Shakedown jd-1

by Joel Goldman

  “I wish I could,” Colby said.

  Pale orange light from a lantern, the kind you’d hang in a tent, this one dangling from a hook buried in the cavern wall, spilled into the darkness. Marty Grisnik stood next to the lantern, a pair of night-vision goggles dangling from a strap around his neck. Colby was next to him on bended knees, Grisnik’s gun aimed at his head.

  Grisnik said, “Now don’t get all crazy on me and start shaking like a mental patient. Come into the light, but take it real easy.” I closed to within five feet. “Hold it right there. When I was a kid, I always wanted to be a ventriloquist. Looks like I finally got my wish. How’d you like my act?”

  I thought of how I had been deceived by Frank Tyler’s act, silently apologizing to Kevin again. I heard Kate’s voice assuring me that I couldn’t have known, not believing her then or now, the props Grisnik had used suddenly becoming clear. He had hidden in plain sight, not disguising his feelings for Tanja, playing me to stay close to an investigation he’d been shut out of, taking advantage of every break I gave him. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a good review.

  “I’ve seen better.”

  “Well, I admit that doing it in the dark with a gun pointed at this dummy’s head gives me an unfair advantage, but they don’t give style points in a game like this.”

  “So you never got over Tanja, after all.”

  “She does have a way about her, I’ll give you that.”

  “Too bad you can’t ask her late husband. She killed him and brought his coke business back home, probably did you behind the bar for old times’ sake her first night home and never looked back. Had to gripe your ass to see her and Colby bumping and grinding.”

  Grisnik smiled. “Say what you want, Jack, he’s the one on his knees.”

  Colby stared up at me, his arms handcuffed behind him, his face a bloody mess.

  I looked at him without pity. He had betrayed Wendy, me, the people he worked with, and those he was sworn to serve. Colby had treated all of us as chips to be played in a game he had lost. Grisnik was no better, his loyalty belonging to a woman who’d had him by the short hairs since he had his first wet dream.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  “Ask him,” Grisnik said. “Go ahead. I asked him plenty of times. He wouldn’t tell me, but he said he’d tell you. I guess that’s what family is all about.”

  Colby may have convinced Grisnik to bring me here, hoping that the cavalry wouldn’t be far behind, but I ignored him. Wendy may have escaped or never been captured. If Grisnik didn’t know where she was, I wouldn’t help him find out. That information would only buy both Colby and me a bullet.

  “Wendy can’t hurt you. Colby used her to launder his cut, but he wasn’t stupid enough to tell her about you or Tanja,” I said.

  “Colby was stupid enough to tell Wendy everything and she was probably stupid enough to demand her cut. She and Colby, and now you, are the last of the loose ends. Then Tanja and I are out. Retired, fat, and happy,” said Grisnik.

  I shined my?ashlight on Colby. One of his front teeth was gone and the corners of his mouth were crusted with dried blood, his lips swollen and cracked.

  “She didn’t know a goddamn thing,” Colby said. “She didn’t want to know.”

  “Bullshit! Tell him where she is,” Grisnik said.

  “Fuck you,” Colby said.

  Grisnik’s face grew hard, blood rushing from his neck to his cheeks, his eyes bulging. “Damn you!” he said, pressing the barrel of his gun against Colby’s temple.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over,” I said, my voice cracking with stutters. “I copied Wendy’s hard drive before you stole her computer. I gave it to Troy Clark a few hours ago. He says Colby kept very good records. Tanja has probably been picked up by now and you know what that means. First one to make a deal wins. She’ll give you up before the ink on her fingerprints dries. You can turn yourself in and try to beat her to the punch or hide down here for the next fifty years. It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”

  Grisnik shook his head, turning his gun toward me. “Listen to you, Jack. You’re a lousy liar. Troy Clark is right. You are half crazy.”

  Tremors began to percolate in my gut, tickling their way into my arms. I didn’t have much time left before I’d be on my knees next to Colby. I had to convince Grisnik that he was finished, that Wendy couldn’t hurt him. If I succeeded, he’d come to the only other conclusion. He’d have to kill both Colby and me, a price I’d pay to keep her safe.

  “This is the way I figure it,” I said. “Tanja handled supply. Rice handled the money. You took care of the KCK cops and Colby played us. Rice went down, but he was willing to do the time to protect his investment. Marcellus Pearson and Javy Ordonez were both going down, but neither of them would take the long view like Rice did. So you decided to close up shop. Latrell Kelly bailed you out with Marcellus.”

  “I was supposed to do him, but I was only going to warn him,” Colby said. “Tell him to get out of town. I was too late.”

  “Is that what you told Javy Ordonez? Except he said he was staying put, so you killed him.”

  “I set up the meeting with Javy, but that’s all,” Colby said. “Grisnik killed him. There’s another entrance to the mine on the other side of the lake. Comes out in the woods behind the rail yard. Grisnik showed me. Perfect way to get in and out without being seen. Grisnik used the boat. We didn’t know that Latrell used the other side for some kind of hiding place. Grisnik found his gun and the photograph of Latrell and his mother. It was just dumb luck.”

  I looked at Grisnik. “That’s why you put Javy’s body in the Dumpster. You knew it would get caught in the sweeper blade, just like the homeless bums you told me about. You left the gun where it would be found and planted the photograph. But you couldn’t have known any of that would tie back to Latrell. We didn’t find out about him until later.”

  “I didn’t care who it tied back to so long as it wasn’t me,” Grisnik said.

  “And Thomas Rice?”

  Colby said, “Rice panicked after you and Grisnik went to see him. He was afraid you’d go after his wife. He called me. I told Grisnik and he called New York. They said Rice had to go.”

  “And you gave the job to Wilson Reddick,” I said. “What about Bodie Grant?”

  “In the water,” Colby said, nodding at the lake. “That one’s on me, too,” he added, dropping his head.

  “Why?”

  He hesitated, choking on his answer. “Tanja,” he said.

  “She tell you that she’d chosen you instead of Grisnik?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Pathetic, huh?”

  “You don’t know how pathetic,” Grisnik said. “I’m a patient man, but I’ve run out of patience.” He stuck his gun in Colby’s ear. “Tell me where I can find Wendy.”

  Colby raised his face toward me. For an instant, a crooked smile?ashed across half his face. It happened so fast, I wasn’t certain I’d seen it. Then his face and his voice?attened out.

  “I threw her body in the Missouri River. She’s halfway to St. Louis.”

  “Well, ain’t that the shits,” Grisnik said and shot Colby in the head.

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Colby’s head exploded in a mist of bone, blood, and brains, his torso toppling into the lake, his legs still folded on the?oor. I went down with him, the gunshot triggering a spasm that coiled me tighter than a roll of steel cable, my head on my knees, and my chin hard against my chest. I braced myself for the aftershocks, using the?ashlight like a pylon to steady my feet.

  The spasm eased and I tilted my head up, gathering my breath. Grisnik was standing in front of me, arms at his side, gun in his right hand.

  “If you think about it, Jack, I’m doing you a favor,” he said, raising his gun.

  “Like hell,” I said, and swung the?ashlight at him, knocking the gun from his hand and launching my shoulders into his gut.

  I had the advantage of surprise but knew I was
too weakened to ride it more than a few seconds. I drove him backward into the cavern wall, knocking the lantern to the?oor. The bulb shattered and the cavern went black.

  Grisnik clasped his hands into a single fist and slammed them down into the center of my spine, putting me on my knees, then grabbed my jacket, yanking me to my feet, and giving me the momentum I needed. Grasping the?ashlight, I speared the underside of his chin with the lens, snapping his head against the rock. He let go of my jacket and slid to the?oor. I didn’t know whether he was down or dead.

  The lens on my?ashlight was gone, the edges jagged and sticky with blood. I felt around his neck for his night-vision goggles, pulling them over his head and trying them on, throwing them aside when they didn’t work.

  The darkness was disorienting. I crawled to my right until I found the water, then stood and turned my back to the lake. With my hands stretched out like curb feelers, I walked toward where I hoped I would find the ladder. I missed it the first time, tripping over the stack of boxes from the bar. Coming back, I was certain I’d end up in the water until my left hand bounced off the bottom rung.

  I grabbed the highest rung I could reach and pulled myself up. Once my feet made it to the bottom rung, I climbed as fast as I could, knowing that if I stopped moving, I would start shaking and lose my grip.

  The first shot came when I was halfway up the ladder. It missed wide, ricocheting off the cavern wall, the sound deafening. My feet slipped and I caught myself after dropping a couple of steps. The red dot from the laser sight on Grisnik’s gun searched the cavern for me.

  “I know you’re on the ladder,” Grisnik said. “Guys like you always run.”

  He fired again, closer but still wide, the air hot with cordite. I started climbing again, the ladder creaking against its shifting anchor bolts. The next shot hit several rungs above me, the steel sparking.

  “Getting closer, Jack! I can hear you on the ladder. I’m coming for you!”

  Climb and he’d hear me. Hang where I was and he’d find me. I said a prayer to the god of darkness to hide me and climbed, almost losing my grip when Grisnik grabbed the bottom end of the ladder and rattled it.

  “Gotcha!” Grisnik said.

  I swung to the outside of the ladder, climbing it like a rope, hoping he’d shoot through the center. Four more shots?ew past and I was at the mouth of the shaft. I hung on to the outside of the ladder as he kept firing, swinging back to the center when I heard the dry click of an empty magazine, wondering whether he was reloading. The answer came when I felt the ladder sag with his weight as I climbed into the shaft.

  “You’re a dead man! I’m coming for you!”

  I held on to a rung on the shaft wall, my feet on the top step of the ladder. I locked my feet around the inside edges of the top step on the ladder and started rocking it back and forth. The anchor bolts rolled around inside the crumbling concrete, the ladder groaning against their loosening grip.

  I looked down. Grisnik was invisible in the dark, but I heard his heavy breathing and felt him getting closer. He’d stopped threatening, not wanting me to know how close he was.

  Sweating heavily, my muscles trembling, I drove my legs harder, the ladder now swinging freely in a growing arc. I pulled my feet back on the rung so that they wouldn’t get caught if the ladder came out of its mooring, and locked my left arm around a rung level with my chest. I then leaned away from the wall, bent at the waist, and drove my legs back and forth like a child on the swing set in the park.

  Grisnik grabbed my ankle as the anchor bolts slid free. For an instant, he and the ladder were suspended in midair, my shoulder wrenching nearly out of its socket as I clung to the rung on the shaft wall. I kicked loose of his grip and a second later heard the ladder crash onto the cavern?oor. He never made a sound.

  My left shoulder was ruined, my arm useless. I climbed one handed, keeping my vision focused on the dim point of light at the top of the shaft, watching it grow bigger and brighter until I was near the surface and someone reached down to lift me up, eclipsing the light.

  “Lend you a hand?” Ammara Iverson asked.

  Chapter Seventy-two

  On the way to the hospital to have my shoulder repaired, Ammara told me that the Wyandotte County Surveyor, the District Attorney, and their husbands were having dinner together when she caught up to them. The surveyor started to give a history of the county’s mines when the D.A. remembered a case involving the Argentine Mine, explaining that it became a thirty-four-acre underground cave when the mine closed. When a killer was rumored to have dumped his murder victim in the lake, the surveyor led an expedition into the mine through the shaft in Matney Park to search for the body. Detective Martin Grisnik was the lead investigator on the case. The surveyor and the D.A. were there when Ammara helped me to my feet.

  I missed my appointment on Monday with the neurologist since I was recovering from surgery to repair the wreck I’d made of my shoulder. Joy postponed the hearing finalizing our divorce. She brought Ruby with her when she visited after I came home from the hospital. The dog raced through the dining room and into the kitchen before jumping onto my easy chair, marking her territory with a wagging tail.

  “I don’t think there’s a future for us,” Joy said. “But I’m not in such a hurry for the future, either.”

  “Maybe it would be better for the dogs if we waited,” I said.

  She shrugged, giving me a sad smile. “Not too long. Just until we’re sure about Wendy.”

  Despite a massive search of the Missouri River from Kansas City to St. Louis, Wendy’s body was never found. The FBI, the police, and scores of volunteers searched the woods in Matney Park and behind the rail yard but there was no trace of her. Joy even hired a psychic, who claimed he saw Wendy’s aura in a dozen different places, none of which yielded her body.

  I wasn’t surprised. At least five times a day and more during the night, I saw Colby’s face when he said that she was dead. His micro expression with its asymmetrical, lopsided grin was enough to convince me he hadn’t killed her, that he’d lied to protect her from Grisnik, a last grasp at redemption.

  Kate said it was possible, but it was also possible that I was finding hope wherever I could. Either way, I said, I’m not giving up on Wendy. We talked about it over dinner, this time at the rotating rooftop restaurant at the Hyatt Hotel, the 360-degree view of Kansas City a more romantic backdrop than the view at IHOP.

  Kate was slowly recovering her capacity to read micro expressions. A lot depended, she said, on letting it happen rather than forcing it.

  “It’s the same with you and me,” she said. “We have to let it happen.”

  “You won’t mind if I give it a kick in the ass every now and then.”

  “Can’t see how that would hurt,” Kate said, taking my hand in hers.

  Tanja Andrija won the confessional race, offering up her brother and her New York connections that had supplied her with drugs for her retail outlets in return for a new life for her and her parents in the witness protection program. I sat in the back of the courtroom the day she entered her plea. The judge, a white-haired gentleman old enough to know better, did everything but ask for her new phone number. Tanja was a woman of considerable talent.

  I eventually made it to the neurologist, who said that he’d never seen a case like mine in forty years of practice, as if I should be pleased to have broken his streak. He declined a diagnosis, sending me to a specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona. The doctor, a lanky, quiet, and compassionate man, stuck electrodes to my skin and monitored my involuntary movements, telling me with more certainty than hope that I had tics, a childhood disorder that disappeared in adolescence and almost never appeared for the first time in adults although, in my case, it had.

  It was, he said, one of the nervous system’s unexplained defects, for which there was no known cause or cure. Though he assured me it would neither threaten nor shorten my life, he also conceded it was unlikely to disappear.

&nb
sp; When the medications he prescribed didn’t work and made me goofy, he told me I had to retire or face worsening symptoms. Take it easy, he said. Do less and take more time doing it.

  It sounded like death in slow motion. If living meant shaking, I chose shaking. The Bureau chose retirement and declared me disabled in record time.

  Troy kept the case open, pursuing the possibility that Wendy was not only alive but was also the sole survivor of the drug ring. The offshore accounts they had used had been emptied, the money never recovered. Troy suspected that Wendy had made off with the money and was living the high life while her parents mourned her presumed death, a possibility I publicly rejected and privately prayed for.

  I didn’t want her to be a criminal. I just wanted her to be alive and safe. If she had been involved, she’d be reluctant to contact us. I understood that, trading the nightmares about what had happened to her for the hope she was okay.

  Ammara told me all about Troy’s theory over coffee, apologizing and saying that she’d asked to be transferred to another squad, adding that Joy and I were being watched in case we received a phone call or e-mail from Wendy or in case the balance in our bank accounts suddenly ballooned.

  It was shameful, insulting, and inevitable, but I couldn’t criticize Troy. Even now, I couldn’t separate the truth from the lies. Each version was layered with shades of guilt, from Colby’s confession exonerating Wendy, to his implied indictment of her on the playground, to Grisnik’s insistence that she was the biggest thief among the thieves. The version that was missing was her own. Until I knew that, I wouldn’t pass judgment.

  Either she was dead, her body lost, or she was alive and had left us behind. Whichever was the case, I had failed her.

  Three months later I was having coffee at Beanology, one of my favorite haunts not far from my house, laptop on my lap, surfing the web. It was one of those rare winter days when the temperature soared for no apparent reason into the upper sixties. I was sitting on the outdoor patio, the sun at a blinding, sharp angle, Ruby curled on the chair next to me.