Last Man Standing (54 page)

T stared out the window at the traffic streaming by and then sat back, his arms folded across his chest.

“Now, my friend here—” began Venables.

“Your damn friend got a name?”

Cove tightened his grip on T’s shoulders. “Yeah, I got a name. You call me T-Rex. Tell him why, Sonny.”

“’Cause he eats little T’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said Sonny.

“And I just want some information about some new product in town. Crews buying it up and stuff like that. No problems. Just
a couple of names and we let you off right where we picked you up.”

“And trust me, T, you don’t want to piss this man off,” added Venables.

“You cops, you ain’t doing nothing to me ’less you want to get your ass sued off.”

Cove stared at the man for a moment and then said, “Right now, T, you better be real nice to me. I’m not feeling good about
things, and I don’t give a shit if somebody sues me or not.”

“Fuck off.”

“Sonny, take the next right. Head to the GW Parkway. Lot of quiet places there,” he added ominously.

“You got it.”

In a few minutes, they were on the George Washington, or GW, Parkway, heading north.

“Take the next turnoff,” Cove said.

They pulled into a sightseeing lot that provided a beautiful view of Georgetown and, far below, the Potomac River. A stone
wall served as a buffer from the steep drop. Day had turned to dusk and there were no other cars parked in the lot. Cove looked
around, opened the door and pulled T out with him.

“If you dudes arresting me, I want my lawyer.”

Venables got out too and looked around. He eyed the drop, glanced back at Cove and shrugged.

Cove grabbed the smallish T around the waist and lifted him up. “What the hell you doing, man?”

Cove climbed over the stone wall and down on the other side while T struggled in vain. There was a narrow strip of ground
and then a drop of about a hundred feet into the river, which was filled with rocks. Down the river and on the opposite bank
were a number of buildings housing local boating clubs. They were painted bright colors and their members rowed the waters
in canoes, sculls, kayaks and other assorted watercraft that required muscle rather than combustion engines to make them move.
There were several of them on the water right now and T was given an inverted view of that picturesque scene because Cove
was holding him upside down, by the legs, over the drop.

“Holy shit,” screamed out the flailing T as he looked down to oblivion.

“Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, and you’re gonna have to decide real quick, because I’m out of time and
patience,” said Cove.

Venables squatted on top of the wall and kept a lookout for other cars. “Better listen to him, T, the man doesn’t lie.”

“But you guys are cops,” wailed T. “You can’t do this shit. It’s fucking unconstitutional.”

“I never said I was a cop,” said Cove.

T stiffened and then glanced over at Venables. “But, damn it,
he
is.”

“Hey, I’m not my brother’s keeper,” said Venables. “And I’m getting ready to retire anyway. I don’t give a shit.”

“Oxy,” said Cove calmly. “I want to know who’s buying it in D.C.”

“Are you one crazy-ass mother or what?” screamed T.

“Yes, I am.” Cove let his grip slip a bit and T went down about six inches. Now Cove had hold of only the man’s ankles.

“Oh, God, oh, sweet Jesus, help me,” whimpered T.

“Don’t be talking to Jesus, T, not after the life you’ve led,” answered Venables. “He might just send a lightning bolt, and
I’m standing way too close.”

“Talk to me,” said Cove in his calm voice. “Oxy.”

“I can’t tell you nothing. Then folks come after my ass.”

Cove let his grip slip again. Now he was holding on only to the man’s feet. “You’re wearing loafers, T,” he said. “Loafers
slip right off.”

“Go to hell.”

Cove let go of one of the feet and now was holding T by one foot with both hands. He looked back at Venables. “Sonny, I think
we better drop this one and go get us somebody else who’s a little smarter.”

“I got just the person. Let’s go.”

Cove started to let go of the foot.

“No!” screamed T. “I’ll talk. I’ll tell you.”

Cove remained motionless.

“No, I mean put me down and I’ll tell you.”

“Sonny, go start the car while I throw this piece of crap in the Potomac.”

“
No!
I’ll talk, right here. I swear.”

“Oxy,” prompted Cove again.

“Oxy,” repeated T, and he started talking fast, telling Cove all he needed to know.

C
laire pulled her Volvo into her driveway and cut the engine. It was a nice neighborhood, not too far away from her office
and she had been fortunate enough to buy into it before housing prices soared. She made a good enough income, but the cost
of living in northern Virginia had become ridiculous. Builders were cramming places on any scrap of land they could find and
yet there were more than enough people willing to buy them.

Her house was a three-bedroom Cape Cod with a nice patch of lawn in front, flowers in window boxes, a cedar shake roof and
a two-car garage attached to the house by a breezeway. The street was tree-lined and the neighborhood contained a nice mixture
of young and old as well as professional and working-class people.

After being divorced for so long, Claire was close to accepting that she would forever remain single. There were few eligible
men in the social circles where she mingled and none of them had captured her interest. She had girlfriends always on the
lookout to fix her up with yet another tech mini-mogul or lawyer, but she found them to be so egotistical and self-centered
that she figured marrying one of them wouldn’t be all that different from remaining single. As a rebuke, she had asked one
very self-involved high-tech chap at a party if he had ever heard of Narcissus. He had wanted to know if it was a new type
of Internet software and then gone right on talking about how fabulous he was.

She pulled her briefcase out of the car and headed up to the front steps. She hadn’t pulled the car into the garage because
she intended to go out again. The man coming out of her backyard startled Claire. He was black and large, with a head that
appeared shaven, though he wore a cap. Claire focused on his gas company uniform and the electronic gas gauge he held in his
hand. He passed her, smiled and went across the street. She felt embarrassed for her automatic suspicion of a black man, though
she had to admit, also with some embarrassment, that there were few people of color in her neighborhood. Yet who could blame
her for being paranoid, after spending time with Web London and men like him?

She unlocked the door and went inside, her mind on her session with Web. It had been shocking in many ways but at least more
revealing than shocking. She put her briefcase down and headed to her bedroom to change. It was still light out and she thought
she would take advantage of the nice weather and go for a walk. She remembered the pills in her pocket, pulled them out and
examined them. The unfamiliar one intrigued her greatly. She had a friend who worked in the pharmacy department at Fairfax
Hospital. He could run it through some tests and tell her what this was. It didn’t look like any sleep medication she had
ever seen, but she could be mistaken. She also hoped she was mistaken about a drug interaction having made Web freeze up in
that alley. That might be something he could never recover from. As crazy as Web’s theory on voodoo was, she would take a
curse over something Web had inadvertently put into his body that caused his friends to die without him. No, the answer had
to lie in his past, she was convinced of that.

She sat on the bed and took off her shoes, went into her small walk-in closet, disrobed and pulled on a T-shirt and shorts
because the heat had returned. Barefoot, she came back out and looked at the phone. Maybe she should call Web and talk to
him. At some point she had to tell him what she had learned about Stockton’s death. The timing of it, though, was critical.
Too early or too late a disclosure and the consequences could be disastrous. She decided to take the chicken’s way out and
figure it out later. Maybe the walk would help her decide. She went over to her drawer and pulled out a baseball cap. She
was about to put it on when a hand went around her mouth. She dropped the cap and instinctively began to struggle until she
felt the gun barrel against her cheek and she stopped, her eyes wide with fear, breaths suddenly coming in heaves. She remembered
she hadn’t locked the door on the way in. It was such a safe neighborhood, or at least it had been. Her racing mind wondered
if the gas man was an impostor and he had come back and was now about to rape her and then kill her.

“What do you want?” she asked in a voice that was so muffled by the hand over her mouth that it didn’t sound like her own.
She could tell it was a man, though his hand was gloved, because of the strength in it. The hand left her mouth and encircled
her neck.

The man didn’t answer and Claire saw the blindfold coming toward her, and the next moment she was in total darkness. She felt
herself being led over to the bed and she was terrified the rape was about to happen. Should she scream or fight? And yet
the gun was still pressed to her right cheek. And the silence of her attacker was more unnerving than hearing his voice.

“Just be cool,” the man said, “all we want is information. Nothing else from you.” His words seemed clear enough to her. Her
body was safe. At least she could hope that.

He guided her down so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She told herself that if he pushed her back and climbed
on her, she would fight, gun or not.

And yet she sensed him moving away from her. And at the same time she sensed the entrance of another person. She tensed as
this person sat next to her on the bed. A heavy man, she deduced, for the bed went down quite a bit with his weight. But he
didn’t touch her, though even through the blindfold she could feel his gaze upon her.

“You seeing Web London?”

She jerked a bit at this question, for it hadn’t occurred to her that this was about Web, though she wondered why it hadn’t.
Her life was fairly ordinary, routine, no guns and men killed. That was Web’s life. Like it or not, she was now part of that
life.

“What do you mean?” she managed to say.

She heard the man let out a grunt, one of annoyance, she thought. “You’re a psychiatrist and he’s your patient, isn’t that
true?” Claire wanted to say that ethically she couldn’t reveal that information, but she felt certain that if she did, this
man would kill her. As though he would care about her ethical constraints. To add credence to her belief, she heard what clearly
sounded like the hammer of a gun being cocked. She had been around guns as a consulting forensic psychiatrist and knew that
sound pretty well. A large cold mass formed in her stomach and her limbs became rigid, and she wondered how Web could deal
with people like this every day of his life.

“I’m seeing him, yes.”

“Now we getting somewhere. Did he mention a boy to you, a boy named Kevin?”

She nodded because her mouth had dried up so much she didn’t think she could speak.

“He happen to know where that boy is now?”

Claire shook her head and tensed as he lightly squeezed her shoulder.

“Relax, lady, ain’t nobody gonna hurt you long as you cooperate.

If you don’t cooperate, then we have quite a problem,” he added ominously.

Claire heard him snap his fingers and about a minute passed in silence, and then she felt something touch her lips. She drew
back.

“Water,” the man said. “You got dry mouth. People scared shitless get that all the time. Drink.”

The last word was an order and Claire immediately obeyed it. “Now talk, no more nods or shakes, you understand me?”

She started to nod and then caught herself. “Yes.”

“What’d he say about Kevin? Everything, I have to know it all.” “Why?” She wasn’t exactly sure where that bold question had
come from.

“I got my reasons.”

“Do you want to hurt the boy?”

“No,” the man said quietly. “I just want him back nice and safe.” He sounded sincere, but then criminals often did, she reminded
herself. Ted Bundy had been the king of smooth talkers while he methodically killed scores of women, smiling all the way.

“I have no reason to believe you, you know.”

“Kevin, he my son.”

She tensed at this and then relaxed. Could this be the Big F person Web had told her about? But he had said the man was Kevin’s
brother, not father. The man
sounded
like a concerned parent, yet there was something not quite right. Claire would just have to go with her professional gut
on this one. What she sensed very clearly was that these men would kill her. “Web said he saw Kevin in the alley. He said
Kevin said something to him and it affected him in a weird way. He saw him later, while the guns were firing. He gave him
a note and sent him off. He didn’t see him after that. But he’s been looking for him.”