Dead Line

by Brian McGrory

  “Get the fuck out here!”

  That was still Jankle, or his soundalike, growing impatient, and obviously profane. I looked at Toby in the dark. We were so close together that I could feel his breath on my skin. We were so close together that I could hear one of our hearts beating, and I wasn’t sure whether it was his or mine.

  I nodded to him, as in, now what? He stared back at me, but I couldn’t read the expression, didn’t know what it meant, had no idea where he was going to take this. I was only sure of one true thing: in his mind, he had nothing to lose. He already thought the Feds, for an as still yet unexplained reason, wanted to kill him. All of which put me very far into harm’s way.

  Harkins grazed his hand along the gravelly ground and picked up a sizable rock. I braced myself, wondering if he was about to slam it into my head. Instead, he scouted a distant spot on the other side of the clearing and fired the stone in that direction. I mean, come on. That’s the oldest trick in the book—“Look over there,” and they all really do, like something that Sgt. O’Rourke might have tried on F Troop.

  But sure enough, the rock plunked against something hard, and immediately, there were multiple bursts of gunfire in that exact direction, the roar filling the air and spreading out amid the black sky and the trees. Toby yanked at my arm, virtually lifting me up off the ground, and the two of us scampered from the edge of the grove of trees to deep within it, running furiously among the sturdy trunks, pounding across the uneven ground, pushing farther and farther into the dark depths.

  I’m going to make a confession here. As we ran, his grip loosened, naturally so. His trigger hand was no longer pointed directly at me, because to have done so would have slowed us down considerably. At any point, I believe I could have given his arm something of a karate chop and disappeared into the trees on my own, circled back, and escaped. Risky? Yes. He might have regained composure. He very well may have caught a long look at me before I vanished. He could have shot me. But more likely, not.

  And yet I stayed. I stayed because of my curiosity. I stayed out of a sense of duty, not to Toby Harkins or to the FBI or even Hilary Kane, though certainly her more than anyone else. No, I stayed out of duty to the Record’s readers, the good people of Boston, who might never have a better chance to know where the nation’s most wanted fugitive was and what had become his fate. I stayed because I wanted to know, and needed, in turn, to inform.

  And a good thing, too, because as we pounded through the forest, our arms in front of our eyes to push back dangling branches, our gaze glued ahead to avoid the thicket of trees, we suddenly found ourselves face-to-face with the law.

  Tom Jankle stepped out from behind a tree on the edge of a new clearing. He flicked on a high-powered spotlight and shone it in our eyes. He said, calmly and collectedly, “Freeze and drop your guns or I blow your fucking brains out.”

  Toby screeched to a halt. His arm tightened around mine. We were about ten yards away from Jankle, who could see us from behind the light that he was holding far better than we could see him.

  Harkins held fast to his gun. He yelled back, “I have a hostage.” First thing I thought was, Jesus Christ, he’s got a hostage. And then it occurred to me in an increasingly uncharacteristic moment of clarity: I was the hostage.

  And with that, I went from between that rock and a hard place to quite literally staring down the barrel of my own demise.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  I got to thinking, standing there on the edge of that dark forest with Toby Harkins’s sinewy arm wrapped around my neck and his gun pointed at my head, and Tom Jankle standing but ten yards away, his gun pointed in the general direction of my head, that there wasn’t a whole lot of good that was about to come out of this situation.

  Suppose, for example, that Harkins shot and killed Jankle. I was the only witness to that act, and I would surely be next on his hit list, and since Toby goes through bullets like Hugh Hefner goes through Viagra, that would probably mark me as an immediate victim. And suppose Toby was right, that the FBI wanted him dead, and that Jankle shot him right there, right then. Again, I would be the only witness, and Jankle might well kill me on the spot, then blame the whole thing on a confused shoot-out obscured by the dark.

  I felt little streams of sweat running down my back, chilly in the autumn air. Cool perspiration formed along my forehead. I stood there silently, a little bit frightened, but oddly, far more fascinated, about how this standoff would end. We grow up in this reporting business believing we are always detached, and over the years, having seen colleagues killed and corrupted, I’ve learned otherwise. But even here, with a pair of guns aimed in my general vicinity, I had a naïve, if diminishing air of invincibility.

  So I stood and I watched and I wondered.

  “Toby, we go back way too far, you and me, to have any bullshit happen now. Put the gun down, and let’s figure out what we’re going to do about this.”

  That was Jankle, only adding to the confusion of a complex situation, at least as far as I was concerned, though maybe not in Toby’s mind. Let’s review how many nuggets of interest were contained in that two-sentence declaration. We go back way too far, and Let’s figure out what we’re going to do about this. Well, okay, just two, but pretty significant ones.

  Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t strike me as the normal way in which a federal agent would address the nation’s number one most wanted fugitive in a standoff where there’s a relatively innocent life on the line, meaning mine. How far back do they go, and why? Why would he work together to “figure out what we’re going to do about this?” One more question: What the flying fuck was going on here?

  Of course, other questions nagged as well, such as, would a bullet from Toby’s semiautomatic handgun kill me immediately, or would I writhe on the ground first like a freshly caught fish on a cutting table? Is Jankle a good shot, or might he take me out by mistake while trying to shoot at Toby? Can I call my mommy, or would these two disapprove?

  Toby replied, “Put the gun down and let me slip away into the woods and you’ll get credit for tracking me down before I somehow got out alive.”

  There was silence between them, silence as if Jankle was considering this exact scenario, which made absolutely no sense to me, but seemed to have some plausibility for the two of them.

  Jankle said, “And what do we do with him?”

  He nodded at me as he said it. I took on the feeling of an unnecessary appendage, or like someone’s inbred, untrained terrier, an incessant nuisance, really stupid, something beyond dispensable.

  “You don’t let him out alive.”

  I cleared my throat, though it was my head that was the truly clogged part of my body. You don’t let him out alive. I was suddenly part of a deal, a bargaining chip, a negotiating point, that which was tossed back and forth in the ruminations of an awkward moment. Decisions could be made that were right or wrong, and regrets might come to haunt them later, but never me, for I’d be dead.

  Jankle stared back at Harkins. At least, I think he was staring, but in the light, in my current frame of mind, these things were tough to tell. He said, “Shoot him right now and I’ll let you go.”

  Harkins tightened his grip on the gun and pushed it harder against my temple. I could actually feel the tension in his hand, the tiny movement of the cold barrel against my skin. There was a long second, a gruesome second, when there was virtually no doubt in my brain that Toby Harkins was about to pull the trigger. I wondered if heaven had a grassy field where I could throw a tennis ball for Baker.

  I felt the need to say something. My head, my life, my responsibility. There was no one else in this crowd who was ready to speak up for me.

  “Toby,” I said, starting slowly, “the second you pull that trigger, Jankle’s going to shoot you dead right here. And it’s going to look like self-defense, because you would already have killed me.”

  That seemed to register some, at least in terms of the tension in his hand. This was li
ke one of those ridiculous dials that focus group members turn during presidential debates to express agreement or disagreement with a candidate. Say the right thing, Toby loosens his grip ever so slightly. Say the exact right thing and maybe he lowers the gun. Say the wrong thing and I’m dead.

  I stood there, sweating even more, wondering about Jankle’s play, about their past, about my future, about whether I’d see the light of another glorious day.

  Toby called across to Jankle, “Answer that. How do I know?”

  “What are your other options?”

  Jankle added, “Kill him or I’ll kill you both right now. He’s a worthless hostage. I’d rather see him dead.”

  I kind of cleared my throat again, but had no idea what, if anything, I could or would say. If Jankle was trying to help me, he was certainly pursuing a perverted means. For his part, Toby neither tightened nor loosened his grip, though I could all but hear his mind whirring as he tried to calculate the conclusion of every possible scenario. Believe me, I was doing the same thing, but I wasn’t the one with any decision-making capacity at the moment.

  Harkins said to Jankle, “You told me I’d be free for the rest of my life. That was your guarantee. I have that first meeting, that time we got together on the seawall, I have it on tape.”

  “So do I,” Jankle fired back. “And I never told you that, at least not in the context of you reaching out to the fucking press.” He sounded angrier here, Jankle did, and he said, “What the fuck were you thinking, you little piece of slime.”

  “Fuck you,” Toby yelled back, and I could feel the tension in his hand, in his whole arm, all over again.

  This is not what anyone needed, this heavy dose of anger added to an already overwrought situation. Normally I’d be utterly fascinated by this dialogue, and truth be known, I was. But the big problem still remained that I couldn’t conjure a single scenario that ended with me walking away alive.

  “I made you,” Toby said to Jankle. His voice was beyond strained, pocked by fright and frustration. I actually thought it was about to crack, and maybe him with it, which probably wouldn’t be all that good for me.

  He continued, “I made you rich. I gave you more information than you could ever use. I made you a star agent. I gave you money and status and anything else that you ever wanted and needed, and you’re telling me that you’re going to kill me now?”

  Jankle stood statuesque in the quiet dark. I could hear crickets chirping and leaves rustling and the sound of Harkins breathing, but nothing else.

  Jankle, after a long moment, said, “Toby. I gave you freedom. I protected you. I flipped state cops and held back Boston PD detectives who were gunning for you. I let you run the city, unfettered. And when the indictments came down, I warned you to get out of town.”

  At this point, both these clowns could have shot me in the head and I’m not sure I would have flinched or felt it. I was so caught up in the unfolding drama that I was losing touch with the reality of my impending death, drawn closer by every statement, every sentence, every word that was uttered in the dark. The two of them were acting like I was dead already, which was not, best that I could tell, a particularly good sign.

  Still, the revelations were extraordinary. Basically, what they were saying was that Toby Harkins was a fully protected federal informant who ran a murderous crime syndicate with the full authorization of the federal government. The Feds also convinced the likes of Boston PD—meaning Hank Sweeney and probably others—to stand down on any arrest or investigation. In return, the FBI got what sounded like a boatload of information about other organized crime figures in Boston, and Jankle had achieved extraordinary celebrity by putting them behind bars. Being a reporter, I wanted to ask questions, most notably, which one of you gentleman killed Hilary Kane? But I sensed this wasn’t the exact right time to do it.

  “So I’d say we’re even,” Jankle said, his voice marinated in contempt. “Wouldn’t you?”

  Silence. Jankle said in a louder, more taunting voice, “So tell me, Toby, why’d you want to meet with a reporter?”

  “I wanted to unload the paintings.”

  Shouting now, Jankle said, “You wanted to confess that you were a federal informant, you dumb fuck. You were looking to rat on me in hopes of cutting some sort of deal.”

  “Not true.” Harkins was outright panicked. His eyes were wide, his voice was shaky, and so was the hand that held the gun that remained pressed against my head. “You wanted me dead. You were trying to kill me.”

  Jankle was incredulous. “Trying to kill you? Trying to fucking kill you? I tried protecting you. I leaked word that the fucking broad with the mayor stumbled across the files that said where you were. I did that so you’d know what to do with her before she started yammering to the wrong people.”

  Harkins replied, “I didn’t kill her.”

  “No shit. I decided you’d fuck it all up, that you were out of practice, that you’re getting fat and lazy on the run. So I decided to do it myself.”

  I could sense Harkins’s arm nearly go limp as he processed that which he was just told. I, too, was floored. Tom Jankle, my source, was also Hilary’s killer, because he didn’t trust that the scenario that he had intricately mapped out would be properly carried out. I became so angry I wanted to grab Harkins’s gun and shoot Jankle dead right there amid the tall pines of an unknowing night.

  “You’re saying my father didn’t kill her?”

  “He doesn’t have the balls. I fucking did it—for you.”

  “You did it for yourself,” Harkins said, softer now. “You should have told me. I unloaded those two paintings to throw this asshole off the trail.” He was, I believe, referring to me. Friends, allies, are tough to find these days.

  These revelations were followed by a protracted silence, not broken until Harkins said, “And now you’re telling me that if I kill him”—he shook the gun against my skin as he said this—“you’ll let me walk away?”

  “I will.”

  I felt Harkins become so taut that the barrel of the gun was chattering against the side of my head, as if it were shivering. He was getting ready to kill me. In a world in which I knew too little else, this I understood as fact.

  I didn’t think. I didn’t process. I didn’t foresee, calculate, devise, or anything else. What I did instead was slam my body directly into Toby Harkins, at once pushing him, then driving my shoulders hard into his ribs and stomach like a sophomore freak on the Oklahoma University offensive line. I felt a gush of breath rush out of him. I toppled over him as he fell. And then I heard the nearby sound of a gunshot—his, followed by another one a little farther away.

  Lying on the cold ground, I immediately, frantically, felt my chest, my head, my limbs, for the sensation of warm blood. Nothing. I looked at Harkins, sprawled out beside me. He was dazed, but apparently uninjured. The gun was no longer in either of his hands, but I couldn’t see it on the dark ground. I slammed my fist into his nose, not out of vengeance, but to keep him on the ground.

  I felt around for the gun, but still no sign, so I crawled slowly toward the base of a tree. The light that had been trained on us a moment ago was now lying on the ground, pointing arbitrarily toward an inconsequential patch of woods. I wondered if Jankle had dropped it and fled. I was wondering this, as a matter of fact, when I heard muffled voices followed by the sickening thud of bone hitting flesh.

  I moved cautiously in the direction of the abandoned light. When I was but a few feet away, off to the side, I saw Jankle in silhouette on his knees, his hands wrapped around a wounded thigh. About three feet away was the massive form of Hank Sweeney, gripping a gun that was trained directly on Jankle.

  I heard Jankle seethe, “I saved your fucking ass years ago, saved your fucking life, and this is what you do to pay me back.”

  Sweeney said, “You gave me no damned choice.”

  He paused and added, “And you give me no choice now.”

  I heard a clicking sound, as if Sweeney wa
s getting ready to fire again. I don’t think he or Jankle knew I was there within earshot and eyeshot, not to mention gunshot. So I called out, “Hank, he’s not worth it.”

  Hank looked over at me, as if shaken from a reverie. “Jack,” he said, “you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Where’s Harkins?”

  “Unconscious.”

  “I shot Jankle in the leg. I thought he had killed you.”

  “Put the gun down, Hank.”

  Jankle said, “Shoot him, Sweeney. You can’t kill me, and I’m not going down without taking you with me.”

  I saw Jankle’s weapon on the ground between us, out of his reach. I regarded Hank for a long moment. He spent a lifetime putting away the city’s most heinous criminals, always with what I believed to be an unwavering sense of wrong from right. But something, somewhere, had gone terribly awry, and the look on his face in the dark of this unfathomable night said he didn’t know how to get back on the right side of life.

  I kept walking. Hank kept pointing. Jankle remained on the ground with a foul look on his face.

  “Hank, hand me the gun,” I said.

  Now it was his arm that was quivering. Sweat was rolling down his shiny face. The expression in his eyes told me he was about to shoot, and if he did, that would mean that he either had to kill me next, or know that he would be splashed across the front page of the next day’s Record as the retired Boston homicide detective who gunned down a once-respected federal agent. There’s more than bad publicity in that; there’s the death penalty.

  “Hand me the damned gun, Hank. Do the right thing. He’s not worth it. You are.”

  Finally, he looked at me, the gun still pointed at Jankle’s head. Then he dropped his arm in one gradual motion, took the gun in his other hand, and turned it over to me, handle first. As he did this, Jankle skidded along the ground toward his own firearm. Hank took two strides toward him and kicked him so hard in the face that his jaw would forever be coming out of the top of his head. Agent Tom Jankle, to say the least, was out cold.