The second perimeter

by Mike Lawson

  “But I can’t approach her,” Carmody had said. “I could kill her— a long shot with a rifle— but I can’t get near her. She has the gang all over the street acting as lookouts.”

  Carmody didn’t tell DeMarco that he had imitated Li Mei’s strategy and hired kids from a Vietnamese gang to kidnap Mahoney.

  Carmody had told DeMarco to be careful approaching Li Mei. “One-celled organisms have more conscience than these gangsters. They’ll kill you and go eat dinner afterward, and not give it a thought.”

  What Carmody hadn’t told him was exactly how he was supposed to be careful.

  At the top of the stairs there was another door. Chinese symbols were painted on the door, which DeMarco naturally couldn’t read. He knocked, waited a few seconds, and knocked again. He turned and looked down the stairs. The three Chinese were halfway up the stairs. Two of the men were in their twenties; the third, a man wearing a Red-skins jacket, was older, maybe in his mid-thirties. The one in the lead had a gun in his hand now, held down by the side of his leg. DeMarco turned back to face the door; he thought he saw the peephole darken.

  The door opened. It was Li Mei.

  This was the closest DeMarco had been to her, and he had two immediate impressions. The first was that he was standing a foot away from the most lethal person he had ever known, a woman who had killed eight people and who would kill him without hesitation. The second was that she was stunning, and he could understand how John Washburn had been captivated by her.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  “You know who I am,” DeMarco said. “I’m the guy who was with Emma in the racquetball court, the guy you tried to kill.” He wondered if Li Mei really didn’t recognize him, if Emma was the only one she could see.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Emma followed one of your pals,” DeMarco said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the three men on the stairs.

  “You’re lying,” Li Mei said.

  “Emma wants to meet with you.”

  Li Mei smiled at this.

  “Think about it,” DeMarco said. “If she wanted you dead or captured, I wouldn’t be here. The cops would.”

  “Maybe they’re on the way,” Li Mei said, but she didn’t look nervous.

  “You know they’re not.”

  Li Mei nodded. “Why does she want to meet?”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” DeMarco said. “To clear this up, I guess.”

  Li Mei laughed, her laughter sounding a bit hysterical to DeMarco. “To clear this up!” she said. “What does that mean? What the hell does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” DeMarco said. “All I know is that Emma said too many people have died and she doesn’t want to be responsible for any more deaths. She wants to meet and talk. Like I said before, if she wanted you dead the FBI would be here instead of me.”

  That was the strongest argument DeMarco had.

  “And where does she want to meet?” Li Mei said.

  “You pick. She said if she named a place, you’d think it was a trap. Pick any place you want except here in Chinatown.”

  “Why are you acting as her messenger?”

  “Because she asked me to. I’m her friend.”

  “Has it occurred to you…What’s your name again?”

  “DeMarco.”

  “Has it occurred to you, DeMarco, that you may be a dead man?”

  “Yeah. But if you kill me, you’ll never see Emma again. She said if you didn’t agree to the meet, she’d disappear and you’ll never find her. And she said that if I wasn’t at the meeting, alive, she wouldn’t show herself. She’s not going to let you use me for a hostage.”

  Li Mei laughed again, then said something in Chinese. DeMarco heard the men behind him thunder up the steps. He began to turn to face them, but before he could, one of them slammed into his back and drove him into the apartment. He hit the floor hard and felt his face burn as it skidded along a linoleum floor.

  72

  Mahoney heard the driver say something to the gunman in the back of the van and then the gunman and the driver started arguing. The passenger chipped in and the gunman screamed at him, too. The three kids yelled at each other for a couple of minutes, then the gunman appeared to give in, capitulating to whatever they were haggling about.

  Mahoney twisted the cap off the bourbon bottle and took a small sip, his first drink since he’d been given the bottle. He needed to keep his head clear but one sip wouldn’t hurt. He wondered what the murderous little shits were fighting about.

  Fifteen minutes later, the van took an exit. They were someplace in New Jersey, not too far from Trenton, but Mahoney didn’t know exactly where; he’d missed the exit sign. They took a left off the exit and drove a couple of blocks until they reached a McDonald’s. The driver started to park the van near the entrance to the restaurant but the gunman said something, and the driver drove to the rear of the restaurant and parked near the Dumpsters.

  Mahoney was relieved. They’d been arguing about stopping to eat, or maybe where to eat. Either one was better than them debating about where to dump his body.

  “You hungry, old man?” the gunman said.

  “Yeah,” Mahoney said. And he was, which surprised him. “I’ll take a Big Mac, fries, and coffee. Two creams, two sugars in the coffee.”

  The gunman smiled at this and said something in Vietnamese to the kids in front. They all laughed.

  “You pay,” the gunman said.

  Mahoney swore and reached for his wallet. He took out a twenty and tossed it to the gunman. The driver made a gesture with his fingers and Mahoney tossed him another twenty.

  The driver killed the engine, then he and the passenger started to exit the van. Before they did, the gunman said something and the driver put the keys back in the ignition and turned on the radio. As the driver and passenger headed for the McDonald’s entrance, the kid guarding Mahoney said, “You make noise, I shoot you in gut.”

  Mahoney almost said: How would anyone hear me over that shit coming from the radio? But he didn’t. Fuckin’ rap music; it was driving him nuts.

  Mahoney figured it would take the other two guys about ten minutes to get the food. He looked over at the guy guarding him and the kid stared back dispassionately. What a cold-blooded little son of a bitch he was.

  Mahoney was sitting down, his legs stretched out in front of him. The gunman was maybe five feet away. Mahoney picked up the whiskey bottle and started to twist the cap, but the bottle slipped out of his hands, rolling to the other side of the van. “Shit,” Mahoney said. The Vietnamese kid sneered. Mahoney couldn’t reach the bottle sitting down so he got awkwardly to his knees, his joints stiff from sitting. From a kneeling position he leaned forward and grasped the bottle, grunting at the effort. Still kneeling, he twisted the cap off, raised it to his lips— then let the bottle slip out of his hand.

  When the bottle fell, Mahoney pretended to make an effort to grab it but he actually pushed it toward the gunman. The kid shrieked something in Vietnamese. The van was new and clean. And it was carpeted in the back. Mahoney imagined the kid didn’t want his fancy van stinking of cheap bourbon. The kid lunged toward the whiskey bottle, to upright it, and the gun in his hand was momentarily pointed toward the floor. When the kid lunged, so did Mahoney. He doubted he’d be fast enough, but if he wasn’t, he was betting the kid had orders not to kill him. As he fell toward the kid from his kneeling position, the kid looked up, eyes wide, and Mahoney hit him in the face with a fist the size of a small ham. Mahoney heard bones in the kid’s face break.

  “There, you son of a bitch,” Mahoney said. He was lying on top of the kid because his lunge had propelled him forward. He got off him, picked up the gun, and tossed it to the front of the van. He also picked up the whiskey bottle and checked the level. About half the bourbon had spilled out. He put the whiskey bottle in one of the cup holders between the front seats. Waste not, want not, as his mother used to say.

  The kid stirred and Mahon
ey raised his big fist to hit him again— he couldn’t afford to have him regain consciousness— but then he lowered his arm. The kid was out cold; he wasn’t going to wake up anytime soon.

  Mahoney had to get out of the van but the rear doors were locked. He tried to get to the front seat but he couldn’t get his big ass over the top of the seats or his gut through the space between the seats. He looked down at the kid again to make sure he wasn’t coming to. On the driver’s side door he could see the button that locked all the doors. He lunged and almost reached the button. He lunged again. He must have looked comical, his broad butt in the air, straining to reach the locking mechanism. He hit the mechanism on his third try and heard the lock on the van’s back doors release. He scooted to the back of the van, opened the double doors, and stepped out of the van.

  He needed to hurry. He reached back inside the van, lying on his stomach, stretching, until he could touch the unconscious kid’s feet. He pulled the kid straight out the back of the vehicle, letting the bastard fall hard to the ground, his head bouncing off the asphalt.

  “Little asshole,” Mahoney said to the unconscious kid.

  He pulled the Vietnamese kid to one side, so he wasn’t in the way of the rear tires, and hustled to the front of the van. He started to get into the van but then stopped and went back to the kid and searched his pockets until he found the cell phone he’d seen him using earlier.

  Mahoney opened the driver’s side door and hopped into the van. The seat was so close to the steering wheel he could hardly move but he didn’t want to take the time to adjust it. He turned the key in the ignition and started the van. He had to study the gearshift knob to figure out where reverse was, finally figured it out, put the van in reverse— and stalled the van.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. He started the van again and this time backed it up.

  As he pulled out of the McDonald’s lot he let out a whoop.

  He felt great, maybe the best he’d felt in years.

  73

  Emma drove to DeMarco’s place and found Carmody sitting nonchalantly on the front porch. He walked calmly to Emma’s car carrying a gym bag in his right hand. He opened the passenger-side door of the Mercedes, tossed the gym bag onto the floor, and entered the car. “Hi,” he said to Emma.

  Hi— like they were buddies commuting to work. Emma wondered what it would take to rattle Carmody.

  “Now what?” she said.

  Carmody explained. He concluded with, “Now we wait until Li Mei calls you.”

  “She may not call,” Emma says. “She’ll be afraid of a trap.”

  “She’ll call. She’s obsessed with you. And when she does call, for your friend’s sake— and for Mr. Mahoney’s sake— you better convince her to meet with you.”

  They sat in silence for a few minutes before Emma said, “Why are you doing this, Carmody?”

  “My employers want her back. She’s become an embarrassment.”

  “Bullshit,” Emma said. “The Chinese want the files she has but then they want her dead. You want her alive for some other reason.”

  Carmody shrugged.

  “I’ve met you before, by the way,” Carmody said.

  “Oh?” Emma said.

  “Yeah. You briefed a SEAL team one night, ten, twelve years ago. We were on a sub off the coast of Libya. We were all wearing wet suits with hoods, so you wouldn’t have gotten that good a look at us.”

  Emma studied Carmody’s face. “I don’t remember you but I remember that op. One of you died.”

  “Yeah, but we got the target.”

  Emma nodded; SEALs always got the target.

  “When you showed up in Bremerton, I recognized you. You have a memorable face. I figured maybe you’d switched jobs, but going from spy to congressional staff seemed pretty unlikely.”

  “So you’re the one who put Li Mei onto me.”

  “Yeah. She was my control. But I didn’t know about her history with you at the time. The Chinese told me about that after she tried to kill me in Vancouver.”

  “Why’d she try to kill you?”

  Carmody shrugged. “She didn’t need me anymore. I guess she was just making sure the Americans wouldn’t have time to interrogate me in depth and find out more about her and the shipyard op. But who knows with her.”

  “How’d you find her here in D.C.?”

  “The Chinese and I figured she’d go after you, so the Chinese watched you while you were in the hospital in Vancouver. When you left the hospital, they helped me get out of Canada. Then I watched you until I spotted Li Mei’s guys.”

  “Her guys?” Emma said.

  “She recruited a Chinese gang to help her. They’re helping her now.”

  Emma shook her head. She should have spotted Li Mei’s people and she should have spotted Carmody. The fact was, she had lost her edge. Everything that had transpired in the last month had shown that she wasn’t as good as she’d once been. Or maybe Carmody and Li Mei were just a lot better.

  “How did you set up this thing with Mahoney so quick, so soon after what happened at my club?”

  “I didn’t set it up that quick. I’ve been watching Li Mei for a week, trying to figure out some way to separate her from that gang, and I came up with the idea of using you. And Mahoney. But she took me completely by surprise going after you at that fancy club today. It’s like her cork just popped. I was lucky I got there when I did. I could have killed her but she got away before I could capture her. But after the thing at the club, I had everything in place to take Mahoney.”

  Carmody was as good as anyone Emma had ever worked with. “Carmody,” she said, “how’d a man like you ever become a traitor? And don’t tell me it was the money.”

  Emma’s cell phone rang before Carmody could answer.

  * * *

  MAHONEY DROVE TO the next exit on the highway, about five miles from the McDonald’s, and stopped at a gas station. He spent a couple minutes finding the lever that allowed him to move the friggin’ seat back, and then took a sip from the whiskey bottle that he’d placed in the cup holder.

  Now what?

  The smart thing to do would be to call the cops. The problem was that Carmody had DeMarco and Mahoney had no idea where they were. So if he called the cops, would that endanger DeMarco? Maybe, but probably not. The Vietnamese kids, if they hadn’t already, would soon call Carmody. Mahoney had the one kid’s cell phone but all the little bastards had cell phones these days. And if they told Carmody that Mahoney had escaped— that old, fat, white-haired Mahoney had gotten away from them— would Carmody kill DeMarco? Yeah, possibly, but not right away. Carmody had those punks kidnap him to make DeMarco do something, so they needed Joe alive, at least for a while.

  So he’d call the cops. Immediately. If the cops could catch the Vietnamese kids— they were probably walking around near the McDonald’s right now looking for a car to steal or hijack— then maybe the cops could make them talk, make them tell where Carmody was. Remembering the hard eyes on the little shit that he’d knocked out, he didn’t think so, but maybe.

  Mahoney took another sip from the bottle. It was lousy bourbon but tonight it tasted as good as any he’d ever had.

  Now who should he call? He could call anyone: the governor of New Jersey, the director of the FBI, the attorney general. The problem was he didn’t know their damn phone numbers. He could call Perry Wallace, his chief of staff, and get the numbers or get Perry to call, but that would take time. He needed to get those kids picked up right away.

  So Mahoney did what any other citizen would do: he called 911.

  * * *

  DEMARCO’S HANDS WERE duct taped behind his back. Li Mei and her three friends had hustled him through the apartment to a closet in a bedroom. In the back of the closet was a concealed door. The hidden door in the closet led to a hallway in the adjacent, connecting row house, and from that hallway they took stairs to the roof and then down a fire escape into an alley where a late-model, full-sized sedan was parked.
Li Mei was making sure that if DeMarco had brought people with him, or if Emma was watching, they wouldn’t be followed.

  They drove away from Chinatown, through the District, and crossed the Potomac via the Fourteenth Street Bridge. DeMarco was in the backseat sandwiched between two of the Chinese guys. The third man drove while Li Mei sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window. The Chinese men never said a word to him or each other. They were hard, silent, and unemotional— pros just doing a job. The man sitting next to DeMarco was wearing a long-sleeved shirt but DeMarco could see tattoos banding the man’s wrists, and he figured the tattoos went all the way up his arms. DeMarco bet that if the guy took off his shirt there’d be a big damn dragon tattooed on his back.