Middle Man (23 page)

R
oger Clark, or somebody posing as Roger Clark, was in the second grave. Ethan groaned. I was tired and hungry. I threw down the shovel and sat at the edge of the grave. Our dance was too static. Ethan stayed more than shovel length away.

“Y'know, no one will ever find all the money Bannion put in the ground. I don't know how many graves he seeded, but I think it's a lot. None with big numbers, but I bet it all adds up.”

“C'mon, it's gonna get dark.”

“I'm just telling you because I want it on the record that I'm not digging them all.”

I went to work on the middle grave. Ethan became quiet. The coming decision was weighing on him. Just standing there and watching had to be tiring him out, too. The sun had rolled across the lake, so Ethan moved with his back to the hill, facing the lake. I slowed my pace. I wish I could say it was some brilliant strategy, but it was really dread. I did not know what was going to be in the grave. I did not know what decision Ethan would make.

“There's no money down there, Ethan. Let's bet on it.”

“Why should I?”

Why should he?

Ethan watched. The sun and the lake seemed perfectly still. I was the only thing moving. After a while, Ethan said, “Where do you think we should go next?”

“Bannion gave me lots of names, Ethan. We could stay busy for a long time.”

I decided to go faster and I hit the top of the box in just five minutes. Ethan hopped up at the sound of the shovel striking the wood. He wanted to come close to get a look, but I glanced up at him and that made him cautious.

I didn't mind, because I was looking at Sampson and Hanrihan standing above him on the hill.

Sampson walked ahead of Hanrihan, which I did not like to see. When she was just a few feet above Ethan, she spoke up. “Drop your gun. Do not turn around.”

Everyone played their part in the dance: drop gun, hands up, drop shovel, turn around. I pointed out to Sampson that Ethan still had a gun in his belt. Sampson and Hanrihan came down to flat ground. Sampson picked up the gun Ethan dropped and put it in her belt. She came behind him and reached around and took the other gun from him. That move looked wrong. Ethan let her take it too easily. I was not happy.

Hanrihan noticed it, too. Sampson moved away from Ethan and said, “Which one is his?”

“The Beretta,” Ethan said. “Marines . . .”

“Who is this guy?” Hanrihan said. I was very unhappy.

Sampson looked at the gun in her hand, put it in her belt, took the other gun out, transferred it to her right hand. I watched it all. Hanrihan watched it all. It was the last thing he ever watched. She shot him in the head. Hanrihan staggered before he went down. His left foot stepped sideways and into the first grave. His other foot stayed out. His body lay across the grave like a broken plank. His gun fell from his hand on the ground on the strip between the graves where I stood.

“Why'd you bring him here?” Ethan sounded like a husband who just found out the neighbors were coming over for drinks.

“The lieutenant had to shoot him. And he has. Hello, Lieutenant. Surprised?”

“Surprised.”

“You guessed right and you guessed wrong.”

“We fooled him this time,” said Ethan. He went up to her and kissed her on the cheek and took one of the guns from her belt. He turned to me. “We didn't know you would help us like that, telling Amy where you were going.”

“Amy.” Ethan had a way with women. “So all you had to do was let Hanrihan and me dislike each other and that gave you an excuse to track me.”

“That's it,” she said.

“But why bother with me at all? Why not take it in a different direction that could never lead back?”

“That was Victor's idea. He thought that FBI pressure would help him turn you.”

“Every little bit,” Ethan said.

“Get Hanrihan's gun. We have to kill him with that one so it looks like they shot each other,” Sampson said.

“First let's see what's in the box,” Ethan said.

“We can open it ourselves, without him.”

“We don't shoot him yet. We might need him.”

Sampson looked at him and took her time about her answer. She was as deliberate and thoughtful there beside the graves, holding a gun, as she had been questioning me in an office or hotel room. “I don't think we will need him. If there is money in the grave, then we've got what we want and we don't need him. If there is no money, it's safe to assume there is no money in any graves. At least none that we can get to. The Marines are digging up graves right now. They're way ahead of us. This is pretty much it.”

She was right. I wished she would have spent more time explaining it so I could figure out a way to grab the gun near my feet.

Ethan did not like the argument. He shook his head and grimaced. The decision was being forced on him. “I don't know. There's definitely more. He even said so. Didn't you?”

“I did. There is.”

“C'mon, Victor,” Sampson said. He was Victor to her.

“Ethan, you two keep discussing this, I'm going to starve to death.”

“Keep quiet.”

“I'm going to start digging, Ethan.”

Sampson was puzzled. “Who is Ethan?” she said.

“Ethan Williams. Didn't you know?”

“Dammit.”

Sampson was controlled and methodical and she would get to that later. “Pick up the gun and let's kill him and get going.”

“No, let's wait on that,” Ethan said.

Sampson said, “I'll do it.” She took one step and Ethan shot her. She fell and she shot him. I dove for Hanrihan's gun and faced Ethan first, but he had dropped his gun. He was wounded in his right arm. Still on the ground, I turned and kicked Sampson's gun from her hand. She was alive, but had been hit in the gut. She tried to speak but couldn't make anything more than low sounds. Ethan was moving to pick up his gun. I shot next to him. He stopped.

I hopped up and faced him. This time I was not going to let him get away. “Get in the grave, Ethan. Get in. Now.”

“C'mon. What for?”

Sampson's eyes were still working and her hands tried to contain the damage, but the blood was too juicy and kept spreading.

“Get in, Ethan. That's where you're going to be until you rot. No one is going to dig this grave up again. Get in.” He didn't move, so I shot next to him again. He moved slowly to the first grave and squatted down, staring at me the whole time. When he finally looked down, he did not like what he saw: the open body bag and the rotting corpse.

“This isn't right, Lieutenant. I let you go. We're supposed to be partners.”

“That's your new partner. Get in.”

He stepped down onto the corpse and it crunched. Ethan was terrified. He kept looking at me for some sign of reprieve, but I felt no mercy, no sympathy. I was putting him where I wanted him. I wanted him buried.

“Lie down, Ethan. Stretch out in that coffin.”

He slowly lay down. He shivered. “Are you gonna bury me alive?”

“Do you think I'm cruel, Ethan? I'm not cruel. I'm going to shoot you first. Not for your sake. For mine.”

And I would have. But from behind me I heard, “I don't think you really want to do that, Lieutenant.”

It was Pongo, or Perdy. And the other stood on the rocks. Neither held a weapon. One shrugged and then the other shrugged.

“I do. Very much.”

“Nah, Lieutenant. That's not you.”

Ethan opened his eyes. I moved away from the grave and the MPs moved down.

Before we left, when Ethan was all bundled up and ready to go, he looked back at the graves and said, “Lieutenant, I really want to know. Please.”

Pongo and Perdy were willing to pull up the bag. I shook my head. They took him away.

I
offered to break the news to Kristen, but Will wanted to face her himself. She and her daughter, Eva, were visiting him at Camp Pendleton. Will wanted to know what kind of sentence Ethan might be facing. I said I thought the Army had him on desertion for sure. And maybe murder. And the civilian authorities had him for the murder of Agent Sampson, bent or not. Maybe they could convict him on the other murders, too.

Will had already taken his visitors to Disneyland and Sea World, so I took Eva to the races at Del Mar. Dan used to take me there quite often. Sometimes he would leave me at the paddock or behind the track at the stables with grooms and jockeys. The first time I asked to bet, Dan bought the ticket. He said, “If you want the horse to win, pat your head and turn around three times.” I did that. “Now skip across the walkway and whistle.” People were staring at me, but I did it. The horse lost. Dan had already torn up the ticket. “Now you know, Rollie boy, what betting on horses does to a man. Makes you a fool. Sometimes people keep their nonsense hidden inside, but if you're watching carefully, you'll learn to spot it. Learn to watch the people here, not the animals. The people are the ones who will make you rich.”

Eva wanted to bet on the four horse in the fourth. I didn't tear up Eva's ticket, but I told her about Dan's lesson and let her watch the race if she promised to find at least one person twisting themselves around as if that would make a horse run faster. She lost, of course. I had a terrific time showing her how to tell the people who were regulars from the amateurs, the ones who needed the money from those who just wanted it, the hustlers from the hustled. I think Eva enjoyed it, too. And only once, only once, did I wonder what it would be like if the daughter of Ethan Williams met up with Aza Karkukli Bannion later in life.

______

I had a few weeks' leave, so I drove up to Big Bear. Loretta was in the bakery. I had not seen her since I left the money behind in her closet. She didn't mention it at all, but she tugged at my shoulder so I would bend down, and she gave me a peck on the cheek. I did not hug her because I was so relieved to see her I would have crushed her. The unsteadiness from the MS was about where it was before.

The runaway refuge looked in good shape. Eight kids were there. She had them rebuilding a gravel walkway. She let me help them and then I got to work on fixing the crumbling stairs along the path up to the kitchen and main building.

We all ate dinner together. Loretta even let me cook a couple of times. Some of the boys wanted to know about being a Marine. I tried my best to paint an accurate picture, but it was hard to tell what they were hearing. In the evenings, Loretta and I sat on the porch or on the couch inside and talked. She told me about the kids who had been coming through, the local politics, the efforts to oust her.

She wanted to hear about me. I told her the Victor Kosinski story, the Afghanistan part.

Loretta was quiet for a long time. I could not see her eyes because we were on the couch and I had my arm around her and her head was on my shoulder. Finally, she said, “You should have killed him.”

“Right there on the mountain? Unarmed?”

“No. More recently. When he came back and you had another chance.”

I had not said a word to her about the further adventures of Williams/Simmons/Kosinski. “How did you know that?”

“You wouldn't have told me the story unless there was a follow-up to it. That's why it bothers you.”

I would have done anything for Loretta then, and I still would. Anything.

I stayed awhile more. The night before I left, I was sweeping out the kitchen when she said, “You look terrible, you know. Whatever you're doing, you should stop.”

“I'm going to stop,” I said.

She pushed me angrily. “Damn you, don't you patronize me. I'll kick you out of here.”

“Ask me when.”

“When?”

“As soon as it's too late.” I dropped the broom, picked her up so her feet were off the floor, and hugged her and twirled her around while she cursed me. Kids were peeking in at the windows.

______

Major Hensel asked me to join him for dinner again. This time we went to a Greek restaurant in San Pedro. He had ordered Pongo and Perdy to follow me after my cell phone told him that I was heading for the private cemetery. I thanked him for that. It had taken him some effort to clear me of the Houston deaths. He did not want to involve Daisy as a witness. But the FBI had backed off, even though Ethan had not confessed. The CIA was going to be a long-term problem, he said. “It's partially my fault. I don't want to share any information with them.” So I dined with a senior officer who said the words “my fault.” Sometimes the world just tilts a little.

As many graves as they could guess at had been dug up. A total of one and a half million dollars was found in two graves.

“Does that include the middle grave up near Bishop?”

The Major smiled, delighted I asked. He stared at me, as if he wanted me to guess. “That body bag contained ten million dollars. Worth killing for, maybe.”

“I don't know,” I said. “He might have wanted to let it ride. I don't know.” And I thought the matter of Ethan was settled.

“There is still the matter of the masks, though,” the Major said.

I told him exactly where I got them.

He shook his head. “You had him, wounded and unarmed, and you were going to kill him. You might want to explain that.”

I had told Loretta the story freely. But confession is terrible for the soul and I would never recommend it. Confession is destructive. I considered bargaining with the Major: Tell me who you really are and I'll tell you the whole Victor Kosinski story. Instead, I shook my head. He didn't argue. He asked for the bill.

After the waiter went away, the Major said as calmly as if he were describing why he preferred scotch to vodka, “If he were dead, it wouldn't matter. There's going to be a trial. Maybe a few trials. If your past with him comes out, I may not be able to help you. If I know what happened, how you first met him, I might be able to steer the prosecutors away.”

Cornered. He made no comment at the end of the story. I don't intend telling it ever again.

He told me he did not need me right away, but to stay close. And to watch out for the CIA.

I did not feel like returning to Camp Pendleton, so I drove north without a plan. The cozy traffic rolled along slowly as if it were a destination in itself. A middle-aged woman driving a silver BMW jumped in front of me, then jumped back. She cut me off three times and I kept tempting her to do it again. Each time she changed lanes, she held her cigarette out the window and flicked the ashes.

Dan waited until we were passing LAX before he started telling stories.

“I knew a guy named Cookie. He was not a good guy, but he had a good thing going with Fran, a woman who ran a sales operation. You gave your product and her people got to work on the phones. Fran was big on counting: I gave you this, you give me that. And Cookie had what she wanted after a long day making sure her team never put down their phones or stopped their tongues from spraying sugar water.

“Cookie decided he had more to give, or extra, anyway, and he found quite a few willing recipients. Fran began noticing that Cookie's affections were less robust and she asked me what I knew about that topic. I was in business with Fran at the time—we were selling land in Nevada, up north—and I knew the answer I had to give her.”

“Whether it was true or not,”
I said.

“Coincidentally, it was the truth. Cookie blamed me, though. Hounded me. Threatened in a very believable way. Followed me. I decided to disappear. Had to leave you behind.”

“But you came back.”
He always came back. He was still coming back. Coming back was an important part of keeping people off balance.

“Fortunately, some fellows who had been looking for Cookie, related to another matter, found him. Cookie went away. I never knew if it was voluntary or not, but right to the end, I kept looking around corners for him.”

I had enough of whatever I was getting on the freeway and turned west on I-10 for the connection to the coast highway. Dan let the story sit and cool and firm up. I said,
“After I testify, Ethan will be in jail for a long time.”

“That's good. People don't like the people who testify against them. I tried to stay away from juries, but sometimes they get it right. That's what I heard anyway.”

I had never been near a jury and had not thought much about how unreliable they were. Ethan would have to win twice, though, in military and civilian courts, a tough parlay. If he did, I would get another chance to make a choice regarding him.

Maybe I knew all along where I was going, but I did not admit it to myself until I was passing Point Dume. The farmhouse where Dan had hidden the money, where I had taken my mother to hide her, where I retreated into meditation, whether for peace or puzzles, was set above a Buddhist monastery at the edge of Ojai. As I passed Oxnard, I considered stopping to see my mother, Kate, another time. But I made no promises.

I parked in the dark lower lot at the monastery just before midnight and walked up toward the main buildings. Two young monks appeared beside the chapel. One of them recognized me. They guided me to lama Gyamtso's room. He asked them to bring tea.

While we waited, he said, “Kate came back here about two months ago. She asked to go up to the house. She spent about three hours.”

I had brought Kate here to escape McColl and his men, but I never mentioned the money to her, and she ran away before I ever made it up to the house. I guessed she had broken up with her boyfriend and that made her rethink her conviction that Dan could not have left anything at the house because he never had anything.

But the lama did not care about Kate; he wanted to bring up the subject of the money. I told him I returned all the money to the government.

“Was that difficult?”

“I could probably find a way to get hold of money if I needed to.”

The lama smiled and said, “You sounded just like your father when you said that.”

But Dan would have said
“Yes, it was difficult.”
Because he would know that was what the lama wanted to hear.

We talked for a little while about the monastery and how popular it was becoming as a corporate retreat. The lama worried that he was taking the monastery in the wrong direction. Then he said, “You can stay here. There is a room for you if you like. Always. But the house is for you, too. I think you might prefer that.”

He offered to have the gates opened so I could drive up, but I preferred to walk, so he took me outside and showed me a path that took me to the house without having to climb the fence.

First I sat in the swing. A half-moon floated off to the left. Each leaf on the bent mesquite tree stayed fixed as if stapled in place; the air seemed to have settled in for a rest. The chains holding the swing emitted small, pleasant squeaks and soon, in between the noises, I heard Dan's voice coming from inside the house.

“
So you have some time off now. Might consider putting the time to good use. You don't have to dig up any graves yourself. You just sell the information. So much for the DS list, so much for Frank's list. You could even sell your fake list.”

“I could make up more fake lists.”
That was another voice, which sounded like mine.

“You could sell each one quite a few times, to many buyers. You tell them there are no guarantees but my father did find twenty-five million in only one grave. Nothing sells like the truth.”

“
How about selling access to the future King of Kurdistan? I could probably marry his mother if I wanted to and become regent.”

“Regent is good. Did I ever tell you about the heiress I knew in Georgia? Dalton, Georgia. Carpets, it was . . .”

He went on. He was a goblin, a djinn, and an indispensible nuisance. I admitted that he had set me in the right direction, leading me toward the PKK partnership. He had forgotten more than I ever knew and I was condemned to dredging all of it up. It was treasure.

I sat there on the swing long after Dan's voice faded away and the moon rolled behind the house. Just as dawn made its first threat, I went inside.