The Last Act: A Novel

by Brad Parks

  “Yes, you’re right,” Herrera said. “Let’s have some fun.”

  And then he pointed the gun at the associates.

  “Lace your hands behind your head,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”

  The associates looked at him like he was joking. From downstairs, there were two distinct noises. First a loud thud, then the sound of splintering wood as the front door was broken down.

  “FBI, FBI!” yelled several voices at once.

  “Hands behind your head,” Herrera said again more forcefully. “You are failing to comply with an order from a sworn law enforcement officer. I know you’re armed. If you make a move toward your weapons, I am authorized by the laws of the state of New Jersey to use deadly force. Now, hands up.”

  One of the associates raised his arms. The other jerked his right hand toward his belt.

  It didn’t get far. Herrera shot him twice, center mass. The force of the bullets tilted him against the wall. His lifeless body left a bloody line as it slid down to a resting position.

  One of the woman, the blond one, screamed into her gag.

  From downstairs: “Shots fired, shots fired.”

  The other associate now had his hands locked behind his head. Several pairs of boots were clomping up the stairs toward them.

  “We’re in here,” Herrera said calmly. “One man down. The other is complying.”

  Two body-armor-wearing FBI agents entered the room. In short order, they had the remaining associate handcuffed and escorted him from the room.

  It was only then that the man who had been calling himself Herrera for years put away his gun and crossed the room. He knelt next to the women and gently tugged off their blindfolds and removed their gags.

  “You can relax,” he said. “You’re perfectly safe.”

  He removed his jacket and placed it around the shoulders of the blond woman, who had started shaking.

  “As you have perhaps figured out by now, I am not truly with the New Colima cartel,” he said. “I’m with the Policía Federal Ministerial, the PFM, in Mexico. We are working in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. My name is really Sanchez. I’m what’s known as a sleeper agent. I’m sorry to have put you through this ordeal, but it was important that El Vio, everyone in the cartel, Tommy, and even the two of you believed you were in great danger.”

  The older woman was working her jaw, still stiff from being gagged. The younger woman spoke first.

  “Is Tommy okay?”

  “He’s fine,” Sanchez assured her. “El Vio was arrested a short time ago in West Virginia and is now in custody, along with the men who were wise enough to surrender themselves without a fight. Tommy knows you’re safe. He’s being debriefed right now. I would expect he’ll be able to call you shortly. He’ll be in FBI custody until tomorrow, when he will be meeting with a federal judge in closed chambers for an emergency resentencing hearing. We fully expect at that time he will be set free.”

  “Except he won’t be free,” the blonde said. “The cartel is going to come after him, won’t it?”

  “They’re about to have bigger problems on their hands than getting revenge against a person who probably won’t be called to testify against them,” Sanchez said. “But even if they wanted to, I don’t know how they could. I was the only member of New Colima who ever heard the name Tommy Jump. The rest of them, from El Vio on down, are convinced they have been tricked by Peter Lenfest Goodrich. As we both know, they can search the world over for Mr. Goodrich. They’ll never find a record of him that they themselves didn’t create.”

  “What about Ruiz and Gilmartin?” the young woman asked.

  Sanchez shook his head. “They were killed in the gun battle when we apprehended El Vio. They were the only ones who knew who Pete Goodrich really was.

  “Tommy’s secret died with them.”

  EPILOGUE

  The seats were filling up before the show, and I was feeling the same rush as ever, even if I wasn’t going to be the one who got to stride out onstage to romance this particular audience.

  This was not the continuation of the career of Tommy Jump, actor.

  It was the debut of Tommy Jump as director of the Hackensack High School spring musical.

  We were doing Anything Goes. The name was probably perfect, given everything I had been through in the preceding months, though the show wasn’t actually my choice. It had been selected by the previous director—who then had to quit early in the run due to an indiscretion that involved too many drinks and too much driving.

  I was the understudy who stepped in, both as director and as his long-term sub at the high school. As a history teacher, of course. I passed the background check no problem. After all, Tommy Jump had never pleaded guilty to any felonies.

  Early indications were that both positions would be mine permanently. The teacher had quietly retired to save his pension, and the principal—who lived in mortal fear of my mother’s rapier tongue—had told me that if I could get my teaching certification by the time school started the next fall, I could have the job. It looked like between the credits I already had and the ones I could take online, I’d be able to get it done.

  That was only one part of what had been some delightfully hectic months. Amanda and I had gotten married a week after I returned from Morgantown in a small ceremony at Hackensack City Hall. I used the When Harry Met Sally line in my vows. My mother and Brock DeAngelis were our only witnesses. His present to us was these gorgeous matching wedding bands.

  Otherwise, we hadn’t been seeing much of Brock. He spent most of his weekends in Baltimore.

  We used the seventy-five thousand dollars I’d already been paid by Danny and Rick—which the FBI hadn’t known what to do with, and therefore quietly left to us—for the down payment on a house. Serendipitously, a place around the corner from my mother had gone up for sale. The nursery was already painted and ready for action.

  Outside our little world, things had been busy as well. El Vio had been indicted on a long list of charges, chief among them the murder of Kris Langetieg. Many, many more charges were expected. The New Colima cartel was in full collapse, with all of El Vio’s top aides either extradited or in hiding. There was already speculation about which of several competing abominations would take its place.

  The day of El Vio’s arrest, Thad Reiner had been apprehended as well. He flipped faster than an Olympic gymnast and confessed to everything: the money laundering, the framing of Mitch Dupree, the totality of his years-long association with New Colima. He even admitted he had continued laundering money for the cartel after Mitch’s arrest, using his high position at the bank to set up fake accounts. It was why the cartel had kept him alive.

  He was now being held at an undisclosed location, segregated from the rest of the population for his own protection. Even with his cooperation, he would be in jail for many decades.

  We mostly followed it through the news. The FBI didn’t want to touch Peter Lenfest Goodrich, much less bring him near a courtroom. During my debriefing, it was explained to me that Pete’s testimony was considered “legally problematic”—starting with the fact that he wasn’t a real person and shouldn’t have been in prison. Besides, most of what I had witnessed pertained to Ruiz and Gilmartin, who were now dead.

  As far as I was concerned, the final word on the subject came not from the FBI but from Mitch Dupree. About three months after coming home, I received a postcard with the Grand Canyon on the front. On the back, there was no return address, just a two-sentence inscription: “Having a great drive. Enjoy your chocolate chip cookies.”

  We made a batch in his honor that evening. I still think of him every time I see one.

  Amanda had returned to serious painting shortly after I got home, trying to get as much done as she could before the baby arrived and seriously curtailed her productivity. She entered a juried compe
tition for artists under thirty and absolutely crushed it, which resulted in a small gallery on the Upper West Side getting interested in her. It wasn’t instant stardom, but it was a great next step. Her first exhibit was scheduled for the fall.

  As for Hudson van Buren, he finally received his well-deserved comeuppance. A dozen prominent female artists gave interviews to The New York Times, detailing decades of his abusive sexual behavior. The Times dubbed him the Harvey Weinstein of the art world.

  We debated whether Amanda should come forward, taking a wait-and-see approach. If van Buren tried to deny the allegations, we agreed she would have to tell her own story, to support the other women. Then van Buren issued an apology to “all the women I’ve hurt with my reckless behavior” and announced he was permanently closing his gallery and withdrawing from public life. He accompanied this with a large donation to a nonprofit that assisted victims of sexual violence. It was enough that we considered the matter as settled as it could be.

  Besides, we had other things to worry about. Amanda was now thirty-nine weeks along with a little girl who was, by all indications, as healthy as could be. We were in the phase of pregnancy her obstetrician called “late third trimester.” I called it “pillow-arranging time”—because only with the artful placement of pillows could she get any sleep at all.

  She was not in the audience for opening night of Anything Goes. There weren’t enough pillows in the universe to make a high school auditorium seat comfortable for two-plus hours. My mother, who had staked out a spot in the front row, promised to give her a full review.

  Me? I was backstage, where I was already starting to feel like I belonged. Teaching these kids all the tricks I had learned and watching them blossom was rewarding in ways I had never expected. My once-tentative Reno Sweeney just needed to learn to open her throat when she sang, and she transformed into this brassy alto whose fortissimo could knock over anyone who wasn’t seated firmly in the back row. My Billy Crocker was this half-Mexican, half-Japanese kid who, once he was shown how to breathe properly, found one of the more beautiful tenor voices heard in recent memory on the Hackensack High stage.

  It turns out applause can actually be more fulfilling when it’s for someone else.

  Already, some of the younger members of the cast were buzzing about what musical we’d do next spring. I was thinking Pippin. I would start rehearsals by telling them what it was like to find a new corner of the sky.

  It wasn’t that I had given up on acting forever. I was still tinkering with my own musical in my spare time, even if it was now about a former child Broadway star who found happiness directing high school kids. I might even go back to auditioning someday, when I got old enough for character roles, and when my life didn’t have as many other demands.

  But that was a long way off. The fact is, my own dreams and aspirations weren’t as central as they once were. Actors have to be selfish to a certain degree. Dads can’t be.

  This show wasn’t about me anymore.

  As a result, the most important person in this particular production—to me, anyway—was a member of the stage crew, a highly responsible, bespectacled junior named Beth Flanders. She was the one I had assigned to monitor my phone. I told her I absolutely didn’t want to be bothered by anything.

  Unless it was Amanda, making The Call.

  And so there was a fist-size flutter in my stomach when Beth came running up to me out of breath about an hour before the curtain was scheduled to go up.

  “Mr. Jump, Mr. Jump,” she said breathlessly. “It’s your wife. She says it’s time.”

  I grabbed the phone from her and said, “Thank you. I have to go now.”

  “But, Mr. Jump, what are we supposed to do without you?”

  “You’ll be fine,” I assured her. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you? The show must go on.”

  I assume it did. I couldn’t say for sure. I was already speeding back to Amanda, to what really mattered. It was a much bigger, more important drama than anything I had ever experienced onstage. And it wasn’t even close to the last act.

  In truth, it was only the beginning.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As a journalist turned novelist who endeavors to salt his fiction with large grains of truth, I am often the beneficiary of my former profession’s work product.

  I mean that in the small sense that the Fourth Estate provides a constant stream of insight, inspiration, and information on topics that might otherwise remain obscure to this struggling writer.

  But I also mean it in a larger sense that seems to grow only more important. The defining conflict in our world today pits those who acknowledge the existence of objective fact against those who subvert it for their own purposes. Now more than ever, we need determined, honest journalists to shine lights in dark places and remind us how much the truth matters.

  For this book, I am particularly indebted to The Guardian’s Ed Vulliamy, a man I’ve never met or spoken to but whose brilliant reporting about malfeasance at Wachovia Bank—and dispatches from the US-Mexico border—helped inform these pages.

  That said, I also make up a lot of stuff. And you would never have the chance to read any of it were it not for the incredibly supportive team at Dutton. That starts with my editor, Jessica Renheim; her pinch-hitter for this novel, Stephanie Kelly; and their able helper, Marya Pasciuto. I’d also like to salute publicists Maria Whelan, Becky Odell, and Amanda Walker; marketeers Elina Vaysbeyn and Carrie Swetonic; jacket designer Christopher Lin; production editor LeeAnn Pemberton; paperback guru Benjamin Lee; and the triad of John Parsley, Christine Ball, and Ivan Held.

  Thanks, gang. Truly, you’re the best.

  In addition, I’m thankful to the many foreign publishers who spread this book around the globe, including Angus Cargill at Faber & Faber, whose sharp edits I deeply appreciate; and Andrea Diederichs and the rest of the good folks at Fischer Scherz, whose success would have made my German ancestors proud. Herzlichen dank.

  Then there’s Alice Martell, who gets her own paragraph in these acknowledgments and in my grateful heart. Where would I be without you?

  As always, the vast majority of this novel was written in the corner booth of a Hardee’s restaurant, my home away from home wherever I happen to be. I’d like to especially call out Benji Frye, who recently celebrated twenty years of coming in every day with the best attitude imaginable.

  I’d also like to thank:

  Marilyn Veltri, Tim Thompkins, and the staff at FCI Morgantown, who let me in to tour their prison and, even better, let me out at the end of the day.

  Joyce Flanagan, Pat DiMunzio, and the late Shirley Kibbe, who long ago helped instill my love for musical theater on the stage at Ridgefield High School.

  Shevon Scarafile and Greg Parks, who should absolutely not be blamed for any legal mistakes I’ve made.

  Rob Masri, whose wife, Natalie, made a generous donation to the Virginia Institute of Autism so I could malign her husband’s good name.

  Pete Goodrich, Amanda Porter, and the rest of our extended family at Christchurch School. It’s great to be back.

  Kris Langetieg and the wonderful people at Cardigan Mountain School, who make summers so magical.

  Librarians everywhere, especially Sarah Skrobis of Staunton Public Library (who does not, for the record, have any issues with ear hair).

  Booksellers like Veronica Vargas at the Springfield, New Jersey, Barnes & Noble, who has spent many years pushing my work on her customers.

  And, finally: you, dear reader. I absolutely love being an author, and I remain forever cognizant that I only get to continue doing this job because of your support. Thank you for buying my books, attending my signings, and sending those e-mails saying you shirked your chores so you could continue reading. I cherish being the cause of undone laundry.

  Finishing up where I probably should have started, I am blessed beyond meas
ure by a wonderful family: my parents, Marilyn and Bob Parks, who continue to be my greatest cheerleaders; my in-laws, Joan and Allan Blakely, who are such terrific grandparents.

  And, of course, my wife and children. There’s a moment in this book when Tommy has this sudden revelation as to why he was put on this planet. I’ve known for a long time now. Thanks, guys, for being my reason.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  International bestselling author Brad Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. A former reporter with The Washington Post and The Star-Ledger (Newark), he lives in Virginia with his wife and two children.

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