Authors: Andrew Vachss
“So if he didn’t trust you”—pointing at Gomes—“how could
you
”—pointing at the tall man on Gomes’s right—“get behind him?”
Gomes barked a not-quite-scared laugh. “What he trusted was that Val”—nodding his head toward the man on his left—“was going to blow his face off if he didn’t climb that cliff.”
“He didn’t argue,” the man who must be Val said, grinning as he slowly drew a chromed wheel-gun with a ventilated rib from a back-belt holster. “Show a man a .357 mag, he usually doesn’t.”
“We told him we had heard some things, and we wanted to give him a chance to put us straight,” Gomes said. “Gave him the idea that our orders were to question him, not ice him. But we wanted to be
sure
nobody could come up on us sudden, and the top of that rock was perfect.”
“He bought that?”
“I’m pretty sure he did,” Gomes answered. “Val showed him the gun just in case he balked. We planned it all out. Jordan, he’d think the
last
place we’d fire a gun would be from up there—the sound would carry for miles.”
“Pretty slick,” the FBI man said, like he was admitting they’d just taught him something. “Only one thing bothers me. Trust, it’s a strange thing, you know? I mean, you’ve got a rep, don’t you? People know why you’re in charge, yeah?”
“That’s right,” Gomes said, a little pride in his voice.
“So why would Jordan trust you? You
personally
, I mean.”
“What the fuck are you saying?”
“I’m saying what I said inside, only now I’m making it clear enough for even
you
to understand. Jordan’s done, but now, all of a sudden, there’s a new rat in the cheese factory.”
“Really?” the hawk-faced guy said, no softness in his voice.
“Really,” the FBI man said as a dark pistol magically appeared in his extended right hand.
That’s a Steyr GB
, flashed in my mind—
I haven’t seen one of those since Laos
. “You think I don’t know who
you’ve
been talking to, Gomes?” he spat out.
Gomes didn’t even blink. “You giving your
self
up now?”
The FBI man blasted his pet informant—a three-shot burst to the central body mass.
No change in ambient sound—probably not the first time people in that bar had heard gunshots out back.
Or maybe the whole thing was an FBI operation
. But I quashed that thought as quickly as it came—this “SAC” had to be a lone wolf, or I would have been in a prison or a grave way before this.
“Who the fuck
are
you, man?” the tallest of the Nazis demanded, still holding the rock hammer.
“FBI,” Brigham said, putting some brag behind his words. “You’re looking at the only man our people have ever placed inside ZOG’s own spy nest.”
“You’re with—?”
“Remember that load of H that was supposed to finance our Robert Mathews Revenge Brigade? It was Gomes who tipped the FBI. And that
major
boom that never went off? That was your boy Gomes, too.”
“Look, man, I
personally
watched Lew earn his spiderweb. Three niggers in one night. No way he was a—”
“Yeah? Then
you
tell me how Gomes got away with so much crude shit. Stuff like you just described. You think the FBI didn’t know who took out those same three niggers you just bragged about? Gomes, he’s been on the payroll for years.”
“And you, you’re the one who’s been paying him?”
“Yep. With ZOG’s own money. That was the only way I could get him to where I needed him to be. And now you two are the team. The
whole
team. Your job is to keep me—”
The tall guy whipped the rock hammer into the FBI man’s stomach, striking as instinctively as a scorpion’s sting.
But the agent must have picked up the pre-strike flex. He was already stepping back, and the spike didn’t get all the way in.
“Fuck!” came out of his mouth as he dropped to one knee. Sounded more surprised than angry, but that didn’t stop him from gut-shooting the hammer artist. The man he shot dropped to the dirt, still holding on to his kill toy.
The last one, Val, immediately threw down his shiny gun, stepped away from it, and threw his hands in the air. He didn’t know who he was surrendering to, but he knew it didn’t matter anymore.
I don’t know where he’d been trained, but one thing he’d never learned is that you can’t surrender to an enemy who doesn’t take prisoners. The FBI man fired twice. Val staggered for a half-second, then slumped to the ground.
I couldn’t be sure how many rounds the FBI man’s pistol had left, but I had to
make
sure the job was done. I waved a white piece of parachute silk back and forth. That was to signal the video man to stop working. And to send Mack circling behind him, to make sure he did.
“You gonna …?”
“Just hold on,” I told the FBI man. “We’ll get you fixed up.” I picked the agent’s heavy pistol out of his hand, asked, “Hardballs?”
“Hollow-points,” he grunted. “Mercury-tipped.”
I walked over to the hammer man and put a slug into the side of his head. Then I planted another one just above the nose of the guy who’d tried to surrender.
I saved Gomes for last. He’d taken the most lead, but no head shots, so I dropped down next to him to check.
He was gone. No pulse, no breath, limp carotid. I stomped his throat with the heel of my boot. It was so quiet I could hear the hyoid bone crack.
I waved again. Mack came on the run. I stepped over to the FBI man, and put his pistol back into its carry-pouch. Then I pulled up his shirt to check him over. Not much blood. I popped open the kit Dolly always puts together for me when she knows I’m going into the field.
Then by the numbers: press on both sides of the wound to push out any pus until I saw a clean blood-flow, pull the backing off the antibiotic-soaked sponge, and smooth it over the opening; body-wrap him using a wide roll of Coban, and cover it all with silicone Rescue Tape to make sure it would hold.
He never said a word, but even his carefully controlled breathing couldn’t put the pain noises on mute.
“Keys,” I said to him.
“Left outside pocket,” he answered. Three separate words, with a nose breath between them.
I found them. Motioned Mack to get close enough to hear what I was going to say.
“Listen good, now,” I told the FBI man. “There’s no way to get a car back here. There’s no light, and the ground’s all rutted—can’t take the chance. We’re going to walk you around to your car and get you in the driver’s seat; you’re on your own from there.”
“I can’t—”
“Yeah, you can,” I said. “If you want the ER, drive yourself there. But have a
good
story ready. And better get rid of your pistol—it ties you to those bodies.”
“Your money—”
“You’ve got that in the ’Vette, right?”
“Yeah. But … Listen! I got a pickup. With a closed bed. At my house. It’s real close to here. You could drive me back here, load up the bodies, and dump them someplace.”
“Why would I do that?”
“For the money. Almost three hundred large. In my house. You take me there, I’ll show you where it is.”
Can I trust Conrad to stay put?
“Go back and make sure everything stays in place,” I told Mack. “Understand?”
He nodded.
“Do it fast. Soon as you’re
sure
, get to the parking lot. You follow us.”
Another nod.
I hoisted the FBI man to his feet, and we started moving. He leaned against me like he was dead drunk.
I
followed the bent agent’s directions to his house.
He wasn’t lying—took maybe seven minutes. Mack had no trouble keeping the red Corvette in sight. Or Conrad under control, I guessed.
The FBI man hadn’t been lying about the money, either. Probably not confiscated counterfeit bills, not the way he had them hidden—he had to give Mack the instructions twice, they were so damn complicated.
While Mack was retrieving the agent’s stash—and making sure Conrad stayed wherever he’d put him—I used my ceramic knife to cut through the Rescue Tape down to the Coban, then pulled it back to inspect the wound. The sponge had done its work—it showed only faint traces of blood. I squeezed a tube of Dermabond tissue glue over the wound, sealing it closed almost as good as stitches would.
“I guess you figured out I was a medic,” I told him. “You want a shot to put you out while we go back and dump the bodies?”
“I don’t need that much. But something for the pain would be …”
“This’ll make it all go away,” I promised, tapping a vein at his elbow.
C
onrad might have been shaking inside, but Mack whispered that his hands had been sure and steady on his equipment as he reloaded the Taurus.
I couldn’t guess at what the FBI man might do if we’d let him come around. Probably not much—take a few days off, down with the flu. But whenever he went out to his garage and found the pickup hadn’t been used, he’d do
something
. And looking for me probably wouldn’t be one of those things.
But I’d been warned off gambling a long time ago—the shot I’d given him made any guesswork unnecessary.
I’d left the spike in his arm, and the length of rubber hose they’d think he’d used to bring up a vein. The tox screen would still be good, even if they didn’t find him until days later—and the three extra baby Ziplocs loaded with 90-plus-percent pure would answer any questions they had left.
What else
would
a junkie do when he realized he had three bodies to dispose of, and was too wounded to drive? A nice little shot to relax himself, then he’d come up with an answer.
The answer he’d always come up with before.
But junkies aren’t good at forward-thinking, and he’d probably been pretty anxious when he took his last hit. He hadn’t had to use a needle. A well-used pipe was in his living room, behind some books he probably never read.
“Y
ou’re one of us now,” I said to Conrad from my position in the backseat.
He turned and looked at me. Not eye to eye, but closer than he’d ever done before. “How could I be—?”
“You’re the one who broke this case, Conrad. It was your photo that started it off. And now you know
exactly
how
that man ended up where you saw him … on the beach that night.
“So you’ve just closed the case you opened, didn’t you? I mean, we’ve got one of the killers on video, not only confessing to the murder, but showing the weapon he did it with. Once you send
that
to the papers, what’s left?”
“But he’s … I mean, that guy in the white jacket, he shot—”
“Oh, you can show him doing that,” I said, as if it would dismiss any doubt a reasonable man might have. “Doesn’t change a thing. Remember, you can’t blow our cover, so be sure you edit—”
“I … I know. I was your eyes, wasn’t I? But I don’t know how to get the … evidence to the papers. I mean, an e-mail with a photo-attach, that’s one thing, but—”
“Oh, we’ll handle that part,” I assured him. “In fact, we’ll take all the tape and disks with us, how’s that? The cops won’t come into this.
They
won’t be able to trace it to you, but the papers, they’ll make sure everyone knows it came from the same freelance investigator who sent in that original picture. The one that started this whole investigation.”
“You can do that?”
“Guaranteed,” I promised.
O
nce the cops saw those portions of the video we needed them to see—they had no choice about that, not with the leak to
Undercurrents
—the DA called another press conference, and proudly announced that no innocent man was going to be tried for a crime he couldn’t have committed.
Not in
his
town.
Homer was released into Mack’s custody. After dark, when
it was safe. Mack’s first job was to take him over to that band of runaway kids, so Homer could see for himself that they
were
his friends, like he’d always believed they were, until the cops had taken him away.
Mack told me and Dolly that the whole experience was actually a good one for Homer. “It’s important that he knows he has friends. It’s even more important that he learns to distrust things that don’t add up, instead of just listening to the voices.”
That still left one more job.
“H
e’s got to go,” I said to Mack.
“Why? I mean, what could he actually—?”
“I don’t know. What difference? He’s not right in the head. Sure, we took all the tapes and the camera cards, but …”
“I don’t want to do it.”
“I wasn’t asking you to. I was telling you what’s going to happen. Tonight.”
He looked at me. Hard, like he was expecting to see something new.
“I’m going with you,” he finally said.
“T
his is a lot of money,” Conrad said, looking at the stack of bills I’d handed him.
“It’s the going rate,” I assured him. “You were the agency’s eyes and ears on this one, don’t forget.”
“You said ‘freelance’ …?”
“Exactly. Who knows when we might need you again? Could be a week, could be five years. But we know where to find you.”
“And if
I
find something, how do I—?”
“Do just what you did this time. Go through the papers. Hit them all,
Undercurrents
, too. We’ll be watching.”
The word must have tripped a switch. Conrad’s hands started to shake. Maybe he picked up on what he had to know was coming next—maybe he’d been waiting on something like that his whole life.
Mack made an “I’ve got this” gesture, and sat down next to the video man. “You don’t have to do what you’ve been doing,” Mack told him. “Not now. You don’t have to
keep
doing it.”
“I don’t—”
“Yeah, you do. You understand just fine, Conrad. If you want, we can work together, turn that around.”
“I don’t understand. What could—?”
“I only work freelance for the agency, just like you,” Mack said, turning so he blocked Conrad’s view of me. “My
work
, my
real
work … I’m a therapist. So I understand why you … watch. And I’m saying you don’t
have
to. It’ll take some work, and—”