Penance: A Chicago Thriller (19 page)

 

CHAPTER 31 – RESTON, VIRGINIA

 

Weaver’s driver pulled the green Jaguar sedan into the brick circle drive in front of Ferguson’s nondescript four-bedroom in a development of nondescript four-bedrooms at a quarter to eight the next morning. Ferguson was sitting on a bench in his front yard, reading the paper. He was dressed preppie – khaki slacks, light green polo, blue blazer. Weaver thought Ferguson looked OK walking to the car. Still stiff, probably half a dozen bandages on under the preppie getup, but OK. Weaver wasn’t surprised that Fergie was out in the yard. He didn’t like Weaver coming into his house, never had.

Ferguson got in back with Weaver, and the driver quickly moved through the side streets onto the Interstate and west. They cleared the suburban sprawl. Trees pushed down near the shoulder, some budding, some with those tiny first leaves, their green still vibrant, electric, alive, not yet diffused through a range of experience. Pretty in a generic way, but life knew how to knock the pretty off.

“Nature’s first green is gold,” Weaver said. “You ready any poetry, Fergie?”

“When it comes to slaughter, well you’ll do your work on water and you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of him that’s got it,” Ferguson said.

“Kipling? Not much in vogue these days. White man’s burden and all.”

“Some other one I remember, guy trying to get into this girl’s pants, telling her worms will have at her if she waits too long. Something about time’s winged chariot drawing near.”

“Marvell,” said Weaver. “To His Coy Mistress.”

“Thing is, I’ve been hearing that chariot myself. Fisher’s driving it. I take it the Judge called you.”

H Dickens Reynolds had been a Brigadier General, a Federal Appeals court judge, and then, for seven years, the Deputy Director of Operations at the CIA. Now, at eighty-one, he was a country gentleman, graciously ensconced on one hundred and fifty well-coiffed acres of horse land in the Virginia countryside. He was also as close to an official liaison as InterGov had with the sanctioned intelligence community.

“Little pissed about you calling the Judge, Fergie, gotta tell you,” said Weaver. “End running me like that. You know we gotta keep our shit in house.”

“Had my say last night. I have to hear from the umpire on this one if I’m gonna keep playing ball. I understand this is the big leagues, and I understand we play hardball, and I understand every so often somebody pulls one into the stands. Just feel like we’re playing the whole game in the bleachers all of a sudden.”

“OK, Fergie. We go back. Anybody’s earned a free shot at me, it’s you. Judge’ll sort this out. Fair enough?”

“Leave it with him,” said Ferguson.

An hour later, Weaver’s driver guided the Jag down a long drive flanked by freshly painted three-rail fences beyond which chestnut horses gamboled on a flawless pasture in the slanting morning light. He parked in front of a portico big enough to hold Bill Clinton’s libido.

Weaver followed protocol with the butler who answered the door. The butler was six-two, weighed about two-twenty, wore a 9mm Beretta in a shoulder holster under his suit coat, and knew a half dozen ways to kill a man without taking it out. And he had friends in the house. Weaver and Ferguson followed him into the study off the entry hall.

Reynolds looked good for eighty-one. He looked about average for sixty-five. He was still wearing a plaid Pendleton robe over black pajamas.

Weaver pulled up when he saw Chen sitting in a chair flanking the desk where Reynolds sat. “What is this, an intervention?”

“Perhaps the best possible characterization of this, Colonel,” said the Judge. “After I talked with Ferguson last night, I became increasingly concerned about the direction of this operation. About the entire unit, actually. I called Chen and asked that she come out early this morning to debrief me, which corroborated and even exacerbated my concerns. Let’s review, shall we?

“Fisher’s family was killed in January. Your PsyOps people saw no cause for concern. Then he disappeared. There was the Wisconsin shooting. Three days ago, your research team captured data regarding a shooting in Chicago. Your systems guy put together a profile on likely credit purchases, and you tracked Fisher to downstate Illinois. Clearly, this was an ambush. It was not subtle. Reports I’ve gotten have six dead. Police recovered two scoped 16s with extended mags and a Barrett, none of which had been fired, all from your guys. Got a cop car that looks like it got hit with an antitank weapon. What’s wrong? You guys didn’t have time to call in air support? Maybe some armor? Christ sake, Weaver, it looks like the Israelis were chasing Arafat through the place.”

“I was the guy on the ground, sir,” said Ferguson. “It’s my bad.”

“Not your choice, Fergie. Bad rolls up hill. Weaver made the call. That’s his bad. And Weaver’s my boy, so we’ve got some guys at Langley who figure it’s my bad. OK, the good news. Chen did some prophylactics, just in case things went south, set up your team to look like druggies. Locals are buying it for now because there’s nothing else on the shelf, but they are asking themselves why somebody was killing druggies on a hill behind a gas station, and why the druggies were going up there armed to the gills. I trust you’ve got somebody making sure this doesn’t track back?”

“I’m on that, sir,” said Chen.

“OK. The locals have already called the Feds in and we can get some rhythm with the Feds, so we can probably pull enough strings to keep this from biting us on the ass. But changes need to be made. Weaver, I’ll be very direct. You’re out. This in no way diminishes your previous service and is not meant to be a reflection on your character. It’s just become apparent that you’ve become too inured to the ramifications of your unit’s actions. I blame myself to a large degree. We’ve been too free with the extra-legal latitude. Difficult to ask anyone to work in that kind of gray area that long without losing their bearings.”

“I understand,” said Weaver, his voice level, his face a mask.

“I know this is difficult, and I assure you’ll be taken care of. Your service record has been adjusted so that you qualify for the maximum possible pension, military and also foreign service. Full access to health care, all of that. Anything else you need, please do call.”

Weaver nodded. “Am I dismissed?”

“Yes, Colonel. Please do not challenge this. You have had your time. Just fade away.”

Weaver turned and left the room. After a moment, Ferguson saw the Jaguar winding down the drive.

 

Reynolds got up and walked over to a sideboard on the right wall, poured a cup of coffee from a silver pot there. “You two want anything, coffee?” Chen and Ferguson declined. Reynolds settled back behind the desk. Then, “Ferguson, I want you to take over InterGov.”

“Are you sure that’s the right move, Judge? I’ve been a field guy all my life.”

“And you haven’t lost your conscience doing it. Weaver was an ops guy when he took over, too. And you’ve got help. Chen, you OK with this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“OK. Final point, but this is vital. We need Fisher in a bag ASAP. Any idea where he’s heading?”

“I’d guess Chicago, sir,” said Ferguson. “Last killing was there. Fisher grew up there. Evidently Zeke did a few things there, late Sixties, early Seventies. Trying to get some detail on that, but it seems to have been on-loan stuff to the Hurleys. Some kind of tie with them and with Paddy Wang, of course.”

“Damn Chinaman’s older than I am, far as anyone can tell. He still active?”

“Very.”

“You talk to him on this yet?”

“No. But that’s up on my list. The more I thought about this last night, the more I think it’s Chicago. That Door County shooting, that one was a red herring. Fisher threw it out there to set up this line. Bet he GPS’d the church in Chicago, then started looking for one due north and one due south. He knew we’d pick up on that. So he takes out the dairy farmer up north, then gets his one free shot in Chicago. He knows how we operate, knows we’ll be looking for him, and knows we’re thin on troops. Figures he culls the herd some, we need time to regroup, and he can get back to whatever the hell he’s up to. He’s got some kind of agenda. I bet he takes down somebody else in Chicago soon.”

“Get going, get on the ground in Chicago. And try to keep the body count down.”

 

CHAPTER 32 – CHICAGO

 

Tommy Riordan knelt in the last pew at Our Lady of Martyrs feeling like he always felt, like a minor Kennedy. He looked like a Hurley – the tall, handsome, dark Irish kind. The Hurley mayors all fell into the other Hurley mold – the stocky, leprechaun-gone-to-seed model. Tommy’s mom was a Hurley. His dad had headed up Hurley the First’s quasi-secret Red Squad. So Tommy Riordan had his Hurley credentials. He wasn’t a front-page guy, though. He was a side-of-the-podium guy, one of the schmucks on the edge of your TV picture on election night clapping and gazing adoringly at the anointed.

Not that it got him much. There was the Streets and San job, which was a cushy hundred Gs a year because showing up was pretty much voluntary unless there was some ghost payroll probe in high gear. Then he had to keep his ass in the office, but he could do his drinking in there, so it wasn’t too bad a deal. And there were the consultant scraps come elections. Couple grand here, ten grand there for gopher work – leaning on precinct captains who were letting turnout slip, stopping by shops that had the wrong signs in their windows, doing his regular-guy stump speech at some of the union halls. And his family got to use the Hurley summer place over in Michigan, the Hurley version of Hyannisport, but they were pretty much hind tit in that line. Usually got early June, late August, primetime going to the real players.

So yeah, being a minor Kennedy meant he was set for life if he didn’t raise the bar too high, if he didn’t mind eating scraps. Thing was, he minded. Fifty-two years old, he was no kind of man and he knew it.

And the Catholic thing, too. Being a minor Kennedy meant keeping that up as well, not that he could really shake it. Grade school right here with the sisters at Martyrs, high school with the Jesuits at St Ignatius, grandpa’s clout getting him in at Notre Dame and making sure he didn’t flunk out. And his old man was big on the rules – the take off your hat in church rules, the fishsticks on Fridays rules, the Holy Days of Obligation rules. The old man was a little slack on some of the other rules, the thou shalt not stuff – adultery, stealing, false witness, even the thou shalt not kill if you believed the rumors – and Tommy had picked up on those habits early.

Which was why he was kneeling in the back of the church. Communion at least once a year during the Easter season. That was the rule. And if you were gonna receive, then you had to be in a state of grace. That was the rule. And that meant confession. So each year, Tommy Riordan tried to work out what it was he was sorry for, which was a lot, did the “bless me, Father, for I have sinned” routine, and tried to keep his nose clean until Easter so he could take Communion. Or his prick clean, actually. Nose wasn’t his problem.

Thing was, he was pretty sure he didn’t believe any of it. He was pretty sure the whole thing was a scam. Couple years ago, he faked it. Told the wife he was heading down for confession, spent a couple hours at the High Hat Tap instead. Come Easter, he went right on up, took the host. Two hours later he was puking up ham and deviled eggs like he was never gonna stop, and that night he had the dream about Sister Mary Theresa – the dream where she’s got him bent over some wooden bench, he’s naked, and she’s got that Samurai yardstick the sisters all carried, and she’s flaying his ass with it, and it’s hot and dark where they’re at, and Tommy knows that this is hell and this shit, it’s just gonna go on and on and on.

He remembered some philosophy class at ND, that Pascal guy and his wager. So, OK, confession once a year, get his annual minimum adult requirement of grace and such at Easter mass, and hope he didn’t die in between with anything on his rap sheet that called for more than ten to twenty in purgatory.

So Tommy knelt in the pew and ran down the commandments. Number one? False gods. There was the Bushmills just for starters, and Riordan had to admit he had way more faith in Bushmills than he had in anything else. Lord’s name in vain? Ten, twenty times a day, minimum. Keep holy the Sabbath? Bears games count? Honor thy mother and father? Turned out pretty much like Dad, can’t give more honor than that, right? He was OK on number five, hadn’t offed anybody yet. Coveting? Stealing? Lying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, cop to all of it. But number six was the big one. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Some trouble there. Always had been some trouble there.

Riordan hauled himself to his feet and headed for the confessional. He made his confession, but he didn’t have the words to cop to all of it, didn’t even know how to phrase the extent of his depravity. He headed for the door of the church, knowing his soul was supposed to feel clean but feeling like it was some bed sheet that hadn’t been changed in thirty years. There was some shit that just wasn’t gonna come out.

 

Ishmael Fisher watched the doors to Our Lady of Martyrs through the scope of the Dragunov from the living room window of a fourth-floor apartment five hundred and seventy meters away. The building had no other units on this floor, and the unit on the floor below was vacant. The woman who lived in the apartment had left at 8am and returned just after 5pm on the three days Fisher had watched the building. It was 4.15pm.

Fisher watched Riordan step through the tall wooden doors and then stop as they closed behind him. Riordan looked down to find the bottom of the zipper on his leather jacket. Fisher centered the sight picture on the middle of Riordan’s chest and fired.

 

Edith Jacobs had just stepped into the lobby of her building when she heard a noise. A door slamming, or a piece of furniture falling upstairs somewhere. Whatever it was, it wasn’t helping her headache. She’d left work an hour early because of the migraine, and the pain hadn’t eased. She started up the four flights of stairs.

 

As Fisher watched through the scope, the force of the round drove Riordan back into the doors, his back hitting just where the two doors met. His arms flew open. They hit the doors just above the two long brass poles that served as handles. As Riordan slid down the doors, his arms caught the tops of the poles and he hung – seemingly crucified – against the door. Fisher watched for a couple of seconds. When he saw no blood pulsing out of the entrance wound, he knew that Riordan was dead.

Fisher fit the Dragunov into the case and was about to close the cover when he heard feet outside the apartment door, heard the jangle of keys. Fisher flattened against the wall to the side of the door.

 

Edith Jacobs opened the door and took one step into the room before she saw the rifle case open on the floor. Then the door swung closed behind her. She turned and saw a lean man with short, iron-gray hair wearing a black, long-sleeved T-shirt and tight black leather gloves. She thought to scream, meant to scream, but the man put a surprisingly slender finger to her lips, and then closed the hand over her mouth, spun her around, and pulled her back against him. The force of his grasp was gentle yet certain. And she knew she was going to die.

“Oh my God,” she mumbled into his hand, “I am heartily sorry for having offended thee...”

 

Fisher listened to the Act of Contrition, sensing its perfection, let the woman finish. Then he slid his right hand under her chin and snapped her neck. She will be with Him today in paradise, he thought.

Fisher looked through the gap in the blinds to the church. A crowd had gathered around the body, and a patrol car was just pulling up. He would have to move quickly. He set the woman down gently, closed the lid of the rifle case, picked it up, stepped out the door, and walked down the stairs.