The Last Act: A Novel

by Brad Parks

  “Slow down, slow down. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Did someone . . . Did you hear something that got you upset? Help me out here. I’m confused about where this is coming from.”

  “Stop it. Stop pretending. It’s over.”

  “There’s nothing to pretend, I’m—”

  “Great. Then prove it. Come to FCI Morgantown. Bring Rick Gilmartin, or whatever his name really is. Tell the warden here you’re FBI and that you want to speak to an inmate. Present him with that big fake gold badge of yours, and let’s see if your credentials hold up for more than about five minutes.”

  “Whoa, take it easy, Slugbomb. I’m . . . I’m actually in the middle of some things right now. I can’t just drop everything because you have some wild hunch about—”

  “This isn’t a hunch,” I said, then lied a bit, so I could cover for Amanda. “Just stop, Danny. I hired a lawyer to do a records search. He found documents from your trial. There was a sua sponte dismissal in the Southern District of New York. It was dated two years ago, when you told me you were already working for the FBI. Now, are you going to stop lying to me so we can get on with the rest of this conversation? Or are you going to keep wasting my time? Because Mitch Dupree has made up his mind about taking the deal, but we’re not going to get to that until you stop playing dumb.”

  There were certain phrases that a career actor simply wouldn’t know. “Sua sponte dismissal” was one of them. And I suspect Danny was working through his very limited set of possible responses now that I had him verbally cornered.

  The only thing I heard for the next ten seconds or so was an open cell line, clicking and hissing through that burner phone’s earpiece.

  “Okay. Fine. I’m not FBI,” he said at last.

  “You work for New Colima cartel.”

  “Yes and no. I got into mercenary work after the army, and one thing led to another. I made some contacts down there. I was distributing for them when I got arrested, and they paid for the lawyers who got me off. After that, they decided I shouldn’t handle product anymore. I’m now an independent contractor. But, yes, I am currently working for New Colima exclusively.”

  “Okay. Great,” I spat, and had to tamp down my anger again.

  I wanted recriminations and explanations. I wanted him to be contrite about having lied so blithely to me and genuinely sorry that his scheme involved leaving me to fester in prison with no hope of escape. I wanted, in other words, for him to be human.

  Then I reminded myself I was never going to get those things and that they no longer mattered anyway. The actor had to leave his feelings out of this and stay on task.

  “So what’s up with Mitch Dupree?” Danny asked.

  “He knows what you are, too. And what I am. And he’s willing to deal.”

  “He’ll tell us where the documents are?”

  “Better than that, he has the documents with him,” I said. “Once I finally told him what was going on, he admitted he never kept the SARs, just the deposit slips. Which is all that really ties the cartel to the money laundering anyway. They’re stored in a shoebox, if you can believe that. All nine hundred and fifty-one of them. They’re safely locked away here at Morgantown, and he gets full access to them because they’re considered legal documents. He can bring them up to Dorsey’s Knob Park, same place I met Gilmartin with the mackerel. He’ll know where it is. But the price has changed.”

  “To what?”

  “Five million bucks. Each. Since you’re not really FBI, and therefore you can’t get us out of here, we figure that’s adequate compensation for the time we’re going to have to spend locked up. We’ll set up overseas accounts. The money will have to be in there before Mitch so much as turns over his pocket lint for you. Plus . . .”

  I let the “plus” dangle out there before getting to the important part.

  “. . . Mitch will only hand the deposit slips to El Vio himself.”

  Danny’s response was immediate: “Ha. No chance.”

  “Sorry. That’s how it’s going to have to be. Mitch wants a personal, face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball promise from El Vio that when this transaction is over, they’ll go their separate ways with no bad blood whatsoever. El Vio returns to being an international drug lord, knowing he won’t have extradition hanging over his head. And Mitch returns to being a convict, knowing neither he nor his family will be harmed, and he’ll have five million bucks to spend when he gets out. That’s the deal.”

  “You don’t understand. El Vio isn’t some clown you can call in to tie balloons at your kid’s birthday party. He doesn’t make scheduled appearances. Even his own people don’t know when he’s going to show up. He just does.”

  “Fine. Then you can tell your bosses that Mitch will be turning the deposit slips over to the FBI. The real FBI.”

  The line crackled some more, the uninterrupted static telling me I had just articulated El Vio’s idea of the apocalypse.

  “Well, I’m sure he wouldn’t want that,” Danny said.

  “That’s what I thought. And one more thing.”

  This was the part I wasn’t sure about. But Hines, citing several white papers from FBI psychologists, had insisted that speed was vital.

  “You’ve got exactly twenty-four hours to decide,” I said. “If the answer is no, the documents go to the FBI. If the answer is yes, we make the exchange tomorrow night. I’ll call you back at this time tomorrow to get your answer.”

  CHAPTER 51

  Herrera had sent the e-mail as soon as Ruiz was done relaying the actor’s offer.

  El Vio replied four minutes later with three words: “Where are you?”

  Herrera wrote back that he was at a Marriott hotel in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, performing his due diligence regarding the actor.

  El Vio’s answer contained two words: “Stay there.”

  Soon it was four o’clock in the afternoon. Then seven in the evening. Then nine at night.

  Herrera grew agitated. He had spent his day staking out the actor’s house. “Hector Jacinto” had rented three more cars so that nosy man in the turban wouldn’t see the same one driving past.

  The house had stayed quiet through the morning. Shortly after one o’clock in the afternoon, two cars appeared in the driveway. He drove past again, perhaps half an hour later, and spotted the actor’s fiancée removing a duffel bag from the back hatch of her SUV.

  His plan was to return when it was dark so he could watch her more. But now he was stuck in this hotel room. Herrera couldn’t even guess what was happening. It wasn’t like it was taking El Vio this long to get the money together. Ten million dollars was milk money to El Vio. He was obviously weighing the other half of the deal, the risk versus the reward.

  The delay was worrisome. El Vio was the personification of action. He never took this long to do anything. He surely understood the time constraint here. The actor’s threat to go to the FBI was possibly a bluff. But the price of calling it was far too high.

  Herrera kept watching the clock. He didn’t dare go to sleep, lest he miss a message.

  One finally came in at quarter to midnight. Again, two words: “What room?”

  What did that matter? Herrera thought. But he replied all the same. When El Vio asked a question, he got an answer.

  Four minutes later, there was a knock at the door. Herrera looked through the peephole and blinked three times to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him.

  It was El Vio. The man himself. Flanked by two bodyguards. In the hallway of an American Marriott.

  Be unpredictable.

  Herrera was both thrilled and terrified. Perhaps more of the latter. El Vio didn’t kill people in upscale chain hotels, did he?

  There was no more time to ponder the possibility. Herrera just opened the door wide, forced cheer into his face, and said, “El Vio! This is an unexpected surprise.�
�

  “Yes,” El Vio said. “I’m sure it is.”

  El Vio turned to the bodyguards and said, “Stay here.”

  He entered the room. Herrera stood to the side, allowing El Vio to walk past. He was wearing his black clothes, his sunglasses, his utility belt, though it was devoid of weapons for once. Not that it gave Herrera much reassurance. The men outside could be called in to handle matters if El Vio decided he needed a new director of security.

  Not knowing what to expect, Herrera stood there, his every sense alert for whatever El Vio was going to do next.

  Then, in the most unguarded gesture Herrera had seen from the man, El Vio sank into a chair on the far side of the room. He removed his sunglasses, setting them on the small end table next to the chair. He rubbed his eyes, the good and the bad.

  Whatever El Vio had been up to—traveling here from . . . where? Mexico? Europe? it could have been anywhere—he was actually fatigued.

  “I need something to drink,” he said in a cracked voice.

  Herrera paused. Surely El Vio didn’t mean a real drink? There was no minibar in the room. Herrera tensed.

  Then El Vio clarified: “Some water.”

  “Would you like ice?” Herrera asked.

  “Please.”

  Herrera grabbed the ice bin and walked into the hallway, past the bodyguards, toward the elevator, where he had seen an ice maker. It was almost surreal. Arguably the most powerful man in Mexico, and there was Herrera, fetching him a cool beverage.

  Herrera returned to the room, filled a glass, and handed it to El Vio. He drank it in one long gulp and said, “More, please.”

  Two refills later, he said, “Thank you.” He already sounded stronger. He took in one long breath and released it slowly. Herrera was making an effort not to stare at El Vio’s white eye, which was atrophied and did not move in concert with the dark one.

  “The contractors in America have done well,” El Vio said. “This is quite an opportunity.”

  “Yes. Though I worry it could be a trap.”

  Herrera had thought of little else during the last few hours.

  “From law enforcement or from one of our rivals?” El Vio asked.

  “Either. We must be vigilant for both.”

  “I agree,” El Vio said. “I don’t think the banker is working with American law enforcement. He has had that opportunity in the past, and he has never taken advantage of it. And it seems unlikely he would have come across another cartel at a minimum-security prison. But the actor is a new presence. What do we know about him?”

  Herrera’s confidence surged. This was a question he could answer with certainty.

  “He is what he appears to be,” Herrera said. “Ruiz grew up with him. He truly has been working as an actor. I broke into his house early this morning. There were pictures of him appearing in many musicals. I don’t think it would be possible to fake what I saw.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Pete Goodrich. Peter Lenfest Goodrich.”

  El Vio bobbed his head, storing away that information before asking, “Did you see any evidence he had spent time in Mexico?”

  “No.”

  “Then our chief worry is that this Peter Lenfest Goodrich is working with American law enforcement. Is that possible?”

  “Possible, but unlikely. There is nothing that makes me suspect that.”

  El Vio closed his eyes. Apparently, both eyelids worked fine. This was a side of El Vio that Herrera had never seen. The uncertainty. The hesitance. The doubt.

  “We could use a body double,” Herrera suggested.

  “Who looks like this?” El Vio said, opening his eyes and staring rather pointedly, managing to get the bad one directed at Herrera along with the good one. “There are pictures of me on the Internet without my glasses. If we lost the documents because we decided to play games . . .”

  El Vio didn’t finish the thought. He just shook his head and said: “I want this to be over.”

  So do I. Even more than you, Herrera thought. And it was that thought—being free of the constant threat of death—that motivated his next utterance.

  “I think we need to be daring,” he said. “For ten million dollars and one evening of your life, we can end this for good.”

  El Vio narrowed his eyes as soon as Herrera said atrevido.

  “And if the actor springs some kind of trap?” El Vio asked.

  “I have something in mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We take out an insurance policy,” Herrera said, producing his phone, showing El Vio the picture of the actor with his beautiful fiancée.

  “She’s pregnant,” Herrera added.

  El Vio studied the photo for a beat, then nodded. “Call Ruiz. Tell him we’ll take the deal.”

  CHAPTER 52

  My first stirrings the next morning came before the wake-up call.

  Two months in Randolph had habituated me to sleeping through all kinds of noise, but there was something different about what I was hearing: the repeated opening of a squeaky metal door, the scuffling of bare feet around the room, the apian buzz of a zipper making its way up the tracks.

  It sounded like someone packing. I opened my eyes to see Frank, already fully dressed in his khakis, bustling about our room. I reached for my digital watch, which I had strapped to the bed’s metal crossbeam.

  Five thirty-eight. My long wait until three o’clock was beginning earlier than I would have liked.

  “Sorry to wake you, sir,” Frank said. “I was too excited to sleep.”

  All his belongings—which, admittedly, wasn’t much—had been removed from his locker and were stacked on our desk.

  “You going somewhere?” I asked, my throat still thick with morning sludge.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, drawing up his already massive body just a little more. “It’s my last day. Going home.”

  A smile broke across my face. “Hey, that’s great, Frank. Really great. How long you been here?”

  “My sentence was eighteen months, but I got me some good-time credit. Going home about two months early.”

  “Well, congratulations,” I said.

  I might have lain back down, but I knew my own efforts to get home—albeit less conventional than Frank’s—already had me too keyed up. I propped myself up on my elbow and watched him continue his preparations.

  Other than when I bribed him to attack Mitch, my interaction with Frank had been limited. He had his church. I had my schemes. We had remained polite but distant. It seemed to suit both of us.

  But now I wanted to know:

  “What were you in here for anyway, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  He turned his huge head toward me. Being on the top bunk had brought me closer than normal to eye level. Only the whites really showed. The rest blurred into the darkness of the room.

  “My little girl got sick,” he said. “It was this thing with her kidneys. I never could pronounce it. She needed medicine that cost twenty-two thousand dollars a year. I had a business mowing lawns, sir. My wife does people’s hair. We got by, but we didn’t have no insurance, and we didn’t have no twenty-two thousand dollars. The government said we couldn’t get free insurance for our little one. They said we made too much money. So I stole another family’s card and used it to take my little girl to the doctor, then to get her that medicine.”

  “Medicaid fraud?” I said. “You committed Medicaid fraud?”

  “Did it for years. That’s why I’m in here. The government said if I hadn’t done it so bad, I could have just gotten me a big fine. But they said I stole more than a hundred fifty thousand dollars from them, so I had to go to jail.”

  “Because you wanted your little girl to get better,” I said.

  “Yes, sir. They say my time in here was supposed to make me lea
rn better, but I’d do it again if I had to.”

  What little light came into our room was now reflecting off his glistening eyes.

  “My little girl,” he said. “I’d do anything for her.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, understanding that urge all too well. “How is she doing now?”

  “She’s fine, long as she gets her medicine. When I got thrown in here, we were finally poor enough to get government insurance. God provides. Sometimes he just do it in strange ways.”

  He hefted the bag, which looked small against his giant shoulder.

  “I got to get going,” he said. “They said if I get up to administration by six, they got a van going out that I can hitch a ride on.”

  “Good luck, Frank,” I said.

  “You too, sir.”

  We shook hands one last time. Then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 53

  Amanda swore she had never been this tired in her life. And it wasn’t even like she had been that active. Not physically, anyway.

  All she, Barb, and Brock had done the day before was drive back from West Virginia, caravanning it in their two cars. Amanda’s body felt like she had walked the entire way.

  By eight o’clock at night, she succumbed from the effort of keeping her eyes open and declared she was going to bed. Her obstetrician warned her she would need more sleep during the first trimester as the tiny life inside her formed its vital structures. Amanda just didn’t realize this would hit her like advanced narcolepsy.

  Even now, twelve hours later, she was still in bed, convinced she needed the strength of ten Herculeses just to get out of it.

  The trip to West Virginia had taxed her in ways she hadn’t quite recognized while she was in the midst of it. First there was watching Tommy have a near mental breakdown in that visiting room. Then there was having to convince/cajole David Drayer into cooperation. Then there were the meetings with the FBI agents, Hines and Hall, who started out as plainly disbelieving and had to be worked hard just to get up to circumspect.