Bombshell (AN FBI THRILLER) (31 page)

Ward Place, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

Tuesday afternoon

The falling snow helped mask the lousy upkeep at Melissa Ivy’s red-brick apartment building. They walked past the triple row of black mailboxes up to the third floor and down the battered wooden hallway to apartment 3B.

Melissa opened the door immediately, since Savich had called her ten minutes before.

She’d changed since the morning into more comfortable clothes, her midriff and navel not on display, perhaps in deference to Peter’s death. Instead she was decked out in loose dark blue sweats, her pink UGGs back on her small feet. Her hair in a single thick braid that fell over her shoulder.

“I’ve already looked for videos that aren’t mine, but I haven’t found any.”

Savich smiled at her. “Tell you what, Agent Sherlock will look around while we talk, how’s that?” He didn’t wait for an answer, simply nodded to Sherlock and walked to the sofa.

He heard Sherlock moving around in the kitchen. If there were any videos or compact disks Peter had secreted away here in Melissa’s apartment, Sherlock would find them.

“Tell me, Ms. Ivy, did you notice if Tommy and Peter had any more money than usual lately?”

She blinked her marvelously thick darkened lashes at him. “More money?”

“Yeah, more cash. On display, for you to see.”

She pursed her pink lips. “Well, Tommy took me to buy my Christmas present and said I could have whatever I wanted, that I didn’t even have to look at prices. Of course, that was a crazy thing to say at Tiffany, so I looked for something I thought he could afford, and asked for these earrings. He did pay cash, I remember, because I saw him pull the bills out of his wallet, all hundreds. I asked him if he was trying to impress me with that stash, but he only smiled and told me I was beautiful and I deserved it. You mean like that?”

Savich nodded. “That’s exactly what I mean. When was this?”

“A week before Christmas, I remember, because Tiffany was really crowded. It was so fun, actually buying something expensive in there with all the rich people.”

She sounded like an orphan, and he wondered if she wasn’t laying it on a bit thick. Probably.

“Did Tommy usually have lots of cash with him?”

“No, that’s the first time I ever saw so much. He usually paid with a credit card, but after that we went to a couple of really expensive restaurants, and he paid cash there, too. Why, Agent Savich?”

He only smiled and asked her, “Then why did you leave him, Melissa, for Peter? Sounds like Tommy treated you well, gave you an expensive Christmas present, bought you whatever you wanted.” He pointed to the pearl earrings in her perfect ears. “I’d say he was head over heels in love with you.”

She searched his face, as if suspecting him of sarcasm, and seeing none, she shrugged. “His grandparents hated me. His Aunt Marian hated me, too. His sisters, though, thought I was beautiful and wanted me to do their makeup. Tommy told me not to worry about it, said we didn’t need his family, but I knew he did, and that I’d never fit in with them. Then Peter was there and he wanted me, too, and his parents were really nice to me.”

He heard Sherlock move into Melissa’s bedroom.

“What about Peter? Did he have a lot of cash?”

“Peter always seemed to, even before we went together. He paid for nearly everything in cash. I asked him once if he wasn’t afraid of being mugged and having all that money stolen. He laughed, said cash was better than having The Man know everything he paid for, whatever that meant.”

He looked toward the pile of compact disks next to her stereo. “All music?”

“Yes. When you said you wanted to look for a video, I looked through them all first. I listened to the ones I wasn’t sure about. They’re all music, I’m positive.”

He and Sherlock left Melissa’s apartment an hour later with nothing to show for the effort.

Then Sherlock mentioned the SUV Delsey had seen in their neighborhood, and Savich remembered. “I’ve asked Davis Sullivan over tonight for spaghetti. After dinner we’ve got work to do.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “You make the spaghetti sauce, and I’ll let Sean help me make an apple pie. What have you got in mind for our after-dinner work?”

He grinned at her as he gunned the Porsche’s engine. Ah, sweet music to his ears. “We’re gonna rock ’n’ roll.”

Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Tuesday evening

Savich let out a contented sigh when he was finally seated at the dinner table with Sherlock, Delsey, and Agent Davis Sullivan, Delsey’s pilot from Maestro, and her date for tonight.

He said, “Davis, I hear you’re not new to the Bonhomie Club. You visited with Quinlan and Sally?”

“Yep, heard our boy play. He makes that sax wail.”

“Who’s playing tonight?”

“Ariel,” Davis said as he spooned some of Savich’s meatballs and sauce over his spaghetti. “I could sit for hours and listen to her play. Talk about floating you in the clouds; she mellows you out better than any recreational drug back in college, not that I ever tried any, naturally, or inhaled.”

Delsey said, “I thought you liked Vincent and Big Escape, people with nose rings and tattoos.”

He patted her hand. “I love it all, even that retro stuff you like to blast. Sherlock, the spaghetti and meatballs sure smell good. Thank you.”

“Nope, not me. Savich is the spaghetti impresario in this household.”

Davis grinned at Savich. “If the sauce and meatballs taste as good as they smell, Savich, you’ve got to give me your recipe. Here, Delsey, load up.” He passed her the meatballs and sauce and spooned Parmesan on top of his spaghetti. “I haven’t heard you play yet, Savich. Quinlan told me you sing country and western and play the guitar? And you write a lot of your own stuff?”

“He sure does,” Sherlock said as she forked up a bite of spinach salad. “We promise we’ll invite you next time he plays.”

Delsey took a bite of her spaghetti, closed her eyes, and murmured, “I’m having a spiritual moment here. Dillon, this is seriously excellent.”

Davis said, “That’s it, then, I gotta have the recipe, keep the cute girl here in my corner.”

The garlic toast was passed around, room made on everyone’s plate for a bite or two of spinach salad, the Chianti poured. Sherlock felt herself begin to relax. She hadn’t realized how tense she was. She took a deep breath, felt her shoulders ease. She watched Delsey and Davis argue and laugh, and they sounded pretty relaxed, too. Relaxed and relieved.

Davis raised his wineglass. “Here’s to the incredible drug bust in Maestro today. And no agents were seriously wounded.”

After everyone drank, Delsey said, “I’m still amazed it was really Professor Salazar. I don’t understand it. He’s a world-famous classical guitarist; he’s feted everywhere he goes. And he’s a drug lord? I still can’t get my brain around it. The gods blessed him with everything.”

Savich said, “I’ve learned that for some people family trumps everything. He’s a Lozano, don’t forget, weaned on the Lozano family business by his mother.”

Delsey said, “I’m going to punch Griffin out the next time I see him. I can’t believe he was crawling through that cave hours after he was shot in his leg. I was letting him have it when Anna grabbed the phone away and said the wound wasn’t bad at all, and not to feel sorry for him.” She grinned over her forkful of spaghetti. “Then they both laughed.”

One minute Delsey was chewing on the incredible garlic toast, and the next she was standing over the DEA agent dead in her bathtub, then hurled into the stark terror when the gang member was straddling her, holding the knife to her throat in her bed at the B&B. She’d be dead if not for Griffin. She hadn’t fallen apart, she’d controlled her fear, she’d handled things, she’d been ready to fight back, and now it was over.

She was alive, Griffin was alive, Anna was alive. She didn’t have to fight her fear anymore. She trembled suddenly, felt the shakes start deep in her belly, as cold as the snow falling steadily outside the dining room windows. She hated the thin-as-paper voice that came out of her mouth. “It’s all my fault, if I hadn’t drunk like an idiot Friday night, then—”

“Then what?” Sherlock said. “The DEA agent’s body wouldn’t have been in your bathtub?”

“Well, that’s true, but if I hadn’t gone home early from that dreadful party, I wouldn’t have never seen a body and I—you—all of us would never have been involved.”

Davis chewed a meatball and swallowed. He leaned into her until she looked at him. “Hang it up, Delsey. None of it is your fault. You’re blaming yourself for going home to your own place?”

He eyed her, saw that everything he had said was like
blah, blah, blah
in her ears. He put his arm around her and gave her a good shake. “Look at me.”

She looked.

“Your brother made it through this, and so did you. They broke up a huge drug-smuggling operation today, seized millions of dollars’ worth of drugs and weapons destined to be sold to kids on the streets. They captured or put an end to the people responsible. That’s as good as it gets for us. You helped with that. You should be proud of your brother, and of yourself.”

So stark, yet it worked. Delsey managed to nod and felt the ice in her belly begin to melt.

“That’s better. Now eat some more of Savich’s incredible spaghetti. The meatballs, Savich, they’re better than my mom’s, I swear.”

Delsey opted for a green bean on her plate and held it in front of her, frowning.

Sherlock said, “Go ahead, Delsey, you can eat the green bean and think at the same time.”

She picked at a piece of garlic toast instead, the green bean still staked to her fork, her spaghetti untouched. “Sherlock, I’m so sorry about last night. I mean, I put Sean in danger, and you guys—”

Sherlock rolled her eyes. “Sean is all right. He decided the evil Incan mathematician, Professor Pahuac, had tried to break in after all. That’s a character from one of his video games, and since Sean is very good at clubbing the professor with a canoe paddle, Sean said he’d go outside and stomp him. I told him Pahuac had probably already hightailed it back to his evil cave in Machu Picchu.”

A bit of laughter, a good thing. Davis put a fork of twirled spaghetti to Delsey’s mouth, and she opened up and in it went. She chewed, thoughtful.

She said, “Since the gang is all broken up in Maestro, maybe Davis and I can go to the Bonhomie Club after all; it might be good.”

Savich said, “Someone has come after you twice now, followed you out here from Maestro. You saw that stolen SUV pass by right outside here this morning.”

“You mean you don’t think it’s over, even with Salazar shot?”

“I don’t know, Delsey, but I’ve dealt with gangs like MS-13 before. What they do can seem chaotic and disorganized, or it can look that way because they follow their own rules, not ours.

“You were never a threat to them except as a witness linking two of them to Agent Racker’s death, and through him to Salazar and the whole operation. They made some big mistakes that night, and in a gang like MS-13 if you make a mistake that threatens the group, you fix it, eliminate the witnesses that made you a weak link in the chain, or the gang will cut you out themselves. Someone in the gang may still be under orders to kill you, or die himself. If that’s true, we have to stop them.”

“How are we going to do that?” Delsey asked. “What are you planning, Dillon?”

“Right now, Delsey, let’s not worry about that. Let’s all enjoy this good dinner and Davis’s lame jokes. Sherlock made an apple pie for dessert.”

Davis’s eyes glittered even though he tried to hide it, at least from Delsey, but Sherlock recognized that look. Sullivan and Dillon had indeed been planning something, but she and Delsey would have to wait to hear what Dillon had in mind. Dillon appeared to be enjoying his dinner. No meatballs, for him, of course, and not all that much spaghetti, either. He was saving room for the apple pie.

The Bonhomie Club

Washington, D.C.

Tuesday night

Marvin the Bouncer listened to Ariel’s flute float out over him soft and sad into the snowy night as he stood in the open doorway of the Bonhomie Club, his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing only jeans, a denim shirt, and a vest, a man impervious to the cold. He wanted the patrons to know that even though he was from Savannah, he was no stinking wuss. Truth was, it was cold and getting colder, under thirty degrees now for sure, and snow was coming down steadily, white and thick as his granny’s lace curtains, in the lights around him. They always had lots of lights around the Bonhomie Club entrance, but outside their circle, it looked black as pitch, except for an occasional halo of light from the two streetlamps that still worked. The other streetlights were out again, smashed by some pork-brained kids. The neighborhood was supposed to be gentrifying, and Ms. Lilly had told him everything was right on schedule with Washington’s hundred-year plan.

He turned a hairy eyeball toward Sherlock—who’d told him to call her Delsey tonight—and Agent Sullivan, who was supposed to be her date. They’d gotten out of Sullivan’s truck, seemingly alone, and were trying to walk normally, tough because they probably had their SIGs pressed against their legs. Savich had told him about some Latino gang trying to kill this woman Delsey, but he still couldn’t believe any yahoos would try to kill her here of all places, or would the idiots not realize the FBI was expecting them? If those tattooed morons couldn’t figure out there’d be half a dozen FBI agents hiding around the club, they deserved all the pain that was coming to them.

Savich was in charge, so Marvin wasn’t worried. And because he wasn’t worried he hadn’t told Ms. Lilly what was going on. Savich had agreed that wouldn’t be a good idea. She was hunkered down in her office playing poker with some hotshot ragweeds from Pittsburgh, and very probably winning big.

He met Sherlock’s eyes, gave her a slight nod. He had his Dirty Harry’s big-ass .44 Magnum in his pocket, ready for action. He saw Agent Davis Sullivan turn slightly, speak to Sherlock.

Davis said low, “We’re giving them all the chances they could want. I’m thinking the gang has been called off or written Delsey off as too much trouble. I also think Delsey’s going to belt all of us for not letting her come out tonight and play.”

Sherlock said, “She’s got Sean to play with, well, along with Lucy Carlyle and his grandmother. It could still happen, Davis. Stay alert.”

It helped, Davis thought, that it was cold and snowing, so Sherlock was all bundled up. Even though she didn’t look a thing like Delsey, what with that hood pulled over her head, no one could tell if she was Delsey or Godzilla.

“Delsey kept saying she’s the Trouble Magnet, so if we wanted trouble, she should be with us.” He gave his head a shake and said, as if the words were being pulled out of his throat with pliers. “The girl’s kinda cute, though.”

“That’s what she said about you, Davis, or something close to that.”

Davis called out, “Hey, Marvin, is that Ariel playing?”

Agent Dane Carver shouted from behind them, off to their left, “Under the black Toyota!” Both Sherlock and Davis dove to the ground and rolled, pointed their guns toward a row of parked cars on the street, Marvin right beside them, trying to pull Sherlock under him with one big hand, and aim his gun in the other. Even though Marvin was a civilian, it didn’t occur to her to tell him to get away, not Marvin. There was a single shot, then a long burst of gunfire from all of them, and a yell. There was silence for a bare second before Savich called out, “You shot him, Dane. Sherlock, you and Davis okay? Marvin?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Regular snow angels. Marvin? He’s a lovely, very big snow angel. Hey, Marvin, get off me, I can’t breathe.”

There were two more shots from the night, unexpected, and then Coop shouted, “Another one down, over here.” They waited, then searched the street. There was no one else.

Savich looked down at the two tattooed young men in turn, both painfully young, both moaning and clutching their wounds. One of them was close to the sketch of the man Griffin and Delsey saw in the alley in Maestro, the same man who’d tried to use the extension ladder to break into his house last night, if he had to guess.

Savich prayed they’d survive and one of them would talk. He heard sirens approaching as he leaned down and searched one of the young men’s pockets. No wallet, no ID, nothing, and so he couldn’t believe it when his fingers closed over a cell phone. He pulled out a small flashlight and looked at it, Sherlock, Davis, Marvin leaning over his shoulder. It was a throwaway, but it was a start.

Marvin was pumped. He slipped his gun back into his pocket and announced, “That all happened in a drunk second, didn’t it? It’s really fine to see these morons whupped right outside my club. Stupid is as stupid does, right, Sherlock? Sorry I nearly squashed you.”

She grinned up at him. “Hey, thanks for protecting me.”

Marvin patted her cheek and walked back into the club to deal with all the excited voices he heard coming from inside. He closed the door behind him. He was bombarded with questions, but simply raised his hands and said, calm as a judge, “It’s all over, folks. The FBI are outside, and they’ve asked everybody to stay inside here for a minute. Everyone can have a beer on the house while we’re waiting.”

There was a cheer, and he quickly nodded to Ariel. She looked a bit on the pale side, true, but she was game, he thought, proud of the tiny Croatian woman who hardly spoke a word of English but played like an angel. She put her flute to her mouth, and her achingly beautiful melody was instant balm. The buzz still circling the room quieted, and the patrons slowly returned to their seats and their free beers—not the imported beer, though, the cheap beer on tap. Ms. Lilly’s people knew her well enough for that. They didn’t want to get punched in the nose.

Sherlock heard Ariel begin her flute solo again outside the club. As usual, Marvin impressed her. He was ready for anything they could dish up. Sherlock wondered where Ms. Lilly was. Surely she’d heard the gunfire. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Speak of the devil, here comes Ms. Lilly.”

“A force of nature, that woman,” Davis said as they watched the owner of the Bonhomie Club come steaming out, a man’s coat pulled over her white satin dress and her five-inch stiletto heels, her magnificent bosom leading the way. She wasn’t happy.

She threw back her head and yelled over the sirens, “Dillon! Where are you, boy? You brain-dead or something, bringing trouble here, to
my club
? And now our local law enforcement is going to come here and try to roust me? Thank you so much! Come over here, I’m gonna kick your fine butt!”

Sherlock heard Dillon laugh, then shout, “I’ll be there in a second, Ms. Lilly; we got us two perps here who wanted to hurt Sherlock. We got it taken care of. Everything’s over. We had agents all over the place, and nothing happened inside.”

“I’m going to thump Marvin’s head, not telling me what was going to happen.”

“I’m surprised it did happen, actually,” Savich called back. “We’ll have these bozos out of here in a minute.” He looked back at her again.

Of course there were always worries, but why say that to Ms. Lilly, particularly after half a dozen cop cars arrived and there were endless explanations and reassurances that the FBI had things under control. Savich assigned an agent to each wounded man and watched the EMTs load them into the ambulances with the cops looking on. He turned to see Sherlock touching his coat sleeve. “What was on that phone you found in the kid’s pocket?”

“A phone number. The area code includes Maestro. Let me calm Ms. Lilly while you check this out. Then we’ll call Ruth.”

He wondered how he was going to soothe Ms. Lilly’s feathers, and not just figuratively, he noticed, since she was wearing two peacock feathers stuck in her big chignon, her signature ’do. She stood waiting for him.

Savich didn’t have a chance to call Ruth. His cell sang out Billy Ocean’s “When the Going Gets Tough.” It was Melissa Ivy. He smiled at Ms. Lilly. “My sincere apologies, Ms. Lilly. I’ve got to take this call, but to make it up to you, I’ll play one night for free.”

She tapped a stiletto heel in the snow. “Only one night? What do you think I am, pretty boy? As easy as those baby bangers you took down here?”

“All right, two nights, for free.”

She smiled at him and patted his cheek, pulled the coat around her, and tottered back through the snow and into the club, headed back to her game of Texas Hold ’Em with people who should know better than to sit across a table from her with money.

“Savich here, Ms. Ivy. What’s happening?”

“Agent Savich, I was listening on my computer to one of my music CDs I like that Peter had put together for me just a few days ago—you know, to help me feel better. I normally play it on my CD player, but this time I played it on my computer, and I noticed the last file on it was a video of some kind. When I played it, I saw it was Mr. Hart in his study, talking on the phone. I think it’s the video from that surveillance disk you were looking for.”

He would have rubbed his hands together after hearing that, but his cell rang again, almost immediately. It was Dane Carver calling from the emergency room at Washington Memorial.
The Latino Dane had shot in the shoulder who’d been lying with his eyes closed, moaning on a gurney in an ER cubicle, had suddenly reared up, grabbed a scalpel from a tray near his gurney, and sliced his own throat before Dane could even register what he’d done. “My fault, Savich, my fault. It happened too fast—and the blood, I didn’t realize how much blood there was in a single human body, and it fountained out all over everything, including me.”

“Tie the other one down, Dane.”

“Already done. Ollie will keep on him, you can count on that, and if anyone can get him to talk, it’s Ollie.”

Savich said, “Ollie’s good, but you’re better, Dane. Go get yourself cleaned up and deal with this, all right? You get anything out of him, you got a week’s vacation in the Virgin Islands.”

Savich heard an attempt at a laugh. Good, maybe the thought of sun and sand with his wife, Nick, would get Dane focused again.