Black Water Transit (32 page)

“Hey there, tiger. Still with us? How you doing?”

Tank Boy’s lips moved. He was staring up at Jack, eyes huge now. He was trying to speak. His left arm was caught under his body, his hand projecting out from under him, blue-white, tubular as sausage meat, veined pink on the palm. Breath from his mouth made a tiny ripple of waves on the slick surface of the paint. They moved out and settled into a delicate fan of shining green curves. Jack reached out, gently patted the kid on his shoulder, feeling the landslide of thick muscle, and the rubbery flesh over it, put the Glock up against the kid’s cheek, listened as Tank Boy’s breath started to rasp out in puffy little gasps, pressed the muzzle in tight, braced his arm, turned his face slightly to the right, but not so far that he wasn’t still making good eye contact with the kid, and fired twice.

He sat back on his heels, studied the effect, and decided that firing into the soft fleshy tissue of a man’s cheek produced a much different pattern than firing into a thin layer of skin stretched over the skull. For one thing, there was the interplay with the molars. You didn’t get that with a skull shot.

He had to go back to the Wal-Mart and buy another
can of paint, but since he had discovered $976 dollars in grubby bills rolled up in an inside pocket of the dead boy’s Knicks jacket along with a plastic bag stuffed full of rock cocaine, he decided to treat himself to some new T-shirts, three black, two white, along with a new pair of jeans, a summer-weight jacket, a pair of olive green slacks and also new Top-Siders, and some necessary toiletries. He remembered to get some groceries and a tool set and some turpentine and a handheld CB radio and a cheap cell phone that came with a prepaid calling card. There were many excellent bargains at Wal-Mart and Jack was gratified to see how far his hard-earned money could take him in such a fine store. America was truly a wonderful country. On the way out he walked through the crowded parking lot and used his brand-new multitool with the screwdriver head to pop the plate off a garbage truck he found parked behind the store. The big orange truck was covered with dust and looked like it might stay there for a long while before anyone noticed a missing plate. Although it was a long way back to the parking garage and he had a lot to carry, he enjoyed the walk very much and found the weather very pleasant. He did see a few cop cars, but he felt quite invisible walking along the four-lane road in the company of so many fellow shoppers out and about on this lovely June day.

It took him another hour, but he finally managed to put a complete and convincing coat of green paint on the van. It was slow work, but he wanted it to look just right. Now and then he’d step back and see how it was going, and once he asked the boys what they thought of his work, but they just lay there and showed no interest in anything he was doing. Typical teens, he decided. Ignore them.

It was late afternoon by the time he screwed the borrowed
plate onto the transport van and tossed the government tags through the window and into a Dumpster next to a section of plaster tailings. They landed with a clatter and slid sideways under a nail-studded section of particleboard. He threw his jeans and the stained white tee down a fifty-foot-deep construction tube and dropped his boots in after them. He regretted having to throw away the boots, but he figured Dan Post was still making them. Jack then used the turpentine to clean himself up as much as possible, changed into the olive-drab slacks, and put on a black T-shirt and his new Top-Siders—no socks, thank you—splashed on some Eau Sauvage—very lime and quite refreshing—climbed into the van, fired it up, and rolled slowly down the exit ramp and far away from Penn State and his little dead friends.

Out in the busy traffic he found an FM station that played soft jazz, turned it up high enough to hear it through the ringing in his ears. Small-arms fire in a tight space did that to your ears. The van had a police radio too, and Jack clicked the selector switch through several channels until the LED display read
Info State City
. He heard a dispatcher discussing a car theft out at someplace called Laurel Run and a state trooper logging on to respond. So far nothing about him. Jack set the volume low, opened a cold bottle of spring water, and drank half of it at one go. Buster had left a package of Kools in a shelf under the dash. Jack took one out, lit it up, and rolled the window down. The day was cooler now, and the leafy suburban avenues he was soon driving through were fragrant with the smell of cut grass and flowers and backyard barbecues.

He took a two-lane blacktop numbered 309 north out of Hazleton and hit Interstate 80 a half hour later. Interstate 80 goes west through Chicago and Omaha and Cheyenne all the way to Sacramento, and it goes
east to the George Washington Bridge and New York City. West was the famous sundown road, and perhaps Mexico beyond it. East was back into the shit and maybe find out who put him there. With a little luck, maybe kill him before the ATF got to him. After that … well, forget that. There was no after.

Jack went east.

Nicky was sound asleep in the backseat and Casey’s mind was on her mother when Dexter’s cell phone started to beep. Dexter fished it out of his pocket, thumbed the send button.

“Zarnas.”

“
Sergeant Zarnas?
”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“
This is Derry Flynn. With the ATF. I said I’d call?
”

“I remember. What’s up?”

“
What’s your twenty?
”

“About a mile out of Delano on Eighty-one.”

“
You anywhere near a mobile display terminal?
”

“Got an MDT right in front of me.”

“
Hazleton.
”

“Hazleton? What about—”

The line was dead. Dexter put the cell phone down, looked across at Casey Spandau.

“Log us onto NCIC, Casey? See if there are any hits with the word
Hazleton
in them.”

“Proper name? A person?”

“I don’t know. All the guy said was Hazleton.”

Nicky, awake now, leaned forward.

“The map shows a town called Hazleton. It’s right on Highway Eighty-one, maybe thirty miles north of here.”

“Okay. Try that, Casey.”

Casey punched in her access code and the computer screen flashed on, a string of luminous numbers and letters showing various law enforcement databases.

Casey tabbed over to NCIC 2000, hit enter, found a search bar, and typed in
Hazleton
. The LCD screen flickered and a paragraph in yellow letters scrolled across the bright blue screen:

Casey read the extract out loud.

“Okay,” said Dexter. “That’s gotta be it.”

“Who logged this on NCIC?” asked Nicky. “Usually these reports are a day late. What’s the reporting code say?”

Casey checked the bottom of the screen.

“DOJ logged it. I mean, it was logged on a DOJ machine.”

“Your guy Flynn?” Nicky asked Dexter.

“I guess so. Sit back, Nicky. We’re gonna fly.”

Dexter hit the grill flashers and floored the unit, accelerated around a slow-moving Greyhound, and powered into a long straightaway. Big blue mountains crowded the northern horizon line. The countryside was green and rolling. The heat was strong enough to make it seem
that pools of water covered the highway in the shimmering distance. Casey turned the cooling up. The car settled into the passing lane at 120 and they blew by a stream of cars.

Six minutes later they were on the outskirts of Hazleton. Four minutes after that, they pulled up in front of Ticknor’s Auto Park.

“I guess this is it,” said Nicky.

“No shit,” said Casey.

The three-floor garage building was almost completely surrounded by official vehicles, including Hazleton PD cars and two Jeep Cherokees with Pennsylvania State Police logos on the doors, a tan Caprice, three EMS trucks with their strobes pulsing, and about fifty cops holding back a crowd of citizens massed in front of a crime-scene-tape barrier. Dexter blipped the siren twice and a startled female state trooper who had been holding up a hand to stop their car stepped around to the window, took off her Stetson, and leaned down to look into the car. She was ruddy and young and had the bluest eyes Nicky had ever seen and a bronze tan. Her voice was flat and nasal and held a midwestern snap. Her ID read
Salt
.

“Who’re you? Jesus or the ATF?”

Dexter showed them his gold sergeant’s shield.

“Neither. NYPD. Where’s the ATF team?”

“Not here yet. They’re coming in on a chopper. Supposed to be here any minute. We’re just holding the crime scene. Who the hell’re we, right? What’s the NYPD doing all the way out here?”

“Chasing a man. We think this is connected. Can we go in?”

She shrugged, stood up, keyed her portable.

“Captain Billy, this is Pepper, down at the ramp. I got three NYPD here, long way from home. They wanna come up.”

They heard a garbled burst of static and talk, but Pepper seemed to understand it. She keyed the radio off and stepped back.

“You go ahead. Park it on the second floor and walk up. The third floor’s the crime scene. Captain Billy’s the whip hand up there. Looks like a bald cranky parrot. You’ll know him when you see him. Am I ever gonna know what this is all about?”

Dexter laughed.

“Your name really Pepper Salt?”

“No. It’s Sandy.”

“Sandy? Sandy Salt? Not really?”

“Yeah. My father’s an idiot. So of course they call me Pepper. It’s what passes for smarts around here. Your name really Dexter?”

“Yeah. They call me Lefty.”

“Very funny. Dexter. Sinister. Right. Left. I get it. You make sure I find out what’s going on, hah? They never tell me anything.”

“I’ll see you do.”

They rolled up the entrance ramp and past a barricade of uniformed cops who watched as they went by with frowning faces and their hands on their service Smiths. Casey got most of their attention. She figured there weren’t very many black female detectives in the State Police and said so. Nicky, a state cop himself, knew better but kept his mouth shut. They parked the Lincoln on the second level and walked up the dusty concrete ramp to the third floor. The sun was low in the sky and soft yellow shafts of light streamed in through the grillwork. The air smelled of dust and turpentine. And something worse.

A short man in a black three-piece suit, a white shirt with a high stiff collar, a narrow red tie, and thick black brogues was waiting for them at the top of the ramp, legs apart, braced, silhouetted against the setting sun.
He had a corona of frizzy white hair and thin gray metal glasses. His face was leathery and his mouth a hard line, his eyes little nailheads, his handshake a sharp snap-and-release, his skin dry and rough.

“I’m Captain Billy Frick. Pepper says you’re NYPD? What the hell you three doing here?”

Dexter, who had the rank, did the talking.

“Captain Frick, we’re looking for a man, escaped from a marshals van this morning. We have—”

“Vermillion. Jack. I know the pecker-head.”

“The NCIC hit said a witness made an ID?”

“Ida May.”

“What?”

Captain Frick turned and walked away, stopped short, looked back. “I said Ida May. Ida May Barbaree. She works at the Wal-Mart down the road. Come take a look at this mess. No consideration. Private property too.”

They followed Captain Frick’s wiry little frame as he strut-walked across the parking area like a rooster with a blister until they reached a section at the rear, cordoned off, guarded by three uniformed state troopers and a Hazleton cop. All four cops straightened up as Frick came boot-thumping across the floor.

“All right, boys. We got the NY-damned-PD here for a goggle. Go ahead, you three. Enjoy.”

He stepped away, and they walked up to the yellow crime scene ribbon, stopped there. Three bodies lay inside the ribbon, stiffened in death, blood pooling in dry green paint. The smell of sewage and turpentine was stifling. The heat still in the day wasn’t helping. The wounds were massive, the scene a butcher’s nightmare.

“Holy Mother of God,” said Nicky.

“Don’t blaspheme, boy,” said Frick. “We ID’d them. One in the Penn State jacket is Jason Bulger. Useless little shit, got a juvie sheet longer than my … sorry, ma’am.
Big kid there, on his side, skull whacked in and the big hole where his face used to be, he’s Ratko Krukovac. Another waste of space. Looks better now. And the sorry-looking bastard with the surprised expression on his face is Dylan Currie, who is, as we like to say, known to the police. A drug-dealing asshole. He got two in the forehead and it has improved him greatly.”

Frick stopped to light up a short nasty-looking cigar and push his hat backward. He spat out a shred of tobacco and chuckled.

“All three got serious whup-ass before they got their nine-millimeter therapy. Guess they picked a fight with the wrong guy this time. Only a dumb little shit like Jason Bulger would be stupid enough to take a piece of rebar to a gunfight.”

Dexter looked at Casey, whose face was gray with shock.

“Christ. Jack Vermillion wouldn’t do this,” he said.

“Heck he wouldn’t,” said Frick. “Ask Ida May Barbaree.”

There was a sudden massive roaring howl that settled into a steady thundering beat. Dust flew in the grating and whirled across the floor. Frick went straight up into the air, bellowing in solid brass.

“God
damn
those people. Henry!”

One of the state troopers jerked upright again.

“Get down there, see if that’s those fools from the ATF. If they’re landing on the roof here, you have my permission to shoot them all. Now scat!”

Henry scatted. Dexter tried to stay on topic while the chopper noise buffeted and slammed the air and the dust clouds choked them all. In less than thirty seconds they were lost in a cloud of drifting dust. Frick was a ghostly figure in front of them.

“There goes the crime scene,” he said. “Damned idiots.”

Frick kicked at a paint can nearby.

“Two of these was bought at the Wal-Mart down the road. Any damn fool could see they was a clue. I went over there myself, talked to the people. Ida May Barbaree sold this paint to a guy, answers the description of your Jack Vermillion pecker-head. Ida May says he had words with Jason Bulger over there. Way I figure it, Bulger followed the man back here, brought some friends to help, maybe looking for that reward money, and they got more than they was expecting.”

They heard the sounds of angry voices echoing in the ramp and the shuffle-stamp of boots. Henry, the state trooper, reappeared at the top of the ramp with five people hard on his heels, a slender black-haired woman in a black jumpsuit in the lead, four ATF men in field gear shuffling up in her wake. Casey recognized Valeriana Greco from the CNN news brief that morning. Dexter Zarnas was busy trying not to recognize Derry Flynn, a slope-shouldered gray-haired man with deep creases around his brown eyes, a blunt harness-bull face, standing apart from Greco and watching her in action. She came right up to Frick, ignoring the three people standing beside him.

“Captain Frick, Greco, U.S. attorney. Who are these people?”

“Lady,” said Frick, “don’t you come sharp with me in front of my own troopers. I told you damn idiots not to come swooping in here on your whirlybird. Look what you done to my crime scene.”

Greco looked as if he’d slapped her, but she came right back at him, her voice raspy, her face bright with battle.

“Captain Frick, this is a federal investigation. This is not your crime scene. This is my crime scene. I can take control of any jurisdiction I damn well please. I am doing that now. Any interference in a federal investigation
will result in strong disciplinary action. Do I make myself clear, Captain?”

Nicky, Dexter, and Casey, who had gained some insight into the captain, braced themselves. They were not disappointed.

“Henry!”

His bark made them all jump. Henry scrambled around the fringe and came up to stand beside Frick.

“Henry, you’re my witness. Young woman, until the governor of this great state advises me that I am no longer in charge of this investigation—which, I take no pleasure in advising you, miss, is how the statute actually reads in Pennsylvania—I will conduct this investigation as I see fit. Now you and your whirlybird pals have scattered my crime scene to the four winds, and although we are recent acquaintances, miss, I find you a most abrupt and unpleasant person and Henry here—stand up straight, Henry!—is going to assist you as you all delocate my area of operations. Now.”

Greco looked from one face to another and Casey expected her to go off like a pipe bomb. But she just froze solid, turned on a heel, and walked away. Three of the ATF escort shuffled their feet, looked at each other, and then followed her down the ramp. Derry Flynn stayed behind and a huge grin spread across his grizzled face.

“Captain Frick, I’ve been waiting for days for someone to do that. It was a pleasure to watch.”

Frick didn’t bend.

“Why are you still here?”

Dexter spoke up for Flynn.

“Captain, Agent Flynn here is a good man. We’re sorry for the … jurisdictional disputes. This is your crime scene. Can we just get a little information from you?”

“You can tell me what the devil all this is about.”

Dexter nodded to Casey, who sketched out the background
of the investigation, the Red Hook shootings, their suspicions about Earl Pike, their belief that Jack Vermillion couldn’t be responsible for this level of violence. Frick took it all in but he was shaking his little round skull before Casey finished speaking.

“Don’t know this Pike fellow. But it was Vermillion did this. Got him on a video. He walks into the Wal-Mart big as life, stops and looks up at the camera like he was admiring himself. Had them print me a still. See for yourself.”

Frick extracted a rumpled sheet from an inside pocket, unfolded it, smoothed it out on his chest, handed it to Nicky. The image was black-and-white but clear, a big rangy man in jeans and boots, a white T-shirt, big cowboy mustache, long hair combed right back. His face in the photo was hard, worn-down, and bleak, his eyes hidden in darkness. He looked dangerous as hell. Nicky handed the shot to Dexter, who stared at it.

“This still doesn’t prove that Vermillion did … this.”

Frick tapped the picture. “See them boots?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice pair of tan boots.”

“Yes.”