It would be the last, he promised, squeezing the steering wheel until his hands were bloodless. Traffic on the Beltway zipped past him as he chugged along, keeping the needle right on 55 miles per hour to stay inconspicuous. He couldn’t afford to be stopped now. Events were wrapping up. The last act was ready to be played out.
One more stop and the miserable, fucking tragedy that had started with Detective Danny Garcia’s death was almost over.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Bloch bumped his car up onto the sidewalk at the end of I Street and parked. We got out and headed towards the waterfront. I had Bloch’s gun, a Glock 19 Compact, slipped into a back pocket and had untucked my shirt to cover it. I’d spent the better part of thirty years carrying a gun, but always in a holster, and the unfamiliar weight resting like a metal wallet felt completely wrong.
We hurried, taking three jogging steps for every two walking, to eat up the ground. We both had a sense of urgency. Caldwell might be casting off right now or heading for an airport. A shared anxiety also pushed us along. A lot of blood had been spilled so far and we knew we were in dangerous territory. That tight feeling between my shoulder blades was back, as though Caldwell had his gun reticle centered on my spine even now.
The wind was dead calm and the harsh smells of dock life lay heavily in the air. Fish, dirty water, diesel gas. A few people strolled along the wide sidewalk that paralleled the pier, already wiping sweat off their forehead and slowing down into a summer rhythm. Bloch and I eased our pace, trying to hide our nerves, acting like any other two Washingtonians out on an early lunch break.
“Caldwell’s boat is just past the mid-point of the marina,” I said, pretending I was talking about Senate hearings or the price of corn oil.
“Remind me of the name?”
“
The Loophole
,” I said. “Sail boat. Big forty-footer.”
We made room for a young mother and her three kids. One had an ice cream cone and the top ball of ice cream fell off onto the ground. The girl’s crying faded as we walked. Bloch said, “Chances that Caldwell is still here?”
“Slim to none,” I said. “If he’s good enough to plan all this, has been putting drug dealer cash in a Swiss bank account, and is willing to snipe two witnesses to stay clean, then he’s smart enough to get the hell out. Even if he has to leave his boat behind.”
Bloch made a face. “So we’re just cleaning up.”
“He can’t be more than twenty minutes ahead of us,” I said. “And he’s bound to have left something on the boat that’ll help us find him. Don’t sweat it.”
He grimaced and we walked on. Over the masts and bone-white hulls of yachts, I made out the mast of Caldwell’s boat peeking over the others. I reached out a hand and slowed Bloch down, pointed. He nodded and we moved closer cautiously, watching the deck and the cabin windows. After a minute, I tugged Bloch’s sleeve and motioned for him to fall back.
“What?”
“The boat’s lashed to the pier pretty tight, but if we’re not careful, he’ll feel us climb aboard.”
“If he’s there,” Bloch said.
“If he’s there,” I agreed. “I’m just saying, do it carefully. Don’t leap aboard like a pirate.”
He nodded and we headed down the dock once more, guns drawn. Some luck was with us, as
The Loophole
was moored stern-in, so we approached the back of the boat and its pleasant lack of portholes or windows. I crept forward, heel-to-toe, my eye on the lower cabin door. Nothing jumped out at me, nobody fired a cannon. Gingerly, I grabbed the gunwale and eased myself onboard, thinking weightless thoughts and trying to tell whether I’d set the boat rocking. Bloch followed, pulling himself onboard next to me without a sound. I motioned towards the cabin door. We could see all of the deck and the upper cabin, so it was the only place left. He nodded and moved to the right of it.
I crept closer and went down the three short steps to the miniature door. It was open a few inches. I stopped and listened. All I heard was the lapping of wake against the hull and the distant, deep-throated rumblings of inboard engines down the line. I swallowed, readjusted my grip and pushed the door open with one hand, gun aimed into space with the other.
And stopped.
Bob Caldwell, staring at me with eyes wide and white, was sitting on the bed with his legs splayed out in front of him like a little boy playing jacks. Kneeling on the bed with a thick forearm wrapped around Caldwell’s neck and holding a gun to his head, was Paul Garcia. He was bareheaded and dressed in the tan and sage camouflage BDUs of an infantry soldier. His eyes, small black dots like raisins in his face, drilled into me. The hand holding the gun was steady.
“Stop right there, Mr. Singer,” Paul said. His voice—calm and flat—sounded loud in the tiny cabin. His face and voice were uncolored by emotion, as though he were talking about tide tables or bus schedules. Small windows ringed the sleeping cabin, backlighting both of them and making it difficult to see details.
“Paul,” I said, just for something to say. “This isn’t what I was expecting.”
A thin smile danced on his lips, then disappeared. “No, sir. I imagine it isn’t.”
“But,” I said, slowly, piecing things together. “I guess I should’ve.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t figure any of it out, Mr. Singer.”
I nodded. “You knew about the moonlighting your dad was doing?”
“I knew.”
“Everything?”
“Yes,” Paul said. “My father wanted me to know before I went through the Academy.”
“And you figured Caldwell sold your dad out?”
“No sell—” Caldwell said, his words choked off as Paul tightened his arm.
“That’s not how it looks from here, Bob,” I said. It was time to talk about anything to keep Paul from pulling the trigger. I had a bead drawn—ineffectively—on the middle distance between Caldwell’s head and Paul’s. I’d been too surprised to bring my gun all the way onto the small target that was Paul’s head. And if I did it now, I was asking him to pull the trigger. This wasn’t some amateur who’d never fired a gun before. This was a trained soldier that had served time in battle. If he saw my gun start to move, he was going to respond. And probably not in a way that would make me feel good.
“Paul,” I said. “I’m going to lower my gun. Partly because I’m old and can’t hold my arm up anymore. But mostly because this is where we talk it out and keep you from doing anything you’ll regret.”
“Like quadruple homicide, sir?” he said. “I don’t want to sound flippant, but what the hell’s one more?”
“Rodriguez and Chillo make two,” I said, confused. “I guess I should’ve seen the Marine Corps training in the shot placement. But the deputy you shot was wearing a vest. He’ll have a bruise and some broken ribs, but he’s still alive. And you don’t have to shoot Caldwell to prove anything.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Paul said, “you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. It’s not about proving anything. It’s about exacting a price.”
Caldwell tried to speak, but Paul cut it off. The DEA agent blinked slowly, trying to get a breath. My gun was by my side and slowly, intentionally, I relaxed my body, trying to communicate my own calm to the young man.
“I’m working at a deficit, Paul,” I said. “I thought I had this figured out. I know your dad was freelancing, taking out the scum he knew the system would never touch. I’m pretty sure Johnson and Caldwell, here, were his gun buddies. At some point they didn’t want to do the vigilante thing for free and decided to help themselves to all that money that was floating around. And your dad didn’t like where it was going, so Caldwell hopped in bed with the Salvadoran
mara
to have your dad taken out.”
“It would be nice if it were all that neat and tidy,” Paul said, staring at me. “If it were just greed, you could almost understand it.”
“What else is there?”
“Something so much more basic,” he said. For the first time I saw emotion in his face, a glimpse of despair and anger that made his eyes squint. “Cowardice.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“None of them knew the
mara
was setting them up. They’d been knocking off drug dealers for years and thought they were too careful, too good, to get caught. They took money, all of them. It was dirty, but you start to question what’s clean after a while. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the two of them never believed as deeply as my father. And when things got too hot for them, that lack of belief, that lack of loyalty, that
cowardice
”—he tightened his grip on Caldwell’s head until the man’s face started to purple—“cost my father his life.”
I glanced at Caldwell’s face and back. “They didn’t set him up. They just…”
“Left him,” Paul finished. “As simple as that. They left him.”
The cabin was very close, uncomfortably warm. My mind raced, fitting things together. “You killed Johnson.”
“He invited me over. He wanted to tell me about it, try to get me to understand. How hard it was for him to just drive off, knowing my father was probably being beaten, being tortured. How it
killed
him, knowing my father was counting on his buddies to bail him out.”
“He didn’t know you’d already taken a run at him,” I said. Paul flinched.
“Okonjo was a mistake,” he said. He blinked rapidly and readjusted his grip on the gun, his fingers opening and closing on the butt. “I didn’t even know what I was doing. Or even if I was going to do it. It was nothing like Iraq, where they told you who the hell to kill. This was all on me. And I screwed up.”
“So don’t screw up again,” I said. I nodded towards Caldwell, who sat inert, looking back at me. “He’s going up the river for all kinds of things. You don’t have to put a bullet in his head to exact justice.”
Paul smiled and his face relaxed. “That’s exactly what they told my dad the first time he watched a gangbanger walk out of the courtroom. And that’s when he vowed that he’d see justice done, no matter what the price. Whatever else I am, I am my father’s son.
Esto es para Él
.”
Quick, so quick. Caldwell sensed it and his hands started to come up, but there were two loud
flacks
and Caldwell’s head exploded, red matter striking the cabin wall. I raised my gun, dropping into a kneeling position, but Paul reversed the pistol and put the end of the barrel in his mouth. At the same time he pulled the trigger, the glass from one of the small windows shattered and Bloch’s shot took him high in the left shoulder, knocking him flat onto the bed. I leapt forward, but I was too late for Caldwell, too late for Paul. Bloch’s shot would’ve stopped him, but it had come too late, as well. The two bodies slumped, coming to rest side by side on the cabin bed, like characters from a Greek tragedy. Footsteps pounded on the deck above, then Bloch appeared in the doorway a second later, his face distraught. He looked at the bed, then at me, a question forming.
With the stink of cordite filling my nose, the sound of the shots still ringing in my ears, I shook my head and put the gun away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Paul’s funeral was held at Quantico National Cemetery. I didn’t know all the intricacies of whether a felony murder compromised an honorable discharge. But Bloch talked to someone who talked to someone else and by the Friday following the shootout at Caldwell’s boat, I was standing a few rows back from a casket with a flag draped across it. I had skipped the church service, not wanting to intrude, but felt compelled to go to the gravesite. Libney Garcia was near the edge of the grave, leaning on the arm of an older woman, as they lowered the casket into the hole. She was a husk of a person, looking stunned and uncomprehending. I could only imagine how inconceivable it must seem that her son should survive four years in Iraq and die at home within a few months of her husband.
Amanda was to my left, Bloch to my right. I caught sight of Chuck Rhee standing towards the back, looking slick and modern in a designer suit and wrap-around shades. I nodded to him, he nodded back. About ten or twelve guys from Paul’s former Marine outfit were there, some in uniform, others dressed as civilians. They were somber, straight-backed, standing close together in solidarity. Besides Bloch and Rhee, there were no police officers, no reps from MPDC. An honor guard stood well off to one side, staring into the distance, their rifles held at their sides.
The service finished quickly. The guns were fired, the tri-corner flag was given to the mother, and a bugler played "Taps" from beyond the honor guard. The small crowd began to break apart. Bloch hurried over to speak to Libney, but her face was blank and she shrugged off his condolences. The elderly woman put an arm around her shoulders and turned her away from Bloch. He returned to where I was standing, his expression pinched.
“I tried,” he said.
“You did. But you can’t really blame her. A husband, a son, two friends. Or former friends. All gone.”
He watched them walk away. “I didn’t predict a happy ending, but this…this has been horrific.”
I grabbed his arm. There was a note in his voice I didn’t like. “This isn’t on you, okay? You did the best you could when no one else was doing anything. Maybe it ended up in the can, but we didn’t put it there.”
“Yeah,” he said, but sounded unconvinced. He shook his head, then turned to look at us. “You heading back?”
I nodded. “Maybe a stopover for a drink or a coffee. Want to join us?”
“No, thanks,” he said. “I have to think about this some more.”
He shook my hand, nodded to Amanda, and walked toward the entrance to the cemetery. Rhee was already gone. I gave Bloch a head start, then went the same way, Amanda next to me. We picked our path around wilting flowers and headstones.
“I’m sorry about all this, Marty,” she said after a moment.
“Me, too,” I said. “I’d call it a waste, but that wouldn’t even begin to cover it.”
“What happens now? Legally, I mean.”
“Who knows. There’s no one left to prosecute,” I said. “A bunch of cases, old and new, get closed. Arlington PD won’t be too happy to have Torres’s dirty laundry aired in public, but they’ll be able to balance that out with the fact that two members of a notorious gang are off the streets.”