Black Water Transit (30 page)

“Casey, if that Peekskill cop finds that case, you just did.”

She locked up, then walked away and started to pace.

Nicky got up off the couch and walked over to her. He put an arm around her shoulders and she let her head rest against his chest. He could feel her body vibrating. They’d spent last night together, in her bed, and this morning everything was very different, and although he was happy about the change and maybe already in love with her a little, what he knew about her now was dangerous for a cop to know.
Forget what she’s going to do
, he thought.
What am I going to do?
The phone rang. Casey stepped away from Nicky and walked to the bookshelf, picked up the receiver.

“Casey? This is Dexter Zarnas. Vince said you’d be home.”

“Dexter … what’s happening?”

“Nicky Cicero there?”

“Yes. He just got here.”

“Good. I’m in Harrisburg. At the airport. I talked to the desk people at Slipstream. ATF has already been all over them, and they swear they don’t know dick about Earl Pike landing in Harrisburg. I believe them. I think the charter thing was just a diversion.”

“Now what?”

“Now you get yourself out here and help me.”

“Why? If Pike’s not there—”

“I think he is. You catch the news this morning?”

“No. Not yet.”

“That Vermillion guy, the one the ATF popped?”

“Yeah?”

“He escaped. Supposed to have killed two guards. The feds are ripping up the state looking for him. Thing is, I don’t buy it.”

“You think Pike helped him?”

“It’s a theory. Vermillion was a business guy. Taking out two U.S. marshals isn’t one of the things they teach you at Harvard Business School. At least I hope not. I could use the help, okay?”

“Okay. We’ll get a car out of—”

“Too slow. Vince has a flight voucher filed at LaGuardia. Get the next regional flight to Harrisburg. Any carrier. I’ll pick you up at the airport. You’ve got my cell number. Call me as soon as you get a flight time. Bring your gear. You follow me? And plan to stay.”

“Both of us? What about the shooting board? What about Jimmy Rock’s funeral?”

“On for Monday afternoon. The department’s handling all of it. And Vince is handling them. Things are happening. Now go pack.”

When Jack pushed through the glass doors of the Wal-Mart, the first thing he saw was a bank of video surveillance cameras and a black-and-white monitor hanging from a steel brace over his head. In the grainy backlit image, bleached by the sun pouring in through the glass wall behind him, he saw a big man in a white tee and
jeans, saw him standing still while a swirling stream of shoppers eddied and coiled around him, saw the man staring back down at him. The video surveillance suddenly made his situation very clear.

He forced himself forward, joined the walking dead milling around in the aisles, and worked his way through the store until he reached the hardware section, where he picked up a five-gallon can of dark-green marine enamel paint and a set of horsehair brushes. As far as he could tell, no one had looked at him sideways. He hefted the can and the brushes and headed back toward the cash registers. On the way he passed the electronics department and stopped to watch the CNN headline news. Stopped dead-short.

The sound was turned down on the huge Sony screen, but the image of Valeriana Greco in a press conference, standing in front of a podium with the seal of the Department of Justice and taking questions from a roomful of reporters, was hard to resist. No one else was paying attention, so he stepped up and found the volume button, notched it up a few bars. Greco looked like a woman on fire, her face a white-hot mask, her voice controlled and forceful. Somebody had propped the mike too close to her face, and Greco pushed it lower with her left hand, getting it out of the camera line. She was wearing a black jumpsuit with her name on the chest,
Greco
, above a gold star and the words
Detectives/U.S. Attorneys
. Her black hair was brushed and shining like a crow’s wing, held back with a thin gold bar. She looked like the kind of stiletto that Fabergé would have made if Fabergé had decided to make a stiletto. The camera jumped to show a man standing in the back row far left, looking at the notes in his hands.

“Ms. Greco, do you expect to arrest Mr. Vermillion anytime soon? Do you have any idea where he might be at this moment?”

Greco was nodding before he finished. When she spoke, she made direct eye contact with the camera. Jack had to admit, she had star power. The camera loved her.

“Yes, we have deployed assets all over the state. We have the assistance of the Pennsylvania State Police as well as members of the ATF and of course the U.S. marshals fugitive pursuit team. We expect an arrest at any time. He can’t hide from justice.”

Another question, from a tweedy geek in the second row.

“Can you tell us anything about the fugitive?”

“I can. As you know, his name is Jack Vermillion. He was being transported to Allenwood under a U.S. marshals escort. Apparently he was able to overcome one of his guards and take the man’s weapon.”

“We understand the guards are dead?”

“Yes. Both of them. He shot them both. In cold blood. We have a witness to the shootings. She was working at the restaurant when the transport arrived. She saw the whole thing.”

“Can we talk to her?”

“No. She’s in protective custody.”

“Do you have any idea where the shooter went?”

Greco shook her head, again looked right into the camera.

“No. But we know he’s traveling in a white van. If anyone out there sees a large white box van with government plates, Echo nine Bravo four one five, we ask that you call nine-one-one and tell the police immediately. This suspect is armed and dangerous. Do not approach him. We cannot stress that too much.”

“Can you tell us what Vermillion was charged with?”

“I can. Mr. Vermillion has been implicated in a cross-border drug and weapons smuggling syndicate. He’s been indicted under the RICO laws of this country, and I
have petitioned a federal court judge to grant the government control of his assets under the federal forfeiture laws. That request has been granted this morning.”

Somebody in the middle wanted to know why she was doing that. Did it not seem a bit draconian? Greco frowned at the question.

“The purpose of the forfeiture law is to prevent accused felons who are involved in organized crime to use the proceeds of their criminal operations to delay the progress of justice. To allow Mr. Vermillion to continue to draw on the assets of a multimillion-dollar corporation would severely hamper the administration of justice.”

“But doesn’t the Justice Department have unlimited resources?”

“That’s not the point. As we’ve seen in some recent criminal cases—I’m thinking of the JonBenet Ramsey case here, not to mention Mr. Simpson—money can be used to create barriers in the path of a thorough investigation. Should Mr. Vermillion be exonerated, he will of course regain control of whatever remains of his assets and resources. But he cannot use them to defer justice.”

“Have you already seized the companies he controls?”

“That process is ongoing. A business associate of Mr. Vermillion has … attempted to obstruct the process. That issue is being dealt with in the courts today. I expect a resolution very soon. And that, I’m afraid, is all the time I have today.”

She shook her hair out, glanced to her left, nodded once.

“I would like to stress, however, one final matter. The Justice Department has authorized a reward of one hundred thousand dollars for information leading to the capture of this felon. One hundred thousand. And no further questions. That’s all I can say at this time.”

The image jumped and now Jack was looking at the intake photo the ATF had taken when they brought him into the holding cells at Albany, full face and profile, with the numbers plate, a black board with little stick-on white letters.
Vermillion, Jack. Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. 1377620
.

It was a bad moment for him, standing in the middle of a Wal-Mart in the middle of middle America and seeing his haggard face staring out at him from the huge screen. He looked angry. He looked dangerous. He looked like a dead man. And he was worth a hundred thousand. Maybe he should turn himself in and claim the reward. He could use the money.

Jack hit the off button, walked away from the screen, bumped into a blocky young kid with a green Penn State jacket on, the kid with his head down, fondling some sort of CD player. The kid looked up at Jack, made a pug-nosed brute face, but Jack was already by him. One thing anyway, it looked like Creek Johnson was holed up in the Alamo and making a fight of it.

Good for him. Jack hoped he was having fun.

He pushed his way to the cash counter and paid $38.63 for the paint and the brushes, which left him a little less than $90, all he had found in Buster’s black equipment bag under the passenger seat of the van. He also had Buster’s Visa card in his back pocket and Sharon Callahan’s service Glock stuffed into the top of his cowboy boot, where it was chafing the hell out of his calf muscle and banging into his shin bone every time he took a step. What the hell he intended to do with either of them was beyond him right now.

The cashier was an elderly woman whose hair looked like cotton candy. Jack could see the shiny dome of her skull under the wispy hair. She had age spots on her cheeks and a huge smiley face on her blue vest, which sported a badge with the name
Ida May
and the title
Sales Associate
. She gave him his change and showed him a set of dentures that had been around since the Truman years and needed a lot of repair work. Her hand was shaking as she counted out the coins and Jack wondered if she’d recognized him. Her pale-blue eyes looked watery and she had a slight cataract in the left eye. Under her huge glasses, her eyes looked wide and wet and as raw as egg yolks. Although he tried to track her shaking hands, she managed to spill several coins onto the floor. Jack was bending down to retrieve them when he felt someone bumping past him, the impact pushing him into the side of the cashier station.

He recovered, looked up, and saw the same thick-bodied young man wearing black jeans and a baggy nylon sports jacket, emerald green, with
Penn State
in white across the back. The boy was leaving at a brisk walk, not even looking back. Jack, already wrapped way too tight, snarled at the boy’s back.

“Excuse me, asshole.”

The boy stopped as if hooked, spun around. He had a bright red face, bumpy and unformed, small blue eyes spaced wide apart, a wispy blond goatee, and of course he wore his ball cap backward like every other brain-dead suburban mutt in every other brain-dead suburban hellhole just like Hazleton. He had on a pair of running shoes big enough to float to Cuba on, floppy sides and laces hanging.

“The fuck you say, faggot?”

Jack stood up, remembered his actual situation. This was no time to be picking a fight with some of the local pond scum. Jack smiled, shook his head, turned back to the elderly cashier, who was staring at the boy with a look of absolute terror. The kid stepped in so close to Jack that he could smell the kid’s sour-milk breath.

Jack looked at him, made eye contact, tried in the
silent exchange to make him understand that a fight between them could go either way, but that Jack didn’t really want one right now. It sounds complicated, but guys learn this kind of stuff very early. The kid got it in one and seemed happy to interpret it as a win for slacker mall rats everywhere. He puffed up at Jack some more, the effect spoiled a bit because Jack had four inches on him.

“Just watch the fucking mouth, faggot. Next time—”

“Yeah, thanks. I will. You have a nice day, now.”

Jack turned a shoulder on the kid and smiled at the cashier.

“Sorry for my language, ma’am.”

The woman was watching the boy, who stood at Jack’s right shoulder for another ten seconds and then turned and walked off, trailing a cheap plastic chain of hip-hop slang behind him. When he got through the doors she breathed out through thin papery lips.

“Goodness. My. What a temper.”

“Yes,” said Jack. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Oh never mind,” she said. “I know Jason from around. He’s always been a bad one. You held your temper pretty good there.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome, son. You have a nice day.”

You too, he thought. And enjoy your golden years as a Wal-Mart sales associate, Ida May.

The truck was in a three-story parking garage called Ticknor’s Auto Park, about six blocks away down a four-lane street lined with shopping malls and fast-food restaurants, bleaching white under the summer sun, unmarked by a single growing thing. The parking garage had been under construction, half-built, but the site was deserted when he drove the truck inside. It was as good a place as any to try to do what he had to do.

He walked all the way back to the lot with the fifty-pound can of paint tearing at his shoulder muscles and saw two police cars cruising past him, a Hazleton police car and a Pennsylvania State Police Jeep Cherokee with a roof rack and a shotgun showing in the rear window. The female cop in the Stetson and the aviators never looked his way. The sun was bitter hot on his shoulders and the back of his neck. By the time he reached the car park and walked up the long deserted ramp, he was dripping with sweat and starving.

The truck was on the top floor. The level was unfinished, white with concrete dust, and littered with metal shards. Discarded scaffolding and sections of rusted pipe littered the upper levels. No one was anywhere around. He stopped at the top of the ramp and listened with every nerve ending he had, but heard only the roar of traffic on the street and the pounding of his own heart. He set the can down, used a can opener he’d found in the glove compartment of the transport van to pop the lid. The opener had an enamel crest on it, a sunset against a big saguaro cactus, and the words
Big Sky Country
in a circle around the picture. He tried not to think about the look in Sharon Callahan’s eyes as she was dying in the hallway of that Denny’s. The opener was clearly hers. She had wanted to be in a gunfight and she got her wish and it killed her, as wishes sometimes do.