Hard Fall (41 page)

He smelled the man before he reached him. And then he stopped, perhaps as close as ten feet away, close enough to hear the ragged breathing and the crisp sound of ripping aluminum as the cap of the unseen bottle was twisted open. He heard the eager lips smack with the drink, and the throat choke down the sweetness of the fortified wine, the tropical fruity smell of which now overpowered the man's vile body odors.

The rumbling of the approaching train grew in the distance like the first hint of a summer storm whose magnitude was foreshadowed even from the horizon. The power clawed its way toward them, a dragon from its lair.

Only now did Kort step forward and shine his light on the poor soul whose first instinct was to protect his rights to his bottle by cradling it tightly in his elbow. Only now did he study the man's size, and approving of what he saw, remove his gun, unseen behind the blinding glare of his flashlight. “Get away,” the stranger croaked weakly in his wet rheumy voice, clutching his comfort even more tightly and rotating away from Kort, who drew closer with each step.

The thunder of the approaching train bore down on them, made louder by the unforgiving qualities of strict confinement and hard cement. Kort went deaf as he stuck the light against his leg to hide its beam, leaned behind a strut to avoid the dragon's sole eye, which arrived and passed with unusual speed. With the dragon's body and tail carried behind it, the lights of the train cars casting a strobed, flickering brilliance on the sagging pipes above them, Kort addressed his victim with the stabbing glare of the flashlight, and lowered the butt of his weapon squarely into the center of the man's head with all the strength he had ever found inside himself. The bubbling scream was sweet music, buried by the grinding whine of the departing train, buried by the dull pop of breaking glass as the bottle fell and broke inside its bag.

Buried, but not forgotten. For this man would live yet again.

His work soon completed, Kort left the stench and heat without his bag and made the arduous climb up what proved to be four hundred and eighty-six steps to the relative coolness of an oppressive September afternoon.

In Georgetown, at the twin sister of the very store he had shopped earlier in the day, he purchased an identical pair of gray canvas jeans with elastic waist, a white golf shirt, a brown windbreaker, and a pair of canvas shoes. This done, his head splitting open with pain, he headed off to make his phone call, for with one flower now blooming nicely, he had an entire garden to attend to.

“There's a bank of pay phones in the Old Post Office Building. Ground floor. Be there in ten minutes.” Daggett heard the line go dead, and only then did he reflect on the harsh severity of the man's slightly accented voice, only then did he know that after two years of searching he had found Anthony Kort.

The Old Post Office had been converted into a restaurant mall and offered a variety of ethnic food shops with Formica tables, plastic forks, and paper napkins. At three o'clock in the afternoon the concourses were nearly deserted, though an ice-cream parlor and a woman selling colorful helium balloons were doing brisk business with the tourists. Daggett found the bank of three pay phones and waited impatiently for one to ring, ignoring the obscene graffiti scrawled in pen on any surface that would hold ink. He blamed Clint Eastwood and
Dirty Harry
for this pay phone scheme—run a cop from pay phone to pay phone until you've got him on a clean line, or until you're confident he's all alone. Daggett wondered which it was to be, how long it was to last. He hoped Kort wouldn't keep it up too long; he had no patience for games. He was reviewing the words he would say when the middle phone rang.

“Me for him,” Daggett said answering, “at the place and time of your choosing.”

“Impossible. More phones upstairs. One minute.” The line went dead.

“Shit,” Daggett said, slamming the receiver down and drawing attention to himself. He galloped up the stairs two at a time and stopped a hunchbacked old man sweeping up cigarette butts and asked him where the phones were. He found them pushed back in behind a video arcade that had gone bust. As he moved his shirt cuff to check his watch, the pay phone to his left rang loudly.

“No more of this,” he said into the receiver. “This is bullshit. I'm not trapping the phones.”

“You will be on the northbound side of the Dupont Circle Metro platform at nine o'clock tonight. It goes without saying that you will be alone. I want all the itineraries. You understand.”

“I'm offering you a trade,” Daggett said, “me for the boy.”

“Northbound side. Nine o'clock tonight. Alone. That's all there is between your son's life and death.”

“How do I know he's still alive?”

“You don't.” Kort hung up.

Remorse, as he had never experienced, overcame him with such ferocity that he ran to the public toilet and vomited. His face crimson with blood, he collected himself at the sink, the man in the mirror older by years than the man who had jogged that morning. It was as if his father's words to him, and his to his own son—
the only way there is through
—were coming back to haunt him, as perhaps they had haunted the men of every generation in his family. For there was indeed only one way out of this now, and he had to wonder how much of this was a self-fulfilling prophecy. In some secret, dark corner of his heart, he had wanted the chance to take on, one-on-one, the man responsible for the death of his parents and the paralysis of his son. No warrants, no papers of extradition, no courts, no jail cells. No rules.

And now, it appeared that time had come.

“Cheysson is missing!” Levin whispered, craning over Daggett's desk. Daggett felt a knot block his throat and no words would come out. It had begun. Daggett refused to roll over and play dead, but he had yet to formulate a plan of his own. Perhaps this was the purpose behind Kort's request—he had wanted Daggett's attention focused elsewhere.

Levin continued, “She left her office at five. Nothing unusual. Our people followed her out to a department store off the Beltway.”

“A department store? They should have stopped her.”

“I know … I know …”

“That's the oldest trick in the book.”

“Listen, they watched all the exits, they watched faces not clothing. She never came out of there. She's still
in
there. We got caught shorthanded. They're requesting backup.”

“She's
not
still in there. Count on it.” Daggett couldn't think clearly. He found guilt a suffocating emotion. Each hour he traveled farther down the path of deception, the more congested his brain became and the more difficult and tentative he found his position. He had come too far to abandon this investigation, to abandon his son without a fight. “Call a meeting,” he said.

“A meeting? What the fuck do I do about Cheysson?”

“We
lost
her, right?” he asked angrily. “Forget about Cheysson. We don't need her. Call a meeting. Tell Gloria to do it. Pullman, Surveillance, Tech. Services. I want them all at the meeting.”

“Don't need her?” Levin shouted.

Daggett said calmly, “Keep your voice down, Bradley. This isn't for public broadcast.”

“You've lost your fucking marbles.”

“Maybe. But I've
found
Anthony Kort. Now call the fucking meeting before I change my mind.”

Monique was free.

Kort's plan worked flawlessly: she walked out of the office building with no one the wiser. An hour later she had received his message in the hotel bar. For the next two hours she moved from one location to the next, Kort probably watching her, and everything around her, at each and every stop. She was walking with wings on her feet, not only because of her newfound freedom but because of her feelings for him, and her realization that the two of them would now be together. He had saved her life—literally. He was her white knight; there was nothing she would not give him, nothing she would not do for him.

At a few minutes past eight she was riding in the passenger seat of the Toyota.

“You saved my life,” she said. “How can I ever thank you?”

“Take off your clothes.” He pulled a gray plastic bag from the backseat.

“Right here?” she asked, misunderstanding him.

“Change into these. Immediately. There's no time!”

She didn't argue. She unzipped the red leather skirt, raised her hips, and slipped it off. She continued to change as they talked.

“I need the key to the storage locker,” he said coldly. He was in no mood for sloppy sentimentality.

She nodded as desperation and fear replaced her ebullience. “You're angry with me?” she asked incredulously. “You think I did something to cause this?”

“I don't want to go into it.”

He was completely emotionless. A wave of intense cold swept through her. “It must have been the Greek. It wasn't
my
fault.” She located the keys in her handbag and handed them to him. She asked, “How can you wear gloves when it's this hot?”

“I live in these things.”

“It's a private mailbox,” she said, referring to the key. “Do you want me to write down the address?”

“I
know
the address. This,” he said, pocketing the key, “is all I need.”

“Why did you do this? Why did you help me?” she asked, not wanting the answer.

“I need you.”

“That's not why.”

“It is.” The light changed and he started off again.

“You're going through with it?” She was stunned.

“Of course. We came to do a job. We're going to do it.”

“You're insane.” She felt tempted to tug the door open and run away.

He felt himself smile. He nodded in agreement. “It's true.”

“Need me for what?”

“To baby-sit. You know how to cook, don't you?”

He had come here to tell her about Duncan. About his decision. He had come here because he had no idea what the next few hours had in store for him, and yet Carrie deserved to be a part of it. Carrie had been the stabilizing force in his life these past two years and he needed her now, regardless of their present problems. He had come here out of selfishness. But when he opened his mouth to speak, he didn't mention Duncan. He couldn't bring himself to, for he knew through her eyes his decision had been the wrong one. But it was over now, and there was no going back. “I went to her the other night.”

She obviously didn't need any names. She searched her purse for a cigarette and lit it.

“I came here. I parked out in the drive and I couldn't bring myself to come inside.” When she failed to say anything he wondered if this was going to end up a lover's monologue, and he feared if it was, then these few minutes might be their last together. “I thought we would argue. All we ever do anymore is argue.”

“What was she like?” Carrie asked spitefully. “Was she everything you dreamed?” She added bitterly, “You
do
dream about her, you know. You talk about her in your sleep.”

“It wasn't like that. I wanted to sleep with her,” he confessed, “but she refused.”

“She really knows how to play you, doesn't she?”

“Maybe she does.”

“I've been seeing someone,” she admitted, glancing up and blowing smoke over his head. It was an act of defiance; she knew how he hated the cigarettes.

He felt a stab of blinding pain shoot right through his lover's heart, and he wondered with self-pity what else the world had in store for him today. And where he might have expected of himself intense anger and jealous fury, he felt only a weeping disappointment. He was too taxed to deal with this properly. He felt the air go out of him. “I wondered what that was about the other night.”

She nodded. “Yes. That was part of it.”

“Do I know him?”

She raised her eyebrows and coughed out a laugh. Smoke escaped with the laugh. “Do
I
know him? He's a stranger. Someone I met recently, that's all.”

“Is it everything you dreamed?”

That caused her some pain and he felt good about it. He had had his chance with Lynn and he hadn't taken it. Regret overcame him. He didn't want to lose Carrie. He didn't want to stay. He didn't want to lose Lynn, but he didn't even have her yet. He had stepped out onto an emotional floating log and now, the faster he ran, trying to stay on, the more precarious his position. Several minutes passed. Some of the longest minutes of his life.

“I thought I had fallen in love with him,” she said.

“Past tense?”

“Just plain old tense right now.”

“Word games? You're going to play word games at a time like this?”

“We play all sorts of games, don't we? That's the stage we're in, isn't it? We play games with each other's emotions. We play games with ourselves.”

His heart wanted to hate her, but it lacked any punch. All the strength had gone out of him during the meeting. There was nothing left for his hate to feed on. “Why bother telling me?”

“No bother.” She forced an evil smile and took another drag. “I wasn't going to. I'm not sure why I did. Probably because of what you said about
her
. I'm afraid of her. She's everything I'm not.”

“She's a friend. That's all.”

“Bullshit.”

“So it's bullshit.”

“So it is.”

“This isn't why I came here.”

“Why then? You haven't been here in
months
. It's always your place. Always your terms. Always you, you, you. You know what that's like for me?”

“Duncan's been kidnapped.” There. He had said it. It was the only possible defense against the truth, and it had just the effect he was hoping for. “Sometime last night,” he added. Her anger and spite vanished magically, replaced by a wave of shock that swept through her, charging her eyes with sympathy and stealing her voice in fear. Just seeing her reaction tightened his throat. He remembered the term they had used:
body fragmentation
. It was how he felt. “I have to meet him tonight.”