malloy placed the item carefully on the table and reached into his briefcase. He took out a large manila envelope and opened it. He reached inside, removed a photograph, and placed it on the table in front of them.
Kaitlin looked at it eagerly. It was a shot of that day in Dealey Plaza. Figures frozen in time as the limousine drove by. Kennedy is bent forward with his hands at his throat. Jackie is leaning towards her husband. It’s a mere second or two before the President’s head will become a cloud of crimson mist.
Malloy stabbed at a woman who had her back to the camera. Her hands to her face. “Orville Nix was using a Keystone eight millimeter camera that day,with Kodak stock. Marie Much more, the same.” Malloy stopped speaking. Swallowed loudly. “This isn’t the only image of the mystery woman. She’s in several of the photos. The film, too.” Malloy turned to Kaitlin. “She was one of the most enigmatic figures to emerge from Dealey Plaza on the day Kennedy was killed and she was never found. Believe me, we tried.We needed to know what she saw and if that was a camera in her hands, we obviously wanted that too.”
Kaitlin nodded. Her eyes swept from the woman in the photograph to the silk square spread neatly on the table. “I think you found your babushka,” she said, laying a finger on the fine piece of cloth.
“I think I found the Babushka Lady,”Malloy added.
Jack leaned forward to get a better look inside the box. “What the hell is that?” he said.
Very, very carefully, as though it might simply vanish, Malloy held the small object and with his free hand withdrew a magnifying glass from his briefcase.He placed the glass over the object,which he turned gently with tremulous fingers. Breathing sharply. “Well, Jesus, Jesus,” Malloy exclaimed.
Kaitlin craned her neck to try and get a look at what Malloy was holding.
“Is that what I think it is?” Jack said.
Malloy was still as a rock. “You did it, Helena,” he whispered. “You bloody did it.”
“Did what?” Kaitlin said, leaning closer.
Malloy spoke as though in a trance. “Like I told Jack, there were plenty of cameras at Dealey Plaza but no one got the shot. Not Nix, Hughes, not Much more or Mark Bell. Even Zapruder screwed us in away because he stopped shooting about a second too early. Just as the motorcade di
sappeared under the overpass. What we needed was a clear viable shot of the stockade fence at the instant Kennedy’s head exploded.” Malloy paused for a second. “How else could we even begin to take seriously the hypothesis of a second shooter on the grassy knoll? Don’t you understand? If it was a conspiracy, they were the luckiest sons of bitches in theworld because, even though the place was lousy with cameras, no one got the money shot. No one.”Malloy returned his attention to the small canister of film in his hand. Whistling a stream of compressed air. “No one except maybe Alvin Gumb’s housekeeper.”
11
MONTREAL
The sniper sitting at the bamboo bar studied Roberto Sevier as one soldier did another, though neither was shackled any longer by duty or honour.That was long ago, leaving Sevier to experience a tinge of nostalgia.
The sniper had sharp cutting eyes that scanned the mirror above the bar. He barely stirred.The more still.The more invisible.
Sevier was well aware of his credentials. He was a deadly man. Sevier, on the other hand, was a senior citizen whose physical power was no longer a threat.Though he had another force at his disposal, the power produced by money.That was how he’d guaranteed the killer would be sitting at the bar. Sevier had paid a handsome sum just to arrange this meeting. He had waited a full week for the phone call, which had lasted, at most, twenty seconds two days ago. Simple instructions.This city.This restaurant.This time.
Sevier arrived an hour before closing and was shown to a booth at the back.He was finishing his plate when the sniper walked to his table and sat.
The assassin held Sevier’s eyes for an instant before breaking off to survey the room again. A moment later, apparently satisfied, the man turned to him.
Sevier spoke first. “You took Kadr Mustafa—800 meters with an M40.” Sevier’s contact had shared thatwith him, but in truth, thisman needed no promotion.
The sniper remained silent. Confidence, Sevier had expected. Themodesty, or reticence, or whatever it was, he hadn’t. Sevier knew little about him, except for the impossible headshot, taken while Mustafa, the Kurd warlord, was fucking his wife. Sevier would have worn the kill like a badge of honour. “I understand the duty of silence,” he said.
The man nodded faintly, which Sevier took as a show of respect. He then raised a glass to his lips and swallowed soundlessly. “The money,” he said, stone faced.
Sevier studied the leather gloves, thin and black. Hands like sculptures. He thought about the last time he had needed a man for the same reason he needed this one. A lifetime ago.
Amoment passed between them, duringwhich Sevier considered the enormity ofwhat this man would accomplish aswell.Themoment brought warmth to his cheeks. He wanted to smile, but thought better of it. Instead, Sevier reached inside his jacket and withdrew a fat envelope, placing it on the table between them. “A deposit. As requested,” he said.
The sniper’s eyes darted around them.Then, in a smoothmotion he lifted the package and in an instant it vanished within his jacket. “You’ll be contacted with the information required to transfer the rest,” he said.
“Of course,” Sevier replied, slightly insulted at being treated as a mere paymaster.
Then, without another word, theman got up and walked out.
Sevier watched him leave. After amoment he relaxed.
A waiter approached but Sevier waved him off. A senior citizen enjoying his solitude. He closed his eyes until fiveminutes later when the tinkle of glasses brought him back to the moment. He glanced around and saw that the restaurant was nearly empty, just a young couple seated at the bar talking quietly. Sevier left money for a tip and then picked up a tattered straw hat. Gently, he placed it on his head and headed for the door. A moment later, he walked out and disappeared into the night.
12
BOSTON
The stink of diesel fuel and the screech of shit hawks always sent him back in time. To the Bark Island wharves with their hungry gulls and gutting tables. At that moment, Jack watched as the birds rode currents of hot air from warehouse rooftops on the Boston harbour front.
Jack and Malloy had reached agreement but it took the rest of the evening in Jack’s kitchen.When the negotiations bogged down, Kaitlin played adjudicator on issues surrounding Jack’s responsibilities as a journalist and Malloy’s oath as a law enforcer.
“Former oath,” Kaitlin had pointed out, rightly.
“Once an oath, always an oath,” Malloy had argued. “You’re clearly on his side. Biased. Like all journalists.”
“I resent that.”
“File a complaint.”
Jack had said, “The box was in our house which makes it part of the property. It’s ours. You’re an interloper. I could demand that you leave.”
Malloy had stared stubbornly at the box. “It’s evidence. I could just seize it,” he said. “I go. It goes with me.”
Jack laughed in his face.
Kaitlin got more beers.
It was finally decided that Jack had exclusive rights to Helena Storozhenko’s story and that included whatever their investigation revealed. As a former law enforcer,Malloy would oversee continuity of the evidence which meant the box and its contents would remain in his possession at all times. Everyone shook on it, and the next morning Jack scooped Malloy from Frauline Ostheim’s doorstep.
“She make her move yet?” asked Jack.
“Whaddya mean?”
“Wait for it.”
They discussed their plan on the ferry ride to the mainland. Jack was careful to explain to Malloy the ground rules for the place they were headed.The person they would meet there.
“Agreed?”
“Agreed,”Malloy said.
They got to the city after rush hour and stopped for coffee refills on the way to Fort Point Channel.
Forklifts were backed up at the T-bone intersection ahead, so Jack slowed to take his position behind them. On their right, a massive freighter was disgorging a cargo of dull black and grey containers. Hard hats yapped orders or followed them.
“We nabbed three tons of cocaine on that dock. Stuffed inside sacks of coffee from Panama.” Malloy grinned at the memory. “Thirteen guys we took down—including the second in command to the harbour master. Seized the dope, ship, everything. A good bust. I should have gotten a promotion.”
Jack looked at him.“That’s too bad. Sorry about that crack about an unspectacular career.”
“No worries.”
Jack turned left at the intersection and drove for another ten minutes before he crossed Moakley Bridge. They rolled into an enclave of condos and red brick apartments that had once been warehouses full of sugar,molasses, and iron.
It took a few minutes for Jack to find the place and when he did, Malloy looked at him. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” Jack pulled into a shaded parking spot in front of a small grey building. It was a box of a structure.Three storeys with a flat roof. Huge faded letters at the top of the building said “Boston Electric Utility.” Large wooden spools, the kind that carried thick power and telephone cable, littered the parking lot. The main door was boarded up with plywood spray painted with large red letters. “CONDEMMED.”
They found a way in at the side of the building, through a door that had once served as a fire escape. Malloy and Jack splashed through an oozing pool of groundwater in the stairwell.They climbed three flights to a narrow hallway with a plain steel door at one end. When they reached it, Jack knocked.
“The guy still hacking?” Malloy asked.
Jack gave him a look that said ‘stupid question’. “If you have a problem with that say so. I’ll do this alone.”
“Not a chance.”
Jack knocked again, and a minute later the door opened. Dwayne Mesner was even bigger than Jack remembered. “Long time,Dwayne.”
Mesner wore a black shirt that hung like a tent to his knees.The sandals on his fleshy feet were worn thin as paper. He had a small round head and tiny beadlike eyes that danced instantly
to Malloy.
“See no evil; speak no evil, right, Jack? Our boy here cool with that?”
“He’s cool,” Jack replied.
Malloy didn’t say a word, stood there assessing the criminal who had managed to hack into the FBI’s computer mainframe.
After a moment Dwayne seemed to relax. “You owe the state of Florida fifty-four dollars, Ed,” he said. “I can fix that for you if you like.”
As far as city hall was concerned the building no longer existed. Dwayne laid it out in great detail. Jack and Malloy nodded like they understood everything he was saying, which could not have been further from the truth.
“Building doesn’t appear anywhere in the city’s records,” Dwayne said proudly as he led the way to his ‘command centre’. “I wiped it clean, gave it the Klingon cloaking device.”Dwayne looked to Malloy, then Jack.“The boneheads at city hall can’t see it anymore. Far as anyone’s concerned this is an empty lot—building demolished years ago.”
Dwayne’s loft was beautifully finished in dark hardwood and huge timber beams that criss-crossed a twelve-foot ceiling. Halogen lights spotted walls of exposed greymasonry. Dwayne’s hideaway was meticulously furnished with smooth leather and stainless steel. No windows.
Jack scanned the impressive array of computer equipment that Dwayne had built into one wall. Flat-screen monitors flickered security-camera views from all sides of the building, and the stairwell. One shot revealed Jack’s car, undisturbed in the place he’d parked at the front of the building. Towering racks of technology blinked and hummed and when Jack looked at Malloy it was clear neither man understood what they were staring at.
“Nice set up,”Malloy finally said. “For a place that doesn’t exist. How do you hide the utilities you’re sucking up—like there’s no tomorrow Imight add?”
Dwayne thought for a moment before answering. He looked at Jack,who shrugged.What the hell.Dwayne grinned. “Uncle Sam gets the bills. Same for the renovations. Stuck it on the budget for a covert operation in Pakistan. My contractor got paid by a CIA front company inKarachi.The accountants at Langley don’t ask questions, likely thought they were signing off on a safe house.”
