“He won't let you keep him down, Baker. Don't you see what he's done? That was Tortora's son in the park, Baker. Do you even realize that yet? Abel knew it. I have yet to learn how, but of this much I'm certain. Abel knew. And he hopes now that they'll come, Baker. This time they'll come killing. They'll all come killing.
“Baker?” Sonnenberg said in a louder voice as he rose and stretched before reaching for the phone again. ”I think Abel is smiling, Baker.”
Harrigan paused at the door of Tanner Burke's suite and listened. He heard nothing. The creak of a chair, perhaps, but he could not be sure. An odd wave of anger came over him as he stood there. It had no cause that he knew. And it receded as he left the door and walked toward the emergency stairwell.
Carefully, he checked the fire stairs for two floors in each direction. All was quiet. Harrigan returned to the fifteenth-floor landing, where he sought a comfortable place to wait. The stairs were of cold concrete, softened only by several coats of gray paint. He eased onto the second step, then squirmed sideways to relieve the pressure of his service revolver against his kidney. He wished he'd thought to visit the men's room before leaving the lobby. That last cup of tea would be asserting itself before long.
A door opened several floors below him, followed by the soft padding of sneakered feet running steadily down the remaining stairs. He checked his watch. Not ten after six and there go the joggers, thought Harrigan. God save us all. What will be the next perversion of civilized behavior that captivates popular fancy.
Harrigan had jogged only twice in his adult life. The first time was that once with Duncan Peck and then once more with Notre Dame. Nice fellow, incidentally. Multiple murderers don't come much friendlier. Anyway, it was only twice. And both times in the line of duty. Harrigan was sure that God would forgive him as long as he swore never to acknowledge either event at a cocktail party.
Duncan Peck.
You tried to sucker me, you old bastard, didn't you! You made me run with you until just short of the point where I'd vomit all over your Nikes, and then in my weakened state you plied me with selected truths. You left out the big truths. And the biggest of those is that you're very much afraid of this Dr. Sonnenberg, aren't you! Oh, Duncan. We're going to see who'll sucker whom, now won't we!
Harrigan's brain exploded with light.
The image it held was Duncan Peck's face shattered like a crystal bowl, and through the pieces Connor Harrigan could see the concrete landing rushing up at him. His arms flew across his face and his elbows painfully broke his fall. Goddamn, he thought. His mind still worked, but his body would not follow. Was he shot, his brain asked?
Hands were on him now. A knee dug deeply into his back, arching it, and a pulling hand had gripped his forehead. Another hand appeared and the arm behind it tried to tighten across his throat. With a burst of effort, Harrigan jammed his palm across the forearm before it could close against his windpipe. It helped, but little. God, he was so weak. Or was the man that strong. Baker? Is it you, Baker?
Another door opening somewhere. Noises. Grunts. More weight across his back. Now less weight. The man is rising. Still holding on but rising. Something is pulling him up.
A slipping, clawing hand twisted Harrigan's head to one side. He could see two men. Part of them. And another shape at the landing door. The choking arm, he could see, was dressed in blue. Oh, Harrigan, damn you for a careless ass. It's that false cop who's killing you.
The uniformed man let go. Harrigan felt him scraping to his feet and then he saw him spin away, slamming against the fire hose that hung in folds on the landing wall. Harrigan rolled to his knees, gulping air and pushing at his eyes to make them focus. Baker! The man helping him was Jared Baker. And the girl, her eyes wide with fright, stood at the door behind him.
Baker, he saw, was struggling desperately. His face flamed red and his arteries bulged at his temples. One arm was locked around the policeman's head while the other clawed at his gun hand. What gun is that? Harrigan wondered. An odd-looking thing. An air pistol, he realized.
The air pistol, if that's what it was, shook loose and clattered to the floor. The policeman grasped at his service gun, but it was pressed hard against the wall. Enraged, he drove his fist savagely into Baker's stomach. And again. The blows made Baker gag, but still he held fast, his eyes washed with tears and turning toward Harrigan. They seemed to be begging for help.
Harrigan, his legs not yet steady, lurched toward the two men. A third blow, low against Baker's groin, broke his hold at last, and Baker half-collapsed against the wall. His hands flew to his eyes and forehead as if the pain was there and not where the blows had landed. Harrigan heard him cursing someone.
The freed policeman spun toward Harrigan, whipping a stiffened hand toward the older man's throat. Harrigan slapped it past him and turned the man, aiming three fast, chopping blows to his kidney. A wild elbow crashed against Harrigan's ear and staggered him. Before he could recover, the policeman had cleared his revolver and lined his sights against Harrigan's chest. Baker lunged for the gun, but the policeman knocked him aside with a backhanded slap. The gun hand began an arc toward Baker's head but hesitated. Only for the smallest amount, but enough. For then another foot flew against the policeman's face. A woman's foot. It struck again and a third time. Now Baker seized the gun and through his pain fought to bend it backward over the blue-coated wrist. The policeman tried to twist away and stumbled. Off balance. And then Harrigan had him. Now it was Harrigan's arm that snaked over the policeman's neck while his right hand gripped the big man's jaw.
The policeman knew at once what was happening to him. He'd done it twice himself. Once very slowly to a woman in Montreal while her boyfriend watched and screamed. He thought of her and tried to scream himself. It would not come. Desperately, he threw both legs forward, hoping that his descending weight would break the older man's hold. It was a mistake. Harrigan's grip had become a noose, and the man had thrown himself through an open trap. Baker could see the horror in the policeman's eyes even as his neck snapped with the sound of wet wood. His body trembled, sagged, and died. And with a final wrench, Connor Harrigan destroyed his brain.
Tanner Burke moaned and gripped the doorway. Baker reached her before she could faint. The act kept him from fainting.
Silence.
Several moments passed before anyone spoke. Harrigan, exhausted, had sunk quietly to the step, where he sat massaging his neck, twice glancing curiously at the man who was Jared Baker. At the monster who just fought like a schoolboy. Tanner Burke's eyes had hardly left the dead man's face.
“He's not a real policeman, miss,” Harrigan whispered hoarsely. He said that although he was not truly certain.
Tanner Burke swallowed. “Who are you?” she managed.
“Ah, yes.’9 The bald man grunted, shifting his weight to free his leather case. He saw an odd, faraway look come over Baker's face and then it was gone.
“Mr. Baker, Miss Burke.” He nodded, pulling a card from its plastic sleeve. “My name is Lawrence Fenton. You're wondering, of course—”
“Good morning, Mr. Harrigan,” Baker said wearily.
11
To the extent that anything at all could unnerve Connor Harrigan, it startled him that Baker knew his name. Knowing his face was another matter. The face he'd allowed Baker to see, just once or twice, he thought, as he'd done with Notre Dame. A bit of eye contact and a few words exchanged. Sometimes risky, perhaps, but a way of getting the feel of a man. And, in Baker's case, a way of knowing whether the quarry had knowledge of the hunter.
But when first they had seen each other months before, Harrigan could recall no light of recognition in Baker's eyes. No uneasiness. On the contrary, he remembered only a glazed and distant look. A momentary mental flabbiness. Eyes barely in focus. Except... when that other change had come over Baker. When Baker was hard and the eyes were those of a snake ...
Forget that, he thought. The point was that Baker knew both his face and his name
. And the knowledge was hardly recent, judging by Baker's manner. That notion offended and embarrassed Harrigan. It meant that those months of professional unobserved surveillance were not so unobserved and professional after all. It seemed to mean that Baker had been indifferent to his presence, which offended him most of all.
Steady, Connor, he thought. No prima donnas here. Do not let the insult cause you to trip over a bloated professional ego. Instead, think! Think of what it means so that you can proceed unencumbered by wounded pride.
Did it mean that Baker knew of your presence from the beginning? From the day of jog number one, when you spotted that little bug in the grass of Potomac Park? Not likely, he thought, even if the bug was Sonnenberg’s which he had to assume it was. Could Baker have known all the time that Connor Harrígan's glass was trained on Sonnenberg's house while he slipped in and out to make those telephone calls to his daughter? Of course not. There was at least one answer right there. He'd never have called his daughter if he'd known he was being watched and recorded. Which meant in turn that Sonnenberg, given that the jogger's bug was his, had never shared what he learned with Baker.
On the other hand, Harrigan thought, allowing his mind to graze a bit, Baker did not share much about his daughter with Sonnenberg. The phone calls told him that even before he knew what was said. The foolish, chancy phone calls to an invalid Tina Baker. Harrigan supposed that he knew from the first days of his surveillance that young Tina would be the glue that would hold the pieces together in the end. In spite of Sonnenberg, apparently. Each time Sonnenberg and his housekeeper drove off on an errand, there would be Baker, an uncharacteristic hat pulled down over his face, strolling down to the Mobil station to call his daughter. Peck had been right about that. And it was stupid. The Mobil station phone booth was an easy wire. Not like the house, which was a goddamned electronic supermarket full of responders that would blow your ear out if you tried to listen. Baker could have called from the house but he didn't. It had to be that Sonnenberg had told him not to call. Sonnenberg would have had his own phones wired to make sure, and Baker must have known that.
On the day of the final call from the Mobil station, the one that said, “Tina, honey, I have to take a trip,” Harrigan had taken over Biaggi's shift. Biaggi had come down with the flu, which was just as well because Michael, Harrigan flattered himself, would likely have missed Baker when he moved. Harrigan damned near missed him himself.
A splattered van had passed through Sonnenberg's electric gate, PUZO PAINTS—FREE ESTIMÄTIES was stenciled on the side. One man emerged, no doubt a Puzo, and entered the house with a canvas tarp over one shoulder and a canvas sack full of paint cans hanging from the other. Harrigan logged the visit and waited.
Two hours later, Puzo emerged carrying the same materials and freshly stained with green paint. He climbed behind the wheel of the van and ground the gears twice before figuring out which one was reverse. So, Harrigan recalled, the astute observer concludes either that Puzo needs to be retrained every time he climbs into his own van or that the guy in the painter's suit isn't Puzo. Good morning, Jared Baker.
Harrigan followed the van with some difficulty. Baker had not spotted him, he was sure, yet he drove as if he was being tailed. He was using evasive techniques that Harrigan recognized. Chalk one up for Peck's conspiracy theory. The guy had been trained.
The van stopped eventually on a side street off Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. Baker locked the car carefully, then walked around the corner, where he entered a Minute Man dry cleaner and walked to the back of the store after a brief chat with the proprietor. Playing a hunch that the van had already served its purpose and gambling that Baker would leave by another door, Harrigan searched for and found a rear alley once used by trucks delivering coal. Baker rewarded his choice, not twenty minutes later, by appearing large as life in a fresh business suit and climbing into a silver Pinto that had clearly been left for him.
Excited now, Harrigan ran to his car. The cooperative Mr. Puzo might not have meant much by himself, but now he had someone else, a cooperative dry cleaner at the very least, who had gone to considerable trouble to stash a car and perhaps some luggage for a fugitive from a very shaky murder warrant. Why was Baker worth it? Harrigan wanted to know. Beating a stretch in jail might have been of consuming importance to Baker, but it simply should not have been that big a deal to anyone else. It didn't seem worth all this. But obviously it was. To Sonnenberg, at least. And to Sonnenberg's increasingly impressive network.
He nearly lost Baker at La Guardia Airport. The car turned out to be an Avis rental, later shown to have been rented by someone who did not exist but who had papers to show that he did. Baker paid cash for an American Airlines flight to Atlanta and, as boarding was announced, he eased himself toward the adjacent gate, where he calmly stepped aboard a plane bound for Indianapolis, with stops at Pittsburgh and Dayton. Harrìgan realized too late what had happened. Gambling again, and remembering Duncan Peck's briefing, Harrìgan booked himself aboard the next available flight to Dayton. Once there, he rented a car and drove it first to the nearest Goodwill Industries donation bin, where he helped himself to a frayed windbreaker and a pair of dried-out brown shoes. Next, with the help of his Avis map, Harrìgan made his way out Germantown Road and to the Riverview Grill, which stood near the main gate of the Dayton Tire and Rubber Company. The sign on the door read: HOWARD Twilley—OWNER/MANAGER. At seven that evening, the new relief bartender showed up for work. Harrìgan had guessed right again.
It was a new Jared Baker, a coarser version. This one wore a cheap plaid shirt, open at the neck and showing a white T-shirt underneath. His hair had been slicked with Brylcreme, then flattened and combed straight back. He chewed gum with his mouth hanging open and did his best to affect the dull-eyed boredom of a blue-collar bartender. His name, Harrigan learned, was Jimmy Flood.
Harrigan had parked quietly at one end of the L-shaped bar. Behind him, a Space Invaders game blinked colored rows of descending alien craft. A black man stood washing glasses at the end near the door. Harrigan recognized him at once. Baker was closer, in the center. It was Baker who'd served the beer that Harrigan was nursing. It was then that the glaze came over Baker's eyes. As he took Harrigan's dollar bill. It wasn't much. Just a momentary pause as if a dim memory had kicked at him from within. On a hunch, and for reasons he'd only understand months later, Harrigan forced his thoughts away from Baker and onto the country & western ballad that wailed from the jukebox. Baker relaxed visibly. Harrigan slid from his stool, his instincts telling him to give Baker room, and took a seat at the idle electronic game.
A tool and die maker named Eddie Kuntz held up a quarter questioningly at Harrigan. Harrigan nodded and gestured toward the opponent's seat opposite. Harrigan had lost his fourth straight game when Albert Doviak pushed noisily through the front door.
“Oh, Christ!” muttered Eddie Kuntz, glancing up briefly.
Harrigan followed his eyes. The huge man who entered stood smiling and breathing heavily as he scanned the faces at the tables. He wore only a soiled T-shirt against the chill night, yet his face, arms, and shaven head gleamed with sweat. Harrigan saw a splatter of blood on the T-shirt and more on the knuckles of the man's right hand. Several in the room exchanged looks and dropped their heads.
“Trouble?” Harrigan asked.
“Probably. Doviak's lookin' playful tonight.” Kuntz kept his attention on the screen.
“Who's Doviak?” the question came casually.
Kuntz raised both eyebrows. “You're not from around here?”
“Akron,” Harrigan answered. “Goodyear plant.”
Eddie Kuntz shrugged in acknowledgment. “Doviak's not so bad usually, but he's in training. He's gonna be lookin' for a couple of tuneup fights tonight.”
“Tuneups for what?”
“Tough Man competition starts tomorrow night.” Kuntz fished for another quarter.
“Tough Man competition? What's that?”
Kuntz look
ed up. “You kidding?”
Harrigan returned a shrug. “In Akron, competition is bowling leagues.”
“Tough Man”—Eddie leaned forward—“is this thing where they have all the toughest guys in town enter this tournament and beat the shit out of each other in the ring down at the auditorium. Winner gets ten grand. Doviak lost in the finals last year, but the next night he took on the winner, big nigger named Floyd, for a side bet. Without no rules, he butted Floyd's face in and left him on top of some garbage cans.”
Harrigan flicked a look toward Howard Twilley, who he was sure had overhead. He thought he saw a faint smile on the black barkeeper's face. Twilley stepped around Baker, who now seemed distinctly nervous, gently squeezing his shoulder as he passed. Baker nodded and tried a weak smile of his own.
“Good evening, Albert’9 The black man grinned broadly at Doviak. The bigger man still stood blocking the doorway with the look of a restless bouncer.
“Good evening yourself, dark person,” Albert boomed pleasantly. Two black patrons looked up. The younger one reached for the neck of a Budweiser bottle and eased it to his lap. Two more men made a space for Doviak at the end of the bar.
Twilley drew a beer and poured a shot from a Seagram's bottle. He placed them before the vacant stool. ‘This is on the house, Albert,” he said. Then the smile faded. “It's one for the road.”
Albert laughed. He looked to each side as if making sure his good humor was noted. He laughed again, louder this time, as he straddled the stool and brought his face closer to Twilley's.
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