The Russian Pink

by Matthew Hart

  18

  I gripped the phone in my hands and stared at the screen as Lily drove. The cell-phone signal struggled to get past a single bar. Twice I started to enter the ponderous security protocols, only to lose the connection. At last I got through to DeLucca.

  “Do you know if he’s there right now?” he asked when I told him about Vanderloo.

  “No. And if I call Pierrette, and he’s there, he’ll be alert to her behavior.”

  “I agree. He’d know he was the subject of the call. What about your guy Treacher, the heavy you posted at the house?”

  “Augie is supposed to text me if anything happens.”

  “But Vanderloo would know about him, right? He knows he’s there, because your ex knows.”

  “We have to assume that if Vanderloo’s there he’s probably taken Augie out. I think I have to show up in person. I’m who Vanderloo’s after, and at least I’d have an element of surprise.”

  “I’ll get a special unit ready to go immediately. Call me when you land.”

  I was losing coverage, so I texted Tommy my flight number and left it at that.

  Lily dropped me at the airport. She would drive on to Luxembourg. We made arrangements to contact each other later. When I opened the door she put her hand on my arm.

  “Alex.”

  “I know, Lily.”

  I got out and shut the door and hurried inside.

  * * *

  As soon as we touched down at Kennedy, I tried DeLucca. The special number wouldn’t go through. I tried again three times as we taxied in. I felt as if a balloon were expanding inside my chest, making it hard to breathe. At the gate, I charged up the jetway and ran the length of the terminal. When I inserted my passport in the slot at the automated kiosk, it didn’t clear. The screen directed me to report to immigration.

  They were waiting for me. A border agent with sergeant’s stripes and a face pitted with acne scars pointed to a booth at the end of the row. The officer in the booth swiped my passport and flipped slowly through the pages.

  “What was the nature of your business?”

  “Holiday.”

  “Is that so?” It didn’t sound like a question so I didn’t answer.

  “And what’s your work?” He held my passport at arm’s length so he could compare the picture on the ID page with my face.

  “I work for the government,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. Can you tell me a little more about that?”

  “No,” I said.

  He shot a smug look at the sergeant lolling nearby, and closed my passport.

  “Then I’m afraid this is going to have to go to secondary interview,” he said.

  Keep your temper, I told myself. Do not yell. Do not get crazy. I leaned forward to the glass so I could read his name tag.

  “Agent Trottier,” I said. “It would be unlawful for me to tell you anything about my work. You already know that. My security grade came up when you swiped the passport. So please understand, because I’m in a hurry: If you delay me in any way, the people who asked you to do it won’t be able to protect you from what happens next.”

  He tried to outstare me. That was never going to happen. He slid his eyes to the sergeant, who decided that whoever was behind this wasn’t worth a disciplinary hearing. He shrugged and jerked his head to let me through.

  The red tail fins of the Caddy blazed in the middle of the taxi pickup lane. Anybody else, the tow truck has a hook on that car and it’s on its way to the pound before you have it in park. Tommy’s car was surrounded by cops and nobody was writing a ticket. They were all standing there grinning and nodding their heads while Tommy waved his hands around and banged his fist into his palm and described the intricacies of some past glory involving a running back who had scored a touchdown by getting past Tommy, and then tried it again.

  I tossed my bag in the back seat and climbed in, and my terror climbed in with me.

  “So this time,” Tommy told the cops, “not so lucky.”

  “Tommy,” I said.

  He waved a hand at me.

  “This time,” he said to his eager audience, “this time I deke his blocker and so help me God I nail that kid. Maybe there was some of my helmet in the hit. In those days a helmet hit was OK. Hey, it’s what we did. You remember that kid?”

  They remembered him.

  Tommy heaved a sigh and spread his hands wide—a man surrendering to the judgment of history.

  “Tommy,” I repeated. He picked up on the tone of my voice and looked at me.

  “What can I say?” he said to the cops as he started the car. “Nothing personal. It’s how we played the game of football.”

  “You was never any dirtier than you had to be, killer,” an older cop said to a murmur of assent.

  Tommy’s powder-blue rayon shirt rippled as we roared out into the exit lanes, scattering yellow cabs. We cleared the airport and got onto the Van Wyck. I made a gesture, and Tommy put the roof up.

  “DeLucca didn’t get hold of you?” I said.

  “No. Why?”

  “That guy at the meeting in Washington, the one the chair didn’t introduce. That FinCEN lawyer told you he was probably MI. Is it this guy?”

  I showed him the picture of Vanderloo on my phone.

  “That’s him.” He shot me a sideways glance. “Spell it out. Who is he?

  “Tim Vanderloo.”

  “The guy who’s been hanging around Pierrette?”

  “And who probably killed Amy Curtain. And who might be inside the ring of security that’s supposed to be protecting Annie and Pierrette.”

  Tommy looked stunned. “But is he there? Have you called?”

  “Too risky. Pierrette would give it away. If Vanderloo was there when I called, he’d know what was up just by watching her face. Now I can’t reach DeLucca. We can’t wait. I have to go there now. Tuxedo Park.”

  “Call Chuck,” Tommy said, putting his flashers on and launching the Caddy up the left-hand lane. “We have to know what’s going on. He can find out. There’s an NYPD default contact if we can’t reach DeLucca.” We hit heavy traffic.

  “In the glove box,” Tommy barked. “There’s a blue strobe.” I handed it to him and he stuck it on the dash, cutting into the breakdown lane and shooting by the bottleneck. We were going eighty when he realized I hadn’t called Chuck. He was reaching for his phone when I grabbed it from the bracket and tossed it into the back seat.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Let’s just say I want to preserve the cone of silence until I understand who knows what.”

  His face turned red. “Is that how it is? I’m a bad guy now?”

  “Maybe you can throw some light on things,” I said, my fear taking the easy road into anger. “You’re the guy who’s been having all the secret meetings in DC. Now I hear that you’re Bolt’s go-to guy. Why is that? Please tell me what it is you bring to the table. It’s not like they don’t have lawyers.”

  We crossed the East River on the Throgs Neck Bridge and blew onto the Cross Bronx Expressway at ninety. Five minutes later we hit the tailback.

  The expressway was barely moving. Tommy fought his way across five lanes to an exit. He picked his way up to Tremont Avenue and headed west to the Major Deegan Expressway.

  You could measure Tommy’s anger by how long it took him to reply. His basic armament included a full clip of withering repartee. When he was really mad, he was not so quick on the trigger.

  We found a ramp to the Major Deegan and headed north up the Harlem River.

  “This is what you carry with you, Alex. Suspicion and mistrust. You against the world. You had a rotten hand dealt to you when you were a kid, so the whole game’s phony and you’re the only one who knows.”

  The Major Deegan fed into the I-87. The thruway took a big loop through Westchester and crossed the Hudson at the Tappan Zee Bridge.

  “Are you working for Bolt?” I said.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “You c
an bet on that, Tommy.”

  “I’m not sure you understand how bad things are in Washington.”

  “I would rather eat broken glass than hear that one more time, Tommy. I don’t care if the president and Nash are in a bidding war with the Russians for help with their Facebook ads. At the moment, a killer who’s already murdered an agent may be holding Pierrette and Annie.”

  Tommy had been going ninety since we’d left the bridge. We were now at the Sloatsburg exit. We got off and merged into the slow-moving traffic on the state road.

  “That was your cue to tell me if there’s anything you know that could tell me something about Vanderloo. If you think I can be trusted with how bad things are in Washington.”

  He’d gotten way past his comfort zone. I could hear it in his voice when he answered.

  “I don’t know anything for sure. There are these zealots at the White House. Maybe military intelligence, but that’s a guess. They believe the president could destroy Nash if only the truth about Nash’s dealings with the Russians came out.”

  “Why would that make anybody come after me?” I said, pressing the speed dial for Chuck. “I’m the one investigating Nash. Isn’t that what they want?”

  Chuck picked up right away.

  “Where are you?” he said, his voice tight.

  “Almost at Tuxedo Park. What’s going on?”

  “There’s been some kind of incident there. DeLucca went onto the property and hasn’t come back out. The NYPD can’t raise him. State police have set up a cordon and are bringing in an armored track vehicle.”

  “What?” I shouted. “Are they out of their fucking minds? Chuck. Get a grip. Call them and order them to hold off until I get there. Tell them you have two senior Treasury officers with special authority on the way. Tell them whatever you want! Just stop them. We’ll be there in…” I glanced at Tommy.

  “Fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “You copy that?”

  “I’m calling them now,” Chuck said.

  * * *

  A mile from the gatehouse we hit the roadblock. Two cruisers blocked the road and four more were pulled up on the shoulder. A squad of troopers in full tac were scrambling out of a bus. A tall man in a gray uniform with a colonel’s insignia on the collar strolled up when we stopped.

  “You Turner?”

  I showed him my ID.

  “I got the village cop here,” he said, nodding at a kid in uniform.

  It didn’t take long to get the story. Vanderloo was on the list of permitted visitors. Pierrette had put him there. The Tuxedo Park cops knew him anyway. You wouldn’t easily forget that car. They’d waved him through.

  When the kid was making his regular evening check of the house, Vanderloo came out on the veranda with Annie and told him everything was OK. The cop asked if he could come in and see Pierrette, because the protocol called for him to visually check. Vanderloo told him no, she wasn’t feeling well. Annie just stood there staring. She looked as if she’d been crying. When the young cop got back to the gate he described the incident to the sergeant in charge of the state police detail. They called DeLucca. DeLucca had been assembling a special team, but when he learned Vanderloo was already inside, he decided to drive out immediately, ordering the team leader to follow as soon as he could.

  “DeLucca went straight in,” the colonel said. “Last message, he was approaching the house. Nothing since then.” He checked his watch. “That was ninety minutes ago, and I got here soon after. Now, I’ve got my perimeter established. I was ready to go in and see what’s up. Then the brass called. Said they had to check with the army, on account of this guy who’s in there, he’s a colonel, and could be on assignment. Then I get another order: wait for you.”

  “I have to go in,” I said. “It’s me he’s waiting for.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He jerked his head at the roadblock and one of the cruisers eased back out of the way.

  “Thirty minutes,” he said. “This is above my pay grade, but after thirty minutes, it’s not. I’m coming in.”

  The gatehouse had been abandoned when the state police pulled back to set up their perimeter outside the village boundary. I wanted to check the surveillance system. One of the jobs of the village police is to make sure that once visitors are in, they only go where they’re supposed to. I sat at the desk with the monitors, found the camera trained on the house, and toggled in for a closer look.

  At the end of the driveway was DeLucca’s car with the driver’s door open. Vanderloo’s E-Type was pulled up in front of the steps. I zoomed into the screen door. I could see right through it to the stairs on the other side of the front hall.

  I panned along the front of the house, selected another camera angle, and checked the side. The curtains were drawn on Annie’s bedroom window. Those curtains were never closed in the daytime. If Vanderloo was holding Annie and Pierrette, that’s where he had them.

  But where was DeLucca?

  I got up and checked out the office. Clipped to the side of a desk was a twelve-gauge, pump-action Remington. It was the model they call “tactical,” because it holds six rounds. I yanked it from the clips, found a box of shells, loaded it, and handed it to Tommy.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” he said.

  “See the end with the hole in it?” said a voice behind us. I whirled to see DeLucca leaning in the door. “That’s the part you point at the bad guy,” he said.

  He looked bad. His face was pale. One arm hung uselessly at his side. His hair was full of twigs and his coat stained with mud. He tottered backward. I grabbed him and we pulled him inside.

  I stripped off his coat and looked at his bloody arm. I found the medical kit. The property owners of Tuxedo Park hadn’t skimped on their cops’ supplies. The white tin box with the red cross contained a US Army field-grade medic’s kit. I scanned the contents.

  “Pop these,” I said, tearing open a white paper packet that contained two morphine pills. I shook them out in his hand.

  I cleaned the wound with swabs and bandaged it as well as I could while he told me what had happened.

  He’d driven to the house as soon as he arrived, put his gold badge on the front of his coat, and was heading for the front steps when a kid in fatigues stepped onto the veranda with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun and fired a burst. DeLucca threw himself on the ground and got off three quick shots. The kid popped back inside to take cover, but jumped out and fired again when DeLucca scrambled for the side of the house. A round caught him in the arm. He got around the corner and made it to the woods.

  “No sign of Augie?”

  “I’m sorry, Alex.”

  We decided that DeLucca would go back through the woods and get in position behind the house to provide a diversion. We opened the arms locker. They had everything in there: flares and riot guns and even bear bangers, a sort of heavy-duty firecracker that’s supposed to send bears running for their lives.

  “Hey,” DeLucca said, lifting out an anti-tank gun. It was already loaded. “This is stuff they get from the military when it’s out of date.”

  “Do you know how to use it?”

  “I’m thinking you pull that trigger-shaped thing.”

  I found an Uzi and shoved it into my belt, added a Walther PPK. I gave DeLucca a ten-minute head start. The sight of him heading unsteadily into the trees dragging that cannon didn’t fill me with confidence.

  Tommy and I came slowly down the road from the gatehouse. The idea was: Give him lots of time to watch us come. No surprises. We had the roof down. I wanted Vanderloo to think he could see everything there was to see. If you hope to do the trick with the rabbit, keep everybody looking at the hat.

  As soon as we arrived, the door to the balcony above the porch opened, and Vanderloo and Annie came out. Except for the pistol in his hand, he looked like he did the last time I’d seen him. Cords, sweater, bland expression, not a hair out of place. Good look for a psychopathic killer.

/>   Annie was wearing her old white cowboy boots with the silver stars, but even with the extra height the heels gave her she seemed shrunken. Her face was white and her eyes bright with terror, and her mouth was quivering. I decided not to say anything to her. If she broke down or became hysterical, Vanderloo would lose some of the control I wanted him to feel he had.

  “Unbutton the jacket,” he called.

  I waited a moment, as if reluctant, then shrugged and did as he asked. I tossed the Uzi on the grass and held my arms out wide.

  “Take the jacket off and turn around.”

  I paused again, then slipped off my coat and turned. The Walther was tucked in the small of my back, muzzle in the belt. I pulled it out and dropped it.

  “Pants,” he called.

  I lifted up the bottoms to show I had no ankle holster.

  “You,” he called to Tommy. “Drive away. Do it now.”

  I’d never seen Tommy look so helpless. He stared up at Annie, his face a picture of anguish. There were tears of shame in his eyes as he turned the car around. The red tail fins drifted up the road and disappeared into the trees.

  Vanderloo waggled the pistol.

  “Take it slowly.” At least he sounded calm.

  When I entered the house, the young guy with the Heckler & Koch was standing at the top of the stairs. The muzzle tracked me all the way up. He gestured with the gun and I crossed the hall and went into Annie’s room.

  Vanderloo stood on the far side, by the balcony door, muttering a phrase into his phone. He finished and slipped it in his pocket.

  The double doors were open now, showing the view right down to the lake. Vanderloo’s pistol was what the military calls an M11. Thirteen rounds in the clip, nine-millimeter parabellum. A stopper. And something else I didn’t like. He was wearing latex gloves.

  Pierrette sat in a chair, her wrists handcuffed to the arms. I’d expected her to be frightened, but the look on her face was hatred. Her eyes were molten with rage. I’d seen Pierrette angry, but the face that stared at Vanderloo brimmed with murderous fury. He had a mark on his face—a deep scratch that raked across one eye.