Don't Look Twice (24 page)

T
he phone continued to ring.

Hauck just sat there staring at Warren.

His brother just shook his head. “I told you to take the job. I tried to get you away from it, Ty.
God damn it!
I did everything I could.” His gaze was hollow and, maybe for the first time in his whole life, completely guileless. Sincere. “I tried to warn you. Everyone tried to warn you, Ty.
Why couldn't you just take the fucking job?
”

“What have you gotten yourself into, Warren?”

His brother slammed his fist against the floor. “You stubborn, stupid, pigheaded shit!”

The ringing stopped. Hauck just continued to look at him. The anger was now gone. His gaze grew glassy with tears.

“I'm your brother.” Hauck shook his head. “What the hell have you become?”

“What have I become?”
Warren rubbed his swollen lip and glared at him. “I am what I've always been, Ty. You think I'm so different from every other fucking guy in this world. Just 'cause it doesn't fit into your neat little view of the world.

“You know what I wanted. I wanted to be in that room with the big boys. In the same boardrooms, in their clubs. You think
we're a part of that world, coming where we came from? So I did what I always wanted, Ty. I found my way in the room.
My way.
I rubbed my hands a little bit in the dirt.”

“
In the dirt?
You got filth all over you, Warren. I'm your brother.”

“
And I tried to protect you, goddamn it!
I did! Just like at the lake. Don't look at me like I'm some kind of monster. So what are you going to do, arrest me?” He put out his wrists. “You going to arrest me for that, Ty?”

“You think you won't be next?” Hauck looked at him. “You think they won't kill you just like they killed Pacello? Just like they tried to do to me? You think I can just let you walk out of here? That things are going to somehow find their way back to normal?”

“No…”
Warren sank his head back against the wall and shook it from side to side. “I know things will never go back to normal, Ty. You just have to believe me. Foley, that job, all I was trying to do was just protect you. To give you a way out. I wish I could turn back the clock. I wish I could've been a better brother. I wish I could've been a better husband to Ginny, a dad to my kids. I wish I could be a lot of things, Ty…

“But I am who I am. There's no big white line you cross, Ty. I've always been the same person who you came upon when you opened that door in the basement room. I do favors for people. I smooth things out. I get things done. And sometimes, these things…” He shrugged sullenly. “Sometimes they just get larger, Ty. That's all. All I tried to do was get you out.”

“They're gonna kill you, Warren. Casey, Raines…Your friends. For whatever they're hiding. Just like Pacello. They're gonna tie you to all their dirty work and not let you walk away.”

“You know me, guy. I always find a way…”

“Not anymore,” Hauck said. “And there's Ginny. Kyle and Sarah.”

“You just don't understand, Ty…” Warren stared at him. “There's no way I'm going to spend the rest of my life in jail.”

Hauck shook his head. “You think I can just walk out of here now, Warren? And things are just going to pick up where they left off?”

“So what are you going to do? Slap the cuffs on me? Take me in? On what grounds? Because I have ties to some influential friends? Because Tom Foley is on my speed dial? None of it ties me to shit. I'm a lawyer, Ty, remember? Go ahead, tell me the charge.”

Hauck knew there
was
no charge. “They'll kill you too, Warren.”

“Go on, get out of here,” Warren said, “leave me alone…” His eyes regained a measure of composure. “I wasn't lying, you know…when I said those things at your house. I did try to protect you. I want you to believe me on that. I just couldn't get it done. You're a good man, Ty. Just let me be who I am. Just know, nothing was ever supposed to happen to you. That was always a part of the deal. That was the basis for everything. I swear.”

“What's this all about, Warren?”

“What is it ever about?” He sniffed. “It's all about power, Ty.”

Politics. Casey. “Everything's always about power, Warren.”

“No.” His brother smiled. “Not that kind of power…” There was a look in his eye, both fraternal and resigned. “Read the papers. It's everywhere. It's right in front of you. Now get out. Please. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to have dragged you into this, Ty. I'm sorry to disappoint you.”

“If I leave here, I can't help you, Warren.”

Warren smiled at him. “Since when have you ever been able to help me, Ty?”

Hauck got up. His brother wiped the blood and mucus off his face. Hauck left him leaning against the wall.

W
arren remained there, blood on his shirt, his eye throbbing, long after Ty had left. He knew he had made a mess of everything. A mess of whatever hope had once guided the arc of his life. He had crossed the lines of every oath he had ever taken. As a lawyer. As a husband.

A dad.

Over the years, that line had blurred so many times he no longer recognized it.

He had an urge to just fly. He had to figure a way out, and up there, the world always seemed clearer to him. He knew Ty wouldn't let up. He needed a way out. To get Ginny and the kids clear. And not to end up in the Witness Protection Program somewhere. He doubted if his family would even go along with him.

Yeah, that needs a whole lot of work too.

Okay, think…You've always landed on your feet. You hit a drive into the woods, you find the angle to the green. You fly without instruments, you find the path through the clouds.

So where's the path now?

Ty was right.
He suddenly realized
he
was the weak link now.
He
was the exposure. Even though Casey's man had come
to him first and explained in the vaguest way how he needed something done.

All those deals, Warren. The fancy house, the clubs…It's payback time now. The senator needs a little favor in return,
Wachman had said.

At first it horrified him. What they were asking. He laughed. He thought it was a joke.

A fucking federal attorney…

But no, it wasn't a joke. It was serious. Serious as cancer.
You set it up, Warren
.
You find someone to do the job. Just this once,
he said. He thought where he could go. He didn't know those types of people. Then he got the idea. First, he broached it to Turner, on the casino's board, who was deeper into Casey than he.

That led to Raines.

It was just one time, he kept telling himself. One more little line to cross. Then it would be over. Ty was never supposed to be involved. That had just been a freak. He had told Raines to take care of it. The fewer details the better.

How did he know they would choose to do it right in the middle of his brother's goddamn town?

His eyes filled up with hot, shameful tears.
Where, Warren, where is the angle through the clouds?

Where are the lines now?

Warren heard a noise. From outside, the front door opening. He figured it was Ty again. He couldn't just leave him like that! What would he say to him now? How could he explain? How could he make things right?

Warren mashed the tears against his cheeks. “You back?”

“Yeah, Warren, we're back.”

Two people stared at him in the doorway. One had a long
scar running down the side of his face. The other, in a baggy sweatshirt and Mets cap, pointed a gun.

“Jesus, hombre,” the guy said, shaking his head. “You don't fuckin' look so good, Mr. Hauck!”

Warren was surprised. He always thought if this would come he would be taken with fear.

And now he didn't feel any. In fact, he felt lighter.
Free,
finally.

Almost like he was flying.

H
auck drove out of town, heading back toward I-84 and Greenwich.

He had no idea what to do. He knew his brother was deeply involved. That was clear. Warren knew where the pieces led. But what could Hauck do? Arrest him? Throw him in a cell? Hand his own brother over to the FBI?
With what?
Warren was right, Vern would laugh in his face.

He had nothing on him.

Seeing Foley's name on that phone tore a hole in Hauck's heart. He thought of the slick, polished manner in which the executive had made his offer to him. His familiarity with Hauck's cases and personal history. Dropping in how his old boss at the NYPD had recommended him.

You've been on our radar for a while, Ty…

All the way up here, since finding Warren's name on those Pequot Woods documents, Hauck prayed it was all just some big coincidence. Something he was reaching for in the vacuum of no other answers.

Now he knew. Warren had set it up.

Set
him
up.

Now he had to figure out what his brother knew.

It all came back to Raines. He could arrest him. Put him and Warren in a room. Let the chips fall where they may.

Hauck flicked on the radio. Desperate to clear his thoughts. The news. There had been an avalanche somewhere in the Rockies. Two off-trail skiers killed. Another suicide bomber had blown up a market outside of Baghdad.

But his mind wouldn't clear.

Instead, he was brought back to how the road growing up had made them so entirely different. The reckless, self-destructive choices Warren had made.

The sight of leaving him there. Broken. In tears.
Why couldn't you just take the lucking job? Ty…

His entire life had always been on a collision course with ruin.

It's all about power, Ty…

Hauck was about to switch stations when another story came on.

“In local news, Richard Scayne, the Greenwich industrialist accused of making improper payments to secure no-bid contracts for Iraq, is set to go on trial in federal court in Hartford in February. Scayne's power generator unit, SRC, has been implicated in payments to Republican figures to obtain a two-billion-dollar contract for Nova 91 power generators in Iraq. The September suicide of Lieutenant Colonel Mark Shafton, a member of the U.S. Army's General Purchasing Office, has been linked to the scandal. Scayne, in deteriorating health, has maintained he cannot stand up to the rigors of a protracted trial…”

Hauck went to turn it off when a thought suddenly wormed into his mind.

Power,
Warren had said.
Not that kind of power, Ty…

Generators.

He almost swerved off the road.

Scayne.
Richard Scayne was going on trial for illicit payoffs related to his generator unit.

Nova 91s.

Hauck's head throbbed.

Scayne and Casey were tied at the hip. Scayne had an interest in the Pequot Woods. Casey was on the board there as well.

Hauck's pulse began to race with the beat of something he did not fully understand but was slowly fitting together.

Generators.

Warren had done work for each of them. Scayne's trial was set to proceed out of the federal offices in Hartford. Where Sanger had worked out of. Hauck had never fully followed that through.
Why would he?
Josephina Ruiz had diverted his attention. Then the trail to the casino. The motives all seemed so clear at first.

Look twice.

Scayne had made payments to Republican coffers to gain a two-billion-dollar contract with the Coalition Provisional Authority. Everything was for sale over there. The purchasing officer in the Pentagon had taken his own life. All connected to Scayne's case. He was doing whatever he could not to go to trial. Hauck's brain ached—who would handle such a thing for him? And Casey? Someone who owed them. For licenses granted, maybe. Favorable tax arrangements. Someone who could handle that sort of thing.

The Pequot Woods.

You have no idea what kind of forces are at work here.

The casino owed them. Raines was just the guy who was paying them back.

And who would someone like Scayne have come to? So as
not to get his own hands dirty? Someone to act as the intermediary. Someone who owed him. The person to put it all together.

You don't know how many ways I've sold myself, Ty…

The entrance to the highway was just ahead.

Hauck stopped at a light, his whole body pulsating.

He spun the Explorer around.

H
e threw a top hat on the roof of the Explorer and sped back to Warren's office.

Weaving through traffic, Hauck suddenly felt something different toward him—no longer the swell of anger or disgust, but pity. Pity at how his brother's own misdirected actions had overtaken him. He'd lost his footing, his family. The shame on his face was clear.

Still, Hauck couldn't help but think about how he had known this person every day of his life.

Honking his way through the lights, Hauck made it back into the center of town, cut the sharp right onto High Street. Warren's Range Rover was still in the lot. He was about to pull up behind it when his eyes fixed on the black Jeep parked on the street.

It sent a jolt of caution running through him.

Not just because of the darkened windows and jacked-up wheelbase, or that it hadn't been there minutes before.

It was what he saw on the rear bumper—the cross of red and dark blue. He had seen it before.

On the rust-colored Jetta Annie had spotted next to her Dumpster.

Dominican colors.
DR-17
.

God damn you, Warren, I told you they wouldn't let you walk away…

Hauck drove past Warren's office. He pulled up down the street, in front of a sleepy colonial, two houses away. He reached inside the glove compartment and took out his gun. The ammo clip on the Sig was full. He jammed it back in. No time to call for backup.

If they were in there for what Hauck thought they were there for, he might already be too late.

There was no sign of anyone still inside the Jeep. Hauck jumped out of the Explorer and hurried over to the side of Warren's office. No chance he could go through the front door. Anyone inside would hear. He had no idea how many there were. But he knew he had to move.

Hunched over, Hauck ran behind the Range Rover to the rear of the blacktopped driveway. A picket fence and gate led to the backyard. Hauck stepped over it, drawing alongside the house. He blamed himself for not taking Warren with him the first time. Holding the gun to his chest, he looked in through a window.

It was someone's office. Empty. Probably one of Warren's associates. The office door was closed. Hauck couldn't see past it to what was inside.

No way they're going to let him just walk away…

He crept around to the back of the house. There was a small yard back there, fenced in by tall hedges. A wrought iron table was set up with five chairs. Warren's office was on the far end off a slate-tiled patio. Hauck spotted the French doors.

Clinging to the side of the house, he moved down the patio toward it.

There were voices through the glass now, coming from in
side. Sweat began to stream down Hauck's temples. His heart rate started to climb. Hauck peered in.

He saw Vega.

He recognized the gang leader instantly. His head was shaved. He had on a midlength denim jacket and black jeans. He was swiveling back and forth in Warren's desk chair like a kid in his father's office, gesturing, enjoying himself, orchestrating whatever was going on. Hauck saw a gun tucked between his legs.

Vega's accomplice had Warren pressed up against the wall. Hauck watched as the man teasingly dragged the muzzle of his gun along his brother's face. They were making him pay, punishing him, not just carrying out what they were here to do. Warren just stared back, glassy, without emotion, seemingly resigned to whatever fate was about to take place.

Vega began to chuckle. “Too bad you just couldn't take it, man. Took it out on yourself. 'Cause that's the way it's gonna look.” He nodded to his accomplice. Hauck saw him cock his gun and finally jam it against Warren's temple.

His brother shut his eyes.

Now.
Hauck kicked in the doors.

Glass shattered over the floor. He picked out the guy on Warren first, who spun, aiming wildly, as Hauck squeezed on the Sig—four times—blotches of red exploding against the folds of sweatshirt gray.

The man toppled back against a bookshelf, leather volumes and mementos crashing down on him.

Hauck shifted toward Vega, who spun the chair across the floor and leaped out, fumbling for his gun, which had fallen to the floor.

“Don't!”

He was trapped, frozen in midmotion, his desperate eyes
locking on Hauck, who stood with his gun trained on him with both hands.

“Don't move a muscle,” Hauck said. “Don't even breathe, Vega. You must know how little I would care if I had to blow you away.”

The gang leader held himself there, crouched, his gun to the side. His finger tensed around the trigger guard. He looked at Hauck, a smile creasing his lips, and straightened up. “Surprised to see you again, bro.”

“Why?
You said to come see you. You said you'd give me a lesson, how one and one didn't add up to two.” The guy had murdered Sanger. Probably been responsible for the hit on Kramer too. Not to mention the charge he had beaten for shooting it out with a state trooper.

Hauck fixed, steadfast, on him.
“So, I'm here…”

Vega glanced narrowly at him, then at Warren. Then he nodded with the resigned state of someone who was about to end it here. He blew Hauck a kiss. “So we are,
maricón
.” He nodded. “So we are.”

There was a gleam in Vega's eye. His finger curled around the trigger.

Hauck shook his head.
“Don't.”

Vega righted his arm, the gun darting at Hauck sideways. Hauck squeezed and the Sig recoiled in three sharp retorts. The rounds ripped into the gang leader's chest. He fell back against the couch, his gun turning toward Warren. Hauck squeezed off three more rounds until Vega landed upright against the wall, a glassy defiance in his eyes, and slid down slowly, a dark smear of crimson against the cream-colored wall.

A weight seemed to free itself off Hauck and he slumped wearily against the desk.

“Ty…”

He turned to Warren. “You alright?”

“You shouldn't have stopped him, Ty.” Warren shook his head and fell, head in hands, to the floor. “You just should've let it happen.”

“There's a part of me that wishes I had…” Hauck went over and collapsed against the wall next to his brother. He put his hand on his knee. “The other part said Pop would wipe the floor with me.”

Warren laughed, his face riddled more with shame than joy. “You were never supposed to be involved, Ty. You have to believe that. It was supposed to be just one time. One fucking time…I told myself I could just look away. In a million years I never guessed they would carry it out right there in town.”

“Raines?”

Warren hung his head and nodded.

“And what about above him? Scayne? Casey had arranged this big Iraq reconstruction contract for his generator division, right? That's what you meant when you said, ‘Not that kind of power'? It was Sanger who was assigned to handle the case. That's what this was all about, the killings—
payoffs
? Two corrupt fat cats who scratched each other's back protecting themselves.”

Warren put his head back against the wall and nodded. “They came to me to get the casino to carry out the hit. Casey had been running interference for them for years. It was all a game.” He shut his eyes. “You have no idea how much I owed these people, Ty.”

“And Kramer? That was just another smoke screen, wasn't it? To back up the appearance that it was all a gambling scam?”

Warren flattened his lips. “Plan B.”

Hauck shook his head disgustedly. “Plan B…”

They sat there for a while. The weight of everything sinking in. Tears made their way down Warren's cheeks.

Hauck pulled his brother's face to his shoulder. He had no idea what to do. Arrest him? Send his own brother away for the rest of his life? Destroy whatever was left of their family?

Warren took in a deep breath. “So, partner, what happens now?”

“Now…”
Hauck pulled himself up. He looked at Warren slumped there and held out his hand. Hesitantly, Warren reached for it.

“Now we get Raines.”

“That won't be that easy,” Warren said. “Vega's dead. I was never privy to much of the details. It's his word against mine. You understand I don't exactly make the most compelling witness, Ty.”

He was right. The people who had carried out the acts were all dead. None of the murder weapons could be tied to Raines. Whatever he and Warren had discussed, it was now just Warren's word against his. Any lawyer worth a lick would cut it to shreds.

Hauck pulled his brother up. “I know how.”