Dunne’s message was simple, with a date and time and an invitation.
Tomorrow at 4:00 pm near Buffalo, in New York State. I’ll send you the coordinates at 2:00. Come alone. If I see any surveillance, the meeting is off.
Dunne had an S&T man’s practiced intuition that White and his precious Consortium would take the bait, and he thought he had a reasonable chance of capturing White and taking him to a place where he could be persuaded to explain the conspiracy into which he had been recruited. But what would Dunne do with him then? Even in his rage, he wasn’t a killer. He needed someone reliable who could keep White on ice after he had bled a little.
Dunne thought of the people to whom he could turn for help, but he realized that he couldn’t trust most of the names. The friendships were transactional, or the people had complicating links with the federal government.
Eventually Dunne settled on a man he had known from his adolescence, who had proven faithful and discreet more than once. He placed the call to a number in Fox Chapel, in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, made his request, and, after an anguished conversation, got the answer he needed. As he drove back to Erie that night, he let himself think about his ex-wife.
40 Lake Erie Beach, New York – June 2018
The weather the next morning was hot and humid, with scattered thunderstorms along Lake Erie. Dunne rose early and rented a Chevrolet sedan at the local Enterprise agency when it opened at eight; he set off soon after, in disguise, to scout his location. Dunne had assumed many appearances over the years: long beards and short ones; different skin tones, noses, and facial structures. Today he wore a gray beard, a faded baseball cap, and lumpy pad around his stomach that made him look thirty pounds heavier.
The rendezvous point Dunne had selected was a small patch of sand grandly called Lake Erie Beach, across the state line into New York. It was a poor man’s Riviera, with a tavern and a bar-and-grill framing the entrance to the beach. Working-class vacationers came here from Buffalo, a slight glimmer above the whitecaps, twenty-five miles northeast at the far end of the lake. Lake Erie had been a sinkhole these last decades as the mighty factories on its banks had slipped away, but at least now the lake was rimmed with green.
The sky darkened as the morning passed, and a sheet of rain advanced across the lake, a curtain of water that seemed at once to be falling up and down. A shard of lightning cut the distant sky, followed by a cymbal of thunder. Dunne gazed at the bleak weather and smiled. The conditions would obstruct whatever surveillance his pursuers could put in the air.
Dunne left his rented car in the parking area. He pulled the hood of his jacket tight around his cap, beard, and false gut shielding his identity, and set off to reconnoiter the site. The “beach” was a sorry, scrubby bit of sand. A dog was chasing a Frisbee, and a few bathers were standing in the wet drizzle, determined to have their day at the shore.
Dunne walked slowly up the beach. A hundred yards north, the waterfront curved east at a crest called Point Breeze, overgrown with trees and shrubs that obscured the sandy ground beneath. Dunne circled the point and climbed down to the water’s edge, testing the banks and eventually locating a spot that was obscured from view east or west.
He marked the location in his mind: A red oak stood twenty-five yards away in the firmer soil; closer to the water was a poplar tree, and by the bank itself was a thicket of dogwood shrubs, their spring blossoms gone but their green leaves festooned over the water, broad and deep enough to hide a small boat.
* * *
Dunne returned to his rented Chevy and drove a quarter mile northeast along Lake Shore Road to a little resort town where a sinuous estuary emptied into the lake. The water was just deep enough that a small boat could float free over the sandbar and into the long, protected finger of the river.
Here, too, Dunne walked the ground, looking for a place where a boat could hide. He found a little green patch by the river called Bennett Beach, with bushy trees overhanging the bank. Dunne returned to his rented car and steered it into a turnout fifty yards from the park and hidden from the road.
Dunne left the Chevy there. He walked back to Lake Shore and phoned for a local taxi to return him to Erie, where he had parked his green Ford Explorer.
Then Dunne made his next carefully considered move: He drove the big SUV up the shore road past Lake Erie Beach, a few miles farther on from Bennett Beach, until he reached a harbor known as Sturgeon Point. A lifetime before, he and his father had rented a boat there to cruise the lake all the way to Buffalo, whose skyscrapers nicked the horizon.
Dunne had called ahead that morning to reserve a one-day charter.
* * *
Dunne parked in a twenty-four-hour lot near the marina. Slouching low on the seat, he peeled off his beard and removed the tummy pad and the rest of his disguise. He needed, for a moment, to look like the picture on his Andy Maguire ID. He put the disguise in his pack with his other gear and set off for the boathouse.
The charter boats were in their slips, chafing against white-rubber bumpers. Dunne selected the smallest seaworthy vessel available, a seventeen-footer, equipped with a twenty-five-horsepower outboard motor. He gave the attendant a fake Maguire driver’s license that matched his fake Maguire credit card and told the attendant he would return the boat the next morning.
The usual maximum rental was eight hours for $255, but Dunne offered to double that for overnight and made a quick deal. The man agreed to throw in an electric starter, so Dunne wouldn’t have to pull the cord. On the way out, Dunne stopped by a nearby fishing store and made a purchase there, too.
Dunne set off in the little craft, heading southwest. The chop of the lake knocked against his metal hull with a regular thud as he crested each wave and hit the trough.
When the marina had faded to a speck in the distance, Dunne reapplied the false beard and the other elements of his disguise. The rain had slackened but the surface of the lake was still boiling. Dunne stuck close to shore all the way down to Lake Erie Beach. He found his little hideaway under the dogwoods, shipped the engine, and tied the boat to a nearby tree. He gathered shrubs and branches around the vessel so that it was invisible from land or water.
Then Dunne took his gear, stuffed it into his backpack, and retreated to the tavern nearest the beach to wait. At two, he texted the coordinates of Lake Erie Beach to Adrian White.
* * *
Just after two, Dunne slipped out the back entrance of the tavern and made his way to the grove of trees that sheltered Point Breeze. He squatted under the branches of a chokeberry bush and waited, binoculars to his eyes, focusing on the one access point to the beach. At three, a helicopter made a slow flight over the area; it lingered by the beach but made only a quick pass over the wooded area where Dunne was hiding. The chopper took one more run of the beach and the taverns and, finding nothing below, disappeared.
A few minutes later, a pair of burly bathers arrived, carrying beach bags big enough to hold semiautomatic weapons. They placed their towels on the sand and lay down awkwardly. One of them wore wraparound sunglasses on this cloudy day. The other began scanning the perimeter, 360 degrees, with electronic binoculars.
Dunne couldn’t see any vehicles. There must be some, hidden somewhere, but they were far enough away that he would have a decent head start.
* * *
At four, precisely, Adrian White arrived. He walked down the access road and rounded the curve toward the sand. He looked far too cosmopolitan to be a Rust Belt beachcomber. He was wearing blue and green Hawaiian surf trunks, a black T-shirt with a picture of the rapper Drake, and a Dallas Cowboys cap that covered the top curls of his dreadlocks; the strands dangled to his shoulders.
White walked north of the two muscular bathers, ignoring them, to a point roughly halfway between them and the spot where Dunne was hiding.
White scanned the beach looking for his rendezvous. Dunne let him walk to the edge of the beach, the waves breaking on the sand just beyond his running shoes, before he te
xted a WhatsApp message. White heard the ding, took out his phone, and read the words:
Walk along the bank to the wooded area to the north. If the two knuckle draggers on the beach follow, or I see any other watchers, no meeting.
White turned and looked at the two security officers. Through his binoculars, Dunne could see the big man’s lips move as he spoke into a hidden microphone. Reading the shape of the lips, the message was: “He’s here,” and then, “Don’t follow.” White walked slowly toward the spot that Dunne had commanded.
As White neared the top of the point and began passing out of view of the beach, Dunne texted him another message:
Keep walking around the bend. Don’t speak to your friends again.
White kept walking, gingerly. Dunne retreated deeper into the grove, just before the lee bank, a few yards above where the boat was hidden. He had a gun in his back pocket, but that wasn’t his instrument of choice.
Dunne held a fishnet in his left hand, the kind you might drag behind a trawler. In the other hand he held a big leather belt. But his chief weapon was surprise. He could hear White coming, from the crunch of the plants under his feet and the crackle of the shortwave radio in his ear.
* * *
Dunne waited until White was just past him, and then he pounced. In a first motion, he threw the entangling net over his prey, so that it caught his head and arms. He jerked hard on a cord attached to the net so that White stumbled. Then he jumped on White’s back, strapping the belt quickly around his neck as the big man fumbled in the netting.
Dunne cinched the belt as tight as he could. White managed to shout, “Help,” but that was all. Dunne reckoned he had about thirty seconds. White resisted, but he was choking for breath, gasping as he flailed inside the web.
As White feebly wheezed for air, Dunne pulled his hands behind him and cuffed them. He kneed his former colleague hard in the back of both thighs to weaken his legs, and then cuffed his feet. He dragged the immobile man toward his hidden boat, ten yards away in the brush. He tumbled him over the side and pushed the boat out in the water until he was knee-deep; he lowered the outboard motor and hopped in.
The engine started instantly, a loud whir of the prop in shallow water. Dunne cranked the power control all the way and the boat surged northeast, still hidden from view of the pursuers. White gave a last gasp before he passed out. Dunne kicked him.
“You bastard,” he said over the roar of the outboard and the bump of the hull against the waves. “That’s for my wife.”
Dunne locked the motor so the boat surged straight ahead. He ripped the communications gear off White’s body and threw it in the water. White was inert. Dunne needed him alive. He undid the belt and compressed White’s chest several times.
White gurgled as he regained consciousness and then began to gasp for air. His eyes were bulging as he stared at Dunne, not just because he had been starved of oxygen, but because he was frightened. Dunne kicked him again.
“That’s for my daughter,” he said.
Dunne looked overhead for a chopper or a drone, but they hadn’t scrambled one yet. If a boat was on the way, it was too distant to see or hear. The estuary was approaching. Dunne turned the boat to starboard and gunned the power. The little skiff shot through the narrow river opening and into the sheltering tree-lined creek.
He steered the boat toward the green shoulder of the park to the deserted spot he had chosen. White was moaning now. Dunne stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth and fixed it with duct tape.
Dunne beached the boat and trotted to the turnout, where he retrieved his rented Chevrolet. He drove it as close to the water as he could, left the engine running, and opened both back doors.
White was heavy. Dunne rocked the skiff until the body rolled out. The big man flailed on the grass, jerking to get free, so Dunne wrapped his arms and legs with more duct tape. Then he dragged White toward the Chevy a dozen yards away, heaved his shoulders up on the backseat, and then from the other side pulled his body inside the car. His legs didn’t fit on the backseat, so Dunne punched his hand behind the knees to bend them and shoved the legs to the floor.
Dunne took his pistol out of his back pocket and put it in front of White’s face.
“Do not fuck with me, Adrian. I used to like you, but I’m ready to kill you if you don’t help me.”
White nodded.
“Are you wearing a tracker?” asked Dunne.
White made a gasping noise through the gag that sounded like “No.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Dunne. He fished in White’s pockets, pulled down his shorts to look for something hidden up his ass, pulled off the running shoes and discarded them, and combed through the dreadlocks. He found nothing, but he was still suspicious.
Dunne examined White’s lustrous black skin. Legs, torso, neck, all the places you might think to implant a tracker in someone’s skin. But it was all smooth to the touch.
Dunne finally found it, on White’s upper arm between his elbow and his shoulder, a small gash of scar tissue in the mahogany skin, from a recent incision.
“Sorry, brother,” said Dunne. He took a pocketknife, cleansed it with disinfectant, and applied the blade gently to the skin. The GPS tracker popped out, with only a little gush of blood. Dunne wrapped the arm in gauze, and then swaddled the arms and legs in duct tape, to keep him still. Then he laid a gray blanket atop White.
Dunne took the GPS tracker and put it in the boat. He pushed the craft in the water again, turned on the engine, and powered it back toward the lake, the boat empty now except for the electronic ghost of its former passenger.
Dunne returned to the car and closed both doors. White was moaning from under the blanket.
“Just shut up,” said Dunne.
Dunne drove back to the shore road. He heard distant sirens, and he could see the faint lights of a police car a half mile south, above Lake Erie Beach. They were still trying to figure out what had happened.
Dunne headed northeast and took his first turn onto a side road that crossed under the New York State Thruway and then ran parallel to it. Several miles on, he found an entrance ramp that joined the highway heading toward Buffalo. In the westbound lane, police cars were heading the other way.
Dunne stopped at the first gas station and bought some plastic sunshades for the back windows so that nobody could see inside.
41 Niagara Falls, New York – June 2018
Dunne turned up the radio to cover the occasional muffled curses from the man under the gray blanket in the backseat. The Thruway was a well-groomed, old-fashioned motorway, the east-west lanes divided by a line of trees. Beyond the pavement stretched the flat terrain of upstate New York, rich and dotted with farms and forests. The landscape became more settled and suburban as they neared Buffalo. Dunne wanted to avoid passing through the heart of the business district, so he left the Thruway at an exit just past a suburban shopping mall. He found a smaller highway that ran along the banks of Lake Erie, past a steel plant in Lackawanna that was still operating somehow.
When he had settled into the drive, Dunne called the friend in Pittsburgh whom he had recruited as his accomplice. He told him that the plan he had described the night before was in motion, and that the friend should take the late afternoon flight to Buffalo and meet Dunne at a small motel near Niagara Falls, where he had reserved a cabin.
As Dunne drove, he wanted to talk to Adrian White. Partly it was to soften him up, and partly just to talk. He turned down the radio and spoke loudly so that the man under the blanket could hear him. At first White grunted back, but he soon fell silent.
“You did me wrong, Adrian,” Dunne began. “I want to tell you about it, so you’ll know why this is happening. My wife was named Alicia. She was the prettiest girl I ever met. After you and Strafe and your friends took me down, she divorced me. She took custody of my daughter Luisa, who I’ll maybe never see again. But that’s not the worst. Alicia lost our unborn son. Did Strafe and any of your other pals ever
explain why that happened? Did they?”
There was only silence, so Dunne continued.
“It was because someone decided to squeeze me by publishing dirty pictures of my wife. Some I took and never deleted, some fake. Alicia was an innocent girl. She had only been with one man. Me. It destroyed her. Did you do that, Adrian?”
From the backseat there was a muffled sound of protest.
“Shut up, Adrian. You were part of it. It’s on you. And I am telling you straight up that you are a dead man if you don’t tell me what you know.”
White gargled apologies against his gag. Dunne cut him off.
“No bullshit. I am going to kill you if you don’t tell me what happened and what’s coming down next. I mean it. I don’t give a shit about the consequences. I have lost everything that matters to me. This is payback. Do you understand me?”
White grunted again, something breathier that sounded like assent, animated by fear.
The highway rolled north, elevated on concrete piers now, framed between the Buffalo River and the lake. Dunne quieted down. They crossed the river toward the Seneca Tower, a hulking refrigerator of a building that was Buffalo’s closest claim to a skyscraper. Just to the west was a district called Canalside, where the Erie Canal met the lake.
Dunne looked at the area, gussied up now by developers, and remembered the way it had looked when he was a boy. He spoke again, in a reverie that was half meant for Adrian but mostly for himself.
“Here’s another story for you, Adrian. You can’t see it, but we’re passing the part of town where all the bars and whorehouses used to be. They paved over all that shit, but I remember. My father would tell me about it when we came up to Buffalo. Ninety-three saloons, once upon a time, and God knows how many hookers. That’s what he said.”
The Paladin Page 26
