Live Bait

by PJ Tracy

  Over at his desk, McLaren slammed down the phone. ‘You know what that son of a bitch did? Put in a margin call on some piece of shit stock out of Uruguay. I fired his ass. So what’s up?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ Gino said miserably. ‘We’ve trashed every lead.’

  ‘So we’re where? Waiting for the guy to take another shot at Jack Gilbert?’

  ‘Gilbert’s covered,’ Magozzi said. ‘I talked to Becker a little while ago. He’s shadowing Jack, and apparently they’re all checking into a hotel tonight to make Becker’s job a little easier. I’m more worried about our killer moving on to another target we don’t know about yet.’

  Gino’s cell burped in his pocket. ‘That’s Angela, and I’m outta here. She’s stuck at home with two kids, a couple of sloshed parents, and a storm on the way.’ He took the call and headed out, phone pressed to his ear, then turned around and held up one finger, still listening.

  Magozzi started paging idly through the Brainerd fax while he was waiting. Had to be at least a hundred pages of police reports, autopsy results, interviews, newspaper clippings . . .

  ‘You’re the man, Marty,’ Gino said into his phone, then signed off with a grin for Magozzi. ‘Marty pulled through, got Jack talking. They’re in the office at the nursery, and he says if we can get there before Jack sobers up or passes out, he’ll give us an earful that might point us in the right direction.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Peterson said. ‘You want us to stick around?’

  Gino shook his head. ‘Just keep your cells on in case we learn something we want to move on right away.’ He pushed speed dial for Angela to tell her not to wait up, and frowned at Magozzi while it rang. He should have been hopping all over the place, halfway to the door by now, but he was just hunkered over the desk, staring at something. ‘Hey, Leo, did you hear me?’

  Magozzi raised a hand without looking up, picked up a piece of paper and stared at it. It was a photocopy of an obituary from the Brainerd newspaper, showing a photo of the recently deceased William Haczynski, owner of Sandy Shores Resort, with his son, Thomas. The old man and the fresh-faced blond kid had their arms hooked over each other’s shoulders. They were beaming for the camera, cradling rifles in their armpits.

  Magozzi had only been looking at the picture for a few seconds, but it felt like he’d been swimming in it for hours. He looked once more at the old man’s son, the light eyes, and the innocent face of a kid he knew as Jeff Montgomery. ‘Jesus Christ, Gino. Thomas Haczynski isn’t in Germany.’

  They were all over Magozzi in an instant, looking at the picture. Gino saw the Montgomery kid and said, ‘That little son of a bitch,’ before he realized he still had the phone in his hand, and Angela on the other end. He stepped away from the desk and started talking low and fast, then clicked off.

  Langer, Peterson, and McLaren were all frowning at the picture. ‘I don’t get it,’ McLaren said. ‘How do you know he’s not in Germany?’

  Magozzi stabbed at the photo. ‘That kid calls himself Jeff Montgomery. He works at the nursery, Lily Gilbert treats him like a grandson, and Morey was paying his tuition.’

  Langer exhaled sharply. ‘And he’s the son of a man Morey Gilbert killed last year?’

  ‘Sure looks that way.’

  McLaren shivered. ‘He’s gotta be our guy. Jesus, that’s cold. Morey’s paying his tuition while he’s plotting his murder and a few others to boot. The kid’s a killing machine.’

  ‘I suspect he had a good teacher,’ Langer said quietly.

  ‘Goddamnit I just talked to him this afternoon,’ Gino said. ‘It was an overseas connection, I swear to God. You can’t fake that delay . . .’

  ‘Maybe he’s got someone covering for him in Germany, but however he did it, it doesn’t matter now,’ Magozzi said, his words clipped and urgent. ‘We’ve got to move on this right now. Gino, call Marty back and give him a heads-up and then do the same for Becker.’

  ‘I’ll take care of Becker,’ Peterson volunteered, hustling over to his desk while Gino punched frantically at his cell.

  Magozzi turned to Langer and McLaren. ‘The kid’s probably at one of two places – his apartment or the nursery – and we need to cover both simultaneously. You two pull together a team and hit the apartment, and don’t be shy with the backup. I have a feeling this kid isn’t just going to roll over.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Gino was stabbing buttons furiously, listening, then stabbing them again. ‘Goddamnit, Marty isn’t answering his cell.’

  Magozzi was moving fast, checking the load on his 9-mm, holstering it, snapping cuffs on his belt. ‘Try the nursery, Lily’s house, Jack’s cell. Do we have a cell number for Jack?’

  ‘Dispatch can’t raise Becker,’ Peterson called out, tension in his voice.

  Everyone in the room froze for an instant. Becker, like every officer on the job, had a car unit and a shoulder unit, and non-response was one millimeter away from officer down.

  Two seconds later Gino and Magozzi were out the door, their shoes pounding on the tile, the sound of panic echoing in the empty hallway.

  40

  Marty was standing directly in front of Jeff Montgomery, the kid’s 9-mm pointed right at his chest, his thoughts slamming against the brick wall of the obvious, bouncing off when they didn’t like looking at it.

  In the past hour he’d learned that beloved, elderly Morey Gilbert was an executioner, and so, apparently, was this innocent-looking kid with the smooth face and the clear blue eyes. The real question was why should he be so goddamned surprised?

  Too many years working in Narcotics, he thought, where meth freaks looked like meth freaks, street dealers looked like street dealers, where everybody looked exactly like what they were. There was a sick kind of security in that particular segment of the underworld, where what you saw was what you got, which was what had drawn Marty to it in the first place. But out here in the real world, almost everyone wore a disguise. He’d known that as a kid, of course; his father had taught him well; but he’d forgotten.

  None of that mattered now, and he freed his mind to race at breakneck speed along the path it was trained to take. The hows and whys and motivations of an armed man were totally irrelevant when a cop found himself on the wrong end of a gun – the only thing that mattered was what happened next.

  He was too close to the kid, and too far away, all at the same time. Too close to dodge a shot, too far away to disarm him. Talk was the only option he had. ‘What are you doing, Jeff?’

  ‘Just taking care of business, Mr Pullman.’

  He wasn’t ending sentences with a question mark now, Marty thought, trying to push back the feeling that he was racing around some preordained circle that was going to open up at any moment and launch him off in a direction he hadn’t imagined. It seemed ironic that his last earnest attempt at suicide had been interrupted by Jeff Montgomery when he came to tell him that Morey was dead, and now that same kid who’d unwittingly saved his life was holding a gun on him.

  ‘What kind of business would that be?’ Marty asked, keeping his voice easy.

  It surprised him a little when Jeff smiled at him. ‘I think you must have been an excellent police officer, Mr Pullman. “Engage the enemy’s attention when you find yourself at a disadvantage. Initiate conversation, introduce distraction . . .” That’s right out of the handbook.’

  ‘Not any handbook I ever read.’

  ‘Would you please turn around, Mr Pullman? Then lift your shirt with your right hand, and remove the gun from your waistband with your left. Use only two fingers, then turn to face me again and toss the gun over here, well to my right, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘You going to shoot me in the back, Jeff?’

  ‘Certainly not, sir. I wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be honorable.’

  The funny thing was that Marty believed him, but still, he didn’t move for a minute, a little unnerved by the pervasive politeness of this strange boy.

  He turned halfway a
round and looked at Jack, who was leaning forward on the sofa, wobbling just a bit, his hands gripping his knees. The worst part was his eyes – they weren’t frightened; just big and sad and apologetic when they met Marty’s.

  Marty winked at him, then lifted his shirt and eased out the gun with two fingers, just as Jeff had told him to, then turned around to face him again. ‘You don’t want me to toss this gun at you until I put on the safety, Jeff.’

  ‘You put on the safety before you tucked it in your pants, Mr Pullman. Please don’t patronize me.’

  Shit, the kid was on top of it, but Marty still stood there holding the gun at his side, thinking how heavy it was when you could only use two fingers, his mind so busy it was falling all over itself trying to sort out the options.

  You don’t give up your gun. Period. Which left him with two choices. Toss the gun, use that off-balance moment when Jeff reached down for it to leap at him; or crouch a little like he was cooperating, but slide the gun back toward Jack, then surge up and hit the kid. Jack was a good shot by his own admission, and if he was fast, he might be able to use the moment to get off a shot. Then again, Jack had put away a lot of booze, and his reaction time had to be down near zero.

  ‘The gun, Mr Pullman.’

  Marty looked at the kid who’d worked by his side for the past three days, the kid who had cried at Morey’s funeral after he’d shot him in the head. ‘I can’t do that, son.’

  ‘I understand and respect that, sir.’ Jeff said, but he steadied his aim and his finger tightened on the trigger. ‘But if don’t give up your weapon I’m going to have to shoot you.’

  ‘You’re going to shoot me whether I make it easy for you or not,’ said Marty.

  ‘No, Mr Pullman, I am not. I didn’t even know you were out here until I walked in the door. I have no argument with you, and I don’t want to shoot you. But I will if I have to.’

  ‘So you were in the loft at Brainerd, right?’ Jack said conversationally from the sofa. Marty heard the gurgle of Jack filling his glass from the bottle.

  Jack, what the hell are you doing? But Jeff’s eyes had flickered, just a little. Jack had taken him by surprise, just as he did everyone.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Jeff asked, his eyes still hard on Marty, his finger still tight on the trigger.

  ‘Brainerd. The fishing lodge. You were in the loft, you saw what happened, you saw us. So that guy behind the counter, what was he? Your dad?’

  Jeff’s eyes darted briefly to Jack, and Marty tensed, feeling the first surge of hope he’d felt since Jeff had pulled the gun from beneath his slicker.

  Keep talking, Jack, he sent him a mental message that was absolutely unnecessary, because talking was what Jack did for a living. Distraction, persuasion, bullshitting – those were the lawyer’s forte, and now Jack was doing what he’d been trained to do. But Jesus, it was still an act of courage. He turned a little sideways, looked at Jack out of the corner of his eye. Thirty seconds ago he’d been hanging on to sobriety with his fingernails; now he was waving his glass, playing the part of a sloppy drunk.

  ‘Kind of old to be your dad, come to think of it. Grandfather?’

  ‘He was my father,’ Jeff said stonily. ‘Mr Pullman, slide your weapon over right now or . . .’

  ‘Shit. Must have been hell growing up with a Nazi for a father. Christ, I thought I had it bad. Kid, you got my sympathy.’

  The 9-mm shuddered slightly in Jeff’s hand, and color started to bleed up from his neck into his face.

  Too fast, Marty thought, jumping in. ‘If you saw everything that happened in Brainerd, Jeff, you know that Jack didn’t shoot your father.’

  Jeff’s smile was absolutely humorless. ‘You expected him to tell you anything different? I came out of my room when I heard the shots. Jack was holding the gun.’

  ‘He didn’t pull the trigger, Jeff,’ Marty insisted. ‘The others shot your father. They tried to get Jack to shoot him after he was dead, but he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.’

  Jeff narrowed his eyes at Marty. ‘He was there.’

  ‘You bet your bonnet I was there,’ Jack slurred from the sofa; ‘and you wanna know why? ’Cause my dad was trying to get me to finish his business, just like your dad got you to finish his. I’m telling you, kid, we got a lot in common . . .’

  ‘Please be quiet, Mr Gilbert.’

  ‘. . . but what I really want to know is just how the fuck did you find us?’

  Jeff was still focused on Marty, still in control, but Jack was unnerving him a little bit, momentarily diverting his attention from the .357 Marty still held at his side. Marty started to move his finger ever so slightly toward the safety.

  ‘Your father was foolish enough to drive his own car. I saw the plate, cozied up to the sheriff, waited until he signed onto the DMV for a license check on some speeder, and ran the numbers. Once I found your father and got a job here, all I had to do was wait for the other two to show up. Child’s play.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the cops?’ Marty asked, moving his finger a little closer.

  ‘In my family, we take care of our own business.’

  ‘And now your business is to kill Jack.’

  ‘That’s correct. An eye for an eye. I’m not an indiscriminate murderer. These are righteous acts, and Jack is the last of them. I don’t have to kill you, Mr Pullman, and I certainly don’t want to. Originally I’d hoped to stay on at the nursery, helping Mrs Gilbert, maybe even make my life here . . .’

  Marty heard Jack’s sharp intake of breath behind him, and had a hard time keeping his face expressionless.

  ‘. . . but when I saw you, I knew I’d have to sacrifice that, just complete my mission, and then disappear. I’m happy to do that to spare your life, Mr Pullman. All you have to do is choose to live by passing over your weapon.’

  Marty just stood there, eyes steady, finally feeling the safety nudge the side of his finger.

  ‘You’ve made your choice, haven’t you, Mr Pullman?’

  ‘I guess I have, Jeff.’

  ‘Goddamnit, Marty, give him the fucking gun!’ Jack yelled, jumping up from the sofa, making Marty start a little, and in that instant Jeff’s left foot shot out with amazing speed and accuracy, kicking the .357 out of Marty’s hand. It spun across the floor and under the sofa, hitting the wall behind it with a loud clunk.

  Marty closed his eyes and kept them closed. Fifteen years a cop, disarmed by a kid. Goddamnit to hell, he couldn’t save anybody.

  The gate to the nursery parking lot had been locked. By the time Magozzi and Gino pulled up, four squads were already lined up at the curb and another two were coming in from Lake Street. No lights, no sirens, thank God. Peterson was doing his job.

  Viegs came trotting up to them, his hat protecting his hair plugs from the rain, a hat condom protecting the hat. ‘There’s a squad in the lot. Two of the guys went through the hedge to check it out. No sign of Becker. Didn’t know if you wanted us to go any further. Peterson said to wait.’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ Gino said, pulling out his cell, shielding it from the driving rain. He keyed in a number and listened. ‘Pullman’s still not answering,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s move it,’ Magozzi said. ‘Viegs, cover the perimeter with whatever men you’ve got; we’re going in.’

  He and Gino ripped off their rain slickers at the car – too restrictive, too noisy – and started circling the property close to the hedge, heading around the side to where the bushes opened, near the office. The thunder and lightning were easing up – just a flash or two and a distant rumble every few minutes – but the rain was heavy, and the wind was hitting them hard.

  Please, please, Magozzi prayed to a god he wasn’t sure he believed in: Let Montgomery not be here, let him be at his apartment, let Langer and McLaren be slapping the cuffs on him right now, and let there be no more bodies in this awful war that never seems to end.

  They found Becker in the planting beds a few yards from the office door. He was on his back, eyes cl
osed, rain smacking against the young skin of his face, the entire left side of his head oozing blood. Magozzi didn’t know if Becker was alive or dead. He pressed hard into where the carotid should have beat against his fingers, and felt a pulse that could have been Becker’s, but might have been his own.

  Gino was on his feet instantly, cell phone in his hand, racing toward the front of the greenhouse, frantically signaling the officers in the lot with hand gestures he’d learned in the academy and thought he’d forgotten.

  Behind him, Magozzi crept closer to the office door alone. Slices of light were leaking out from around the edges.

  Jeff Montgomery’s kick had had enough force behind it to push Marty back a few steps, and to break his hand. It hung uselessly at his side now, swollen and throbbing and empty.

  ‘I’m sorry I had to do that, Mr Pullman. It was the only way I could think of to save your life.’

  Jesus, Marty thought, shaking his head, smiling helplessly. Jeff was focusing as much attention on saving Marty’s life as he was on taking Jack’s. It was such a bizarre, twisted sense of honor and right and wrong that for a minute, he couldn’t get it to gel in his head.

  And then suddenly, it did, and he realized that he wasn’t just looking at Jeff Montgomery now – he was looking at Morey Gilbert, Rose Kleber, Ben Schuler, and last but certainly not least, Marty Pullman. For the first time in a long time, he felt easy with himself. He was looking at things head-on, seeing them clearly. ‘Listen to me, Jeff. I’ve been where you are; I’ve done what you’re doing; and I am telling you it is not a righteous act.’