The Palm has swagger, bravado, a New York gangster dive ambience. The waiters all look like they made their bones in Newark in ’67, with those walnutty faces, thick pomades of rich Mediterranean hair, and little khaki waiter’s coats, with all kinds of odd bric-a-brac pinned across the belly. The place is dark and, even in the decreed absence of cigarettes and cigars, still feels smoky; the walls are festooned with somebody’s dim idea of celebrity caricature (unrecognizable); the potatoes look like they could be called the myocardial infarction facilitation kit—pancakes fried in diesel grease, possibly?—and the meat is stark, primordial, and bleeding.
Thus on his one mistress dinner night of the month (his wife of thirty-five years and mother of his four children was so understanding), Bill Fedders sat with current flame Jessica Delph, in his usual booth on the left side of the dim room, sipping a powerful vodka martini while admiring the young woman’s aquiline features, drawn-back blond hair, and hooded eyes. God, she was beautiful! Too bad he was going to dump her soon.
“Jessie, when I look at you, I wonder why you haven’t given your heart away to some twenty-five-year-old linebacker.”
“Possibly it’s because all the linebackers in this town are Redskins, that is, losers,” she said, with a smile that concealed the fact that she had in fact given her heart away—and some other goodies, as well—to a thirty-one-year-old stockbroker, because she didn’t want to have that conversation until Bill had gotten her, as promised early in the relationship, a job with a really fine lobbying shop.
“I love a gal who knows that she’s as beautiful as she is smart and as smart as she is beautiful,” he said. It was a treasured line, but he didn’t think he’d used it on this one, and besides it didn’t matter, because he knew about the stockbroker.
“So are we celebrating something, Bill?” she asked.
“Actually, we’re in mourning.”
“Ohhh, death. I hate it when that happens.”
“It’s not death, just massive frontal trauma, a coma, the patient in the oxygen tent out like a light, but I think it’ll come out of it.”
“It?”
“Not a person, a campaign. My oldest and dearest client had me running a campaign to hurry a certain federal policy toward implementation.”
“Details boring or classified?”
“Details unnecessary. Long story shortened: I had a young guy on the team, he seemed so promising, and I let him develop something on his own and it proved to be a hoax. A fraud. He was caught. Disaster.”
“You let him go?”
“He wasn’t really in my employ. I was helping him in his career. Anyhow, he’s been placed on probation, as I understand it, and now he’s covering New Jersey sewer commissions.”
“Bummer.”
“Indeed. I do think we’ll be okay. It’s just that Monday I have to make a phone call I’m not looking forward to. But it’ll work out, I’m sure, just not quite as quickly as we had hoped. But that’s why I’m a little down for now.”
“Poor guy,” she said, reaching across the table to touch his hand. “Jessie will try to make you feel better.”
“Excellent. Now let’s order and—”
But a shadow fell across the table.
Bill looked up and was surprised to see Nick Memphis of the FBI. He almost did a double take.
“Nick, I—”
“Bill, imagine running into you here. Gosh, what a surprise.”
Was that mockery in his voice?
“Uh, Jessica, may I present Nick Memphis, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Nick, this is Jessica Delph, a friend of mine.”
Nick bowed.
“Ms. Delph, a pleasure,” he said.
Then he turned to Bill and smilingly said, “Bill, you know, I think it would be a good idea if you gave Ms. Delph carfare and sent her home. I think it’s going to be a long evening.”
Bill swallowed, dammit, and looked for the joke in the agent’s face but saw no humor.
“Ms. Delph, sorry, but I think your evening with Bill here is over.”
“Bill, is anything the matter?”
“Uhhh,” Bill stumbled, at a loss for words for the first time in his life. Then he said, “I don’t know. Is anything the matter, Nick?”
“Well, Bill, that depends on how well you do over the next few minutes as we have our little chat. I’m trying desperately to find out why I shouldn’t touch this button on my pager and stand back as our crack apprehension team—this is five guys who were all tackles or guards at Nebraska—come through that door in full SWAT gear, guns drawn, and throw you to the ground, mace you, slam on the cuffs, and drag you out by your ears, your Allen Edmonds shoes dragging in the sawdust. Imagine how quickly that would get all over town. We don’t want that, do we?”
Bill had no desire to find out if Nick was bluffing.
“Jessie, here’s a twenty, honey. I’ll call tomorrow.”
Quickly, she scurried out, and Nick slipped in.
Bill took a sip of his martini, then another, and ate the olive.
“Am I allowed to order another?”
“Sure.”
“And you’re not drinking, I’m guessing.”
“You got that right.”
Bill gestured Vito Corleone over and sent for another vodka martini.
“Okay, Nick, I’m all yours.”
“I want to know why I shouldn’t arrest you on seven counts of aiding and abetting a felony crime, namely murder, the first-degree kind.”
Bill’s lower jaw not merely hit the table top but fell clean through the floor to the wine cellar beneath. When he got his breath back and his jaw reinserted in its hinges, he spoke with a weak, phlegm-choked voice.
“I—I—”
It was not much of an argument.
“We recovered a 1971 bank camera film of a robbery in Nyackett, Massachusetts. It clearly shows the young Thomas T. Constable shooting and killing two security guards from behind.”
“I—Uh—Are you joking?”
“Not at all. Then we recovered very solid information linking him to four Irish contractors—professional snipers—who murdered Joan Flanders, Jack Strong, Mitzi Reilly, Mitch Greene, and Carl Hitchcock, and I’m betting we can pin the murder of a Chicago cop named Dennis Washington on him too. Tomorrow when we serve warrants, we’ll have a lot more evidence. Now, Bill, here’s where we are. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem. My bet is that you’ll want to get ahead of this thing, because you know if you don’t, it’ll crush you. You’ll do very hard time in a very bad joint.”
“Nick, I knew nothing—”
“Save that for your own lawyer. I don’t have time. Mr. Fedders, either you come with me tonight and start making like a tweety-bird, or you are looking at a grim end to a very pleasant life. Somehow I don’t think Ms. Delph is going to make the long trip to Marion every Sunday to hear your sad stories of gang rape. And maybe Mrs. Fedders won’t either.”
Bill threw down his martini, signaled Vito for another one.
Then he turned to Nick and gave him a solemn, sincere look, rather fatherly, one of his most persuasive tools, and in his rich mahogany voice, he said, “Nick, you’re asking me to turn on a man who’s supported me my whole life. Because of Tom Constable’s belief in me, I wear fine shoes—Aldens, not Allen Edmonds—and suits, am married to a beautiful, understanding woman, have four extraordinary children, well educated and prospering in their careers, and as you can see, I do still get out on the town once in a while, old dog that I am. All because of Tom. I make over five million dollars a year, have a fine estate in Potomac, a beautiful house in Naples, and another on the Eastern Shore, right near Dick Cheney’s. I have horses, Perazzi shotguns; I have a two handicap and am noted as one of the best poker and bridge players in town. Everyone returns my calls. All that because of the generosity, the support, the belief, even the love of Tom Constable, whom you now accuse of horrific crimes. And you say to me, will you betray this man? Wil
l you turn on this man? Will you do harm to this great American?”
“That’s the sixty-four-year-in-prison question.”
“Well, Nick, I can answer you very quickly, in words of one syllable: of course I will. In a second. In half a second. And have I got stuff to give you. Now let’s get out of here. I hope you’ve got stenographers and typists ready, because it’s going to be a very long night.”
53
Two hours later they sat in a diner across from Indian Rapids’s only motel, an Econo Lodge, showered and changed into clothes they’d bought in the town’s only store, a beat-up old joint featuring everything from guns to butter. The two men were eating nothing great but a lot of it.
“Didn’t know I was so hungry,” said Bob.
“I can tell you’re gassed. Best get some sleep now. I think you’ve got an advanced case of what I’d call combat stress syndrome.”
“Umph,” said Bob. “Maybe so. Felt better. Called my wife, told her I’d be home in a few days. She wasn’t real sure who I was, and when I finally got her to remember me, she told me my daughters are all grown up and married and have kids.”
“You need to chill for a long, calm year.”
“I wish. Maybe later. I have to go to DC one last time on Tuesday to get this thing straightened out. Then I want to stop in Chicago. I have a gun that belongs to a police officer that I’d like to give to his widow.”
“No rest for the weary,” said Chuck. Then he said, “Look, Bob, nobody’s going to say this, so you’re stuck with me and I’m not any kind of speech maker. Too bad for you. But you wouldn’t let ’em do that to Carl Hitchcock, and by extension to us, the snipers, the mankillers, the bastards way out there with a rifle that never make it into the history books even if they make it back to their own lines. So sniper to sniper, the only thing I can say is—hell, I don’t know—Gee, Roy Rogers, you made all the little buckeroos happy.”
Swagger smiled. That was good enough for him. Then he suddenly felt a wave of fatigue. Time to go.
“Brother Chuck, I’ve got to crash.”
“Got it.”
“You’ll wake me in the morning and we’ll figure out where to go and what to do next.”
“Good.”
“See you then.”
“Gunny, one last thing. I won’t sleep. How in hell did you make that shot? You were what, six hundred yards out, with a mil-dot, and he had that supercomputer-driven thing. But you beat him and put him down before he even got a shot off. How? For God’s sake, that was the greatest shot I ever heard of.”
“Oh, that,” said Bob, as if that were something like picking up a sock. “He thought he was hunting me, but I was hunting him. I knew if it came to Lone Tree, the shooting would be fast and far and it’d be a one-round war. I spent a night in Lone Tree before you came in and even before I went in. I walked it, I studied it on the maps, I tried to learn it good. I figured out where he’d start in if he came on a beeline from the first valley, ’cause he knew where the games would be played. That was the whole point. From there, I tried to figure where he’d shoot from. I discovered that there was a spot he’d move through, either on foot or low crawl, where there wasn’t no wind. That’s because you can’t hardly see it, but about two hundred yards to the right, there’s a knoll, about twenty foot tall, a natural windbreak. So if Anto’s coming down that slope, when he gets to that dead spot, that’s where he’ll shoot. Any sniper would. Why fight the wind at the muzzle if you don’t have to? I lased the range from the spot back to the tree. It was five hundred thirty-seven yards. When I got your rifle, I zeroed it to point of aim, dead bang center, no holdover, right at five thirty-seven. Then I just watched, and when he felt the wind stop, he halted, just for an instant, to process it; then he went to shoot. But I was maybe a half second ahead of him, and I put it on the money, though a little to the right. I was five inches off my center chest hold. Blew his arm out at the root. Wasn’t pretty, but then little in this game is.
“Now, you know what? I’m going to drink some goddamned whiskey tonight, with Chuck McKenzie, Chuck-Chuck-Chuckity-Chuck, the great marine sniper, my friend, the fella who shot three Irish gooney birds off my ass and saved my worthless drunk’s life three times in three seconds. Can you stay up with the old guy, Chuckity-Chuck, you goddamned sniping mankiller, you?”
“Gunny, I will drink to your mankilling ways and my own, and to all the snipers, and we will have ourselves a toot!”
54
Nick’s apprehension plan was brilliant, and he cleared a major obstacle that Sunday morning, after a long night with his team listening to the confessions and accusations of Bob Fedders, by obtaining a federal warrant against Thomas T. Constable for murder by way of hired hitmen who crossed state lines to execute their crimes. That made it a legal federal pinch, and even if that charge ultimately proved hard to make in court—much of the information, in the form of e-mails in various laptops, had yet to be collected—it would stand until Massachusetts authorities were able to file murder charges against Constable for the 1971 killings, of which photographic evidence now existed.
Given that arrest warrant, Nick was also able to get his search warrants, which were eight in number: three for Constable offices in New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles; one for the ranch property in Wyoming (especially the security team headquarters); one for Constable himself, including any possessions with which he might be traveling; one for the hard drive on Jack Strong’s computer; one for all e-mails exchanged prior to the murders of Jack and Mitzi between Bill and Tom; and finally one for all properties belonging to the late Jack Strong and Mitzi Reilly.
All this had to be delicately coordinated, as all agreed that Constable had revealed himself a borderline sociopath given to violence and flight, and with his enormous resources he would have plenty of places to flee to, including homes in Costa Rica, the South of France, Switzerland, the moors of Scotland, and Bali. It was further thought that the governments of Cuba, Venezuela, China, Libya, and Indonesia would give him refuge if necessary. Therefore, all the searches were timed for 7 p.m., at which time Constable would be on the ground and ideally on the runway from his flight to Seattle to address the annual Amazon.com employees banquet. An FBI apprehension team was laid on, heavily armed, not because they expected trouble from Constable’s three Graywolf bodyguards, who were after all sworn to obey civil law as a condition for their firearms permits, but Constable himself; who knew, who could predict how he might act when confronted and cornered? He might prefer a gun battle as a way of suicide by cop. Nick wanted him in custody with no difficulty, quietly and carefully before he realized the totality of the charges against him. Nick sure didn’t want him shooting up the Amazon.com banquet; that would be a bad career move of epic proportions.
Like all brilliant plans, it began brilliantly, and like all brilliant plans, it failed brilliantly. Someone in the New York office got mixed up on time and thought the 7 p.m. jump-off was western time; to compound this error, it turned out that the New York AIC misunderstood the concept of time zones and thought that 7 p.m. in Seattle was 3 p.m. in New York.
“Oh, Christ,” said Nick when he got the news. Heads would have to roll on this one, but that was for later. Now a real problem: would Constable hear? If he heard, he could bolt. If he got to his jet, he could head to Costa Rica or wherever, and what would the Bureau do then?
“Hmm,” said Ron Fields, with his usual subtlety and political acumen, “I think I’d launch some F-18s, intercept over water, go to air-to-air, and do the shoot-down where it’ll do the least damage.”
“Thanks, Ron. Helpful as usual,” Nick said grumpily, even though everyone else had laughed. “Okay, we go. We go now, we make the arrest wherever he is, before he gets word. Where is he?”
That’s when it occurred to brilliant Nick that he’d made a brilliant mistake himself. He had purposely turned down the option of locating Constable and tailing him, because such a move, to a paranoid like Constable, might spook him into e
arly flight. And the Seattle date was so solid that of all options, the Seattle airport takedown, well staffed, well planned by top tactical people, seemed absolutely the best.
“Where is he?” he asked again.
“We could do an NRO satellite interception of his cell phone notifications,” said the ever-bright Starling.
“We need his number.”
“Fedders would have it.”
But Fedders was in a safe house in Roanoke, Virginia, and Bureau policy was never to call, because you never knew who was listening in, and if Constable somehow got away, Fedders’s life would be at risk, to say the least. His security was not only mandated by regulation but paramount to Task Force Sniper’s enterprise.
“Oh, shit,” said Nick, sitting back.
“Nick, we can get FAA, we can find out the flight plan of his Gulfstream, and we can move an apprehension team there ASAP.”
“Good. Get going on it, Starling. I’ll call the director and get his authorization to assemble apprehension teams at all field offices so that when we find out, we can move them fast.”
Nick looked at his watch. It was now well after three. He felt like he was going to have a heart attack. All the shit they’d gone through and now it was beginning to topple—
“Wait a second,” he said.
He took out his cell and called a number.
The phone on the other end rang and rang and rang.
“Swagger.”
“Hey. How do you feel?”
“Better. Did some drinking last night, nothing much, I’m happy to say. Had a good time with a good pal. Is something up?”
“I’m afraid so. The good news is I’ve got a fed indictment on Constable, I’ve got search teams ready to—well, I told you all that.”
“Yep.”
“Okay, short version. We fucked up somewhere along the line and one of the search teams jumped early. It’s possible—it would depend on who, if anybody, was staffing that New York office—the upshot is that it’s possible someone could notify Constable that he was the subject of a federal operation. You know the guy has access to a jet. He could bolt overseas, we might never get him. He’d just end up more famous and admired by the world’s assholes than he is now.”
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