Suspicion

by Joseph Finder

  “Good. One more thing?” Yeager said.

  Danny turned.

  “Please be careful with that gun. You might hurt someone.”

  72

  His tires squealed as he swung through the Lyman Academy’s wrought-iron gates, barreling past the teacher’s parking lot—Hyundais and Nissans and Ford Fiestas—and careening around the semicircular pickup lane. Two hours before school got out, and his was the only car parked in front of the main entrance. He hummed with anxiety. Everything was too bright and seemed to move like a jagged stop-motion video. Adrenaline pulsed through his bloodstream.

  Their assurance that children were off-limits—that was meaningless. What they, or their colleagues, had done to Galvin’s driver in Aspen bespoke a limitless violence. If abducting his only child was the way to force his obedience, they wouldn’t hesitate.

  He had to get her out of here, keep her away from all known locations, which included Lyman and his apartment. Wellfleet, staying with his parents—that was out of the question now, since the cartel had them under surveillance.

  There was only one safe place right now, and that was the Galvins’ house in Weston. It was a target, yes, but a hardened one. The property was fenced in, and Galvin had assured him he’d brought in private security. Not manpower provided by the Sinaloa cartel, but real security guards. If she’d be safe anywhere, she’d be safe there.

  He sprang out of the Honda and raced through the school’s front doors.

  Leon Chisholm, the school security guard, looked up from the chair where he was reading the Globe, and said “Hey, Dan—” but Danny kept running through the hall and up the stairs, no time to talk. Mrs. Gifford, the school secretary-receptionist, gave him a perplexed smile that quickly turned into alarm. “Mr. Goodman, is everything all right?”

  “Where’s Abby?”

  “She didn’t sign out—”

  “What class is she in?”

  She lifted her reading glasses from their chain around her neck and peered at the computer monitor. “She’s in Mr. Klootjes’s precalculus class. Do you need me to get a note to her? Is there something wrong?”

  “Where’s the class?”

  “Mather 29, but—”

  “Which way?”

  “I can send a message, but parents can’t—”

  “Thanks,” he said, and he vaulted into the corridor in search of Mather Hall.

  In his peripheral vision he saw Mrs. Gifford get up from her desk chair and heard her call after him, “Mr. Goodman?”

  His shoes slapped against the terrazzo floor and rang in the hallway. The damned school was a maze of halls and cubbyholes and lockers and short flights of stairs and blind turns.

  It took him a good five minutes to locate Mather. Room 29 was a modern-looking classroom, at least by Lyman standards: whiteboard walls instead of blackboards or greenboards, M. C. Escher posters, inscrutable diagrams. Danny stared into the classroom through the window in the door. Fifteen bored-looking students sat in burgundy tablet-arm desks staring dazedly at Mr. Klootjes, an obese bearded redhead with grimy wire-rimmed glasses and a soporific teaching style, scrawling a tangle of digits with green marker on a whiteboard. Danny had met him once, at a routine parent-teacher conference, and understood at once why Abby detested the man.

  Abby was in the back row apparently struggling to stay awake. He didn’t see Jenna; maybe she wasn’t in the same math class.

  Danny yanked open the classroom door. Mr. Klootjes turned around slowly, squinting. “Um, hi . . . ?”

  “Abby, come on,” Danny said, beckoning with an urgent wave.

  Abby looked up at the door, alarmed. “Daddy?”

  “Let’s go, come on, now!” Fifteen girls were staring at him, a few tittering. He heard one of them say, “Abby’s dad.”

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Mr. Klootjes.

  “Abby, let’s go, this is important,” Danny said.

  Mortified, she slunk out into the hallway. “What’s going on?” she said.

  “Let’s go, we’ll talk in a minute.”

  “I need to get my stuff from my locker.”

  “No time for that.”

  “It’s close, it’s just in Burke—”

  “We can get stuff from your locker another time.”

  “What? What’s going on? What happened?”

  “We’ll talk in the car.

  “Wh-why are you doing this? Did something bad happen?”

  “We’ll talk in the car,” he said again.

  • • •

  Abby slammed her car door. “Oh my God, this is so embarrassing! What the hell is so important that you have to pick me up now? What’d I do?”

  “You didn’t do anything.” He couldn’t tell her the truth, couldn’t tell her what was going on, what exactly the threat was. “I’m taking you over to Jenna’s house now.”

  “Jenna’s—for what? How come we’re going there now?”

  “Just . . . just listen to me, please,” he snapped as he maneuvered the car out of the main gates of the school and onto St. Agnes Road. “You’re going to be staying at the Galvins’ for a couple of days.”

  “The Galvins—?”

  “At their house. Just for a couple of days.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re not complaining, are you? I would have thought you’d be thrilled.”

  “I can’t—I mean, all my stuff’s at home!”

  “I’ll get it for you later on today.”

  “You don’t know what to get! You don’t know where I keep all my stuff.”

  “It’s not a big apartment. I’ll find whatever you need.”

  It wasn’t as if Danny could give her an explanation that would make any sense to her. I’m afraid something might happen to you. I’m afraid someone might take you hostage. You’ll be safer, far less vulnerable, in a house in the suburbs surrounded by fenced-in acres and armed guards than in a second-floor apartment in the city with a couple of flimsy locks between you and them.

  No reason to terrify her.

  “What is the big rush, are you going to tell me?”

  “No,” he said. “Not now. Later.”

  73

  The regular security at Galvin’s house had seemed elaborate enough, with the eight-foot-high wrought-iron fence and the electric swing gate that opened only once you identified yourself.

  But Galvin, at Danny’s urging, had hired a private security company that provided trained ex-soldiers and ex-policemen to corporations and wealthy individuals. And now the property had the look of a military base. The two uniformed guards who stopped Danny at the gate didn’t look like the run-of-the-mill, rent-a-cop variety. They looked fit and professional and had walkie-talkies and were armed. A third appeared to be patrolling the perimeter on foot.

  One of them came over to Danny’s car. Danny rolled down his window at the guard’s stern behest and handed over his driver’s license.

  “I’m a friend. Daniel Goodman.”

  “Yes, sir, we’re expecting you,” he said, consulting a clipboard. The guy stared at Danny’s license, handed it back, and nodded to his partner. The gate slowly came open.

  “What is this?” Abby said. “What’s with those guys?”

  Danny didn’t answer. He couldn’t tell her the truth, but he didn’t want to outright lie. He drove up the long tree-lined road that wound through the woods to the house.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  He pulled over and put the car in park, the engine running. “Boogie, listen. One of Mr. Galvin’s clients has been threatening him and his family.”

  She squinted, frowned. “So . . . what does that have to do with me?”

  “The thing is, they’re probably targeting close friends, too. Anyway, that’s what Tom’s security company tells him, and
we don’t want to take any chances.”

  Her mouth came open. “But what—what about Jenna?”

  “She’s being picked up separately.”

  “Holy crap!” she said. “I don’t believe this. You mean we can’t leave the house?”

  “Just for a couple of days. Until this blows over.”

  They pulled up to the house.

  • • •

  Celina answered the door, looking beautiful as ever, in jeans and a beige silk top, but her radiant smile was gone. She wore no makeup and looked a little haggard. She gave a perfunctory smile; she wasn’t hostile so much as remote, guarded. Her life had been rocked by the carnage at Aspen and its aftermath here at home. Everything had changed, and was about to change even more drastically, and she was frightened for her family.

  “Abby, would you like to go to Jenna’s room? She’s on her way back right now.” The little rat dogs skittered around them, swarming them, wheezing and rasping, their nails clicking like tiny tap shoes.

  “Torito! Loco! Enough!” she said.

  She placed both hands on Abby’s shoulders. “Abby, querida, you and Jenna will have a nice time this weekend. Maybe you and Jenna can help make dinner tonight?”

  Abby blinked and nodded. “Okay, sure,” she said, unenthusiastic, giving a quickly disappearing smile.

  “There’s nothing to be scared about,” Celina said.

  But Abby didn’t look convinced.

  • • •

  A few minutes later, Tom Galvin and Jenna came through the front door, followed by a stocky black man in a navy sweatshirt, his gun holstered on the left side of his belt. In his ear was the coiled wire of a security earpiece. He stood in the doorway.

  Galvin looked ill. His shoulders seemed stooped. He was pale, with beads of sweat on his forehead. “We’re all set, Dennis,” Galvin told the guard, who nodded and left, pulling the door closed behind him.

  “Mamá!” Jenna gasped, her eyes wide. “Will someone tell me what is going on here? Are we, like, prisoners here? Is anyone going to explain?”

  “Celina,” Galvin said flatly. “Have a talk with the girls. Danny, you and I need to have our own talk.”

  “What about College Night?” Jenna said.

  “Huh?” her father said.

  “Tonight at school,” Abby said. “College Night. Everyone has to be there.”

  “Sorry,” said Galvin. “Change in plans. College Night’s been canceled. You girls can stay here and have a party.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Jenna told her father. “It’s not, like, optional. We have to go.”

  Danny shook his head. Celina said, “It’s not good time.”

  “Dad, every single girl in the class is going to be there,” Abby said. “There’s going to be admissions reps from Yale there, and Princeton and Brown, and the college counselors will be telling everyone what we have to do, and answering questions. It’s not a choice. I have to be there. We both do.”

  “Not tonight,” Danny said. “Sorry.”

  “You think I want to go to College Night?” Jenna said to her parents. “Abby really wants to go, okay? I mean, it’s not like I’m even going to get into college. Not unless you buy them a gym.”

  Galvin looked stung. “Don’t say that, honey. The right college will be lucky to get you.”

  “Lucky to get you, you mean. Anyway, you can’t force us to stay here. We’re not prisoners.”

  “Actually, I have bad news for you. I can force you to stay here. Last I looked, I’m your father.”

  “And I wish to hell you weren’t!” Jenna shouted. “You’re a goddamned Nazi, you know that?” The sharp edge of her banked fury was blunted only by her tears.

  Galvin was quiet for several seconds. Then he shook his head, as if all the fight had gone out of him. “Don’t talk that way,” he said softly.

  “I hate you!” Jenna said. “You’re ruining my life.”

  “Your father loves you, chica!” Celina said. “Don’t say like this!”

  “No!” Jenna shouted, and she stormed upstairs. A moment later, Abby followed Jenna.

  Galvin muttered something to Celina in Spanish. Then he said, “Right now, Danny and I need to have a talk of our own.”

  The two men headed toward Galvin’s office.

  “I’ve got to show you something,” Galvin said.

  “It’s gonna have to wait,” Danny said.

  Galvin looked at him.

  “I think you haven’t been honest with me,” Danny said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” At the door to Galvin’s study, he folded his arms.

  Galvin looked at him sharply. “About . . . what?”

  That was when Danny knew for certain he was right. “About how you’re working with the DEA.”

  74

  Until he learned the truth about Slocum and Yeager—that they were grifters—Danny had believed he was the leak, the confidential source of damaging information about Galvin that had so alarmed the Sinaloa cartel.

  But he’d assumed wrong. Since they were frauds, someone else had to be the leak.

  And that someone was Galvin himself.

  It defied the odds that Galvin could have served as Sinaloa’s chief money man for so long without the DEA finding out and trapping him.

  Galvin had as much as said so.

  I’ve been at this a long time. Long enough for the DEA to dig down deep into what I’ve been doing. And trap me. Force me to flip. That doesn’t seem crazy, does it?

  Now Galvin looked at Danny for a long time. He blinked a few minutes. “You’re a smart son of a bitch, you know that?” he said at last. “I’m going to put all my cards on the table. The simple, ugly truth is, the feds got onto me about a dozen years ago. I should have expected it—the whole arrangement was too good to last. An agent with the DEA showed up at my office and started asking me questions. I guess they had a team of accountants poring over Mexican cartel cash flow out of the HSBC bank. And he had a theory that pointed right to me.”

  “Which you denied.”

  “Of course I denied it,” he said with a shrug. “Until I figured out that someone high up the chain of command in the cartel must have turned. They had me. I had a choice of cooperating or fighting it. But this one DEA guy—name of Wallace Touhy—was too smart. Or his sources were too good. He had me.”

  “You didn’t . . . try to fight it?”

  Galvin shook his head. “What was the point? You can’t prove a negative. I couldn’t prove to them I wasn’t cooperating with the DEA—they’d assume I was cooperating. Or that eventually I’d break down and give them up. Then they’d have no choice but to kill me. They’d write me off as just another cowardly gringo who’d sell them out.”

  “You became a confidential source for the DEA.”

  “They gave me a choice. Twenty, thirty years behind bars—or help them out. Tip them off. Hand them the occasional Sinaloan, as long as I could do it without the cartel suspecting me. That was the trick—you never know who inside the DEA might be secretly working for the cartels. So Touhy agreed to run me off the books. A silo operation. The only way to make sure the cartel didn’t find out. He locked up my file in a cabinet somewhere—I mean, there’s always documentation. Has to be. He assigned me a number, and that was about it for paperwork. I must have given up five or six high-ranking Sinaloans over the years.”

  “And how do you think the Sinaloans found out?”

  He shrugged. “Ever seen that World War Two poster of a guy drowning, says, ‘Someone Talked’?”

  Danny nodded.

  “I guess I’m just lucky I got away with it as long as I did.”

  “This DEA guy can’t help you now?”

  Galvin scoffed. “The DEA? What are they going to do, put my whole family in witness protection? I m
ean, short of giving me plastic surgery and stashing me in North Dakota, there’s nothing the government can do, once the cartel has it in for you.

  “For days now, I’ve been trying to reach out to Touhy. They gave me a number; I call it, he answers twenty-four/seven. Always. Except not this time. I’ve been calling him. No answer.”

  Danny felt a fresh panic rising. “And?”

  “And I just found out why. I got a source in the state police. Touhy’s dead. Murdered, brutal. Like, tortured to death. And if I don’t act now, I’m next.”

  “You say this like you’re certain.”

  “I am. And I know who they’re sending.”

  75

  “I need to show you a picture,” Galvin said, nodding toward his open laptop.

  The image that filled the screen was of a man in a dark overcoat. Danny leaned in closer. The image was slightly blurred, like a still from a surveillance video. The man was entirely bald and had rimless glasses and appeared to be sitting in a vehicle, his head turned toward the camera. Looking directly at the camera, in fact.

  “Who’s that?” Danny asked.

  Galvin turned away from the screen, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. His face shone with sweat. It occurred to Danny that he looked as if he’d recently been sick to his stomach. He wiped a hand over his face.

  “El ángel de la muerte. The angel of death, they call him. He’s the guy they send.”

  “Who? Send to do what?”

  “The cartel. Sinaloa. His name is Dr. Mendoza. That’s all I know—Dr. Mendoza, no first name.” He paused, took a deep breath. “He specializes in . . . coercive interrogation.”

  “You mean like ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’? Torture?”

  Galvin shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it. I’m next on his list.”

  “But how do you know he’s coming?”

  “This picture was taken about an hour and a half ago, from a security camera on my fence. The guy was just sitting in a car across the road, watching and waiting. Like he was biding his time.”

  “So you think your guy—Touhy?—was tortured and gave up your name, that it?”