Trace

by Archer Mayor

  “Come on,” he pleaded. “Why go through the whole rigamarole?”

  “What’d you want with him?”

  Willy cut off Colin’s canned response. “Kill him.”

  Her eyes grew round. “What did you say?”

  Colin let out an almost inaudible sigh as Willy said, “So, get him now or tell us where he is, so we can get it over with.”

  For no logical reason, it worked. Brenda leaned back as much as her physique would allow, and bellowed, “Chris. Get your ass down here. Now.”

  Willy smiled, she thought at her response; in fact, it was because Sam Jones had apparently taken on a different identity, as he’d thought he might.

  “You happy?” she demanded.

  “Always,” he said.

  There was a clattering of booted feet as the two men dimly saw a pair of legs appearing from what looked like a ladder connecting the ground floor to a loft tucked in under the eaves.

  An accompanying male voice querulously inquired, “What?”

  Her explanation consisted of a single word, before she backed away from the doorway and vanished into the small house’s inner gloom: “Cops.”

  The man now called Chris obviously would have appreciated a heads-up. He stepped into view, took Willy and Colin in with a glance, and moaned, “Fuck.”

  But he had nowhere to run, and didn’t look in good-enough shape to do so anyhow.

  Willy hooked a finger, gesturing to him to step outside. In the early summer sun, he was a sad sight to behold, his face bloated, bruised, and scarred with recent cuts.

  “What’s your name?” Willy demanded.

  “Chris.” The facial damage clearly had a painful effect on his ability to speak.

  Willy said nothing, merely staring at him.

  “Walker,” he added, wincing again.

  “That your real name?” Colin asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Prove it.”

  Favoring his bandaged right hand, Walker dug into the back pocket of his baggy cargo shorts with his left and pulled out a much-duct-taped canvas wallet, from which he awkwardly extracted a non–driver’s license identity card. This he passed to the Windsor cop, who looked it over before handing it to Willy, who returned it without a glance.

  Willy tilted his head toward their vehicle. “You wanna get in the car?”

  Walker balked. “Why?”

  “’Cause you’ve done bad things and it’s time to get out from under them.”

  “What’ve I done?”

  Willy barely leaned forward. “Are you refusing?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then get in the fucking car.”

  It had been Willy’s quick test of Walker’s complicity and grit, which the latter had passed and failed in turn, to Willy’s satisfaction.

  They drove back to the police department on Union Street, as modern and well appointed as the town garage was not, and resumed their conversation inside the confines of an interview room, where—although the door was left partially open—the implications of incarceration were thick in the air, as intended.

  “For the record,” Willy intoned as they all sat down. “This is a recorded conversation between Christopher Walker, William Kunkle of the VBI, and Sergeant Colin Guyette of the Windsor police. State your name and date of birth for the recording, Mr. Walker.”

  Walker did so, after which Willy added the time, date, and location of the conversation to follow. The practical reasons for all this were clear, but its true motivation was to continue the erosion of Walker’s self-confidence.

  This was working. Walker licked his lips as he looked from one of them to the other. “What do you want?”

  “You prefer Chris or Christopher?” Willy asked.

  “I don’t know … Chris.”

  “That’s good to know, ’cause we may be here for a while.”

  “Why?” Walker asked plaintively, his voice high-pitched. The contortion apparently strained his lip, as he winced and reached up to touch it tenderly.

  “Like I said,” Willy explained. “You been a bad boy, and it’s time to confess your sins. How’s the mouth doing?”

  “It hurts.”

  “I bet. Why the hell’d you do that, anyway? When the train was a few yards away from stopping? Seems dumb.”

  Walker’s mouth grew slack in astonishment at Kunkle’s knowledge. “What?”

  “You coulda just gotten off,” Willy suggested. “Why’d you jump?”

  It was an early shot in the dark—a calculated gamble. But not a wholly uneducated one, and certainly, if successful, a big step toward Walker’s further destabilization.

  He blinked and shook his head slightly. “Jeez. I don’t know.”

  “Went with the whole covert thing?” Willy proposed. “The backpack, the alias, the sneaking around Springfield? Something James Bond would do? ’Cept it was harder than it looked.”

  Walker bowed his head. “I guess,” he muttered. “Sounds dumb. I wanted to show I was more than just a delivery guy. But it was higher than I thought.”

  “Did the battery burn right then?” Willy pointed to his bandaged hand. “Or did it take a few seconds? Bet you weren’t told that could happen.”

  “Shit no, I wasn’t.”

  “That’s what you get for playing man in the middle, Chris,” Willy commiserated. “You’re kind of the disposable gofer, you know? Malik makes his money in Springfield, and as for…” He looked over to Guyette. “What’s his name again?”

  “Robb Haag,” Colin supplied, building up the notion that there were no secrets in the room.

  “Right.” Willy repeated casually, “Haag. Well, as for him, the sky’s the limit. I mean, who knows what he might make?”

  Walker’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that mean?”

  Willy looked surprised and cast another glance at his colleague. “What’s it mean? Are you kidding? With the high-tech widgets you’re delivering to him?”

  “I don’t get it,” Walker stammered. “They’re batteries. What’s the big deal?”

  Willy laughed. “Wow. You are being screwed. You must owe Haag big-time, to stick your neck out this far. He must be laughin’ at you now.”

  Walker’s face flushed. “What the fuck’re you talking about?”

  “That guy you saw in Springfield,” Willy tried explaining. “What was his name?”

  “Malik. Sunny Malik.”

  “No, right, right. I meant his company. Where was it, again?”

  “On Albany Street,” Walker said. “Pure Computers.”

  “That’s it. Foreign guy. I forget where he’s from.”

  “Pakistan.”

  This was too easy, Willy thought. “Yeah, yeah. Well, anyhow, here’s the thing, Chris. The way you got your hands on those batteries? The way they came into the country, and how they’re gonna be used down the line? That puts you smack in the middle of a federal, Homeland Security black hole. That means terrorist charges, a vacation in Guantanamo, no rights to a lawyer. Hello, waterboarding; good-bye, US of A. Get what I’m sayin’?”

  Walker had raised his damaged hand to his cheek and was holding his face as if he’d been struck. “I’m no terrorist. I just carried that stuff for a couple of bucks.”

  “You know what they say about a bird in hand,” Colin said quietly.

  Walker looked dumbstruck.

  “Of course,” Willy threw in helpfully. “You’re not without options.”

  He got a blank stare.

  “Help us help you out, Chris,” Willy tried again. “The more details you give us, the more we can tell the feds how cooperative you were.”

  “About Haag?”

  Willy looked as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him. “Sure. That’s a good place to start. Why not? Where’s he operating out of, for instance?”

  Walker stared at him as if Willy were the one guy in the room not to know that water was wet. “You coulda damn near seen it from where you picked me up. In that old factory bu
ilding, on the other side of the Goodyear slab, at the end of National Street.”

  “The same one where they got a woodworking shop at the southern end?” Colin asked.

  “That’s it. Robb’s got the middle section, upstairs.”

  “He still there?” Willy wanted to know.

  Walker was nonplussed. “How would I know? I’m with you guys.”

  “He still working there regularly?” Willy expanded patiently.

  “Oh. Yeah. Sure.”

  “How did he deal with your little accident?”

  “Deal with it? He was pissed, like I did it on purpose.”

  Willy made an effort to look sympathetic. “Right. You do all the humping and he gives you crap. Sounds like my boss. Did he pick up the medical bills, at least?”

  “Fuck no. Lucky for me, they won’t get any money out of me, either, but I’m still screwed with these.” He tapped his lower lip, or what was left of it, destroyed by the missing teeth behind it. In all honesty, as Willy saw it, the poor bastard hadn’t had much to work with before his swan dive onto the tracks, so his altered looks weren’t a great loss. But that was just Willy’s opinion.

  “That’s all you do for him?” he asked. “The runs back and forth? There must be other jobs.”

  “Hey,” Walker said emphatically, “I’m his whole staff. He’d be nowhere without me. I do all sorts of things. That’s what ticks me off about the medical bill.”

  Colin took that as his cue to play supportive second fiddle. “I was brought into this kind of late,” he said. “What exactly are you doing in there? Something about batteries?”

  Walker was caught out on his boast of moments earlier. “It’s kinda technical. Electronics, you know? Pretty complicated.”

  “Right, but with batteries?”

  “Yeah. I do soldering, screw around with wires, and packaging. It’s like finishing up a car on the assembly line, or something.”

  “So the end product’s still a battery,” Willy surmised, “but it looks different?”

  “Way different,” Walker stressed.

  “And what’re they for?” Colin wanted to know.

  “He supplies them to some dude down the line.”

  “What dude?”

  “How do I know?” Walker grinned, as best he could, which looked both painful and unattractive. “Haag’s management; I’m labor.”

  “Okay,” Willy interjected. “This is good stuff, Chris. It’s helping you out big-time. Tell us more about Haag. What’s his story? Where’d he learn to do all the fancy electronics?”

  “Burlington,” Walker replied instantly, catching them both off guard. “He worked at a plant there, making these things.”

  “Batteries?”

  “That’s what we’re talkin’ about, ain’t it?”

  “It is. What was the name of this place?”

  “Fuck if I know. I just asked him once, ‘Where’d you learn how to do this shit?’ and he told me.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “Not much. Not a chatty guy. Plus, he’s pretty stuck on himself, so we don’t hang out. He did say he was fired, though, which I thought was pretty funny. I kept that to myself, course, ’cause I knew he was ticked off about it. I got the feeling what he’s doing now is payback for that.”

  “Really?” Colin reacted, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees. “He’s becoming a competitor?”

  “Nah. He’s out to fuck ’em up,” Walker said. “That’s what I got, at least.”

  “How?” Willy asked.

  Walker’s expression bordered on pity. “The batteries are crap. They don’t last. That’s the whole point.”

  Colin and Willy exchanged looks.

  “And what’re the batteries for, Chris? You know that?”

  The answer was as eloquent as it was simple. “Sure. Drones.”

  Damn, Willy thought—drones now inadvertently designed to drop out of the sky, who knows where, on whom, or in what numbers.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sam twisted in the passenger seat of Scott Gagne’s unmarked car and looked at her guide as he pulled onto Lancaster Street in Albany’s Center Square district and parked. He’d taken the scenic route to get here, he explained, to show her the city in which he’d been born and brought up.

  “You a native Vermonter?” he asked her. “I feel like I been talking nonstop.”

  “Born and bred,” she said, determined not to be too specific—or even accurate, for that matter. In the reflection off her side window, she’d already noticed him taking her in when he thought she wasn’t looking—scanning her from thighs to face whenever he could and with obvious appreciation. It didn’t bother her. She was used to it, and even enjoyed it on occasion. When it stopped there and went no further.

  There was a slight pause in the conversation before he nodded toward a stately brownstone ahead. “That’s where Wylie lives.”

  She took it in appreciatively. “He’s doing all right.”

  “He should be, for a walking, talking cliché. A lawyer-lobbyist with a bad reputation? Please. Not that we actually care much about his dirty dealings with government types. Like Ted was saying at the office, his corrupting officials isn’t our business, strictly speaking. I want his ass for what he does to women; to hell with the politics. There’re so many Albany assemblymen and -women in jail as it is that they’d probably reject him anyhow—for lack of available space.”

  “What’s his background?”

  “Aha.” Gagne held up a finger. “There are roughly three categories of operators like him in town: the homegrown types, who have to watch where they piss, ’cause they might hit somebody related to them; the New York City high-class sleazos, who’ve got a wife and family in Westchester and at least one mistress up here, but whose big-city firm’ll keep an eye on ’em, maybe; and the last bunch, which is where Wylie fits in. They’re harder to define. He’s from a D.C. firm that farms out lawyers all over the map, to capital cities of states where they have big-money clients. Most of these guys work solo, don’t have leashes on them, but do have a mother ship they can call on in a pinch. Wylie’s got contacts, money, influence, and none of the tie-downs that keep a lot of the less independent lawyers more or less under control. Plus, he’s not too flashy, is kind to kids and old ladies, does pro bono work for the right high-visibility projects … You get the idea.”

  He paused a moment before adding, “Bottom line, with all those categories involved, it makes for quite a jungle. And, like I said, that’s the part we don’t mess with—unless we can finagle it with a locally rooted case like this.” He smiled. “After all, if we didn’t poach on state police turf every once in a while, we’d never get to work in the nicer neighborhoods.”

  “Looks like Greenwich Village,” Sam commented. “Or what I know about it. I’ve been to New York only a couple of times.”

  “Not far off,” he said. “Center Square, we call it. It’s very narrowly defined, like a gated community without the gates. You couldn’t find a Republican with a search party around here. You got your Yuppies, your Metros, your whatever the trendy set is now. They’re not the filthy rich. That would be too tacky. But they’re way up the politically correct tree, which is what makes Jared Wylie such a joke. They got the biggest offender to their value system living right in their midst, with no clue.” He gave a theatrical sigh. “Such is life, I guess.”

  He checked over his shoulder to pull back into traffic.

  “And nobody’s ever jammed him up? Blackmail? Influence peddling? Corruption of public officials? Nothing?”

  “Not yet. Here’s hoping we can this time. It’ll take some doing, though. I’ll guarantee you that. All the stuff we and the state police have on him? It’s circumstantial, guesswork, innuendo—nothing we can bring to the DA. This is a cagey dude.”

  They were almost at the end of the block, facing a high, white marble wall that forced them to turn right or left.

  “What’s that?” Sammie as
ked.

  “Rockefeller Plaza,” Gagne intoned. “It’s got a longer, fancier name, but that’s the acceptable short form. There are a bunch of ruder monikers for it—‘Rocky’s Last Erection’ is my favorite.”

  He cut her a quick glance, to gauge her reaction to this vulgar reference.

  Sam merely responded by craning forward—in full tourist mode—to take in the monumental, semi–sci-fi movie skyscrapers shooting up like futuristic dominoes. “I saw these driving in, but from a distance. I didn’t realize they were sitting on a platform.”

  “Yup,” he said, appreciating her self-restraint at his comment. “Between the plaza and the interstate, city planners pretty much destroyed downtown. No different from what they did all over the country after World War Two. The car was king, gas was cheap, everybody was driving, and the whole notion of ethnic neighborhoods was seen as backward and a reminder of the same corrupted Europe that had just killed so many GIs.”

  This time, she stared at him, her eyebrows raised. “Damn. Listen to you.”

  He chuckled. “History nut.” He turned the wheel and began driving parallel to the bland marble wall. “And on top of all that, this eyesore ended up being a perfect souvenir of the tasteless ’70s. Gotta love it. Rocky Rockefeller was governor. Story is he got embarrassed driving some head of state around town, so he gutted the old neighborhood—mostly Italian—and put down the best example of fascist architecture outside of Hitler’s Germany. There’s irony for you—given the European reference.”

  Sam shook her head. “Architecture buff, too?”

  “Okay, okay,” he admitted. “I read that somewhere. But it’s great, ain’t it? And it fits.” He turned another corner and pulled over once more. “See? Ya gotta admit—that is one ugly mutha.”

  She laughed.

  “Tourists love it, of course,” he continued, pointing out the opposite window. “I saw a busload of Japanese stop here. Everybody piled out and began taking pictures. Not one of them turned around to take that in.” He indicated the state capitol—gold-domed, intricate, as lushly adorned as a wedding cake. “I love that old heap, but it sure ain’t streamlined, and I guess that’s what hot now, even though the damned plaza’s like a half century old.