Half-Past Dawn

by Richard Doetsch

  “He’s not to have any visitors-”

  “So the only people who can have contact with him are the FBI and their doctors? Do you work for the FBI or the city of New York?”

  “The city.”

  “Who gave you the order not to let him see anyone?”

  “Mr. Tierney.”

  “Do you work for Mr. Tierney?”

  “No.”

  “Good, because Jack Keeler, as you know, is the DA for the city of New York. He was thought to have been killed this morning along with his wife, who is either missing or dead. He is being denied counsel, contact with his family, and all of his rights. I am his closest friend, and this here”-he pointed to Joy-“is his secretary. We are here to see him, and we will see him now unless you want to have a much larger problem that will be resolved by a judge.”

  Meeks looked at Nolan.

  “Frank, she’s good people. Lose the bluster.” Nolan turned to Susan. “He’s just upset. He’s doing the right thing. You can let him see Mr. Keeler.”

  Susan nodded and led Frank and Joy to room 504 just down the hall.

  “You know he’s very sick?” Susan said quietly.

  Frank and Joy stared at her, confused.

  “What kind of sick?” Joy asked.

  Joy looked at them a moment. “You said you were close friends of his?”

  “What kind of sick?” Frank asked, his voice stern. “We’re family. What kind of sick?”

  Meeks inhaled, pausing. “He’s dying. Cancer.” Susan paused. “If you’re his friends, you should know that, because his file says he’s not dealing with it, nor has he told his wife.”

  Joy looked away, trying to hold back her compounding emotions. Frank remained stoic, but the shock was visible in his eyes.

  They arrived at the door to Jack’s room. Two FBI agents stood on opposite sides.

  “Can we help you?” the first agent said.

  “And you are?”

  “Special Agent Matt Crews,” the taller agent said.

  “Have you notified Jack Keeler’s family of his presence here? Have you notified anyone? Has he spoken to an attorney?”

  “You need to speak to Director Tierney-”

  “No, we are his family, and we are going in to see him.”

  “I can’t permit that.”

  “Has he been charged with a crime?”

  “No.”

  “Are you holding him against his will, then?”

  “You need to speak to Deputy Director Tierney.”

  “I don’t give a shit if you come in there with me, but I’m going to speak to the DA.” Frank nodded to the nurse, who slipped the key into the door and opened it.

  Crews stepped in her way.

  “You,” Frank said to Crews, “come in with me. And you,” he said to the other agent, “you go get your boss. Bring him in here to speak to me. You guys have crossed the line. You have denied this man his lawful rights, and there will be hell to pay.”

  The short agent hustled off down the hall as Frank and Crews stepped into the room. Frank turned to Joy. “Get the car. If I’m not down in fifteen, go home, because I won’t be leaving here for a long time.” And he closed the door.

  “Hey, Jack,” Frank said, seeing his friend bound to the bed, his eyes red and tired.

  “Frank.”

  “They say you’re nuts.” Frank smiled.

  “I think I am.”

  “Well, I’m glad you finally admitted it. Now, do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Jack looked at him. “Yeah, but first, can you do me a favor and loosen my wrists?”

  “Sure, just give me a second.”

  Frank spun around, his gun drawn and aimed in Crews’s face. “Could you please kneel down?”

  “They’re going to be here any second,” Crews said as he complied, putting his hands on top of his head.

  “Which is why we have no time to waste.” Frank pulled out his first set of handcuffs and slapped a cuff on Crews’s right wrist. He pulled him to the other side of the bed, laid him on the floor, threaded the cuff around the bed leg, and slapped the other cuff around his left wrist. He pulled a handful of tissue from the side table and stuffed it into the agent’s mouth.

  “Now, about that favor.” Frank nodded as he tore back the Velcro straps from Jack’s arms and released the strap around his chest. Jack sat up and quickly climbed out of the bed.

  Without a word, he tore the layers of white bandages from his left forearm.

  And he felt his heart fill with hope.

  • • •

  The door exploded open, and Tierney and the shorter agent, Philippe, charged in to find Jack out of the bed and standing in the corner. Philippe drew his gun as the door slammed closed behind him, but it was too late. Frank’s pistol was pressed against the back of his head.

  “Either of you make a sound, he’s done,” Frank said, thwacking the agent in the back of the head with his pistol.

  “What the hell, Frank?” Tierney yelled.

  “What the hell, Gene?” Frank shot back. “You’ve got Keeler strapped to a bed, without counsel, family, anyone notified?”

  Frank took his second set of cuffs and secured Philippe’s hands behind his back, threading the cuffs through the leg of the bed, where he was awkwardly crouched.

  Frank turned his gun on Tierney and motioned him to the bed. “Get your ass in bed.”

  Tierney glared at him. “You have no idea what you’re doing.”

  “Oh, I have every idea what I’m doing. Now, lay the fuck down.”

  Tierney complied; Jack strapped him to the bed.

  “You want to tell me what’s really going on?” Jack asked as he leaned over Tierney.

  “You’re insane.” Tierney struggled against his bindings.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Where is Cristos holding my wife?”

  “Your wife is dead-”

  Jack drew back his fist and pile-drived Tierney in the jaw. “Don’t you say that. I know she’s alive.”

  “She died in the car accident,” Tierney growled. “You know it, and I know it.”

  “What is the FBI so scared of? What’s in that box that you so desperately need?”

  Tierney said nothing.

  “Can I tell you a little secret?”

  “Fuck you, you’re nuts.”

  “I wanted to be caught. I knew full well where you would bring me.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous.”

  “You think so? You don’t think I’m fully aware of police protocol when it comes to the arrest of high-level people, when it comes to bringing in someone like a DA on charges that no one will believe? I knew I’d be brought up here to the psych ward.”

  “Why would you do that? You wanted to be committed?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Jack said. “You’re good; you had me convinced, using my friend to bear your false news. Talking about all of those dead people, trying to convince me it was all in my head.”

  “So you think you’re not crazy?”

  “I know I’m not crazy. Now, where is Cristos holding my wife?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You know why I think you’re working with Cristos? Because once I was captured, once he got what he wanted, it would be far easier to pin it all on me, to kill my wife, dump her body where it would never be found, convince me and the world that I was crazy, no trial, just lock me up in a padded room until I succumbed to the cancer.”

  “That sounds like a pretty good plan,” Frank said, half joking.

  “But you know what? There is something in that box that Cristos was not expecting.”

  Tierney’s eyes narrowed slightly, just enough for Jack to see.

  Frank thumbed through Tierney’s phone, through the names of his last twenty calls, and passed the phone to Jack. “You know this guy?”

  Jack looked at the phone log, the last eight calls all to the same number, the same person. Someone Jack knew and tru
sted above all. “Son of a bitch.”

  Cristos sat in the passenger seat of the Suburban. Josh drove at a leisurely pace so as not to draw any more attention. Cristos had raced down the stairs, his prize in hand, and exited through the back of the unfinished structure. He’d cut through the alleyways and hidden in the shadows of a parking lot while police swarmed the area searching for him. He had lain motionless, the case tucked tightly against his body, blending with the shadows. He had avoided two cops who had taken up position not thirty feet away, watching the rear of the office building, keeping focus on the alleyway, never realizing their prey lay just feet away.

  Cristos slowed his heart, focused his senses, and became motionless, his mind taking on a Zen quality. He had used the technique during countless situations in which he would take up a position ten hours before his mark was to arrive, patiently lying in wait until the precise moment of pulling the trigger. He would finally rise from his position, shake off the moment, and exit the area, without cramp or ache.

  It was nearly an hour later when the cops were called off, and he slipped from the garage to arrive on 47th Street, where Josh lay in wait.

  Josh told him the moment he got into the car: Jack Keeler was in the mental ward of the Tombs, preliminarily diagnosed as insane, with the slaughter in the evidence room blamed on him.

  Cristos felt like a child with a wrapped gift in his lap. He had maintained such a singular focus on it that everything else in the world had become secondary. He had spent months tracking down his father, tracking down what he so desperately needed, secrets he was promised but in the end had to kill for.

  As they turned onto Broadway, heading downtown, Cristos was actually only two blocks from where he last saw his father.

  One month ago, Cristos had realized he was following him in Istanbul. He allowed it to continue through the Middle East into Africa. After a week of cat-and-mouse, he found his father in his hotel suite in Marrakech, sitting calmly on the floor, looking out the large living-room window at the Atlas Mountains in the distance.

  “You survived,” Cristos said, with no hint of emotion as he laid his briefcase on the coffee table and sat on the couch.

  “Come home with me,” his father said, continuing to look out the window.

  “I’m no longer your son,” Cristos reminded him.

  His father sat there a moment and finally turned to look at him. “I have foreseen your death… and it is soon.”

  Cristos stared back. “You are so fond of reminding me of the inevitability of fate, of the difficulty in altering its path, and yet here you sit telling me this?”

  “Our will, our love, is much stronger than fate. Surely you haven’t forgotten that.”

  Cristos laughed. “Really? Love is what made me who I am.”

  “Then allow my love for you, my son, to save you.”

  “After all this time.” Cristos shook his head in disbelief. “After all that I have done over the last twenty years…”

  “Your death is soon, Suresh. It will come from where and when you least expect it.”

  “Then tell me,” Cristos said. “If you are my father, if I am truly your son, then you will tell me so I can save myself.”

  His father remained silent.

  Cristos stared at his father and for the briefest of moments remembered what it was like to be a son, to be part of the world, to be not alone. He finally stood. “I am going to get us something to eat.”

  He went to the small kitchen and set out a tray of bread and cheese. He reached into the cabinet and withdrew his gun, tucking it into the back of his waistband. He picked up the tray and returned to the living room

  But his father was gone. He knew his son too well.

  Cristos turned to see his briefcase on the coffee table, wide open, his papers in disarray. And with shock, Cristos realized what his father had done.

  He had taken his red prayer book, the book he gave to him when he was a child. Cristos had written everything in this book, his entire life, every job, the people he contracted with, the fees he was paid, a record of every assassination.

  And so Cristos turned the table on his father; the hunted became the hunter. Cristos tried to capture his father on the train to the port city of Casablanca, only to find that he had eluded him by slipping out of the country before Cristos was even aware.

  He had to get his prayer book back for obvious reason. But even that paled in comparison with the obsession he felt growing inside himself, the desire to know his own fate. By knowing, he would change it, would stop it from ever happening, killing anyone and everyone remotely connected to his demise before it arrived.

  Cristos knew that his father had recorded it in his own prayer book, a place where he wrote his most important prophecies, his greatest secrets, wondrous things that were not meant to be shared with the world or any living soul.

  It became like a game, a deadly game, for Cristos would go to any lengths to extract from his father not only his fate but also his secrets, the grand mysteries and objects that he possessed and always carried on his person.

  It was well after midnight, the past Monday, when Cristos tracked his father to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Park Avenue in New York City. The suite was large, four rooms with an elegant marble bathroom provided by the Cotis government to their respected diplomat.

  Cristos opened the door to see his father sitting calmly on the couch, as if in wait.

  “Come back home with me,” his father said, his words filled with emotion. “Leave this world behind. It has corrupted your heart.”

  “I knew from the moment I killed you that you’d survive, you with all your tricks and magic. But with all that wisdom, all that power, you couldn’t stop me,” Cristos said.

  “I’m sorry for you,” his father said without reaction.

  “I should have used a larger blade.” Cristos walked into the room and stood over his father. “You stole my prayer book.”

  “You have corrupted it, using it for everything but what it was designed for.”

  “Oh, it contains my inner thoughts, my life, painting a pretty detailed picture.”

  “Of death…” his father said sadly.

  “Where is your book?” Cristos said. “That’s what I want to see.”

  “You do not want to know the future I have written in mine. Yours is very short.”

  “Show me the book!”

  “Suresh-”

  “That has not been my name for more than twenty years.”

  “Our identity is our heart, not what we call ourselves.”

  “Return my book, and give me yours, and you’ll save yourself,” Cristos said as he drew his gun and screwed on a silencer.

  “Know that in what you are about to do, you will seal your fate. You will set in motion a series of events that will end with your own death before this week is through. If you come back with me now, you will live.”

  Cristos stared at his father, absorbing his words, and without further thought pulled the trigger. The bullet struck his father in the stomach, and as he collapsed on the couch, Cristos reached across and tore open his shirt, looking at his bare chest, at the wound in his stomach that began to bubble with blood.

  Cristos turned to his father’s bag on the floor and rummaged through it. Beyond prayer robes and some personal effects, there was nothing there.

  “Where are they?” Cristos shouted in desperation.

  “You will never find them,” his father said as he held his stomach. “Soon to be placed in the hands of someone pure of heart-”

  “I’ll tear the heart from their chest.”

  “I’m sorry for you,” his father said through labored breaths.

  Cristos searched the suite, the safe, every inch of the hotel room, but found nothing.

  “Does it hurt yet?” Cristos spat out in anger. “The poison in the bullet is for two purposes: to ensure that your death is painful but, more important, to make sure this time it is permanent.”

 
“Know this, my son, it will not be long until we are together again.”

  Now, riding in the Suburban, Cristos looked down at the case, which he felt would soon provide all the answers. Cristos finally had what he came for; he would carry out the second part of his mission without distraction and disappear from the world like a ghost, as he had done so many times before.

  Cristos finally turned his attention to the small lock on the case and smashed it with the butt of his gun.

  Savoring the moment, the anticipation of victory, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, knowing that he possessed the power to cheat his own death. He finally lifted the lid, his heart holding in expectation, the culmination of his quest; he dug his hand inside, and as he looked at the contents…

  … he lost his mind in rage.

  CHAPTER 35

  FRIDAY, MIDNIGHT

  Do me a favor?” Frank said, pointing at Jack’s former room. “Don’t open that door.”

  Nolan looked up at Jack and Frank standing in the hallway of the mental facility. “And what are we supposed to say when people come asking?”

  Susan Meeks handed Jack the rabbit’s-foot key ring, a key fob, and his shoes.

  “Just say you saw me but never saw us leave. Trust me when I tell you that they will be in far worse trouble for holding Jack than anyone who assisted us.”

  Jack looked at Nolan as he buttoned up his shirt, tossing the hospital gown onto the floor. “Someone is holding my wife. I don’t have much time.”

  Nolan looked at Jack. “I never saw you, but if I did, I’d tell you good luck in finding her.”

  Nolan buzzed the door, and Frank slipped out into the small vestibule and hit the elevator call button.

  The elevator door of cab one opened, but Frank didn’t get in and allowed the door to close. He hit the call button again.

  Cab three arrived, but Frank again let it leave without him.

  It was when cab four arrived that he turned and motioned through the glass to Jack, who was buzzed through the security door and came out pushing a wheelchair stacked with blankets.

  Jack raced into the open cab and without a moment’s hesitation, leaped onto the wheelchair, reaching up to the roof of the cab and pushing aside the trap door. The shaftway was aglow in the red pin lasers.