by R. J. Jagger
The exchange was to take place directly under the Golden Gate Bridge, midway between the two towers. Teffinger was to motor out from the city side. Yoan Foca would come from the Sausalito end. They’d meet, they’d exchange, they’d motor away in separate directions and everyone would live happily ever after.
Teffinger swallowed.
He didn’t like water.
He especially didn’t like cold water.
Cold water had tried its best to kill him on more than one occasion.
A breeze blew, stronger than Teffinger preferred.
Small waves washed in from the Pacific, not more than one to two feet, not to the point of whitecaps but more than enough to make the dingy nervous.
“Do me a favor,” Teffinger said. “If he kills me I want you to kill him back.”
Rail chuckled.
“He’s not going to kill anyone.”
“Yeah, but if he does, I want you to, too.”
“He won’t but if he does, I will.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise. Time to go.” Rail pushed the dinghy off shore and said, “I’ll be waiting for you. Good luck.”
Teffinger kept the motor in reverse until he got clear of the rocks, then swung the vessel around bow first and headed for the massive orange structure, which was three or four hundred yards up the shore.
The waves slapped at the boat.
The noise was louder than Teffinger expected.
It made his eyes narrow and his palms sweat.
He got directly under the bridge and followed it.
He passed the first tower.
He kept going.
He had a vision of Yoan Foca pulling a gun at the last minute and shooting everyone dead—Teffinger, Dandan and Susan Smith, all of them, dead. He had a vision of their bodies falling into the merciless cold water and sinking deeper and deeper into the horrific darkness.
He should have brought his gun.
Should he turn back?
Suddenly a small vessel punched out of the fog up ahead.
Teffinger flashed his light.
The other vessel did the same.
Then they slowly approached one another.
111
Day Seventeen
July 24
Thursday Evening
Del Rey kept her eyes on the back entry of One First, waiting for Justice Preston Wendell to emerge. Her chest was tight. What she was about to do was serious. Every word mattered. The day was hot. She stayed in the shade of an elm.
Lots of people emerged at the end of the day.
Wendell wasn’t one of them.
He was a hard worker.
He packed a snack.
That let him work until 7:30 or even 8:00.
Tonight he came out at 7:42.
He had a spring in his step.
He’d had a productive day.
Del Rey closed the gap and said, “I’m a friend of Judge Nelson Robertson. I was hoping I could talk to you for a minute.”
The man paused.
“How do you know Judge Robertson?”
“I was the one blackmailing him,” she said. “You know he was being blackmailed to throw his vote, don’t you?”
The man took a step back.
“What’d you say your name was?”
“My real name’s Susan Smith,” she said. “I go by Del Rey, though. I’m a lawyer from Denver.”
“And you say you were blackmailing Judge Robertson?”
She nodded.
“He swung eight votes for me,” she said. “All that changed though when you killed him.”
The man looked at her with shock.
“I killed him?”
Del Rey ran a finger down his arm.
“How’d it feel when you did it, just out of curiosity?”
“You’re about one step away from me calling the police,” he said.
“I’ve been working out the pieces ever since he got murdered last week,” she said. “I’ve put a theory together. Do you want to hear it?”
“No.”
“Good because here it is,” she said. “Everything was fine until a friend of mine named T’amara Alder jumped in and wanted to blackmail him for money. That’s when he went to his good friend, you.”
“Me—”
She linked her arm through his.
“Walk with me,” she said.
He obliged.
“You knew some of his votes were off the charts so you weren’t all that surprised when he told you why, namely that he was being blackmailed. Being the good friend that you are, you told him you’d try to think of a way to get him out of his little jam. After all, the court would change if he left, and not in a way you wanted. Then you came up with a plan.”
“Which was what?”
“You went to Leland Everitt and talked to him, knowing full well the attorney-client privilege covered your conversation,” she said. “You impressed upon him that the solution needed to take place at the source, meaning that the two blackmailers—me and T’amara—needed to be eliminated. Leland, being the man of bad genes and greed that he is, told you about a little a friend he had, a friend named Oscar Benderfield, who could arrange to get things done. You told him to proceed. You wired money to the firm to cover the so-called expenses.”
Wendell wiped his brow.
“Hot out, isn’t it?” Del Rey said. “Anyway, Robertson found out that T’amara Alder got murdered. It was in the papers. He confronted you about it. You admitted that it might have happened but it was all for the better. It was for his benefit. The world was better off. The system was back to pure.” She exhaled. “The problem was, he might be a pervert but he wasn’t a killer. With every day that passed, you got more and more concerned that he would break down and go to the police. So you followed him one night when he made one of his dirty little journeys out there to pervert-land and you put two bullets in his gut and made it look like a robbery.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Relax,” Del Rey said. “I have no plans to mention any of this to the police. My game is much bigger than that.”
Wendell looked at her with a sudden recognition of what she was after.
“You want my votes,” he said.
Del Rey nodded.
“You’re my new Robertson,” she said. “Don’t panic though. It’s actually not a bad deal. You’ll only hear from me now and then, when there’s a particular case that interests me. I really should be mad, given that you tried to have me killed. The guy who got hired by Benderfield to do that job, by the way, ended up dead.”
“You killed him?”
She nodded.
“It felt good,” she said. “How’d it feel when you killed Robertson?”
The man grunted.
“It felt like he didn’t appreciate everything that I’d done for him.”
“Meaning the whole thing that I just outlined—”
“Right.”
“We’re going to get along just fine,” she said. “In many ways you and I are exactly the same. We know how to get things done. Just for grins, where’d you get the gun that you used?”
He smiled.
“Leland Everitt gave it to me.”
“It worked well.”
“Yes it did.”
“What kind was it?”
“It was a Glock.”
She patted his arm.
“Small world,” she said. “That’s the same exact weapon I used on the man who came for me. His name was Jean-Luc Baxa, by the way. Did you know that?”
“No. I never knew his name.”
“You only knew that he’d been hired—”
“Right.”
“Well, that was his name, Jean-Luc Baxa. I’ll say one thing for Benderfield, he sure had a lot of friends in low places. I wonder how he and Leland Everitt ever got tangled up together in the first place.”
Wendell shrugged.
“It probably started small.”
“Most things do. So, do we have a deal?”
“It doesn’t look like I have a choice.”
Del Rey studied him.
“Let me ask you something,” she said. “If you could go back in time to that night when you pumped two slugs into Robertson’s guts, would you do it differently?”
“You mean kill him differently?”
“No, I mean not kill him at all.”
He didn’t hesitate.
“Not killing him wasn’t an option at that point,” he said. “He put me in a corner, not just me but Leland. He brought it on himself as far as I’m concerned. How about you? Would you not kill that man—”
“—Jean-Luc Baxa—”
“—Right, Baxa---would you not kill him if you had the chance to do it over?”
She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I’d kill him again. I’d kill him a hundred times over. It was self-defense, that’s how I look at it. It was him or me.”
“Then you know exactly how I feel.”
“I think I do. I’ll be in touch.”
“I’ll wait for your call.”
She broke off.
Five steps later she turned and said, “Hey, Judge. There’s just one more thing.”
“Which is what?”
“Have you ever heard of someone named Jori-Lee Kent? She was a law clerk for Robertson.”
His face got somber.
“What about her?”
“Well, it seems that she got onto some things, which I’m sure you already know about. What you might not know is that she eventually ended up talking to a detective in Denver by the name of Nick Teffinger, who happens to be the man who killed Benderfield. She was pretty impressed with that and felt she could trust him. Anyway, unfortunately for some people--people like you for example--Teffinger’s a pretty smart guy. Between what I was able to tell him, and what Jori-Lee was able to tell him, he started putting things together, and now, here we are. Do you see those four men coming this way? They’re with the FBI so I wouldn’t resist them too much if I were you.” She tore her blouse open. “Did I mention I was wearing a wire?”
The man broke into a run.
He didn’t get far.
He went down hard.
Bodies were on him.
A knee went to the back of his head.
His arms got pulled roughly behind his back.
Handcuffs went on.
He got jerked to his feet.
He looked around wildly, spotted Del Rey and said, “You bitch!”
She pulled the wire off her chest and threw it at him.
“See you in hell.”
Then she left.
112
A Month Later
August 19
Tuesday Night
Tuesday night after dark a mean thunderstorm rolled out of the mountains and unleashed a demonic fury on Denver. Teffinger watched it from the garage, through the windshield of the ’67 to be precise, with a Bud Light in his gut and another in his hand. Del Rey sat in the passenger seat sipping an iced wine.
She wore a white tank top and white shorts.
Her legs were tan and strong.
Teffinger’s phone rang.
It was someone he never expected to hear from again.
It was Rail.
“I want you to do me a favor,” the man said. “I want you to meet me in Miami tomorrow.”
“What for?”
“For something important.”
“Like what?”
“I can’t give you any details.”
Teffinger exhaled.
“That’s a pretty big commitment,” he said. “I’m in the middle of five hundred things.”
“Make it five hundred and one,” Rail said. “You trusted me once before and things worked out. Trust me a second time.”
Teffinger didn’t have the time.
He didn’t have the cash.
He didn’t have the curiosity.
“Come on,” Rail said. “You owe me.”
That was true to a point.
Last month under the Golden Gate Bridge, everything worked out exactly as Rail had orchestrated it. Dandan and Susan Smith were both delivered unharmed. Dandan since went underground on the run from Mun Yin, but that was her problem at this point. Susan Smith was back in Denver already readjusted to her life.
“Okay,” Teffinger said.
“Take the first flight you can get,” Rail said. “Call me when land and I’ll tell you where to go.”
“This better be good.”
“I will be.”
Lightning arced across the sky immediately followed by a slap of thunder so loud and absolute that it rolled all the way to Kansas.
“I’m going to Miami tomorrow,” he said.
“What for?”
“I don’t know. Rail wants me there.”
She wrinkled her face.
“This doesn’t smell right.”
“Rail’s okay—”
“He’s a well-polished killer,” she said. “Don’t get fooled by his pretty little smile. It’s entirely possible he’s offered you up to someone.”
113
A Month Later
August 20
Wednesday Morning
Miami was hot and humid when Teffinger touched down Wednesday morning. Rail picked him up at the airport, drove to a marina and said, “Can you drive a boat?”
“To a point.”
They rented a 32-foot Baja go-fast and headed southeast into open water with Rail at the throttle.
“Where we going?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
They went for a long ways, seventy or eight or ninety miles, until Cuba was in their sights.
“We’re still in international waters,” Rail said. “Don’t be concerned.”
“I’m not but why are we here?”
A sail was on the horizon, a mile or so off, tacking in their direction.
Rail killed the engines.
The vessel bobbed.
The waves were gentle.
The sun was magic.
The water was aqua.
“I told you about that night when I sat out in your backyard and watched you and Kelly Nine make love,” he said. “I decided to not protect her any more and left. I walked away, got in my car and drove off.”
“I remember.”
“What I didn’t tell you is what happened next,” he said.
“Why, why happened next?”
“I came back.”
Rail paused and let the words float.
“To my house?”
Rail nodded.
“I tried to leave but I couldn’t,” he said. “My hate was too much. It was in control. I broke in and walked into your room. You were sound asleep, curled up and facing the wall. The storm was beating down. I put my hand over Kelly’s mouth. She woke up. She saw me. She knew how bad things were. She knew I’d kill you if she woke you up. She got up without waking you and she left with me.”
Teffinger hardened his face.
“You’re the one?”
Rail nodded.
“I got there before Baxa,” he said. “He never touched Kelly. He might have showed up that night, I don’t know one way or the other, but she was already gone if he did.”
“You had her.”
“Right I had her,” he said. “We fought. I almost killed her but didn’t. Instead I took her to Yoan Foca. It was the perfect solution because Kelly would end up with a terrible life for betraying me and Foca would be most grateful. I’d get more work from him in the future.”
Teffinger cocked his fist.
“You little bastard.”
Rail held his hand up in defense.
“Hold on,” he said. “It get’s worse. Foca kept Kelly as part of his stable for a while but quickly got tired of her. He likes his women more animated and cooperative and enthusiastic than she was. So he sent her out to one of his porn operations.”
“He
forced her into porn?”
“Yes.”
Teffinger punched Rail as hard as his fist would go.
The man fell back.
Teffinger pulled him to his feet, picked him up and threw him over the side.
The man disappeared under the surface, then gasped for air and treaded water.
Teffinger headed for the controls and said, “Have a nice swim back.”
“Wait,” Rail said. “There’s one more thing.”
Teffinger almost cranked over the key. Instead he said, “Tell me.”
“What I did was wrong,” he said. “It was born from my hate of her but that hate faded. When we arranged the deal with Foca to exchange Dandan and Susan Smith for the painting, I asked him to throw Kelly Nine in as well. He wouldn’t do it, plus he said the logistics were bad. She was all the way on the other side of the island. Plus it was already going to be risky flying Susan Smith all the way to San Francisco.”
“He never even mentioned her to me,” Teffinger said.
“No reason he would,” Rail said. “Anyway, I later cut a deal with him. Mun Yin was out to kill Foca, first because Foca killed Savina Bandini in Rome, which ended up getting ten million of Yin’s money stuck in a Cayman account that he can’t get out, and second because Foca jacked up the whole painting exchange. My deal with Foca was simple. I would kill Mun Yin for him. After I did that, he would return Kelly Nine to me and throw a small amount of money my way—five million. I killed Mun Yin three days ago. It took me a whole month. Do you see that sailboat heading our way? Kelly Nine is on it. That’s Foca’s part of the bargain.”
Teffinger processed it.
Then he pulled Rail out of the water.
As the sailboat approached Rail said, “Kelly is supposed to be blindfolded. I don’t want her to know I’m here. I don’t want her to see me. I don’t want to feel her hate. I’m afraid it will kill me.”
Teffinger nodded.
He understood.
The boat came closer and closer.
A rough, brown-skinned man threw a rope.
Rail grabbed it and tired the boats together.
A timid woman was led out of the sailboat’s cabin.
She was blindfolded.
Rail hopped aboard the sailboat, held the woman’s hand and carefully helped her into the go-fast.