Truth or Die (16 page)

Three-point-eight billion years of evolution tucked away in your DNA …

Immediately, I spun around with my arms locked, the inside of my index finger flush against the trigger. Once again, I had the perfect view.

And once again, it was of nothing.

The sidewalk was empty. He wasn’t there.

But he was far from gone.

I’VE NEVER cracked the cover of Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War.
It’s never even made the to-read pile next to my bed. But I had to believe that somewhere buried in the book was a rule that said if the enemy knows where you are but you don’t know where the enemy is …
move.

As fast and low as I could, I zigzagged across the street, stopping only when I saw some bald guy in a suit halfway out of his shiny red Cadillac. He was crouched, looking through the window with his entire head exposed as if he’d somehow missed that physics class in high school explaining the effect of a speeding bullet on a piece of glass.
This just in, pal, the bullet wins….

“Hey,” I tried whispering, which was pretty much a lost cause given the cacophony of horns still blaring. The entire street had become a parking lot, an exceedingly angry one at that.

“Hey!”
I tried again, louder.

Finally, he turned around and I motioned with both hands for him to get down. That immediately got me a look suggesting I should mind my own effin’ business. Then he saw the gun in my right hand. That did the trick. He ducked back into his seat so fast he literally banged his bald head on the top of the car.

Any other time, any other place, that would’ve been funny.

I wasn’t laughing.

All I could do was keep looking left and right as I approached the other sidewalk, my head on a swivel. Forget my trigger finger, the slightest movement anywhere in front of me had my entire body twitching. Throw in some self-doubt, and I was close to drowning in my own sweat. Did I really need to go after a trained CIA field agent head-on?

Too late.

It was like lightning before the thunder. I first saw a flash in the corner of my eye. I turned quickly to look, squinting for focus, and heard a booming voice right behind it.

The voice was saying something.
He
was saying something. But he was too far away; I couldn’t make out the words.

The voice, though … I knew the voice. It was familiar.

It was Owen.

He was sprinting toward me on the sidewalk, his cell phone lit up with one of those flashlight apps. Damn, those things are bright. He was close enough now, the words beginning to come together.

“You!” he was screaming. “Find you!”

Find me?
No.

Behind me!

I spun around, hands out front, my eyes blowing up wide with panic as I looked out over the barrel of my pistol to see another gun already lined up with my chest. Somehow he’d gotten behind me.

Now he was right in front of me, dead center. All Gordon’s partner had to do was pull the trigger. But he suddenly had a problem …

He couldn’t see me.

The light from Owen’s phone hit his face so fast I could practically see his pupils snap shut. He raised his arm to shield his eyes, but it was the other arm I was watching. The one with the gun. He was swinging it right at Owen.

There was no thought, no planning, no decision. Just instinct. And maybe a little trace memory thrown in for good measure in case he was wearing a bulletproof vest.

In other words, I aimed a little bit higher.

I got off two shots. I couldn’t tell if the first one hit him, but there was no doubt about the second. Let’s just say it was going to be a closed-casket funeral, and leave it at that.

“C’mon,” said Owen. “Let’s go.”

That was all he said. Or maybe that was all I heard.

For sure, it was more than I was able to say, which was nothing. I could barely breathe, let alone talk. But I was keenly aware.
The kid came back for me.

Later, I would thank him. The heart rate would slow; the thoughts and words would come. I’d point out that this was the second time he’d saved my life. I’d even crack that I’d never been so happy to have someone ignore what I asked him to do. If Owen had fled back to the hotel from Lamont’s car as I’d asked—as he’d told me he would—I would’ve been the one lying on the pavement in a pool of blood.

But he hadn’t. So I wasn’t.

Yes. Later, I would do all this. When there was time to think and sort things out. But the moment after I pulled the trigger was no different than the moment right before.

No thought, no planning, no decision. Just instinct. The same instinct Owen had.

Let’s go.

I WENT to sleep having killed a man. I woke up thinking I’d at least find out who he was.

It didn’t matter if he wasn’t carrying ID. There were other ways. So many other ways. Fingerprints. Dental records. Facial recognition software. If ever there was a job for CrackerJack …

“What time is it?” I asked Owen with my one good eye open off the pillow. My head was killing me. The rest of me wasn’t faring much better.

Owen was sitting on the edge of the other queen bed in our two-room bunker at the Stonington staring intently at the television and the start of the local morning news. He could’ve been a statue if it hadn’t been for his hands. They were doing that dry wash thing again.
What’s the deal with that?

“It’s six,” he answered.

That explained the hint of daylight along the perimeter of the drawn curtains, not to mention why I still felt so tired. It was barely dawn, and I’d only been asleep for a couple of hours. Longer than Owen, though, apparently.

There’s one exception to the age-old maxim about news reporting—if it bleeds, it leads—and that’s the early-morning broadcast. At the start of the day, one thing trumps everything else. The weather. Short of an apocalypse, that’s what people want to hear about first. The eternal question? It’s not the meaning of life. It’s
Will I need an umbrella?

According to the far-too-chipper weatherman pointing out some incoming clouds on the Doppler radar, the answer was a definite maybe. There was a forty percent chance of showers in the afternoon.

Of course, there was a hundred percent chance of two shooting deaths overnight in the Chelsea section of Manhattan.

The weatherman, still grinning, sent it back to the anchor, who did her best to segue into a more somber tone as the words
DETECTIVE DEATH
appeared on-screen. Next to them was a picture of Lamont. He must have fallen to the ground a thousand times in my mind before I’d finally been able to drift off to sleep.

Now tell us who the goddamn son of a bitch was who killed him. Tell us about “Gordon’s partner.”

As if he could read my mind, Owen stopped rubbing his hands and glanced back over his shoulder at me.

“They’re not going to know,” he said softly.

The second he said it, I knew he was right. Even if the police did know, they wouldn’t be quick to release the name to the press. It would raise more questions than answers.

“At this time, the identity of the second victim, who is believed to be the man responsible for Detective Lamont’s murder, is unknown,” said the anchor, so keyed to her teleprompter that she didn’t seem to even grasp how twisted that sounded.

Even more so because there wasn’t even a mention of the other triggerman. Me.

Was there really no one who saw me shoot him?

The anchor moved on to a fire in a Queens tenement building, prompting Owen to shut off the television. As soon as he turned to me, I knew the question coming, and it certainly wasn’t about how I’d slept.

“How do you want to do this?” he asked.

That was the part we hadn’t discussed after returning to the hotel. The
how
. Our focus had been the what, as in
What do we do now?
The night had changed everything.

Detective Lamont was dead, and we knew why. We owed it to him, his family, and everyone he worked with to come forward. Maybe Owen was right. Maybe justice wouldn’t be served in the end. But it no longer seemed like our call to make.

“Lamont’s precinct,” I said. “I think that’s where we begin.”

Owen nodded. “Do you want to call ahead?”

“No. Let’s just show—”

Before I could get the word
up
out of my mouth, Owen’s phone lit up on top of his backpack by the TV. I thought it was an incoming call at first, but there was no ring, no buzzing or vibrating.

“That’s strange,” said Owen, going over to check it.

“What is?” I asked.

“It’s an e-mail.”

“So?”

“I shouldn’t be getting any,” he said. “The account uses an entity authentication mechanism I designed myself. It’s way beyond the X.509 system.”

I stared at him blankly. “Okay, now in English,” I said.

“It means that for me to get an e-mail it has to be piggybacked on one I already sent. But I only set up the account yesterday. I haven’t sent an e-mail to anyone.”

No sooner did he say it than we both realized he was wrong. He had sent an e-mail to someone. From Lamont’s car.

“What’s it say?” I asked, watching him read.

Owen tossed me the phone so I could see for myself. It was more than an e-mail. It was hope.

Underneath a screen grab from one of the interrogation videos were a name and an address in Washington, DC. Georgetown, to be exact.

My partner always believed in what he was doing, McGeary added. I hope you do, too.

IT DOESN’T matter if you don’t know a door card from a river card or whether a full house beats a flush, anyone old enough to see the inside of a Las Vegas casino can walk right into the poker room at the Bellagio.

Walking into Bobby’s Room is a different story.

Bobby’s Room—named after Bobby Baldwin, the 1978 World Series of Poker champion—is the poker room
inside
the poker room at the Bellagio. It features two high-stakes tables that are completely walled off from the other forty some-odd tables, complete with a polished-looking host, a maître d’ of sorts, who stands guard at the door to make sure none of the riffraff ever make it in. Minimum buy-in is twenty grand. The games being played, however, almost always require a much bigger bankroll.
Much
bigger.

On the one hand, Bobby’s Room caters to a very privileged clientele. On the other hand, there remains a certain egalitarian element. Especially if that other hand is clutching a boatload of money. Better yet, a yachtload.

Truth is, almost any Tom, Dick, or Harry flashing a lot of cash is more than welcome to play in Bobby’s Room.

That goes for any Valerie, too.

Valerie Jensen, dressed in a leather Chanel skirt, a silk Valentino blouse, and a pair of red Christian Louboutin Lady Peeps, handed the host at the door a house marker for two hundred thousand dollars with the carefree ease of someone who had plenty more where that came from. The fact that she didn’t was the first lesson her father, a professional gambler, had taught her when she was a little girl back in Somers, New York.

Poker is a game of lies. If you want to tell the truth, go to confession….

“Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet Beverly Sands,” announced the host as he pulled out the lone empty chair at the table for Valerie. It was the “three seat,” three spots to the left of the dealer.

Valerie, aka Beverly Sands, sat down amid the polite nods from the other players. Save one, they were all pros. She looked around the table; she’d seen them numerous times before on TV, playing tournaments. And more times than not, they were winning those tournaments.

But as attractive as Valerie was—stunning, really—not a single pro allowed himself the slightest gawk or ogle. That would be a sign of weakness.

Never show weakness at the poker table.

That was the second lesson Valerie’s father had taught her. This one doubled as a life lesson, his mantra all during the battle with the lung cancer that ultimately took his life but never his spirit.
Never show weakness … period.

“Two,” said the host, giving the dealer what would’ve been the peace sign anywhere else. In Bobby’s Room, it meant give the lady two hundred thousand dollars in chips, which was what the dealer promptly did after gathering up the pile of cards in front of him. A hand had just finished.

The game was No-Limit Texas Hold’em. Two cards facedown to each player, followed by five share cards in the middle. Best five from the seven wins. Simple as that.

Of course, if it were really that simple, there wouldn’t be nearly a thousand books out there dedicated to explaining how the game should be played.

Given the high stakes, there were no blinds to jump-start the betting. Instead, every player had a five-hundred-dollar ante. This meant Valerie wouldn’t have to wait for the dealer button to come around her way. She could be dealt in immediately.

With the speed of a robotic arm on a Detroit assembly line, the dealer placed the cards from the last hand in the automatic shuffler to his right and pulled out the second of the two decks used in the game. After a quick cut, he began to deal, giving Valerie a few seconds to look around the table again. Her father’s voice was so clear in her head, it was as if he were back from the grave, sitting right there next to her.

There’s a fish in every poker game. That’s the player who’s in way over his head. If you look around the table and can’t spot him, get the hell up immediately. Because you’re the fish.

Valerie smiled to herself. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Her fish was seated directly across the table in the eighth seat. He was the only other nonpro at the table, but everyone knew who he was. That’s just the way it is with multimillionaires. When you land in Vegas in your own Gulfstream G650, it’s tough to fly under the radar.

Shahid Al Dossari was a Saudi Arabian banker who was purportedly an advisor to the Saudi royal family, among other things. He was handsome, he was charismatic, and he was currently under investigation for money laundering by the US Government.