Heat Lightning

by John Sandford

  “Why’s that better than a wire?” Andreno asked.

  “Because everything is so much bigger, they can jam more shit into it. Get better sound, you get movies, you get a better radio, and a bigger battery,” Jackson said. “But the main thing is, a bug-detection device will pick up a computer every time. If they scan you, they’ll pick up the laptop. And they make an allowance for it. And the computer works, if they want to see it work. The trick is, it really is a bug.”

  Andreno looked skeptical. “Maybe I should just take a wrist radio.”

  Andreno would give Warren color xerox copies of the photos, saying that the actual photos were nearby. “He won’t believe it if you just hand over the originals,” Virgil said. “Or, if he does believe it, why would he give them back to you? It’s not like you’re gonna shoot him right there in the restaurant.”

  ANDRENO PRACTICED with the laptop a bit, put in his own e-mail address and figured out how to call it up. When they were satisfied that he knew what they were doing, they headed out, across town, to the restaurant, a sandwich-and-pie place, and they all got coffee and a piece of pie and worked out the seating arrangements.

  When they were done, Virgil asked, “You happy?”

  Andreno nodded and said, “I am. It’s almost noon. Let’s make the call.”

  They went out to Virgil’s truck, gave Andreno a clean cell phone, which Shrake plugged into the microphone attachment on the laptop, and Warren’s cell-phone number.

  Andreno sat in the passenger seat, hunched over the phone, cleared his throat a couple times, and dialed. The phone call lasted a minute, and they replayed it from the recorder.

  ANDRENO: “Ralph Warren. I’m an ex-employee of a very old friend of yours, going back to the sixties. I need to talk to you.”

  “What friend? Talk about what?” Warren had a high-pitched, reedy voice on the phone. “How’d you get this number?”

  “We need to talk about all these dead people with lemons in their mouths. Your old friend figures that you might know something about it, and he’s very nervous. Therefore, he’s hiding out. The thing is, he took some pictures way back then, in that house, the one where the trouble started. He sent you copies. I had a little problem with your friend, and he canned my ass, so I lifted the pictures and here I am. All I want is my fee. Thirty thousand dollars. Then I go away.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, pal.”

  “Okay. Well, then, don’t show up,” Andreno said. “I’m gonna be at Spiro’s Restaurant, which is three blocks west on University from your Checkerboard Apartments, at one o’clock. If you’re not there by ten after one, fuck it, I mail the pictures to the television people and go on back to Chicago. See you there, or not. I know what you look like . . . from the pictures. Oh—if you want to know where your pal is, I can tell you that, too. ’Bye.”

  “Wait . . .”

  But Andreno had hung up.

  “He bit,” Shrake said from the backseat. “He’ll be there.”

  JACKSON SET UP three hundred yards away with a camera lens as long as his arm. The rest of them stayed on the street, sitting in the backseats of plain-vanilla state cars, behind lightly smoked glass, each with a radio. For the first half hour, they saw nothing at all. Then the radio burped and Jenkins said, “Look at this guy. Red Corolla. He’s five miles an hour too slow and he’s checking everything.”

  “Can’t see his face,” Shrake said. Virgil was at the end of the line, watched the Corolla as it passed, but was on the wrong side of the street to see the driver’s face. He watched as the car made an unsignaled right turn off University. They’d driven the neighborhood before taking their parking spots, and there wasn’t much down that street—a crappy old industrial street with no residential.

  A minute later, the Corolla poked its nose back onto University and turned toward Virgil. “Corolla’s on the way back,” he said. “He’s probably our guy.”

  The car rolled past: the driver was a big guy, wearing a steel-gray suit, wine-colored necktie, and sunglasses. He looked like one of Warren’s security people: good physical condition and too big for the Corolla.

  “Got another one,” Jenkins said. “Look at the Jeep.”

  Red Jeep Cherokee, a few years old, slowed and turned into the parking lot. The Jeep made a slow tour, parked at the far end, sat for a moment, then slowly came back out. “I think they’re taking down the tag numbers on the cars,” Jenkins said. “It’d be interesting to know who’s running the numbers for them.”

  “Let’s figure that out,” Virgil said. “Let’s get the numbers on the plates ourselves, see who ran them.”

  The Jeep rolled out of the parking lot, turned back into traffic, drove a hundred yards up the street, then did a U-turn and parked two cars behind Shrake. “This isn’t good,” Shrake said.

  “Maybe they’ll get out when Andreno shows or Warren shows,” Jenkins said.

  “Hope so. Makes me nervous to have them right on my back.”

  THEY ALL SAT, and waited, and got hot, and Andreno showed up at ten minutes to five, showing the Illinois tags, and turned into the parking lot. Shrake was watching the guys in the Jeep, through the windshield and rear window of the car behind him, and called, “They made him. They picked him out. As soon as they saw him get out of the car, the driver was on his cell phone.”

  Andreno went inside. Three minutes later, he said, “I hope you guys can hear me.”

  Virgil called him on his cell phone and said, “You’re loud and clear.”

  WARREN SHOWED UP at one o’clock in a black Cadillac Escalade, got out of the passenger side, brushed the seat of his pants. Virgil said, “There he is, the guy in the black suit.”

  Warren was wearing wraparound sunglasses and took them off and dropped them in his jacket pocket. One of his security people had been driving, and he checked out the parking lot, his eyes lingering on Andreno’s Crown Vic. Then he nodded at Warren and they disappeared into the restaurant.

  They heard Andreno say, “Mr. Warren.”

  Warren: “What’s your name?”

  “Ricky.”

  Warren must have sat down, Virgil thought. Warren said, “Call in,” apparently to his security guy, and then said to Andreno, “We’re checking in with my security people.”

  A new voice said, “Yeah, we’re in. He’s here.”

  Then Warren said, “What’s this about pictures?”

  Andreno: “You want my story, or you just want the pictures, or you want the pictures first and the story later?”

  “Let’s see the pictures.”

  SHRAKE CALLED: “The Jeep guys are moving.”

  The Jeep moved out into traffic, then turned into the restaurant parking lot and parked. A moment later, the Corolla rolled down the street, made a turn, and parked next to the Jeep.

  ANDRENO WAS SAYING, “I’ve got color xeroxes. The actual pictures are . . . close. But I want to see some money.”

  “The money’s close,” Warren said. “Let’s see the pictures.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Warren said, “That’s not me. That’s just not me. Sorry about that, but it’s not me. That might be my head, but they Photoshopped it onto somebody else’s body.”

  “Well, you know, it sorta looks like you, asshole,” Andreno said, putting a little New Jersey into his voice. “Quite a bit like you. And there’s at least one guy still alive who’ll tell the cops it is you. Anyway, if it ain’t you, fuck it, I’ll take my pictures and hit the road.”

  “Where’s Knox? I want to talk to him,” Warren said.

  “I don’t want to talk to him,” Andreno said. “We had a pretty serious disagreement.”

  “About what?”

  “About I was supposed to bodyguard him, but when I get up there, he’s in some fuckin’ cabin on this fuckin’ lake and he wants me out in the woods with the fuckin’ ticks and mosquitoes and these little fuckin’ flies. . . . They were chewing my ass up, and I sez, I gotta get out of there,
and he sez, we gotta have you up in the woods, Ricky, and we went around about it, and I went back out in the woods, but when they went out—they went out a couple times a day—I lifted the photographs and took off. All I want is my money.”

  “Your deal is with him, not with me,” Warren said.

  “Yeah, but you’re the guy I fuckin’ got,” Andreno said. “You can get the money back from him: believe me, you don’t want these things rolling around out there.”

  “Five thousand,” Warren said. “That’s all they’re worth.”

  “Bullshit. You killed those people in Vietnam and Carl said this other guy, this first guy you shot here, was feeling guilty and was going to the cops and that’s why you killed him, and then you had to kill everybody.”

  “That’s wrong. Carl’s killing people, not me. Carl’s the one who killed those people in Vietnam.”

  “Horseshit, I’ve got the pictures,” Andreno said.

  “Five thousand . . .”

  “Five thousand, kiss my ass, that won’t buy gas to Vegas.”

  A third voice, the first time the other man had spoken: “Shouldna bought that piece-of-shit Crown Vic. What you get, a mile to the gallon?”

  “FUCK HIM,” Jenkins said.

  Shrake: “He’s right. Can’t shoot him for that.”

  ANDRENO: “Twenty. I gotta have twenty.”

  “Well, fuck you,” Warren said. “You’re lucky to get five, and I gotta get back to work. You want the five, or what?”

  “You gotta come up from that or I’m walking,” Andreno said. “Five is the same as nothing.”

  “ANDRENO IS good at this,” Jenkins said.

  WARREN SAID, “Last offer. Ten. You can have it in one minute. You get it when I see the photographs.”

  Long pause. Then Andreno said, “Gimme the ten.”

  WARREN MUST’VE nodded at the third man. He said to Andreno, “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t be back. I’m providing ninety percent of the security at the convention, and if I tell somebody you’re a risk, you’re gonna go away. So I better not see your face again.”

  “What the fuck convention? What convention?” Andreno whined.

  “The Republican National Convention. What, you don’t know what convention is coming here?”

  “What the fuck do I give a shit about a bunch of political shit.”

  AS THEY WERE squabbling, the third man left the restaurant, unlocked the back of the Cadillac, leaned inside, did something. . . .

  “Getting some money,” Virgil said. “They had more than ten thousand.”

  WHEN WARREN’S security man had the money, he walked quickly to the red Jeep, said something through an apparently open window, then hurried back to the restaurant.

  “Something happening?” Shrake asked. “Maybe they’re gonna try to lift him.”

  Virgil started his truck and said, “Get ready to move.”

  INSIDE THE RESTAURANT, the third man’s voice came up. “Ten. Count it if you want, but keep it under the table.”

  Another pause. Andreno: “Okay. Lot of money for a picture that isn’t of you.”

  “Fuck you,” Warren said. “Where are the pictures?”

  “Here . . .”

  The third man said, “He’s got the money, we’ve got the pictures.”

  Virgil asked, “What’s that? What’d he say?”

  Andreno said, “What’d you say?”

  The third man said again, to somebody unseen, “He’s got the money, he’s got the money.”

  IN THE PARKING LOT, two guys got out of the Jeep and a third from the Corolla, and Virgil called, “Something’s happening, we gotta move,” and Shrake called back, “Hey, that second guy, that second guy is Dave Nelson, he’s with Minneapolis, he’s a cop.”

  “I know the third guy, he’s with Minneapolis, I know his face,” Jenkins said, “Hell, they’re cops! They’re gonna bust Andreno.”

  Virgil said, “God . . . damnit. They were wired. Mother . . .”

  HE PULLED INTO the parking lot and stopped at the door, but all three of the men were inside and he hurried to catch up. He turned one corner inside, blowing past the hostess, who was looking after the Minneapolis cops anyway, and when he turned the next corner the three were crowded around Andreno and he could see Warren’s face, sneer playing across it, and Andreno was saying, “Wait a minute, wait a minute . . .”

  All the customers in the restaurant were looking, some half standing for a better view, and then Virgil turned the last corner and one of the cops was telling Andreno to get out of the booth and Andreno settled back and said, “Look that way.”

  The cop turned his head and saw Virgil coming, and then Shrake and Jenkins, and Virgil dropped open his ID and said, “BCA. You just busted our show.”

  The lead Minneapolis cop looked from Virgil to Jenkins to Shrake and said, “Ah, shit.”

  THEY ALL BOILED into the parking lot, Warren screaming-angry, ripping a wire from under his shirt. He tossed it at a Minneapolis cop and then pointed a trembling finger at Virgil. “You motherfuckers. You’re all done. You’re all gonna be unemployed in two fuckin’ hours. You don’t know what getting fucked is like until I fuck you. . . .” Spit was flying from his mouth, and his face was heart-attack red and the Minneapolis cops were shaking their heads.

  Virgil got tired of it and said to Warren, “Shut up. I’m tired of hearing it. So get us fired. Go do it. In the meantime, I’ll take the photographs.”

  “You’re not taking any photographs.”

  Warren put his hands up, and Virgil said, “You touch me, I’ll put you on the ground, and after we pull your teeth out of your throat, we’ll charge you with assault. Now, give me the photographs: they’re state evidence.”

  The lead Minneapolis cop, whose name was Randy, said, “Give him the photographs. You gotta give him the photographs.”

  “The photographs,” Warren said. “The photographs . . .”

  He kept backing away, Virgil a step away from him, and Randy tried to get between them, but then Warren had his back against Virgil’s truck and Randy said, “Mr. Warren. Give him the photographs. This is enough of a screwup without you going to jail. If you push the man, I can tell you, you’re going to jail.”

  “The photographs . . .” Warren was so angry that his entire body shook, but he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the envelope of photographs and gave them to Virgil. Virgil stepped back, checked them, put them in his pocket. “If I see those fuckin’ things on TV . . .”

  “You won’t see them on TV until they’re admitted into evidence somewhere, and then you can argue with the judge,” Virgil said.

  “If you let those out . . .”

  “What’re you gonna do?” Jenkins asked. “Fire us some more?”

  “Keep laughin’ motherfucker.”

  “You call me a motherfucker one more fuckin’ time and I’m gonna break your head like a fuckin’ cantaloupe,” Jenkins said.

  Randy: “Hey, hey . . . Mr. Warren, you better take off.”

  “We’ll be back in touch,” Virgil told Warren. “We’re taking evidence from a witness to the murders shown here, who says that you committed them. If the evidence is found to be credible, we will turn the photos over to the responsible federal authorities, and they can decide what to do,” Virgil said. “In the meantime, stay away from Carl Knox.”

  Warren erupted again. “Knox is the one! Knox is the one! Knox did all this shit! He was right there! Right there! He’s the guy who did all this shit—he’s the one who’s killing everybody, he’s the goddamn Mafia, you moron. Why do you think I’ve got security guys all over the place? It’s Knox, you dummy!”

  Virgil said, “We want some DNA from you. A blood sample. We have some DNA from the killer. You want to give us some?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “We’re also considering charges of willful obstruction of justice and possibly accessory after the fact to murder—I have notes from our first interview, when you said that
you didn’t know the other men who went to Vietnam, and we have photos that say you knew them very well. Your obstruction may have resulted in the death of Ray Bunton.”

  Warren’s attitude stepped down. “My obstruction . . . I’ll give some DNA. I’ll give some blood. Not to you, asshole, because you’re gonna get fired. But I’ll give some DNA to whoever fills your job.”

  “I’m taking you at your word,” Virgil said. “We’ll have a guy come around tomorrow.”

  “Fuck you.” Warren pulled his shirt cuffs down, adjusted his tie, turned to his security man, and said, “We’re outa here.”

  WHEN THEY WERE GONE, Randy said, “This ain’t going down in the annals of fine police work. For any of us.”

  They all half laughed, and Virgil said, “He sounded for real. When did he get in touch with your guys?”

  THEY FIGURED OUT that he’d called Minneapolis a half hour after Andreno had called Warren. “So they talked it over,” Virgil said.

  “For a while,” Randy said. “We had to run like hell to set this up. Jesus—we had like twelve minutes.”

  “But by calling you in, he’s putting the pictures in the hands of the cops,” Virgil said, confused.

  “Maybe he figured the pictures were gonna get out there. Maybe he figured he could finesse the pictures,” Shrake said. “Pictures from Carl Knox are gonna be a little shaky. If Knox would even testify. And without him testifying, the pictures don’t mean jack-shit.”

  “How about this?” Andreno said. “Maybe he thought he could find out where Knox is by squeezing me.”

  “Maybe,” Virgil said, fists on his hips. “Ah, man, it’s all screwed up. I gotta have some time. I gotta think.”

  21

  VIRGIL CALLED Davenport and told him what happened. Davenport said, “You’re fired.”