Puppets (43 page)

Biedermann paused expectantly, but again got only frightened silence from the other booth.

"The program," Rebecca called.

Yes! We manufacture operatives that are their equivalent. Programmed androids without scruples, who'll go in and do unspeakable things. Who won't care who they kill or if they live through their missions. We build ourselves some pet monsters, terrorists to fight terrorists. But the funny thing is, all the advances in the neuro-sciences, and the psych boys still can't do it right! These puppets still go screwy on their handlers. You wonder why we've seen twenty years of rising statistics in serial murder and rampage killing? You see now? You see how heavy this is? You see why we've got to go through with this?"

With Biedermann looming over them, cranking himself up, the people at the other booth were crying more loudly. Rebecca positioned the bag with her feet. Biedermann was only about fifty feet away, there'd be only one chance.

She deftly booted the purse toward Mo across the smooth boards. It skated straight but stopped short, a black mound appearing in the middle of the floor, obvious even in the half darkness. Mo flung out his legs until he was out full length, hanging by his cuffed hands from the ball-return carousel. He managed to snare the purse with his feet, then drew his legs in. The weight of it told him some bad news: not heavy enough to contain Rebecca's .38 as he'd hoped. Of course not—Biedermann would've checked. Then what? He had slid it up below his arms before he realized he couldn't pick it up. The cuffs stopped his hands several inches short.

He threw himself prone again, got his teeth on the bag, raised his head, got his hands on it. Hard to open with the cuffs on, the dead finger. But now Biedermann had straightened from the other booth and was looking back. Mo froze, hoping the purse wasn't visible. Biedermann looked back for a moment, motionless. Mo's heart pounded so loud he was afraid the G-man would hear it.

But then Biedermann bent back to his cowering audience. He was obviously coming more than a little unglued. "See? Look at your own skepticism! I mean, you wonder why I had to do this whole big production, look at your own fucking response—'Guy's a real fruitcake, all this paranoid conspiracy shit.'"

Mo loosened the drawstring and got his hand into the bag. Rebecca was still staring at him as if beaming a transmission from her brain to his. His fingers felt her wallet. Computer diskette. Key ring. Tampon. A roll of breath mints or something. The broken finger was getting in the way, stiff and fat as a frozen hot dog, the purse a tangle of invisible objects.

"Give me a fucking break!" Biedermann was saying. "Didn't anyone notice how every goddamned assassin is this total loony, driven by weird compulsions, voices in his head? With mysterious chunks missing from his past? I mean, Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, Hinckley, Mark David Chapman, the whole gang—you got superpowers and terrorists up the wazoo wishing they could bump off our leaders, and their best agents, their James Bond types,
can't
do it, but these guys
can?
Guys who can hardly wipe their asses they're so fucked up, but suddenly they can get past the Secret Service? You think about that! I mean how
obvious
can it get? I finally decided somebody had to say,
Wake up and smell the coffee, America!"

Lipstick. Fountain pen. Soft pack of Kleenex. And then Mo found what she must have intended: a clipper. Just a fingernail clipper, but a fairly heavy-duty one. A little lever that swiveled out, biting razor jaws. He got his fingers around it, shook it free of the bag, used his knee to shove the bag out of Biedermann's view. Turned the clipper awkwardly, felt along his left wrist to the strap there. Couldn't get the angle right. Followed the band up to the flange, found the loop there, fitted the jaws to the strap.

Biedermann was facing this way again, coming back to his duffel. Mo froze. Then Rebecca was starting to sneeze,
Ah
—
ah
—and at her explosive
ka-CHOO!
Mo snipped the band.

The click was lost in her sneeze, but when he felt the cut he realized it had only gotten halfway through. Another painstaking fit of clippers to nylon, another sneeze from Rebecca, and he felt the tension go off the band.

Crouched over his duffel, Biedermann looked over at her. "What the hell, Bee. You coming down with a cold? Allergies, maybe?" He stood up and started toward her.

She sneezed again and Mo clipped through the second Flex-Cuf. Biedermann striding quickly now. "You up to something, Bee? You being a bad girl?"

"You ever have to sneeze when your hands are tied?" Rebecca asked acidly.

Biedermann's big body was moving with that scary heavy agility, coming toward her. He passed Mo. The instant he bent over Rebecca, Mo slipped the bands free of the flange and got up with one long strand of Flex-Cuf trailing. Biedermann had Rebecca's golden hair in a big handful and was wrenching her neck back over the booth seat, and that's when Mo hit him from behind, hands clenched in a double hammer blow, knocking the bigger man's head to the side.

Biedermann went to his knees and Mo leapt onto his back. The advantage lasted only an instant. Abruptly Biedermann flung his weight into a roll and struck out with an elbow all in one move. Mo hit the floor next to him, two feet from the booth. He tried to get his hands under him, but Biedermann was too fast. He kneed Mo between the legs and then was on top of him, whaling at his face with fists like wrecking balls. Mo felt his jaw snapping, the grind of bone ends.

And then Rebecca's foot whipped up and caught Biedermann square under the chin with a
chock!
and Biedermann tottered sideways. Mo got an arm around him, found the trailing end of the handcuff, pulled it against the bull neck.

Twenty-two inches of nylon band, just enough. One end was still cinched around his wrist, the other he wrapped in his broken hand. Pulled with every ounce of strength. Rebecca pounded Biedermann's temple with her heel. Biedermann's face turned scarlet with rage. Mo felt his grip start to fail, his strength giving out, but then Rebecca raised her leg and put her whole weight into a second heel to the purpling forehead.

And then it was Big Willie all over again. The bucking, grappling, fading. The slackening back muscles. The torpid dead-meat half-roll.

Mo gave it a full minute. Then slipped the band, got unsteadily to his feet. Limped down the lane to retrieve his guns. Came back to the booth, stepped over Biedermann's body.

Rachel was in shock, head tilted and mouth half-open, and Mo crossed quickly to her. "Rache.
Rachel.
Try to look at me." She didn't lift her head, so he did it for her, trying to be gentle as he turned her face to him. Her nose bled freely down her chin and throat. "Are you hurt badly somewhere?"

She seemed to think about it. "No." And all Mo could think was
Not the parts you can see, anyway.

"It's all right now." Mo's face felt paralyzed, he could hardly talk at all, but he made the jaw move: "He's not going to hurt us anymore. Do you hear me?"

Again, she thought about that. "Yeah."

Mo squeezed her shoulders hard, caught Rebecca's eye. He went to get the clipper, came back, cut their hands loose. Rachel fell into her mother's arms. Then he needed to sit down in a hurry, the pain in his jaw so intense he couldn't see, he felt like he was going to throw up. Ringing in his ears, sweat on his temples. He closed his eyes to get a grip on the pain.

Only an instant, he thought, but when he opened his eyes, Rebecca was just sliding back into the seat. She wrapped her arms around Rachel. She had gone down to lane three and cut the others loose. Mo could see them lurching out of the booth. One of them stood and immediately lay down on the boards. Probably the old man, having a heart attack.

On the floor Biedermann suddenly sighed and rolled his head.

Mo had put the Glock in its holster, but still held the Ruger, and now his hand flicked like a snake and the gun seemed to fire itself. Once through the throat, point-blank. Only a .22, but the shot was loud in here, the muzzle flash blinding. When he regained his vision, he saw a small hole just to the right of the Adam's apple.

Biedermann's eyes rolled, focused. "Well," he gurgled. "You get the idea anyway. Some idea of the hurt, huh." He blew some blood out of his mouth. "Should have taken the purse away, huh. Should have known how resourceful. Gotta admire you guys." On the floor, a pool was spreading away from his head, black as an oil slick in the dim light.

Rebecca's face had that look that gave Mo chills. She reached over, took the gun from him. Put it into Rachel's hand, wrapped her fingers around it. "Rachel. I want you to focus.
No one has therightto
do what he did to you.
If you want to, shoot him."

Rachel tilted her head to look at Biedermann's face, almost curious.

"Rachel, you understand,
you don't ever have to be subject to him
again.
Him or anyone! If you need to kill him to prove that to yourself, do it."

"You don't have to talk so loud. I'm not retarded," Rachel mustered.

She angled the wobbly Ruger at Biedermann's face, still watching him curiously. Held it for a few seconds. Then set it on the table.

"You think you're free now?" Biedermann asked in a wet whisper. "Dream on. You'll know what I mean when you walk out of here. Even after you've gotten the materials out, you'll be afraid. I'm dead, but Zelek isn't. They won't Hke it that you know things. They'll wonder how much more I told you. They'll need to protect the program. Not just a dirty secret from the past. A very
now
kind of secret. It's worth your life. To even know about it."

Rebecca gave Mo a wide-eyed questioning look,
What do we do?
The black cape of blood widened around Biedermann's head Hke a poisoned soul taking its leave. After another moment he turned his cheek into the wet and closed his eyes. He looked relieved to be shut of the problem.

53

M
O DIDN'T UNDERSTAND ALL of it, but Rebecca explained at length and gave him a couple of books to read. Posttraumatic stress, on top of the regular stuff between mother and daughter and Mo the new rival for Mom's intimacy, very complex psychology. But a couple of months had passed, Rachel was beginning to come around. It helped to have someone as insightful as Rebecca working with her. And Rebecca had been very strategic about the three of them being together, almost always outdoor stuff, where conversation was not central to the activity. No bowling.

Today it was Rollerblading in Central Park. Sunday, mid-August, the foliage was thick and full, everybody was out in the steamy heat, a great weekend. Mo was fine on the skates until he had to stop—braking was tricky. But that was okay, it gave Rache something to laugh about.

With all the residual anxiety, concern about her daughter, Rebecca had lost weight since that night, but it made her look even more terrific in shorts, knee- and elbow-pads, T-shirt. God have mercy, Mo thought, what skates did to an already long-legged woman.

They got to the area around the zoo and pulled over for a rest. It was nice beneath the big trees, rocks and lawns all around, the bustle of activity, the smell of hot dogs and roasting pretzels. Rebecca went to one of the carts and got lemonade. They watched the passing parade for a few minutes, then Rachel met a trio of friends and they skated off with promises to rendezvous in an hour.

Rebecca picked up a discarded
Times
from the bench, and they scanned it together. She pointed out an inside article featuring a photo of a familiar face: bald head, big grin, eyes that didn't smile as much as the mouth.

She shook her head. "You called this right, all the way, Mo. Did I tell you I think you're a genius?"

"I think you might've, but you're welcome to tell me again,"

The article was about Westchester DA Richard K. Flannery, who was quitting his job to take over as deputy-some thing-or-other in the Defense Intelligence Agency. A nice fat Washington posting with a title that told nothing about the new job. His meteoric rise from a county-level position to a national-security role was attributed to his prosecutorial skills and his shrewd political networking. Also his apprehension of the deranged FBI agent who had flipped out and killed a couple of people at a bowling alley, a demonstration of investigative cunning and bravery that had gotten him national press only two months ago.

It was still uncomfortably fresh in Mo's memory. Biedermann lay dead, there was one man dead in the middle of a lane and another, it turned out, with his throat cut in the other booth. Rachel was in shock, the old man was lying on the floor, the others down at lane three were trying to console each other. And once the threat to her daughter was gone, Rebecca had kind of gone into shock herself. Mo got his bearings again and went to the front desk and picked up the phone. But Biedermann's last words stopped him before he dialed.
You think you're free now? Dream on. It's worth your life just to know about
this.
This fucking thing would be controlling their lives long after Biedermann was in his grave.

With the pain in his head he couldn't think straight, but still it occurred to him that there was another call he could make first.

When he got Flannery on the line, he said, "I've got something for you to take credit for. A real springboard. But it's only yours if you get here within twenty minutes."

Sunday, Flannery was at his bachelor's pad Manhattan apartment. He made it in eighteen minutes. Mo unlocked the Star Bowl's front door to let him in.

"You were right about Biedermann," Mo mumbled, trying to ignore the crushed bones grating in his jaw. "There's a file containing materials that blow the whistle on secret U.S. military programs. I don't know any details, but I can guess it'll make the national news for weeks. You're also right that I'm not in a position to use this, I wouldn't know how. I don't need the headache. But somebody like you—

"Gotcha," Flannery said, oblivious to Mo's less than flattering intent. They paused at the top of the steps down into the alley. Mo had deliberately left the lights off, so it was still dark, but they had a pretty good view of the scene: Rebecca holding Rachel close and stroking her hair, the bodies on the floor, the others huddled and just holding on. "Great God Almighty," Flannery said appreciatively. He practically licked his chops. For a moment his eyes went click-click, the wheels turning, calculating odds and angles. Then he turned to Mo. "Okay. Deal. So here's how we're going to play it."

Mo had made good use of the minutes before Flannery arrived, and Rebecca and Rachel already knew what to say and not to say: It was about jealousy, Biedermann going off the deep end after she'd ended their relationship, thank God Flannery had seen it coming and had charged to the rescue.

Flannery went to work on the survivors at lane three, finessing their recollection of events. Their memory of what the perpetrator had said was jumbled anyway, the old man and his wife couldn't hear very well, the young woman and her husband had been injured, the kid traumatized, everybody preoccupied. In the bad light, they hadn't gotten a good look at the guy Biedermann had handcuffed to the ball return down near the other end. Rebecca and Flannery would both say it was the courageous DA himself, who came when he put together the scenario and rushed to the Star Bowl at the very last minute. By the time more of the DA's people arrived, only a few minutes later and just in front of the ambulances Mo had called, Mo was gone.

In fact, he'd never been there.

But that still left a loose thread in the whole scheme, one that could threaten them if he didn't act immediately. So before leaving, Mo had stopped at Biedermann's corpse and rummaged in his pockets until he found his keys. He couldn't quite remember the address Gus had given him for Biedermann, but of course Rebecca knew it. Then he drove across the George Washington Bridge and into the Upper West Side. Flannery would cover the bowling alley scene, they could maybe just manage to fudge that, but Biedermann had to have been listening in on Rebecca's phone cans and probably live conversations at her apartment. Which meant that Biedermann kept monitoring equipment somewhere. He couldn't have been able to listen at all times, so most likely he'd rigged it to make tapes that he could review when time permitted.

If there were any such tapes, they were dangerous. Mo's whole plan hinged on Zelek and company not realizing how much he and Rebecca knew. If Zelek got the tapes, he'd hear the two of them piecing it together.

At the three-flat brownstone he checked the windows of nearby buildings, then gimped up the stoop steps and unlocked the outer door. Good luck so far, Sunday night, people winding down early, nobody on the street. He put on latex gloves and went up to Biedermann's third-floor apartment. Nicer furniture than Mo's own hellhole, but dimly lit, musty, not a place where anyone really lived. Taking a turn through the rooms, he saw only the meagerest tokens of domestic life. Most interesting were the handful of photos: some hard-faced men in camo outfits and face paint, standing in front of a ruined-looking patch of jungle. A busty, matronly old gal in outof-date clothes. A dog. And a blond kid standing between a meek-looking woman and a man Mo first took to be Erik Biedermann until he noticed the fender of the station wagon just behind the group. Had to be a late-1940s vintage. So the man would be Biedermann's father, and the boy with the locked-in face Biedermann himself. The son's head was tilted slightly away from the man, signifying some aversion or resentment. Or fear.

Rebecca would love this, he thought: a clue to the original trauma suffered at the hands of a tyrannical and very blond, blue-eyed father.

But there was no time to delve further. The pain from his shattered jaw rose in blinding flashes, Mo kept feeling himself slipping toward unconsciousness. And the moment Zelek heard about the bowling alley fiasco, his guys'd be all over this place, sanitizing it, discovering more about Biedermann's secret life. Mo had to find the surveillance setup. But what if it wasn't here? Maybe Biedermann kept the gear at another place, maybe at the secret lab that must be somewhere near the old dump.

But then he opened a louvered closet and found a set of rackmounted electronics, including two reel-to-reel tape recorders, a cassette dubbing setup, some heavily customized telephone equipment sprouting wires like Medusa's head. He took the two reels from the machines, then looked around until he found a stash of half a dozen others and a bunch of cassettes. He stowed them in a paper grocery bag from under the kitchen sink and then found a couple of fresh reels in unopened boxes, broke the seals, replaced them on the machines. Checked the telephone answering machine for messages. None. He pushed ERASE five or six times anyway.

Not perfect, but it would have to do. He locked up and left with the bag full of tapes.

The next day, jaw wired and finger splinted, Mo searched carefully through his house and Rebecca's apartment, looking for surveillance devices. The three bugs and the relay box ended up in the river that night. The tapes they burned in the barbecue pit behind Carla's mom's house.

The scenario he'd crafted with Flannery would just about play. Especially, Mo figured, with some help from interested parties behind the scenes.

Mo and Rebecca had played dumb for Flannery, but Flannery would have learned all the details about the program from the evidence in Biedermann's duffel. And he'd done with the information just what Mo had anticipated. Mo and Rebecca, had they showed interest in whistle-blowing, were small fry, the kind you shut down, got rid of. Flannery, though, he was big enough to bargain, sufficiently lacking in conscience, and very smart with people and deals. He was in position to use his knowledge to his advancement and more than willing to make himself useful. Hey, he wasn't selling out, he was buying in.

The FBI put a tight lid on the whole case, one of those demonstrations of press obfuscation and spin control only "national security" warranted. Later, Mo heard though the grapevine that the FBI had located Biedermann's secret Westchester place. Nobody knew any details, but the consensus was that Biedermann had flipped while working on the Howdy Doody case and had started playing puppet games himself. Another example of job stress, too damn bad. The house had apparently belonged to his mother's sister, Eleanor Smith, who'd left it to him when she died. All he'd had to do to keep it secret was finesse keeping the Smith name on the tax rolls.

As a psychologist, Rebecca was dying to learn more about the original abuse that Biedermann had experienced, and if the old junkyard really had a role. She was also curious as to how many puppets Biedermann had been working with, whether the house contained evidence that there'd been others. But she resigned herself to not knowing. Showing any curiosity at all would have been a very bad plan.

Rebecca brought Mo out of his thoughts and back to the heat and bustle of Central Park by slapping the newspaper on her lap. "Of course," she said, "we still have a problem."

He looked around at the happy activity, the swaying high foliage. "That he never gave Biedermann's materials to the press. That he traded it all for his next step up. That the program goes on and nobody's doing anything about it."

"It kills me, Mo. I can't stand that somewhere they're still . . . doing it. Betraying basic human—God, I can't even—" Her eyebrows drew together and she glanced quickly over to the people on the nearby benches. But no one was interested.

"It screws me up, too," Mo whispered. "I never saw this as a permanent solution. More just buying us some time."

"How much time?" she asked. "And how much do we pay for it?"

As always, she'd seen to the heart of the issue. Their cover wasn't perfect. Realistically, it couldn't last. Maybe Zelek would think Mo was too dumb to figure things out, but no way he'd believe it about Rebecca. And maybe Flannery could give them some shelter, for a while, but Flannery had to have guessed what they knew. So the question was,
when
would it come back to bite them? And in what form? Not an outright whack, Mo figured, at least not for a while, that'd raise too many eyebrows. But at the very least, if Flannery was giving them shelter, it would be in exchange for something. Mo could easily imagine a future visit or call from him:
Hey, I've got a little
project I need your special expertise on. Nothing illegal, just marginal
procedure. A little carrot-and-stick thing. You guys help me out, I'll help
you out, everybody stays happy.

"I don't know," he told Rebecca. "Hopefully enough time to figure out what we should do. To maybe decide something about . . . " He stalled out, hesitant to mention it:
About us. About our own
priorities.

But of course she understood. It shut them both up for a few minutes. After that night at the Star Bowl, Rebecca had pulled back. She said things had gone too fast, she'd been impulsive again, Rachel needed a lot of her time. And Mo was deeply associated in Rachel's mind with the trauma of the bowling alley, she needed to build a basis of trust of him before she accepted her mother with him. Also, Rebecca needed some time to think through being with a guy whose job involved what they had just been through. The goddamned job.

They all needed some recovery time, Mo had to admit. After something like this there were a lot of hurts inside you. At first you were numb, just glad to be alive, in a state of shock that protected you. Then you began realizing how it had changed you. What was it, Biedermann's agony? The program, what it implied about the United States government, or about human beings in general? All the corpses, the puppets? You couldn't look at other people the same way. Couldn't read the newspaper headlines without a crawly feeling, that sense of things working behind the scenes, it seemed as if every time Mo opened the
Times
he saw another item Hke
DEFENSE STRATEGISTS REASSESS RESPONSE TO TERRORIST THREAT.
Sometimes you woke in the night in a sudden sweat.