Name of the Devil (24 page)

S
O MUCH OF
the way I think about things is influenced by what I learned watching my father, my uncle and my grandfather sit around the large table in our kitchen and dissect a problem to come up with a solution. Usually they were fun problems, like the creation of a new illusion. Occasionally, there were not-so-fun ones, usually financial ones. The worst nights were those they spent drinking large cups of coffee while trying to figure out what to do about Brutani.

My father is mechanically inclined. He tends to see things as physical problems, to be solved with physical solutions. How could you use a mirror to hide someone onstage?

My uncle is more psychological. His mind would leap to how you could hide someone in plain sight, maybe through a visual distraction.

Grandfather likes to see the problem as a matter of theater. How you hide the woman is irrelevant unless you have a good reason to make her disappear. Simply vanishing a woman has no dramatic value. Vanishing a woman an instant before she is about to be pierced by a rack of swords creates dramatic tension, and a climactic solution with meaning.

After Grandfather and Dad met with Julia Vender, they spent several nights trying to figure out how to use the information about Father Devalo. Arranging a meeting with Devalo, who
lived in a sprawling estate near Lake Tahoe, was a challenge unto itself.

Before I could walk, Dad and Grandfather taught me how to hide inside the razor-thin magic tables and secret compartments magicians use. They'd had no idea they were also teaching their little girl to be a ninja capable of spying on them from any room, even if it wasn't bordered by a secret corridor. I'd wedge myself behind cabinets, under tables, or just disappear quietly into a dark corner.

This was how I followed their conversations with visitors and people on the phone as they tried to deal with the crisis.

Before becoming, and then “unbecoming,” a priest, Devalo had lived in Sicily. He left the Church and started his own, almost cult-like, following in America when his passion for women got the better of him. His mother had been a half-gypsy tarot reader back in Sicily, and Devalo adapted and expanded this skill considerably for his own ends.

Criminals are probably more superstitious and religious than anyone else. You only have to look at the tattooed crucifixes and Virgin Marys on gang members to understand this. Devalo soon found himself doing psychic readings and even acting as a confessor of sorts for a number of high-ranking mobsters. All of them, without fail, wanted to speak with their departed mothers. From there he built himself a reputation as a spiritual adviser to some of the roughest criminals in the country. Always discreet, he was rewarded lavishly.

About a week after our meeting with Julia Vender, the phone rang late one night and I was ushered into the car for the drive to Devalo's estate. Dad and Grandfather were still too scared to leave me out of their sight. The introduction came from an old actor friend of Grandfather's.

I slept in the backseat most of the way to Lake Tahoe but woke up as we pulled onto the gravel drive that led to the three-story stone mansion. I remember it looking like a castle, but not an
inviting one like Cinderella's Castle at Disneyland. More like a Roman fortress. I stayed in the car with Dad as Grandfather met with Devalo for what seemed like several hours.

Finally, as the sun came over the horizon, Grandfather climbed into the car. He was tired as hell from being up all night, but was all set to head back to Los Angeles.

“That is the strangest man I've ever met,” was all he would say as we drove off.

Sometime later, Dad prodded him for more information. “What do you mean?”

“I had to spend an hour convincing him I wasn't Satanic. I showed him a half-dozen card tricks and had to explain how I did each one. The man has no idea how conjuring works,” replied Grandfather.

“But he's a fraud, right?”

“A peculiar kind. Not like Vender. He did a cold reading on me. I think he genuinely believed it was divinely inspired.”

“You sure it wasn't an act?” asked Dad.

Grandfather was too exhausted to call out the question as stupid. “If so, he's the greatest actor in the world. I think the mob guys go to him because he doesn't go in for the blackout spookshow stuff. Apparently he talks in the voices of the dead. All these guineas want to hear the same thing from their dead mothers, so it's not hard to keep them happy. I think Devalo genuinely believes he's channeling their relatives.”

“Is he going to help?”

“He's going to let me come to a séance with Basso in a week. He says I can ask for intervention there.”

“You mean, ask Devalo to pretend to be Basso's mother and ask for intervention?”

“I don't know.”

My father glanced at me in the backseat, where I was pretending to sleep. “That's not good enough, Dad.”

“I know.” Grandfather sounded almost defeated.

“If all you had to do was ask their dead mother to forgive a debt at a séance, there wouldn't be too much point to loan-sharking. I get the feeling they're not in the habit of saying ‘yes,'” my father continued, agitated.

“You don't think I don't goddamn know that?” Grandfather shot back tersely. “Where were you with all this wisdom when you were telling me to take Brutani's money? Huh?” Under his breath, he muttered, “Just one more goddamn disappointment.”

“Don't say that in front of my daughter,” my dad snapped, trying to keep his voice low.

“Your daughter? Heh. Whose roof is she living under? Where's her mother? You're a child. A goddamn child. I have three children.”

“You're an asshole.” My father turned back and gave me a guilty look when he realized my eyes were open and I was awake. “Sorry, hon, we got carried away.”

I just stared back at him, not sure what I was supposed to say.

“She knows that. Christ, the girl sees everything. Don't you know that by now?” chided my grandfather. “Always watching, never speaking. She sees
everything
,” he emphasized. “I wish you had a fraction of her common sense.”

These moments were my least favorite ones. I could handle it when their criticism was directed at me, but not when it was pointed at each other. Especially not when Grandfather would rip into my father.

I love my dad. He is, at heart, a sweet man. But I think I sometimes look down on him because of the way my grandfather talked to him. You can't help but notice someone's flaws when somebody else is constantly shouting them to the world on a megaphone.

Dad would rarely defend himself. He would just take it all in, quietly accepting that he was a failure. Uncle Darius is different.
He would have no qualms about calling Grandfather a righteous bastard to his face. Grandfather would retort that he was a cheat and a thief, but Darius would just throw up his hands and say he had no trouble admitting what he was. At least he knew.

But what was I? Who am I?

I am all of them. The good and the bad, I think. Right now, I need the good.

W
INSTONE SWEATS AS
he watches the monitor. My fists are coiled so tightly, I'm afraid I'll draw blood. The tension is carved into Knoll's face. But Chisholm is rock steady. He's watching me. I can tell he's trying to figure out, as always, what the connection is between me and Damian. It's not so much from suspicion—I've told him just about everything and I think he believes me—as much as from clinical fascination.

E
SPECIALLY RIGHT NOW,
there's no solace in knowing that Damian's mind is just as much a mystery to one of the world's leading psychologists as it is to me.

Tapping into the building's surveillance cameras give us multiple views of the street around the apartment complex. Occasionally a car comes and goes. Nothing indicates that inside are one hundred and twenty-two people worried that they're about to be blown to hell.

A blue Honda Civic pulls into the parking garage and appears on the open network cameras. Our bomber is seeing the same thing we are. The car takes the ramp to the lowest level and pulls into the space directly behind the SUV.

Everyone in the room leans in and squints at the screen as it draws closer.

The driver of the Civic misjudges the gap as he backs up,
overestimating the distance beyond his rear bumper, and heads straight toward the SUV.

Someone in the control room gasps. It might have been me.

It's a slow-motion crash in real time.

The Civic is one foot away from the back of the SUV when the camera feed goes dark. Switching to an external view on the monitor, we see an explosion rip apart the front of the apartment complex, blasting through windows and sending shards of glass and smoke into the street. It's so loud our microphones make a garbled chirping sound. Cars waiting for the light to change vanish in billowing clouds of dust.

The building is obscured as the smoke conceals the entire block.

No one in the operations theater speaks.

We stand in stunned silence and wait.

Seconds feel like lifetimes. I think of the little boy who always holds his sister's hand as he takes the elevator. I think of the retired couple who send me a Christmas card every year. I think of all my neighbors. How many of them do I really know? Have I ever invited any of them over, even once? They live there. I just take up space. And they are in peril because of me.

“All clear,” calls a voice over the open radio channel.

“Our driver?” Winstone immediately inquires.

“Some broken glass in the back of his legs. He's fine.”

“The occupants?”

“We've got them into the lobby across the street. We're now moving them to the next building.”

A cheer erupts in the control room. Knoll nods at me. A flicker of a smile crosses Chisholm's face.

The smoke begins to dissipate, revealing the street and parked cars covered with debris. It could be a scene from the aftermath of any other terrorist bombing, except the cars are empty. The first five floors of windows are blown out, but the building structure is intact.

“What about emergency crews?” asks a technician.

“Hold them back,” says Winstone. “We need to send in the bomb robot.” He turns to me. “Is your guy going to blow it?”

Before I can answer, we're interrupted by the agent monitoring phone calls. “Boy Scout is on the line.”

“Put him through the loudspeaker,” Winstone growls. “Is this what you wanted, Boy Scout?”

“It's exactly the kind of thing I hoped you'd do. I don't need to ask who thought up the clever solution. But there's no telling what the actual bombers will do when they realize what you've done.”

Winstone looks confused.

“Actual bombers?” he asks Damian.

“Yes. The ones who put the device there. I've already gone through the effort of outing them, now that everyone is safe.”

“Pardon me?”

An agent holds her phone to her shoulder. “We're getting reports that the media has already received calls from a group claiming responsibility.”

“Who?”

“X-20. It's trending up on Twitter. Hold on . . .” The agent puts the phone back to her ear and listens for a moment. “Now we're getting reports that the Filipino Marxist Muslims are taking credit.”

“What the hell is going on here?” Winstone demands.

“I took the liberty of calling out the real culprits,” says Damian. “I also sent time-encrypted emails to the editors of the major newspapers claiming responsibility for this bombing on behalf of X-20 in advance of the certified letters this afternoon.”

Winstone looks to Chisholm and Knoll for an answer. “I don't understand.”

“I don't imagine you would,” replies Damian. “Was the fake explosion Jessica's idea? Low-yield charges to blow out the
windows? Smoke bombs. Very clever. It looked quite convincing. Hopefully, the real culprits are second-guessing detonating the bomb now they've realized that the car didn't hit the truck and it was all a ruse to get everyone out under the cover of the smoke.”

“What are you getting at?” Winstone asks.

“I've messengered the assistant-director the passport I lifted from a Colombian bomb maker I spotted leaving Jessica's building yesterday. His brother-in-law is a known affiliate of X-20. The details aren't important right now. Well played, Jessica. We'll be in touch.” The line goes dead.

Winstone turns to me, confused and angry. “What the hell was that about?”

I'm only beginning to understand what just happened. I try to piece everything together. “Damian figured out X-20 was going to try to kill me by planting a bomb in the parking garage of my building. He knew the only way to save everyone was to explain how to fool X-20. The only way he could get us to believe him and follow his instructions, was by acting as if he planted the bomb.”

“He could have just called it in,” Winstone barks.

I shake my head. “To DC metro police? If they'd even taken him seriously, X-20 would have blown the building the moment a uniformed officer showed up. If he tried calling us as someone passing on information, it would have taken hours to reach the right people. This was the only way he could get our attention.”

“Why?” asks Winstone.

“X-20 wants me dead. After Mexico, they can't target me directly now. I'm sure the alleged Filipino Marxist Muslims pointed out in their message are meant to imply that the officials from the Filipino embassy who live in my building or the US envoy who lives there is their target. It's a cover.

“The last thing X-20 wants is for themselves to be connected to this. By telling the media X-20 was responsible before they could
pass the blame, Damian put this right on them. They wanted to kill me and have no one trace it to them.”

“By taking out a whole apartment complex?”

Knoll speaks up. “Anything too targeted would look suspicious. Instead of just taking out Jessica, take out a hundred people in the first major act of terror here since 9/11.” He's still letting it all sink in. “This is . . . insane.”

Winstone glances up at the building on the monitor. “Are they still going to blow the bomb?”

“I don't think so. They've already been outed. There's no point to detonating the bomb to get rid of any evidence. We know they did it. We know why they did it. And I'm not in the building.” And never going back if I can help it.

“To kill one FBI agent.”

“Yes. I just don't know why they want me dead.” I stare at the street filled with our staged devastation, glad it isn't real.

“I would think finding that out would be of paramount importance right now,” replies Chisholm in his gallows voice. “And yes, I know who you think their next target is supposed to be. The only thing about your hypothesis that lacks credibility is the name of whomever is behind the threat. Who wants you dead, Jessica? And why?”

Who would kill a hundred innocent people to get me out of the way so they can kill one man?