Last Man Standing

by David Baldacci

  He took a sip of coffee and Gentleman Jim and picked up the phone. He liked to work the phones, even on the weekends, particularly in calling back people he didn’t want to talk with. Rarely would they be in on Saturday morning and he’d leave a polite message telling them he was sorry to have missed them. He did ten of these and felt like he was being very productive. His mouth was growing very dry, probably from all the talking, and he took another shot of the whiskey coffee. He turned to a brief he was working on that would, if granted, suppress evidence in a burglary ring matter he was involved in. Most people didn’t realize that trials were often won before anyone stepped foot inside a courtroom. In this case if the motion were granted there would be no trial because the prosecution would have no case.

  After several hours of work and more phone calls, he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. The damn diabetes was wreaking havoc with just about every part of him and he had found out last week that he had glaucoma. Maybe the Lord was getting him back for the work he was doing here on earth.

  He thought he heard a door open somewhere and figured one of his overpaid associates might have wandered in to actually perform some weekend labor. The young folks these days, they just didn’t have the same work ethic of Wingo’s generation, even though they made outrageous sums. When had he not worked a weekend for the first fifteen years of his practice? The kids today grumbled about working past six. Damn if his eyes weren’t killing him. He finished the cup of coffee, but his thirst returned just as bad. He popped open a desk drawer and drank from the bottle of water he kept there. Now his head was throbbing. And his back was aching. He put a finger on his wrist and counted. Well, hell, his pulse was out of whack too; yet that happened just about every day. He had already taken his insulin and wouldn’t need another shot for a while; still, he wondered about speeding up the schedule. Maybe his blood sugar had plummeted somehow. He was always adjusting his insulin, because he could never get the damn right dosage. His doctor had told him to stop drinking, but that was just not going to happen, Wingo knew. For him, bourbon was a necessity, not a luxury.

  He was sure he heard the door that time. “Hello,” he called out.

  “Is that you, Missy?” Missy, he thought, Missy was his damn dog that had died ten years ago. Where the hell had that come from? He tried to focus on the brief, but his vision was now so badly blurred and his body was doing such funny things that Wingo finally started to get scared. Hell, maybe he was having a coronary, though he felt no pain in his chest, no dull throb in his left shoulder and arm.

  He looked at the clock but couldn’t make out the time. Okay, he needed to do something here. “Hello,” he called out again. “I need some help here.” He thought he heard approaching footsteps, but then no one ever came. Okay, damn it, he thought. “Sons of bitches,” he yelled. He picked up the phone and managed to guide his hand to the nine and then twice on the one. He waited, but no one came on the line. That was our tax dollars at work. You dial 911 and get jack. “I need some help here,” he called into the phone. And then he noted there was no dial tone. He hung up and lifted the receiver again. No dial tone. Well, shit. He slammed the phone down and missed the cradle and the receiver fell to the floor. He pulled at his shirt collar because it was getting hard to breathe. He’d been meaning to get one of those cell phones but never had gotten around to it. “Is anybody out there, damn it?” Now he could hear the footsteps. His breathing was becoming impossible, like something was wedged down his gullet. Sweat was pouring off him. He looked up at the doorway. Through his clouded vision he could see the door opening. The person came in.

  “Mother?” Damn if it wasn’t his mother, and she would be dead twenty years this November. “Mother, I need some help, I’m not feeling too good.”

  There was no one there, of course. Wingo was just hallucinating.

  Wingo slid to the floor now, because he couldn’t keep himself up in the chair any longer. He crawled along the floor to her, gasping and wheezing as he did so. “Mother,” he said hoarsely to the vision he was experiencing. “You got to help your boy, he ain’t doing too good.” He got to her and then she just disappeared on him, just like that, right when he needed her. Wingo put his head on the floor and slowly closed his eyes.

  “Anybody out there? I need help,” he said one last time.

  17

  Francis Westbrook was feeling seriously hampered. His usual haunts, his normal places of conducting business were not available to him. The Feds, he knew, were looking for him, and whoever had set him up was no doubt trying to get the jump on him too. Westbrook couldn’t assume anything else. In his line of work extreme paranoia was really the only thing keeping him alive. Thus he was hanging out, at least for the next hour, in the back of a meat warehouse in Southeast D.C. Ten minutes’ drive from where he was sitting and freezing his ass off was the Capitol and other great national buildings. Westbrook had lived his whole life in Washington and had never been to a single monument. These grand edifices to a great nation meant absolutely nothing to him. He didn’t consider himself an American, a Washingtonian or a citizen of anything. He was just another brother looking to get by. His goal when he was ten was to live to fifteen. Then his objective was to make it to twenty before he was killed. Then twenty-five. When he hit thirty a couple of years ago he had given himself a party worthy of a person achieving octogenarian status, because in his world, he had. Everything was relative, maybe more so in the eyes of Francis Westbrook than other people.

  What was occupying most of his thinking now was how he had screwed up with Kevin. His desire to let the boy have a somewhat normal life had led him to be careless about Kevin’s safety. He had once had Kevin with him all the time, but then a crew dispute had erupted into a full-fledged battle and Kevin had been shot in the face and almost died. Francis hadn’t even been able to take him to the hospital because he probably would’ve been arrested. After that, he let Kevin live with some quasi-family, an old lady and her grandson. He kept close watch on Kevin and visited him as often as he could; however, he let the boy have his freedom because every child needed that.

  And the fact was Kevin was not going to grow up like Francis. He was going to have a real life, away from guns and drugs and the quick drive to the medical examiner’s office with a tag on your toe. Being around Francis too much, being witness to such a life, any young man might be tempted to stick his toes in the water. And once you did, you were caught for life, because that sweet-looking pond was pure quicksand and filled with water moccasins all claiming to be your friend until you weren’t looking and one of them sunk his fangs in your neck. That was not going to happen to Kevin, Francis had pledged when Kevin had been born, and yet maybe it already had. It would be truly ironic if Kevin did not outlive him.

  While Westbrook headed up one of the more lucrative drug operations in the D.C. metro area, he had never been arrested for anything, not even a misdemeanor, though he was going on his twenty-third year in the “bizness,” having started very young and never looked back, because there was nothing to look back to. He was proud of that clean record, despite his felonious ways. It was not all luck; in fact, most of it was due to his carefully crafted survival plans, the way he gave information when it was needed to the right people, who in return then let him carry on his thing peacefully. That was key, don’t rock the boat, don’t be causing trouble on the street, don’t be shooting nobody or nothing if you can help it. Don’t give the Feds a hard time, because they got the manpower and money to make your life hell and who needed that shit. His life was complicated enough as it was. And yet without Kevin his life was nothing.

  He looked over at Macy and Peebles, his twin shadows. He trusted them as much as he trusted anyone, which was not all that much. He always carried a gun and had needed it on more than one occasion to save his life. You only had to learn that lesson once. He glanced toward the door where big Toona had just come in.

  “Toona, you got me some news, ain’t you? Some good news ’bout K

evin.”

  “Nothing yet, boss.”

  “Then get your sorry ass back out there till you do.”

  A sour-looking Toona immediately left and Westbrook looked at Peebles.

  “Talk to me, Twan.”

  Antoine “Twan” Peebles looked chagrined and carefully adjusted his expensive reading glasses. The man’s eyesight was excellent, Westbrook knew, he just thought wearing spectacles helped him to look the part of an executive, trying to be something he never would be, legitimate. Westbrook had made his peace with that issue a long time ago. Really the choice had been made for him the moment he had been born in the backseat of a Cadillac up on cinder blocks, his mother snorting coke even as Francis had slipped out between her legs into the arms of her man of the moment, who had promptly set the child aside, cut the cord with a dirty knife and forced the new mother to perform oral sex on him. His mother had told him about this later, in graphic detail, as though it were the funniest story she had ever heard.

  “It’s not good news,” said Peebles. “Our main distributor said until the heat died down on you, he wasn’t sure he could provide us with any more product. And our inventory levels are pretty low as it is.”

  “Damn, now ain’t that a shock,” said Westbrook. He sat back. Westbrook had to put on a strong front before Peebles and Macy and his people, yet the fact was he had a real problem. Like any reseller of sorts, Westbrook had obligations to folks down the line. And if they couldn’t get what they needed from him, they would get it from somebody else. His survival time would not be long. And once you disappointed folks, they almost never did business with you again. “Okay, I’ll deal with that later. This Web London dude, what you got?”

  Peebles opened a file he had pulled from a leather briefcase and adjusted his reading glasses once more. Using his monogrammed handkerchief, Peebles had carefully wiped off the seat he was sitting on and had made it clear that holding a meeting inside a meat warehouse was far beneath his dignity. Peebles liked rolls of cash in his pockets and nice clothes and nice restaurants and the nice ladies doing whatever he wanted for him or to him. He didn’t carry a gun, and for all Westbrook knew, Peebles didn’t even know how to shoot one. He had come up at a time when drug operations had been far less violent and run in a more orderly way, with accountants and computers and business files, and taking dirty money and making it clean, and having stock portfolios and even vacation homes that one traveled to in one’s private jet.

  Ten years older than Peebles, Westbrook had come up purely on the streets. He had run crack for pennies a bag, slept in rat holes, gone hungry more often than not, dodged bullets and fired them into others when he had to. Peebles was good at what he did; he made sure that Westbrook’s operation ran smoothly and that product came in when it was supposed to and went out to the people that it was intended for. And he also ensured that accounts receivable—Westbrook had belly laughed when Peebles had first used that term with him—that accounts receivable were promptly paid. Money was efficiently laundered, excess cash flow prudently invested, innovations in the industry kept abreast of, the latest technology utilized, all under the watchful eyes of Antoine Peebles. And still Westbrook couldn’t bring himself to respect the man.

  When personnel issues arose, though, which basically meant that somebody was trying screw them, Antoine Peebles quickly stepped aside. He had no stomach for that part of the business. That’s when Westbrook took over and handled things. And that’s where Clyde Macy really earned all the dollars that he was paid.

  Westbrook looked over at his little white boy. He had thought it a joke when Macy had come to him for work. “You on the wrong side of town, boy,” he had told Macy. “Whitey-town’s up Northwest way. You go get your ass to where it belongs.” He had figured that would be the end of that until Macy had popped two gents trying to mess with Westbrook and, as Macy had explained at the time, he’d done it on a pro bono basis, just to prove his value. And the little skinhead had never failed his boss. Who would have thought it, big black Francis Westbrook being an equal opportunity employer?

  “Web London,” said Peebles, who stopped and coughed and then blew his nose, “has been with the FBI for over thirteen years and with Hostage Rescue for about eight. He’s highly thought of. Got lots of commendations and things like that in his file. He was badly injured and almost died during one mission. Militiamen thing.”

  “Militiamen,” said Westbrook. “Right, that’s white people with guns think the government’s fucked them over. They ought come see us black folk, see how good they really got it.”

  Peebles continued, “There’s an investigation currently going on into the shooting in the courtyard.”

  “Twan, tell me something I don’t know, ’cause I’m freezing my ass off and I see you are too.”

  “London’s going to a psychiatrist. Not one at the Bureau, an outside firm.”

  “We know who?”

  “It’s a group at Tyson’s Corner. Not sure yet of the psychiatrist seeing him.”

  “Well, let’s get that nailed down. He’ll talk to the shrink about things he ain’t talk to anybody else about. And then maybe we have a talk with the shrink.”

  “Right,” said Peebles as he made a note.

  “And Twan, can you tell me what the hell they were going after that night? Don’t you think that might be important shit?”

  Peebles bristled at this. “I was just about to get to that.” He rustled through some more papers while Macy meticulously cleaned his pistol, wiping away from the barrel dust motes that apparently only he could see.

  Peebles found what he was looking for and glanced up at his boss. “You’re really not going to like this.”

  “There’s a lot of shit I really don’t like. Tell me.”

  “Word is that they were going after you. That building was supposed to house our entire financial operations. Bean counters, computers, files, the whole deal.” Peebles shook his head and looked offended, as though his personal honor had been impugned. “Like we’d be stupid enough to have that centralized. They sent HRT in because they wanted to bring the money guys out alive, to testify against you.”

  Westbrook was so stunned by this that he didn’t even take Peebles to task for saying “our” financial operations. They were Westbrook’s, clear and simple. “And why the hell they think that? We ain’t never even used that building. I ain’t never even been in the damn place.” A thought suddenly seized Westbrook, but he decided to keep it to himself. When you wanted to deal, you needed to bring something to the party, and maybe he had something, something to do with that building. When Westbrook was just starting out on the streets, he had actually known that place real well. It was part of government-funded tenement housing built in the 1950s and designed to give poor families the subsidies they needed to get back on their feet. What it ended up being twenty years or so later was one of the worst drug areas in the city, with killings nightly. White kids in the suburbs watched TV at night while Westbrook had watched homicides in his own backyard. But there was something about that building and others like it that maybe the Feds didn’t know. Yeah, that one went in his “deal-making” file. He started feeling a little better, but just a little.

  Peebles perched his glasses on the end of his nose as he eyed Westbrook. “Well, I’m assuming the Bureau had some undercover working this thing and that agent must have told them otherwise.”

  “Who’s the damn agent?” asked Westbrook.

  “That we don’t know.”

  “Well, that’s shit I got to know. People going around lying about me, I want to know who it is.” Something very cold had suddenly seized in Westbrook’s chest even as he tried to put on a strong front. Now he was not feeling so good. If a Bureau agent had targeted what he thought was Westbrook’s operations center, then this meant the FBI had turned its attention to him. Why the hell had they done that? He wasn’t that big an operation and he sure wasn’t the only game in town. A bunch of crews did things a lot worse than he did. Now, nobody walked over him and nobody touched his turf, but he had played it low and cool for years, causing nobody trouble.

  Peebles said, “Well, whoever tipped the Bureau off knew what strings to pull. They don’t call up HRT unless they got something very serious to go on. They hit that building because it was supposed to be filled with evidence to be used against you. At least that’s what our sources say.”

  “And what’d they find there, except the guns?”

  “Nothing, place was empty.”

  “So the undercover was full of shit?”

  “Or else his sources were.”

  “Or else they set him up, to set me up,” said Westbrook. “See, Twan, the cops ain’t going to care what’s not there. They still gonna think my ass was behind it ’cause it’s on my turf. So whoever did this was taking no risk. They stacked the deck against me right from the go. Ain’t no way I could win that. Am I right, Twan, or you see it different?”

  Westbrook studied Peebles closely. The man’s body language had very subtly shifted. Westbrook, who had made the noticing of such things an instinct, an instinct that had saved his life numerous times, definitely picked up on it. And he knew its source. Despite his college education and his skill at managing the business, Peebles was just not as quick as Westbrook was at sizing up a situation and coming to the right conclusion. His street instincts paled in comparison to his boss’s. And there was a simple reason for that: Westbrook had spent years surviving on those instincts and all the while honing them to an even sharper precision. Peebles had never had to do that.

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Yeah, probably,” said Westbrook. He stared grimly at Peebles until the man finally looked down at his papers.

  “So the thing is, as I probably see it, is we know jack-shit about London, only that he’s seeing a shrink ’cause he froze up. He could be in on it and just faking everybody out and saying it’s all in his head.”

  “I’m certain he is in on it,” commented Peebles.

  Westbrook sat back and smiled. “No, he ain’t in on it, Twan, I was just seeing if you could finally show me some street mind. You ain’t there yet, bro. Not by a long shot.”

  Peebles looked up in surprise. “But you said—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know what I said, Twan, I can hear myself talk, okay?” He hunched forward. “I been seeing the TV and newspapers, catching up on this dude Web London, Twan. Like you say, man’s a damn hero, got his ass shot up and all.”

  “I’ve been following it too,” said Peebles. “And I didn’t see anything that convinced me London’s not in on the setup. In fact, the widow of one of his own men thinks he was in on it. And did you see what happened outside his house? The guy pulled his gun and fired on a bunch of reporters. He’s crazy.”

  “No, he fired in the air. Man like that, if he had wanted to kill anybody, they’d be dead. That man, he knows guns, that’s easy to see.”

  Peebles wasn’t backing down. “I think the reason he didn’t go out in that courtyard was because he knew the guns were there. He -->