He felt like he sounded a little nervous as he reached up to the dome light, “Good idea, but you need your dome light turned off so it doesn’t broadcast the fact you’re getting in and out of the car.” He peered up at it, trying to figure out how work the switch.
“Thanks,” she said when she heard the switch click over.
“So, what’re we doing?”
Roni shook her head, “I’m not sure. I put a GPS tracker on Romano’s Escalade…”
“Wait! You did what?!”
“Put a tracker on Romano’s Escalade. Invisibly. Don’t go acting like that’s crazy. It’s not half as crazy as some of the other things we’ve done, or some of the things we’re thinking about doing, right?”
“Um, I guess…” Hax said uncertainly.
“When I checked it this evening it was here in Lareta and I kind of panicked. I started thinking he might be doing something horrible to someone we know.”
“Where is it?”
“I’m not really sure. The map the tracking app displays doesn’t actually tell you whose home or business the tracker’s near to.” She handed Hax her phone, “Maybe you could google what’s actually at the address?”
“Okay,” he said, getting out his own phone so that he could go back and forth between the two. A minute later, he said, “Big Bend Steakhouse.”
“Crap! You think he just drove down here to go out to dinner?!”
“I don’t know. Does it matter? You’re just planning to kill him, right? One place is as good as another, I’d think.”
“Just kill him?” Roni said uncertainly.
“Why not?”
“I… I don’t know. It seems kind of cold-blooded.”
“I don’t know why we’d wait. Wasting time just endangers more people, doesn’t it?”
Roni drove silently for a minute or two, then said, “I think… I think it should be obvious that he’s dead because of something bad he was doing. Not… Not like it’s just some random thing that happened.”
“So, you want to wait until he kills someone else when you happen to be there?! You might feel better that you didn’t kill him in cold blood, but I’d feel horrible that we let him murder another person!”
“I… guess. It’s just that everything I’ve seen in TVs and movies seems to say that you should wait for due process of law, unless you’re acting to…” she paused uncertainly, “to prevent something that’s happening right then and there.”
“Roni! From what you’ve told me this guy deserves to die, right? Aren’t you certain about that?”
“No, I’m not certain! You should always be worried about… about killing somebody! Shouldn’t you?” Exasperatedly, she said, “Maybe Tillman and his wife deserved to die. Even juries convict the wrong person sometimes!”
“Juries weren’t there when an asshole like Romano killed someone right in front of them, in cold-blood, in good light, leaving no doubt about who did it! And held girls as sex slaves! Even if Tillman deserved to die, that girl didn’t deserve what they were doing to her, did she?!”
Roni turned into the parking lot in front of the Big Bend Steakhouse. She pulled into the first empty parking space, turned off the car, and leaned back against the headrest, closing her eyes. “I guess,” she said tiredly. “I’d still like it better if we could do it so it was obvious he died because of the unspeakable things he does. Not so it just looks like a random killing. Maybe it’d send more of a message to other people like him. You know, that they can’t get away with stuff.”
Hax thought about it for a moment, then said slowly, “Yeah, I can see that.” Roni was looking at her phone down in her lap, so he said, “What’re you doing?”
“Figuring out where the Escalade’s parked.”
Hax tilted his head as he wondered about that for a moment, then he said, “Why? Aren’t we just going to go inside and look for him?”
She looked at Hax as she handed him a balaclava and a pair of black gloves. “I think we need to know if he’s left a bunch of his guys out in the car. Besides, killing him in the restaurant probably puts a bunch of other people at risk.”
“Oh, yeah.”
They got out of the car and started across the parking lot. When they were getting close to the building, Roni crouched between a couple cars and studied her phone. Hax said, “Why are you hiding to do that? You made us invisible, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but remember we’re not invisible on closed-circuit TV. If somebody tries to look at recordings of this parking lot later, I don’t want the light of this cell phone to draw their attention to us.” She turned off her phone and put it in her pocket. “In fact, I think we should stay low behind cars the rest of the way.” She pointed, “Best I can tell the car’s almost at the end of this row.”
Staying crouched down, she started moving along between the cars. Hax crouched down and followed behind her. Staying bent low was really starting to cramp his back when Roni stopped. She slowly raised up, then squatted back down. “His limo’s parked next to the Escalade and there’re a bunch of people in both cars!”
Hax said, “You think he’s getting ready to start a war or something? Take on some other crime boss?”
“I don’t know.” She paused, thinking for a while. “But if you’re right, we don’t want to get caught in any crossfire. Let’s watch and wait.”
***
Fred Rector saw the mayor’s car rolling into the parking lot at Big Bend Steakhouse. He watched until he had a pretty good idea where the mayor was planning to park, then started his car and slowly drove that way. The mayor parked, got out and was about to walk across the last lane before the steakhouse when Fred pulled in front of him with the passenger-side window rolled down. “Mayor Jennings.” Fred winced at the flinching look of fear that appeared on the mayor’s face. He said, “It’s all right, Mayor Jennings,” he flashed his badge, “I’m FBI Special Agent Rector. I’d rather we not meet here at the steakhouse. Too many people know about our dinner. If you’ll just get in, we’ll go somewhere else.”
The mayor hesitated, then woodenly opened the car door and got in. “Hello, Agent Rector,” he said unhappily. As Rector pulled forward and turned toward the parking lot exit, Jennings fumbled in his pocket and got out a folded slip of paper. He held it out with trembling fingers.
This is ominous, Rector thought. He took the paper gently so it wouldn’t rattle, but didn’t try to unfold it yet. He couldn’t read it in the dim lighting, especially while he was driving. Putting on a cheerful tone, he said, “We’ll just go on down the street a way. To a place where I can be relatively sure no one’s listening to our conversation, okay?”
“Sure,” Jennings said, not sounding happy at all.
Six blocks away, Rector pulled into a small strip mall and parked near Milton’s, a bar really, but it did have cheap steaks and supposedly had good burgers. As he got out of the car, he glanced down at the slip of paper. It had seven words. “Wearing a wire. Family held hostage. Sorry.”
As Fred guided the mayor into Milton’s, he glanced around and saw Scott and Martin, the guys he’d asked to back him up. They were sitting watch in one of the task force’s non-government issue cars. Turning back to Mayor Jennings, he put on a jovial tone, “You’ll like this place. They have great cheeseburgers.” Fred didn’t know whether this claim about the food was really true, but it made for simple non-suspicious conversation to be having with someone wearing a wire.
Milton’s didn’t have a hostess, so Fred led Jennings back to the rear of the bar and picked out a booth himself. Seeking a non-threatening topic, he said, “I hear your local high school has quite the quarterback?”
Jennings expounded on how the kid was an astonishingly accurate passer and had just blown out the opposition the last Friday night. While the Mayor was talking, Fred pulled out his pen and wrote, “Romano?” on the slip of paper Jennings had handed him, then pushed it over to Jennings.
Jennings nodded. He took a turn writing on the p
aper while Fred reminisced about his own high school team’s quarterback. Jennings pushed the paper back and started talking about how Buchry, the local high school QB, had disarmed a man in the crowd by throwing footballs at him.
The waitress came. Fred ordered a beer and a burger. Then while Jennings placed his order, Fred looked down at the paper. Jennings had answered with a “yes,” and amplified by drawing arrows from that word to his previous words, “wire” and “hostage.” He’d also written “probably killed Mullaney and Chief Smith.”
Fred started to put the paper in his pocket but Jennings held his hand out for it. Fred handed it back to him, thinking he wanted to write something else on it. Instead, the man put it in his mouth. As Fred settled in to tell Jennings that the FBI was working on the murders of Special Agent Mullaney and Police Chief Smith, Jennings chewed the paper and eventually swallowed it. Fred told the mayor that they hadn’t made much progress on the murders, which was true enough. Fred hoped Romano would be lulled by hearing such news over the wire Jennings was wearing.
Jennings spoke platitudes about Mullaney and wished the FBI well in finding the Agent’s killer.
Neither of them spoke their true minds or said anything about Romano. Fred tried to decide how best to bring Jennings in for a wire-free debriefing. From the way the Mayor acted, he didn’t think the man would cooperate with such a thing unless Fred got his family into protection first.
Chapter 9
Tired of crouching, Hax turned to sit on the ground, leaning against the wheel of one of the cars. He wondered how much longer they’d be out there and considered asking Roni how long she thought it’d be. Deciding she wouldn’t know any better than he did, he pondered their alternatives.
Could I really just go over there and start shooting the people in those cars? He wasn’t really worrying about whether he’d be successful, though he realized that, even if he was invisible, the mobsters might start shooting back and hit him by accident. In view of Roni’s worries, however, he’d started wondering whether he should or even could shoot people he didn’t know were guilty. What if I found out tomorrow that one of them had just hired on without really understanding what he was getting into? Or was just an accountant? Or, he thought with a sudden sick sensation, what if one of them’s a hostage?! Or what if another one of the girls these bastards are so fond of keeping is in the car with them?
“Someone’s coming,” Roni said.
Hax rolled to his knees and peered through the windows of the car he’d been leaning against. A guy was walking rapidly toward the Escalade and limo. He looked like he’d come out of the steakhouse. Someone got out of the limo and opened the door for him. “Is that Romano?” Hax asked.
“I think so,” Roni said. The two vehicles started up and began backing out of their parking spots. “Crap!” Roni said. “Let’s go!”
At first, Hax wasn’t quite sure where Roni intended to go. But as she took off at a run, it quickly became evident she was heading for her car.
***
The limo and Escalade were most of the way out of the parking lot by the time Roni and Hax made it to her car. Hax kept an eye on them while Roni started the car and headed for the exit too. By the time she arrived at the exit, he was able to tell her they’d turned right. She turned that direction as well. Out on the street, Roni seriously exceeded the speed limit, worrying Hax that a cop might stop them until he remembered that any policeman wouldn’t actually see them once he was within a one block radius. “Where the hell do you think they’re going?” Hax asked.
Roni merely shrugged, then said, “Looks like they’re just going to a different restaurant. Not sure why they were in such a hurry?”
Hax had also seen that the two vehicles were turning into a strip mall parking lot. He wasn’t sure how Roni knew they were going to a different restaurant, except for the fact that a place called “Milton’s Bar and Grill” seemed to be the only thing there that was open this time of night.
The limo and Escalade parked fairly close to Milton’s. Roni parked near the end of the little lot and she and Hax got out to start trotting down that direction. Men piled out of the Escalade and started walking toward Milton’s. With a suddenness that caught Hax by surprise, they suddenly surrounded a nondescript car. Hax wondered what was going on, and evidently Roni did too because she started running full speed. Hax quickly followed.
By the time they’d arrived, the men, waving guns, had pulled a couple of guys out of the car and were patting them down. They removed several weapons and what looked like earpieces and microphones. What the hell’s going on? Hax wondered.
Evidently, Romano’s men were wondering much the same thing. They forced the two guys to their knees and put guns to their heads. “Who the hell are you?” one of Romano’s minions asked.
Hax pulled out his 9 mm Springfield and racked the slide. Feeling for the safety and flipping it off, he turned his attention back to the men at the car. The guy on his knees said, “FBI. There’s more of us on the way. Want me to show you my badge?”
“Shit!” the guy said. “No, don’t show me your goddamn badge!” He looked up and said, “Joey, go over to the limo and tell Mr. Romano we got a couple of Feebs here.”
As one of the guys took off for the limo at a run, Hax felt some relief that the situation had resolved itself to let him know who the good guys and bad guys were. He wondered about shooting Romano’s men now, but worried that if he shot the guys holding guns to the FBI men’s heads, they might spasm and shoot the good guys when they themselves died.
Tensely, Roni said, “Hax? You think you could shoot the guns out of those asshole’s hands?”
“Yeah, but bullets are gonna fragment when they hit guns. What if some of the fragments wind up in the FBI men’s heads or eyes?”
Sounding a little desperate, Roni said, “You have any other ideas?”
Hax shook his head, then realizing Roni might not have her eyes on him, he said, “No.” Putting as much tranquility in his voice as he could, he continued, “I think we should wait. If it looks like they’re going to kill them right here and now, I’ll take the shot. But if we’re patient, maybe they’ll take the guns away from the guys’ heads when they move them somewhere else.”
Sounding calmer, Roni said, “Okay. But, if you get a shot, I don’t think there’s much doubt the guys with the guns deserve to die.”
“Agreed.”
Joey came running back, “Mr. Romano wants you take them to the back of the Escalade. He’s gonna ask them some questions.”
Romano’s men got the two agents to their feet and started walking them toward the Escalade without giving Hax a good angle for what he’d consider a risk-free shot. They had their guns in the agent’s backs now. This seemed tempting for a shot at a weapon since a bullet fragment into the body seemed much less dangerous than one to the eye or head. But Hax worried that—since he never seemed to have an angle to shoot at both weapons at once—if he shot the weapon out of the hand of one of Romano’s men, while he was moving to get an angle on the other gun, Romano’s second guy might react by killing the FBI guy he was guarding.
On the other hand, Hax also worried that by waiting for the perfect shot, he was giving up reasonable opportunities he might not get again. This fear was borne out when they loaded the two men into the back of the Escalade without Hax getting his opportunity.
Roni said, “Do you think you can take out Romano when he comes over to the Escalade?”
“I guess,” Hax said uncertainly, “I’m worried that Romano’s men might just shoot the FBI guys if their boss dies in front of them. They may decide to do without the distraction of guarding them.”
Sounding frustrated, Roni said, “Dammit! Why the hell can’t we figure out how… how to beat these guys?! We’ve got all the aces. We’re invisible. You’ve got your gun and you’re an amazing shot.” Suddenly, Roni leaned closer to the car, lifting her sunglasses. “Oh my God! Romano’d already moved over to the Escalade. He’s in
there questioning those guys already!”
The door of the Escalade opened, and one of Romano’s guys got out. He turned to the rest of the guys and said, “There may be more Feebs coming. Mr. Romano wants us to grab the mayor and the FBI guy he’s talking to and get out of here.”
The Escalade started up and pulled out. The driver’s window cracked open and somebody yelled, “Jimmy, Robbie, get in. You’re with us.”
The rest of Romano’s guys headed into Milton’s.
Hax said, “What do we do?”
Exasperatedly, Roni said, “I don’t know! I guess we follow these guys and see if we can help the people they’re pulling out of Milton’s!” Glancing at Hax, she said, “Did they say the mayor? And someone else from the FBI?”
Hax nodded.
***
Fred Rector looked up as a number of men pushed in the door of Milton’s. He and the mayor both looked that way and Fred got a bad feeling. Though the guys that worked for Romano came in several sizes and ethnic types, they tended to act alike and these guys were acting like other mobsters Fred had encountered. He glanced at Jennings and saw the mayor’d blanched, suggesting the man thought the same and might even recognize some of the guys who’d come in.
The gaggle of men who’d entered saw Fred and the mayor and started toward them, moving rapidly. Fred briefly wondered why he hadn’t gotten a warning from Scott and Martin out in the parking lot; then got a sick feeling about it. He rose to his feet.
One of Romano’s men grabbed the mayor under the arm and tugged him toward his feet. The big guy who appeared to be in charge said, “Boss wants to talk to you guys. Let’s go.”
Fred said, “Who’s this ‘boss?’”
“If you don’t know, you’re even dumber than you look,” the guy said, poking Fred’s ribs with either a knuckle or a gun.
Fred started walking, mentally castigating himself for underestimating how far Romano would be willing to go in a move against the FBI. Come on! he thought, The man’s already had one FBI agent killed, maybe two. Why would he stop at killing you just because you’ve got a task force behind you? Especially since you’ve been doing everything you can to keep him from even knowing there’s a task force in Blayton!
The Boy Who Couldn’t Miss Page 18