The Rivers Run Dry (19 page)

Laying the radio on the seat, I kept the flashlight beam fixed at the steel rail. The brown fur was gone.

Behind me, the partition slid open.

“We want to know why you're stopping!” Tweedledump hollered.

The man flew from the shadows.

I jumped out of the van, flashlight in my left hand, Glock in my right, but my legs struggled to catch up, stiff from sitting in the van. My left foot tripped. I glanced down, seeing the white letters FBI on my vest. Perfect target.

“Freeze!” I yelled.

The man raced up the stairs, turning at the rail. But the last moment, his head turned. I lifted my flashlight, aiming for his eyes. He stumbled, grabbing the steel rail to break his fall.

“FBI! Freeze!”

It was a split second—but the longest split second in law enforcement. My finger twitched on the trigger. I watched his hands, looking for his gun. Knife. A pipe to bash in my skull.

“Hands up or I blow your head off!”

He hesitated. My heart pounded.

“Hands up!”

They were small hands. And they were empty.

“Grab the rail, nice and slow.” I walked toward him.

When he hesitated again, I swept my left foot into his right ankle, taking his balance. He fell, grabbing the rail with both hands.

“That's better.”

I jabbed the barrel of the Glock into the area just below his ribs, once, then pulled it away before he could grab it. I reminded him that if he moved I'd either kill him or give him a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. Then I silently holstered the gun and yanked cuffs from my belt, pulling his right arm back, then the left, squeezing his small hands together, palms facing out to neutralize his grip. His skin felt slippery, clammy.

“Yer gonna be sorry, girlie.”

His breath smelled of cigars and bitter fruit, and when the headlights came toward us, scouring the dark street, I ratcheted the cuffs over his narrow wrists. I kept my eyes diverted from the headlights and patted down the Meerkat's curved back, his narrow hips, ankles, feeling for a weapon. The ankles felt sharp, honed as arrowheads, and I found the .25 pistol in the ankle holster and I pulled it out.

He spoke over his shoulder. “Yer gonna pay, girlie. Big time.”

I pushed him toward the car where Byron Ngo was stepping out, his narrow face set like a batholith, dark eyes shining. I leaned toward the Meerkat's ear.

“Ernie,” I said, “don't bet on that.”

chapter fifteen

L
ucia Lutini's brown hair appeared coated with a thin layer of gray ash. Fine lines radiated from the corners of her agate eyes. It was 12:37 a.m., and her voice purred from a bedrock of certainty. She was unharmed. She had kept the money she started with.

And since no players would admit they bet one cent, SWAT collected the rest of the money. The Bureau would return to the VanAlstynes every last dime, and turn a profit on an operation that should have cost the Feds thousands of dollars. A smile played across Allen McLeod's worn face. Our surveillance—done on the fly—had gone terribly, profitably right.

“When the brush kept asking about the wedding,” Lucia was explaining to McLeod, “I thought at first he was homosexual, so interested in the details. And he was letting the break extend, even longer than before. The other players seemed restless, watching him speak to me. I began to wonder why he wasn't returning to the table, then realized he knew something was wrong with my story. He would call my bluff. So I simply said: ‘My grandfather once lived in Seattle, that's how we know the bride's family. Their name is Danato.' Then I walked toward the bartender, to the far side of the room, putting distance between myself and the door. It burst open moments later, and I must say, the flash bangs were spectacular.”

McLeod's face carried a night's growth of beard. With the tasseled loafers, it gave him an odd roguish appearance: bureaucratturned- pirate.

“So what's your read on the players?” I asked. “Any suspects?”

“Each of them is what my father calls no-good-winks,” she said. “We could run them through the system and discover deviations of some kind. The Korean high roller, the man they call Pusan Paul?”

Ngo looked up, interested.

“He's definitely organized crime,” she said. “He's certainly worth looking into for that. But is he connected to the disappearance of the girl? I doubt it.”

“Why?” McLeod asked.

“Because the VanAlstyne girl has money. Lots of it. And she enjoys gambling. The last thing the mob wants to get rid of is a paying customer, particularly when there's going to be more where that came from.”

“Who else?” McLeod asked.

“The man I spoke to during the first break. He was introduced to me only as ‘Mac.' He wasn't somebody Kit Carson knew. And he's strange, but he would need serious assistance to pull off a disappearance, particularly any kind of kidnapping like the VanAlstynes allege.”

“Why's that?” McLeod asked.

“He's a messy card player, lacking focus. He wins occasionally, but simply due to others players' mistakes. Which tells me he's a messy thinker, not methodical. If this girl was taken from that parking lot, it was a clean abduction. The brush on the other hand . . .”

“Yes?” Ngo said.

“The brush is hiding something. And it's rather significant.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“Difficult to say at this point. But he recognized my bluff quickly, and I believe it's because he's so focused on the subterranean aspects of life. When a man hides things, he looks for the same secrecy in others. And, of course, he ran. He's the first suspect we should investigate. Then, possibly, the man named Mac, though he's much less probable.”

“Maybe they worked together, taking the girl,” I suggested.

She shook her head. “This girl's been gone, what, nine days? I don't see this Mac as a patient man. And I can't see those two working together. He clearly despises Suggs. And if they took her, why haven't they sent a ransom note to the parents? They're greedy men. Why bother gambling if they have a sure thing? The parents will pay, we know that.” She turned to McLeod. “Raleigh deserves some recognition for tonight.”

McLeod nodded. “Harmon, you got any more questions for Lutini?”

I shook my head.

“Expect a call from upstairs,” McLeod told her. “Get some rest.”

Lucia left the room, Ngo followed. And I stood, gathering notes from my interviews of Basker, Ngo, Jack, the two agents who pursued the runner, and the Tweedles, who mostly offered exclamations of fear. Now I had to write an official log, the catalogue of procedural details that took place, why we chose certain procedures, at what time, what happened. After that, the FD-302s, documenting all the facts according to each agent—facts only: what the agent saw and heard, no insinuations, no hunches, no embellishments. All 302s read like dialogue from
Dragnet.

“Write everything up tonight,” McLeod said. “They'll want it upstairs first thing.”

I nodded. I could hear the excitement in his voice. And I could feel the pinch in my spine, stabbing at my right shoulder blade, radiating down my arm. That is what I got for curling up like a pretzel in the truck cab wearing a bulletproof vest. It was a foolish error, nodding off, and during the post-surveillance interviews with McLeod looking on, I kept waiting for somebody to mention my mistake. But no one did. And it made me wonder how long I'd been out—five minutes, ten? Fifteen? Long enough to dream about a river of fire. Long enough to develop a crick in my neck. But perhaps not long enough for anyone to notice. At least, that was my hope.

“When I tell the SAC that Lutini took these guys to the cleaners . . .” McLeod chuckled, shaking his head, imagining the reaction from the special agent in charge. “He'll want Lutini undercover full time on poker games.”

I shifted the notebooks to my left arm, dangling my right, alleviating one fraction of the pain. “Anything else, sir?”

I caught the “sir” too late and was too tired to apologize. I wanted to go home, take a shower, sleep.

He ran his hands over the short black whiskers, making a sandpapery sound. “Just so you're warned, Ngo wants to write up his own report.”

“One less 302 for me.” Besides, Ngo offered only meager information during his interview.

“I wish he was writing a 302,” McLeod said. “But he's writing a memo. He's sending it to the SAC. It's about your screwup tonight.”

A memo. Ngo wanted a memo. So the suits upstairs could read about my dozing off.

“I made an error,” I said.

“Yeah,” McLeod agreed. “He's got a point.”

“I should have been more careful.”

“It was a dangerous situation, Harmon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you're going to collar a runner, wait for backup.”

“Pardon?”

“Especially with a disabled vehicle. That was dangerous. Ngo wants it on the record that he didn't advise you to take the runner by yourself. He says you acted without authorization—his words—and that you put yourself, and the Tweedles, in jeopardy.”

I started counting to twenty but gave up on four. “The runner was a flight case. The order was to bring him in alive. That's what I did.”

“But it was danger—”

“It was a good collar. Sir.” My throat felt tight, cinched with anger. Ngo's memo was the same sort of over-regimented attitude that landed me in Seattle. Another addition to my personnel file, and it might keep me here. Or get me transferred to South Dakota.

“Harmon, the end doesn't justify the means.”

“I'm not saying it does. But if I didn't get out of the vehicle, if I sat there thinking about protocol instead of doing my job, would Ngo write me up because I was a coward?”

He raised his hands, placating. “Harmon, listen—”

“I brought in the runner. That was the objective. I met it.”

“We all make mistakes,” he said. “You're still a little green behind the ears.”

Once—just once—I wanted to correct his malaprop. “I would appreciate your support. This was a nearly perfect night for Violent Crimes. Maybe Ngo wants to ruin it by offering his version of events.”

He stared at the tasseled loafers, leaning back against the counter, crossing his ankles. Then pushed himself from the counter.

“I can't get in the middle,” he said. “Ngo's not part of my squad. And Organized Crime does things their own way. If he sees a need for this, then he sees a need.”

“What
need
are we talking about?”

“Harmon, take it easy.”

“Ngo should have stayed with the van instead of rushing into the warehouse to look like a hero. He lost the guy. The
need
here is Ngo looking to divert attention from his own error. Why aren't we writing him up?”

McLeod sighed. “You got lucky. He didn't.”

“I don't believe in luck.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “Put the reports in my box. I'll be back in here at six.” When he reached the door, he turned. “Look at it this way. Lutini made us money. That'll smooth a lot of rumpled feathers.”

I typed the 302s feeling an exhaustion that made even close objects seem distant and distorted. But then a thought of Ngo and his memo would slip into my mind, and a barbed surge of adrenaline would twist into my system, fury propelling me through the dry forms. After I slid all the paperwork into McLeod's office box, I rode the elevator down to the parking garage. My government ride was parked in the visitor's space, and under the dim underground lights the weird purple paint looked midnight blue, a color like the one I'd seen in my dream.

When the guard raised the steel gate that led to Spring Street, I drove through the deserted city, watching the wind lift sheets of loose newsprint, carrying it across the road like paper cranes. I got home close to 2:00 a.m. and took a hot shower, hoping the water's heat and force would beat the pinch from my back. Madame was lying on my bed when I got out, the digital clock reading 2:16 a.m. I set the alarm, curled up with the dog, and fell into a deep and immediate sleep.

The next morning, before anybody else was up, I pulled fresh clothing from the closet and tiptoed downstairs, scribbling a note on the kitchen pad, telling my mother and Aunt Charlotte that I hoped to see them for dinner. Before leaving, I checked the cupboards, hoping to find something to eat. But the shelves were bare.

I drove to the office under an autumn dawn like melted pewter. I avoided the freeway, taking Madison Street into the city's center, relishing every stoplight for the rest it provided. My legs felt weighted walking up the hill to the office, the wind buffeting every step. At my desk, I dropped my gear and walked to the conference room, money in hand, tossing two dollars in the wicker basket beside the coffeemaker, a donation that paid for Starbucks instead of Bureau-issued Folgers. I drank the first cup staring at the bulletin board—new incentives for Iraq, still not enough—then carried the second cup to my desk.