The Last Act: A Novel

by Brad Parks

  Each step was its own wrenching challenge, requiring her to summon skills she hadn’t exactly been taught at art school. Thank goodness for Brock. And for Barb. Even the scrappy girl from Mississippi needed backup.

  Amanda had wanted to stay in West Virginia, to be closer to Tommy. But Drayer and the agents said it would likely take several weeks to put together any kind of operation, and perhaps several more before Tommy had a hearing that might—even under a best-case scenario—lead to a reduction of his sentence.

  Therefore, it was better if they all went home. Amanda reluctantly agreed, even if she wondered if the agents weren’t just coming up with an excuse to get her, Brock, and Barb out of the way.

  Now here she was, back in her own bed. Or Tommy’s bed. Or whatever. She blinked a few times, then, with great effort, got her feet down to the floor.

  She stood, looking at herself in the mirror over Tommy’s dresser. She was wearing the nightgown Tommy loved, mostly because it was easy to remove. As had become her custom of late, she briefly lifted its hem to study her stomach.

  It was perhaps a little rounder than normal. But it could have just been bloating. She yawned, stretched, then walked down the hall toward the kitchen. Sometimes, if she ate something small before the nausea hit, she could stay on top of it.

  The first thing that struck her as out of place was that Barb was sitting on the couch. Just sitting. Barb was not a sitter. She was a woman of action. And shouldn’t she have been at work?

  The next thing that registered as being off was Barb’s cheeks. They were stretched tight, but not in a smile. There was strain Amanda had never seen before.

  Amanda had stepped fully into the room when the final and most significant incongruity filled her ears.

  A man’s voice, coming from behind her.

  “Good morning,” he said pleasantly. “My name is Herrera. I hope you had a nice sleep. I didn’t want to have to wake you.”

  “What’s going on?” Amanda said, turning to see three men, all of whom appeared to be Mexican, standing behind her.

  The one who called himself Herrera stepped forward. His eyes traced up and down her body three times.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us,” he said.

  She didn’t look at him as he spoke. She was too focused on his gun.

  CHAPTER 54

  By three o’clock, I had returned to the administration building, in that empty middle manager’s office, with that six-ounce burner phone heavy in my hand.

  Agents Hines and Hall had been making their necessary preparations, calling in enough personnel from surrounding field offices that they could overwhelm whatever forces New Colima brought along. Their assumption was that El Vio would have several armed bodyguards and an advance team that would inspect all of Dorsey’s Knob Park before they would allow their boss to approach.

  Concealment was therefore critical. As Hall had put it to me, “Our job is to make sure that any of our people who are within a mile of that park look like a local, a log, or a tree.”

  Mitch had been busy as well. A parcel with a thousand empty deposit slips from Mexico had arrived that morning, having been priority overnighted the previous day. He had recruited Jerry Strother, Bobby Harrison, and Rob Masri; swore them to secrecy; and then inducted them into what he called “the Fake Squad.” Equipped with more than a dozen pens of varying color, width, and ink type, they had been holed up in a room with a large whiteboard. It was covered with all the Spanish names, first and last, that Mitch could remember the cartel using.

  Each deposit slip was filled out with a different combination of names and a random amount of money, per Mitch’s instruction. A few were placed directly in the shoebox, remaining crisp and pristine. The rest were distressed to varying degrees—sat on, folded, stuffed in a pocket, and so on—before going in. Once they got the hang of it, each man was averaging a fully forged deposit slip roughly every minute. At that rate, they were expecting to be done with all 951 anytime now.

  The plan was that Mitch would march up the hill with me, receive his assurances that he would be allowed to live a long and happy life, then hand the box to El Vio. Neither Mitch nor I would be wearing a wire—it was too risky, we all agreed—but the FBI had already planted enough listening devices nearby that a cricket wouldn’t be able to fart without them hearing it.

  The FBI was hoping that El Vio might say something incriminating to Mitch. But even if he didn’t, the moment Mitch and I were clear, they would swoop in and make the arrest. The initial charge would be obstruction of justice—for receiving stolen evidence. It was a bit like getting Al Capone for tax evasion, but whatever.

  Hines and Hall would then work on flipping Ruiz and Gilmartin, getting them to admit that they were operating under orders from El Vio when they murdered Kris Langetieg. The killing of a federal prosecutor would earn El Vio, and anyone else in the chain of command, a life sentence with no possibility of parole.

  It was all in place. I just needed to confirm we had a deal.

  Ruiz answered my call on the first ring with a brusque, “Hello.”

  I didn’t waste time with niceties. “Are you in?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I balled my fist and squeezed. “Good. Meet us up there at one A.M. sharp. I’ll be wearing the same CO’s uniform Gilmartin saw me in last time. I’ll have Dupree with me, obviously. And he’ll have all nine hundred and fifty-one deposit slips. Are you ready to take the routing and account numbers for the five million?”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  I read off the numbers that Hines had given me. She had explained that the money would eventually be seized by the FBI as part of a larger legal action against New Colima. That was fine by me. I was done worshipping at the altar of cash.

  “Got it,” he said when I was done.

  “The bank has a customer service line for high-net-worth individuals that’s staffed twenty-four/seven. I’ve told them I’m expecting two large deposits. I’m going to call them at twelve thirty A.M. If the money isn’t there, we’ll go straight to the FBI.”

  “Understood.”

  “Also, just so you don’t get any ideas about shooting us the moment Mitch hands over those deposit slips, my roommate knows I’m running the hill,” I said, even though my roommate was hopefully in South Carolina by now. “I’ve told him if I’m not back by one thirty, he’s supposed to sound the alarm. He’ll tell everyone at FCI Morgantown that the New Colima cartel helped me escape. It’ll take about five minutes for your boss to become the subject of a major manhunt. They’ll be closing roads, closing airports, sending up choppers, the whole thing. Cops live for stuff like that.”

  “Okay,” Ruiz said. “And just so you don’t get any ideas, we’ll be checking that shoebox for tracking devices. If there’s anything metal, electronic, or emitting some kind of signal in that box, we’ll know it. It had better be clean. Oh and one more thing.”

  He left some dead air, so I said, “What’s that?”

  “I want you to hang up your phone and keep the line clear for the next two minutes. Someone is going to call you and have a brief chat with you. Then I’m going to call you back.”

  “Okay, who?”

  I waited for a response. None came. He had hung up.

  It took thirty seconds for my phone to ring again. The number was one I didn’t recognize from the 973 area code, which was northern New Jersey.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hi, honey, it’s me,” said Amanda. Hearing her mellifluous Mississippi accent should have been a sweet treat. But there was quaver in it that didn’t belong.

  “Hey, love, what’s going on?”

  In a surprisingly calm voice, she said, “I’m supposed to tell you that your mother and I have been kidnapped. We’re fine. They’re treating us fine. We’re being held at a—”

 
And that’s all I got.

  “Amanda!” I shrieked. “Amanda!”

  She was gone. I reeled, sickness and panic slamming into me. No discernible thoughts were forming in my head. It was filled with a terror that was like loud white noise, blocking out everything else. It took most of my concentration not to fall out of the chair.

  Then the phone rang again.

  Ruiz.

  I cursed him, his mother, his whole rotten genome going back to when his ancestors crawled out of the primordial slime.

  He waited until I was done, then said, “Just so we’re perfectly clear: If there is any trap here—any trace of law enforcement, any rival cartel, anything other than this exchange going exactly as you’ve described—they will be dead, got it? We’re going to hold on to them as long as we feel like it. If you have us followed in any way, if El Vio doesn’t make it safely all the way back to Mexico, they will be dead. If El Vio is not a hundred percent satisfied by the documents he received, they will be dead. If we get wind there’s any kind of effort to rescue them, either by the cops or by someone else you’re working with, they will be dead. They are our ultimate insurance policy. Do you understand all this?”

  I was hearing the words. I was quite sure if I fully understood them—if I grasped how much danger my future wife and my mother were now in—I would have passed out from the shock. Already, I was dizzy from all the extra blood my supercharged heart had sent racing around my veins.

  “And you . . . you won’t hurt them?” I managed to say.

  “We don’t plan to,” he replied, which wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

  “But how do I know you won’t just kill them once the deal is done?”

  “You don’t,” he said. “See you tonight.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I staggered out of the office and down the hall to the conference room where Hines, Hall, and their colleagues were bent over laptops and mumbling into mobile phones.

  The door was open, which was fortuitous. I wasn’t sure I had the strength to open it. It was all I could do to fall back on my voice training and remember how to draw enough breath into my lungs to make myself heard.

  “The operation is over,” I said, interrupting at least three different conversations. “It’s over. I want everyone except Mitch and me to be as far away from that stupid park as humanly possible.”

  There were half a dozen agents in the room. They had all stopped talking but were eyeing me blankly.

  Men in khaki uniforms didn’t tell them what to do.

  “You want to tell us what’s going on?” Hines asked.

  In a brisk staccato, I recounted my exchange with Ruiz and my brief conversation with Amanda. Hines’ face darkened as she listened.

  “We should have anticipated the cartel would make a move like that and sent a protective detail,” she said. “That’s our fault.”

  “You’re goddamn right it is,” I snarled.

  “Call the Newark Field Office and let them know what they have going on,” Hall said to one of his fellow agents, then turned to another and added, “And call down to Atlanta. Let’s get a detail on Dupree’s family a-sap.”

  It was like they hadn’t been listening.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “You’re missing the point. There is no Newark. There is no Atlanta. You guys are going home now. You effed up. They win. We lose. Good-bye. This is over.”

  Hall already had his hackles up and was ready for a good old-fashioned cockfight.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Jump, I am. I hate to be blunt about it, but having a chance to capture the head of the New Colima cartel is a lot bigger than your family. El Vio has killed thousands of people’s family members, and he’s going to kill thousands more if we don’t stop him. Do you understand that?”

  “And you’re just ready to add two lives onto his tally, just like that?” I said. “You’re a cold son of a bitch, you know that?”

  “I can live with that,” he said stiffly.

  “Well, I can’t. So let me make this really, really simple for you: You’re going to cease and desist right now because I’m not walking up that hill tonight until I am utterly convinced that everyone with a badge in the state of West Virginia is well clear of that park. There’s no threat you can make, no payment you can promise me, no torture you can devise that will make me change my mind. Do you understand that?”

  Hines put on her schoolteacher voice. “Everyone just take a deep breath for a moment, okay?”

  I couldn’t have if I wanted to. I was too furious. But I at least stopped talking as I glowered at Hall as Hines spoke.

  “To begin with, Mr. Jump, you don’t give the orders around here. I do. So we’re not ending this operation because you said so. We’re ending this operation because I said so. Are we clear on that?”

  Hall was readying a counterargument, but Hines cut him off before he could spit out the first syllable of it.

  “Chris, I’m sorry, but our guidelines are very clear here. The bureau doesn’t get to play Machiavelli. That’s not my opinion. That’s policy. We can’t knowingly go through an operation that will directly lead to the extermination of two civilians. It would give Mr. Jump a wrongful death suit against the bureau that would have the director looking to fire anyone who came near it. So perhaps that’s the big picture you want to focus on. I’m afraid Mr. Jump is right. The cartel outmaneuvered us. They win this round. Our only goal now is to make sure everyone gets out of this alive. And the best way to do that is for us to stand down.”

  For the first time since I heard Amanda’s voice, I felt like I could breathe just slightly.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

  “You realize without us capturing El Vio, there’s nothing we can do to help you long term,” Hines said. “We’ll still be putting Mr. Dupree in witness protection. It’s the right thing to do for his safety, and we probably need to keep that promise just to get him to cooperate tonight. But there’s nothing we can do to help you. You’re free to take your case to the courts and I certainly hope they give you a hearing. But there’s a very real chance you’ll have to stay in prison and serve your sentence.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Absolutely fine.”

  It was a blessing to have the chance to make that sacrifice.

  “Okay,” she said. “You can go ahead with the exchange tonight as planned. We’ll let you keep the burner phone so you can check to make sure the money has been deposited, but don’t get any cute ideas about moving it somewhere else. We’ve put a no-withdrawal block on the accounts and will be changing the passwords in the morning.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll brief the warden about what’s happening so he doesn’t interfere. Hall and I will be here, because we have to take Dupree away as soon as this is over. Otherwise, I’ll have everyone clear out. You realize, of course, this means you’ll be going up there naked, no backup. If the cartel decides to make a move against you . . .”

  “I’ll take my chances,” I said.

  “Well, then I guess we’re done here. You can go back to your dorm now.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  And then she made the grand pronouncement: “All right, people. Let’s pack up and get out of here.”

  CHAPTER 55

  If time onstage always went too fast for me, flowing so blissfully I barely felt its passage, the time after I left the administration building dragged to a near-frozen halt.

  All I could think about were Amanda, my mother, my unborn child, and the extraordinary peril they were in. As far as I was concerned, nothing in the universe—not space, not time, not the most distant matter in the farthest galaxy—would move normally again until I knew they were safe.

  I pictured Amanda, now perhaps starting to show just slightly, bravely looking for any opportunity to improve her ch
ances of survival. She and my mother would be strong, neither wanting to give in to the fear they surely felt, because they would be worried about the other. But they had to be beyond terrified.

  Had a cartel goon tied them up? Were they stashed away in a basement somewhere? Had they been beaten, tortured, or broken in some way to make them more compliant? I didn’t even want to ponder any of it, and yet I couldn’t help it.

  The harrowing fact was that their continued survival was reliant upon the basic decency of the world’s most violent criminal syndicate. The knowledge of that was so oppressive I thought it might cripple me. I swore the only reason my body kept working is because the basic functions that kept it going—respiration, circulation, that sort of thing—were automated, and therefore too stupid to know they probably should have stopped.

  At least a dozen times, when I knew I was alone, I pulled out my burner phone and called Amanda, my mother, our home line. All three went to voice mail. I listened each time, just to hear them talk to me.

  After dinner, and after the sun went down, I snuck out to the tree where I had hidden the unicorn. I was relieved to find it still there, unbothered.

  When I returned to my room, I stuffed the package under Frank’s bare mattress, which remained unoccupied. Mr. Munn had told me it might remain so for a while. To say the room felt emptier without him was a Frank-size understatement.

  After lights-out, I lay on top of my bunk, not bothering with getting under the covers, staring at the wooden planks above me, just like I had on my first day at Morgantown. It seemed impossible that had been only two months ago. It seemed equally impossible how many months I still had left to contemplate that ceiling.

  This was around the time that my thoughts naturally turned dark. The horrific image of Kris Langetieg’s carved-up death mask kept visiting me, like a sick song that was stuck in my head.

  Did a similar fate await the people I loved most? Was that the only way the cartel knew how to conduct its business? Could I ever survive their loss?