“It’s a Polaroid. A guy in one of the base camps snapped it.”
Vail pointed to the medium-size man with the hair and special rifle. “I think this guy went by the name Oz.”
“Like in Wizard of?”
“That’s what it sounded like. He was obviously a specialist of some kind. Jordan says he once took out a Vietnamese general from two thousand yards, and I think that’s the gun he used. But Jordan said he’s dead. We know Jordan, Shrack, and Metzinger are Specters. I’ve got it on my tape.”
“You taped the interviews?” Hardistan said, his eyebrows arching. After a moment Vail said, “Only for reference.”
They both laughed.
“We think one of the other two who are still alive, maybe both, are working for the Sanctuary,” Hardistan said. “That file contains all the information we have on them. Needless to say, it could be explosive in the wrong hands.”
“Like the media?”
“Or some members of Congress.”
“You know a judge named McIntyre?”
“Lucy McIntyre, Eighth Circuit. She’s good people.”
“The President thinks we may be able to get the warrants and approvals for surveillance work from her. I was thinking of editing the tapes down, putting some salient points together to convince her. Maybe you’d like to come along.”
“You’re the boss. I’ll tell you up front, she’s tough.”
“We need access to these guys, Billy. I’ll throw the fear of God into Waller. Tell him I’ll drop a dime on him if he doesn’t testify for us. I’m sure he’ll at least say he let me tape our conversation.”
“That might work,” Hardistan said. “But I know the lady, she’ll probably want to talk to Waller face-to-face.”
“How about a videotape? We could go down there and videotape him. Right now, he’s the only card we can play.”
“It’s certainly worth a shot,” Hardistan said. “If she insists on a personal interview with him, we’ll have to sneak him out for a meeting. That’s risky business.”
“The whole thing’s risky business,” Vail answered.
Hardistan slipped the file back in the pocket and closed the case. Vail ran the flat of his hand across the smooth leather top.
“You have good taste, Billy.”
“Thanks. Mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Try me.”
“Why are you doing this? I mean, this is a shitty job. It’s got failure written all over it.”
Vail thought for a minute and shrugged. “I don’t have anything better to do at the moment.”
Hardistan was jerked up by the remark. He looked at Vail, trying to decide whether the lawyer was joking or serious.
Vail took out his wallet and leafed through it, removed a worn business card, and slid it across the table. “I used to pass these out when I was a defense advocate and later when I was D.A.”
His name was in the lower right-hand corner. In the center were his favorite two words.
NO COMMENT.
At dusk Woodbine left the airport outside Fort Wayne and drove the circuitous route to the dirt road north of Ralph Anderson’s farmhouse, timing himself. It took forty-eight minutes. It was dark when he turned down the road, which was still caked with ice patches and rock hard. When he reached the intersection of the two dirt roads, he pulled off the road, turned around, and backed under some trees. He took the aluminum case from the trunk, assembled the .50 caliber rifle, then snapped the sight in place. He got out the pair of night binoculars and crept up the bluff to the tall oak tree and zeroed in on the farmhouse. He jockeyed his position a bit until he had a clear sight line to the farmhouse, then checked the area around the house: a small barn, a pickup truck parked beside it, what looked like a small shed of some kind. He moved the binoculars back to the kitchen.
A thousand yards. Piece of cake if he could get a clean shot.
He knelt down, augered a unipod into the hard earth, and set the rifle in its cradle. His heart was pumping hard but his hands were steady. He scanned the house through the scope, sweeping it slowly past the kitchen windows and back door, checking the small porch and the corner windows, where he picked up a television set. He assumed it was a recreation room of some kind. He moved the sight back to the kitchen and could make out the woman, obviously cleaning up after dinner.
But where was Waller/Anderson?
Woodbine wasn’t in any hurry. He was dressed for the cold, and no matter how long he had to wait, he knew the escape route and how long it would take once the job was done. The time was relative.
He waited, sweeping the rifle back and forth between the windows of the house, waiting to catch a glimpse of his prey. He kept scanning the house, and then, as he was watching the window of the den, he saw the television station change.
Waller was in the room, watching television.
Woodbine had to lure him outside.
He turned to his binoculars, which gave him a broader view of the site. The tractor was still sitting in the field, its back wheels mired in a mud hole.
Woodbine sat back on his haunches and considered the problem.
The sequence was fixed in his mind. Take out Waller. Blow the tires on the pickup. This would leave his wife with no phone and no transportation. Unless someone happened to visit the Andersons, she would be trapped a mile from the state road. It could be an hour or two before she summoned help.
His other choice was to kill them both.
He waited, concentrating on the den window.
Inside the farmhouse, George Waller a.k.a. Ralph Anderson walked into the kitchen.
“Want to take out the garbage?” Marie asked.
“Okay,” Ralph said. “I’m gonna crank up the tractor for a few minutes and put a tarp over it. I’m worried it might freeze up on me.”
“Has plenty of antifreeze, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. Just makes me nervous. I got some wire fencing to put under the back wheels, get some traction. Maybe I’ll give it another try. I’d feel a lot better if I could get it outta that damn hole and put it in the barn.”
“Watch your language, Mr. Anderson,” she admonished.
He put on his parka, took the garbage bag and a heavy canvas tarp, went outside, and dropped the bag in a large can. He picked up the roll of fencing, stuffed it under his arm, and trudged out to the tractor.
***
Over half a mile away Woodbine saw him leave the house and head out toward the tractor. Waller was walking straight toward him. He set the stock of the rifle firmly into his shoulder and laid his cheek against it. Waller was a silhouette, framed against the lights from inside the farmhouse. Woodbine followed him through the scope, watched as he leaned down and rolled out what looked like wire under the rear wheels of the tractor. Then Waller climbed up on the seat of the tractor and cranked it up. Woodbine saw a swirl of exhaust belch from the rear of the machine. Waller stood at the controls and, looking toward the back of the tractor, started working the controls.
Woodbine decided on a head shot. If he went for the body mass, even a dead-on shot could be iffy in the dark.
Then Waller turned on the lights of the tractor.
He was a clearly outlined target now.
Woodbine aimed at the center of his head, but the tractor suddenly jumped and wobbled out of the hole. He was about to become a moving target. As the tractor jumped onto firm ground, Waller stopped it for a moment and looked over the rear end.
Woodbine clenched his fist, felt the trigger tighten, heard the muffled report.
Pumph.
Felt the .50 caliber kick his shoulder.
Saw Waller’s head snap back, watched as he fell against the control panel and then slid down, half in, half out of the rolling tractor. He charged another round into the chamber, leveled the rifle at Waller’s body, and fired a second shot, saw it rip into the parka.
Inside the house, Marie heard the tractor start up and, looking through the kitchen window, saw it lurch out of the hole. T
hen suddenly Ralph’s head seemed to jerk back and he fell over sideways. The tractor kept rolling toward the house.
She ran outside, saw Ralph hanging over the side of the tractor as it rumbled toward the house.
“No!” she screamed, and ran toward the tractor.
Behind her, she heard an explosion and turned to see the front tire of the pickup truck burst.
My God! Oh my God! What’s happening?
She was frozen with fear, watching as the tractor rolled on with nothing to stop it. Then she turned and ran toward the farmhouse. It kept coming, struck the rear porch, ripped through it, and smashed into the kitchen wall. The wall crumbled and the tractor slammed into the kitchen sink. The water pipes burst as it ground to a stop. Water showered from the broken pipes.
Marie Anderson rushed to the doorway and stared inside, saw her husband lying over the side of the tractor, water pouring down over his body, cleansing the blood that rushed from the hole over his right eye.
She started screaming uncontrollably. But there was no one to hear her.
BOOK THREE
CHAOS
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
—Pascal
CHAPTER 18
At the penthouse apartment shared by Jane and Martin, the Wild Bunch was gathering for a staff meeting that Vail had requested earlier in the day. Jane had called their favorite restaurant, Avanti!, mastered by Guido Signatelli, who hosted the political kingmakers, lawyers, and media near the city hall in a bistro with the tackiest decor and the finest Italian food in the Midwest. Guido had acquitted himself with elan, heaping a feast upon the dining room table. The apartment had been Jane’s before the two had decided to live together. It was spectacular, a two-story suite of rooms with a living room that soared to a spire on the top of one of the newest skyscrapers in the city. The living and dining rooms were faced with glass, affording both floors with a breathtaking panorama of the lake’s waterfront.
One of the three bedrooms had been allotted to Vail for an office. It was a replica of previous Vail offices, dominated by a large, cluttered oak table that served as his desk. Built-in bookcases were jammed with volumes of every description from classics to law books, usually with dog-eared bits of paper stuck between the pages marking long forgotten passages. On a small table facing the window was Vail’s old Smith-Corona electric typewriter. He eschewed computers, relying on his legendary secretary, Naomi Chance, to handle the electronics. Only Vail could find anything in the office, and he could put his hand immediately on even the most arcane notes, transcripts, and briefs from his twenty-some years of courtroom battles. Naomi had stayed with him after he stepped down as Attorney General of the state. The rest of his staff were still at loose ends, trying to decide what to do without the adrenaline assignments Vail picked for them. Defending drug dealers, rapists, and armed robbers or working in staid law firms defending equally felonious big business clients was no longer their style. They responded eagerly when he called them.
Those who were there were what was left of the brilliant group Connerman had dubbed the Wild Bunch.
“Young, in their early to mid-thirties, they were aggressive, cunning, adroit, and resourceful, and although extremely competitive, they were bonded by mutual respect, talent, and a strong appreciation for teamwork,” he had written. “Through the four or five years they had been together, each had become a specialist in certain areas and, like Vail, had become expert at walking the tightrope between statutory compliance and forbidden procedures, and they were not above taking risks if the payoff was high enough. They all loved the courtroom. As it was for Vail, for them the law was both a religion and a contest, and the courtroom was their Roman Colosseum, the arena where all their resourcefulness and cunning were adrenalized in the most intriguing of all blood sports.”
Naomi Chance was the den mother. She was a stunning, ramrod-straight black woman with high cheekbones and wide brown eyes, her black hair cut short and turning silver. She had earned her law degree at the age of forty-six, after working for Vail for twelve years, but chose to stay with him. She was indispensable. And she had recruited all of the Wild Bunch but one.
Shana Parver and Dermott Flaherty were a study in opposites who had changed their lives under similar circumstances. She had been brought up in a rich beachside community in Rhode Island; he was a product of Rochester back alleys, a tough, brawling street kid whose father had spent fifteen years on Death Row before dying of a heart attack, still appealing his death sentence.
She was not quite five-two, had a breathtaking figure, jet-black hair that was clipped short, hooded brown eyes, skin the color of sand. Vail had expected anything but the beautiful, diminutive, and aggressive legal wunderkind.
“I want a lawyer, I don’t want to give some old man on the jury a heart attack,” he said when he first saw her, to which Naomi had replied, “What do you want her to do, Marty, get a face drop?”
A rebellious hell-raiser who made straight A’s without cracking a book in high school, she had flunked out of an upscale New England prep school in her senior year. In the depths of depression she had decided to take her life in her own hands, became totally focused on school, and pursued her dream of becoming a lawyer. From that moment on she’d been an honor student, earning straight A’s in college and law school, where her hero was Martin Vail. She also had pursued a place in the Wild Bunch.
Flaherty had been an angry kid, living on the streets, where he was constantly in trouble for fighting, shoplifting, and picking pockets, until one night, sitting in solitary at the juvenile lockup, he made the same decision, deciding to rely on his only asset—his brain. Back on the street, he had scrounged for a living, earned pocket money brawling in illegal backroom bare-knuckle fights, and focused his anger on books. Like Parver, he became a straight A student, went through college on a combination of scholarships and minimum-wage jobs, then hitchhiked west until he ran out of money in Illinois and won a scholarship to the University of Chicago. Inspired to become a lawyer to help his father, he walked off with honors, a sly, tough legal eagle who was as much cop as lawyer. Like Parver, he had idolized Vail before ever meeting him.
Vail’s only personal choice was Ben Meyer, a specialist in fraud, embezzlement, computer crimes, and money laundering. A tall, lanky man with a long, intense face and a shock of black hair, he dressed impeccably and was a ferocious litigator. Meyer had been brought up in an Hasidic family. The Hasids were the strictest of Jews, mystics who observed strict adherence to ritual law, opposed nationalism and ritual laxity, and turned their back on the fine arts and the pursuit of historic knowledge. They wore their hair in earlocks, dressed in black, and fervently studied the Old Testament and the Kaballah. Ben bore the brunt of his fellow students, who saw him as a physical freak who had no TV, did not read popular books or listen to their favorite bands, and did not go to movies or dances.
Meyer’s father assumed he would become a rabbi. Until young Meyer was fourteen, he was a solemn, solitary boy who saw no alternative to his fate. One day he visited a friend after school. Left alone in the living room, he saw a book lying on the coffee table. It was a book of fiction, forbidden to his eyes. He circled it, staring over his shoulder as if he expected demons to attack him, and finally leaned over and fearfully opened the cover. He turned to the first page, and read:
In my younger and more vulnerable days my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
What advantages have I had? his inner voice screamed. Meyer could not put The Great Gatsby down. Suddenly the world opened before him, and he was intrigued, no mesmerized, by Fitzgerald’s tapestry of the twenties as it wove gangsters, playboys, and bootleggers into its theme of bittersweet and unrequited love.
Meye
r became a voracious reader, secretly poring over volumes of Hugo, Dickens, and Faulkner with themes he strongly related to: justice gone awry, bigotry, hatred, social malfeasance. When he finally informed his parents he was forsaking the ritual fervor of the Hasidic order to become a lawyer, he did so with panache, cutting off his ear-locks, getting a haircut, and arriving at his father’s home in jeans and a sweatshirt. He was promptly banished from the family by his father. Through the years that followed, his mother visited him often, bringing him homemade chicken soup and knishes, and secretly reveling in his success. His father never forgave him. He died three months before Meyer graduated from Yale at the head of his class.
His mother was proudest of him for the role he played in the Grand County case and its unraveling of political and environmental corruption in mid-America.
Harrison Latimore was the wild card of the Wild Bunch. He was its newest member and had acquitted himself well in Grand County as Flaherty’s backup man. His father had lost both legs in Vietnam and died in a veterans’ hospital. Latimore had become a lawyer to satisfy his father’s dream for him, although he planned eventually to join the FBI. Naomi, who did most of the “recruiting” for Vail, was attracted by his youthful good looks and casual air, which disarmed lawyers who faced him in court, and his skewed sense of humor, which concealed his voracious appetite for the jugular.
Another member of the Wild Bunch had been Harve St. Clair, a garrulous old-timer with the instincts of a wild predator and an encyclopedic memory. He had been killed two years ago in an automobile accident. A hunch player, St. Clair had a natural instinct for link analysis, putting together seemingly disparate facts and projecting them to a single conclusion. It was a trick Flaherty had learned from him and learned well.
But the man Vail would miss most was Abel Stenner, an ex-Chicago cop who had become Vail’s closest friend as well as his bodyguard. Stenner had suffered a stroke in the weeks just after the Grand trial concluded and was living with his divorced daughter in Trenton, New Jersey. Vail talked to him at least once a week, often seeking his wisdom and advice.
Reign in Hell Page 25
