Dying Embers (26 page)

“But you do the dirty work,” I said. “What do you get, besides used?”

“Who's to say what's dirty work? Moses terrorized the Egyptians. Was that religion or politics? The angels of God slaughtered infants in their cribs. It's the winner who decides what's criminal and what's sacred. I'm just a little cog on a big wheel. The job pays good and I like the rush.”

“Must be a very large and shiny wheel.”

“A cartel. One that likes the energy business the way it is.”

I scratched out a couple of words. “World's changing.”

“World'll change when the cartel changes it.”

I set the pen down.

“Look,” he said. “You bought this shotgun at Meijers this afternoon. It'll do the job just fine.”

“You bang up someone just to look like me?”

“Used sunglasses and some bandages. We did a driver's license. Cops'll never look past the paperwork.”

“Clever,” I said. I showed him an open palm. “Question. One professional to another.”

“As long as you're writing.”

I picked up the pen. “You kill the Frampton woman?”

“Nope.”

I started another sentence. “C'mon, it was all too damn neat—the break-in, the cigar butt, the hair in the Frampton woman's hand.”

“I was taking care of Dixon—gave him diarrhea of the brain before he
developed diarrhea of the mouth. Man should never forget who his friends are.”

“Okay, we—you and me—were out of town.”

“Bitch killed the Frampton woman.”

“Bitch worked for you?”

“Naa. Was a freebie. We billed for it—don't tell anybody.” He laughed and then shrugged. “We had to plant the hair on the body.” He made it sound like an excuse.

“Bitch have a name?”

“How the hell would I know?”

I made a period, moved to the bottom of the note, wrote a big “A” and stopped. I looked at the now bald and beardless Fidel/Andy and arched my eyebrows.

He sighed. “Guy who came to scope your office. He was there and ready to do the job. He set it up. Sent the Frampton woman a gift certificate for an expensive dinner good only one day—her birthday.”

I said, “Andy?”

“Everybody's Andy.”

“Except Frank.”

“Frank was Andy,” he said. “Now he's John Doe.”

I finished my signature, pushed the note toward him, but left my palm firmly planted and spread across the text. He pulled at the corner but I held fast.

“Old bitch. Language was terrible. ‘Mother this, fuck that.' Frampton woman picked up the telephone. ‘Bitch, faggot, dyke'—pow, dead artist. Gimme the mother-fucking note.”

I let go of the paper. Fidel/Andy glanced from the note back at me with his eyebrows holding hands.

He said, “What the fuck is this? Asshole!”

“Mary had a little lamb,” I said and snatched the Detonics. I pulled the muzzle up looking for the front sight.

Loud rapid cracks came from the front office. Fidel/Andy lurched toward me, his face astonished. The shotgun erupted and took my curtain through the window. On the monitor I saw Wendy through a haze of smoke, standing with her .380 in both hands. Fidel/Andy racked the shotgun.

I found my front sight. “And tied it to the heater,” I said taking the slack out of the trigger. Fidel/Andy, spinning left, was already in profile. I put the sight on his ear. Squeezed. A pink fog shrouded his head.

The shotgun barked. The monitor exploded. Fidel/Andy piled onto the floor like a puppet with its strings cut, his right hand flexing on the comb and trigger of the shotgun. Stepping around the desk I snapped the magazine into the Detonics and hit the slide stop.

“Every time it turned around it burned its little seater,” I told him, but I don't think he heard me. He had a nickel-sized hole through his right ear. The left side of his head spackled my office door and his brains hung in the air like a fine mist.

I stood on his hand to break it loose and kicked the cannon across the office carpet. Wendy stared at the pistol in her right hand, her left hand holding her mouth. Her face blanched, from behind her hand she said, “I emptied it and he just stood there.” Her purse and my shave kit lay discarded at her feet.

A thunder and rumble came from the stairwell. Through the office window I saw Matty Svenson—clad in a black jacket emblazoned with FBI in white letters, black slacks, and her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail—leading a herd of black-clad, helmeted agents down the stairs with carbines at the ready.

I thumbed up the safety on the Detonics and planted it on Marg's desk, took the .380 out of Wendy's hands, and skittered it next to the Detonics. Taking Wendy's hands in both of mine, I raised our hands over our heads and backed Wendy out the office door, pushing the canvas cart before us.

“What? Stop!” Wendy said. “What are you doing? Oh, God!”

Disgust pinched Wendy's face. “Don't touch me.” Wendy turned her face away. “You're covered in blood.”

Wendy struggled. I held her hands. An agent with a helmet and a Kevlar mask over a woman's face covered us with an MP5 and said, “Freeze or you're dead!”

Matty brushed by us into the office with two other black-clad agents. Other agents took up covered positions, kneeling at corners, and aiming their weapons down the hallway and up the stairs. Outside, tires squealed and a clatter of automatic gunfire—punctuated with shotgun blasts—rose in the parking lot.

Matty looked up from the fat nine she had pointed at the pile of meat in my office doorway. The agent covering me and Wendy put the MP5 to her shoulder and leaned into the weapon. Tires squawked in the parking lot and vehicles collided. Buzz bursts from MP5's were answered with the steady tack-tack-tack of an M60.

Two agents from inside my office burst from the office door with Matty stepping on their heels. “They're with us,” Matty said to the agent covering Wendy and me. “Go, go, go!”

I released Wendy's hands. She pushed off of me and looked at her hands. Horror pressed her cheeks hollow. At the top of the stairs agents crashed the door open but froze in the doorway. I heard the sound of what they saw.
Toop. Toop.

“Oh, shit!” Astonishment washed down Matty's face. I dived onto Wendy, smothering her to the floor. Some agents bounded down the stairs, others made a pile on the red tile entrance way. I clutched Wendy's head to my chest and turned my head to the wall.

Two explosions ripped through the parking lot. Ceiling tiles cascaded to the floor. Dust hung in the air. I backed off of Wendy. She got to her knees and crawled away to vomit on the floor.

Matty stood in the hallway, her jacket covered with a fine gray dust. Her pistol dangled at her side. She stared at me. She said, “My God! What?”

“Forty millimeter rifle grenades,” I said.

Matty wheeled and charged up the stairs to exit the building with the other agents. I stepped over to Wendy to help her to her feet. Her face and sweatshirt were smeared red and pink with small white flecks. She made her way to the restroom, alternately leaning on, and pushing off, the wall.

I looked at my shirt, found it spattered with blood and brains, and pulled it over my head. I inspected the front of my undershirt for holes, found none, and pulled it off to use as a towel.

In the office I dropped the shirts into Marg's trash can. The smell of smoke, cordite, and scorched flesh wafted in through my exploded office window. Sirens, some approaching and others fading into the distance, deadened the sounds of cursing and discharging fire extinguishers in the parking lot.

I threw one of the suitcases Wendy brought onto the sofa, found a shirt and a pair of jeans, and put them inside the door to the ladies' room for Wendy. In the men's room I rinsed off, but discovered I needed to wash my hair. The water ran red as it swirled down the drain.

In the hallway I found black-clad FBI agents standing on office chairs to reinstall ceiling tiles. Wendy had kicked my shirt and jeans out of the ladies' room. An agent carried my exploded office monitor up the stairs, two more wrestled my office door up the stairs behind him. Men in blue coveralls had the late “El Guitmo” zipped into a black body bag and
parked on a gurney waiting for the stairway to clear.

Matty stood at Marg's desk. She folded her arms when she saw me. The telephone rang. I limped in to answer it.

Through my office doorway I saw my desk and the wingback chair had been moved by agents rolling up the carpeting. Matty put her hand on the telephone. She said, “Art, we have to get a lid on this.”

“Telephone works in my office, too,” I said. The telephone rang again.

“We fixed it,” said Matty. “The room mike is in the telephone, it runs off your service current.”

“You recorded it all?”

“I can't say,” said Matty. The telephone rang.

“You
heard.”

“Art, I stopped listening when your wife came in.”

“C'mon!”

“We heard. Not me. We thought it was the cleaning service. We ran the plate on the truck.”

The answering machine took the call. “Arthur, this is Pete Finney. Sorry to ring you up so late. It's important that we speak.”

“My wife is in the restroom,” I said. “Get a lid on that. Tell her where the crap they found in here really came from.”

“Arthur, if you are there … I rang your house. This really is most important.”

Matty nodded and took her hand off the telephone.

“Pete,” I said. “I just stepped in when I heard your voice. Mind if I put you on the speaker while I tidy up?”

“If you like.”

“What's up?”

“A couple of things. First, I've just spoken with Scott Lambert. He says he'll take you on as his security director. If he does that you would be able to work the case.”

“He wants to pick up my office rent and staff?”

“Perhaps you could work out of his space.”

“If he's paying the rent this
will
be his space,” I said.

“Well, all right then,” said Pete. “You were harboring some doubts earlier.”

“None,” I said. “You're working late.”

“There has been a bit of a mix-up. Scott was arrested at the airport tonight. He had a borrowed passport. They have revoked his bond.”

• • •

Wendy sulked in the passenger seat, her arms folded over the shoulder belt and crushing her bosom. My shirt came down to her knees. She'd rolled the legs of my jeans up to her calves. I backed out and threaded her old Cadillac through a maze of four-door sedans and around the flat-bed car hauler winching the second of two exploded and burned FBI vehicles.

Armed and black-liveried FBI agents guarded the parking lot and ignored our departure. Kentwood patrol cars lined the street and had been parked with their emergency lights left rolling. Detective Van Huis's fake-woody minivan sat parked on the lawn between the sidewalk and the curb. At the intersection a Kentwood patrol officer directed traffic with a burning road flare in his hand. He flagged me to a stop.

Van Huis knocked on my window. I let it down.

“What the hell is going on here, Art?”

“Feds cornered a terrorist in my office,” I said.

“Yeah, and then what? They won't tell us shit.”

“You gotta talk to them, Jerry,” I said.

“Follow me down to my office,” he said.

“Am I under arrest?”

“No.”

I shook my head. “I gotta go.”

“Fine,” he said. “You're under arrest.” Van Huis waved his hand and we were looking up the muzzles of weapons in the hands of several Kentwood police officers stationed around the car.

“Then I'm allowed a phone call,” I said. “And I call the feds.”

“This is bullshit,” said Van Huis.

A knot of black-clad agents started up the street from the office parking lot.

“Jerry, come and see me in the morning. I'll be in the office,” I said.

Van Huis stood up and looked toward the office. In the rearview mirror I could see the knot of agents spreading out, their MP5's at port arms. One of them yelled, “Is there a problem here, officer?”

I said, “They're not going to let us have this argument in the middle of the street, here. Or even at our level, Jerry. Your chief is going to have to bitch at somebody from Justice. For God's sake, come and see me in the morning.”

Van Huis waved off the Kentwood patrolmen. “You ain't there in the morning, you're a fugitive,” said Van Huis. He yelled at the officer with the road flare, “Get this one out of here.”

“We can't go to the house,” said Wendy, cold, like she was discussing the bus schedule.

The officer stopped traffic and motioned us out. I turned left toward the city. “Probably right.” I said. I watched the mirror. No vehicles were allowed to come out after me.

“You can't come to the house,” she said. “I promised the licensing bureau that you would not have anything to do with my daily operations or be at my office until after the hearing on my license.”

“I think we have that straightened out.”

“Matty, the FBI Agent—your friend—said that the details of this case were ‘confidential.' She said this was an open case and that she wouldn't be able to testify on my behalf.”

I turned right onto the next residential street and parked at the curb. I leaned on the car to get back to the trunk and set my suitcases in the street. At the open driver's door I took my cane off the floor in the back and dropped the keys on the seat. “Go home,” I said.

“Art!” she said. “What are you doing? You can't walk.”

I shut the door, stuffed the two-suiter under my left arm, and got the handle of the suitcase with my left hand. My shoulder should have hurt. It didn't. I leaned on the cane and started back up to the main drag a step at a time.