Last Man Standing (14 page)

Romano looked up in surprise as Web walked over and peered into the guts of the Nassau-blue ’Vette with a white convertible
soft top. Web knew the car was a model year 1966, which was the first production year of the famous 427-cubic-inch block engine
that carried 450 horses inside, because Romano had told him and all the other HRT guys this about a thousand times. “Four-speed
manual close ratio. Top speed of about one sixty-five. Blow anything off the street,” he had said until Web was sick of hearing
it. “Police cruisers, morphed street shit-cans, hell, half the damn stock cars racing at the smaller tracks.”

Web had often wondered what it would have felt like to be a kid pulling wrenches and tearing apart cars in the driveway with
your old man. Learning stuff about carburetors, sports, women, all the things that made life worth living.
Like, hey, Pop, you know how she’s next to you and you’re wondering, should I slip my arm around her, and maybe take a chance
placing my hand
there
? Yeah, there, Pop, help me out, you were young once, weren’t you? Don’t tell me you never thought about stuff like that,
because I’m standing here, aren’t I? And when should I go in for the kiss? What signs should I be looking for? Pop, you won’t
believe this, but I can’t figure these crazy women out. Does it get easier when they get older?
And the old man would wink, smile knowingly, take a swig of beer, a long drag on a Marlboro and sit down, wipe off his greasy
hands on a rag and say,
Okay, listen up, Junior, this is how you work it. Let me lay it out for you here, and you better write this down ’cause this
is the gospel, son.
Staring into the Corvette’s chest cavity, Web wondered what that exchange would feel like.

Romano eyed Web and didn’t mention the 450 HP Big Block that could blow away morphed street shit-cans. All he said was, “Beer’s
in the cooler. Buck a can. And
don’t
make yourself comfortable.”

Web reached inside the small Coleman at his feet and popped open a Budweiser without, however, leaving a dollar bill in payment.
“You know, Paulie, Bud’s not all there is. Got some wicked South American brews you should try.”

“Right, on my salary?”

“We make the same money.”

“I got a wife and kids, you got shit.”

Romano gave the socket wrench a few more pulls and then stepped past Web and fired up the engine. It sounded powerful enough
to burst through the thin metal keeping it all together.

“Purring like a kitten,” said Web as he sipped his beer.

“Hell, like a tiger.”

“Can we talk? Got some questions.”

“You and everybody else. Sure, come on. Got all the time in the world. What the hell am I supposed to do on my day off, enjoy
myself? So what do you need? Some ballet tights? I’ll check with my wife.”

“You know I’d appreciate you not ragging my ass to everybody at Quantico.”

“And I’d appreciate you not ordering me around. And while we’re at it, get the hell off my property. I got standards on people
I hang with.”

“Let’s just talk, Paulie. You owe me that.”

Romano pointed the wrench at him. “I owe you nothing, London.”

“After eight years doing this crap, I think we
both
owe each other more than we’ll ever be able to cover.”

The two men stared at each other until Romano finally put down the wrench, wiped off his hands, turned the tiger off and headed
toward the backyard. Web took this as an invitation to follow. Yet, part of Web was thinking that maybe Romano simply was
going to the garage to get a bigger wrench to hit him with.

In the backyard the grass was cut short, the trees pruned, a fat rosebush billowed out from one side of the garage. The temperature
must have been near eighty in the sun, and it felt good after all the rain. They pulled up a couple of lawn chairs and settled
down. Web watched as Romano’s wife, Angie, hung clothes on the line to dry. She was from Mississippi originally. The Romanos
had two kids, both boys. Angie was petite and still curvy with big blond hair, bewitching green eyes and a “let me eat you
up, darlin’” look. She was always flirting, always touching your arm or grazing your leg with her foot, saying that you were
cute, but it was all innocent stuff. It drove Romano nuts sometimes, yet Web could tell he really loved that other guys were
attracted to his wife. That was just part of what made Romano tick. And yet when Angie Romano got pissed off, you had better
look out. Web had seen that side of her too at some HRT get-togethers; the little woman could be a hellcat on speed—she had
made intensely confident guys who shot big guns for a living dive for cover when she was on the warpath.

Paul Romano was a Hotel Team assaulter now, but he and Web had come to HRT in the same class and been paired as snipers for
about three years. Romano had been with the Deltas before joining the FBI. Though Romano was built like Web, lacking big muscles,
the muscle he did have was like cable. You couldn’t break it, and the guy’s motor never quit. No matter what you threw at
him, he never stopped. Once, during a night raid on a drug boss’s Caribbean stronghold, the assault boat had dropped Romano
off too far from shore, and the guy, carrying sixty pounds of gear, had plunged into fifteen feet of water. Instead of drowning
like everybody else would have, he hit the bottom, stood, somehow got his bearings, held his breath for a mere four minutes,
walked to shore and participated in the attack. Because there had been a snafu in communications and the target wasn’t exactly
where he was supposed to be, Romano had actually ended up nailing the drug lord himself after killing two of his bodyguards.
And the only thing Romano had bitched about afterward was getting his hair wet and losing the pistol named Cuff.

Romano had tattoos over most of his body, dragons, knives and snakes, and a cute little ANGIE in a heart on his left biceps.
Web had run into Romano on the very first day of the HRT selection class for that year, when most of the applicants had stood
naked and scared, awaiting the terror they all knew was ahead of them. Web had been checking out all the other guys, looking
for scars on knees or shoulders that evidenced physical weakness or expressions on faces that demonstrated mental paralysis.
This was both free enterprise and Darwinism at their full, feverish pitch, and Web had been looking for anything to get an
edge over the competition. Web knew that only half of them would survive the first cut that would take place in two weeks,
and only one in ten of those would get an offer to come back and really kill himself.

Romano had come from the FBI’s New York City SWAT team, where he had the reputation of being extremely intimidating among
a group of intimidating folks. He hadn’t looked scared standing in a room with seventy stripped males that first day of HRT
qualifying. To Web, he had looked like a guy who loved pain, who was just itching for HRT to start clobbering his butt with
it. And the guy could dole out the hurt too. Back then Web hadn’t known himself if he would make the cut for the HRT slots,
yet he had known from day one that Paul Romano would. The two had always been supercompetitive and the guy regularly made
Web mad, but Web had to admire the man’s ability and courage.

“You wanted to talk, talk,” said Romano.

“Kevin Westbrook. The kid from the alley.”

Romano nodded at his beer. “Okay.”

“He’s missing.”

“The hell you say!”

“You know Bates? Percy Bates?”

“No. Should I?”

“He’s heading up WFO’s investigation. Ken McCarthy said you and Mickey Cortez were with Kevin. What can you tell me?”

“Not much.”

“What’d the kid say?”

“Nothing.”

“So who’d you pass him off to?”

“Couple of suits.”

“Get their names?”

Shake of the head.

“Hey, Paulie, you know the difference between talking to you and talking to a wall?”

“What?”

“Not a damn thing.”

“What do you want me to say, Web? I saw the kid, I watched the kid and then the kid was gone.”

“Are you telling me he didn’t say one thing to you?”

“He was pretty tight-lipped. He told us his name and gave us his address. We noted that down. Mickey tried to talk to him
some more but got nothing. Hell, Cortez doesn’t even talk to his own kids. See, we weren’t all that sure what the boy’s role
in all this was. I mean, we’re hauling ass to the courtyard, see your flare and stop. Then this kid comes out of the dark
with your cap and a note. I wasn’t sure if he was on our side or not. I didn’t want to screw up legally by asking him stuff
I shouldn’t.”

“Okay, that was actually smart of you. But you passed him off to the suits without a word? How the hell does that compute?”

“They flashed their creds, said they were there for the kid and that was that. It’s not like we had the authority to say no.
HRT doesn’t do investigations, Web, we just bang ’em and hang ’em. The suits do the snooping. And I had other things on my
mind. You know me and Teddy Riner were in Delta together.”

“I know, Paulie, I know. So about what time was that, when the suits showed up?”

Romano thought about this. “We weren’t there that long. It was still dark. Say, two-thirty or so.”

“Pretty efficient for WFO to get its act in order and send guys for the kid that quickly.”

“So what’d you want me to say to them? Hey, guys, you can’t have the kid, you’re way too efficient, and the FBI just doesn’t
work that way? Boy, that’d do wonders for my career. I could kiss my GS fourteen salad days good-bye with that one.”

“The suits, can you give me a description?”

Romano thought this over. “I already told the agents.”

“A bunch of other suits. So tell me. It won’t kill you. Trust me.”

“Right. If I was that stupid you wouldn’t have to stop at the bridge because you could sell me Brooklyn too.”

“Come on, Paulie, assaulter to assaulter. Hotel Team to what’s left of Charlie.”

Romano thought about this for a bit and then cleared his throat.“One of them was a white guy. A little shorter than me, thin
but wiry. Satisfied?”

“No. Hair?”

“Short and blond—he’s a Fed, what else is it going to be? You think J. Edgar walked around with a ponytail?”

“Some folks claim he did. That and a dress. Young, old, in between?”

“Thirties. Had on your standard-issue Fed suit, maybe a little nicer than that, actually. A lot nicer than anything you have
in your closet, London.”

“Eyes?”

“He had on shades.”

“At two-thirty in the morning?”

“Well, they might have been tinted prescription glasses. I wasn’t exactly gonna interrogate the guy on his choice of eyewear.”

“You remember all that and you can’t remember the guy’s name?”

“He flashed his creds and I zoned out. I’m in the middle of a crime scene with people running everywhere and six of our guys
with their heads blown off. He came for the kid and he took the kid. He walked the walk and talked the talk. Hell, he probably
outranked my ass.”

“What about his partner?”

“What?”

“His partner, the other suit, you said there were two of them.”

“Right.” Romano didn’t look so certain now. He rubbed at his eyes and sipped his beer. “Well, see, that guy didn’t actually
come over. The one suit pointed at him, said it was his partner and that was that. That other guy was talking to some cops,
so he never actually came over.”

Web looked at him skeptically. “Paulie, that means you don’t know for sure if the guy you talked to was even with that other
guy. He could’ve been working all alone and just been blowing smoke up your butt. Did you tell the
real
honest-to-God FBI all this?”

“Look, Web, you were an honest-to-God Fibbie. You’re used to investigating this kind of crap. I was a Delta. I only joined
the FBI so I could jump to SWAT and then onto HRT. It’s been a long time and I’ve forgotten how to play detective. I just
bang ’em and hang ’em. Just bang ’em and hang ’em, man.”

“Well, you might just have hung a little boy.”

Romano stared at him angrily for a few seconds and then slouched down and looked off. Web figured Romano was thinking about
his own two sons. Web wanted the guy to feel guilty, so this blunder would never happen again. “That kid’s probably in some
landfill right now. He has a brother. Some badass named Big F.”

“Don’t they all,” growled Romano.

“Kid hasn’t had much of a life. You saw the bullet hole on his cheek. At all of ten years old.”

Romano took a slug of beer and wiped his mouth. “Yeah, well, six of our guys are dead and they shouldn’t be and I’m still
wondering why it wasn’t seven.” He shot Web a nasty look as he said this.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m getting some professional help now trying to figure that out.” This was a huge admission
for Web to make, particularly to Romano, and he immediately regretted it.

“Oh, yeah, that makes me feel so good I’m gonna run through the streets yelling ‘Web’s seeing a shrink, the world is safe.’”

“Give me a break here, Paulie, you think I wanted to freeze out there? Do you think I wanted to see my team get shot up?
Do
you?”

“I guess you’re the only one who can answer that,” Romano fired back.

“Look, I know this all looks bad, but why are you giving me such a hard time?”

“You want to know why? You really want to know why?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I did talk to that kid, or let me put it better. The kid talked to me. You wanta know what that kid said?”

“I’m sitting here, Paulie.”

“He said you were so scared you were bawling like a baby. He said you begged him to please don’t tell anybody. You were the
biggest piece of chickenshit he’d ever seen. He said you even tried to give him your gun because you were scared to use it.”

Talk about your ungrateful kid.
“And you believed that crap?”

Romano took a swig of his beer. “Well, not the part about the gun. You ain’t giving that damn SR75 to nobody.”

“Thanks a lot, Romano.”

“But the kid must have seen something to make him say stuff like that. I mean, why would he lie about everything?”