by John Locke
We’d been in the air forty-five minutes, long enough to feel comfortable putting the battery back in my cell phone. I’d been thinking about the boy I saved earlier and the girl who might have been his sister, the one who didn’t survive. It made me think about Kimberly, how precious she was to me.
“Daddy? Are you okay?”
And how lucky I was to have her in my life.
“Dad?”
Kimberly doesn’t know the details of my job, but Janet had told her plenty over the years. She had some sketchy knowledge about the killing I’d done for the CIA, and she knew my current position had something to do with counter-terrorism. Still, I never realized until now what I’d been putting her through. I hadn’t realized that every time a bomb detonated or a bridge collapsed, she automatically wondered if I might be injured or dead.
“I love you, Kimberly,” I said. “I’m sorry you were worried.”
“Well, at least you called this time.”
I felt guilty. Up to now, I’d thought Janet would call and I’d reassure her first, then I’d talk to Kimberly. My daughter is so together, I always seem to think of her as the parent and Janet as the child.
“I’m good,” I said. “How’s your mom?”
“Daddy, I’m worried. That hotel bomb, was it a terrorist attack? Are there going to be more?”
I looked at the color monitor on the wall panel. It showed our air speed, altitude, and ETA. We were making good time. If the computer was accurate, Quinn and I should be in Virginia by midnight. “We don’t know much about the hotel yet,” I said, “but I’m sure Homeland Security is doing everything they can to stop any further violence.”
Kimberly groaned. “Jesus, Daddy, you sound just like that FBI bimbo on TV. I’m your daughter, remember? I can’t believe you don’t trust me enough to tell me what’s really happening with all this.”
Kimberly was a sophomore in high school. No way could I give her the type of inside information she wanted. If she told a friend and word spread, the wrong people could trace the story back to her and that would put her and Janet’s lives in danger. Since I couldn’t allow that, I decided to change the subject.
“How come you’re not in school?”
“I knew it!” she said. “You’re on the West Coast! It’s night time here. Not that you’d know,” she added, “but it’s also winter break.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought that was in December.”
She sighed. “That’s Christmas break.”
I loved my daughter, but what Janet had accused me of was true. I wasn’t an involved father. Maybe someday I’d have the time to become one—at least that’s what I keep telling myself. I knew Kimberly was experiencing some abandonment issues that were pretty much all my fault, and I’d eventually get around to solving them. But that would mean committing significant blocks of time to her, time I didn’t have at this point in my life. I wasn’t completely absent; I saw her once or twice a year, but in point of fact, where Kimberly was concerned, I was pretty much one and done.
Now I was about to do it to her again, because I knew Janet was hurting and I had to ask about her. Specifically, I wondered if Janet had told Kimberly about the breakup with Chapman. I decided to jump right in. “How are the wedding plans coming?”
She paused a beat. “Okay, I guess.”
“Have the announcements gone out yet?”
“No, they’re not at that stage.”
“Have you picked out a bridesmaid’s dress?”
“That comes later.”
“Are you uncomfortable talking to me about this?”
“What do you think?” she said. “I’d rather she didn’t get married, okay? I’d rather you didn’t ask me about it. I’d rather have you both in my life. If you want to know about her wedding so much, why don’t you talk to her about it?”
I heard teenage voices in the background.
“Where are you?” I asked. “At the mall?”
My daughter made a sad sound, the kind a teenager should never have to make. It was a sound that told me that in her eyes I was not only clueless as a father, but hopeless as well.
“Just call Mom,” she said. Just like that, she was gone.
Janet regarded me as poisonous. Her take on our marriage: the single biggest mistake of her life. Had she the opportunity to do it over again, she’d have lived in sin and walked out on me the day she gave birth.
I’d be the first to admit things weren’t always perfect, but really, whose marriage is? I attribute the bad times to the crazy hours I kept, the high stress component of my job, my anger issues, the void in my chest where a heart would normally be located, the lack of sympathy and tact most people expect to find in a spouse, and the depression I suffered when the opportunity to kill people for the CIA ended so abruptly.
However, these last few years had made me a better person. I’d been far less moody lately and wanted a chance to prove to Janet how much I’d changed since the divorce. Not because (as Lauren had said) I wanted her back—I didn’t—but because of Kimberly, who was hitting the age where having an involved father was more important than ever. I just wanted to get to a place where Janet might be able to find it within her power to have some decent things to say about me to our daughter.
I glanced at the sleeping Quinn and hoped he wouldn’t wake up in the middle of an argument between me and Janet. Talking out loud to Lou about my date with Jenine had been embarrassing enough. I took a chance and dialed Janet’s number.
“What do you want?” she snapped, as if she was hours into a bad mood and suddenly turned to see me standing beside her. I ignored her tone, knowing Janet had to rev herself up in order to deal with me. I didn’t blame her for keeping her guard up. According to her shrink, she may have divorced me, but she had never been able to drain “the reservoir filled with unresolved pain from the relationship.”
Janet’s question had been a good one. What, in fact, did I want? Down deep, I guess I wondered if her breakup with Chapman could somehow provide the catalyst for friendship. Maybe she’d thought about it this afternoon and realized I wasn’t the bad guy in all this, that by making her aware of Ken’s shortcomings, I was the one who’d been looking out for her and Kimberly. If Quinn hadn’t been sitting there, I might have casually mentioned some of the good things I’d done since the marriage, like the way I helped save some lives today. I wondered if she’d develop a greater appreciation of my character if I did so.
“Did you hear about the hotel bomb in LA?” I said.
“Was that your doing?”
Or not. “Jesus, Janet.”
“So that’s a yes?”
Janet wasn’t the most classically beautiful woman I’d ever known, but she was certainly the prettiest who ever professed to love me. While some might not care for her thin, cruel lips or sharp facial features, everything about her appearance used to tantalize me.
“I’ve obviously caught you at a bad time,” I said.
“Are you for real? Any time spent talking to you is a bad time, you son of a bitch!” She screamed, “I’d rather spend ten days strapped to a machine that sucks the life out of me than spend ten seconds talking to you!” Then she hung up on me.
I thought about what she said. The part about the life-sucking machine. I wondered if such a device could be built. If so, how would it work? How large would it be? What would it cost? Would it have much value as a torture device? I couldn’t imagine anything better than the ADS weapon. It was relatively portable now, but the army was already working on a handheld version that could be functional in a matter of months. Also, with ADS, the pain is instant and so is the recovery. Now that I’d compared the two in my head, I’d have to put the ADS weapon way above Janet’s lifesucking machine idea. Then again, Janet probably hadn’t heard about the ADS weapon.
I was pretty sure she’d choose talking to me over being exposed to the ADS beam.
I thought some more about Janet and the good times we shared. Then I pressed
another number on my speed dial to shake away the image of her tight body and firm, slender legs.
Sal Bonadello answered as he always did: “What.”
It was more a statement than a question.
“Tell me about Victor,” I said.
“Who?”
“It’s me, goddamn it.”
“The friggin’ attic dweller?”
“The same.”
“Where are you?” he asked. I imagined him looking at the ceiling over his head, wondering if I were up there right now. I heard he woke up from a bad dream a few months ago and pumped six rounds into the ceiling above his bedroom while screaming my name.
“Relax,” I said. “I’m in the air, somewhere over Colorado.” I noticed Quinn was beginning to stir. Maybe he’d been awake the whole time and was giving me privacy with Janet and Kimberly. You never knew for certain about Augustus Quinn or what he might be thinking at any given moment.
“I heard what happened in Jersey.”
“You sound almost disappointed.”
“Nah, not really. But hey, it’s hard to find good shooters, you know?”
“Which is why you put up with all my shit,” I said.
“Tell me about it.”
“Listen up,” I said to Sal. “You said you met Victor. Where?”
“You know I can’t—whatcha call—divulge my sources.”
“Cut the crap, will ya?”
“He needed some heavy shit. I gave him a name.”
“What kind of heavy shit?”
“Guns, drugs, explosives—shit like that.”
“And your contact required you to be there?”
“Right. Look, what about that blond of yours, the one on TV driving the van—the real one, not the bullshit picture the FBI showed. You talk to her about me yet?”
“Don’t even,” I said.
“What, I can’t dream? What, I’m not good enough for her? How about you put in a good word for me, ah? I’ll consider it a favor.”
“Do you guys go to school somewhere to learn how to talk like that?”
“Yeah, wise ass. It’s called the friggin’ school of bustin’ heads, and I’m the—whatcha call—headmaster. So, you want my help or what?”
I sighed again and realized I’d been doing a lot of sighing lately. “I’ll mention your interest to the little lady.”
“All I’m askin’.”
“Next chance I get.”
“Ask her nicely.”
“Fine.”
“’Cause you never know.”
“Right.”
“Tell her I’m a man of mystery.”
“For the love of God!” I shouted. A few feet away from me, in the cabin, Quinn did that thing where he sort of smiled. I decided to come at Sal from a different angle.
“Did you happen to catch the hotel bombing in LA?”
“What am I, blind? Everywhere I look that’s all I see on the friggin’ tube. Was that you?”
I sighed again. I should be blowing balloons for a living.
“Sal,” I said, “the hotel bombing, it was DeMeo.”
“What? Joe DeMeo? That’s nuts!”
“I had a meeting with DeMeo this morning. Afterward, I met a hooker. That bomb you saw on TV? She planted it in my room. I found out later she was one of DeMeo’s girls.”
“You sayin’ they blew up that whole goddamn hotel just to kill you? And missed? I’d a used a friggin’ ice pick.”
“That’s a happy thought,” I said.
“Hey, nothin’ personal.”
“Right,” I said. I got us back on track. “Do you think Victor and DeMeo are working together some way?”
“Why?”
“Victor gave me the hit on Monica Childers. Suddenly the pictures are all over the TV. Turns out Victor hijacked a spy satellite and downloaded the photos. Then Monica’s body goes missing. The government pins it on Russians, supposedly working with terrorists. Next thing you know, DeMeo tries to kill me and makes it look like a terrorist attack on a hotel. That sound like a coincidence to you?”
“What do I look like, Perry Mason? Whaddya think, I got a friggin’ crystal ball in my pocket? What, I’m gonna check the horoscope for—whatcha call—worlds colliding?”
I took that as a no. “Can you give me anything at all on Victor?”
“You tryin’ to find Childers’ wife? Make sure she’s gonna stay dead this time?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Might cause a—whatcha call—rift between you and the midget.”
“I’ll try to solve the one without losing the other.”
“Well, nuthin’ from nuthin’, but things go bad between you, I don’t give refunds. Anyway I already donated my share to charity.”
“Spare me.”
“The Mothers of Sicily. You should look into it. They do great work here in the neighborhood.”
I said nothing.
Sal’s voice changed to something resembling sincerity. “Truth is, I got squat,” he said. “But I’ll shake the trees, see what falls out. I hate that friggin’ DeMeo. He’s bad for business.”
“You want to help me take him down?”
He paused. “That’s the sort of question gets people killed if someone’s taping.”
“I’m not taping anything. I want to rob him.”
“You better be planning to kill him, then.”
“I won’t rule it out,” I said. “You want half?”
“How much we talking about?”
“Twenty million.”
He was quiet a moment. “Twenty for me, or all together?”
“All together. Let’s get together soon, work it out.”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, then added, “But stay outta my house. I don’t want to come home one night, find you in my friggin’ living room in the dark.”
“I’ll come to your social club.”
“Bring the blond with you.”
“Sal, about the blond. She’s dead inside.”
“You ever do her?”
“She’s like a spider. If she does you, she kills you.”
He thought about that awhile. “Might be worth it,” he said.
I thought about it, too. “Might be,” I said.
We hung up. My shoulder throbbed from hitting the sidewalk a few hours earlier. The engines continued their monotonous whine. I reclined my seat and closed my eyes. I think I might have heard Quinn say, “How can you sleep at a time like this?”
CHAPTER 33
A shrill sound jolted me awake. It repeated, and I pulled the air phone from its cradle. I checked my watch. Two hours had passed.
“What have you got for me?” I asked.
“We’re guessing Semtex,” Lou said.
Semtex is the explosive of choice for international terrorist groups. It’s cheap, odorless, readily available, has an indefinite shelf life, and slides through airport security scanners like a pair of silk panties.
Lou said, “You were right; the hotel blast originated in the area of your bedroom.”
“How’d they verify that?”
“Lack of a crater. Ground floor detonation would have left one a meter deep. A charge placed above the second floor would have taken out the roof.”
“What are the Feds working on?”
“Hotel cameras, cross-referencing faces with suspected terrorists and sympathizer lists, checking for connections by address, criminal records, religious and political affiliations. Darwin said to give them Jenine, so they’re working up a profile on her as well.”
I looked across the aisle at Quinn. He appeared to be asleep again, in the exact same position as before. From what I could see he hadn’t moved a muscle since finishing his second drink. I envy any monster that can crash like that.
“I wish he hadn’t given them Jenine,” I said. “They’re going to want to talk to me about it, and we’re liable to cross wires in the field. Better to solve the case for them and let them take the credit afterward.”
“The Feebs have you on the lobby camera checking in. They’ve got your name and credit card on the registration. They’ve got Jenine twice on the lobby cameras. They know about your clearance to fly out of Edwards. Darwin said if we didn’t give them Jenine, the Feds would detain you and Quinn as material witnesses when you land.”