The 500: A Novel (33 page)

“Charming,” she said as she stepped into the flophouse and tossed her jacket on a chair.

“Jeffrey Billings,” she said.

My father and I exchanged a glance.

“The name on the file?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. We had everything we needed to go after Henry. I lifted her up and spun her. She winced in pain.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine.”

There was something off, though. Red rimmed her eyes, like she’d been crying. Gently, I pulled back her sleeve to look at her forearm where I had held her during the lift. A blue bruise circled her wrist.

“Henry. Did he find out? Is that why you were late? Did he hurt you?”

“No,” she said, then laughed a little, covering up the pain. “Not Henry. When Henry saw my face back at the fields, he thought you’d tried to kill me. He doesn’t suspect a thing. They lowered their guard. That’s how I heard them talking about the name on the file.

“This,” she said, pointing to her wrist, “was Dragović.”

“Radomir? He’s in the country?”

“He’s in DC. I was leaving the office tonight when these two men who work for him came up beside me, took my arms, forced me into a car. They brought me to some nightclub, through the back door.”

The White Eagle. It was an old Beaux Arts mansion where Aleksandar and Miroslav held court, a magnet for Arab and Eastern European new money.

“They took me into a back room. When I ran, they grabbed me”—she pulled her sleeve back down—“dragged me back. Dragović was there, eating dinner.”

“What did he want?”

“You,” Annie said. “I told him that you had disappeared, that we were all on the same side in this, that I was working with Henry, and Henry was working with the police to hunt you down. He didn’t seem to care.

“I tried to back him off. I said Henry wouldn’t stand for me being treated this way, talked about how powerful Davies was. None of that concerned him, he said. He said he would go through Henry, go through any man, pay any price for honor.

“He stood behind me, very close. I could feel his breath on my neck. ‘I loved my daughter,’ he said. ‘Mr. Ford loves you. Mr. Ford killed my daughter, and so…’” She trailed off for a moment. “He didn’t finish the sentence. He just sat down, buttered a roll, and swirled some wine.” She looked at the floor, reluctant to speak.

“What did he say, Annie?”

“The deadline is eight o’clock tomorrow. If he doesn’t have you by then, he’ll take me.”

“For what?”

She pressed her lips together and shut her eyes. “Nothing good.”

I took her in my arms. She was shaking.

“He didn’t hurt you.”

“No. Just pushed me around a little.”

I looked from her to my father. They were all I had left. And I was going to get them both killed for my mistakes, for this crusade against Henry Davies. Davies wanted me back. He was right about me not knowing the full cost of honesty. Maybe he’d finally found my price.

Rado had Henry beat when it came to sheer psychotic meanness, but Henry had enough clout to keep Rado at bay. If I gave myself up to Henry, maybe he’d keep Rado away from Annie. Sure, it’d mean hocking my soul, but half of Washington seemed to have made that deal. They survived it. So would I.

“Listen,” I said. “I can’t let you two suffer for me. I can go to Henry. I—”

Annie and my father looked at each other.

My father rolled his eyes.

Annie said, “Pfff.”

“Not a fucking chance, Mike,” he said. “He’s the most fearsome man in the capital, and for once, he’s afraid. There are a lot of people out there who are looking to get out from under Henry’s thumb. He says everyone has a lever. We’ve got his. You can’t let that go.”

“So how do we do it?” Annie asked.

I walked her over to the blueprints.

“This is the Justice Department,” I said.

It was a level 4–security federal building, on par with the FBI. The only targets more hardened were the CIA and the Pentagon. That meant smart-chip IDs checked against a central database, visitor escorts at all times, intrusion detection, CCTV cameras monitored centrally, x-ray and magnetometer at every entrance, and group 2 locks (yup, the old Sargent and Greenleaf).

The building housed the FBI, the marshal services, the attorney general, the DEA, and the Bureau of Prisons: a criminal’s most feared enemies all gathered in one convenient spot.

“I’m going to break in and steal the file,” I said.

“And then?” she asked.

“I go haggle with the devil.”

There were four guards in the DOJ entrance, all armed. For good measure, the two Federal Protective Service officers near the front door carried HK MP-5 submachine guns. Bags and briefcases went through the x-ray. People went through one of four metal detectors with curved doors, which held each one for a five-second scan before allowing the person to proceed.

It was the middle of a holiday weekend, so the place was almost empty. I’d have preferred the distracted bustle of rush hour, but we didn’t have much time. Annie had overheard Henry and Marcus talking about the Eastern Shore when they mentioned the name on the evidence. I don’t know how they’d found out—maybe the lawyer’s stolen phone—but they would find Langford soon, if they hadn’t already. They’d have no hesitation about forcing it out of him. Once they knew where the file was, I would have company here at DOJ.

Annie had cut and dyed my hair at the safe house, and Cartwright added a little bump to my nose. It was just a sliver of latex, but with it I could barely recognize myself.

All the confidence I’d felt in my disguise drained as I stepped up to the guards.

My father had busted my chops when I showed him the printouts at the safe house. “They tell you how to break into the DOJ on the Internet?”

Actually, they did. Congress’s watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, ran stings every five years or so to see if they could sneak past the guards at the CIA, FBI, DOJ, federal courts, and so on. They’d usually try ten sites or so and had never been turned away or caught at any of them. Then they were nice enough to write up how and where they’d done it and publish it where enterprising young crooks like me could find it. Your tax dollars at work. There was even a nice little paragraph at the end explaining how, due to funding issues, these faults aren’t likely to be fixed any time soon.

I sure hoped not. The guard glared at me.

See, if you pay attention in Washington you start to realize that, as in most bureaucracies, 90 percent of the effort is dedicated to the appearance of getting something done. In security, that number was probably even higher. More guards, more guns, more barriers. Trillions of dollars spent to prove that trillions of dollars were being spent, to have the exteriors of every building bristling with armed men, to reassure the public and the higher-ups with a great show of force that something was happening.

Maybe it helped, but there were still ways to slip through, and that hard exterior may have even backfired because it was a false mask on vulnerability. A good thing for me. From a con man’s point of view, it was an easy belief to exploit. If the people you want to put one past have absolute faith in the law and the gun, you simply make yourself the law.

I showed the guard my badge.

“How you doing?” I said, moving with my best high-noon cop walk. “I need to drop off some data at the DAG’s office.”

I lifted my valise. He looked from it to my badge, then sucked his teeth.

“Go on,” he said. A flat pry bar was hidden in the side of the case, to avoid the metal detectors, but he just waved me past them. I could have had a claymore mine in there.

A claymore actually would have come in handy, because he beckoned over a hard-looking young woman, fresh from college, in a power pantsuit. I’d expected an escort, but it made things trickier. In most level 4 buildings, unless you have a security clearance and a hard pass, you get a nanny at all times. A friend of mine worked at State for six months waiting for his clearance to come through. Every time he wanted to take a piss he had to ask for permission and bring a chaperone.

I’d planned for it, though. As we walked I pulled my phone out and started tapping (in Washington, you’d stand out if you weren’t staring at your BlackBerry like a zombie at all times).
Call it in,
I wrote, and hit Send.

It was a ten-minute stroll to the office of the deputy attorney general, DAG for short. She pulled up in front of his door. “Here you are.”

“DAOG,” I said.

“The officer downstairs said you wanted the deputy.”

“Debt Accounting Operations Group.”

She let an angry little puff of air come out of her nose, then forced a smile. “Okay then.”

I was playing for time. I guess I could have hit her with the pry bar and dragged her into the bathroom, but this was more fun.

We were halfway to our destination when the strobes started flashing and a pleasant female voice came over the public address. “Emergency evacuation. This is not a drill. Please proceed calmly to the nearest exit. Please do not panic. This is not a test. We repeat. This is not a test.”

“We need to go,” she said, looking distinctly alarmed. She beelined for the front of the building. Near the exit, I peeled off in the commotion and headed for the stairwell.

My father had been waiting for my signal—the text message—to call in the bomb threat. He’d done his time, and then some, so I wouldn’t let him near the actual dirty work, the break-in. That was all mine.

Now the place was completely empty. I popped two doors with the pry bar to get into the subbasement where Langford had suggested the evidence against Henry was hidden.

It looked like nothing had been touched since the 1970s. The walls were concrete. Dusty bankers’ boxes were piled four feet high on industrial shelves. Metal cages cut the room into grids. Utility pipes hung low overhead.

Hidden somewhere in this labyrinth was the only way to save my ass, as well as my dad’s and Annie’s: a file labeled
JEFFREY BILLINGS.
I entered the first cage and started flicking through papers. Some were alphabetical, some not. I scanned the sides of the boxes for the names, for any legend that might suggest their contents. It was all pretty random. Some had dates, some names, some codes. I tore through anything that hinted at having the files starting with
B
in it. I didn’t find Billings.

I could hear the sirens outside. I didn’t have much time before the bomb squad would sweep the building. I stepped back, tried to think calmly, systematically. The file should have blood and tissue samples and the police write-up. It would have to be thick. I stood in the middle of the room and shook out my hands.

A door creaked somewhere off to my left. I wasn’t alone. I ducked behind a pallet of boxes and scanned the room. Footsteps, now straight ahead. I stalked in parallel, trying to glimpse the source of the noise through the boxes and wire mesh of the cages.

Then I saw his face. You’re never lonely when William Marcus is hunting you.

I circled the room away from him. I had to find the file before he could find it, or find me. I had the pry bar. He had a pistol. I was fairly sure that he hadn’t seen me yet, or else he would have already closed in.

He was making a slow circuit of the room. Crouching, I cut straight across the storage area, then tucked myself behind a few boxes along his path. I waited, pry bar cocked, for him to pass. I had one shot. With him out of the way, I could focus, find the evidence.

I concentrated, slowing my breath so he wouldn’t hear me. He must have rounded the corner by now. Any second. I tightened my grip on the bar, felt the sweat cool against the metal.

Five seconds passed; ten; twenty.

He didn’t come.

I heard a clanging from the corner, and turned my head to look. I could see the corridor, the exit.

Marcus was gone.

I waited a moment. Was he trapping me? Had he already found the evidence? I turned the corner, then smelled it, a smell I knew well, because it had permeated my childhood: the stale cabbage funk of leaking natural gas.

Marcus had smashed open the valve on a gas line overhead, about fifty feet away. Through the overpowering fumes, I could pick up something else: burning paper. Flames licked at the base of a pile of boxes on the opposite side of the basement.

He hadn’t found the evidence, or missed me. He simply was going to take care of both his problems with one tidy inferno. I turned on my heel and moved away from the flames. I was inside one of the cages, so I would have to double back through the fire to reach the exit.

I heard a roar. The gas ignited. Heat and pressure boomed past me. The flames would come right behind. I’d never make it out. Standing empty against the metal fencing ahead was an open safe—about four feet square and three deep. I didn’t think, just threw myself inside and slammed the door shut behind me.

The curtain of fire roared past like a jet engine. It lasted for a few seconds. The metal walls felt warm, and were getting warmer. I could still hear the fire roiling, but it sounded quieter now. I pressed on the safe door. Nothing.

Huh. I’d locked the safe. This was a new one. I was the loot, and I’d have to steal myself.

I could taste the fire in the thinning air. I tucked into a ball to get away from the scalding walls of the safe.

The beauty, of course, is that a government safe typically takes about twenty hours to crack, but that’s supposing you’re cracking it from the outside. In the blackness inside the safe, I ran my fingers over the lock assembly, a box about the size of my hand behind the dial. Two Phillips-head screws attached it to the vault door. I backed them out with the pry bar and groped around inside the lock.

My head was swimming from the smoke. Sweat soaked my shirt and ran stinging into my eyes.

It was a typical group 2, with four wheels. All combination locks, whether cheap Master padlocks or the boxes on vaults, keep their secrets with what’s called a wheel pack: three or four discs, each of which has a notch in the side. The dial connects to the rearmost disc, and there are little tabs sticking out from each one. The tabs are arranged so that when you spin the lock four times to clear it, you’re actually picking up all four wheels by their tabs. As you move to a number, then turn back, you’re leaving a disc with its notch under a bar called the fence. If you rotate it back and forth in the right order, the four notches line up, the fence drops, and the bolt pulls.