“It crossed my mind. It would be my third strike. Always leave them wanting more.”
There was the slightest smile tugging at Turnbull’s mouth. He shook his head and looked down. “Tom Lange. Jumps into a frigging river in a hurricane. Goes against the direct orders of his SAC, takes off for the Caverns park, jumps into a frigging river, pulls his guy out.” Turnbull looked up, eyes shining. “He was in a cave?”
“Yes sir. Sitting back in there like something out of a . . . I don’t know.”
Another shake of the head, but the sly smile faded. “And that was just the tail end. I’ve got complaints on you a mile long. You’re mostly just inside the margins until the very end there. But here’s the thing — honestly, I don’t know why you’re here. All your paperwork went through to Tallahassee last week. We just kept your desk because we didn’t have anybody to fill it yet. Ed Skokie has already got an office waiting for you.”
Tom nodded at the box. “I needed my pencils.”
When Turnbull didn’t smile, Tom said, “Sir, you’ve always been straight with me. I think you’re a good captain. I don’t hold anything against Blythe, either. But I’m no good to you back here transcribing reports because of budget cuts. And I can’t work up there for Skokie. The thing about it — sir, I guess I discovered that the complexity is a feature, not a bug.”
Turnbull sat back with his hands across his sternum and enfolded his fingers.
“We have to have limits, Tom. Maybe you just haven’t found the right place yet for your — your particular set of skills. I hate to see you go. But you know how it is. Stay here and we’ll just try to tame you. But you got in with us — well, you know how you got in with us. Maybe this thing was doomed from the start. How things begin is how they . . .” He waved a hand in the air. “You don’t need a lecture from me. I wish you the best, Tom. In whatever you do next.”
“Thank you, sir.”
* * *
Skokie called before he reached home.
“Lange? You pulled your own ticket? What’s going on?”
“I’m done, Ed. I’m gone. Maybe I’ll hang out my shingle, maybe I’ll go into ranching instead.”
Skokie was quiet for a while. “Jesus, Tom. Why would you do this?”
“I don’t like secrets anymore. I don’t have the make-up for keeping them.”
“Secrets? The hell are you—?”
“David Balfour. His conspicuous absence in any of our conversations.” Tom went around a slow-moving motorist and pressed the gas pedal deeper. “That you and Blythe — well, maybe you especially — suspected that there was some compromising material on the Balfours that had hit the street. You sent me sniffing after it, not even knowing that’s what I was really doing.”
“That’s not how it went. I gave you another chance in this, Lange. And we did a lot of good together. We’ve got the burglary, we’ve got the girl, we’ve taken out a huge piece of Pedro Vasquez’s operation.”
“And I’ve got a picture of you and Balfour at a charity event. I’ve got you and Balfour sitting together at a Policeman’s Ball. You never told me you were friends with him.”
When Skokie spoke again his voice was flat and cold. “And so what do you think happened?”
“I think you’ve been covering for him.”
Skokie grew colder still. “Let me ask you something, Lange. Why did you lie on your state exam? Because you thought you could do some good. You didn’t want the mistakes of your past to prevent you from that. You believed you were worth it. I want you to absorb that, Lange. Think about that when you’re making your judgments.”
Skokie hung up.
* * *
Hundreds were in attendance at Jack Vance’s funeral, people from all over the country. Tom met Vance’s daughter. They hugged. Tom cried.
He saw Katie at the gravesite and felt a wash of déjà vu. The last time they’d been estranged from each other then got back together was at Danny Coburn’s funeral.
After the priest’s elocution, the mourners made their way back to their vehicles and Tom approached her under the gently bobbing and swaying palms. “Is this a pattern for us?”
“I hope not,” she said. She studied him. “Your face looks better.”
“I quit.”
“Oh yeah?”
“This is the last time I’ll ever ask for a chance, Katie.”
Her eyebrows lifted as she looked up at him.
“That’s not an ultimatum,” he clarified. “I mean that I know how much I’ve asked of you in the past. This is the last time I’ll ask it. Please take me back.”
She didn’t answer, just kept studying his face. “You have two scars now.” She touched the spot above his eye. “That’s your repressed memory, right there. You stepped in when your father was hurting your mother and tried to stop it.” Her fingers moved to his jaw. “And this unholy mess, this is part of that same repression.”
She lowered her hand.
“This is what I know about you after a year. You took on all the trauma of your childhood. That doesn’t just go away with a promise.”
“But it—”
She silenced him with a look. “You decided, consciously or not, that you wanted to stop the perpetrators of violent crime. Stop those who cause the suffering of others. Like you suffered. Like Nick. Your mother. The desire to be a cop was born in you at that moment. You’re never going to stop. Right now, you’re thinking you’ll just do it without the badge. And I can’t be a part of that, Tommy. Being married to a cop is one thing. There’s a chance you’ll be standing where we’re standing, putting a loved one in the ground. You go into that with your eyes open. But this is different. You won’t stop until Nick’s death is . . . until you’ve gotten what you think is justice.”
He waited anxiously for her to finish and shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do. I already did it, Kate. Frank Guttridge is alive. You understand? That was as close as I could come. And I’m at peace with it. I went into that water and — I don’t know. I think I came close to dying.”
She stared into his eyes, searching for the truth. “So what would you do? What would you do with your time and energy?”
“I don’t know yet. Is that okay?”
“I can’t be your new addiction, Tom.”
“You’re not. You won’t be.”
She looked away. “You jumped into a river, Tom . . .”
“It’s over.”
Gradually, her eyes came back. “And you have to see someone. I’m not talking about a trip to the state bureau’s psychiatrist once a month. I mean regularly. Regular treatment. For what was inflicted on you. What it’s induced you to do. To get . . . You’re addicted to this life. You jonesed like a drug addict when they put you at a desk. And now you’re done. You can’t just . . . It doesn’t just stop, whether you almost died or not. You have to seek treatment. And follow through with it.” She turned her face away a moment, then looked at him. “And then you can give me a call.”
* * *
The click woke him up. It sounded like a lock giving way. He listened hard to the silence, hearing the hum of the refrigerator in the other room, the soft whirring of the ceiling fan. Then, maybe, the wisp of fabric, one pant leg crossing another, the pop of a stair tread. He rolled from the bed, careful not to make any noise, and gingerly slid open the drawer in the end table. He pulled out the loaded Beretta and stuck it in his jeans behind his back. He groped beneath the bed for the Remington and pulled it out.
When Tom stepped into the living room, the guy with the alligator boots was standing there.
Tom aimed the shotgun from the crook of his arm.
The man registered Tom and his gun, then looked impassively around the room as though he were standing at a bus stop.
Tom felt the pulse working fearfully in his throat. “Take your piece out and set it down on the ground.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“Take the fucking piece out. The one behind your bac
k. Set it down and kick it to the side. Then we’ll talk.” The words felt like bubbles popping in his throat.
The man breathed heavily, his nostrils dilating. “We just got to wait a minute.”
“A minute for what?”
Tom was ready for the man to draw. This was it. Whoever he was, whomever he worked for, Tom had the shotgun trained on him. If he so much as twitched, he was going down.
Then the door opened and someone started coming up the stairs. His heart started doing triple-time. Tom thought about moving to the stairs but didn’t want to divert his attention. He remained, barefoot and shirtless, holding the Remington on the man in the alligator boots as the other person continued up the stairs, breathing heavily along the way. A man’s head came into view.
“Why you gotta live on the second floor?”
It was only the second time Tom had ever seen him in person, but Skokie was aging rapidly. His color was bad — too red from climbing just a short flight of stairs — and one of his shoulders stooped lower than the other, like he was having back trouble. He wore an inexpensive brown suit with the top buttons of the white shirt undone, revealing sprouts of gray hair.
He looked around for a moment, avoiding Tom’s stare, and said, “Nice place.”
When their eyes connected, he frowned at the shotgun and said, “You can put that away.”
“I think I’ll keep it.”
The man in the boots remained in the center of the room between the coffee table and the TV, arms hanging at his sides. Skokie just shrugged and moved toward the counter that split the living room and kitchen.
“Yeah, you street kids.” He sat down on one of the bar stools, grunting with the effort, his gun showing on his hip.
He looked at his fingernails a moment and then focused on Tom. “Got anything to drink?”
“There’s some beer in the fridge. That’s about it.”
Skokie grunted again as he slid off the bar stool, walked around the counter and disappeared behind the kitchen wall. Tom heard the jangle of glass bottles as Skokie opened the refrigerator and the sudden hiss of a bottle cap unscrewed. Skokie reappeared carrying the bottle and returned to his seat. “Thank you. I’m not much of a drinker, but my hip is really bothering me.”
“There’s Ibuprofen in the bathroom,” Tom said.
Skokie flapped a hand. “Already loaded up on it but thank you. And thanks for the beer.”
“Ed, why are you here?”
Tom traded looks between the domestic security agent and the man in the blue jeans, denim shirt and cowboy tie, the big gold belt buckle with a bucking, angry bull etched on it.
“Have you met Arsenio?” Skokie asked. “That’s part of this anyway — an introduction.”
“And who’s Arsenio?” Tom kept his eyes on the man.
“Arsenio? Let’s just say it’s not just you out there, Lange. And Arsenio can go some places you can’t.”
Tom wasn’t sure if that meant geographically or ethically, but his patience for this was running out. “Ed,” he said, “what are we doing here?”
Skokie drank the beer and set the bottle, half-finished, up on the counter. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“We’ve got a problem . . . we don’t know who we can trust. I’m coming up on thirty years working for the state and I’ve seen some pretty crazy shit. Mostly what I’ve seen is how one side ratchets up the other. It’s a microcosm, if you think about it. Vasquez, Palumbo, these traffickers — they’re exercising free enterprise. You can’t call them amoral and champion capitalism at the same time. And yet here we are, we’re the government coming in with our rules and regulations, keeping things in check. It’s like an equation, a balanced equation. But, every once in a while, something comes in and throws off the balance.”
“Like David Balfour. Your man Arsenio here tried to open up on Frank Guttridge. Thought he was at the Starlight Motel. You’re protecting Balfour.”
Skokie put a lightly fisted hand against his lips and burped. “On your last case, you took down a guy named Ben Franco — Mario Palumbo’s guy. And the feds used all their RICO tools to tie up Mario Palumbo and his whole organization. A big victory.” Skokie picked up the beer again and dangled it between his fingers. “But really the FBI just made it look good — they had to. Palumbo was already an informant. Look, Lange, I’m like you — I’m an exponent of bad guys being bad guys and good guys being good guys. But you and I both know that’s not how the world really works and that for every good thing there’s unintended consequences.”
“I don’t care.”
“Yeah, I know. You quit. Good for you. Only you can’t quit — not just yet. I’ve got one more job for you.”
“Not interested.”
Skokie’s eyes narrowed, then he smiled. “That gun must be getting heavy. What is that — Remington 870? I used to be like you. I’d say idealistic, but it was really naïve. And you’ve got a lot of anger. Maybe more than I ever did.”
Tom moved the shotgun to one hand and dug in his jeans pocket. “I’m going to call the police now, Ed.”
“Tell them Ed Skokie says hello. I don’t think you have enough beer in there for a party, but the more the merrier.”
“You broke into my home. I could have shot you on sight. This is Florida.”
“Arsenio punched in your code — even the new one, after you changed it. That’s hardly B&E, just a little basic surveillance. I just wanted to demonstrate to you the illusion of your safety. A little dramatic, maybe, but it brought the point home, right? This is a war. You gotta decide which side you’re on.”
“I told you I’m not playing this game anymore.”
“So you’re against everyone, then — the FBI, domestic security, your own state bureau. Just hear me out on it, okay? I mean look at this shit! You’re a hero. You helped get Lemon Madras back to her family. This is the big time. Now you can start making moves where they really count — at the top. You’re off the streets, Tom.”
“I’m not working for you.”
“Because of my interest in preserving the deserved reputation of an A1 statewide prosecutor? So maybe her husband fucked up. Maybe he got greedy with a little insider trading. Maybe he was sloppy, left things for a Vasquez private investigator to pick up on. What he did was before he ever met her. This world we live in today? Jesus, you do something a hundred years ago and it comes back to bite you.”
“You own up to it. You pay the price.”
“Oh, look at you. Mr. Righteous now. You’re a tiny cog in the fucking machine.”
“I thought I was at the top now.”
“If I decide you are, Lange. You’re nothing compared to Stephanie Balfour. But you’re better than some burnout army sergeant with PTSD who deals drugs and kidnaps little girls. I mean, Tom, get your priorities straight. You know what it is? Too many years hanging out in alleyways and your sympathies are on the wrong side. I was prepared to do what had to be done. That’s what maturity is. Don’t be a little kid, okay?” Skokie hopped down off the bar stool. Tom had the phone out, ready to dial 911. But when Skokie moved, Tom stuck the phone back in his pocket and held the Remington with both hands. “Easy, Ed.”
“Your last job is simple — you need to get the information on Balfour. We went to Ronald Parker and he doesn’t have it. Guttridge stuck it somewhere else.”
Tom thought of the preacher, the pawnshop, the used thumb drives in the jewelry case. He thought of the kid at Aardvark Wrecking who said a man had been through there ahead of Tom, a man with an angry bull on his belt buckle.
“Tom, maybe you don’t realize — there’s a big target on your back and you know it. That’s the point of this whole drama here tonight — you think because you quit that you’re safe. That’s not how Valentina Vasquez operates. She once had a guy double-cross her and had Lupton and some other guys bring him to her. She took a knife and cut him open while he hung upside down in a refrigerator.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
>
Skokie sniffed and shook his head, smiling. “She’ll be just as effective from prison. That’s how it works. You think you hurt these people and you just end up making them stronger. The game goes on. We all like to scamper around in our little illusion, but I’m looking at you with reality beaming from my eyes.”
Tom lowered the shotgun at last.
“Get out, Ed. Get out of my home, get out of my life.”
Skokie finished the beer and set the bottle on the countertop. Then he jerked his head and Arsenio started backing toward the top of the stairs. Skokie followed, limping a little because of his hip. He stopped and turned before descending.
“I’ll wait for your call. Think about it. I think you’d look good in a suit, Lange. Domestic security could use a guy with your instincts.”
“You have a terrible way of making a job offer.”
A smile tugged at the corners of Skokie’s mouth and for a moment he appeared wistful. “I grew up watching Sergio Leone. You know? Spaghetti westerns. The stranger comes into town, all that sort of thing. That’s how we’d like to see the world. Simple. But then, like I said, I grew up.”
* * *
“Did you have any way to record it?” Blythe asked.
Tom was sitting on his couch. “Skokie caught me off guard — it was two o’clock in the morning. He had his pit bull come in first, I guess maybe to check me out. I was standing in my jeans, with bare feet. I guess they figured they didn’t have to worry.”
Blythe looked around the condo. She had her hair down today, unusual for Blythe, a face-framing blowout that resembled the First Lady’s style. “I don’t know, Lange. This whole thing . . . I don’t know. This is going to be tough.” Her gaze slid back to him. “But I’m with you.”
Tom smiled. He glanced away from her, toward where Skokie had been sitting. He didn’t want to leave Blythe hanging, but he’d just needed to be sure.
“Alexa,” he said, “play back last night’s recording. From 2:11 a.m.”
The computerized female voice emanated from the small black box near the jar of pencils on the kitchen counter. “Playing back recording from 2:11 a.m.,” she announced.
Special Agent Tom Lange Box Set Page 82