Imposter

by Davis Bunn

  “I’m not ready for a family meet. Besides which, home games are as close to a tradition as anything in my life.”

  Dorcas snorted but said no more. They dumped their trash and joined the hordes. They took the Camden Yards passage running alongside the new Orioles stadium. The dual-stadium development was a rare monument to good taste and civic pride. The baseball stadium and outbuildings were all done in the same Church Street brick as the renovated waterfront warehouses. The result was an arena that looked as if it had been there since Revolutionary War soldiers rooted for the home team, or so the locals liked to claim.

  The crowd was thick and boisterous enough to leave them feeling isolated. Dorcas asked as they walked, “How’s it going with those names I gave you?”

  Those names, as in the neo-Nazis doing time for the National Guard heist. “I’m still working on them. This is my only time off this weekend.”

  “So what’s the big crunch?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  Dorcas stared at her. “That is so cool.”

  “Yeah, it’s something, all right.” Connie grinned. “You’re looking at a real cop doing real cop work for a change.”

  “So how do you like working with Lucas?”

  “He’s an all-around great guy.”

  “Yeah, he’s that, all right.”

  “You talked to him about me, didn’t you?”

  “You mind?”

  “Do I look like I mind?”

  “Then yeah, I did.” But Dorcas didn’t smile. “Lucas saved my marriage.”

  “Get out.”

  “We hit a rough patch. Lucas helped. A lot.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “What does he ever? Sat Carl down. Got him to talk. You know how tough that is?”

  “I know.” Dorcas’s husband treated words like money he couldn’t afford to spend, looking at things he didn’t want to buy.

  “Two solid hours, my big silent man blabbed away. Then he sat me down and listened to me. Then he had us listen to each other. Got us going to a couples class at his church.”

  “When was this?”

  “Before you joined up. Right after Lucas lost his wife. That was why he got to us. You know, showed us just what was waiting on the other side of that door.” Dorcas was sad now. “Poor guy. You know about his daughter?”

  “I don’t hardly know him at all.”

  “He’s got this kid, Katy. We’re talking seriously slow, you get me? But sweet as an angel. I see her around church sometimes. Lucas is trying so hard, but after losing his wife, the whole deal is just dragging him down. Sometimes I think he’s too trapped to see it.”

  Connie pulled her friend to one side of the crush. “Okay. Enough. You know what today is, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The Ravens’ ticket to the play-offs.”

  “And what are we here to do?”

  Dorcas answered like a sullen teenager. “Rumble.”

  “Right. So let’s leave the world out here where it belongs.” She grabbed her friend by the arm, handed her ticket to the attendant, ratcheted through the turnstile, and said, “Any more of that long face and I eat your hot dog.”

  Connie and Dorcas shared a passion that Dorcas’s husband considered seriously twisted. They headed up the ramp to their season ticket seats on the forty-yard line. When they emerged into the sunlight, they stopped as always and took a deep breath. Popcorn and chicken fingers and beer and cheese fries and adrenaline. The end-zone screens greeted them with “Get Ready to Rumble.” Connie hooted in reply. Tradition.

  On home-game Sunday, Connie was no longer a cop with serious career troubles. She wasn’t lonely. She wasn’t wondering about her home and bills and a future that had looked too bleak for far too long. She was surrounded by seventy-two thousand of her very closest buddies, walking the stairs with a twin sister dressed in matching R. Lewis T-shirts. They were already dancing to Hendrix and P. Diddy before they found their seats. An old man with beer and onions on his breath shouted, “You two put them cheerleaders down front in the trash!” And today, of all days, it was a compliment worthy of a smile.

  Jerry Freid had worn every nerd’s nickname since he started school. Long before geeks existed, Freid had been sidelined and forgotten. Pencil boy. All bones and bottle-bottom glasses. Well, Jerry Freid had finally taken his revenge on the world. In a sweet and singular way.

  He actually was a wizard with numbers. If computers had come in twenty years earlier, Jerry might have been the geek making the covers of magazines. As it was, Jerry Freid had grown up a skinny little gnome who loved dark corners, spying, and slipping in the secret dagger. There was no question in Jerry’s mind. He would have made the perfect hacker.

  He unlocked the Bromo-Seltzer Tower’s front door. The foyer was a perfect square, lined in art-deco bronze and floored in marble tile. The entire tower was only eighty feet to a side, which was incredible, since the tower stood taller than the Ravens stadium. Jerry could hear the nutcases screaming their heads off a quarter mile away even with the door shut. The tower had been built in the thirties as an advertisement ploy. Back then, Bromo-Seltzer was the world’s best-selling fizz. The tower made national news. Now it was just another of Baltimore’s many follies. Nineteen brick stories high, and one office wide. Topped by an absurd concrete crown. Jerry Freid had loved the place at first sight.

  He inspected himself in the lobby’s mercury-backed mirror. He knew what the world saw. A ferret in a bow tie. Only now Jerry was powerful enough not to care. People were a commodity Jerry Freid could take or leave. After all, friends were only a credit card away.

  Especially now that Freid had what everybody wanted.

  The brass-cage elevator clanked and rattled as it climbed to his office on the eleventh floor. The city was always going on about turning the whole tower into another of their artsy centers. They’d already done it to a dozen or so places around the city, old warehouses refitted as lofts and handed over for pennies. The artists and film people crowded the new bars and cafés and filled the air with their snotty talk. He hated them all. They were just geeks in fashion black. Nobody had offered Jerry Freid a helping hand when the Hamden bullies were pounding him into the dust. Let the artists fight their own way to the top.

  It had started as a small-time thrill. Buy some guns. Read the books. Learn how to file off the numbers. Refit a semi so it became fully automatic, and thus illegal. Then it got bigger. Forge federal licenses so he could buy some heavy stuff. By then he was getting known. Not as Jerry Freid. Never as Jerry. As the man people knew by the box number. By the quality. By the price. Gradually he moved into the stratosphere of illegal weapons. Things only a handful of dealers around the country held and moved. Guns that went for a hundred thousand a pop. More.

  The buyers still came, though. A different sort from before. Buyers who valued faceless and nameless and covert intelligence. Because most of the guys in the illegal gun trade made doorknobs look clever. But Jerry was dealing with the top-drawer clients now. They came and they paid his asking price and they vanished. They dealt in ciphered messages and encrypted e-mails and suitcases of unmarked bills.

  His office was along the front of the building. Which meant as he unlocked and opened his door, the stadium’s noise washed over him. But Jerry didn’t notice. Because the client was there waiting for him. Standing by his front window. Assembling the merchandise.

  The merchandise that was supposedly hidden behind the false wall in his other office. The office nobody knew about. “What are you doing?”

  The man did not even turn around. “You’re late.”

  “I’m not and you know it! I always get here before my clients!”

  “That’s what I mean.” The client inspected the grooves in the barrel and screwed it to the stock. “You’ve always been an hour ahead of time. Today it’s only forty minutes. I hope you’re not slipping, Jerr. I can’t afford that in my people.”


  “I’m not your anything, and get your hands off that!”

  “Why should I, Jerr? We’re friends, right? Friends shouldn’t have secrets.” The man pulled the scope from its padding. “I asked for a Zeiss.”

  “I couldn’t get one in the time you gave me. This isn’t stuff I can pull off a Radio Shack shelf.”

  The client wore an outfit that had gone out of style with the Cold War. A houndstooth jacket and matching turtleneck sweater. Gray flannel trousers. Polished lace-ups. A tweed trilby covered a salt-and-pepper wig. Sunglasses and a bushy mustache hid the rest of his face. Bizarre sort of accent, not one thing or another. Jerry Freid had been handling this particular client for a while and had never clearly seen his face. Jerry had a lot of extremely weird clients. But this one was seriously dirty. That was how Jerry thought of them, the ones who came in with mayhem on their minds and insanity in their gazes. Jerry always went home after a meeting with the dirties and scrubbed himself down with volcanic soap. But he also loved it. Because these were the ones who left him with the worms, the electric beasts who crawled through his gut for days and days. He was close to the edge with the dirties. These were the ones who went out and exacted revenge for Jerry against the world.

  “Then I suppose this scope will have to do, won’t it.” The client slipped the bolt action from the specially fitted padding that lined the black gun case. He motioned at Jerry’s desk. “Final payment.”

  Jerry slit the manila envelope and counted out the hundreds. Then he noticed the sack at the client’s feet. “What’s in that?”

  “Have a look, Jerr. You’ll like this.”

  But Jerry didn’t like it at all. The yellow cases glared up at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “Sure you do. Six months back, I shopped you some information, remember? I said you could plan the deal, take whatever you wanted. The only payment I requested was the claymores. All of them. Come on, Jerr. It wasn’t that long ago. You’ve got to remember what you told me.”

  The client had a gravedigger’s voice. A soft whisper of sound, toneless and empty. A harbinger of death, as cold as the black nights when Jerry woke from half-remembered nightmares and heard the client speaking to him. “I gave you plenty. I figured one, two, it wouldn’t—”

  “We had a deal, Jerr. You say something else, it means you’re lying now and then both. I know when you’re lying and I don’t like it. You got greedy, Jerr. It’s a disease that’s infecting the whole world, don’t you agree?”

  He could feel the sweat gather at the base of his skull and slip down the entire length of his spine, a river of dread. “I wasn’t going to sell them around here. I knew one buyer away from here. A long way.”

  “The truth. Good. But the problem is, you’ve still done what you said you wouldn’t.” The client shook his head sorrowfully. “And now your greed has got you in a world of trouble.”

  Jerry would have slipped to his knees except for the desk he landed on when his legs gave out. “I know who you are.”

  “How many of the mines have you sold on, Jerr?”

  “Five. A mob connection in Jersey.” Another swallow, trying to hold down the gorge. “Did you hear what I said? I had you followed. I know—”

  “And these three are all you have left?”

  “Yes. I swear.” He watched the client slip one of the silicone-coated rounds into the chamber. “Your name is Allen Pecard. I’ve got everything written down in a safe place. If I go missing, the information comes out.”

  The gun’s snout looked large enough to swallow Jerry whole. But what frightened Jerry Freid even more was watching the client slip a silenced pistol from beneath his jacket. “This time I believe you.”

  Matt felt like he was choking in the owner’s box and its air-conditioned bonhomie. He accepted handshakes and backslaps from ruddy-faced drinkers who wanted the powers to see them being nice to the candidate’s son. He smiled his way around comments he scarcely heard. The owner’s tame photographer entered the box. The men jostled and joshed one another as they were shifted for game-day photos. When Matt was positioned next to his dad, he asked, “Where’s Sol?”

  “Back in D.C. taking care of paperwork.” His father spoke around a professional smile. “The man hates football.”

  The lieutenant governor was flush-faced and weaving slightly.

  “Who’s that, Paul?”

  “My campaign manager. Sol Greene.”

  “Can’t be much of a manager, he hates this.” He sloshed his drink in a staining arc across the carpet. “Call my office, I’ll turn you on to somebody who’ll trade his youngest child to be up here in the winner’s skybox.”

  Paul Kelly waited until the photographer moved away to lose his smile. “Sol Greene is the top man in his profession. And my best friend to boot.”

  Matt excused himself and walked up the broad carpeted steps to the buffet table. He picked up a plate but took nothing. He waited until attention had turned toward the two men, one drunk and the other tetchy, and tried to recall a time when his father had defended him with such conviction.

  Matt slipped out the door and took the elevator down one floor. A security jock checked his pass, then went back to scanning the crowd. Matt found the arena entrance that matched Connie’s seat number and entered the sunlight.

  The day was football perfect, something that had escaped Matt until that very moment. He glanced down at the field. The Ravens played like they were meant to. To his left were the meager stands set aside for the visiting fans. Which meant neighboring season-ticket holders were the most ferocious Ravens supporters of all. They were up on their feet now, cheering a Ravens first down, waving in unison as the chains were moved into field-goal range.

  Then he saw her. The other fans seated themselves, but two women remained on their feet, dancing to country rock and entertaining an army of supporters they did not even see. Matt had to agree, Reba McEntire had never sounded so good.

  The song ended with the next play, but the women remained reluctant to stop their private boogie. Matt took another step, moving to where he could see her face. The afternoon sun turned Connie golden. He had never seen anyone so fiercely joyful. When she screamed her pleasure over a successful play, Matt felt an answering hunger at his very core.

  The crowd greeted the shooter with a humongous roar. Or so he liked to think.

  The building he had selected was half a block from the Bromo tower. He had stopped by earlier, worked the door lock, inspected his perch, and made plans for his emergency withdrawal. That was one of the critical points separating novices from experienced soldiers. Always have a back door identified and within reach. Always.

  The building’s power was off. The place smelled of grimy memories and futile dreams. He took the cracked marble stairs up to the roof, thirty-seven stories. Back in the twenties when this building was erected, thirty-seven stories would have made it one of the highest buildings south of New York. Now it was a wasted hulk, another victim of Baltimore’s gritty decline. He was breathing hard by the time he pushed through the rusted rooftop door. The flooring here was unstable, but the new developers had thoughtfully laid out a metal track for safe passage. The reason was blazingly clear. This was the highest of the buildings in Baltimore’s latest development. A billboard clung to the ledge, supported by sparkling new steel claws. It was tilted slightly out and down, so anyone driving along the harbor thoroughfare or seated in the waterfront stadiums would look over and see happy people making beautiful homes in exclusive new Downtown.

  His breathing was back down to normal by the time he’d set up the tripod and locked it into place. He used his silenced pistol to punch a hole through the billboard’s plywood back, not large, just enough space for his weapon and the top-mounted scope.

  He knew the building was tall enough because he had sighted it from the stadium two days back. The stadium had been full of staff getting ready for today’s game. It had been easy enough to slip inside. He had worn white worker’s cov
eralls, just one more faceless deliveryman. Security was supposed to be on high alert, checking everybody in proper 9/11 style. But their bosses were cutting deals over in Camden Yards and they were just hourly wage clones, instantly replaceable with another desperate middle-aged mortgage-bound debt-ridden high-school dropout. He had traded howdies with two sullen guards and waltzed right in. Ten minutes later he was back out again, knowing the right box because a deli-laden clerk had told him.

  And there it was, coming into vision through his sight. He had always preferred Zeiss because that was what he had trained on. But the computerized Trijicon ACOG—for Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight— scope was brilliant. Its field of vision was clear from the edges right down to the core. He could not see inside the owner’s box, of course. But the reflective glass meant nothing. He knew what he wanted. Havoc was his upon demand.

  Then he spotted the kid.

  Matt Kelly sprang out as clear as day, one thousand and fifteen yards away and still instantly recognizable, the scope was that good. He altered the rifle’s stand slightly, bringing the scope’s center to bear upon Matt Kelly. His finger tightened upon the trigger. There was no reason to shoot him. But the effect would be equally powerful. And it would do away with an unexpected threat.

  The Kelly kid continued down the stairs, then stopped in the full afternoon sunlight, looking down at something else. The game, perhaps. Watching with an intensity the shooter could feel from his perch. As though a match that would find its way to the bottom of tomorrow’s birdcage held life-or-death importance. The shooter smiled tightly. This kid deserved to die.

  He flipped the bolt, drawing a round into the chamber.

  The Ravens were ahead by a lot more than the scoreboard indicated. Rushing, first downs, passing, defensive punches, the works. Connie was surrounded by conversations that started or ended with, this was the Ravens’ year.

  Dorcas said, “Looks like I need to start saving. Super Bowl tickets don’t come cheap.”

  Connie was finding it harder and harder to stop her touchdown boogie. “All the way, baby.”