Frankie Aguirre and Art Jefferson - 03 - Simple Simon

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “I mean, how could he do this to you?”

  The agreeing nod froze, and Anne’s expression hardened. “Now wait a minute. He did not do this to me. Someone is doing this to us.”

  Jennifer looked doubtfully away, then drifted back to her mother. “Then why is he running? Why doesn’t he turn himself in? Running makes him look—”

  “Don’t you even think that!” Anne interrupted harshly. “Art is a good man. An honest man. Do you think he’d want me in here? Do you?”

  “Then why is he running?”

  “Jennifer, running doesn’t always mean running away,” Anne reminded her daughter.

  “I’m not equating this to dad,” Jennifer countered. “God, you are such a damn analyst.”

  “It is my job,” Anne said, and they shared a laugh that lasted a painfully short time. “Babe, you’ve got to trust Art. There’s a reason he’s doing what he’s doing.”

  “And what is it?”

  A treacherous void of reasons opened before Anne as she considered the question. She looked her daughter in the eye and said confidently, “I’m sure he’ll tell me someday.”

  * * *

  He could see the deep holes in the tips of four of the six bullets, and could feel the cool metal of the barrel on his forehead. His thumb stroked the trigger up and down.

  His eyes squeezed shut.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Pull.

  Brad Folger, sitting on the edge of the bathtub in the upstairs bathroom, saw himself pull the trigger, knew that he had, believed that he had, but when he forced his eyes open he could see his thumb still on the slender curve of steel, caressing it.

  Heavy breaths, almost gasps, pumped his chest, and somewhere beneath the skin he felt his heart become a runaway steam engine. A roar that he thought might be laughter filled his head, and he dropped the revolver on the mat by the tub and collapsed forward on his knees, hands pressed over his ears, elbows out.

  Coward. You couldn’t do it.

  The roar in his head seemed to agree.

  But after a moment the gasps eased, and his heartbeat slowed, and the taunting sounds faded, and when Brad Folger pulled his hands from his ears and sat up he heard something that could not kill him, but that did break his heart.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” the cry came from the opposite side of the bathroom door, accompanied by the thump of a tiny fist on wood. “I gotta go.”

  Brad Folger drew his arm across his upper lip and wiped his eyes with his other hand. “Sweetie, why don’t you use the bathroom downstairs.”

  “‘Cause Tommy used it and it stinks.”

  Folger’s pained scowl dissolved into a grin. He picked the gun up from the floor and tucked it in his waistband, making sure his shirt tails covered it. Then he stood, and caught sight of his reflection in the mirror.

  You are a coward, he told himself. But not because you couldn’t blow your brains out.

  When he opened the door, his three year old little girl, stuffed penguin in hand, strolled past him and turned, waiting. “Can I have some privacy?”

  Folger smiled at his little girl, nodded, and backed out of the bathroom, pulling the door shut.

  “Coward,” he said aloud, quietly, the self pity fading, a new emotion rising. Anger.

  He was surprised that he could feel that. Surprised and thankful.

  * * *

  Mr. Pritchard watched the video with Sanders, both men seated in an office that sported trophies and plaques honoring the occupant. The scene transfixed them, Pritchard pressing the knuckles of one hand into his chin, Sanders finally stopping the recording with a click of the remote.

  “He’s smart,” Sanders commented. “He knows they’ll be watching his friends, so he goes to someone who would be thought of as a nemesis.”

  “What’s his name?” Pritchard inquired.

  “Underhill. Walter Underhill. He’s a con man Jefferson busted a long time back. He served ten years for dealing in stolen credit cards through the mail. He’s still connected, but not very active.”

  Pritchard stared at the frozen scene of Jefferson and Underhill in the front seat of a pickup, the innocent between them. Shot through a long range lens, the image was grainy, but Pritchard could clearly see that Simon Lynch sat very close to the wanted FBI agent. Very close indeed.

  “You’re a bright young man, Sanders. What made you suspect he’d be leaving last night?”

  “Our surveillance showed the Volvo parked in the driveway,” Sanders explained. “It’s always in the garage. I knew someone would be going somewhere. It was just a matter of knowing when they left.”

  A simple tracking device affixed quickly, nonchalantly, under the bumper as a woman out for a walk passed the car had taken care of the rest. But that begged a question. “Will they search the vehicle?”

  Sanders shook his head. “They have no reason to.”

  “And what about the opposition?”

  “At this point, we can’t be sure. But you can be certain they’re looking.”

  Opposing teams, on a crowded field, one team sees the ball amidst a forest of legs, afraid to reach for it for fear that their opponents will then see it. Pritchard knew someone would have to make the first move. The difference was when his team made it, it would only be an opening. If the other side made it, it would be the end.

  In this case, he thought, late was not better than never. Late was never. Never was never.

  Now was the only viable option. Or soon, at the latest.

  “Have they laid up yet?” Pritchard asked.

  “No.”

  He thought for a moment, mindful of some of the boys’ reservations. “I want to know as soon as they do.”

  “Yes sir,” Sanders said, clicking the player off now, the TV screen collapsing to a single point of light before going black.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Downs and Ups

  Just before ten in the evening, Brad Folger arrived in the puzzle center for his shift, an assistant deputy director answering phones. A de-facto demotion he could not protest.

  When he entered, he was surprised to see Pedanski swiveling back and forth before the phone console, hands together at his face, thumbs beneath his chin, a finger on each side of his nose. “Leo, what are you doing here? I was supposed to relieve Vik.”

  Pedanski did not turn toward Folger, did not even glance his way. “I did a double. Told Vik to rest up.”

  “Oh.” Folger laid his jacket over a chair and studied Pedanski. “What’s wrong?”

  “You didn’t log a call,” Pedanski said to the console. “The computers logged it, but you wrote nothing. It’s my job to reconcile the logs.” He swung the chair so that he faced Folger, hands coming to his lap.

  “Leo, look, I know I should have, but…” But what? Folger questioned himself. He should have followed procedure. It was all ‘for the good of the country’.

  As that mantra of G. Nicholas Kudrow reverberated in his head, he realized why he hadn’t made any notation. He could not reconcile himself with what was happening, and he could not back out. He did not want to lie, but he could not tell the truth. That voice on the other end of the phone was a real person, a real person who had no idea that he was about to get waylaid by people in the very government he served. For the good of the country, of course.

  No, Brad Folger, had he been a man with any backbone, would have told that real person what was about to happen. Instead, Brad Folger the coward had put a gun to his head and tried for the ultimate escape from responsibility.

  And now, when it hardly mattered at all, he was an angry man, one who knew not only that what was happening was wrong, but that he could do little to stop it.

  Let me tell you, his name is Kudrow, and he has this little stooge named Rothchild who can press a button on his computer and make a herd of cape buffalo stampede half a world away, and together they’re destroying this FBI agent so Kudrow can get his hand on a retard who broke our
top code… And right after Folger told whatever authority that, the men in white with a big butterfly net would come along. And in a padded cell, there would be questions for him. ‘You knew this Mike Bell, didn’t you Bradley Folger, and we seem to have stumbled upon certain information implicating you in a fatal hit and run some years ago…’

  “Mr. Folger?”

  He snapped out of his solitary musing. “What? Yeah, oh, look, I’m sorry I didn’t log it but—”

  “Sorry?” Pedanski asked, surprised. “No, Mr. Folger, it’s not that. It’s that…well…why was an FBI agent calling us?”

  Why? Pedanski wasn’t relishing his ignorance, Folger thought. What he would give not to…not to…

  Warmth flooded Folger’s face, surging at his eyes, spilling out as streams of hot tears that fell against his hands as they came up. He collapsed into a chair and buried his head on a cluttered desk, Pedanski watching him with a mix of shock and concern. Sobs rocked his body, and before he could stop it he was on his knees at a trash can throwing up what little food he’d managed to eat. When the heaves ended, he sat on the floor, back against the door, eyes on Pedanski frozen in his chair.

  He felt better, but not good enough. There was more to purge.

  “I need to tell you something,” Folger said to Pedanski. Over the next hour he did just that.

  * * *

  Nelson Van Horn let the front door close behind him and was reaching for the light switch when a lamp across the living room came on.

  “Shit!”

  Standing almost in the dining room, Art Jefferson, head shaved and a day’s growth of stubble peppering his jaw, held his Smith & Wesson duty weapon one handed. It was pointed in Van Horn’s direction.

  “Don’t go for yours,” Art suggested. He swallowed hard.

  Van Horn held his palms toward Art. “What are you doing?”

  “I need something.”

  “Art…” Van Horn’s eyes shifted from Art’s strangely menacing face to the pistol, and he noted two things. The menace on the A-SAC’s face was not that at all; it was fear. And the muzzle of the shiny Smith was pointed off a few inches to one side, not actually at him. “You’re not going to shoot me and I’m not going to shoot you, so put that away and we can talk.”

  Art held his position. “Who do I trust, Nels?”

  Van Horn weighed whether he should answer.

  “I was set up,” Art said.

  “No shit. Did I do it?”

  “No, but your job is to take me in.”

  “You’re my supervisor. Order me not to.”

  “I’m a wanted man.”

  “Innocent until proven guilty. Order me.”

  Art lowers his weapon a bit. “Don’t arrest me, don’t cause me to be arrested, don’t contribute to my arrest.”

  “Order received,” Van Horn said with a nod, and wheeled himself toward Art. “Put the gun away.”

  It disappeared under a loose blue sweatshirt, tucked into a high-riding holster.

  “That’s better.”

  Art went to a chair in the corner and sat, head back on the soft cushion. “I need something, Nels.”

  “This all has something to do with that KIWI ciphertext, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Art dug a scrap of paper from his pocket and handed it to Van Horn. “Put an eight hundred in front of that number and find out where it is.”

  “This is from what I decoded the other day. The stuff you wouldn’t let me keep a copy of.”

  “Yeah. The trace? Can you do it?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “Will you?”

  “You could order me.”

  “I’m asking.”

  After a few seconds, Van Horn nodded, becoming an accessory to the flight of a federal fugitive. Well, that was easy enough. “Nice haircut.”

  “I’m trying not to look like me.”

  “You look like a bald you. So, how do I contact you when I get the information? I imagine you’re not at the Hilton.”

  Art sat forward. “I figured that out. Listen up.”

  * * *

  Pooks Underhill had more than one place to flop, but he had offered his ‘nicest’ accommodations to Art, a two room third floor apartment fifty feet from the Dan Ryan Expressway with a northern exposure that overlooked the railyards. It was in an area of the old south side where old brick buildings dominated the landscape, where the lost and downtrodden congregated, and where those wanting to get lost could do so.

  Art tramped up three flights of creaking stars and tapped on the door of 3B twice.

  “Who’s that?” the familiar voice challenged from inside.

  “It’s me.”

  Pooks undid the three latches and let Art in, resetting the locks again quickly.

  “Did your friend show up?” Art asked.

  Pooks pointed to a shoebox on the dulled wood tabletop. “Credit cards, two phones, and keys to a Chevy Nova. It’s parked on 55th.”

  Relieved, Art put a hand on Pooks’ shoulder. “When this is over, I owe you.”

  A grimace and a shake of the head were Pooks’ response. “Shit, Jefferson, you stopped the Pooks from getting into deeper shit when you busted me. I was old and stupid then. Older and wiser now.”

  Art nodded and looked toward the door to the bedroom. It was open just an inch or so. “How was he?”

  “Fine,” Pooks said curtly.

  “You cut his hair, right?”

  “Yep,” Pooks confirmed sourly. “And turned that blond mop brown. Yep. Your little friend is a-okay, all right.”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Art asked.

  “I taught him how to play dominoes,” Pooks said. “And the little snot goes aheads and beats me!”

  Art chuckled and half sat against the edge of the table. “He beat the Pooks.”

  “Jefferson, if you tells a soul…” Pooks made a bony fist and held it toward Art.

  “Not from me,” Art assured the old man. “How long did it take him?”

  “First game!”

  The chuckle rolled into a laugh as Art doubled over.

  “Then he up and takes all my dominoes into the bedroom and starts playing alone with ‘em! You believe that?”

  “Yeah,” Art answered, wiping his eyes. “Yeah, I do, Pooks. Is he still playing?”

  “He’s doing something with ‘em,” Pooks said, waving a dejected hand as he turned away. “I don’t care.”

  Art left Pooks to sulk in defeat, probably his first in a decade, and eased open the door to the bedroom, his smile draining away and his eyes bugging in wonder at what he saw.

  “Jesus…”

  Simon stood on a chair by the bedroom’s only window, looking out to the north, the stepped black form of the Sears Tower rising in the distance, and on the flat top of the dresser next to the window the same structure rose in miniature, constructed of dominoes. A near perfect replica at least three feet tall.

  As Art came into the room, Simon’s head rolled his way, eyes more visible now that the blond locks were shorn. “Black is up.”

  “Yeah,” Art agreed, marveling at the display. “Way up.”

  “Beats me and then makes that thing,” Pooks commented from the doorway to the front room. “Where the hell did you find him, Jefferson?”

  In a blue house on Vincent Street, where his mother and father were murdered. Art could have explained it that way, but he didn’t. He chose to offer no answer at all. Instead he had his own question. ‘Pooks, can you hang around a while longer? To keep an eye on him?”

  “You got somewhere to go?”

  “I’ve got something to do,” Art answered. Or try to do. Damn, there was so much to do.

  “Hell, just lock the door and tell him to stay,” Pooks suggested. “He listens real good.”

  “This could take a while,” Art said. “I don’t want him left alone too long.”

  Pooks saw something strange in Art’s expression, a look he’d never thought the man capable of: helplessn
ess. “What you gotta do?”

  Art considered whether he should tell the old con man. But what could it hurt? “I’ve got to get word to my wife. They’ve got her locked up. I’ve got to let her know what’s going on. Why I’m doing this.”