The camera swung back dramatically to Gruber’s face. The video clip had been shot in the wee hours of the morning and it was obvious that Gruber had just woken up. Pillow creases still lined his otherwise perfect face, and he seemed a little off his game. ‘Uh, Miss, er, Agent Logan,’ Gruber stammered, ‘now that you’re lead on this still evolving case, can you tell us what the FBI’s primary concerns are? And where will the case go from here?’
Looking relaxed, her cheeks still flushed from the romp she’d scored with Thiery, Logan stepped into the light, and kept it short and sweet. ‘I’ve been working with Agent Thiery for the past few days’ she announced. ‘He is a competent, professional law enforcement officer who’s done a very efficient job handling this tragic and senseless crime. We are currently tracking where the guns used at the school were purchased and, of course, we’re still trying to find Erica Weisz. To that end, Agent Thiery has requested to add one last comment.’ Logan stepped back and, once again, Thiery looked into the camera.
‘Erica Weisz,’ he began, his eyes focused as if on her face, ‘if you are in a place where you can hear this broadcast, I want you to know, I know what happened.’ The camera man, at the urging elbow of Gruber, zeroed in on Thiery’s face as he continued. ‘I know what is going on. I know you’re running to protect yourself. You don’t have to run anymore. This is my personal cell phone: 850-256-1900. Please call. My department, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Agent Logan, here, and the FBI will protect you. So will I. You have my word. Please stop running and give us a call. If you are physically able to call us, you must do this as soon as possible, before other people are placed in jeopardy. Thank you.’ Thiery stepped away from the podium.
‘Wait a moment, Agent Thiery, can you explain that?’ asked Gruber, coming after Thiery like a pit bull, his cameraman desperate to keep up. ‘What do you mean by “you’re running to protect yourself?” What, or who is she running from?’
‘No further comment,’ said Thiery, waving his hand as he walked away.
‘Agent Logan …?’ Gruber tried, but she waved him off, too.
Gruber, his eyes red from lack of sleep, stared into the camera and, for the first time since he’d been in broadcast journalism, had nothing to say. ‘Er, uh, there … you … have it: the latest in this increasingly bizarre case; a case that started off as a school shooting, but has spawned other violence throughout this rural county in the heartland of Florida. We will keep you informed as we learn of any developments. Now, back to you, Gail …’
Moral woke up and turned on the TV, glad to be alive. Oddly, the only reason he was still breathing was because Erica Weisz had managed to escape again. Even he could find slight humour in that she was named after Houdini, the world’s greatest escape artist.
When he’d arrived at Julio Esperanza’s room at the Gaylord the previous night, his tail metaphorically tucked between his legs, he’d been greeted by De De Davies, a mountain of a man who’d immediately thrown his arm around Moral’s neck and squeezed. It felt like a python wrapped around his throat. Blood pushed into his head until he thought his eyes would pop out. He was beginning to lose consciousness when a local news flash reported the gun battle on Guava Lane in Lake Wales, along with the deaths of the Lopez brothers.
Julio quickly came to the conclusion that, with the Lopez brothers down, the woman had escaped again, and the only link he had to her – though it was a weak one – was Moral. He ordered Davies to let him go. Gasping for air as he writhed on the floor, Moral listened to Julio give him a pardon.
‘Robert, I think you can hear me,’ he calmly addressed the US Marshal, as if discussing interesting stock options he’d seen on TV. ‘I was going to kill you tonight. Your usefulness has been questionable compared to your debt to my family. What you did for us three years ago alleviated some of that debt and gave us confidence in your ability, and your access to information has been valuable. Since then, you’ve become indebted to us again and again, with higher amounts each time. We’ve tried to let you work it off, but, aside from giving us the location of your so-called protected witness, you really aren’t worth much to us. Do you understand what I am saying to you?’
‘Ye … yes,’ Moral croaked painfully.
‘Good. So you understand your value, and the best way to enhance that value is to either bring that woman back to us or kill her yourself. Do you understand?’
Moral rolled over and pushed up to his hands and knees.
Anichka had been watching the pathetic man with increasing agitation; being summoned all the way there for a hit that hadn’t materialized had tested her patience. Her expenses would be paid, but, if not actually part of the kill, she wouldn’t get a piece of the big bonus. All she was essentially doing was spinning her wheels. The only good that had come of any of this, so far, was screwing De De, again. That big Canuck could make her putty in bed. She strode over to Moral and kicked him in his ass, her kick going right into his rectum, causing him debilitating discomfort and humiliation. She fought the desire to kill him, just for being a loser.
Moral went spread-eagle, and the contents of his bowels spilled into his boxers. He lay there whimpering, the combined scents of liquor-stained hotel carpeting and excrement in his nostrils.
Julio laughed as though he was watching stand-up comedy. Davies looked at Anichka with renewed lust and admiration.
The following morning, Moral rolled out of bed, his ass still tender from the night before, a spot of blood in the fresh boxers he’d slipped into after showering, his head humming from emptying the room’s bar of all its little bottles. But it felt good to be alive another day. Reaching for the remote, he turned up the volume as the latest breaking news report came on.
He wasn’t worried about the overzealous FDLE agent. Guy looked like a former college football player who was handed a job to act like a cop. Big, not brilliant. But, he decided to look him up, see what his background was in case they ran into each other. He grabbed his laptop and Googled Thiery to see if anything popped up.
What a surprise. He was the cop whose wife went missing some ten years ago. Could it be? he wondered to himself. Was the world really that small? His mind raced, but he came to the conclusion it didn’t matter. He rationalized his connection, made it jibe in his own head, and put it aside. ‘Gamblers do that,’ one counsellor had told him when he was trying to stop his addiction. ‘They rationalize their failures.’ So the fuck what? he’d said, leaving the counsellor’s office that day, and on his way home, heading for a late afternoon poker game held in the back of a billiard hall.
Still, the FBI’s involvement bothered him. They didn’t usually tangle with his department, because they were aware of the importance of protecting a witness’s identity, but they could get access to individual cases if they believed them to be part of an ongoing federal investigation. This was turning into just that.
‘Fuck!’ Moral muttered to himself, no longer as thankful to be alive as he was when he first woke up. He tried to remember when he had identified the Coody kid as a potential candidate for the school shooting and the hit on Erica Weisz. He had used an FBI-linked database – legal, due to the Patriot Act – that allowed federal investigators to scan a citizen’s home computer when they searched for or purchased large amounts of guns, ammunition, chemicals, or explosives. Once he found young Coody and determined he was a suitable candidate, he’d approached him on an anarchist chat site called blackenedflag.org.
He learned Coody was looking for a huge cache of assault weapons, then toyed with him until the kid was practically announcing he was going to kill someone, a group of people, preferably, to show the liberal government it was powerless to stop him or anyone else from doing what must be done in order to, well, maintain order. It was all crazy gibberish to Moral, but it didn’t matter. The kid was a gun-carrying nut bag with a chip on his shoulder, and all he needed was a little push. That had to have been three, maybe four, months ago.
Moral had found the auctio
n the Kentucky State Police Department conducted, but learned one had to have a dealer’s licence to buy the guns in a cache like that. He’d brought the plan to the Esperanzas, hoping it would finally make things good with them. Maybe they’d even loosen their grip on his daughter, or clean his slate one more time. They liked the idea and brought in the Vegas pawn shop guy to make the purchase from the Kentucky State PD. What was his name, Tito something or other?
The final piece had been scaring Erica Weisz out of her safe haven, first in Richmond, then the ‘B’ haven in Washington. That was easy. In Richmond, as in Cleveland before that, all he had to do was go into her place, ransack the drawers and closets a little and Erica was ready to run. But, in Washington, he’d gone a little farther. He’d fired a shot through her living room window as she sat watching an old movie one night. The downside of that plan had been his proximity to her place; as soon as the shot was fired, she called his cell. When it rang, he was sure she’d heard it. Instead of hiding like she was supposed to, follow escape protocol and get out of sight and away from windows, she had stepped outside. She’d actually looked around, forcing Moral to dive behind a hedge and hide for several minutes, while he tried quietly to talk her down and assure her he was on the way.
Meanwhile, he’d already set up her new place in Frosthaven, where Coody lived. A few more suggestions to Coody about why schools symbolized the epitome of government bureaucracy, wasteful spending, and the dumbing down of America, and he’d set Coody on a path from which he could not be deterred. Then, the Esperanzas had sent Frank Shadtz down to pick up the gun cache, befriend the troubled young Coody, and the thing was set. It was like putting a tiger into an enclosed cage with lambs. Sooner or later, that cat was going to go postal.
Moral tried to remember if he’d erased his hard drive on his laptop. Surely, he had. He wondered if Coody had. He remembered hearing on the news that the hard drives had been destroyed, but he still fretted over it.
On top of everything else, Julio Esperanza had declared Moral useless. Fucker! He had risked everything for their deal, and they had blown it. Shadtz was the problem. He might have agreed to do the shooting and the hit on Weisz, but he was no killer. Even though he was dying and they paid him good money, he must’ve hesitated, must’ve given Erica a moment to act. After all she’d been through in the past few years, a moment would have been all the time she needed. That woman had proven herself a survivalist time and again, and that was Moral’s shortcoming, in the end: he hadn’t considered what she’d turn into over time. He should have known; when you hunt something long enough, it fights back.
So, he was in a corner, pressure so intense he couldn’t breathe. He had to find her and, this time, he would kill her himself. He had no choice now. She knew he had betrayed her. She might not have proof, but she knew. If he didn’t kill her, the Esperanzas were going to kill him. So, it had come down to that: it was him or her.
Given the latest news broadcast, he knew he had to find her before the FBI did, before any more questions could arise about who she was and why, if she was in WITSEC, her location kept getting compromised. Without her, the investigation into the assault on Travis Hanks Elementary would fizzle, and the perception would be that it was just another school shooting that hurt the community, nothing more. No ties to him or the Esperanzas. She was the only one who could throw doubt on all that.
He tried not to think of the fear the Esperanzas instilled in him. It wasn’t just because they were one of the cartels responsible for killing tens of thousands of people in Mexico over the past five years. It was because they owned him. From the time they’d approached him in the casino, when he was already underwater by some two hundred grand at the craps tables, they owned him. He had sold himself to pay for his addiction.
It had been Julio who’d first greeted him, bought him a few drinks, then boldly told him what he needed to do. Wasn’t it a thing he’d done before, he’d asked, a long time ago? Did he remember the first time his gambling habit had written a cheque his ass couldn’t cash? Moral had balked, telling Julio he didn’t know what he was talking about. He’d walked away incensed, but trembling with as much fear as anger. Had his past indiscretions been so indiscrete?
Julio caught up with him a few days later at a local bar he frequented, and told him a story that went like this: One of Julio’s associates had hooked up with Moral’s daughter, Amy, in LA, where she was trying to be a movie star. He’d been helping her get into movies. He also got her hooked on oxys. Seemed she liked them so much, she was willing to do anything to get them. Anything, he’d emphasized. Julio showed him a video on his phone. The picture was small, but Moral recognized his daughter, even with the five naked guys all over and in her.
Moral went along after that. What could he do? Who could he turn to? They took care of his debt, but he soon managed to drive it up again. And again. Esperanza’s men later told Amy it had all been a set-up, a debt collected because of her father. She never spoke to him again.
Now, the only time he saw his daughter was when he surfed the Internet looking for porn. She had got her wish and become a star, going by the name ImMoral Amy. She was known for her penchant for gang bangs – the more, the merrier. And, as much as he tried, Moral found he couldn’t stop watching her. He’d drink until he couldn’t see straight and watch her do things that, in spite of himself, aroused him, as well as his self-loathing.
Nothing the Esperanzas could have done to him would have been a more enduring torture. This was his miserable life.
Moral limped down to the lobby, a beaten man. Maybe he could get a boiled egg and a Bloody Mary at the bar. He ordered from a bartender who made the drink as thick as a salad, full of horseradish and celery sticks and booze. Moral took out his cell. He found the number to Erica’s new phone and, after much internal debate and three shots of vodka to bolster his courage, dialled it. He heard it ring. Then he heard a phone ring behind him. He glanced across the lobby and saw a woman, with tufts of blonde hair sticking out from under a straw fedora, frowning at her phone. She looked like she’d just stepped off a Greyhound bus. He looked closer. Was that a handcuff on her wrist?
Erica looked up, still wearing the sunglasses. She spied Moral at the lobby bar as the elevator doors opened behind her. Her lips parted and her mind raced, trying to accept the conclusion she’d already suspected. Now, if there had been any doubt, it was gone. Why else would her handler be at the same place the hitmen had come from? She turned and quickly darted inside the empty elevator, her heart seeming to rise into her throat as if she would spit it up.
Moral was running toward her, shuffling across the polished lobby floor as if he were wearing an artificial leg, his ass throbbing from Anichka’s kick the night before. He was still ten feet away when the doors closed.
As the car began to lift, Erica remembered the gun tucked into the waistband of her pants and cursed herself for not using it.
TWENTY-THREE
Thiery and Logan had fallen into bed after the interview with Gruber. They were exhausted and fell fast asleep.
Thiery was having a dream – an incredibly erotic dream – when he woke up. He looked over and saw that Logan’s head was no longer on the pillow. He looked down and saw it under the thin bed sheet, bobbing up and down above his pelvis, the Bluetooth light on her ear phone still blinking off and on. It looked like a firefly doing jumping jacks.
‘Oh,’ he said, groggy headed. ‘That’s where the dream came from.’
Her phone vibrated and she stopped what she was doing. ‘Yes? This is Logan. No, not now, let me call you back, I was just, uh, having breakfast.’
Logan, giggling, crawled up his chest, nibbling at the hair along the way, and popped out of the covers, playfully. ‘Good morning,’ she said and bent down to suck on his neck as she sat on top and pushed him inside of her. ‘I made a call to an associate of mine early this morning and was waiting for a call back but, uh, uh … got…uhm…dis… tracted… uhm.’
‘Uh
mm,’ turned into ‘Mmmmm… My…God, MYGod, MYGOD!’ as she came in less than three minutes. Thiery lasted a little longer.
‘God,’ she said, panting. ‘Why did we stop doing this?’
‘Uh, because you’re married?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ she said, suddenly sobering from her lusty high. ‘And you had kids.’
‘I don’t regret that.’
Logan sat up, pouting now. She shook her head. ‘I … ’ she began.
Thiery stopped her. ‘Let’s not get into that again.’
She wanted to. She wanted to talk about things that might bring a resolution – a happy ending, so to speak – but she knew he wouldn’t go for it. ‘Kids are gone now, right?’
Thiery rolled out of bed and pulled his pants on. ‘Yep. And so is your timing.’
She pouted, trying to keep it light but sensing the after-sex fade. ‘Don’t be mean.’
Thiery reached down and kissed her on her head. ‘I’m not. I just don’t care to get my head fucked-up again, and you’re pretty good at that.’
She smiled up at him. ‘We’ll always have … Ormond Beach,’ she said, referring to her vacation home, a beach house fuck-pad.
He shrugged noncommittally at that. Then it was back to business. ‘You get anything back on the Lopez brothers?’
She nodded, reluctant now to get back into work. She sighed and picked up her phone. There was an email from Miko Tran. Logan read it aloud.
‘Alejandro and Eduardo Lopez. Interpol has a list of suspected hits in a half-dozen countries and ties to various drug lords in Mexico. Both brothers arrested several times, only Eduardo did time in a Chilean prison for a murder rap eventually downsized to a manslaughter charge because they couldn’t prove premeditation. That was four years ago. Last known residence for both of them is a small town called El Salto, just outside of Guadalajara, but they are regulars in Puerto Vallarta, where they go to shake down female American tourists when they’re not busy with contract hits.’
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