Marty Coors was the CO of this sector of the State Police and right now it was his personal duty to see that the piece of human waste currently being held inside the SuperMax containment cell lived to see the next morning.
This he was doing by being the only living human being on level four of the cellblock. Level four had only one cell, known to the troopers based here as the Bull Pit, and Marty Coors was looking at it right now.
Coors was convinced to a moral certainty that every one of the twenty or thirty state troopers and county cops and even the three FBI types crowding the main floor concourse of the HQ center would cheerfully pop six rounds of hollow-point into Byron Deitz’s skull if he gave them a sliver of an angle on him. Or, if pushed, beat him to death with their bare hands.
This was because Byron Deitz had just been caught with pretty clear and convincing evidence that he had been involved in an armed robbery during which four police officers had been literally executed, two state, one county, and one of their own pursuit drivers, a fine young man named Darcy Beaumont, which had left Coors with only one pursuit driver for his entire sector, Darcy’s best friend, Reed Walker.
Two media mutts had also been killed when their news chopper had been shot down, but, to be honest, nobody gave a flying fruitcup about them, because, really, did anyone give a flying fruitcup when a couple of vultures circling a fresh kill got themselves all shot to shit?
No, they did not.
The memorial service for these four young men was scheduled for the following week, at Holy Name Cathedral down in Cap City. So far, law enforcement people from all over America, from Canada and the UK and Europe, were slated to walk behind the hearses. Three police pipe bands were due to attend, including the NYPD Emerald Society Pipes and Drums, the U.S. Corps of Cadets Pipes and Drums from West Point, and the Virginia Military Institute Pipes and Drums.
It was shaping up to be the largest memorial service for fallen police officers ever held in the South, with expected attendance being estimated at somewhere around ten thousand people.
And this was all happening because of two hundred and twenty-odd pounds of meat and gristle chained to a chair on the other side of this sheet of glass. The main reason Coors was unarmed was because he really didn’t trust himself all that much either.
He reached out and hit a wall switch beside the glass and a bank of fluorescent lights flared up inside the SuperMax cell. Deitz was slumped over in the chair, asleep, so when the lights went on his head came up with a jerk.
Appearance-wise, Byron Deitz had never been a figure one could contemplate with a joyful heart. He did not walk in beauty like the night. In fact, he slouched in warthog ugly like a Hangover Monday in Barstow, with a big bald head stuck like a cannonball on a neckless torso that might have been a shaved grizzly carcass. The fact that he had been well and truly tuned up by the arresting officers was written—let’s say tattooed—all over his face. He straightened up, glared through the glass, knowing somebody was out there. His grating snarl came through the loudspeaker in the wall over the window.
“Where’s Warren Smoles? I want my lawyer. I’m not saying a fucking thing without Warren Smoles in the room.”
Coors pushed the TALK button.
“This is Captain Coors—”
“Marty, you prick.”
“We’ve called Smoles. He was down in Cap City. He’s flying up right now. In a police air unit. He’ll be here in an hour. Anything you need right now?”
“You could take these fucking chains off me, Marty. I’m in your SuperMax cell. My company designed and built it. My contractors put it in. Whaddya figure, I built in a secret door in case I ever ended up here? Besides, I gotta hit the can.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Coors, killing the speaker. He left the lights on. From what he could see, Deitz was still talking. From how red his face was getting, it was probably something unpleasant. His radio beeped. He picked it up.
“Coors.”
“Captain, Nick Kavanaugh’s here. He’s asking to see Deitz. What do you want me to say?”
“Tell him I’ll be right up. And send a team down here to get Deitz to the can. It’s okay to take the girdle off him. Just ankle chains and the belt shackles. He’s not going anywhere.”
“Will do, Captain.”
“No sidearms, remember. Just the muscle and the Taser if you need it. Reliable guys only, got it?”
“Hey, Cap, they’re all reliable.”
“You know what I mean, Luke.”
“Roger that. They’re on their way.”
When Coors got out of the elevator in the main lobby, the entire space was jammed full of uniforms, big blocky men and solid, capable-looking women, young and old and right in the middle, the black and tan of the Sheriff’s Department, the charcoal gray of the State Police, even a few navy blue uniforms from the Niceville PD.
He saw Mickey Hancock and Jimmy Candles, the shift supervisors for the Belfair and Cullen County units, standing talking to Coker and his buddy Charlie Danziger. Danziger was a tall, cowboy-looking older man with a white handlebar mustache, and Coker was a top kick with the county. Coker was the unofficial go-to police sniper for pretty much every agency in this part of the state. He was wiry, silver-haired, and had something of a gunfighter air about him, with pale eyes and a tanned leathery look. He and Charlie Danziger were in civilian clothes, Coker in a charcoal suit and Danziger in a white shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. Danziger’s connection to the case was that one of his Wells Fargo trucks had delivered the cash only an hour before the robbery.
When the elevator doors binged open, everybody in the lobby, including Coker and Hancock and Candles and Charlie Danziger, turned to look at Coors. It was like being gunned by a room full of wolves, all set faces and ferocious attention. The talk, whatever it had been, fell silent. Coors moved through the crowd, making eye contact, letting everybody know who was running this room. They all gave way as he passed. There was no muttering, but there were a few unfriendly looks.
He reached his office, a glassed-in square with a view of the rest of the operating area and the front doors. Nick Kavanaugh was there, along with his new sidekick, the kid named Norlett.
Boonie Hackendorff, the Special Agent in Charge of the Cap City FBI office, was leaning on the wall opposite Coors’ desk, a large big-bellied man with a round red face and a neatly trimmed beard. He had his suit jacket open and Coors could see he was carrying today, a gray Sig in a Bianchi holster.
Everybody looked up as Coors came in.
“Gentlemen.”
“Jeez, Marty,” said Boonie Hackendorff, “can you feel what’s going on out there?”
Coors came around, sat in the chair behind his desk, laid his hands on the table.
“Hell, yes,” he said. “Reminds me of Tombstone just before the Earps took their walk. Nick, how are you? Any word on Kate’s dad?”
Nick shook his head.
“Got a DT named Linus Calder up at VMI, he’s on it. So far, no sign of him.”
“He’s what, in his eighties? Could he have just wandered off?”
“That’s what we’re hoping,” said Nick.
Coors nodded.
“I hear Mrs. Deitz is with Kate?”
“Yes. She walked out on Byron last night. Took the kids. I think she’ll be with us for a while. Boonie, you’re gonna want to talk to her, I guess.”
“Yes. But not today. She’s been through enough. Okay, we’re all hanging here, Nick. What the hell went down at Mauldar Field?”
Nick laid it out for them, from takeoff to wipeout, and what they had learned from Hopewell and Luckinbaugh.
Boonie Hackendorff was not pleased.
“Are we saying that those five guys who augured in were Chinese fricking spies? And that Deitz was working with them?”
Nick shook his head.
“Only solid thing we can say is that Deitz is connected to them. He might even have been trying to stop them from doing something.”
“And Deitz used the word ‘item’?”
Nick nodded.
“No idea what he meant?”
“Not yet. Like I said, might have been something Deitz was trying to recover, something the Chinese guys had taken—stolen—somehow.”
Boonie shook his head.
“That doesn’t square with Holliman saying ‘they were always going to take it with them.’ ”
“No. It doesn’t,” said Nick. “That sounds more like Deitz was expecting to get the item back.”
“Which sure sounds like he gave it to them in the first place,” said Marty Coors.
“We can’t assume it. All we can do is follow up. Boonie, you might want to get on to the people at Quantum Park, get them to start an inventory check, see if anything’s missing.”
“We’re going to have to bypass all the Securicom people, go direct to the companies themselves. Jeez. I gotta make a few calls.”
Boonie went toward the door, saw all the uniforms out there, all staring back at him through the glass, and hesitated.
“Use my gun room,” said Coors. “Nobody there. Close the door.”
When Boonie was gone, Coors leaned back in his chair.
“What do you make of Deitz having a wad of bills from the bank thing in his own truck?”
Nick leaned forward.
“I think it stinks of a plant. Not even Byron Deitz is dumb enough to leave a hundred thousand in stolen money lying around in his truck.”
“Deitz is a greedy guy, Nick. And he’s been dirty before, back when he was with the FBI, how he got ‘resigned.’ ”
“I knew he was forced out. I’ve never heard what he did. Records were sealed.”
Coors reached for a pack of cigarettes, remembered he had quit, found a stick of gum and popped it into his mouth.
“Sealed as part of a plea bargain. Whatever he did, four mob guys ended up in Leavenworth. Still there. Very pissed off, from what I hear.”
“Who are they?”
“Guy named Mario La Motta, zipperhead named Desi Munoz, another guy named Julie Spahn. Fourth guy, De Soto something, he died a few years back. What I heard, Deitz was into something with them, figured out they were all about to get busted, flipped the whole thing into a ‘case’ he was working—lying shit—but rather than deal with another corrupt FBI story line in the media, the Feds gave him credit for a mob bust and Deitz took early retirement. That’s how he was able to get licensed to run security for a place like Quantum Park.”
“Quantum Park people never knew?” asked Beau. Coors popped his gum, shook his head.
“File was sealed. FBI does the background check on all those applications, and they sat on it. So it was like it never happened.”
“Unbelievable,” said Beau, looking at the closed gun room door. They could hear Boonie’s voice through the metal. He sounded unhappy.
“Did Boonie know about this?”
Coors shook his head.
“Couldn’t say, Beau. I doubt it. Agency was protecting itself. They’d have no trouble keeping their field guys in the dark, not if it meant keeping the lid on a ‘rogue agent’ scandal. I guess we should fill him in when he comes out of the gun room. Only fair. I only heard this story maybe a year back. By then Deitz was in solid. Nothing to be done without him screaming about his rights.”
“How’d you find out, Captain Coors?” asked Beau.
Coors smiled, popped his gum again, and tapped the side of his nose.
Beau nodded.
“So how do you think we should play this?” asked Nick. “The jurisdictional issues are a mess. We have a whole bunch of things cooking off right in our faces and if the national security sector lands in the middle of this, Deitz is liable to get jerked right out of our hands.”
Coors sat forward, thumped the table.
“Main thing I care about, who killed our guys? I mean, fuck these dead Chinese mooks, fuck whatever got stolen from Quantum Park. For that matter, fuck national security. All I want is for whoever slaughtered our boys to take a spike at Gun Hill.”
“Then we have to figure a way to keep Deitz here, in Gracie, where we can work him,” said Nick. “And you’re right, Deitz is our only hook. Either he had a hand in this robbery, in which case he knows who else was involved—because there’s no way Deitz could manage a Barrett .50 the way that shooter did—”
“Deitz is no kind of shooter at all,” said Coors. “I’ve seen him at the range. He can hardly manage a pistol, let alone a Barrett .50.”
“And if he didn’t have anything to do with it, the guys who planted the stolen money in his Hummer sure as hell did, and even if he doesn’t know it, somewhere, somehow Deitz connects to them. They chose him. They had to have had a good reason. So, either way, Deitz is our only link to them.”
The phone on Coors’ desk bleeped at him. He picked it up, listened, and then said, “Okay. Keep him in the car. And stay down the road. Don’t let any of our people see him. And don’t let him get near the media crews. He starts one of his All Cops Are the Spawn of Satan speeches to any of the television crews outside, our guys will beat him to death. So stay clear, you got it? Good.”
He hung up, looked at Nick and Beau.
“Warren Smoles is here.”
There was a general groan.
“Here in the HQ?” asked Beau.
“No. I got two of our guys keeping him in a plain brown wrapper a mile down the line.”
“They won’t be able to do that for long,” said Nick.
Coors grinned.
“Yeah. He’s already calling it unlawful confinement. They took his cell phone too. He went postal.”
“What’d they tell him?”
“Security precautions for his own safety.”
“He buy that?”
“Hell no. And I don’t give a fuck. That showboating air bag is staying right there until we figure out what to do about—”
Boonie came out of the gun room. His face was wet and red and he had taken his tie off.
“Well, here we go. I just got off the line to D.C. State Department is sending an investigator to monitor the crash investigation. And get this. They may be bringing somebody from the Chinese Embassy with them. I’m gonna have to lee-aze with them. What the fuck does ‘lee-aze’ mean?”
“It means it’s your turn in the barrel,” said Coors.
“That’s what I thought. Fuck them all. Okay. So, to cut to the chase, whaddya wanna do with Deitz?”
They all tried to look blank.
“Don’t even start with me,” said Boonie, shaking his head. “I know none of you give a rat’s kidney about a buncha dead Chinamen, or if any spy shit was stolen from Quantum Park. All you want is who killed your boys, and Deitz is all you got. He had the money. We have him. You want to keep him close.”
“That’s right,” said Nick. “And you’d let us?”
Boonie blew out air, patted his shirt for the cigarettes he had given up around the same time Marty Coors did, rolled his eyes, and sat down on the edge of Coors’ desk.
“I’d take him away from you guys for the bank thing in a heartbeat, if that’s all it was. But this Chinese deal changes everything. It’s only a matter of time before the DNI lands on us, maybe even the CIA, and then nobody will see Byron Deitz again this side of Jordan. They’ll use him in some poodle-faking espionage stunt with the Chinese that’ll fall flat on its ass like always and none of us will ever be able to find a trace of him in a hundred years. Tell you the truth, that’s all I give a fuck about too. These were our people. But to pull it off, we’re gonna need a stunt. Any ideas?”
There was a silence.
“How’s his blood pressure?” Nick asked.
“Deitz?” asked Coors.
“Yeah. His heart, liver, that kind of thing.”
They all looked at each other.
Nobody said anything for
a while.
“We’ll need a tame doctor,” said Coors.
“We’ll need him right away,” said Nick.
More silence.
Boonie reached over, took one of Marty Coors’ gum sticks, started chewing on it as if it were a toothpick. The effect was not pretty, but then neither was Boonie Hackendorff.
After a time, Boonie smiled around the gum.
“I think I got just the guy,” he said.
Warren Smoles had long, luxurious white hair that he combed straight back in a leonine flow that perfectly framed his deep-set brown eyes, his strong jaw, his lofty forehead. He may have been tanned a buttery brown, but it was hard to tell under the pancake makeup that he had put on before he arrived. Right now he was standing out in the parking lot of the State Police HQ, surrounded by media people, a bright flood lighting him up like a roadside Jesus, if Jesus had been wearing a double-breasted navy blue pin-striped suit over a pale pink shirt with a white English-style collar and a pale blue silk tie held in place with a gold collar bar.
Warren Smoles was where he liked to be, where he was born to be, right in the middle of a media scrum, doing what he did best, which was to lie his ass off with style, wit, and ferocious conviction.
Nick, watching him on the television set in the Lady Grace Hospital cafeteria, surrounded by a squad of Niceville cops, was thinking that you had to hand it to the guy.
He had arrived on the scene only four hours ago; he had spent less than thirty minutes consulting with his client, and another half hour playing hardball with Boonie and Nick and Captain Coors while they arranged Deitz’s helicopter transfer to the intensive care unit here in Niceville.
And now Smoles was out there on the hardpan, claiming complete mastery over every detail of the case, and the media mutts were hanging on every word. The fact that Smoles knew damn well that the tame doctor—a Lady Grace heart surgeon who was Boonie’s brother-in-law—was using a preexisting blood pressure issue that Deitz had as a pretext for admitting Deitz as a critical care case, didn’t seem to be slowing him down at all.
The Homecoming Page 5