by Mike Lawson
The final issue was his car. He couldn’t fly to Little Rock, because there’d be an electronic record if he flew. He didn’t know if you had to show ID these days to take a train or a bus—he hadn’t taken either one in years—but traveling by train or bus didn’t appeal to him. He wanted the flexibility a car would give him; he could set his own schedule and go wherever he wanted.
But his car was a problem. It had license plates and was registered to him.
What he really needed was a new identity—a driver’s license and credit cards in some other name. He knew there were folks out there who made false IDs but he didn’t know anyone personally, and he didn’t intend to stay in Philadelphia long enough to find somebody. When he got to Little Rock that would be his first priority: to become someone else. But right now what he had to do was get a new, untraceable car.
He drove to an area in South Philly where there were a number of used car lots, found the sort of place he was looking for, and parked his car half a block away but close enough to keep it in sight.
Hamilton Motors had about thirty junkers in its inventory, the prices soaped onto the windows. An overweight man wearing a porkpie hat and a yellow golf shirt was sitting on a plastic chair outside the sales office, and while Hobson walked around the lot—looking at the cars, checking the mileage—the guy remained where he was seated. He obviously wasn’t the high-pressure-salesman type.
Hobson finally settled on a 1999 Toyota Camry. It had a few small dents on the doors—like it had been playing bumper cars with supermarket shopping carts—a couple rust spots on the hood, and a hundred and forty-five thousand miles on the odometer. It was selling for thirty-five hundred. He walked up to the salesman and said, “I want to test-drive that gray Camry.”
The salesman let out a sigh—like getting off his butt and getting the keys for the Camry was a major inconvenience. As he handed Hobson the keys, he said, “If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’ll call the cops.”
Hobson drove the car around the block a couple of times. He was afraid to go too far because he’d left Brad—and his money—in the Taurus. The Camry sounded fine, the acceleration was good, and the brakes worked. But he didn’t really know anything about cars, which was why he’d kept his AAA card. He drove back to the car lot and said to the salesman, “I’ll give you three thousand. Cash.”
“Okay,” the salesman said, surprising Hobson. “Come into the office and we’ll fill out the paperwork.”
“No,” Hobson said. “No paperwork.”
“I can’t do that. I gotta transfer the title to you so the car gets registered in your name—but for another hundred I won’t ask to see your ID and I don’t care what name you give me.”
Hobson thought for a second and gave the salesman the name of a man who worked for the Warwick Foundation and who was still in Uganda, then drove his new-used Toyota Camry back to his Ford. He transferred all his and Brad’s belongings to the trunk of the Camry, and then used a screwdriver to remove the license plates from the Ford; he’d toss the plates out on the highway on his way out of town. He took one last look around the Taurus—checked the console and the glove compartment to make sure he hadn’t left anything with his name on it—then put the key in the ignition so someone could steal it easily.
It was too late in the day to start out for Arkansas so he found a cheap motel not too far from Hamilton Motors and spent the night. The next morning at five A.M., with all his worldly possessions in the trunk of his new car, West Point graduate William Benedict Hobson gave the finger to the City of Brotherly Love and headed south.
His future looked grim—but it was better than no future at all.
Kelly forced Nelson’s lawyer to go see Nelson in the hospital again so they could use the lawyer’s cell phone to communicate.
“How are you doing?” Kelly asked.
“Okay,” Nelson said.
He didn’t sound okay. He sounded depressed.
Nelson had fully recovered from the gunshot wounds—except for being paralyzed—and had been getting physical therapy every day so he’d be able to operate a wheelchair. During the therapy sessions he made it appear that he was in considerable pain and still as weak as a kitten; Kelly had told him to do this because as soon as he was fully recovered they were going to arraign him and move him to a prison cell.
“How you doing with the wheelchair?” Kelly asked.
“I can operate it fine—the other day I was doing wheelies in the hallway when the nurses weren’t looking. And I’ve been working out two, three hours a day on the chin-up bar over my bed. The only problem is I can’t get out of this bed and into the wheelchair by myself unless I just fall out of the bed and onto the floor.”
“Don’t worry about getting out of bed. I’ll get you out of bed.”
“So when do we move?”
“Wednesday, two A.M.”
While Nelson had been recovering, Kelly had been making all the preparations for their escape. He bought a Taser and a semiauto 9mm with a silencer. He bought a van that had a hydraulic ramp to accommodate wheelchairs. He made arrangements with a pilot—an Iraq War vet he knew—to fly them to Costa Rica without filing a flight plan. He leased a temporary apartment for them in Costa Rica, making sure the apartment was wheelchair-accessible. He’d selected Costa Rica because he and Nelson had been there and liked the place. He also bought them two new sets of IDs—passports, credit cards, driver’s licenses. Getting the IDs had taken the most time, but now the IDs were ready—and so was Nelson.
Although he had yet to see Nelson, Kelly had reconnoitered the hospital several times, and during one of those trips he’d stolen a lab coat and a medical technician’s ID badge so he could roam freely throughout the hospital. There were only two nurses on Nelson’s floor on the graveyard shift, and they couldn’t see Nelson’s room or the elevator doors from the nurses’ station. There was a cop who sat outside Nelson’s door, bored out of his skull, and, when he wasn’t sleeping, he was bullshitting with the nurses.
Kelly’s plan was to park the van near the hospital emergency room entrance and lower the wheelchair ramp. He didn’t think it likely that the van would get towed during the short time he planned to be in the hospital. He’d take the elevator up to Nelson’s floor, Taser the cop, drag him into Nelson’s room, put Nelson in his wheelchair, and roll him to the elevator and then into the van. He didn’t want to kill the cop or the nurses because if he did, the cops would make a greater effort to catch him.
“We’re going to enjoy Costa Rica, amigo,” Kelly said.
“I’m sure,” Nelson said, but his response was halfhearted.
“I mean it,” Kelly said. “We got a lot of money in the bank and I’ve rented us a place on the beach. We’ll hire a maid and a cook, and we’ll buy a fishing boat. Then we’ll drink a lot of rum and catch a lot of fish. They got marlin down there—sailfish, too. We’re rich men, Nelson. We’re gonna be just fine.”
“But what about the place in Montana?”
Kelly hesitated. “We’re gonna have to walk away from that. Maybe sometime in the future when things settle down we can figure out a way to sell it without having the money traced back to us, but I’m thinking the place in Montana is just … Well, it’s gone.”
“Aw, Jesus, Kelly.”
“Yeah, I know, but that’s the way it goes.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this for me.”
“What did you think I was going to do? Let you rot in prison?”
“Kelly, there’s one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
Nelson didn’t respond.
“Nelson, what’s the other thing?”
“I have to wear a diaper.”
Aw, jeez. That had to be the worst thing he’d ever heard in his life. And for Nelson that had to be almost as bad as being crippled
, thinking about the indignity of Kelly helping him change his diapers.
“So what?” Kelly said. “We can deal with that. You just be ready to go on Wednesday. Hooah.”
Nelson was too choked up to give him a hooah back.
As DeMarco drove toward Philadelphia he went over in his head exactly what he was going to say to Bill Hobson. His first lie was going to be that he was a congressional lawyer with a boatload of federal clout, and he was going to use all that clout to make sure Hobson spent the remainder of his life in a federal prison. If you thought Leavenworth was bad, DeMarco would say, wait until you see the cage I’m gonna put you in. His next lie would be—contrary to what was being reported in the media—that the Justice Department was secretly working with law enforcement agencies in four other countries to prove Mulray Pharma had tested their new drug in an illegal manner and killed a few poor souls along the way. This means, he’d tell Hobson, that you just might get the needle. Hell, we’ll extradite your ass to Pakistan, where they still hang people. Finally, he’d tell Hobson the one thing he knew to be true: that Neil had gathered enough information to make sure Hobson was convicted of tax evasion, and where Hobson might normally get a fine, DeMarco—the guy with that boatload of federal clout—was going to make sure he served at least ten years in prison for that particular crime. After he’d told all these lies, he’d tell Hobson the only way out was to testify against Mulray Pharma and, in particular, to testify that he’d helped frame Brian Kincaid for murder. By the time he arrived in Philly, DeMarco had worked up a full head of steam and had his speech down pat.
Fifteen minutes later, he found out that all his mental preparations were for naught. Hobson’s secretary told him that Hobson had not shown up for work and wasn’t answering his cell phone. The woman was practically in tears because she had no idea what to do with him gone.
Pissed off that Hobson wasn’t where he was supposed to be, DeMarco called Neil and had him look up Hobson’s address, which turned out to be an apartment building on the east side of town. When Hobson didn’t answer his door, DeMarco’s nerves began to tingle. He knocked on the apartment manager’s door next and asked if she’d seen Hobson, and she told him she saw him putting a suitcase in the trunk of his car, along with the travel cage for his little dog. She thought maybe he was taking a vacation. DeMarco didn’t think so.
“Hobson’s gone,” Earl Lee said.
“Gone where?” Fiona said.
“I don’t know, but he’s split. I broke into his apartment and it looks like a lot of his clothes are missing—you know, empty drawers and a whole bunch of bare hangers in the closet. And I couldn’t find a suitcase in the place, either.”
“Goddamnit all to hell,” Fiona muttered. To Lee she said, “Okay. I’ve got some guys who can track him down, and I’ll call you when they find him.”
“Roger that,” Lee said.
If he didn’t quit saying that, Fiona was going to rip his tongue right out of his head.
Fiona called her headhunters—those guys had been invaluable—and told them she’d give them a bonus if they found Hobson fast.
One of them called her back a couple hours later and said Hobson had cleaned out his bank accounts and had stopped using his credit cards and his cell phone. He definitely hadn’t caught a plane but he could be on a train or a bus. Or he could be driving.
“But don’t worry, we’ll find him,” the headhunter said. “We’re good at this.”
38
“Hobson’s disappeared,” DeMarco said, “and I’m guessing he’s running from Mulray Pharma. He’s afraid they’re going to kill him because they think he might talk.”
“This is good news,” Emma said. “We can offer him protection if he’ll testify.”
“Only if we can find him first.”
“I’ll get Neil looking for him.”
“In case we can’t find him, I have another idea,” DeMarco said. “I want Nelson out of that hospital and in a jail cell. It’s going to be months before his case goes to trial, and I want to give him a taste of his future. Maybe then he’ll feel like talking.”
“Can you make that happen?”
“I think so. I don’t know what Mahoney promised the Arlington prosecutor, but I think he’ll do what I want, and I’m gonna make him move Nelson to the shittiest prison they got.”
Nelson was doing one-arm pull-ups on the bar above his bed when the group walked into his room.
There were four of them: Charles Erhart, the Arlington County prosecutor; DeMarco; an older man Nelson had never seen before, an overweight, gray-haired guy who had the watery eyes of a major booze hound; and a pencil-necked little geek wearing a bowtie and holding a TV tray in one hand and what looked like an old-fashioned adding machine under his arm. The geek immediately walked over to an electrical outlet, set up the TV tray near it, pulled over a chair, and plugged the machine into a wall socket.
“What’s going on?” Nelson said.
“You’re being arraigned today,” the prosecutor said.
“What?” Nelson said. Jesus, he hoped whatever was happening didn’t fuck up Kelly’s plan.
“We’re just waiting for your lawyer to get here.”
Dennis Conroy, Nelson’s lawyer, burst into the room a minute later and immediately said to the old boozer, “Your Honor, I object to this. My client is in no condition to participate in this procedure, and he should be arraigned in a courtroom like any other citizen.”
“Arlington County can’t afford to keep him here,” the prosecutor said. “We’re not only paying for a hospital bed, we’re paying cops overtime to guard him. And as for your client’s health, he’s in better shape than half the people in this hospital. When we walked in here, he was doing chin-ups.”
“Let’s get on with this,” the judge said. “I got things to do today.”
It turned out the geek with the bowtie was a court reporter, and he began tapping furiously on his machine as the prosecutor explained that Nelson had been arrested for armed robbery and attempted murder, and the fact that he’d tried to kill a cop made his crimes particularly “heinous.” He also noted that there were three eyewitnesses who would testify against Nelson, including Mr. DeMarco, who was in attendance and willing to answer any questions the judge might ask.
“How does your client plead, Mr. Conroy?” the judge said to Nelson’s lawyer.
“He pleads not guilty, and we request bail. My client is a decorated military veteran and, as you can see, clearly not a flight risk. If he’s granted bail, he’ll remain here in this hospital so he can continue to receive the physical therapy he desperately needs.”
“As Your Honor knows,” the prosecutor said, “Mr. Nelson was employed by the Warwick Foundation, and Warwick has links to the suspicious activities of a pharmaceutical company that has billons of dollars at its disposal. This makes him a flight risk.”
“That’s utter nonsense!” Conroy shouted. “There’s no proof whatsoever that my client has any connection to Mulray Pharma. Mr. Nelson has spent most of his life defending this country, and has spent the last five years working for a charitable organization.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the judge said, “I’ve heard enough. No bail. The defendant is remanded to Wallens Ridge until his trial.”
“Wallens Ridge!” Conroy shrieked. “You can’t do that, Your Honor. If my client is removed from this hospital, he should be placed in the Arlington County Detention Center like any other defendant awaiting trial in this county.”
“I was told the detention center isn’t equipped to deal with people in Mr. Nelson’s condition, but Wallens Ridge is. They got a dispensary there, or something.”
“Or something! Your Honor—”
“Wallens Ridge,” the judge said—and the court reporter unplugged his machine and began to fold up his TV tray.
Nelson couldn’t
believe this was happening to him. A month ago, he could have killed the men standing around his hospital bed with his bare hands; all he could do now was pray—pray that they didn’t plan to move him out of the hospital until tomorrow morning.
DeMarco waited until everyone else had filed out of Nelson’s room, then walked over to his bed. “This is just the beginning, Nelson. The only way you’re getting out of this without spending the next fifteen years in jail is to testify against Orson Mulray and admit that Brian Kincaid was framed for Downing’s murder.”
Nelson thought about smashing his fist into DeMarco’s face, but he just turned his head away and stared at the wall until DeMarco left the room.
Kelly parked the van in the curved driveway near the Emergency Room entrance, then opened the sliding door on the passenger side of the van and lowered the wheelchair ramp. He figured if anyone noticed the van, they’d think that somebody was there to pick up or drop off a patient. It wouldn’t get towed, because he didn’t plan to be in the hospital more than ten minutes.
He was wearing the white lab coat and hospital ID badge he’d stolen on one of his previous trips to the hospital. The ID belonged to a black man, but other than his skin color, he looked nothing like Kelly. Kelly wasn’t worried about that, however; he knew that no one ever looked closely at the pictures on ID badges.
He took the elevator up to Nelson’s floor and glanced down the hallway as soon as the elevator door opened. The nurses’ station was to his right, around a corner and not visible to him, but he could hear the two graveyard-shift nurses talking to each other. He turned to his left and proceeded down the hallway. As he walked, he pulled the Taser from the pocket of the lab coat. His plan was to walk toward the cop sitting outside Nelson’s door, nod to him in a friendly way—then jam the Taser into his chest and zap him until he was unconscious. After that, he’d drag the cop into the room, tie him up and gag him, then take Nelson from the hospital. Overcoming the cop would be easy compared with what he’d done when he was with Delta Force, but he was still energized and completely focused, the way he always was during a mission.