Suspicion

by Joseph Finder

  Somehow she had to support a daughter and a granddaughter on a GS-6 salary and the negligible survivors’ pension the VA paid for her husband, Luis, a Vietnam vet who’d died more than a decade ago.

  Her daughter, María Elena, worked in customer service at Marshalls in the Snowden Square Shopping Center. Her take-home pay barely covered day care for her two-year-old boy, Jayden, with just enough left over for food and clothing.

  So María Elena and Jayden lived in the second bedroom of Graciela’s apartment, on the fourth floor of the ugly dun brick building on Columbia Road, in Columbia Heights, Maryland. Graciela’s son, Raúl, was in prison in Hagerstown for boosting a Zipcar.

  Graciela was not the type of person ever to do anything that might put her job at risk. Yet there were all the money problems. And there was Tía Yolanda, back home in Mazatlán, and her nine children and twenty-four grandchildren. They needed whatever money Graciela could spare to send them.

  Life did not always give you choices.

  Wearing a long puffy charcoal-colored down coat with gray pants and simple black shoes, she climbed to the fourth floor and keyed open the top and bottom locks and then the police lock. Graciela had high cheekbones and wore prim black glasses and had once been considered reasonably pretty. Now she was generally regarded as matronly.

  Her tabby cat, Señor Don Gato, meowed loudly when she entered, and brushed up against her leg. That was unlike him. Most days he scarcely bothered to rouse himself from the sofa.

  Graciela sniffed. The kitty litter needed changing. She hung up her down coat on the wall hook next to little Jaden’s snow pants. She noted with disapproval the dishes still in the sink. She was always asking María Elena not to leave the breakfast dishes unwashed.

  Then she lit the flame under the kettle to make herself a cup of tea and selected her favorite mug from the cupboard: WORLD’S BEST MOM.

  “Make two cups, if you don’t mind.”

  The voice—a soft baritone—startled her. She turned, saw the silhouette in the shadowed recesses of the living room.

  “You know who I am, don’t you?”

  She nodded mutely. The mug slipped from her hand and thudded to the linoleum floor of the kitchenette, where it bounced but didn’t break.

  “I hope you have something for me,” the man said.

  56

  “Anything you need,” Danny said. “I’m here.”

  “I’m going to need you to vouch for me.”

  Danny looked at Galvin curiously. “Vouch for you? How do you mean?”

  “Well, not to put too fine a point on it, brother: I’ll need you to lie to law enforcement after I disappear. Back up an alibi for me. When the FBI question you—and they will, believe me—just say I told you I was flying down to meet some business contacts in Mexico.”

  “Where will you really be?”

  “Probably best you not know. Belize, at first. Then somewhere else. Cuba, Venezuela. Maybe Kazakhstan or Croatia or Dubai.” He was driving less erratically now, though just as fast. “There’s this remote fishing village in New Zealand Celina and I discovered on our honeymoon. It . . . it’s the town that time forgot. On the west coast of the South Island, in the middle of nowhere. The landscape’s out of Lord of the Rings. Maybe a dozen ancient stone houses, green rolling hills dotted with sheep. You sit there eating the greatest fish and chips from a little shack on the water’s edge. Watching the dolphins playing and the fishing boats bobbing in the bluest water you’ve ever seen.”

  Danny nodded. “You’re taking your plane?”

  “Right. But as I told you, it’s chartered. I don’t own it. Means I have to file a flight plan. Which I will, but it’ll be a bogus one. I’ll be requesting one particular pilot, and I know he’ll cooperate. He’ll fly me wherever I ask. For a briefcase full of cash.”

  “So you want US law enforcement to think you were meeting with cartel officials and were abducted. Something like that?”

  Galvin nodded.

  “So what’s—what’s your plan? Just fly away one day?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Do you have a fake passport or something?”

  “No. A real one.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “If you know the right people and you have the right kind of money, you can buy an absolutely one hundred percent genuine US passport under a different name.”

  “Jesus, Tom. You sure it’s real? It’s not counterfeit—not something that might be flagged and get you arrested?”

  “It’s absolutely authentic. And it was extremely expensive.”

  Danny went quiet for a moment. Neither man spoke. Then Danny said, “You’re talking about leaving your family behind?”

  He nodded. “It’s for their own protection.”

  “Would you . . . will you . . . tell them?”

  “Just Celina. She knows this may happen someday. As for the boys and Jenna—I couldn’t burden them with the knowledge. When the time is right, I’ll say good-bye to them as if I was just going away for a week or so on business.”

  “And then just disappear.”

  “Right.”

  Another long silence. “I don’t understand.”

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “How you can actually do this. The way you love your kids . . . the way you love Celina . . . how you could bring yourself to decide one day you’ll never see them again.”

  Galvin exhaled slowly. Then he replied, hesitantly, stumblingly. “I can’t—I mean—I mean, consider the alternatives! Having their father in prison for the rest of his life? Having their father killed by the cartel? And them in jeopardy, too?”

  “So why is this any better, Tom? Leaving your kids to think you just ran off one day? Or that you were abducted and killed. But never knowing?”

  Galvin sounded weary, even defeated. “They’ll figure out in time that I had to leave, that I had no choice. Maybe they’ll hate me for it. But they’ll know this was the only way to protect them. Anyway, they all have money in trusts. They’ll be taken care of.”

  Taken care of, Danny thought: What a phrase. When the one thing his kids wouldn’t be was taken care of. They’d have money, like they’d always had. But to have their father just be gone one day without a word of explanation? It was difficult to think of anything harder or more painful than losing a mother to cancer, as Abby had. But losing a parent without closure, without ever knowing how and why? That would be painful beyond words.

  “Well,” Danny said softly, “I just can’t imagine it.”

  “I’ve had twenty-some years to think about this. Though it doesn’t make this any easier.”

  Danny looked at Galvin’s gun resting on the console between the seats. It was matte black and had a seal stamped on its handle that read R. BERETTA. He picked it up. It was cold and heavier than he’d expected.

  He didn’t like guns particularly—they made him nervous—and didn’t own any. But his father had taught him to fire pistols and shotguns at the Nauset Rod and Gun Club on the Cape. He knew how to use one if he had to.

  “Careful,” Galvin said. “That’s loaded.”

  Danny nodded. “The safety’s on.”

  “You know something about guns?”

  “Enough. Do you have another one?”

  Galvin looked away from the road, gave Danny a searching glance, then turned back. “There’s another one under your seat. Could you pull the trigger if you had to? I mean, and shoot someone?”

  Danny was silent for five or six seconds. “Yeah,” he replied. He swallowed hard. “I could now.”

  57

  Danny reached down and felt something flat and hard. A metal flap. He pulled it open. Inside the compartment, he felt the cold smooth steel carcass of another gun and a small cardboard box. He slipped out the gun and the box. An identical Beretta.
The box contained Cor-Bon jacketed hollow-point high-velocity ammunition and felt heavy.

  He checked the magazine and saw it was full. The gun was loaded.

  “What happens if they send a bunch of cartel guys with AK-47s after us?” Danny said. “A pistol’s not going to be much help.”

  “If they send anyone after me, it’s not going to be what they call a fusilado. More like a tiro de gracia.”

  “Translation, please?”

  “A single shot. Not a firing squad. If and when it comes to that, I mean. They’re not going to send a bunch of goons with submachine guns after me. Not here. Not back in Boston, either.”

  “Why not? They have the manpower, right?”

  “They have armies. But they don’t need it, not for one guy. And they’re limited by the surroundings. Around here, a truck full of scary Mexicans with tats and Uzis isn’t going to blend into the background so easy. And something else: Even if they want to kill me, they’re not going to do it right away.”

  Galvin paused, and Danny looked at him. He shrugged. “I don’t follow.”

  Galvin tapped the side of his head with a forefinger. “There’s too much up here they need. Passwords to bank accounts and such.”

  “Meaning they’ll torture you first.”

  Galvin nodded.

  Danny felt a wave of revulsion. He tried to keep those goddamned Internet videos of beheadings and castrations from playing in his mind.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Danny said.

  Galvin said, “But I don’t plan to give them the opportunity.”

  Danny nodded.

  “For now, I’ll just need you to keep a watch at the house. We have to get the women to the airport and onto the plane uneventfully. And make sure Abby and Lucy have no idea anything’s wrong, okay?”

  “I’ll do what I can, but—”

  “You’re a good friend. None of this has anything to do with you. You could just walk away if you wanted, but you’re not. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

  If you only knew, Danny thought, but he just shrugged.

  • • •

  As they pulled into the long driveway in front of his house, Galvin said, “See the window over the garage?”

  Danny nodded.

  “Do me a favor and keep a watch from that room while everyone’s getting packed. That’s probably the best vantage point. You see someone with a gun drawn, shoot ’em.”

  “Got it.”

  When they came inside, Galvin clapped his hands like a grade school gym teacher and said, “Let’s go, girls. We need to be at the airport in half an hour. Less, if we can. We’ve all got to hustle.”

  The girls were on the landing, on their way upstairs. “Well, this totally sucks,” Jenna said.

  “Right?” Abby said. They were both still wearing their ski attire, their faces rosy from hours on the slopes.

  “We don’t even have time to take a shower?”

  “No.”

  “Is what’s-his-name, Alejandro, going to come up and get our stuff or do we have to bring it down?”

  “Alejandro isn’t working tonight,” Galvin said without a pause. “Bring your own stuff downstairs and I’ll load the car.”

  “You’re not even packed, are you?” Celina asked her daughter. “Upstairs and pack. Now.”

  “They’re not packed yet?” Danny said. “Come on, Abby, move it!”

  The girls trundled loudly up the stairs. Celina bustled around the big main room, picking up miscellaneous items the girls had scattered about. Jenna’s iPad, a phone charger, lip gloss. She didn’t look at her husband. She wasn’t wearing any lipstick, or else it had worn off, and her eye makeup was smeared. Her eyes were bloodshot. She’d been crying.

  Lucy wasn’t there. She was probably upstairs packing.

  “Come on,” Galvin said, following the girls up the stairs. He stopped at one of the first doors off the long hall that led to their guest room. He switched on the light. The room had the faint solvent smell of newly installed carpeting. It was much smaller than the room where Lucy and Danny had spent the night. The only furniture in here was a queen-size bed with a chenille bedspread, a couple of end tables, and a bureau. Galvin pointed at the window.

  “You should be able to get a good angle from here without standing directly in the path. If you have to fire through the window, do it.”

  “Understood,” Danny said.

  Galvin turned and left quickly without closing the door.

  Passing headlights bloomed and faded on the road at the end of the driveway. They came by at the rate of around one car or truck every minute. He shifted from one foot to the other, tense.

  “Danny?”

  Lucy’s voice. He turned, saw her standing in the hallway, her blond hair gleaming in the overhead light.

  The gun in his hand.

  “Danny, what are you doing?”

  58

  Danny carried the Beretta onto the plane in the pocket of his down parka.

  It went just as Galvin had promised. No going through security. No metal detectors or wands or pat-downs. He just walked right onto the plane as he’d done in Boston. Galvin had told him to keep the gun with him.

  The seating arrangement on the plane was slightly different on the way back.

  Celina sat next to her husband. They spoke almost continuously, in low voices, alternating between Spanish and English. Danny couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Celina looked worried and upset, and Galvin seemed to be trying to placate her.

  The two girls sat next to each other on the couch at the back, as before. Jenna was reading the book Abby had just finished, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. Abby was reading a novel by Jodi Picoult.

  Danny took the seat near Lucy’s, but she appeared not to be speaking to him. She hadn’t said a word in the Suburban on the way to the airport, and as soon as the plane took off, she’d opened her Cleopatra biography. A couple of times he’d caught her eye, or took her hand, only to get no response. An averted glance, a limp hand.

  She smoldered. He’d never seen her so angry. In fact, he could barely think of times when he’d seen her angry at all. Nothing more than momentary irritation. But this was different. She was angry, and she was frightened.

  She’d seen him holding a gun, and there hadn’t been an opportunity for him to explain without someone else overhearing. It must have freaked her out to see a gun in his hands.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  She arched a brow, turned a page. “Hmm?”

  “We need to talk. It’s important.”

  She closed the book on her index finger. As if to say: I’ll give you a minute, no more. “Important enough to involve me? And maybe your daughter?”

  Her voice sounded high, constricted. Indignant. A faint tremble.

  She looked at him, eyes hooded, a hostile expression that said either I really don’t care or I don’t believe a word you’re saying.

  “Oh?”

  “I can’t talk about it here. But as soon as we get home. I just want to say I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged, returned to her book.

  The horror he’d witnessed that afternoon on the mountain pass had changed everything.

  For far too long, he’d kept the real situation from the woman he loved.

  It was time to tell her the truth.

  PART

  FIVE

  59

  He waited until Abby had gone to bed that night.

  In the old days, not so long ago, that meant tucking her in and reading to her and talking and eventually turning out the light. Often he’d fall asleep before she did and later stumble out of her bedroom in a stupor. Now it meant she closed the bedroom door and put on her headphones and listened to music and “chatted” with friends on Facebook.

  Danny k
ept his voice low, just in case Abby wasn’t wearing her headphones and had her ear against the wall.

  “Baby, something happened this afternoon,” he began. “But it began a while ago.”

  He started with Galvin’s loan and the meeting with the DEA. He told her how he’d planted a bug in the Boston College medal and how it was somehow discovered. He told her about Esteban’s mutilated body. About how he furtively downloaded Galvin’s BlackBerry at the Plympton Club. And finally about the nightmarish event earlier in the day. Had it been only a matter of hours since they’d discovered the mutilated body of the bodyguard? It felt like days.

  Mostly, she listened. After the first few minutes, she stopped interrupting him with questions. Her mouth came open a few times, an understandable response to the shock. She gasped at his descriptions of what had happened to the two driver/bodyguards.

  When he finished, she was silent for a long time.

  Her eyes were filled with tears, her jaw tight.

  “So basically you decided to secretly cooperate with the DEA against a Mexican drug cartel,” she said. “And put your life in harm’s way. And your daughter’s. And mine, too.” He was surprised by her tone, flat and cold and bitter.

  “That’s not how it happened, Lucy. I told you.”

  His cell phone made the plinking sound of a secure text message. He ignored it. He knew what it was: They wanted his photos of whoever Galvin had met on the Aspen mountainside. Well, they could wait.

  She sat up in bed very straight. “No, that’s exactly how it happened. You didn’t tell me in the beginning because you knew what I’d say. You knew how I’d react.”

  He shook his head. “Come on.” But he knew she was probably right.

  “Because keeping me in the dark would keep the bad guys away. Like that? Is that what you thought? You know, we shrinks call that magical thinking.”

  “Lucy.”

  “Because you didn’t want to have this very argument?”

  “I wanted to keep you safe. You and Abby both.”