Gatekeeper

by Mayor, Archer

  But there was still something wrong, something escaping her. She got up and began pacing the room.

  "It could make an okay movie," Manuel humored her. "A TV movie, maybe, since it doesn't make sense, but some people might like it."

  "What's wrong with it?" she challenged him, hoping to draw him out.

  "Why hang Hollowell? If I was making an example of him, who was I making it to? You say Rivera had nobody to impress—he had nobody out here except Hollowell."

  She burst out laughing, the last piece falling into place. "Exactly. You were making a point to Torres's people. Hollowell worked for Torres once, too, like you all did." She slapped her forehead. "So dumb."

  "Greta. You can't just change your mind to make it fit. This whole story is make-believe." His face suddenly got serious. "Are you okay?"

  She waved that off. "Spare me. Hollowell worked for Torres. That should be easy to find out. But he must've gone over to Rivera—for real. Johnny's got all those gunmen on his side, after all. It's not like he's a total loony—just guilty of false advertising with me. But he wanted to get this done, and until you killed Hollowell, Hollowell was the means. That's why you hanged him. It was a double message. I mean, yeah, it made a point with Rivera, but it really hit home with the boys in the 'hood, right? 'This is what happens to traitors.' Why the hell didn't I get it sooner? What a moron."

  Manuel straightened, ran his hand through his hair, and then stood to his full height. "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself."

  She froze in her pacing. "I'm right?"

  "Very good." He took one step away from the couch, in her direction.

  "Why did you kill the girl?" Furtively, Sam began looking around, thinking tactically, knowing things were about to get dangerous.

  He furrowed his eyebrows momentarily, as if trying to remember. "She was in the way. I didn't know she'd be there."

  "But you made it look like a drug overdose."

  "I didn't need two murders." He stopped and studied her closely. "How did you know it wasn't an overdose? That wasn't in the news."

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. It was like having cold water thrown in her face—the startling revelation that she'd made a crucial mistake.

  "I heard it somewhere."

  His hand shifted to the small of his back, where he kept his gun.

  Sam ran at him, head down, taking him totally by surprise. He staggered back, tried pulling his gun, but she collided into him before he could, sending them both sprawling backward over the couch behind him, and onto the floor in a tangled, thrashing embrace. She grappled blindly at his arms, swatted his face, did all she could to keep him on the defensive until she could control the gun.

  But he was fast and not easily distracted, and he eventually threw her off, pushing at her with his feet. He rolled away, came up in a crouch, and aimed the gun between her eyes, all in one fluid movement.

  In the distance, approaching fast, sirens were wailing.

  "I'm a cop," she said breathlessly, still crumpled on the floor. "This whole place is rigged with video. That's why they're coming now. Everything's being recorded."

  He rose slowly, the gun steady, not reacting to her outburst. "You slipped, saying the girl didn't overdose."

  "Give it up, Manuel. You can make a deal. Shut down Torres, maybe more. Witness protection, even."

  He smiled, but there was a lover's betrayal in his eyes. The sirens were almost on top of them, filling the room.

  "I don't think that's how it would turn out. I am sorry, though," he added sadly. "I liked Greta Novak. I would have enjoyed cooking for her more."

  He paused for a split moment, as they exchanged a lingering glance, no words left, before turning quickly and vanishing from the room.

  She scrambled to her feet, blue lights already reflecting off the ceiling, and followed him outside into a swirl of strobes, dust, the sound of cars skidding to a halt.

  "Stop where you are. Put your hands in the air."

  "The guy with the gun," she shouted, bathed in a cross-hatch of headlights. "Did you see the guy running out of here?"

  Nobody had.

  Chapter 22

  "Nice job on the Rutland case," Gail said.

  Joe merely shook his head. They were in his car on Canal Street. He'd just picked her up from the hospital. His voice was almost bitter when he spoke. "I shouldn't complain, since we ducked a bullet, but this was nothing to brag about. When you get down to it, we were pulled in to make the governor look good, and screwed it up. He made it happen anyhow, of course. Instead of presenting somebody's head to Roger Lapierre for Sharon Lapierre's murder as planned, Reynolds substituted the surveillance video of manuel Ruiz admitting to it, just before he got away. And it worked. Apparently, Lapierre was satisfied with the promise that 'we'—whoever that is—will nail the guy in the long run. Makes you wonder why we bothered."

  "You shut down a couple of drug rings,"she countered. "That's what the paper said this morning: 'Rutland Drug Lords Stopped in their Tracks.'"

  He let out a short laugh. "Pure spin. There were no lords and no tracks, for that matter. We busted a few guys. Mouse fart in a high wind. Given our high hopes, the resources expended, and the risks to Sam, the whole thing was a wash. I doubt the people we arrested had even been fingerprinted before their successors were already setting up deals. I'm happy to leave that entire drug merry-go-round to the task force. Not my cup of tea."

  "Did Sam do a good job?" Gail's voice was more tentative against this unusual dourness.

  Here his tone lightened. "Oh, hell. If she'd been a crook and Rivera had been honest with her, they would've made an amazing team. She was great. Totally convincing. The only hitch was that he couldn't organize a drug ring any more than we could stop one. Talk about ironies. Of course," he confessed, addressing her question, "Sam won't accept any of that. She just sees the end result and blames herself. So she's a little bummed out at the moment."

  Gail reflected that Sam was obviously not the only one. "Is there blame going around?"

  He smiled again. "Everyone's tiptoeing away from this one, counting their lucky stars. Yours truly included. My gut instinct was to hold Sam back when she first discovered Rivera, but I went with the flow. Everyone got so excited about working an undercover, it never crossed our minds to check the horse we'd chosen to ride."

  Joe pulled off Canal and stopped next to a gas pump at a convenience store. He swung out of the car, turned the unit on, and wedged the nozzle into his tank opening.

  Gail leaned over in the front seat so she could see him through the open driver's window. "But you're all okay, aside from a little wounded pride, right? There's no long-range damage?"

  He leaned his elbows on the windowsill. His expression was more philosophical now.

  "I think so. Allard's happy we got off light. The governor's ratings are up. Sam's licking her wounds and Willy may or may not be helping her. God only knows there. Spinney's gone on vacation. He got into a fight with some scumball in Springfield who tried to stop him from retrieving his son from a friend's house. I don't know the details, but he's shrugging it off. He told me he was going to see a whole bunch of bad movies with the family, whatever that meant. I'm glad he's taking the time."

  "Basically," he concluded, "all's well, if you label pure survival as success." "

  He stopped to gaze at Gail. "What about you, Mother Zigman? All this concern for others. How're you holding up?"

  She smiled at him. "Fine. Guess it was something I just had to do. Pretty crazy, the way things catch up to you when you're not paying attention. But except for what happened to Laurie, I'm not unhappy about any of it. These lessons come in strange wrapping sometimes."

  He nodded ruefully at that. "No kidding. I have to pay for the gas inside. Be right back."

  He left the car and crossed the lot to the convenience store located in its middle like a customs house. The bell above the door tinkled as he entered. He handed his credit card to the young m
an at the counter. The store was empty. He leaned over the counter slightly as the clerk's back was turned and looked at the floor where Laurie's blood had once flowed from edge to edge. It was pristine now.

  "Is Arnie in?" Joe asked, signing the receipt moments later.

  "Yeah. He's in the back. Last door beyond the rest rooms. Says 'Employees Only' but you can walk in."

  "Thanks."

  He made his way to the back, pushed open the door, and found himself in a narrow, cinder-block-walled room filled with piled boxes and crates, along with one steel desk and a fluorescent lamp. There were no windows, so the lighting made the man sitting at the desk look pasty and haggard.

  Joe showed him his badge. "Arnie Weller?"

  The man's voice was listless. "Yeah."

  "Mind if I sit?"

  "Free country."

  Joe moved a few papers off the chair beside the desk and sat. "I'm Joe Gunther. I worked a little on the Laurie Davis case. Thought you'd like to hear how she was doing."

  Weller's face transformed. His eyes widened with hopefulness, giving him almost a plaintive air. "She better?"

  "She is physically. Woke up this morning, talked to her parents. She's still very weak, but the docs're saying she should make it—that the coma was actually a good thing. Gave her time to heal on her own."

  To Joe's surprise, tears welled up in Arnie's eyes, which he awkwardly wiped away with the back of his hand. "Oh, Christ, that's good news. I've had that girl's face in my head ever since it happened. I can't sleep, I don't have any appetite."

  Joe leaned forward and patted the other man's shoulder.

  "You weren't the one who put a knife in her hand to start with. Remember that. She made her own choices, and she'll have a lot more still to make—her work's barely begun. You were just a step in that process—a lucky one, as it turns out." Joe reflected a moment before asking, "You still carry a gun, by the way?"

  Weller cradled his forehead in his hand. "Shit no. I got robbed again two nights ago. I just stepped away from the register and let him take what he wanted. I'm getting out of this business. It's too much to take—almost killing someone, almost getting killed. It's not worth it."

  He suddenly looked up and stared directly at Joe. "And you can't tell me it'll get any better, can you?"

  Joe studied him for a moment, thinking back to what he and his team had just gone through, and the minimal results they'd gathered.

  "Damned if I know."