Don't Know Jack (34 page)

She sighed.

He pressed. “Any bright ideas?  Preferably something that won’t get us fired?  Did I mention I have a large family?”

She said nothing.

He said, “That’s what I thought. You got zilch.”

He was wrong, technically. She had one desperate, last-ditch option. But she didn’t describe it. Maybe she would never need to. Maybe something else would come along.

She went back to pacing. She talked as she walked. “Roscoe said Archie Leach is howling because we left before he debriefed us. He wants vengeance for his brother.”

Gaspar said, “We didn’t kill his brother. So how is Archie Leach our problem?”

“Cooper called you after the fire in the mailbox store.”

“Right.”

“He asked you about Sylvia’s mail. You told him everything. The smashed mailbox theory, forwarded envelopes, the list of box holders, and how you found her mug shot.”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t ask to see the list?”

“No.”

“That’s weird, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“You saw the list just like I did. His name is on it. And so is mine. And yours. He wasn’t even interested?”

Blandly, like he was calming a suicide, Gaspar said, “But I didn’t know all that when I was talking to him. You took the list with you, remember?  To the bar?  In your pocket?”

“But he had to know, right?  So it’s weird that he didn’t ask or deal with it somehow, isn’t it?”

“You’re wearing me out.”

“Isn’t it?”

“We’ve been over this, Sunshine. All we have is the list. Nothing else. If it comes to it, he’ll say he has no idea why his name was on the list, and he’ll say he didn’t have a mailbox at Bernie’s, and we’ll believe him, because we have no idea why our names were on the list either, and we sure didn’t have mailboxes at Bernie’s.”

“Cooper is involved with Sylvia.”

“Sex is not illegal.”

“Sylvia laundered the money and stole it from Harry and killed him.”

“Maybe so. No proof, though. And nothing connecting Cooper to any of that.”

When she didn’t raise anything else, he said, “Can I go to sleep now?”

She patted herself down, checked her gun and her pockets, and walked toward the door.

Stretched out in his chair, eyes closed, Gaspar asked, “Where are you going?”

“To call Finlay.”

He didn’t move so much as an eyelid. But his tone conveyed every catastrophic consequence she’d already argued in her head. “If anybody asks, you’re on your own. I’ve got a family to feed. Did I mention that?  Twenty years left. Fit for no other work. Not even fit for this, to be honest. I’m a charity case. You can throw your career out the window, but please don’t add mine to the landfill while you’re at it.”

“Cooper’s not God, you know,” she reminded him, in his own words.

“He’s the God of my family dinner. And yours, too. Whatever special relationship you think you two have, Sunshine, make no mistake. He’ll throw you under the train in a Hot’lanta second and never look back.”

O
nly one choice
.

She opened the door. Looked back. He hadn’t moved.

“I was wrong about you,” she said. “Zorro, you’re not.”

“Sad but true,” he said, and the door slammed behind her.

CHAPTER FORTY ONE

Washington, DC

November 3

7:15 p.m.

Kim got a cab outside the hotel and sharpened her plan on the fly. It was cold, but she barely noticed. She thought through her counter-surveillance options but knew she was unlikely to hide much. Unmonitored transmissions in Washington, D.C., were as scarce as innocent felons. The very airwaves were alive with ears and eyes every moment of every day.

Best case: Cooper was otherwise occupied at that moment. He was covering a private operation solo and off the books. There would be inevitable windows of surveillance black-out. He wasn’t God. He could find the pieces afterward, but he might not be observing in real time.

But he’d anticipate her call to Finlay. He’d be ready to intercept. The problem gnawed at her. She rubbed Finlay’s card inside her pocket. She needed an unpredictable location. And fast. The Redskins’ FedEx Field would work, but there wasn’t enough time to get there and back.

Only one choice.

Which was: Verizon Center during tonight’s hockey game.

Twenty-thousand-plus in attendance; most of them using electronic devices. On a pre-paid burner phone, she would be as anonymous as any hay straw in the stack.

The cab ride took eight minutes door-to-door in light traffic. The game was already in progress. She used the media entrance at 6
^th
and G Streets Northwest. She flashed her badge everywhere she needed to. She found the best reception she was likely to get. She put a finger in her opposite ear to mute the screaming crowd. She called the number.

Finlay answered on the fourth ring. Boston accent. Rich baritone.

He said, “How can I help you?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me,” she said. “We’ve hit a snag.”

“Your partner knows you’re calling?”

“Yes. But he advised me not to.”

“Because you’ve worked your way up the food chain to the killer whale?”

“Correct.”

“And you want me to remove the obstacle in your path. Why would I do that?”

Trading favors. What did Kim have that Finlay wanted?  “You tell me.”

“Much has changed since we met. You’re operating under a bright spotlight now.”

But his price might be too steep. “Can you help or not?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“How far you’re willing to go.”

Kim paused briefly. Reflex.
Only one choice
. “I think we understand each other, Mr. Finlay. One more thing. Roscoe’s in trouble. Friendly fire. Fix it.”

Silence. Had he not anticipated her demand?  He said, “Agreed. I’ve left a package for you at the Swiss embassy. Offer expires in twenty minutes. Your taxi’s waiting.”

Connection terminated.

She checked her watch. Fifteen minute trip in the opposite direction under current conditions. She burned five extra minutes to dispose of the phone, exit on F Street, and flag a new cab of her own. “2900 Cathedral Avenue Northwest. And I’m in a hurry.”

#

The cab pulled up in front of an unimpressive building. Tan brick boxes joined by a brown mullioned glass structure all seemed deserted. A lone security guard waited inside the locked gate. Kim asked the cab to wait.

“ID, please,” the guard said when she approached. She showed her badge. He checked his watch, examined the photo, compared her face. Returned her ID wallet.

“One moment,” he said.

He walked behind a majestic maple tree and retrieved a shrink-wrapped redwell accordion file. He handed it through the bars. He turned away. Kim ran back to her cab.

“Hay Adams hotel, please.”  No time for further counter-surveillance maneuvers; she’d been gone too long already. She ripped off the shrink wrap, removed the attached elastic, opened the redwell’s flap, and pulled out its contents. She held them up to the cab’s window for passing ambient light. She stared. Flipped through. Too dim to read. Ink blurred on the pages.

Her smart phone rang. She answered without thinking. “Agent Otto.”

Gaspar said, “We’ve been released. Where are you now?” 

“On my way.”  She was maybe five blocks out, but traffic was barely moving.

“I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

Kim didn’t understand. “What about Sylvia?”

“She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Cooper had Hale pick her up twenty minutes ago.”

She saw the Hay Adams up ahead in the distance, but the traffic was stopped in all directions.

“Wait for me at the front entrance. I’ll be there in five.”  She disconnected, grabbed cash from her pocket, paid the driver, and left the cab where it was.

She dialed the second pre-paid burner while she jogged along the sidewalk.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

Washington, DC

November 3

9:45 p.m.

Kim had worked at the Washington Hilton, one of the biggest and busiest hotels in DC, during law school. She knew its eleven hundred guest rooms, its acres of function space, its forty-two meeting rooms, its four restaurants and bars. She remembered the service corridor, the loading dock, and the freight elevator. Tonight and every night, the hotel buzzed with crowd cover. The night manager was happy to help her. Returning felt almost like coming home.

Gaspar had asked no questions for the past hour while they collected Sylvia’s mail from the Crown Vic and transferred to the Hilton. He’d felt her urgency, perhaps, but whatever his reasons, he had stuck with her and demanded no explanations.

She wondered how long he’d wait.

Kim picked up the banker’s box containing Sylvia’s newer mail from P.O. Box 4720 and dumped it out on one of the beds. She pushed envelopes with both hands, seeking recognizable logos amid the junk. Marketers were ever smarter. Separating the gold from the dross wasn’t simple. Evidence was easily missed.

Five items looked promising.

She scooped junk mail into the box and shoved it aside. She carried possibles to the desk and rooted around for a letter opener. She unfolded contents and sorted them into piles.

Two senders: Jensen & Associates, C.P.A, and The Empire Bank of Switzerland.

Gaspar said, “OK, Sunshine, I give up. What’s all this about?”

Kim glanced at her watch. Seventy-three minutes of patience. She wondered if that was some sort of personal best. It probably was. She said, “I know why they killed Harry.”

He shrugged. “Everyone knows why they killed Harry. For the money.”

“It’s more complicated than that. If I’m right, Sylvia and Harry were about to be on the wrong end of the IRS for back taxes, penalties and interest of $137 million. More than twice Harry’s total Kliner stash. They’d have lost everything and gone to prison.”

No reaction.

She said, “And they would have taken Cooper down with them. And they still can.”

“How?”