Final Victim (1995) (2 page)

They had insisted he go "stress related" until this psychological exam was complete. He suspected he might have another beef coming, because two days before, in a frustrated moment, he had slugged an Internal Affairs SAC named Victor "Brute" Kulack in South Beach, Miami. It had been a stupid thing to do and Lockwood regretted it immediately, but the argument and a seething anger had escalated so fast he couldn't control it. He was becoming more and more puzzled by his own behavior. It was undermining him with his superiors. But more important, it was altering his opinion of himself. He was no longer certain of what he stood for.

"You say you don't resent these sessions, but your body language says otherwise," Dr. Smythe said, retrieving another yellow ball and rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, before ditching it surreptitiously on the carpet beneath his chair.

"If my body is talking to you, Doctor, maybe we need to change places." Lockwood smiled.

"Evasive response," Smythe said into his tape recorder. They sat in silence and regarded each other like enemy generals staring across the desolate battleground of Lockwood's career in law enforcement.

"Are you angry because you're a child of three institutions?" Smythe pushed on.

"Depends on which institutions you're talking about."

"I was referring to the Materwood Home for Boys and then the St. Charles Academy and, to a lesser degree, the Marine Corps."

"Oh . . ." Lockwood said noncommittally.

"There were others?"

"I was briefly in the institution of marriage, but I got kicked out," he said, remembering Claire with a sharp pang of anxious desperation. Claire had been his life's most damaging failure. She had been the onl
y o
ne to bring him softness, and he had wasted that valuable warmth, squandered it, wounding both of them with his selfishness.

"We'll get to that," Smythe said. "Could it be because you were raised by institutions, you have a latent hostility toward them, and that's what is causing this self-destructive behavior?"

Lockwood leaned back on the couch and laced his fingers behind his head. *

"Well, lemme give that some thought. . . ." He closed his eyes and let some time pass. He'd learned that during an IA head test, you had to say as little as possible. Information was power. This wasn't about Lockwood's mental health; it was about getting him suspended. The less they had, the less they could use. At the same time, he had to capture Smythe and try to get him to sign the FFD slip, stipulating he was fit for duty. He listened to the desk clock ticking and kept his eyes closed. It was a humid April, Washington, D
. C
., day, but the building was freezing cold. An unrelenting air conditioner hissed at them. In truth, he had hated the Materwood Home for Boys. The fathers had been strict and the food stringy. He'd been small for his age and had been picked on, but he had learned to fight at Materwood--something that came in very handy at St. Charles a few years later.

"What do you remember?" Dr. Smythe prodded. "This won't work if you don't participate."

"Oh . . . Sorry, I was just going back to Materwood in my head * * remembering the place. I guess they did all they could for us. They were underfunded. We had okay sports, but the equipment was all hand-me-down stuff from the public school system. The bats and everything were cracked, and we hadda wrap 'em tight with tape to use 'em. . . ." He was talking with his eyes closed, chewing up the hour.

"What am I supposed to do with all this bullshit, John?" Dr. Smyth
e f
inally said. "Am I supposed to just sign off on you and pass you along till you turn into someone else's field disaster? 'Cause if that's what you're planning, I can outlast you. Shit, man, I can have you lounge on that couch until your beard is gray."

John knew, eventually, he had to give this guy something. The problem was, there was some truth in what Dr. Smythe had said. Lockwood had been raised by institutions. The Materwood orphanage was bad, but St. Charles Academy had been a dungeon . . . a piss-hole full of social mutants. Boys with men's bodies who'd been deformed by relatives, demeaned by experience, and destroyed by their environment. He remembered the day he'd walked through the gates at St. Charles. He'd been too small and looked too easy. Fifteen years old . . . trying to saunter, trying to look tough, bouncing on his toes, rolling his shoulders. He was terrified and trying not to look it.

"Hey, tight-ass. You gonna be my weenie woman," an eighteenyear-old black inmate named Dwight Jackson yelled through the yard fence at him. Everybody at St. Charles, including the guards, called Dwight "Crazy-D." He was six-two and weighed over two hundred pounds. He had already been reprocessed by the adult criminal court and was awaiting transfer to the state pen at Joliet. He looked to John like he'd been chiseled out of purple onyx. John tried to glare fiercely at him, but Crazy-D wasn't buying.

"You my chick with a dick," Crazy-D yelled. "You're mine, sweetmeat."

The students at St. Charles slept in dormitories, and somehow it had been arranged for John to have the bunk right above Dwight Jackson. John knew that as soon as the lights were out, he would be pulled down and his head buried under a pillow. . . . His arms would be held and he would be raped by the huge inmate. This was something he was determined to prevent, even if he had to get wrecked in the process. At nin
e o
'clock, just before the trusty pulled the power switch on Building 12, Crazy-D patted the top bunk. "Dis be de trick bunk. Jump your curvy ass up der. We gonna get to it soon as de Jelly Roll call lights-out," he said, grinning, exposing four gold teeth.

John had left his shoes on and, saying nothing, jumped up onto the top bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. Then, while Crazy-D moved around the room, laughing and high-fiving the brothers, John quietly pulled the heavy, leather-soled brogans off his feet. When the lights were turned out, he waited.

"Get your ass down here," Crazy-D whispered from the bunk below. "I got a instrument needs playing." And then he kicked the mattress above him, where John was lying.

Without saying a word, John Lockwood dropped down and, with his leather shoe in his right hand, he started to pound the larger boy in the face. He broke Dwight's nose with the first blow. The second filled his eyes with blood. Before the startled eighteen-year-old could even sit up, it was almost over. Then, with both hands laced together, John swung with all his might at Dwight's jawline. Gold teeth flew out of Crazy-D's mouth, hitting the floor and bouncing like ejected brass. In seconds, Dwight was screaming in pain. When the lights went on and guards ran in, John Lockwood was standing triumphantly over his huge opponent.

"No motherfucker in this place ever lays a hand on me!" John yelled, spewing out rage and unused adrenaline. The guards dragged him out of the dormitory. He did three weeks in lation and three years in St. Charles, but nobody ever tried to molest him again.

One week after being released from St. Charles, John was busted in a G-ride. Rather than go to the Big House for Grand Theft Auto, he chose the Marine Corps. The Marines were his third parental substitute. He ended up, strangely enough, as an MP. He found it more than
a l
ittle weird to be wearing a badge instead of looking at one, but five years later, when he mustered out, he had achieved his GED and the rank of Tech Sergeant. Some buddies had signed applications for U
. S
. Customs, and he had more or less gone along with them because he didn't have anything better to do. That had been ten years ago.

"You have to look at the reason all of this is happening to you, John," Smythe said, slogging on. "You pretty much do things the way you want. I think you should take a look at why that is . . . why you seem to relish breaking the rules."

Lockwood nodded. "Okay." His sinuses were beginning to ache, so he pulled out a small nasal inhaler he'd bought at the drugstore, clamped it over his nose, and inhaled the vapor, immediately clearing his sinuses. "Allergic to something," he explained.

The little alarm clock on Smythe's desk rang. The session was over. "How about two o'clock Tuesday?" the doctor said, looking over his half-glasses at the calendar.

"Sounds good," Lockwood chirped.

He left by the side door and found himself standing in the chilly marble-floored corridor. He was cold, and it wasn't just the frigid office building. John Lockwood could hear his own blood pumping and feel his heart sinking, and he wasn't sure why.

His beeper went off. It was the DOAO's office. He found a pay phone in the lobby and called in.

Laurence Heath was one of the old breed of Customs officers, a no-nonsense commander who wanted the good guys to win. He'd worked his way up from a field office in Hays, Kansas, to become Special Agent in Charge for Arizona. Any supervr running operations in a border state like Arizona, where the smuggling action was constant, was generally considered to be a hot shoe. The border was no place for fuck-ups. After ten years in Arizona, Heath had recently been promoted to Director of All Operations, which made him the second highest officer in the Service. He had also been John Lockwood's boss in D
. C
. on Operation Girlfriend.

That operation was one of the biggest drug busts in Southern Florida's history. Lockwood had been the Special Agent in Charge and had quarterbacked the case from the time an ex--baggage handler named Ray Gonzales had wandered into the Southern District office. Ray told him that he'd quit his job at Global Airlines because a lot of the baggage handlers at Miami International Airport had been opening targeted luggage from Central American flights and removing drugs or cash before they got to the Customs shed. Lockwood had convinced Gonzales to become the key informant on the bust. Drug dealers had their own universal code words when talking on open phone lines, and since airplanes were often called "girlfriends," Lockwood named his sting "Operation Girlfriend," and had proceeded to work it for almost eighteen months.

When the bust went down, Customs agents rounded up almost a hundred airport baggage handlers and skycaps, as well as two dirty Customs agents. At the last minute, Lockwood's long-awaited airport sting was kangarooed by an Internal Affairs SAC named Victor Kulack. Ku-lack had moved too soon and tried to arrest the two Customs agents. One of them got away and made a phone call. The bust climaxed in a deadly shoot-out. Ray Gonzales, who had become Lockwood's good friend, ended up in critical condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Dade County, Florida. Lockwood filed a complaint against Kulack for jumping the bust, and before they left Florida, he ran into him in a bar. When Kulack called Ray Gonzales "just another Cuban grease stain," Lockwood lost it and swung at him, knocking him out with one punch.

Now Kulack was upstairs, seething, on the Internal Affairs floor of the Washington, D
. C
., Customs building. Lockwood had been wondering what Kulack would do and figured the call from the Director of All Operations was the other shoe dropping.

He got off the elevator on the third floor and moved along the green-carpeted corridor. The offices were all spacious and decorated with oak furniture; very nice for civil servants. All of the men and women on this floor were in the Senior Executive Service (SES), Assistant Commissioners or above, and made their living passing paper and begging the appropriate Congressional committees to improve funding. The furniture had been purloined from a Senate office building after its renovation two years ago. As far as Lockwood could see, oak furniture and a full dental package were the best perks in SES.

Lockwood could hear Heath before he saw him.

"Where the fuck is he? I said forthwith!"

Heath's assistant, Bob Tilly, was seated at an oversized secretarial desk outside of Heath's office. He shot Lockwood a smile weak as Oriental tea and waved him in.

Laurence Heath looked like the commander of a tank division. He had a bull neck, with rolls of fat and muscle coming off the back of his shaved skull. He was popular in the Customs Service, because he was willing to downfield-block for his men. Through the large window behind him, Lockwood could see across Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. A cloud-drenched April sun was struggling to get through. The sky looked like oatmeal.

"Are you ever gonna stop wearing your balls outside your trousers?" Health said, without preamble. His bright-blue eyes and huge shoulders glowered.

"Larry, I don't know what Victor Kulack told you, but you can bet there's another side to it."

"He's upstairs, about to paper you for failure to correctly supervise an informant."

"That's bullshit."

"Shut up, John." Silence hung like a velvet curtain. "He says there's five thousand dollars missing from Operation Girlfriend's petty cash account." Heath held up a Customs Internal Affairs folder and waved it at Lockwood like a booking sheet. "He says you and your informant, Ray Gonzales, were dipping into that account to buy drugs, and that you put those drugs on the street to build your pedigree with the river scum down there."

"That's a lie. The money went to buy information. We were trying--" "I said shut up. I'm not through. Stop talking for a change." "Okay . ."

"Then I get it in the halls that you knocked this asshole through a wall in a bar fight in South Beach before you came back up here."

"Kulack tried to steal the bust, sir. He jumped the gun. Got two guys shot."