Alex Cross 16 (10 page)

It was done, anyway. He'd wiped the hard drive and taken the disk away with him. He'd recorded Zeus's session with the two girls. He'd witnessed the horror show. The question now was what to do with it. It was tempting to drive around all night, put the thing in his safe-deposit box, and hopefully never go back to it again. On the other hand, he thought, if the need did arise, he'd be smart to keep it closer at hand. Just in case. Nicholson had never indulged in the idea that this scheme of his could go on forever. The discreet club and the dirty blackmail had been a delicate balance. With Zeus in the mix, it was untenable, and the madman showed no sign of slowing down.

If Nicholson wanted out, he was going to have to disappear, and sooner rather than later. One contingency plan after another ran through his head as he drove.

The offshore account in the Seychelles had just over two million in it. There was a hundred and fifty thousand coming from Temple Suiter, and then the Al-Hamad party next week, which promised to be good for at least as much. It was no lifetime reserve, but it was certainly enough to get him out of the country and keep him more than comfortable for a while. Definitely a couple of years, maybe longer. He could fly through Zurich and lie low for a few weeks, until he could get a second passport. Lots of countries offered acquisition programs; Ireland might draw the least notice. Then he could use it to fly back out again, perhaps heading east. He'd always heard the trade in flesh was outrageous in Bangkok. Maybe it was time to find out.

Meanwhile, there was Charlotte.

God, what had he been thinking when he married her? That he would turn that lump of clay into something worth keeping? She'd been a little nothing of a London schoolteacher when they met; now she was a little nothing of an American housewife. It was like some kind of cruel joke — on him. One thing was certain. Mrs. Nicholson would definitely not be making the trip east, or wherever he ended up. The only question was whether he should find someone to finish her off — just one more body at this point, and well worth the twenty or thirty thousand it would cost. Anything to keep that gob of hers from flapping after he was gone.

It was just after four a.m. when Nicholson finally got home. His mind was still racing as he came down the short, curved slope of his driveway, and he nearly rear-ended the black Jeep four-door parked right in front of the garage.

"What the hell?"

His first cogent thoughts were of the disk in his glove box, and of Zeus.
Jesus, was it possible somebody
already
knew about the recording? Could it be true?

Not wanting to find out, Nicholson jammed the car into reverse, but even that was too little, too late. A fat man was already at his side window, pointing a handgun and shaking his head
no
.

The fat one opened Nicholson's door for him and then stepped back. The guy's mouth hung open a little, and his cheap golf shirt was tucked in, leaving an impressive curve of belly suspended in midair. It seemed inconceivable that someone as sloppy as this should be working for Zeus — which left the obvious question.

"Who the hell
are
you?" Nicholson asked. "What do you want with me?"

"We work for Mr. Martino." The accent was New York, or Boston, or
something
. East Coast American. Nicholson slowly got out of the car, keeping both hands in sight. "Okay then, who the hell is Mr. Martino?" he asked.

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"No more stupid questions." The corpulent thug gestured Nicholson toward the house. "Let's go inside. We're right behind you, bub."

It occurred to Nicholson that he'd already be dead if this were a straightforward hit. So that meant they wanted something else.
What?

They were barely inside the front door when Charlotte Nicholson's thin, very irritating voice came seeping down from the upstairs hall. "Babe? Who's that with you? Isn't it late for guests?"

"It's nothing. Not your concern. Go back to bed, Charlotte."

Even now, he felt like throttling her, just for being where she shouldn't be. Her bare splayed feet and legs came into the light from the foyer as she took a step down. "What's going on?" she called out again.

"Did you not hear me?
Go. Now.
" She seemed to pick up on his tone, anyway, and floated back into the darkness. "Stay up there," he told her. "I'll come get you later. Go to sleep." He took his two unexpected guests through to the great room at the back, for more privacy. Also, the bar was there, and Nicholson headed straight for it.

"I don't know about you fellas, but I could use a drink —" he said, then felt a sharp crack at the back of his skull. He stumbled down onto his knees.

"What the fuck do you think this is, a social call?" shouted the fat guy. Nicholson felt angry enough to fight, but he was in no position to do it. Not even close. So he pulled himself up, then onto the sofa. Thankfully, his vision was slowly coming back into focus.

"So what the hell do you want at four in the morning?"

The fat one hovered over him. "We're looking for one of our guys. He came down here about a week and a half ago, and we haven't heard from him since."

Christ, he wanted to lay out this fat bastard, but that wasn't going to happen, at least not right now. But someday — somewhere.

"I'm going to need more information than that.
What
guy? Give me a hint."

"The name's Johnny Tucci," said Fatboy.

"Who? Never heard of him. Tucci? Did he come to my club? Who is he?"

"Don't bullshit us, man." The smaller punk pushed in close now, with a rush of cigarette and body stink. "We know all about your little place in the country, okay?"

Nicholson sat up straight on the couch. This might have more to do with Zeus than he'd thought. Or maybe with his business on the side?

"That's right," the punk went on. "You think Mr. Martino sends his people down here for a vacation?"

"Listen, I still have no idea what you're talking about," he told them. That much was partly the truth. Fatboy hunkered down on the burled-wood coffee table and lowered his gun for the first time. It might have been an opening, if the other punk weren't so close by.

"I'm going to lay it out for you, then," he said, in an almost conciliatory tone. "One of our guys is missing. Whoever's been contracting with our boss isn't easy to track down. So far, all we've got is you. And that means our problem just became your problem. You understand?"

Nicholson was afraid that he did. "What do you expect me to do . . . about
our
problem?" The guy shrugged, then scratched his stubbly chin with the barrel of his gun. "Bottom line, we've got to deliver somebody back to Mr. Martino. So you do some asking around, find out what you can, or you'll be the one we bring back."

"Or the little lady up on the stairs," the other one said.

"You can have the little lady," Nicholson said. "We'll call it even." The heavy man smiled finally, and then he stood up. Tonight's business was clearly done.

"I'll take that drink to go," he said to Nicholson. "You just stay put." He waddled over to the bar, where his buddy was already helping himself to as many bottles as he could carry in both arms.

Once the two punks were gone and Nicholson had his drink and some ice for his head, he noticed they'd cleaned him out of Johnnie Walker only to leave a Dalmore 62 sitting right there on the bar. It was a fourhundred-dollar bottle, and seemed as ominous a sign as anything else. If these two losers were onto him, then everything was unraveling faster than he'd thought possible.
Now, who the hell was Johnny Tucci?

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"Let me ask you this," Suarez said to his partner. "He's obviously filthy rich. Why does he risk it? What is he

— completely crazy?"

"On some level, sure."

"On some level? How about 24/7/365 he's crazier than a shithouse rat on speed? How does he get away with it —
how?
"

"Well, for one thing — do
you
know who he is, Suarez?"

"You're right, I don't. But somebody has to know. Somebody has to stop him eventually."

"What can I tell you — welcome to the wackadoo world of the rich and famous. Can you say wood chipper?"

"How's it going, fellas?" He shuffled on over like the piece of white trash he was supposed to be. "What've you got for me this time?"

"Two female." The driver looked up, though not quite into his eyes. What was this:
Did the Latino have a
conscience?
"One of them has a bullet in the chest. You'll see."

"Oh, yeah? What'd you shoot her for?"

"I don't know, maybe because we're still chasing down the last one who ran off." The guy was baiting him, Remy could tell, but he wasn't sure why or, really, what these murders were all about. He was just a cog, didn't have all the pieces, figured probably no one did. Like JFK. Like RFK. Hell, like O.J.

"Seems to me you shot the last one too," he said, playing along. "Maybe she didn't run off a'tall. Might just be lying out in those woods somewhere, turning into mulch. As we speak. Coulda just been found by hikers."

"Yeah, maybe." The ex-agent took a deep breath, starting to get a little showy with his aggravation. "Listen, if you could just clean out the trunk, we'll be on our merry way."

Remy scratched at his crotch — a little overkill, maybe — and then shuffled around to the back of the car. The driver popped the trunk for him.
Jesus! Look at this
.

The two bodies were double wrapped in black poly sheeting and sealed with packing tape. These guys were pros at what they did; he had to give them that much.
But
who the hell was hurting these girls in the first place?
What
was the big picture here? Who was the killer?

He dragged both "packages" out of the trunk and onto the canvas tarp he'd already spread. His tools were laid out on a big hickory stump, and there was an extra gallon of gas next to the chipper.

"Which one'd you say was shot?" he called over to the spooks.

"Tall one. Left chest. What a waste. Girl was a real looker."

He rolled her over and slit the plastic down the middle, pushing just hard enough with the tip of his bowie knife to leave a thin red trail in its wake. When he pulled back the wrapper, he found a small crater just above the very well-formed left breast. The body was still warm — in the nineties or high eighties. Dead only a few hours at most.

"Okay, got it. You want me to pull the slug or do you care?"

"Pull it. Get rid of it."

"All righty.
Done
. Anything else?"

"Yeah. Close the trunk."

A few seconds later, the two smartass bastards were gone.

Distrust aside, Remy didn't mind their arrogance, mostly because he knew it worked in his favor. It probably page 42

never even occurred to those two how expendable
they
were.

Or how vulnerable.

In fact, they'd already done a good bit of the work for him when they erased their own identities. Now they were just a couple of spooks, and Remy knew as well as anyone that when the time came, there was nothing easier to make disappear than a ghost.

He could do that — hell, he'd done it before. Made a career of it, actually. He unwrapped the second girl — another real looker. Seemed like maybe she'd been strangled. And bitten? He massaged the girl's lukewarm breasts, played around a little bit more, then took the two of them up the hill to the chipper.

What a waste
was right.
Who the hell would do such a
thing? Somebody even crazier than he was?

As I pulled in, I couldn't help thinking about those Deep Throat scenes in
All the President's Men
, the book and the movie. There was a definite cloak-and-dagger thing happening here. Why was that? What in hell was going on?

Ned was already waiting when I got out of the car. He handed me a manila folder with the Bureau's seal on it. Inside, I found some notes and a collection of photos, copied two to a page. "What's this?"

"Renata Cruz and Katherine Tennancour," he said. "Both missing, presumed dead." Each picture showed one of the girls, in several locations around town, with a variety of mostly white, much older men.

"Is that
David Wilke?
" I asked, pointing at someone who looked very much like the current chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Ned nodded. "That's David Wilke, all right. Both women have powerful men as regular clients, which is why we've been tracking them to begin with. And Katherine Tennancour, at least, worked at the club out in Virginia." I didn't say a word, just stared at Mahoney.

"I know exactly what you're thinking," he said. "Might as well break out the legislative directory while we're at it."

This whole thing was getting more insidious by the minute. There was no way to track this killer — or this network, if that's what we were looking at — without exposing all kinds of very dirty laundry in the process. A lot of innocent family members' lives would be ruined — and that was just the start of it. House and Senate majorities, not to mention presidential elections and governorships, had been lost over a lot less than this. No one would be going down without a fight either; I already had a bad taste of that from Internal Affairs. Anyone who thinks that cops look forward to these sensational "career-making" cases has never been in the middle of one.

"Jesus, Ned. It's like waiting for a hurricane to happen right here in DC."

"More like running after one — looking for trouble," he said. "A real category-five shitstorm. Don't you just love Washington?"

"Actually, I do. Just not right at this minute."

"So listen, Alex." His voice went serious again. "The Bureau's all over this. It's about to go
pop
. I'd totally understand if you want to back off, and if you do, now would be a good time. Just hand the envelope full of goodies back."

I was a little surprised by the offer. I thought Ned knew me a lot better than that. Which meant, of course, that his offer carried a serious warning.

"Does that mean you're ready to hit the club out in Virginia?" I asked him.

"I'm waiting on the ex parte right now."

"And?"

Ned grinned, and if I'm not mistaken, he looked just a little relieved. "And you should probably leave your phone on when you go home tonight. I'll be calling."

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