“In a way it was,” Frankie responded. “For her, at least. Women think differently, fellas. Older women like Mrs. Royce in particular. There’s a romantic sort of thing about being ‘connected’ to a younger, powerful man. And she saw John Barrish as very powerful.
“So, step three: assistance. She started giving him money for the AVO, just like her father and grandfather had done for the Klan.”
“How much altogether?” Lou inquired.
“She never said in the diaries, but she was loaded.”
“The money was hers, not Monte’s,” Omar reported. “He had the business, but she had the family fortune tucked away. We ran down her accounts and found withdrawal after withdrawal, all cash. And remember those cash bundles in the desk drawer? Those match exactly in amount with several withdrawals.”
“And who—need I ask—did the actual withdrawing?” Lou wondered needlessly.
“Mrs. Royce’s signature on the papers, Monte Royce’s hands on the cash. She’d okay it, he’d go pick it up.” Omar shrugged. “From him it somehow got to Barrish and Kostin and whoever else she was supporting. But we do know it totaled over fifteen million from the time she met Barrish.”
“Fifteen million?” The A-SAC slid back in his seat at the head of the table. “That’s a lot of mad money.”
“Hate money,” Art corrected the emotion.
Lou Hidalgo nodded. “So Mrs. Royce bankrolled Barrish because she liked him.” His face screwed into a frown.
“That, and some of the nostalgic connections,” Frankie expanded. “Remember what she said about Trent? That’s Felix Trent.”
“The guy Barrish put on a pedestal?” Hidalgo said, leafing through the thick mental file devoted to the AVO leader.
“The same one,” Frankie confirmed. “Mrs. Royce’s father was a friend of Trent’s. In a way she thought of her connection with Barrish as a sort of divine signal.” She paused, feeling a connection herself to Mrs. Royce. But it was only gender, and that was grossly insufficient to allow understanding of her actions. “The stupid old woman.”
“What else do we know?” Hidalgo asked.
“The minivan the Barrishes used was found at a shopping center in Palmdale,” Art reported. “Their house was deserted.”
“What about the Mankowitz and Royce hits?” That was something Hidalgo was puzzled about.
“Royce and his mother were hit sometime between five and eight,” Art answered.
“That was the coroner’s finding,” Frankie added. “But some things at the house point to a more concrete time. Royce was up, dressed, and in the kitchen. The nurse said he usually got up at six. Give him half an hour to dress and make his tea, and that puts it back to six-thirty. And the alarm was manually turned off at seven-fifteen. The security company that monitors their system records the times the systems are active for liability purposes.”
“So whether Royce or someone else turned off the alarm, we have them getting hit at the earliest at seven-fifteen,” Art said. “Mankowitz we know was hit at one minute after eight from the nine-one-one calls reporting glass breaking and strange sounds. They used silencers, we’re certain, otherwise it would have been a ‘shots fired’ call. All the callers were hearing was the sound of the rounds hitting Mankowitz’s Mercedes.”
“Forty-five minutes apart and different calibers,” Hidalgo observed.
“Three-eighty on the Royces, and forty-fives on Mankowitz,” Lightman said. “And two forty-fives on World Center’s plant manager. All the spent casings were clean. Wiped before they were loaded. Smooth prints. Pro-like.”
“The only people we know of that Barrish had to work with him are his family,” Art said. “A wife and two sons. No record on any of them.”
“This is a lot of work for four people,” Hidalgo commented. “The Royces, Mankowitz, the World Center. All within an hour and fifteen minutes.”
Art had no answer for that obvious and very correct observation. But there had to be one, and he would find it.
A single tap on the conference room door preceded Special Agent Dan Burlingame. His expression told those gathered to drop what they were doing. “KMOC just got a call from some group claiming the World Center as their work.”
“We have a hundred claims, Dan,” Art reminded him.
“Did any of those others know that the cylinder of nerve gas was in the A/C ducts on Seventy-four?”
The silence after Dan’s revelation of the message’s most important part was brief, just long enough for looks to be exchanged.
“I have a team going over for a copy of it,” Burlingame said.
“Who made the claim?” Art asked.
“Some group called the New Africa Liberation Front.”
Art’s eyes narrowed. New Africa? What in the hell was going on?
“I made a quick check on this group,” Burlingame reported. “We have them listed only as a matter of record, but LAPD has a file on them.”
“They’re an actual group?” Art asked skeptically.
Burlingame nodded. “I’ve got the address LAPD has on them.”
“Liberation Front?” Espinosa said. “Sounds like a revolutionary bunch.”
“That’s what LAPD said,” Burlingame confirmed.
“Are you saying this is a black group?”
Burlingame nodded to Art. He knew it wasn’t the answer desired. But it was a fact. “Black revolutionaries. That’s what LAPD called them.”
Damn. Art looked to the A-SAC and stood. “We’ll check it out.”
Hidalgo stood, too. “Fast.”
Art gave a crisp nod and turned to Burlingame. “The address?”
“On my desk.”
“Let’s do it.”
* * *
Cars were like fingerprints, but infinitely more simple to dispose of. Activities and people could be traced to, or through, a car, and the Oldsmobile Cutlass involved in the shooting of Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Fitzroy made it only as far as Orem, Utah. There it was left burning in an empty parking space of a large apartment complex in favor of a Volkswagen van with a rickety box trailer attached whose owner would be needing it no more. That lasted the rest of their journey to Baltimore, then it, too, had to be done away with in favor of “clean” transportation. And more transportation.
Darian eased the just-purchased ‘84 Volvo sedan into the space to the right of the later-model Ford van. Its door slid open as he stopped.
“Brother Darian,” Roger said, sitting in the van’s first bench seat and running a hand over his newly shaved head. “Like my new doo?”
Mustafa leaned forward and looked from the front window. “We all need to look different.”
Darian nodded agreement, though they’d have to retain some individuality. “As long as we’re not four bald black guys running around together. And lose the hat, Brother.”
Mustafa reached up and slid the brimless NALF cap off.
“Where’d you ditch the Volkswagen?” Darian asked.
“In the river back off Ninety-five,” Mustafa answered, turning back to Roger. “What was the name of the place?”
“Laurel, wasn’t it?” the smooth-headed revolutionary responded without surety.
Mustafa shrugged. “Anyway, it’s nowhere near here.”
Roger bent down and looked past Darian to the passenger seat. “Brother Moises. How goes it?”
“It goes, Brother Roger.” Moises ran a hand over his still intact buzz cut. “But I’ll keep my doo, if you don’t mind.”
“Better put some whiskers on that baby face, then,” Roger ribbed. “Make that boy look full-grown, Brother Darian.”
The NALF leader ignored the joking and looked to his number two. “I made the call.”
“Good.” Let them know that the black man knows how to strike back, Mustafa thought.
“Did you find a place?” Darian asked.
“A little apartment over by Mercy Hospital. You and Brother Moises?”
“We’re going to look now.”
Must
afa removed a piece of paper and handed it to Darian. “This is the phone booth across the street from our place.”
“Okay. Settle in and lay low. We’ll call you a week from today.”
Mustafa nodded. “Next Monday.”
“Two in the afternoon,” Darian said, putting the cream-colored Volvo in reverse. “Don’t be late.”
“Never,” Mustafa promised.
* * *
Art exited the “headquarters” of the New Africa Liberation Front on South Vermont to the sound of thunder in the distance and the sight of Director Gordon Jones approaching from his car. The director’s accompanying entourage was hanging back.
“Sir,” Art said as Jones stopped just short of him.
The director acknowledged the greeting with a nod and looked past the agent to the nondescript front of the NALF’s apparent home. “They’re the ones?”
“It appears so,” Art said without conviction. He saw the director notice his hedging straight away. “They have to be. No one outside the team or the Army captain in charge of the building search knew where that cylinder was found.”
“Are we sure it was these guys who made the call?” Jones inquired.
“A note left inside says the same thing their call did,” Art informed him. “I can’t see any reason not to believe their claim.”
Jones looked to his agent now. “Then why don’t you sound as sure as your words?” An answer didn’t come, and that didn’t surprise the director. “Not the perps you expected.”
“No, sir.”
The drizzle that was almost nonexistent suddenly gained form. Drops tapped Art’s head, while Jones opened a collapsible umbrella for them both. “I read the reports your A-SAC was sending. You were leaning toward John Barrish as a suspect.”
“Yes, sir.”
The New Africa Liberation Front. Jones looked again to the storefront, then back to Art. “And now? What explains this? It doesn’t exactly fit into that theory.”
From any other person, in any other tone, Art would have seen this as a mocking attack on the work he’d done so far. But it was not. The director was simply searching for answers. For the answer.
“Barrish was still involved with Allen, Kostin, and Royce,” Art began. “I’m sure of that. These guys... I don’t know.”
“Customers?” Jones suggested.
“Kostin the salesman.” Art considered that.
“Selling his wares to whoever on the side,” Jones added. “The ‘whoever’ in this case was the NALF.”
Art nodded, but it was only a series of muscle contractions. He couldn’t add complete agreement to that scenario. But he couldn’t dispute it with any credible evidence to the contrary, either.
“You didn’t screw up, Jefferson,” Jones said. “You had a target. A good target. No one knew there was more than one.”
Screw up? Did I?
“A-SAC Los Angeles says you’re still on this. Find these bastards.”
Again Art nodded, but little was behind this gesture either. Too little, too late...at least for those in the World Center. “Will do, sir.”
Jones lingered for a moment, then walked back to his car as the sky opened to a full downpour. Art Jefferson stood in the rain and watched him drive away.
EIGHTEEN
Direction
Frankie grabbed the phone on the second ring as Art paged through what information the LAPD had provided on the New Africa Liberation Front. “Aguirre.”
The prolonged silence after that brought Art’s eyes up. His partner’s head was bobbing gently at what was being said over the phone, her pen jerking like a seismograph’s stylus back and forth across a legal pad.
“Spell it,” Frankie said. “O-R-E-M.” She listened for a few seconds more before hanging up.
“What is it?”
“Utah Highway Patrol had an officer killed the night of the World Center attack,” Frankie explained. “The officer had a camera setup running and it recorded the thing on tape. There was some bad glare from his spotlight on the back window of the car, so they sent it to our lab in Washington for enhancement. It came back this morning, with—guess who—Darian Brown shown gunning down the officer. There were three other male blacks in the car.”
“It was at our lab and our people didn’t recognize him?” Art shook his head.
“Well, they found the car torched right after the shooting and traced it back here,” Frankie continued. “The RO sold it just before the attack to some guy. It was a cash-under-the-table deal, so no paperwork. They had no way of knowing the two were related until they got the tape back and matched it with our bulletins on the NALF.”
The drip of Art’s decaf filling the pot marked the silent seconds as he thought. “Three other males plus Brown, huh? We only know of Brown and two others. They picked up someone new.”
“Or someone we didn’t know about.”
“Hmmm,” Art grunted. “They found the car in Orem?”
“Yeah.”
“I assume they’re running down all stolens there.”
“Six the night of the murder,” Frankie reported.
“Quiet city,” Art commented. “Get a copy of that tape directly from our lab in D.C. Have Hal and Omar run the pictures of the known NALF members past the guy who sold them the car.”
“Got it,” Frankie said.
Art turned off his coffeemaker and poured himself a cup of unleaded. “Four black guys in Utah? Not the best place to hide out.”
“A common place to travel through, though,” Frankie observed.
“Yep.” Art sipped from his mug. The small stack of plastic hot cups next to the coffeemaker was for visitors. “You know what this means.”
Frankie nodded. “They’ve got somewhere to go.”
* * *
Earl Casey surprised the president’s chief of staff in his West Wing office just before lunch.
“Earl, I was just heading to Duke’s for a bite. You want to join me?”
“No, thanks.” Casey walked to Gonzales’s desk and stood at its side. “I want you to do something.”
“What?”
Casey explained his idea in less than the predicted sixty seconds. When he finished the chief of staff was smiling thoughtfully.
“I ran it by the Man a few minutes ago, and he liked it. He even thought there might be an opening to the speech in the whole thing.”
“I think he may be right,” Gonzales agreed blindly, though not without some sense of what the president might be thinking. “Interesting.”
“I want to do it,” Casey said. “It smells right.”
“Agreed.”
“Will you take care of the invitation?”
Gonzales nodded and made a note to take care of it right away. “With pleasure.”
* * *
Toby entered the spacious living room from the kitchen scratching his dyed and shorn hair. “How do I look?”
“Like a bad Elvis impersonator,” Stanley commented from his seat by the roaring fire.
“Funny. Mom’s ready for you now.” Toby pulled a short punch at his little brother and took the vacated seat by the crackling fireplace. His father sat quietly in an overstuffed chair. Behind him out the huge window the purples and oranges of the setting sun draped the skies above the George Washington National Forest. “I like this place, Pop. The view’s a lot nicer than back home.”
“It’s temporary, Toby,” John Barrish reminded his son.
“I know. But it’s nice. I think Mom likes it a lot.”
John looked over his shoulder to the expanse of meadow behind the house. Five grand a month it was costing them, plus a twenty grand deposit, and for that he had a fireplace, three thousand square feet, solitude at the end of a country road near Fulks Run, Virginia, and a view of a doe browsing near the tree line. An expensive and comfortable way station, but a way station nonetheless.
“What color contacts are you getting?”
“Brown,” Toby answered.
Joh
n surveyed his eldest boy’s new appearance. It wasn’t right. It needed something. The lines of his face were still too familiar. “Grow a mustache, and make sure your mother dyes it.”
“Okay.”
A log, consumed to the point of being a single roll of orange embers, collapsed in the fireplace, sending a plume of sparks upward into the dark recesses of the riverstone chimney. A burst of heat accompanied the disintegration, causing John to slide his chair back from the hearth.
“What about you, Pop?”
John touched his growing gray locks, which he’d maintained at a military-like one inch since high school. “Shaggy red hair and a goatee.”
“That’ll do it,” Toby commented, smiling at the thought of his father as a carrot-top.
“What about the Africans?” John inquired.
“I’ll put an ad in the Baltimore Sun in a couple of weeks. They’ll be expecting it then.”
“And Vorhees?”
The sound of scissors clicking rapidly drew Toby’s eyes toward the kitchen briefly. “Stan’s going to start on that soon. We’ll be ready. What about the tools and stuff?”
In his earlier life, before exposition of his views generated the kind of money that could finance an organization and support a family, John Barrish had made a modest living as a machinist. Nothing so complicated would be needed in this instance. Mostly hand tools, an arc-welding rig, and several types of metal. Light metal. Strong metal. Yes, expensive metal, but the money had to be spent on something. “I’ll take care of those.”
Toby nodded and let his body press into the soft cushions of the couch. They had been on the move, always busy, for so long that relaxation felt alien. But it also felt good. “Hey, Pop. You wanna go find a lake tomorrow? There’s got to be one around here somewhere. We ain’t got anything else to do. Maybe have a picnic, or go fishing?”
“It’s winter, Toby,” John said. “The fish don’t bite well this time of year.” The father-to-son instructions on life’s important matters flashed in John’s mind. His father had said something about fishing then. Don’t fish in the winter, or something like that. He hadn’t passed things such as that to his boys. He wondered if he should have.
“I didn’t say we had to catch anything,” Toby said. “C’mon. You, me, Stan. We’ll just sit, and throw some lines in the water, and shoot the shit.”
Capitol Punishment (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 3) Page 22