Gone Cold (17 page)

“Should be easier to find the guy than the girl,” Ostermann said after several seconds. “There are about a half-million people residing in Liverpool and ninety percent of them are white. And the majority of black Liverpudlians are of African descent. Only five thousand or so are of Afro-Caribbean origin.”

“He’s a Yardie,” I said, “so I’m hoping he has a sheet. You might want to check with the Merseyside Police first.”

“I’m on it.”

“Any luck tracking down the identity of Eli Welker’s client?”

“Not yet. But I’ve tossed a few lures in the water. Magda spread word over the Internet that current clients of Eli Welker should contact me here in London, or something to that effect. She provided a phone number and an e-mail address to head off any privacy concerns. No bites yet. But I’m hopeful.”

“All right, then.”

“What do you intend to do first?”

“I’m going to find myself an espresso. Then I’m going to go looking for Sterling.”

“And how do you intend to go about that?”

“By shopping for a gun.”

*   *   *

I started in Everton, an inner-city district just north of the city center. After fueling up with a couple espressos at Smokin’ Joe’s on South Pine Road, I took a walk down White Street toward Teralba Park, where I hoped to find some of the city’s homeless—a few trampled souls down in the mouth and eager to sell their sole asset: information.

But the weather was working against me. A hard Atlantic wind was blowing in over the River Mersey, and it was still too early for the shelters to have let out. So I finally hopped aboard the Merseyrail and headed west to Vauxhall then north to Kirkdale and east to Anfield.

No luck.

Although the streets by then were beginning to spark to life, I continued to meet with limited success. For some peculiar reason, your average Liverpudlian was reluctant to engage in conversation with a caffeinated stranger dressed in full black biker armor enthusiastically seeking out illicit firearms.

Go figure.

But as far as the biker armor went, I was unequivocally impressed.

“Designed by Miguel Caballero in Bogota,” Gilchrist had told me back in Glasgow. “Not just to spare you from road rash either, mind you. It’s bloody bulletproof. Can withstand a fifty-caliber round, if I’m not mistaken. Caballero has designed clothes for Prince Felipe of Spain, President Uribe of Colombia, the late Hugo Chavez, even President Barack Obama. Not just motorcycle gear, of course, but topcoats and blazers. Tuxedo shirts, if you can believe it. I think it’s safe to presume that were James Bond not merely a fictional character, Miguel Caballero would be his personal tailor.”

Bulletproof and all, the biker armor afforded me a full range of motion and was so comfortable it felt like a second skin. Dressed head to toe in such expensive and exquisite gear, it seemed almost criminal
not
to get myself shot.

*   *   *

Ten minutes before noon, I was about to call it a morning and grab a quick lunch when Ashdown called.

“Zoey and I are going to meet you in Liverpool.”

“Not necessary,” I said. “Besides, the Chairman promised to send you straight on to London.”

Zoey apparently snatched the phone from him.

“We’ll be in Liverpool in a few hours, little brother. Are you going to tell us where you are or are we going to have to come looking for you?”

No use,
I thought.
She’s a Fisk, right down to the bone
.

“Call me when you get here,” I said. “I’ll be in a different district by then.”

I pocketed my phone. I hadn’t yet puzzled out whether Damon Ashdown was helping me because he possessed the heart of a good cop or whether he was just aiming to get back into my sister’s good graces. A bit of both, if I had to bet.

And I wasn’t sure whether it should matter to me anyhow. Ashdown had gotten me into the Stalemate to view the crime scene, and gained us access to Eli Welker’s room at the Radisson. He’d gotten me a look at Welker’s hotel file, which netted me the passport picture, which Ostermann used to identify Welker and ultimately led to his sending me the photos of Shauna with Angus Quigg in Glasgow.

If not for Damon Ashdown, I might still be running around Dublin, trying to discern the identity of the dead man in Temple Bar.

Kurt Ostermann’s callback came a few minutes after Ashdown’s.

“No sheet on Lennox Sterling,” he said. “But I have a good idea where you’ll find him. Know a district called Toxteth?”

“Of the Toxteth riots? Sure.”

“A friend of mine contacted a Merseyside cop. There’s an open investigation into a group believed to be trafficking in firearms there.”

“Are we talking about a crime firm,” I said, “or a street gang?”

“A hybrid, it sounds like. Since the Yardies have a reputation for cold-bloodedness and resorting to extreme violence at the slightest transgression, crime firms are apparently quick to adopt the moniker. Scares off the competition
and
throws off law enforcement in the same breath.”

“Do you have an address?”

“I’m afraid not. That’s as far as he would go.”

“Well, it’s a start. Thanks.”

“Before you thank me, please carefully consider what you’re about to walk into, Simon. I’m only four hours away in London. How about you find yourself a local library and read some Bukowski until I can get there?”

“Not necessary,” I said. “I have Ashdown and my sister on their way down from Glasgow.”

Following a significant pause, he relented. “All right, Simon. Remember, though, I’m here if you need me.”

“I know.”

By the time I ended the call I was already standing at the entrance to the Anfield Merseyrail Station.

Slipping my hand into my jacket, I surreptitiously moved the HK to my waistband for ease of access.

Then I descended the steps to board the next train south to Toxteth.

Chapter 34

TWELVE YEARS AGO

I’m staring out the living room window. The press is parked outside our home and I can’t decide whether they’re friend or foe. Oh, I know they’re far more interested in ratings and selling newspapers than in finding my six-year-old daughter. What I don’t know is whether all the attention is helping or hindering the investigation. Or whether it’s having no effect whatsoever.

Rendell is ambiguous on the matter. “The best thing we can do at this point, Simon, is forget they’re there. You and Tasha have done what needed to be done. You’ve made an appeal to the public. You’ve spoken directly to any potential kidnapper. And you’ve instructed Hailey on what she needs to do if she’s watching. That’s about as much as we can control with respect to the media.”

I nod and close the drapes. Turn toward the kitchen where Tasha is seated with her best friend from college, Aubrey Lang. Aubrey has been in D.C. since the day Hailey was abducted. Flew all the way up from Costa Rica where she works as a nurse to provide Tasha some moral support. We offered her a room but she insists on staying at the Georgetown Best Western in order to remain out of the way. She drops by every morning to keep Tasha company. And I’m grateful beyond words. Because at this point I find myself unable to talk to Tasha at all.

She blames
me,
she says. Blames me for going off to Bucharest and leaving her and Hailey at home alone.

“Yes,
I
was in the kitchen,” she shouted at me early this morning. “I was in the kitchen while Hailey was out in the backyard. And where the hell were
you,
Simon? On a goddamn plane somewhere over the Atlantic. At least I care enough about my daughter not to take off for the other side of the
world
.”

When I argued that it was my job, she became hysterical.

“
Why
is it your job? Why, Simon? Because
you
requested the assignment. You weren’t content escorting prisoners to and from FCC Petersburg. You weren’t content chasing down federal fugitives here in the metropolitan area. You
wanted
to work abroad.”

“What are you
saying
?”

“I’m saying you weren’t content with
us,
Simon. You wanted
more
. Your request for overseas assignments had nothing to do with advancing your career. Finding a federal fugitive in D.C. or Maryland is just as goddamn important as finding one in Lisbon or Madrid. But you wanted to be
away
. You wanted to be away from
us
.”

“Why would I want that?”

“Because you were
bored
.”

“The
hell
I was.”

Even as I said it, I wondered whether she was right.

Is this all my fault?

I had told myself I was bored with my
job
at the D.C. field office. But was it more than that? Was I bored coming home to Tasha and Hailey every night? Bored watching the same inane television shows and Disney DVDs every evening? Was I bored with the same damn dinners night after night? Was I bored having sex with my wife even though I’d never so much as considered having an affair?

It’s true that I requested the assignment shortly after Hailey was born. At the time my world had been changing so drastically, I’d figured one more modification wouldn’t upend it. But had I ever really reflected on
why
I wanted to work abroad?

It’s not as though extraditions are exciting. It’s all waiting around and paperwork. It’s working with foreign law-enforcement agents who resent your very presence. And in the nearly two years since September 11, air travel has become a living nightmare.

So why was I so insistent on leaving?

Christ
, am I just like my father? Did I make a calculated decision to spend as much time as possible away from my wife and daughter without resorting to divorce? Did I find a way to walk away from my marriage without forcing Hailey to endure an ugly and protracted legal disentanglement? Am I just like Dr. Alden Fisk, abandoner of wife and daughter, callous breaker of lives?

Is Tasha a victim just as my mother was?

Is Hailey a victim just as my sister, Tuesday, was?

I stare into the kitchen and watch Tasha with Aubrey. I feel compelled to walk in and apologize. But I know that this argument has already gone too far. There may well be no coming back from it. Too much has been said. By both of us.

And I still can’t be sure who’s right.

Probably both of us are.

Probably neither of us, too.

That’s the way the world works, isn’t it? Everything infinitely gray, nothing at all black-and-white?

“Simon?” Rendell is saying. “Simon?”

I barely hear him over the storm brewing inside my head.

Chapter 35

Although the Toxteth riots occurred nearly thirty-five years ago, the reasons behind them are just as relevant in many major cities in the UK today. And in the United States for that matter. Such as Ferguson, Missouri, in the Greater St. Louis metropolitan area, where a young unarmed black man named Michael Brown was recently shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer, igniting months of mammoth protests and civil unrest.

So it was in 1981 Toxteth, where long-established tensions between the local black community and the Merseyside Police finally erupted into waves of full-scale riots. At the time, Britain was in recession, with unemployment at a fifty-year high. And not surprisingly, the inner-city area of Toxteth was plagued with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

Unfortunately, over the past three and a half decades, not much had changed. At least not with respect to the area’s economic conditions. Whether police-community relations had improved or declined, I didn’t know and hoped not to find out, at least not until I was clear of the city.

I remained the primary suspect in the murder of Ewan Maxwell in Glasgow, which meant I was a wanted man throughout the United Kingdom. Regardless of how things went from here, I wouldn’t be seeking the assistance of the Merseyside Police. At least not directly. Not without Kurt Ostermann or someone else as a go-between.

With little to go on, I decided to begin my search of Toxteth much in the same way I began in Springburn. I took out my BlackBerry, opened the browser, and called up a Merseyside pub guide. First I scanned for Caribbean bar names, looking for words like
island
or
tropical
or
paradise
in the title. Next I hunted for spots that featured reggae music. Failing all that, I finally pursued pubs in which one of the main drinking attractions was either rum or Red Stripe.

Nothing.

Since there were no overtly Caribbean bars, I took the criminal angle instead. Rather than taking note of the four- or five-star pubs with rave customer reviews, I searched for the dives, the one- or two-star pubs with reviews featuring words like
tatty
or
filthy
or
scary
.

Much easier to find.

On the first site I visited, there were three dives to choose from. I settled on one called Down Your Neck (a variation, I assumed, on the American idiom
down the hatch
), which, according to MapQuest, was located only three blocks east from where I was roaming near the docks.

*   *   *

The reviews for Down Your Neck did the pub justice. Which was to say the pub was indeed a tatty, filthy, scary place. Precisely what I was looking for. I took a seat at the rough-and-tumble bar and ordered a bottle of Fuller’s ESB. No glass, in order to lower my risk of contracting hepatitis A.

I was the only patron in the place, which worked well, since the bartender seemed like a talker. A young guy with a pierced nose and lots of facial hair, he reminded me somewhat of Casey O’Connell back at Terry’s in the District, though this barkeep was skinny and slightly better dressed. He paced behind the bar as though he were debating whether to pick up and leave.

Which also served my purpose. I pulled a couple hundred pounds out of my pocket and set it on the bar. As he made a return run, his eyes fell on the cash and lit like stars gone supernova.