“Very well. Watch, please.”
As soon as the words escaped her lips, video started playing on several of the room’s screens, including the largest. Deeks looked there. The video was from a bank surveillance camera, inside the bank. “It has been edited,” Hetty said, “to focus on the important parts. This happened this morning at the Certified National Bank branch in Malibu.”
The camera was stationary, mounted high above the counter, on the customer side. The video was a little grainy. At first, it looked like a normal morning. Three tellers were working, each with a customer at the window. Two more customers waited in the queue. Two of the tellers were women. The gender mix of the customers was similar, with three women and two men. One of the men was barefoot, wearing board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.
Another woman strolled into the bank and took her place in line. Almost immediately behind her came three men in long, dark coats and stocking caps. As they entered, each man reached up and rolled down his cap, turning it into a full-face mask. From beneath their coats, they pulled long guns. AR-15s or something based on that platform, Deeks guessed, though it was hard to be sure with the poor video quality.
From there, events proceeded as expected. The men made the tellers back away from their windows and ordered the customers and other staff to toss aside their cellphones and lie on the floor. One of the men went over the counter and started emptying drawers, while another took the bank manager with him to the vault.
It was over in less than two and a half minutes, and the three were on their way out the door, each one carrying what looked like a heavy bag of money.
“One point one million,” Hetty said, as if reading Deeks’s mind. She was good at that, and not just with Deeks. “We’ll cut to the outside now.”
As she spoke, the scene switched to one filmed by an exterior camera. The men burst from the bank and dashed to a waiting brown station wagon. The doors were open, as was the rear. They threw their bags of money in the back, piled into the seats, and the vehicle was in motion before the doors were closed.
But they weren’t out of the woods yet. A pair of patrol officers had reached the scene, and were standing beside their cruiser, shielding themselves behind the doors. One held a handgun, the other a shotgun. They aimed at the oncoming car, and the one with the handgun got off a couple of shots, then ducked from the hail of fire coming his way. The cop with the shotgun was, Deeks guessed, waiting for the wagon to get close enough to make the weapon useful. But before that happened, a couple of rounds fired from the passenger-side window hit him. Deeks could almost feel the impacts as the officer flinched, turned, and fell to the street.
“That’s enough,” Hetty said. The screens went dark.
“Is he…?”
“He’s still in surgery. Mr. Deeks, you know him, I believe.”
“I thought he might be… is that Tony?”
“Officer Anthony Scarlatti, yes.”
“Oh. Oh, man.”
Deeks felt Kensi’s hand on his arm, then snaking across his back.
“Friend of yours?”
“Kind of. His dad, Tony senior, was one of my training officers. Kind of a mentor when I first got onto the cops. Tony junior was just a kid, then, but before long he was a rookie on the force. Tony senior was killed by a drunk driver who plowed into him while he was walking back to his car after giving a motorist a verbal warning, and I sort of took Tony junior—just Tony, now—under my wing.”
Kensi squeezed tighter. “I’m sorry, Deeks,” she said.
“What’s the prognosis?” Deeks asked.
“His condition is critical. The doctors are doing what they can. They’re cautiously optimistic.”
“Good. What about those… bastards, who shot him? Are they…?”
“We were able to enhance the image enough to get a license plate number. The vehicle is registered to someone named Mitchell Bostic, of El Paso, Texas.”
“He came all the way from Texas to rob a bank? I mean, it wasn’t a bad haul, but—”
“How does the OSP fit in?” Kensi interrupted. “Is Bostic Navy?”
“Our only interest—other than the natural concern we have when any law enforcement officer is targeted—is Officer Scarlatti’s connection with Mr. Deeks. The investigation is in the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department and the FBI. At this point, they know little to nothing about Mr. Bostic, and have not identified his compatriots. I wanted Mr. Deeks to hear it from me before it hit the news. When I get back to my office and give the word, the name and photograph of Mr. Bostic will be broadcast across the entire Los Angeles basin. One does not shoot a police officer in this city and expect to get away with it.”
“You okay, Deeks?” Kensi asked.
Was he? He wasn’t sure. He had been close to Tony once, but that had been years ago. Still, he didn’t want to have to see Angela, Tony senior’s widow, at a funeral for another of her Tonys.
“I’ll be all right,” he said at last. “But thanks. And thank you, Hetty. You’ll keep me posted?”
“In thirty minutes, you won’t be able to escape the news, Mr. Deeks. No matter how much you might want to.”
“That’s good. Let’s flush this guy out.”
“I assure you, that is what those running the case intend to do.”
“If I can do anything to help—”
Hetty cut him off. “You’ll be the first to know. Well, the second, actually.”
“Who’ll be first?”
Her eyes widened, as if in shock. “Why, me, of course. Always.”
4
To no one’s surprise—her own, least of all—Hetty was right.
Television, including the networks and the cable news channels, ran with the bank robbery story, showing the largely unhelpful video footage and incessantly repeating Mitchell Bostic’s name for most of the day. If history was any guide, there was every likelihood that they’d run with it for days, unless some other horrific crime or national disaster supplanted it. The correspondents and professional hairpieces knew virtually nothing, of course, but that didn’t stop them from interviewing “experts” who also knew nothing, and repeating the same paucity of details in ever more breathless tones, as if vital new information had just come across the wires.
Deeks was upset because there was no new information. He had hoped that the release of Bostic’s name and pictures of his car would have spurred a flood of tips. Said tips wouldn’t have come directly to him, of course, but either through his contacts at the LAPD or via Hetty, he’d have heard about any promising ones. Instead of information—or even better, intelligence—all he’d heard during the day could have been the relentless chirruping of crickets in the evening.
Not that it was his case—or anybody else’s, for that matter. Hetty had made clear that NCIS was officially hands-off. Still, Deeks was an interested observer, and a legitimate consumer of the media. It wasn’t his fault that the media he was consuming on this particular day happened to be focused on local news.
He was ready to call it a day. He’d heard about a new food truck in Bell Gardens, which was supposed to have an incredible baked ziti. Kensi was ready to go, car keys in her hand, when his phone buzzed. He offered Kensi a shrug. “Deeks,” he said.
“Marty?”
He didn’t recognize the voice. “Yeah?”
“It’s Chris Gilpin.”
Deeks had to scan his memory banks for that one, but then it came to him. Gilpin was a detective Deeks knew from the LAPD. They’d never exactly been friends. Deeks suspected that Gilpin was on the take—he lived a little too large for what he earned, and that was always a cause for concern. But no dirt had ever surfaced, that Deeks had heard about, so maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe Gilpin had made some good investments, or had family money or a profitable side job.
“Chris,” he said. “Been a long time. What’s shakin’?”
“You were tight with Tony junior, right?”
“With both Tonys, yeah. Terrible n
ews.”
“Damn right it is. Anyway, I got someone you should meet. She came in today, after the story ran on TV for about the millionth time.”
“She?”
“I think you should hear it from her. Trust me, you’ll want to.”
“About Tony?”
“Just meet with her, Marty.”
“When?”
“What are you doing now?”
Deeks thought about that baked ziti. He’d almost given up on finding lasagna as good as his mom’s, but there were other dishes in that neighborhood, and a good baked ziti was one of them. His mother made a heck of a smalahove, too, but Kensi had explicitly rejected the idea of any dishes made from sheep’s heads, so that was off the menu permanently.
He caught Kensi’s eye, read her disapproval there. “Nothing, I guess,” he said, glancing away. “Where do you want to meet?” Say Bell Gardens, he mentally implored.
“Don’t you have someplace there? Some boat house or something?”
“The Boatshed. Sure, that would work.”
“I’ll bring her over. Thirty minutes?”
“Cool. See you then.”
He ended the call and turned back to Kensi. “Please don’t kill me. Because I know you could.”
“I could,” Kensi agreed. “But I don’t want to. Yet. I’m pretty hungry, though, and you know what happens when I get hungry.”
“You get hangry.”
“Yes. You don’t want that, do you?”
“No, of course not. Where can we eat that’s close enough to be at the Boatshed in half an hour?”
“There might be a candy bar in one of my desk drawers we could split.”
“Seriously, Kens—”
“I am serious. The only places close by that I’d want to eat at would take considerably longer than a half hour.”
“I think there’s some food in the cupboard at the Boatshed.”
“If there is, it’s probably been there long past its prime.”
“It’s about Tony Scarlatti, babe.”
“I figured. It’s okay, Deeks. The food truck was your thing, not mine. We can eat a little late. As long as we eat sometime.”
“You mean it?”
“I do now. I won’t guarantee that I will later. Who are you meeting?”
“A cop named Chris Gilpin. And a mystery woman.”
Kensi arched an eyebrow. “Ooh, a mystery woman? Who is she?”
“If I knew that, she wouldn’t be a mystery.”
“Point taken.”
“You’re really not mad?”
“I’m really not mad, Deeks. Just—”
“Just what?”
“Just when you do buy me dinner later, it better be a good one.”
* * *
Gilpin had grayed some since the last time Deeks had seen him. His jowls had thickened, as had his gut. His piercing blue eyes seemed to have shrunk behind folds of flesh. True to form, he was wearing a suit that had probably cost a month’s salary. He had bought the silk shirt twenty or thirty pounds earlier, though; when he sat, it gapped open between the buttons.
Julianne Mercer, the slender young woman with him, looked nervous. She had big brown eyes that wouldn’t hold still, and long, straight dark hair that she twirled with her fingers. She was wearing a long, men’s-cut Tee shirt with a word on it that Deeks assumed was the name of a band he’d never heard of, and jeans so tight they might have just been painted on. She couldn’t meet his gaze, and it took seemingly intense effort to release her hair long enough to shake his hand.
After the introductions were made—Kensi had accompanied Deeks to the Boatshed, on the off chance that having another woman in the room would make the “mystery woman” more comfortable—they all sat around the long table. Deeks tried not to stare at Mercer, but he was curious. “If Kensi doesn’t get some dinner pretty soon, she’s going to start eating my fingers,” he said. “What is it you wanted to tell us?”
Julianne Mercer stared at the tabletop, feverishly winding her hair around her fingers. “Go on,” Gilpin said. “Agent Deeks is one of the good guys. He can help.”
“Maybe. I’ll try, if I can,” Deeks said. “Kind of depends on what this is all about.”
“It’s about Mitch Bostic,” she said. Her voice was thin and quiet, as if she were far away and speaking through a tube.
“I kind of figured that from Chris’s call,” Deeks said. “What about him?”
“He doesn’t exist.”
5
“Maybe you could be… a little more specific?” Deeks said.
“He’s not real,” Mercer said. “He’s a fiction. Made up.”
Deeks knew he shouldn’t have been so surprised. He and the others on the OSP team often inhabited phony identities. When they had time, they built legends—unbreakable fake histories, complete with lifelong identity trails, yearbook photos, former “friends”—everything necessary to make an assumed life stand up to the closest scrutiny. But her flat way of saying it threw him.
“Can you explain?”
“I don’t know how else to say it. There is no Mitchell Bostic.”
Kensi spoke up. “Let me try. I think we get by now what you’re saying. Mitchell Bostic is an assumed identity. How about if you tell us how you know that?”
“Yeah,” Deeks said. “That’s what I was getting at.”
Mercer took a deep breath, held it in for several long moments, then let it out slowly. “I know, because I’m his girlfriend.”
“But you said he—” Deeks began.
Mercer interrupted. “That’s not his real name. Mitch Bostic is really Kelly Martin.”
“And you’re Kelly Martin’s girlfriend,” Kensi said.
“That’s right.”
“And Kelly Martin is here in L.A.? Robbing banks?”
“He would never do that,” Mercer said. “He’s not a criminal. He’s a Navy SEAL. Or he was, anyway; he just retired a couple of months ago.”
The light bulb blinking on in Deeks’s brain was just this side of literal. “And that’s why you brought her to us,” he said to Gilpin. “Because Mitch Bostic is really a former SEAL named Kelly Martin.”
“Now you see why I thought you should hear it from her.” He sounded relieved, as if he had transferred a heavy weight off his shoulders and onto those of NCIS.
“So where does Bostic come in?” Deeks asked.
“I haven’t known a lot of Special Ops types,” Mercer prefaced. “So I don’t know if it’s true or not. But Kelly told me that a lot of them have boltholes set up.”
“Boltholes?” Deeks asked.
“A new name. A new identity. Maybe a house and a car and a good stash of money. Someplace far from where they live, so it won’t be easy to connect them and they’re not likely to run into people they know. Kelly’s was in El Paso, Texas. He said from there it would be easy to blend in, or if necessary to cross the border and melt into the population in Juarez.”
“But why would he need that? Why would any soldier need a bolthole?”
“I get that,” Kensi said. “Special Operations forces handle a lot of sensitive missions. Sometimes they’re as much spies as soldiers. They’re on the front lines, and they make plenty of enemies. He probably figured that the day might come that somebody tried to get revenge on him, and he might need to disappear for a while.”
“That’s it exactly,” Mercer said. She flashed the first grin Deeks had seen on her, a quick one, there and gone in an instant but it brightened the whole room. “He said there were plenty of bad guys who had it in for him—and you couldn’t always trust the good guys.”
“That’s for sure,” Deeks said. In his experience, the good guys were almost as likely to be bad as the bad guys. Or maybe it only seemed that way because he invariably started out trusting the good guys, whereas if he knew someone was bad from the start, they couldn’t disappoint him.
Which brought up another question. “Who knew about his bolthole? Obviously you did.”<
br />
“Only two people in the world knew about the Bostic identity. Me, and his swim buddy, a SEAL named Bobby Sanchez.”
If words could knock a guy out of his chair, those would almost have done it. “Hold on. Bobby Sanchez, the—”
“The one who was killed a few days ago,” Mercer finished for him. “That’s right.”
“Wow.”
What had not been an NCIS case a few minutes earlier was suddenly part of a much bigger case—and undeniably NCIS business.
“If his bolthole was in El Paso, why is he in Los Angeles?” Kensi asked. “Don’t people know him here?”
“I don’t know,” Mercer said. “I was out of the country, in Belize, for a shoot.” She flashed another quick grin. “I’m a model—not, like, a supermodel or anything, but I do catalogs and websites and stuff. We were in a jungle area, and cellphones were useless. I talked to Kelly once on the one satellite phone we had. He was staying at my place while I was gone. But then the next time I tried to call him, a couple of days ago, I couldn’t reach him. I got back into town last night, and it looked like he hadn’t been there for days. Then I saw all the stuff on TV about Bostic today.”
“So you’ve seen the video?” Deeks asked.
“Yes. Non-stop.”
“Is the car his?”
“I’ve never seen the Bostic car, or his place in El Paso. But it’s the right make and model, anyway.”
Gilpin spoke up for the first time since introducing Julianne Mercer. “It makes sense,” he said. “We spent all day trying to figure out who Bostic was. He has a good ID set up, with bank accounts, credit cards, driver’s license, passport, all that stuff. But there are weird blanks in it, if you dig deep enough.”
“Like what?”
“He has a birth certificate. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, thirty-one years ago. But he never attended elementary school there. Can’t find any other educational records, either, except a diploma from the University of Texas at El Paso at his home there.”
Bolthole Page 3
