Authors: Stephen Coonts
the evidentiary link could never be completed. He had to die, the fool. And he had been a fool. The FBI would inevitably pick up the trail of the Stinger missiles and the guns. And that trail would lead to Tasson, who was now a dead end. Why, indeed!
He had shot Tasson in the front yard because he didn’t want any blood or bullet holes in the house. The rain and snow would take care of any blood outside.
Charon fished Tassone’s wallet from a pocket and took it inside to the kitchen table. There was very little there. A little over three hundred dollars in bills, some credit cards and a Texas driver’s license for Anthony Tasson. No else. He carefully fed the credit cards and drivees license into the stove. Even the money. The wallet he put into his pocket Outside he pulled the pickup around and placed the body in the bed. He got the suitcase from the trunk and inspected the car carefully. As he suspected, it was a rental from one of the agencies at the Albuquerque airport. He would drive it down there himself tomorrow and park it at the rental car return and drop the paperwork and keys in the express return slot. At that moment Tasson would cease to exist. Then Charon would board the plane to Washington.
There was a candy wrapper on the floor of the car, and Charon pocketed that too.
The contents of the suitcase were as innocuous as the wallet. Several changes of clothing, toilet articles, and a paperback novel by Judith Krantz. He put everything back and tossed it into the bed of the trucl it took him twenty minutes to travel the five miles up the Mountainside to the old mine. He had the pickup in four-wheel drive, but still he took it slow and easy. The higher he climbed on the mountain the worse the snow was and the poorer the road. Tomorrow he might not even have been able to get the truck up here.
Visibility was poor at the mine, less than a hundred yards. The delapidated, weather-beaten boards and timbers that formed a shack around the shaft were half rotted, about to
fall down. The mine had been abandoned in the late fifties. Henry Charon walked up on the hill, then around the mountain, then back down the road. Fifteen minutes later, satisfied that no one was around, he pulled the corpse out Of the pickup and dragged it across to the mine shaft and dropped it in. The suitcase followed.
He then tied a rope around the front bumper of the pickup and lowered that into the shaft. He got a reel of coated wire from the tool chest behind the truck cab, and unwound a hundred feet or so and lowered that down the shaft. Finally, he put a flashlight, four sticks of dynamite, and a blasting cap into his pocket, took a last look around, and, using the rope, lowered himself down the shaft.
He worked quickly. He dragged the body fifty feet down one of the two drifts that led off from the bottom, then brought the suitcase and put it beside the body. He left the wallet and candy wrapper.
The dynamite he wedged between the rock wall and a six-by-six oak timber that helped hold up a weak place in the roof. He stripped the insulation from the wire he had lowered into the shaft and twisted the raw wire to the blasting cap, which he then inserted into one of the dynamite sticks. With the dynamite packed into place with dirt and small rocks, he took a last look around with the i flashlight. Had he forgotten anything? The keys to the rental car. They were in his pocket. Okay.
Charon was not even breathing hard when he got to the surface. He pulled the rope out of the hole.
He had a little wind-up detonator in his toolbox. He attached the wire to the terminals, wound it up, and let it go. A dull thud that he could feel with his feet followed. Using his flashlight, he looked down into the shaft. It was all dust, impossible to see the bottom.
He got back into the pickup and started the engine. He turned the heater up. The visibility had deteriorated to less than a hundred feet. About four inches or so of snow on the ground. Tasson was going to be missed, of course, but Charon
thought that whoever wanted George Bush killed ten million dollars worth was not going to miss his messenger boy very much. And Charon would try to get as many of the other people on the list as he could. Of course, Tasson wasn’t around to deliver additional money, and Charon didn’t know who to go to to get paid, but so be it. Somebody was going to get his money’s worth and that would be all that mattered.
And ten million was enough. More than enough. It was more money than Henry Charon could spend in two lifetimes.
Fifteen minutes later Charon tried to pull the wire up out of the shaft. It wouldn’t come. Probably a rock lying on it. He dropped the rope back into the shaft and went back down. The dust had almost completely settled. The flashlight’s beam revealed that the drift tunnel was blocked, with a huge slab pinning the detonator wire. Charon cut the wire, then came back up the rope hand over hand.
He coiled the rope and wire and stowed everything. Going down the mountain the pickup truck slid once, but he got it stopped in time. It took most of an hour to get back to the house. Only an inch of snow on the ground t
Inside the cabin he threw another log in the stove and washed the cup Tasson had used and put it back in the cabinet. Henry Charon made a fresh pot of coffee. After it had dripped through, he poured some into his cup and stretched out in the easy chair.
“Your ten o’clock appointment is here, Mr. Brody.”
The lawyer reached for the intercom button. “Send him in.”
T. Jefferson Brody walked over to the door and met Freeman Mcationally coming through. Brody carefully closed the door and shook Freeman’s hand, then pointed to the red leather client’s chair. “Good to see you.”
“Yeah, Tee. Howzit going?”
“Pretty good.” Brody went around his desk and arranged himself in his eighteen-hundred-dollar custommade swivel chair. “How’s business?”
“Oh, you know,” Mcationally said and made a vague gesture. “Always problems. Nothing ever goes right.”
“That’s true.”
“You been watching the TV the last couple days?”
“You mean that car-bus crash? Yeah, I heard about that “One of my drivers. Some of our guards tried to rip off his load. He was lucky he wasn’t killed.”
“A lot of heat,” Brody said, referring to the President’s press conference and the announced government initiatives. The papers were full of it.
“Yeah. That’s why I came to see you. Some of those things The Man wants to do are going to hurt. I think it’s time we called in some of those markers for donations we been making to those senators and congressmen.”
“I was wondering when you might want to do that.”
“Now is when. Putting the DEA and FBI together is of n going to help us businessmen. Yeah, like they say on TV, it’ll take ‘em forever to decide to do anything, but someday they’ll know too much. I mean, it’ll all go into the same paper mill and eventually something will pop out that’s damn bad for me.”
“What else?“‘9
“Well, this new money proposal. Now that will hurt. I got about ten million in cash on hand to run my business on a day-to-day basis.”
“I understand.”
“Seems to me this whole thing is sorta antiblack, y’know? The black people don’t use whitey’s banks and they’re the ones who’ll lose the most. Shit, all the white guys got theirs in checking and investments and all that. It’s the black women and Poor families who keep theirs in cookie jars and stuffed in mattresses. Damn banks charge big fees these days for checking accounts unless you got a white man’s balance.”
“That’s a good argument. I’ll use that.”
“Yeah. And this bail reform business. That’s antiblack too. Whites got houses and expensive cars and all to post as bail. Black man’s gotta go buy a bail bond. That takes cash.
Freeman had two or three other points to make, then Brody asked, “Who tried to rip you off the other night?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think Willie Teal’s behind it. He’s been getting his stuff through Cuba and that’s dried up on him. So I think he put the word out he’d pay top dollar s, and that sorta tempted my guys. No way to for supplied know for sure, though, as the three dips that tried to rip me all got killed.”
“Saved you some trouble,” Brody noted and smiled. “It wouldn’t have been no trouble. You gotta make folks want to be honest or you’re outta business. That’s Part of it., The buzzing of the intercom caused T. Jefferson Brody to raise a finger at his client. “Yes. “Senator Cherry’s on the phone, sir.”
Brody looked at Freeman. “You’ll get a kick out of this.” He punched buttons for the speaker phone. “Yes.”
“Bob Cherry. How’s it going, Jefferson?” The sound was quite good, although a little tinny.
“Just fine, Senator. And you?”
“Well, I’ve been going over my reelection finances with my campaign chairman-you know I’m up for reelection in two years?”
“Yessir. I thought that was the date.”
“Anyway, those PAC’S that you represent have been so generous in the past, I was hoping that one or two of them might make a contribution to my reelection campaign.”
“Sir, I’ll have to talk to my clients, but I’m optimistic. They’ve always believed that someone must pay for good government.” Brody winked broadly at Freeman Mcationally, who grinned.
“I wish more people felt that way. Talk to you soon.”
When the phone was back on the cradle, Brody smiled at Freeman Mcationally and explained. Mcationally threw back his head and laughed. “They just call you up and ask for money”…“l “You got it.”
“If I could do that, I could retire from business. You
hire a few people to work the phones and generally life easy.”
“Well, you’re not in Congress.”
“Yeah. My business is a little more direct. Tell me, is Willie Teal one of your clients?” All trace of humor was gone from his face now.
“No.,”
was I’m glad to hear that. How about Bernie Shapiro?”
“Welill … I’ll be straight with you, Freeman. My rule is to never discuss my clients’ identities or business with anybody. Ever. You know that.”
Freeman Mcationally stood and walked around the room, looking at this and that. “You got a lot of nice stuff here,” he said softly.
T. Jefferson Brody made a modest gesture, which Mcationally missed.
Mcationally spoke with his back to the lawyer. “Bernie Shapiro is in with the Costello family. They’re moving in on the laundry business. Gonna cost me. And I don’t like to pay more money for the same service.”
Brody said nothing.
Mcationally came over to the desk and sat on the corner of it, where he could look down on T. Jefferson Brody. “Tee, I give you some advice. You’re a good lawyer for what I need done. You know people and can get in places I can’t get into. But if I ever hear, ever, ever, ever hear that you told anybody about my business without me giving you the okay, you’ll be dead two hours after I hear it.” He lowered his face to look straight into Brody’s eyes. “You understand?”
“Freeman, I’m a lawyer. Everything you say to me is privileged.”
“You understand me, Tee?”
“Yes.” Brody’s tongue was thick and he had trouble getting the word out.
“Good.” Freeman got up and walked over to the window. He pulled back the drapes and looked out.
After ten or fifteen seconds Brody decided to try to get back to business. He had been successfully handling scum like Mcationally for ten years now, and though there were rough
moments, you couldn’t let them think you were scared. “Are you and Shapiro going to do business?”
“I dunno. Not if I can help it. I think that asshole killed the guy who was washing my dough. And I think he killed the guy who owned the checkcashing business. Guy named Lincoln. Shapiro paid off a broad, a grifter named Sweet Cherry Lane who was servicing the guy, and she set him
up.”
Bells began to ring for T. Jefferson Brody. “What does this Lane woman look like?” he asked softly.
Freeman turned away from the window. He came back and dropped into the client chair. “Sorta chocolate, huge, firm tits, tiny waist, tall and regal. A real prime piece of pussy, I hear tell.”
“If someone wanted this bitch taught a lesson, could you do a favor like that?”
A slow grin spread across Freeman’s face. “Lay it out, Tee.
“She robbed me, Freeman.” Brody swallowed and took a deep breath. “Honest. Stole my car and watch and a bunch of shit right out of my house-and she stole the $400,000 that Shapiro paid for that check cashing business.”
“Naw.”
“Yes. The goddamn cunt pretended to be the widow, signed everything, took the check, slipped me a Mickey and cleaned me out.”
“What the fuck kind of lawyer are you, Tee? You didn’t even ask to see some ID before you gave her four hundred Gs?”
“Hey,” Brody snarled. “The bitch conned me. Now I want to slice some off her. Will you help me?”
The grin on Freeman Mcationally’s face faded in the face of the lawyer’s fury. He stood. “I’ll think about it, Tee. In the meantime, you get busy on those senators and congressmen. I’ve paid a lot of good money to those people, now I want something. You get it. Then we’ll talk.”
He paused at the door and spoke without looking at Brody. “I try to never get personal. With me it’s all business. That way everybody knows where they stand. When you get
personal You make mistakes, take stupid risks. It’s not good.” He shook his head. “Not good.” Then he went out. Brody stared at the door and chewed on his lower lip
Ott Mergenthaler returned from lunch at two-thirty in the afternoon with a smile on his face and a spring in his walk. Jack Yocke couldn’t resist. “Back to the old grind, eh, Ott?”
Mergenthaler grinned and dropped into a chair that Yocke hooked around with his foot. “Well, Jack, when you’re the most famous columnist writing in English and you’ve been in the cutback for a week or so, the movers and shakers are just dying to unburden themselves of nifty secrets and juicy tidbits. They can only carry that stuff so long without relief and then they get constipated.”
“A tube steak on the sidewalk?”
“A really fine fettucine alfredo and a clear, dry Chianti.” Ott kissed his fingertips. “Who was the mover and shaker, or is that a secret?”
“Read my column tomorrow. But if you can’t wait that long, it was Bob Cherry.”