False Witness

by Randy Singer

  “I need to access my safe-deposit box,” Hoffman said.

  “Certainly.”

  Hoffman provided his box number and name while Ms. Lawson fished the keys and signature card out of a drawer. Hoffman noticed Xu glance around the bank lobby without ever lifting his head. There were three tellers at the counter, a few customers already forming a line, a branch manager sitting at a desk in a glassed-in corner office, which was partially obscured by open miniblinds, and one other customer assistant seated at a desk in the lobby and flipping through some papers. There was no visible security guard on the premises. One outside wall was all glass, giving the occupants a view of the Fourteenth Street sidewalks.

  “Follow me, please,” Ms. Lawson said.

  She led them past the side of the bank teller stations and back into a small vault with a massive steel door at least two feet thick. The inside walls of the vault, which Hoffman estimated to be about twenty feet wide by forty feet long, were lined with various sizes of lockboxes, all numbered and shining like coats of armor at a medieval castle. But for the smaller size of the boxes, it reminded Hoffman of a mausoleum he had seen as a child. About a third of the room was actually another small, self-enclosed vault, containing rows of oversize safety boxes and a counter along the length of one wall.

  Hoffman showed his driver’s license and signed the entrance record card. It was only the second time Box 273 had been accessed. Cynthia Lawson wrote in her name, the client ID, the date, and the time of access.

  “Okay,” she said. “Do you have your key?”

  Hoffman and Ms. Lawson both inserted their keys into Box 273, a three-by-ten-inch box located at eye level about a third of the way into the room. As Xu watched from behind, his right hand inside his suit coat, the door for Box 273 hinged open and Hoffman pulled out the small, metal rectangular box.

  “Do you want to access it here or in a separate, private room?” the clerk asked.

  Hoffman looked up at the ceiling-mounted security cameras. “Does the other room have cameras?” he asked.

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “We’ll use that one,” Hoffman said.

  He carried the lockbox in both hands, following Cynthia Lawson out of the vault and across the lobby. Huang Xu, his head low, trailed a step behind. Lawson unlocked the door to the small, rectangular room with reinforced block walls, no windows, and a Formica desk that extended across the length of the far wall. A solitary chair faced the desk and wall. A few pens and legal pads were placed neatly along the desk.

  “Just call me when you’re done,” Lawson said, pointing to a small buzzer next to the door.

  After the woman left, David Hoffman carefully placed the lockbox on the desk and removed the lid, exposing a single sheet of paper folded in half.

  Outside the bank, Wellington Farnsworth and Isaiah Haywood waited. They had arrived earlier in Isaiah’s tricked-out Camaro, complete with spinners, tinted windows, and a Bose sound system that could rock an entire block. Wellington was too stressed to remember the vehicle’s side-impact rating.

  After riding with Isaiah to Fourteenth Street and pushing an imaginary brake on the passenger’s side of the vehicle too many times to count, Wellington wished more than ever that he had checked on that rating. Once they arrived, Isaiah parked directly across the street from the SunTrust Bank and Peachtree Plaza, in the middle of a side alley next to a high-rise commercial building, ignoring the numerous No Parking signs posted on the alley.

  Wellington looked at the signs and frowned.

  “We can see the bank and that little driveway loop for the Peachtree Plaza next to the bank,” Isaiah said defensively. “Don’t sweat it. Nobody will tow the car with me in it.”

  What do you mean, me in it? What about us?

  As if in answer to Wellington’s thoughts, Isaiah began outlining his plan. “See that outdoor café over there, right next to the bank? I need you to go order a coffee or something and grab one of those seats. You’ll be closer to the bank’s front door in case we need somebody on foot or they have Hoffman in disguise so we can’t recognize him from this distance.”

  Both Isaiah and Wellington had studied the pictures of Hoffman provided by Stacie. Still, Wellington didn’t feel quite up to completing this new assignment.

  “Why don’t we stay together? Seems like it would be safer that way.”

  “For us, maybe,” Isaiah said. “But this isn’t about us anymore.”

  Though Wellington couldn’t exactly figure out when it had stopped being about him, or even why it had stopped being about him for that matter, he obediently crossed the street (with the light) and picked up a diet soda and newspaper at the outdoor café.

  As he waited, he tried to occupy his mind by focusing on the algorithm encryption, a challenge that had kept him up all night. After he had exhausted several possibilities related to the underlined biblical passages, Wellington had decided to ignore the Bible and try to solve the numbers as some type of substitution pattern. Maybe each number stood for a particular letter or possibly for a different number. When this concept failed to produce results, he assumed that certain combinations of numbers stood for single letters or single numbers. Or perhaps he was supposed to add the numbers in the five-number sequences, or divide them, or add the first and third and subtract the second and fourth.

  It would have made him crazy had he been fully rested. Exhausted and stressed-out, he didn’t stand a chance.

  After twenty minutes of waiting, Wellington saw Hoffman and another man enter the building. Frantic, he called Isaiah immediately.

  “I know,” Isaiah said. “I saw them.”

  “I’d better come back over so we’re ready to go,” Wellington suggested.

  “Just sit tight,” Isaiah said. “Stacie should be calling any second.”

  In the bank lobby, the second customer assistant, a woman named Tricia, transferred a call to Cynthia Lawson. “There’s a problem with an overdrawn account,” Tricia explained. “He sounds pretty upset. He asked for you by name.”

  Leaning over the desk, Xu reached into the safe-deposit box and unfolded the paper. He spread it out before him and began studying its complex mathematical schemes. Hoffman wondered how much of the formula the mob leader really understood. Did he even realize it was encrypted?

  “This thing better work,” Xu said sharply.

  They were interrupted by a brief knock on the door and a turning of the dead bolt. A customer assistant entered, closed the door, and stared at the men, a cell phone and keys in one hand, a bank document in the other. Her name tag identified her as Tricia Martsen.

  Xu stood up and stiffened, stuffing the paper in his suit coat pocket.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Hoffman,” she said, holding out the document as she walked toward them. “But access to this safe-deposit box is supposed to require the signature of both you and Mrs. Hoffman.”

  “It’s not a problem,” David said quickly. “She asked me to come by and get something for us. If you want, you can give her a call.”

  “I really am sorry,” Ms. Martsen said, stopping a few feet from the men. She smiled, but it wasn’t convincing. “Procedures.”

  Xu stared at her for a second, intensity coiling every muscle. “We were just leaving,” he said.

  Xu started to go around her, but the startled assistant shuffled half a step to the side and held her ground. “You’ve already accessed the box,” she sputtered. “We will need to at least call.” She extended the cell phone . . .

  And jammed the antenna hard into Xu’s neck, her face turning dark with hatred.

  The veiled Titan stun gun did its debilitating work, sending a hundred thousand volts through the body of the shocked triad leader. The auburn-haired assistant with the thick glasses pulled the gun back a few inches as Xu fell to his knees, moaning in pain, bracing himself with one arm against the wall of the room. But as David Hoffman stepped toward his wife, he saw Xu’s posture stiffen, an almost-instantaneous, miraculous recovery.
A steely look flashed across Xu’s face, the eyes of a warrior.

  Xu spun and rose, the speed of a black belt, his right hand knocking the stun gun from Stacie’s fist. David had not hesitated. In the split second it took Xu to spin toward Stacie, David lunged, using his head as a battering ram, hoping to rearrange Xu’s face to match Dennis Hargrove’s, the Vegas bounty hunter. Xu deftly sidestepped David and flipped him like a rag doll to the floor. David landed hard on his side, the pain from the already-broken ribs nearly crippling him.

  Sprawled on the floor, David heard a thwack behind him. He looked up just in time to see the results of a vicious blow Stacie had landed with the safe-deposit box, the corner slicing into the back of Xu’s skull, spattering the wall and desk with drops of blood. David watched Xu’s eyes roll back in his head as the force of the blow sent him crashing into the wall a second time. He slid to the floor and lay there motionless, his head tilted awkwardly to the side.

  Before David could struggle to his feet, Stacie had dropped the safe-deposit box and recovered her stun gun, driving it once again into Xu’s shoulder. He convulsed, his body jerking involuntarily, his eyes vacant. As David stared, she held it there for ten seconds . . . fifteen . . . twenty. Her face was contorted into an animalistic intensity.

  David grabbed her around the shoulders, winced as the pain shot through his ribs again, and pulled her away from the fallen man. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “It’s okay.”

  76

  David and Stacie dragged Xu into a corner of the small room so that his body would be behind the door if anybody looked in.

  “He’s breathing,” David said.

  “Thank God,” Stacie murmured, mostly to herself. “I almost killed him.”

  “It’s okay, babe,” David said. He slowly raised the shirt he was wearing and pulled the electrodes off his body. Just lifting his arms made the pain slice through his broken ribs.

  Stacie looked at the electrodes wide-eyed. “What’re they?” she asked.

  “My leash.” He finished removing them and reached out to hold Stacie by the outside of both arms. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked as bad as he’d ever seen her. The auburn wig had become skewed in the fray, her glasses knocked to the floor. She looked frightened and weary, the large brown eyes shooting around the room. He gently embraced her, but she soon pulled away. “I don’t know how long Isaiah can keep Cynthia Lawson on the phone,” Stacie said. “We need to return this box and get out of here.”

  “I didn’t know Xu would actually come in with me,” David said. “I thought he would send one of his men. I was worried he might recognize you.”

  “For a moment, I thought he did,” Stacie said.

  She opened the door, and David walked into the main bank lobby. He tried to stand as straight as possible, but the ribs wouldn’t allow it. After closing the door to the private room, Stacie joined him.

  “Anything else, Mr. Hoffman?” she asked.

  “No. I think that about does it.”

  Slightly stooped, David walked out of the bank and took a right toward the atrium and food court. A few seconds later, after returning the lockbox, Stacie followed. They walked quickly across the food court and toward the side entrance for the Sheraton Hotel.

  “It’s almost over now,” he said.

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  Wellington watched a third man climb out of the Town Car and walk past the outdoor café where he was sitting. The man was tall, six-three or six-four, and weighed at least two-fifty. He had a dark beard, short stubble on top, and a large earring in his left ear.

  Wellington placed his newspaper on the table and dialed Isaiah as soon as the man was past. “Another one just went in the bank,” he reported.

  “I know that,” Isaiah said. “I think you oughta go in there after him. See what’s going on.”

  The ink from the paper had already stained Wellington’s sweaty hands. The thought of following this thug into the bank nearly made him stain his pants.

  “What if he recognizes me?”

  “They don’t even know who you are.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “C’mon, you big wuss. Just go see what’s going on. You can keep the phone on and talk to me the whole time if you want.”

  Wellington took a deep breath, calming his nerves. “All right.”

  He rose from his seat and checked in both directions—for what, he didn’t know—then walked with great trepidation toward the door of the bank building. Wellington entered the lobby just as the thug was walking out of the SunTrust doors. The man stopped and looked in all directions.

  “Did you say a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk?” Wellington said into his cell phone.

  “No, you didn’t say that,” Isaiah snorted. “Why don’t you just tell him you’re following him?”

  Ignoring Isaiah, Wellington did a smooth left turn and pushed the button for an elevator. He counted to five and glanced over his shoulder. The man was heading toward the revolving door.

  “Suspect leaving building,” Wellington whispered into his cell phone.

  Just then, the man turned and looked straight at Wellington, freezing the law student in his tracks.

  77

  Wellington freaked and did the first thing that popped into his mind. When the elevator door opened, he jumped on.

  “The guy spotted me,” he said to Isaiah, but his phone was showing no coverage on the elevator.

  He rode the elevator to the second floor and hopped off. As soon as the doors closed behind him, Wellington pushed the Down button and called Isaiah.

  “Where are you?” Isaiah shouted. “Our man just left the building; he’s heading toward his car.”

  “I’m coming,” Wellington said. “Just a second.” The elevator doors opened, and he jumped back on. He got off at the lobby and ran from the building, the closest thing to a sprint that Wellington Farnsworth had ever done.

  David and Stacie Hoffman walked into the Sheraton lobby and began searching for the hunched-over body of Walter Snead. Because of his ribs, David had trouble taking deep breaths. He quickly scanned the front desk area, the couch and seating areas, and the empty bar.

  “I can’t believe he’s not here,” David said.

  Stacie had called Snead the night before and told him to meet them in the Sheraton lobby. He would rush them to Hartsfield airport for a flight out of Atlanta. Stacie had told Snead that she and David would likely have at least one triad member captured and possibly a location for where they were holding Jamie. She had given him no further details.

  “What time did you tell him to meet us?” David asked.

  “I told him to be here at 10:00 a.m.,” Stacie said, her face tight with frustration. “I told him to wait all day if he had to.” She pulled out her cell. “I’ll call the feds myself.”

  “I’ll check outside,” David said. As he turned, two serious-looking men in blue blazers started walking his way. They had just appeared from a door that led to the parking garage. David’s instincts told him to run.

  “Mr. Hoffman,” one of them called out.

  Stacie’s head whipped around. She glanced at the men and darted for the front door. David followed as best he could.

  They burst through the front door and almost ran into three additional men: one dressed like a bellhop, one in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, and a third man, dressed like an FBI agent, whom David had no problem recognizing.

  Sam Parcelli flashed his badge.

  “Huang Xu is in a private room for customers attached to the SunTrust Bank lobby right next door,” Hoffman gasped, wincing from the pain in his rib cage. The two men whom Hoffman had seen inside now joined them. “Stacie should be getting a call any minute from one of our lawyers, a kid named Isaiah Haywood, who will be following a couple of triad members back to their headquarters. They had blindfolded me, so I don’t know where it’s located.”

  “A law student?” Par
celli scowled. “Whose idea was that?”

  David and Stacie looked at each other, though neither fessed up. Parcelli nodded toward the two men in blue blazers. “Check out the bank,” he said. “Clear the building first. Get Hutchinson and Romano to join you.”

  He turned back to Stacie and David. “You two are going with me.”

  “We were supposed to meet Snead here,” David protested. “We’ve got other plans.”

  “Those plans have changed.”

  “Slow down!” Wellington shouted.

  “Are you kidding? They’re almost out of sight!”

  Isaiah sliced through traffic, swerving from one lane to the next on Peachtree. At a red light, he looked left and right, waited for a break in the cross traffic, then darted through.

  “What are you doing?” Wellington asked.

  “I should have left without you,” Isaiah replied.

  Unlike Isaiah, the driver of the Town Car was actually stopping at red lights, not wanting to draw attention to himself. Isaiah closed the gap by a block or so, then backed off. “Better not get too close,” he said.

  Praise God, Wellington thought.

  Just then, Isaiah’s cell rang.

  “Do you want me to handle that?” Wellington asked.

  But Isaiah had already picked it up. He answered and listened for a few seconds and mouthed “the feds” to Wellington. It was just like Stacie had outlined it.

  Isaiah started giving a running commentary, street by street, into the phone. He followed at a distance as the Town Car pulled onto Interstate 85. “The FBI agents are just leaving the Sheraton,” he whispered to Wellington.