Top Ten (6 page)

“He drives trucks across country,” Judy told Ariel. “God, has anyone told him?”

“He’s been talked to,” Ariel assured her. Agents in Montana intercepted his rig and questioned him for two hours. They ended up taking him to a hospital. “So Doris had no one new in her life. Not even a new friend?”

“Everybody knows everybody around her,” Judy said. “There’s no one new to know.”

Ariel nodded and clicked her pen shut. Tucked her notebook inside her blazer. Judy Bryce was a wash.

“I appreciate you talking to me, Mrs. Bryce. I’ll walk you back in.”

Judy Bryce took a last draw on her cigarette and tossed it to the ground. She crushed it out with a twist of her foot on the gravel and used her key to open the back door. A new lock had been installed over the weekend. One that locked automatically whenever the door closed.

Ariel followed Judy back through the post office. Through the back room and its mail sacks. Down the hall past the rooms where horrors had been done to Doris ‘DoDo’ May. Both were closed off. The floor was shiny. It had been stripped and cleaned and waxed overnight. The place was spotless. Clean. But it would always be stained.

Judy walked Ariel behind the counter where another postal worker stood at the service window chatting softly with a woman buying stamps and mailing a package. The woman was slowly shaking her head.

“Thanks again,” Ariel told Judy Bryce once they were in the main lobby. “I know it’s hard to talk about.”

“I know I wasn’t much help,” Judy said. Her arms were crossed tight across her chest as if there were a chill in the room. The heater was running at full bore.

“Everything helps,” Ariel reassured her. It wasn’t a lie, per se.

Judy Bryce looked around the lobby. The floor gleamed. One spot on the wall near the bulletin board had been scrubbed whiter than that which surrounded it. Word was the whole place was going to be painted. Rumor was it was going to be razed.

Ariel, too, took a look around the sanitized space. Muted afternoon light filled it through the doors that had been part of Michaelangelo’s canvas. Only part. The walls, too, where he’d scrawled his message, they were integral to the shock value he sought to...

Camera.

Her survey of the room stopped cold on the surveillance camera pointing almost directly at her from behind the counter. She turned and looked behind. High above the door another one was mounted. A cable from it snaked through a hole in the ceiling.

Jaworski hadn’t said anything about cameras. The case notes he’d given her hadn’t mentioned any. But certainly they had been noticed.

“Mrs. Bryce, the cameras there and there...”

“Bob said your people took the tapes and the recording decks.” Judy Bryce motioned to her coworker commiserating with the customer. Her face went sullen. “I don’t know if I want them to have seen anything.”

Ariel could understand without agreeing. “Again, Mrs. Bryce, I’m very, very sorry. You’ll take care, right?”

Judy nodded. “Oh. Wait. Did you bring a new bulletin for us?”

“Excuse me?”

“When the person from your office called and said you’d be stopping by, I thought maybe you’d be bringing a new most wanted bulletin.”

Ariel looked over to the bulletin board. A faded spot where something had been posted showed like a sore on the nearly covered cork board.

“Bob said he asked if you could.”

Ariel was still staring at the bare spot.

“Miss?”

She turned quickly back to Judy Bryce. “Yes? No. No, I didn’t bring one. I’m...”
Why would that be missing?
“...sorry.”

“Could you put in a request, or whatever, so we could get one?” Judy Bryce asked.

Spot of blood on it, maybe, Ariel thought. Kept as evidence? Thrown away?

“Miss?”

She was seeing what was before her again, not the stored image of that bare spot off to the left. “I’ll request one, for you. You try and have a good day, Mrs. Bryce.”

“I won’t,” Judy Bryce told her.

*   *   *

The Bureau Taurus was parked on the street half a block down Roseland Road from the Pembry Post Office. Ariel Grace sat in the passenger seat with the door open and one leg hanging out as she took the cell phone from its holder. She began to dial, then pressed the end button, shaking her head. She was calling the Atlanta field office, less the area code. Likely she would have gotten some pizza place or a confused old woman who’d curse her for not being more careful. She paused, flipped through the case notes that she’d opened atop the dash, and found something with Jaworski’s number on it. She dialed and waited through three rings.

“Jaworski.”

“Agent Grace, sir.”

“What do you want, Grace?” It was five past two, but he sounded as though he’d been waked from a dead sleep.

“There are cameras at the post office,” she said. The immediate reply she got was silence.

“If you’re calling to tell me that there are cameras, Agent Grace, I have to tell you I’m disappointed in you.”

Tired and testy, she thought, then remembered his appointment. The doctor had come and gone, she suspected, but left her boss with a reminder of their time together. She wondered if there was a spare wastebasket close by his desk like the one her mother had kept near the bed.

“No, sir, I know you know about the cameras. I’m wondering about the tapes.” She could sense his head shaking during the brief pause before he spoke.

“I’ve seen them. There’s nothing useable on them.”

“They didn’t get it?”

“They got it all, but they didn’t get anything clear of him. Unless you call dark clothing, dark baseball-style cap, and turned up collar, all things we knew already. We had surveillance pictures of him before, Agent Grace, or didn’t you read what I gave you?”

It wasn’t him talking. Ariel knew that better than most, though she would have given the world not to. “At the stables, sir, yes. But I’m not thinking about seeing him. I want to see what happened in there.”

“I have, Grace. There’s nothing useful. Trust me.”

He was being a wall. She doubted he knew that he was. But still she had to get through. “I would really appreciate it, sir, if you’d let me see the tapes. I know it may be disturbing, but if I’m going to be part of your team then I need to be able to access the evidence.”

“The tapes are in Washington, Grace,” Jaworski told her. He sounded as if he simply wanted her to go away. “The lab has them. They’re going to try for an enhancement. They won’t get it.”

“Can I see the raw tapes, sir?”

“They’re in D.C., I just told you.”

Easy push. Easy push. Just like what the doctors would be doing and telling him.
One more, Mr. Jaworski. One more round might just do it. Might just get this sucker.

“The lab makes copies of the raw tapes, sir. They could send copies of those copies.”

A breath hissed over the connection. Exasperated. Dog tired. “Do you want me to get you copies, Grace? Do you?”

“I would appreciate it.”

“Fine,” Jaworski said. She was listening to electric silence a split second later.

Three

Trick Or Treat

Clarion Key, a thousand miles from the nearest bit of American soil, save Puerto Rico, had been owned by the Spanish, the British, and long before that by a succession  of pirate invaders who fought one another for control of the sliver of Caribbean land. Cuba had laid claim to it at one time, as had the Dominican Republic, but the truth be told it belonged to no government. Its status was unclear.

That pleased many people.

One of them stood at the end of the tiny island’s only airstrip looking west toward the lightening sky. The sun had risen behind him. It warmed his back through the thin shirt that hung upon him like a rag. His shorts were loose and long. His hair was gray. He looked the part of a wayfarer.

One would not likely guess he was worth two billion dollars, U.S.

Of course his wealth was not kept at Chase Manhattan, nor any other institution where the prying eyes of some legally entitled functionary might locate it. Survey it. Seize it. No, that which made him rich was more transitory in nature. He had access to houses, fabulous estates and villas from Rio to Monaco, flats in London and Lisbon, a cottage in the Swiss Alps and a ranch in Zimbabwe. He could pick up a phone and have a jet waiting at any airport in the world in an hour, if that were his wish. Said jet could take him to a yacht, moored in Hong Kong, if he suddenly fancied yachting from Hong Kong. None of these things were ‘his’, in the legal sense of the word, of course, but that did not matter. The truth be told, he did not
need
money in the traditional sense. If he required cash, for cigarettes in Paris or a bag of
qat
in Yemen, it would come. Money truly only ‘existed’ for him if he had a few francs in his pocket, or a lira left by accident in one of the many cars that were at his disposal. He did not need money on him, with him, attached to him in any way. He only needed it to pass through him. He only needed people to need him. And in that lay his value. Middle man. He had become filthy rich doing so.

And was about to become just that much richer, he knew, spotting the glint of light low in the west.

The glint paralleled the long north-south axis of Clarion Key for a minute, then seemed to stop moving. But it wasn’t. It was growing larger, coming at the man now. Soon he could hear the fine whine of two engines perfectly tuned.

“It’s here,” the man said over his shoulder in flawless Russian. He could have said it in French or English or three other languages. But the fat man sweating in a chair beneath the shade of three date trees would not have understood him. “Get your fat ass up and have a look. It’s a new plane.” He looked back out to sea and muttered in his native French: “The lucky bastard has more planes than me.”

The hurricane that had skirted the area only days before was long gone, spinning moisture now up the American east coast and into Canada, leaving a tufts of white cloud high in the blue, blue sky. The twin engine Beech came out of it like a seabird, graceful and quick, skimming the paved but worn runway for nearly half its length before its gear dropped and it touched down with three small puffs of smoke.

Yves Costain laughed at the display of bravado and clapped his hands mightily as the Beech taxied toward him. The fat Russian waddled up behind, a pint bottle of rum held low against his leg. It was half full, the optimistic slob knew.

“He is marvelous,” Costain said to the Russian, who nodded and took a sip of rum. “Magnificent.”

The Beech slowed pointing right at Costain and the Russian, and swung hard right just in front of them, leaving its left side to them. Costain waved to the pilot. Mills DeVane waved back through the cockpit’s side window.

The engines spun down and stopped. Costain walked behind the wing as the pilot’s door tipped up.

“Mills! Mills!” Costain shouted, in perfect if accented English. “My friend!”

“Yves? How are you?” Mills said with some surprise.

“I’m fine. Fine. How are you?”

“Good,” Mills said, stepping onto the wing and reaching back into the plane.

The Russian put his free hand on the pistol tucked behind his belt against the small of his back. With the other he brought another touch of rum to his lips and watched the American warily from behind dark glasses.

“Are you thirsty, my friend?” Costain asked.

Mills seemed to be struggling with something, then with one final pull he heaved a large black duffel from behind the pilot’s seat and dropped it on the wing. “I am now.”

He smiled and hopped down, shouldering the duffel and giving his hand to Costain. “I never get to see you anymore. When I make the trip it’s usually that Mexican fellow of yours waiting for me.”

“Roberto,” Costain said, grasping Mills’s hand in both of his. “Like a son to me. If he could speak French I’d adopt him.”

Mills and Costain laughed raucously, like school chums reunited after too many years. The fat Russian sipped his rum and let his hand come off his pistol.

“Mills, you know my friend, do you not?”

Mills nodded and smiled at the fat Russian. He’d met him once, hadn’t heard him utter a word, and had never heard Costain mention his name.

“Come, Mills, good fellow. We will go and get you something to drink and you will tell me about this new plane I see.”

New? Mills thought. He guessed it was new to Costain. He’d already used it on four runs, and that was about his limit. Gareth would be wanting to spring for a new one soon. New look, new tail number. Easier to get in and out of ‘iffy’ fields without some gung ho local cop or customs agent asking the wrong–or the right—questions.

“That, Yves, is a brand new twenty five year-old Beech Baron,” Mills said proudly as they began to walk toward a grouping of shacks beyond the date trees. In one there would be barrels of fuel, he knew, and in another, the one in the center with Costain’s bodyguard standing outside, there would be a table. A big table. “Pressurized, electric door seal, M1 coupled, dual DG’s, and a hell of a nice interior.”

“By that you mean as few seats as possible, eh, my friend?” Costain put his arm around Mills, chuckling knowingly. “More room for other things.” He put a finger to his nose and sniffed twice in suggestion. “I am right?”

“I transport needed medical supplies from third world countries to poor souls in my country,” Mills told him with a broad smile. Sweat was beading on his forehead already. The Beech’s A/C had spoiled him. “I’m a humanitarian.”

“Of course. Of course.” Costain laughed and thumped Mills twice on the back. “Come, hurry, let’s get business done so we may relax a bit.”

Mills nodded as he walked. Behind he could hear the fat Russian’s sloppy steps in the sandy earth past the date trees. At the shack where his bodyguard waited, Costain paused outside the door and spoke to his man quietly in Russian. The bodyguard nodded and trotted off. “Raoul will be back with refreshments in a moment. Iced coffee is good?”

“Fine, Yves,” Mills said, wondering how in the hell the Frenchman had managed ice on this Godforsaken rock a thousand miles out in the Atlantic. Then again, Costain had surprised him before.