Frankie Aguirre and Art Jefferson - 03 - Simple Simon

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  Breem’s head shook slow from side to side. “I’m not taking any more chances on Bureau weak knees.” The image of Jefferson stalking away down the courthouse steps burned in Breem’s head. “He goes down at home, with the missus.”

  What some sons of bitches would do to make a name for themselves, Kasvakis thought with distaste. He looked again at the arrest warrant signed just hours before by Judge Kinmont, flipping through the pages. “I can’t believe this. Jefferson is cleaner than any cop I’ve ever known.”

  “Well he just got dirty,” Breem countered.

  The Deputy U.S. Marshal slid the warrant back to Breem. “And Fiorello?”

  “You get him, too. As soon as Jefferson has the cuffs on.”

  Kasvakis shook his head once and left the office without another word. Passing the secretary’s desk, he gave the wall a solid punch and went off to make preparations for two warrant services that night.

  * * *

  Glasses off and set aside on the date blotter, Kudrow rubbed at his eyes and listened to Rothchild relate the latest information.

  “Very good,” he said, and hung up the phone with Rothchild making some wisecrack at the other end. The day before he would not have done that, but the day before he had feared Rothchild. That was no more.

  Kudrow slipped his glasses on and placed an internal call.

  “Section Chief Willis.”

  “Have the surveillance teams back off,” Kudrow directed. “Something will be happening this evening, and I want no exposure. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  And that was it, Kudrow thought. The end was in sight.

  His mistake was forgetting that with the culmination of most things, others quite easily began without warning, and in this case it wasn’t a true end at all by which circumstances could be measured. No, G. Nicholas Kudrow had ended nothing. He had done little more than toss a pebble onto a glassy pond, defining the center from which ripples were already spreading.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Song and the Dance

  Breem was impressed with the facade of the old brownstone and the window boxes expectant of spring. He spit into one and pounded on the door, ignoring the brass knocker. When it opened, an ugly man stared out at him.

  “Agent Lomax,” Breem said in greeting.

  Bob Lomax, in sweats and a pullover sweater, gave Breem a cursory glance, but seemed more intrigued by the man standing next to him. “Pete?”

  Kasvakis tipped his head in a joyless greeting.

  Past both Breem and Kasvakis, Lomax now saw the familiar dark vans, windows tinted. He knew what was inside, or rather, who was inside. But why were they here? “What’s going on?”

  From inside his coat Breem removed the warrant, folded in half lengthwise, and passed it to Lomax. “I think you’ll want to come with us.”

  * * *

  The surveillance teams were gone as ordered by Kudrow, pulled back to locations sufficiently far from the neighborhood where Art and Anne Jefferson lived that there would be no chance of errant contact with the authorities closing in on the area.

  The sun had long since set. It was getting late. The streets were quiet. Just a lady walking her dog, a diminutive Westie, enjoying the crisp night, circling the block repeatedly.

  Each time around, she took special interest in the two story Tudor with the Volvo in the driveway. It was usually in the garage, she was aware.

  On one particular trip past she slowed, making mental notes, and after she turned the corner at the end of the block she came back no more.

  * * *

  In the captain’s chair behind the driver’s seat of a van following those carrying the warrant service teams, Bob Lomax finished reading the warrant. When he looked up, Breem was smiling at him from the passenger seat.

  “Where’d you get this crap?” Lomax demanded angrily.

  “Bank records don’t lie, Bob.”

  “Someone is lying, because this just ain’t true. Art Jefferson would no more get into bed with Kermit Fiorello than I would. Or you.”

  Why was it so hard for them to accept it? Breem wondered. Did the Bureau boys think they were all beyond reproach, that they were genetically incapable of selling out? Well, sorry to rain on the parade, Lomax, but I have your man cold, in the bag.

  “This is not right,” Lomax said, collapsing back against the resistance of the high backed chair, swiveling it left and right, his heels digging into the carpet. “No way.”

  “Your cooperation here is expected,” Breem said, eyeing the warrant. “He is one of your people.”

  “Are you enjoying this?” Lomax asked, satisfied that he knew the answer beyond what Breem might say.

  “I’m doing what I have to do.”

  “Making your name?”

  Breem quieted, then said, “Jefferson has a weapon and a shield. You’ll take those.”

  Out the side window, streetlights blazed by as whitish streaks. Lomax stared at them until his eyes hurt, and then he simply closed them.

  * * *

  This time, only Mr. Pritchard smoked, savoring a cigar that was nearing the end of its life. It glowed bright with each breath, a fat stub poking from between his teeth.

  And as he smoked he read, eyes scanning the message given him just a minute before by Sanders, who had promptly and properly retreated from the room. When Pritchard was done reading he passed the message to a man on his right, Mr. Bellows, and watched it progress around the table with serious, contemplative eyes.

  Bellows passed it to Muncy, who passed it to Yost, who passed it to Pike. Pike read it twice and laid it on the bare table they circled. All eyes tracked to Pritchard.

  “This is not good,” Pritchard said, choosing an understatement over the actuality.

  “And the expected result of this…glitch?” Yost inquired of the group.

  “He’s an honorable man, by all accounts,” Pike said. They’d read much concerning the parties that day.

  “He’s not our concern,” Pritchard said coldly. “We have an innocent to think about. How does this affect our efforts there?”

  Silence ebbed from man to man, broken only by Muncy’s throat clearing, a wet, raspy product of the cancer assaulting his esophagus.

  “It complicates anything we do tenfold,” Yost observed. There were no disagreements.

  “So,” Bellows began, looking to Pritchard, “the question becomes, ‘Do we intervene?’”

  “The situation has changed since we agreed to step in this morning,” Pike said.

  “An extreme innocent is involved,” Pritchard reminded the boys.

  Muncy leaned forward, coughed into his hand, and said, “And if something goes wrong, what about the next innocent? And the next one?”

  Pike agreed with a nod. “Will we be in a position to help them?”

  “I think,” Bellows began thoughtfully, sitting back, “that it all depends on one man. How he reacts.”

  “To them, or to us?” Pike asked.

  “To us,” Yost said. “Do you doubt how he’ll react to them?”

  After a moment’s contemplation, Pike shook his head.

  “Well, how do we determine one man’s reaction to something he has no knowledge of?” Pritchard asked the boys.

  “He is an honorable man,” Yost observed, adopting Pike’s earlier point.

  “Meaning?” Pritchard probed.

  “He has to understand the big picture,” Yost explained. It was difficult to suggest what came next. “If it is presented to him.”

  “Presented?” Pike challenged.

  “That is not the way to do these things,” Muncy said. It is not the way. It’s dangerous.”

  “Extremely dangerous,” Bellows had to agree.

  Pritchard, though, was silent. After a moment the boys looked to him.

  “You’re not considering this?” Pike inquired cautiously.

  “It’s too early to say yes or no,” Pritchard responded. “How the next few hours play out will affec
t any decision on that point.”

  Pike shot a derisive look Yost’s way before getting up from the table. He walked toward the door, saying directly to Pritchard on his way out, “One innocent we can’t save is not worth risking everything we’ve worked for.”

  No response seemed appropriate, and Pritchard simply watched Pike leave, followed by the others, none of whom had any comments to add. They knew the decision was in his hands, and, like Pike, they had a fair idea what that decision was going to be.

  Alone in the room Pritchard pressed the stub of his smoldering cigar into an ashtray and leaned back in the chair to stare at the ceiling. It would have been so damn easy, if it weren’t for Jefferson. He was a good person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  What Pritchard needed was someone who didn’t care. What he had on his hands was the FBI’s equivalent of Gandhi.

  Gandhi with a gun.

  * * *

  A little before ten in the evening, a dark van cruised past the Jefferson house in Evanston, Illinois, and glided to a stop at the opposite curb, lights out and no screeching tires. A second, similar van was doing the same one house shy of the two-story Tudor. The side doors of each opened quickly, but quietly, and seven men in black exited, fourteen in all moving stealthily to positions around the house.

  Four went down the side walkway, scaling a fence to cover the house from the rear and sides. The remaining ten huddled in front of the garage, weapons ready. One man held a Kevlar riot shield. Another gripped a small battering ram. Ten seconds after their comrades went over the side fence, the entry team made their move.

  In a union choreographed through countless sessions, both practice and real, they moved in one line from the garage to the front steps, guns tracking to every window. The man in the lead pried the storm door open and held it as the man with the ram came up the steps, his implement already swinging, and knocked the simple wood door in with only one hit.

  * * *

  Anne’s head was twisting toward the front door from her spot on the living room couch, alerted by the pop of the storm door’s latch, when she saw the jam around the deadbolt explode into splinters. She screamed and stood, thinking Dial nine one one, dial nine one one, but there was no time for her body to react to the mental directions.

  “U.S. MARSHALS! GET DOWN! DOWN! YOU! DOWN! ON THE FLOOR!”

  Anne froze at the sight of men with guns invading her home. For the oddest instant she thought it might be some of Art’s friends from the office playing a joke, but the absurdity of that coupled with a faceless man shoving her to the carpet, foot on her back, gun at her head, made it very clear this was no joke.

  “What is going—”

  “SHUT UP!” a Deputy U.S. Marshal ordered, pulling her hands behind and cuffing them as the rest of the team fanned out through the house, clearing room after room, checking closets and the attic, the basement, the garage, and under the beds.

  Within two minutes it was clear that there was no one else in the house. One minute after that, Angelo Breem entered behind Peter Kasvakis and Bob Lomax.

  Anne, straining to look up from a forced position face down on the rug, saw her husband’s boss right away. “BOB!”

  Lomax looked at Anne, embarrassed, and went to her, giving the man standing over her a sharp look that matched the scar. “Get her off the floor.”

  The Deputy U.S. Marshal looked to Kasvakis, who nodded, and with Lomax on one arm they helped her into a chair.

  “Bob, what is happening?”

  One of the entry team trotted down from the second floor and went to Kasvakis. “He’s not here.”

  Anne, disoriented, angry, scared, and more than a bit sore, looked away before Lomax could answer her question and said toward Kasvakis and Breem, “What are you doing in my house?!”

  Lomax crouched in front of Anne, his hands on her shoulders. “Anne, where is Art?”

  “Art? ART?” She looked at anyone with a face, shock everywhere on hers. “You’re here for ART?”

  Breem stepped closer, and said to the man guarding her, “Mirandize her.”

  Getting a nod from his boss, the man did.

  “Anne,” Lomax began when the rights had been read, “something needs to be cleared up.”

  “Where is your husband?” Breem asked.

  Anne tried to focus her attention, but too many things were happening at once. Plus, with the disorientation and fear fading, her anger had room to grow, and when it reached critical mass it had its own questions. “Who are you?”

  “I’m United States Attorney Angelo Breem. Now, where is your husband?”

  “Why do you want to know?” Anne demanded, remembering the name, and some choice characterizations her husband had made about the man.

  “Because I have a warrant for his arrest, as well as yours.”

  Arrest? Art, arrested? And…me? She needed a familiar face and turned to Lomax. “Bob?”

  “Anne, something has happened. I don’t know how to explain it, but I know Art can.”

  Breem rolled his eyes. “Your husband? Where is he?”

  “Why are you here to arrest him?”

  “Stop playing stupid,” Breem said.

  Lomax stood. “Watch it, Breem.”

  “No, you watch it Agent Lomax. I have a warrant, I have one suspect from this residence. Now I want the other.” He stepped right up to Anne now and glared at her. “I want your husband. Where is he?”

  Anne started to say something, then stopped, and swallowed. The conversation over the breakfast table flashed in her head, Art saying nothing was up, and her knowing it was a lie. Did this have something to do with that? She thought hard, in silence, the thin man who said he was the U.S. Attorney waiting for his answer.

  * * *

  For the second time that week, Art Jefferson took Simon Lynch back to the house where his parents were murdered, and up to the room that not long before was a large part of his physical world.

  The first thing Simon did was go to the corner where the red rocker had been and fix an unsteady gaze on the empty space.

  “We took that back with us the other night,” Art said, lowering himself onto the bed behind where Simon stood. “Remember?”

  Simon studied the floor, the corner, the walls where they came together, even glancing at the ceiling, but it was not there. The red rocker was supposed to be in the corner. It was in the corner in the room at Art and Dr. Anne’s house. It was not here. Simon chewed his lip and fretted over the inconsistency.

  “Simon, come here.” Art patted the bed next to him, picking the same spot as the previous night.

  Simon did as his friend asked.

  Art leaned casually forward, elbows on his knees, and did not try to force eye contact with Simon. On his lap he had The Tinkery, and the paper taken off Mike Bell. It could have been a repeat of their earlier visit. Art hoped it would not be.

  “Do you remember the man with red hair?” Art asked.

  “The man with red hair,” Simon parroted partially, and began to rock.

  All right, was that nerves making him do that, or was it because of the simile Art had seen with the rocker? Art did not know that, but he knew he hated with every fiber of his being the condition that afflicted this kid.

  “Simon, did the man with red hair hit you?”

  Simon’s head swung right, then came back. “The man with red hair hit me.”

  Art considered the answer, and its repetitious nature. After a moment he asked, as a test, “Simon, did the man with red hair sing to you?”

  A pleasing silence followed.

  Okay. So he hit you. That could have angered Art without end, but he would not let it. There were more important—

  “Daddy’s gonna sing,” Simon said.

  Oh, shit. You had to ask him about singing. Would this ever end? Art wondered. Did he still believe his mommy and daddy were around, just AWOL for some unexplained reason? If he did, it was torture to let it go on.

  “Simon, Daddy’s n
ot going to sing to you. He’s not here.”

  That triggered something in Simon, and he pulled his cards out and flipped through, choosing the one at the very back. IF DADDY IS NOT AT HOM AND CAN NOT SING TO SIMON THN GO TO TH TOP DRSSR DRAWR AND TAK OUT TH TAP TO LISTN TO.

  Art leaned over enough to read the card for himself, mentally adding the E’s where needed. A tape…