Hard Fall (3 page)

Bernard repeated, “There is or is not an offer?”

A sharp knock on the door shattered the resulting silence. The Smoker rose and opened it, spoke to an unseen person in a hushed voice, and then pulled the man's briefcase through. He closed the door. Daggett came off the table as the Smoker placed the briefcase at Bernard's feet. Backman said, “Your briefcase. Shall we have a look-see?”

They
knew
what was inside: deutsche marks. But to what purpose? A payoff? Financing? This briefcase had been a vital part of their investigation. What was Backman doing?

“You are
not
going to open that,” Daggett stated. “Are you forgetting this man's occupation?”

“It was X-rayed,” the Smoker said. “Twice. No sign of any wiring. No explosives. It's been cleared: we have nothing to worry about.”

“Has it been sniffed? Has it been checked with ultrasound? That bag should be handled by the bomb squad. That bag has been on the move since—” He caught himself before making the same mistakes Backman had made. He dried his palms on his pants legs. He was terrified. His eyes jumped between that bag and Bernard.

“Put yourself in
his
position,” Daggett said, stepping close to Backman. “What if the suitcase
is
rigged? Unless he cuts himself one hell of a deal, he faces life imprisonment, at best. But what if he could take out the chief of C-three and the investigator responsible for ten twenty-three all in one move? What kind of a hero would
that
make him?”

“A dead hero,” Backman said, unimpressed. “No one kills himself over principles anymore, Daggett. Use your head.” He bent down toward the bag and released one of its two latches.

Daggett jumped forward and pushed him away from the bag. Backman slipped, reached for purchase, but fell to the dirty floor. His weight gave him trouble getting back to his feet. It was a pitiful attempt. Daggett offered his hand, but Backman refused any help. It took him several, embarrassingly long, seconds to return to his feet. “Get out of here, both of you,” Daggett shouted at the two others.

When the Smoker didn't move, Daggett added, “Now!” his focus still on the briefcase. Hairless pushed his friend quickly out the door.

Backman mopped his face with his handkerchief. “That was a
stupid
thing to do, Michigan. Really fucking stupid. That's going to cost you, big time.”

Bernard said nothing. His attention remained fixed on the briefcase with its one open latch.

“You can order me to leave this room with you. Right? You can report me. Christ, you can probably get me fired.”

“Damn right I can.”

“So do it! Come on, let's go. Your only witnesses are getting away.”

Backman pouted his lips and nodded. “Okay, I guess you're right.” He took a step toward the door. Then, abandoning his ruse, he threw his weight into Daggett and knocked him off his feet.

Daggett hit the floor hard, slid, and careened into the door.

Backman lumbered back to the briefcase and struggled with the other latch.

Bernard glanced up hotly and looked at Daggett with dark, wet eyes.

Daggett knew. “No!” he shouted as he reached for the door handle and dove into the hallway.

The door blew as a unit, straight across the hall, through the opposing wall, and out onto the tarmac. An orange ball of burning gas rolled down the hall like a tongue uncurling. The Smoker, Hairless, and the uniformed security guard they were escorting between them were all three knocked off their feet by the concussion. Fire licked out angrily and set the ceiling ablaze.

In a world of silence, Daggett belly-crawled for an exit door jarred open by the blast. Hairless appeared through the smoke, crawling on hands and knees. Partially blinded, he climbed right over Daggett. The two took shelter behind a cinderblock wall. The uniformed cop was on his feet, his pants on fire, running fast across the open field of blacktop, the Smoker trying to catch up with him. A surreal sight, punctuated by the slowly moving heaviness of a taxiing jet.

Daggett heard nothing; he'd gone deaf. He didn't want to hear; he didn't want to see. Bernard had won, even in death. He felt half crazy with frustration, the loss of life, the whole mess. He tried to scream. Still heard nothing. But the frightened expression he drew from Hairless told him his voice still worked. He wondered about his state of mind: maybe he wasn't half crazy, maybe he'd gone all the way. It certainly couldn't be snowing in August, but that was what he saw.

He extended his hand—there was no hair on the back of it, he noticed—and awkwardly caught hold of some of the falling snow, like a child in his first winter storm.

Slowly, his fingers uncoiled. He still could not hear, but his eyes worked well enough. His hand was filled with confetti. He wasn't crazy after all.

Deutsche marks.

Anthony Kort sat behind the wheel of the rental car carving a potato. He recalled his Bavarian grandmother doing the same thing. She wore thick cotton dresses, which covered her calves, and a tired white butcher's apron as she sat in a dark wicker chair on her back porch preparing a bucketful of potatoes to mash and later lather with butter, pepper, and generous chunks of pork bacon. Kort had no intention of eating this potato.

It was Tuesday, August 21. He had been anticipating this day for months. He needed detailed information on the behavior and performance of a Duhning 959 Skybus. A hundred yards away, on the other side of some cinderblock and glass, his chance to obtain that information, a Dr. Roger Ward, was in the throes of passion.

A pair of candles cast a yellow light on the windows beyond the small balcony of the third-story apartment on the corner of East Olive Street and Bellevue Avenue. It was the kind of light that flattered women, that witnessed whispers of affection with wine-sweetened breath, that failed to mask the distinctive, intoxicating smell of arousal. The building, a clean-lined, setback, double-box structure of ivory stucco, had low-walled balconies enclosed by steel pipe banisters painted indigo blue. Its basement held two parking garages, both secured behind heavy metal gates. A placard sign on the sidewalk out front announced:
SPACE AVAILABLE
. The real estate agency used Seattle's Space Needle as part of its logo.

Kort continued his work on the potato, dividing his attention between Ward's Taurus, parked in the Pay-and-Park, and the apartment window. The second game of the Mariners' doubleheader played softly from the car radio despite Kort's basic lack of understanding of the American game.

Kort wore stone-washed canvas pants, brown leather Italian walking shoes with rubber soles, a short-sleeved olive-green permanent-press shirt, and a navy-blue Nike windbreaker. For reasons of anonymity, his face was not entirely his, but instead the repository of theatrical cosmetics, pigmented contact lenses, a wig, and fake eyebrows. He was no expert at such things, but he got the job done.

Sarah Pritchet was obviously a good lover: Ward had been with her for hours. Kort couldn't help but imagine the sensations this man was experiencing. What he wouldn't give to be in the clutches of a willing woman instead of carving a potato in the front seat of a rent-a-car. But even so, his concentration remained fixed. With German efficiency, he compartmentalized the tasks before him: abduct Ward; gain access to the Duhning simulator. A mind cluttered with too much information, too many considerations, was incapable of quick reaction. Anthony Kort had the reactions of a cat.

As the sixth inning drew to a close behind the failed attempts of a Mariners' relief pitcher, the ember-red August sun sought the coolness of the Pacific, issuing a candy-pink glow to everything not in shadow. Kort left his rental and deposited the potato firmly into the exhaust pipe of the gray Ford Taurus. He slipped off into the corner of the Pay-and-Park lot, positioning himself behind a tow trailer bearing the weathered logo and address of Stoneway Asphalt and Paving. He lit a cigarette and waited.

Up the street a block, a group of six kids loitered outside the Malstrom's Market smoking cigarettes; 99¢
VIDEO
, the sign read. He wished they would move on. Thankfully, a few moments later they did.

The relief pitcher must have found a second wind, or was himself relieved, for the arrival of the seventh-inning stretch took another three cigarettes. This was fine with Kort because the sunset blush and subsequent twilight had darkened into a starry summer night sky when three dimensions are reduced to silhouette and any measure of distance becomes unreliable.

Roger Ward appeared behind the polished bars of the security gate at the entrance to the apartment building. He paused to check the street carefully in order to protect his infidelity.

Like a lion in hiding before the kill, Kort watched him. He snuffed out the cigarette. He temporarily snuffed out his concerns as well: that he was now on his own; that Michael and the other members of
Der Grund
were, at this very moment, fighting the chill of Bonn jail cells; that many of his previously arranged contacts might now be compromised and/or conspiring with U.S. authorities to lay traps to catch him; that he now relied on a young woman whom he had neither seen nor worked with in over two years, a woman he had contacted less than twenty-four hours before, abruptly changing the timing and the degree of her involvement in this project; that this was the most ambitious undertaking
Der Grund
had ever attempted—fourteen months in planning.

He lightly brushed ashes from the front of his dark blue windbreaker, stepping completely out of sight of the Taurus, awaiting the sound of an uncooperative engine. That was his cue.

The Taurus ground away, refusing to catch. Kort waited patiently for the sound of the driver's door opening, which finally came, accompanied by a muttered curse of complaint. Now Kort approached, making sure to be seen so he wouldn't surprise the man. He needed the man to feel comfortable. He needed the man to feel rescued.

From a distance, Roger Ward seemed smaller than he actually was. He had hair the color of dead bamboo, a lantern jaw with a cleft chin, and gray-white sideburns improperly trimmed: the right a bit longer than the left. He wore a lime-green woven short-sleeved sport shirt and cuffed khaki trousers. His ankles were bare above shiny penny loafers. The left shoe had a new heel. Even peering angrily into the darkness of a raised hood at the uncooperative engine, he gave Kort the impression of a man who had boundless energy and a great vitality. To spend a doubleheader with your mistress you needed great vitality, Kort supposed.

Too distracted by his engine problems, Ward took little notice of Kort, except to say “Damn thing” as Kort walked past.

“Problems?” Kort asked, stopping a few feet past the car.

“Know anything about ignition systems?”

“Not in those things. Computerized, aren't they?” Kort said. In a perfect world, he might have kept walking, but he couldn't play this too loose. He needed Ward to find it easier to go with him rather than bother his lovely Sarah Pritchet. If he elected to involve Pritchet, then the potato would be secretly removed, and the actual confrontation would have to wait until Ward was in his car and driving home. Kort had left himself options in either case. “Are you sure it isn't flooded?”

“Fuel injected,” Ward replied. “I doubt it.”

If the report on Ward was accurate, then he should be feeling rushed by now. The seventh-inning stretch left him only one inning to reach the Kingdome in order to catch the ninth, and make his appearance for a drink at his neighbor's balcony box. The drink was part of an insurance plan designed to support his alibi. He and Sarah Pritchet ran their own bases during home games, and if his wife happened to ask, then the neighbor would unknowingly support Ward's false claim to having been at the game. It was a neat little package that had been going on the better part of twelve months. With season tickets to the Mariners, Seahawks, and 'Sonics, it left only a few weeks a year where he had to come up with something more creative. And again, according to the report, Ward was not as creative as predictable, which made him the perfect mark. He was reportedly pragmatic and terribly afraid of his wife: two key elements that made him attractive to Anthony Kort.

“I'm heading over on Denny Way,” Kort said, bending the rules. Not quite an offer, but as close as he dare come.

“Are you?” Ward said. “Right now?”

“Yes. Right away.” Kort watched as Ward lifted his head in the direction of the apartment. He was prepared to lose Ward at this juncture, and almost preferred that it happen this way: it would make their second encounter all the more powerful and therefore effective.

But the man asked, “Could I hitch a ride with you down to a gas station?”

Kort shrugged. “Sure.”

Ward hurriedly lowered the hood and scurried around to the driver's door. Leaning in, he retrieved the keys and locked up.

Anthony Kort licked his chops—like shooting fish in a barrel.

Ward took the passenger seat. Having broken the seat belt's release mechanism, Kort suggested that Ward buckle up, waited for him to do so, and then started the car and drove off. The seat belt's ratchets took out the slack and Kort knew he had him—Ward could escape easily but not quickly. Time now favored Kort.

He knew the impact of immediacy, just as he knew the impact of claustrophobia, and so he hesitated only long enough to get the car up to speed. Hard to jump from a moving car. When he turned right on Olive Way, Ward spun his head curiously. “I thought you said Denny Way?”

Kort elected not to look at the man. “There's no need for your wife to find out about Sarah Pritchet, Dr. Ward.” He wanted to look, to see the man crumble, his face drained of blood, his hands trembling. But he remained aloof.

“What?” Ward finally coughed out. “You're a private eye?” he asked after some thought. “Oh, my God. How long has she suspected?” And then, “Oh, my God” several more times. He concluded with the very astute “I can't believe this.”