Parallel Lies (31 page)

“As in maintenance,” Tyler completed.

“As in crossing guards.”

“Markowitz was familiar with Stuckey’s name because Stuckey bitched to accounting about his money drying up. Markowitz’s job was to stall him and make promises that couldn’t be kept. The truth was that the maintenance budget was being used for the bullet train.”

She said, “Routine maintenance was probably suspended. That would have included crossing guards.”

Tyler said, “So after Genoa, Stuckey gets handed a dream of a retirement package. Markowitz, Milrose, and Stuckey forget they ever heard about maintenance problems or that funds were ever diverted.” Tyler felt he had most, if not all, of the pieces now, and he wondered what to do with them. He still felt he needed the NTSB files on the crossing accident. The details. And then a sickening feeling, like nausea, twisted his gut—the suspicion that Loren Rucker, his boss, was somehow involved with Northern Union. What if Rucker had been the investigator assigned to the Genoa crossing accident? Perhaps there had been a few favors granted. Tyler
recalled that Rucker had known O’Malley a long time—since they had served in the Marines together. The same Loren Rucker who had made this spur-of-the-moment job offer.

“Peter?” she said. “What are you thinking?”

Tyler spoke calmly, though inside he churned. “Rucker gave me this job because O’Malley asked for someone he could blow up.”

Priest turned and faced him, her hair partially obscuring her face like a curtain.

Tyler theorized, “If I led them to Alvarez, they would kill him, just as they did Stuckey—beat him to death—and make sure that I looked good for it. Their dirty little secret dies with Alvarez, and anything I say gets taken as the ranting of a desperate man.”

“That’s a little paranoid, don’t you think?” If she crossed her arms any more tightly, she was going to stop all circulation.

“Is it?” He asked, “Why else did Rucker bail me out with this job offer? Me, of all people?”

“Your experience on homicide,” she said, reminding him of his own explanation.

“Yeah?” he asked sarcastically. “Now I wonder.”

She reached out and touched his arm, “One thing at a time. We stay focused. Can we get Markowitz to testify?”

“To what? He doesn’t believe any crime was committed. And now that I’ve tipped him off?” he asked disappointedly. “He has a lifestyle to protect. Either O’Malley will get to him, or he’ll go underground and no one will ever hear from him.”

“Then what?”

“Alvarez,” Tyler answered. “As long as Alvarez is alive, the Genoa accident can’t go away. If O’Malley gets to Alvarez and Markowitz, the cover-up will hold.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“If we’re going to beat O’Malley,” Tyler said, grinding
his teeth between his words, “we have to get Alvarez before he does.”

Under a slate sky and steady rain, Baltimore, from the river, looked eerily deserted. A refrain from a song passed through Tyler’s head, “Ain’t no one in Baltimore no more.” Later, the freighter docked, with deckhands busy making preparations, and Priest hung up from a call to a taxi company. “Ten minutes or less,” she told Tyler. “What now?”

“A room. Some sleep. A shower. We start fresh.”

“I hate to state the obvious, but O’Malley will make every effort to make sure you’re placed in custody A-S-A-P.”

“Will he send your colleagues or the police?”

“Both. With you off the case, and Stuckey dead, there aren’t going to be any grand revelations.”

“There’s always you,” Tyler pointed out, turning his collar up. “What do you suppose he has in mind for you?”

“If he suspects I know something, he’ll either try to buy me or discredit me. I should resign effective immediately.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Tyler protested. “We’re far better off with you inside.”

“You’re kidding, right, Peter?”

“You could wear a tape recorder. Maybe we get him trying to compromise you.”

“I’ve chosen sides,” she reminded him. “I like the team I’m on.”

Tyler repeated, “They
must
be liable for those Genoa deaths—it must be provable—or they wouldn’t have taken it this far.”

Priest asked, “But
why
take it this far? Have you asked yourself that? A case like this always settles, never goes to court. You raise the offer high enough, and eventually it settles.
Ten, fifteen million for Alvarez’s wife and kids? What’s the big worry here for Northern Union?”

“The big worry is that it ends up more like eighty or a hundred million.”

“No way!” she protested.

“Not if they’d admitted their mistakes up front, no. Not if they could win a settlement. But what if Alvarez was demanding a trial—a stage to air his suspicions? The press. A jury. A Latino crushed by a corporate conglomerate.” He thought this out. “You can bet they’ve destroyed documents along the way. We know for sure they’ve given early retirements in exchange for silence. That kind of behavior on the part of a corporation pisses juries off, I’m telling you. They would pay through the nose for that kind of attitude.”

Nell picked up on this. “What if we carry Markowitz’s NASA analogy a bit further? What if the company is broke? What if Goheen has leveraged the company to the hilt for F-A-S-T Track?”

“A lawsuit like this could start the dominoes tumbling,” Tyler answered. “Questions start getting asked, stockholders demand an audit. Weirder things have happened.”

Priest’s mobile rang yet again. She didn’t answer it. The leash that connected back to NUR was tugging at her.

“Maybe next time you answer,” Tyler said. “We give them something tiny to suggest where we are. It can’t be too obvious.”

“Why?”

“Time. For both of us to get some answers.”

She reached down and took his hand. They watched as the longshoreman began unloading the containers. She said, “In my heart of hearts I want to believe that Bill Goheen is honest. He has a vision. He’s charismatic. He’s one of those guys you cheer for. Would he condone beating Sam Stuckey to a pulp? Not on your life. I know the man, Peter. That had to be O’Malley, and my guess is, they didn’t mean for him
to die. They wanted him like Chester Washington,
exactly
like Chester Washington: alive for the cameras to capture all the gory detail when the guy leaves the hospital with a face the size of a hot-air balloon. This went south on them. They wanted to scare Stuckey into keeping his mouth shut and to get you out of the way in the process. Now they’re cornered, and it’s their own doing. If Goheen’s smart, he offers O’Malley’s head and wipes his hands of it.”

“If he was clean, he’d have already done it,” Tyler offered. “A guy like O’Malley—he’s got something on everyone.”

“That sounds a little paranoid to me.”

Tyler gently let go of her hand. “Cab’s here,” he said, pointing.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “Luxury of hindsight. We are where we are.”

“Indeed we are,” Tyler agreed. “Listen, temper or not, impatience or not, why on earth would I beat up Stuckey? At some point that has got to occur to somebody investigating this. Why would I kill a possible witness? Why club him as he answers the door? Why would I do that? Truth be told, I’m not so worried about the long-term outcome of all of this, I’m worried about the short term. I know how slow police work can be, believe me. If I get back down there, I can speed it up.”

He asked rhetorically, “You want some irony? At this point, my job is not only to stop Alvarez from derailing this bullet train—and I know that that’s what this is about—but to protect him, to
save
him.
He’s
the witness we need, the voice. If something happens to him, then whatever went down at that rail crossing will never be heard, just as you said. O’Malley sent Harry Wells on a search-and-destroy. They don’t want him in custody, they want him out. And if they kill a domestic terrorist? Hell, they’ll get medals.” Tyler signaled the cabbie, and he and Priest walked off the ship.

They were about to split up. He’d lost control over events.
Or maybe he’d never had any. Cops had a corner on the market when it came to arrogance.

“Thanks for being here,” he said over the roof of the cab as they were about to climb in. Honesty was as good a place to start as any.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Nell, smiling at him in a way he felt to his core.

It was called the Maritymer, but judging by the decor, and the ceiling-mounted mirror, it might as well have been the No Tell Motel. Forty rooms on two floors. Anchors at the bottom of the outside stairs, with white-painted chains for handrails. Anchors as door knockers as well. The minibar refrigerator stood empty, a patch of green mold in the back like a birthmark. Tyler took a ground-floor unit, in part because it had a sliding glass door leading out the back, where a covered swimming pool hid under snow.

Tyler sent Priest out to buy him a new pair of shoes so he could toss his own, hedging his bets in case the police did catch up with him. The bloody shoe prints outside of Stuckey’s would not match with the new shoes. When she returned, nearly two hours later, with a pair of leather boots cut low at the ankle, a freshly showered Tyler protested over the cost. “I only gave you eighty bucks.”

“Never mind. They’re a gift. I couldn’t see you in running shoes in this weather.” She handed him back his four crisp twenties.

“And you paid for them how?” he inquired, his nerves on edge. He feared she had accelerated his plans.

She didn’t answer right away.

He asked, “You
did
remember what I said about not using any credit cards?”

“It wasn’t exactly a credit card,” she said. But she looked guilty as all hell.

“Tell me you didn’t use a credit card.” Tyler was already gathering his jacket and some change he’d removed from his pocket. Unable to reach her on her cell phone, O’Malley would be using every means to track her. “Tell me you paid with cash.”

“Not a credit card.”

“Thank God.” He relaxed some.

“I have an account at Nordstrom. I charged it to my account.”

“You charged it.” The room grew progressively smaller, the walls coming in toward him. This was much too soon. He hadn’t planned his trip back to Washington.

“But not to a card!” she protested.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He explained, somewhat calmly, “Your credit rating will show the Nordstrom account,” he informed her. “They’ll be watching that account if they’re smart.”

“I know you were a cop, and I don’t mean this the way it sounds, but I think you give them too much credit.”

“I’m not talking about the cops,” he said. He stepped toward her and took her purse strap. She pulled back to stop him. They struggled. Tyler won the purse. He pulled out the cell phone and held it in the air as he switched it off. “When was the last time you used this?”

“The cab,” she said. “I called a cab from the boat. Remember?”

“Ship,” he corrected. Some things he couldn’t help. He dropped the phone back into her purse and returned the purse to her. “My call overseas? It doesn’t help them any; it doesn’t place us. Even the call to Milrose. But a call to a Baltimore cab company? What the hell was I thinking? We’re screwed,” he said. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Hell…they could already be out there waiting.”

“My
cell phone?” she asked. “I understand they might watch yours, but—”

“If they’re alerted to the Nordstrom charge—and they very well could be—then they’ll know you’re in Baltimore. That call to the cab company cinches it. O’Malley can use his clout to get our drop-off from the cab company.”

“Well, let’s hope like hell that you’re a better cop than they are. And I suggest that we get the hell out of here.”

“How? Call a cab?” he snapped.

“Elite,” she said. “The rent-a-car company. They pick you up and bring you back to the rental agency.” She added, “We watch for anyone following us.”

“To rent a car we have to use a credit card, and we can’t do that.”

“I rent it, and I call in, and I head back to the city. I drop you somewhere. I tell them that I stayed with you, wanted to get word to them but couldn’t because you had my phone. You ditched me at a gas stop.”