Penance

by Dan O'Shea

  “How long did that last?”

  “I dunno. Week and a half maybe. I only know about it because they’ve got a historical marker up by the corner there. Had to check out a body next to it once, back when I was in uniform. Just some drunk, passed out one night, middle of January. Froze to death.” Lynch shrugged the bag off his shoulder held it out to Johnson. “This is for you.”

  Lynch ran down what he knew. The Hurley murder-suicide back in 1971, his father’s murder, the Fishers, father and son, Clarke’s involvement, Ferguson, Chen, how they needed the press to push in this, needed her to push it, all of it.

  “Jesus,” Johnson said. “My god, your father?” She stopped, turned to face him.

  Lynch just nodded.

  “And you never knew?”

  “Still don’t know, not for sure. Not everything.”

  Johnson started to say something, but Lynch held a hand up, cut her off.

  “Listen, part of me didn’t want to give you this. Didn’t want you in this. These people, they’ve got no boundaries. Nobody’s off limits. Nobody. But it’s a big story, important story, and that’s what you do. So it has to be your call. Somebody’s gotta do it, but nothing says that has to be you. I don’t want it to be you. But that has to be your call.”

  She stopped, turned to face him.

  “You know I’m going to run with it. I have to.”

  “I know.”

  Another pause, then walking in silence again, Johnson talking first.

  “This going to be a problem for us?” she asked.

  Lynch shook his head. “You grew up with cops, you knew the risks, hell, you’ve seen me get shot. You’re still here. What am I supposed to do? Tell you to stay home and bake cookies? You love somebody, nobody says you get a free ride, that you’re gonna like everything. Can you do me a favor though?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t get greedy, try for some kind of exclusive on this. Spread it around a little. Make sure your editor’s up to speed, maybe loop somebody in on the TV side. You start poking and these guys think they can stuff the genie back in the bottle with one bullet, they’re gonna take the shot. You get enough people involved, then they’ll know it’s too late for that.”

  Johnson nodded.

  “Too much for me to handle alone anyway. I don’t have DC contacts, I’ll need the help. And trust me, I’m all about not getting shot.”

  They passed the small zoo at the back of the park, most of the cages empty now, budget cuts. A lone goat looked up for a moment, went back to picking at the long grass that grew up along the edge of the fence.

  Johnson nudged the bag that hung from her shoulder now. “What’s all this got to do with the killings now?”

  “This Zeke Fisher? His kid went into the spook business, but he’s gone off the deep end. He’s on some kind of redemption mission.”

  “Killing people’s children? Grandchildren? What kind of sense does that make?”

  “Guy’s a nutjob. Only one it has to make sense to is him.”

  Quiet again for a minute.

  “The children he wants to kill. You could be one of them,” she said.

  Lynch nodded. “Good thing I haven’t been to confession in thirty years.”

  Johnson smiled. “I tell you what, big boy, you promise to stay out of the confessional until this is over, I’ll make sure you’ve got something really juicy to confess.” She reached down, squeezed his ass.

  Lynch smiled. “Deal.”

  Johnson took his hand and they walked quietly for a while, both with the sense that this could be their last good moment.

  “Après cela, le déluge,” Johnson said.

  Lynch let out a short laugh. “The reporting is one thing, Johnson. But you start in with the French and I’m dumping you.”

  They both laughed, more than they should have, stopped at the corner at the northwest edge of the park. Lynch looked at his watch.

  “Need to catch your bus?” Johnson asked.

  Lynch shook his head as a black sedan pulled up. “I got a ride.”

  “Your new friends?”

  He nodded.

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Going to see Paddy Wang,” Lynch said. “He says he wants to talk.”

  Johnson looked at the car, looked back at Lynch.

  “The only way these people know how to solve things is to kill people, you know that, right?” she said.

  Lynch nodded.

  “Please tell me you’re not OK with that.”

  Lynch shook his head. “No, I’m not.”

  “What are you going to do about that?”

  “I wish I knew,” Lynch said.

  CHAPTER 54 – CHICAGO

  Lynch and Paddy Wang, alone in Wang’s office.

  “Young Lynch, in current circumstances, you are likely suspicious of all motives, but I mean this sincerely. Ever since the unfortunate passing of your father, I have had a kind interest in you.”

  “That’s great, Paddy. You help Hurley and his punks kill my old man, or help cover it up, or at least know about it and say nothing, and you tell me what a kind interest you have in me. I’m all choked up.”

  “I understand your anger, young Lynch.”

  “Keep up that condescending bullshit, and I’m coming across this desk. You’ve got no fucking idea about my anger.”

  “At losing a parent unfairly? My parents were killed by the Maoists. I was, well, present for that. Whether you choose to believe it or not, I had no prior knowledge of your father’s death, and saw no benefit to anyone – most particularly to you or your sister or your mother – of exposing what I knew later.”

  “And I have no way of knowing if that’s true or just more of your crap.”

  “As with all our demons. They drive each of us in all we do, and yet have no currency outside our own souls.”

  “Look, Paddy, you got down here for some reason. Can we just get to it?”

  Wang just looked at Lynch for a moment, his eyes hooded.

  “Have you ever heard the theory that a man is great in proportion to those who take an interest in him?” Wang asked.

  “No.”

  “By that measure, young Lynch, you have always been a great man. The Hurleys, of course, have an interest. Your uncle has an interest. I, too, have an interest. And now I hear that the President of the United States has an interest.”

  “It’s an interesting world.”

  “I have always found it so. But perhaps a different world than you imagine.”

  “More than is dreamt of in my philosophy?”

  Wang chuckled. “Ah, young Lynch. I truly do wish you would visit more often. Yes, yes. Far more.”

  “Paddy, you got a point to get to here? Every time I talk with you, I feel like I’m going to end up farting smoke for a week.”

  “I’m afraid that my Eastern proclivity for circuitousness and your Western preference for straight lines will always leave us at odds. Very well, to the point. You believe that you are a champion in a great contest between good and evil and that, as a result of your current actions, power will be shaken to its foundations, yes?”

  “I think your proclivities run more to hyperbole, Paddy. I believe some assholes got away with murder a long time ago. I believe some other assholes capitalized on it. I believe a lot of other assholes sat by and did nothing.”

  “And so you will drag these scurrilous cowards into the light of day so that they may reap that which they have sown.”

  “I’ll chase it down and see how it plays out. I know you’re trying to protect them, Paddy – Hurley, Clarke, all of them. You can’t. And if I can prove you’re in it, then I’m taking you down, too.”

  Wang sat back, nodding. “Finally, we come to the crux of the matter. You never have understood, young Lynch. You still don’t.”

  “So enlighten me.”

  “Do you really think that the Hurleys of the world matter? Or the Clarkes?”

  “Do I think that o
ne of the most powerful political families in the country matters? Do I think that the President of the United States matters? I’m leaning toward yes.”

  “Power matters, young Lynch. And it has a public and a private face. These men are merely its skin – skin that changes with each election or the fall of each dynasty. The Roosevelts, the Kennedys, all so many shed skins.”

  “And you’re the snake?”

  Wang snorted a short laugh. “Always these scandals. The private face of power decides, young Lynch – decides direction, decides policy, decides strategy. But there must be a public face to translate that vision into useful social action – into law, into commerce, into treaties. And so we find the public faces, and we cultivate them, and we allow them their vainglorious belief in the infinity of their own power. But the public face is always flesh, and the ways of the flesh are always its downfall. And so the face is changed. And so the public face may be changing again. The private face of power does not care and does not involve itself. But the public face cares greatly. The greater the threat, the harder the public face will fight. Do not misunderstand, Lynch. The power of the public face is no threat to the private face – it is venal, banal, grubbing power – but it is still very dangerous.”

  “You called me down here to warn me? I’m touched.”

  Wang shook his head. “Surely you did not need me to advise you of your current danger.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “What is your marvelous American saying? I have no dog in this fight? That is all I wanted you to know. Should the Hurleys or the president fall, the private face of power will adjust. Sometimes such tumult presents opportunities for change that are less incremental than those mandated by more tranquil times. We shall watch, and we shall await the outcome. That is all I wanted you to know.”

  “So you don’t have my back, but you’re not gonna put a knife in it, either?”

  “To paraphrase. Although, in my passion for fairness, I would like to help your new friends with their shopping.”

  “Help what new friends with what shopping?”

  “Feigned ignorance is trying. Ferguson and Chen. They are used to operating with the equipment and material afforded the minions of power’s public face. They now will need to find new sources. Please give them this.” Wang slid a small card with a phone number on it across the table.

  “You’re on our side?”

  CHAPTER 55 – CHICAGO

  Weaver hung up the phone. Hastings Clarke, calling from the private residence. Clarke was coming apart. Somebody, probably Lynch, had spilled to the press. Not all of it, but enough. Lynch’s squeeze, that blond from the Tribune, she’d started in hard that morning, and it was pretty clear somebody’d given her a big leg up. Then a guy at CNN she’d played ball with before chimed in. That was enough to churn the water. Now the whole DC press corps was scrambling, knew the Big Story Train was leaving the station, everybody looking for their own angle, trying to grab a seat before the thing got too far down the tracks. There were enough people pulling on the ends of the right strings. Give them enough time, and the whole thing would unravel.

  Which meant two things. This shot at Fisher tomorrow, he damn well had to make that work because another day or so was all the time he had. And he had to get an alternative story out there, something for the press pukes who hadn’t bought into what Johnson was selling, or who were too slow to grab a good chunk of it. Give that crowd something to push, have them start calling bullshit on Johnson’s stuff, get everybody fighting over which one was the right narrative. Turn the whole thing from a potential PR nightmare for Clarke into a he-said, she-said hair-pulling contest.

  He had Cunningham on ice, drugged up and ready to play patsy just as soon as Weaver had a dead Fisher to swap him out for. With Clarke’s clout backing him up, he had a whole passel of counterintel gurus ginning up a back story. Paravola and his cronies had hacked into the right databases and planted the right seeds. Skeff Young was laying some breadcrumbs in front of some FBI contacts. The feebs in DC would feed that shit back to the taskforce guys in Chicago, the taskforce guys would leak it, and that would chase the press right into the net of bullshit that Paravola and company were laying out for them. Which would make the whole story their idea. Cunningham would be all teed up.

  All Weaver needed was Fisher off the board and a dead Cunningham lying next to Fisher’s rifle. And he was twenty-four hours from pulling that off.

  CHAPTER 56 – CHICAGO

  Lynch, Chen, and Ferguson were in the basement of Lynch’s mother’s house, their new base of operations. Not enough room at Lynch’s place. Also, Ferguson didn’t like the idea of being four floors up. Pointed out that, if Weaver ran them down, they’d want more than one way out.

  Lynch had passed Wang’s card to Ferguson, and he and Chen had disappeared for a few hours. Now Chen was unpacking their toys. It looked to Lynch like she might be smiling.

  “Four MP5s – two vanilla, two suppressed, all with folding stocks and laser sights,” Chen said.

  “You’ll love these,” said Ferguson, tossing one of the submachine guns to Lynch. “Light, relatively concealable, great cyclic rate of fire, magazines swap easy. Really nice room broom.”

  “Gee, you shouldn’t have,” said Lynch.

  “For Ferguson, we have Parker Hale Model 85. 12x Leupold scope, reportedly tricked out in all those special ways you like by an ex-SAS master armorer,” said Chen.

  Ferguson snatched the rifle off the table and worked the bolt. “Ah, come to papa, baby.”

  Chen digging back into her toy chest. “Several Glocks for you gentlemen. A nice, efficient .32 for me. Sufficient ammunition for all. Flash bangs, night vision goggles, NOMEX suits, web gear, comm units, a couple of Claymores–”

  “Claymores?” said Lynch. “You mean antipersonnel mines?”

  “Front toward enemy,” said Ferguson. “A nice-shaped wad of C4, a few hundred ball bearings. Pop the trigger and you can even up some bad odds in a big hurry.”

  “And we are going to use those where exactly?”

  “Better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them,” said Ferguson.

  “By which logic we should have a fighter jet and an A-bomb.”

  “I am rated on the F-16,” said Chen. “But I don’t think even your Mr Wang has one of those in inventory.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that,” said Lynch, thinking to himself that he really needed a way to pull the plug on this which didn’t end up with everybody dead.

  CHAPTER 57 – CHICAGO

  Weaver had seven shooters left after the Palmer House debacle, still should be enough. Had some new tech, too, that was going to help.

  With Clarke backing his play, Weaver was able to shake a couple of radar-assisted anti-sniper units out of the DoD, new prototypes, next generation stuff a couple notches up the technical ladder from the Boomerang acoustic system the troops were using now, the one that triangulated sound waves to ID the point of origin for sniper fire. Boomerangs weren’t going to help much with Fisher. He was a tricky bastard. That back-from-the-window shit he’d been using muddied up the sound, and that would cause some trouble with an acoustic unit, that and he’d used a suppressor downstate. Boomerangs would only give him a general direction.

  The new system added 3D laser radar to the mix – actually picked up the flight of the bullet, traced it back to the point of origin. With these puppies, as soon as Fisher took his shot, Weaver’s boys could put enough firepower on target to puree the son of a bitch. Scoop up Fisher, drop the black guy’s corpse in his place. The only problem was the units were new, prototypes on their way to Afghanistan for field-testing. He only had two to play with, so he had to make sure he had them in the right locations.

  That solved one problem. The other problem was this. They were out of time. This thing had to go down tomorrow. Suppose this Manning chick’s been behaving herself, doesn’t feel the need to go to confession? Wouldn’t matter to Fisher. Fis
her would wait. Weaver couldn’t. As of thirty minutes ago, though, Weaver was pretty sure he had that problem licked, too.

  He flipped open the dossier from Langley, one of their few female paramilitary types, some hard-ass named Pat Brown. Manning was thirty-two, Brown was thirty-three. Manning was five-six, one hundred and twenty-two pounds. Brown was the same height, six pounds heavier, but it was all muscle, so she actually looked a shade smaller. Manning was kind of a dirty blonde, Brown’s hair was almost black, but they could fix that. But the face was the real home run. Not identical twin material, but close, and the bone structure was perfect. Give the hair-and-makeup guys an hour, no way you’d be able to tell them apart, not through a 12x scope, not at seven hundred meters.

  So he’d have a team grab Manning tonight. This Manning, though, she was one of the lectors at the parish. Good chance Fisher’s done his recon, knew her voice. So they’d get Manning to record a confession. Snyder’d done background, had all the lingo for that down. Take the priest down in the morning, swap one of their guys in, have him do confessions. Have to get him a script. Have Brown lip-synch her way through whatever they get out of Manning for Fisher’s camera. Plus, a fake priest would give Weaver a back-up gun in the church, just in case.

  Everything was falling into place. Even God was on his side. Weather was turning. Temperatures in the low forties tomorrow, pretty good wind coming in off the lake. So he could stuff Brown in one of Manning’s coats, put a hat on her, scarf, pretty much eliminate the possibility of anything that would tip off Fisher, queer the ID. With the coat on, Brown could even wear a vest. Not that a vest was likely to stop a rifle round, but the story Weaver had fed Brown was that they had Fisher’s hide scoped. Just need her to show herself so he’d step up to the window and they could take their shot. Who knows? Might work out that way. She might come out of this alive.

  If it didn’t? Well, it’s not like Brown would be coming back at him over it.

  CHAPTER 58 – CHICAGO