A Mighty Fortress (52 page)

Shields shook his head. “Easy, Porter, we let you keep the videos. You hang onto them for leverage, so we’ll know we can all trust each other.” He waited for me to respond. “Come on, Porter. This has your name written all over it.”

He waited. I still said nothing.
 

“Otherwise, you take a bullet. So does she. And you’ll take the fall for it all, and a lot more.”

I grinned. “How about a little time to think it over?”

“Time’s up. What’s it gonna be?”

I stared at him for a moment. His eyes were crazy, mad crazy. I told him, “I think we can work something out.” Then I nodded toward Angie. “Can I say something to her?”

He nodded back. “Make it quick. We don’t have much time.”

I returned to Angie. All the fear in her face seemed to have burned away, leaving nothing but resignation. I leaned over, got close.

She relaxed and listened.

I whispered in her ear. It took a little longer than I expected. Then I stood still and looked her in the eyes again to make sure she’d heard me right. There was some confusion there, but it seemed to pass after a moment, and I finally felt we were on the same page.

“I’m sorry,” I said loud enough for Shields to hear.

She nodded, faintly, but still uneasy.

“Well?” Shields said.

“Can we talk alone for a minute, me and you?”

“Why?”

I sighed. “This isn’t easy for me. I don’t want her to hear what I have to say. And I need some fresh air.”

I started walking toward the balcony door.

He followed me, gun in tow, and he put it to my head when I touched the door handle. “Where the hell you think you’re going?” he shouted.

“I said I need some fresh air. And to talk to you alone.”

I opened the door, and he pushed me harder with the gun.

“Not another move!”

I shrugged. “So shoot me. You’ll never get the videos.”

“Porter, I know everyone you know. I’ll start with that neighbor of yours who picked you up today and dropped you off. After I’m done with him, I’ll move onto your girlfriend and her fat fuck brother. And don’t think I won’t pay the judge a visit either. You don’t have many friends here, and it’s only a matter of time.”

I kept walking. “Sounds like you got it all figured out.”

He joined me on the balcony and left the door open. A warm breeze met us, and tussled Shield’s hair in his eyes.

“I love this view,” I said. “I really love it.”

“Porter, you’re out of time. I’m about to go in there and put a bullet in her head. You need to give me your answer before I do. Otherwise, you’re going to join her.”

“I’m getting to it, Shields. That’s why I wanted to talk alone. I need this perspective, you see?”

“You’re fucking nuts.”

“I know, Shields. And you know why, don’t you? I mean, come on, man. The brotherhood you and Parker have. I can see why you’d lay your life down for him. But why would I? Why would I lay down my life for that girl in there?”

“You mean that whore?” he said.

“Exactly,” I said. “It just doesn’t make sense, does it? Unless I loved her. I mean
really
loved her.”

“You telling me you love that whore, Porter? You telling me that?”

“No, Shields. I’m telling you about my perspective. And about how it’s changed so much this week.”

“I’m not following you. Honestly, I could care less. This is over.”

He stepped away, but I pulled him back.

“You’re not seeing the big picture, Shields. I mean, come on, look across the river. See, over there?”

“You talking about the university?” he said with no shortage of frustration.

“Yeah, I mean the minarets.”

“The what?”

“The pillars that look like they belong on a mosque?”

“Porter, I don’t have time for this bullshit.”

“I’m telling you, Shields. I’m confessing why I’m doing it. It’s the least I can do.”

“Doing what?” he asked.

“This. You know how many times I’ve driven by that building and thought of bad memories of the war? Thought of death. Thought of things I’d seen, mistakes I’d made. People I’d killed, and people I’d let die. And for what? For what, Shields?”

“Porter, you’re out of your mind.”

“True, but hear me out. Look over there. Have you ever really looked at them?”

But Shields was staring only at me, and with the gun pointed in a way that told me he was only a second or two away from pulling the trigger.

“The minarets, Shields. Look over there.”

“This is over,” he said, and aimed the gun at my head.

I raised my hand. “I need to tell her one more thing.” I pointed my mouth at Angie and shouted, “Angie, you ever heard the parable of the Lost Sheep?”

Shields’s hand started shaking with anger and frustration.

Angie grunted something that sounded like a yes.

“I kept running into that parable this week, and the more I learned about you and saw what was going on around us, the more I kept thinking about you, Angie, thinking that you were the Lost Sheep.”

She nodded in agreement, and a new wave of tears welled in her eyes.

“I was wrong, Angie. It’s not about you.”
 

I could see the confusion in her eyes, but she cried too.

“No, Angie, it’s not about you. It’s about me. I’m the Lost Sheep.”

I looked back to my assailant, who was pointing the gun at my head. “I’m ready, Shields. I get it all now, you know? I see it now. You know, I met a man this week. He totally changed my perspective about those minarets. When I look over there now, I see hope. I see redemption. I see deliverance.”

Shields sighed. “That’s it. This is over.” He turned the gun away from me and started in the direction of Angie. But I stopped him and asked, “What do you see, Shields?”

He turned the gun back in my direction, and started to say, “I see …”

But just then, I gave the signal, the wave of my arms we’d discussed, and I hit the deck.

In the split second that followed, Shields lowered the gun and pointed it in my direction. This time, he looked intent on shooting me. Fear and anger burned in his glare as the first bullet hit him—a clean shot to the chest that knocked him against the opened balcony door.

Shields dropped the Glock just as the second shot hit him dead center in the forehead. This shot wasn’t so clean, and his blood splattered over the balcony glass like a can of spray paint that had exploded.

I rolled over to avoid the trajectory of his fall. Then I stood and turned him over, face down. There was no need to check for a pulse.

I waved across the river at the center minaret, from which I was pretty sure the gunshots had been fired. I might have smiled.

I had to hand it to him—Bob Hunter was still one hell of a shot.

She was crying as I untied her. Once freed, she grabbed me and hugged me, and I hugged her back, but all the while she never stopped crying. She had a surprising strength. I didn’t try to say anything to console her for a while; I just let her cry. It’s amazing what another shot at life will do for one’s morale. I wondered what was really going on inside her head, and then I thought back to what Gus had said—that what would happen today was going to kill her demons. Whatever the hell that meant, I wondered if I was watching it at work.

She cried another five minutes before she asked, “What happened out there?”

I pulled back and looked in her eyes. I wanted to see some sign of death, of change, but if I saw anything, it was only new life. “I’ll explain later,” I said. “First, let’s get the hell out of here.”

Hector picked us up outside Taps a few minutes later. I’d never seen my neighbor quite as speechless as he was when Angie pulled herself into his van. I introduced Hector to my friend. She was still drying her eyes, but managed to smile a nice hello from the backseat.

He, on the other hand, stuttered and said something vaguely resembling “Hi.”

I grinned at my neighbor. “What’s the matter? You’re not your usual chipper self.”

He swallowed hard and cleared his throat before he managed to ask where we were going.

I checked the clock on his dashboard. We were just in time. “Actually, just down the street. There’s a party I’d like to crash.”

Judge Pinkerton was waiting for us in the lobby. He wore the same old gabardine suit he’d worn on our dinner date to Armani’s the week before, when I tagged Scalzo with the subpoena. To my surprise, Angie hugged him when we saw him. Then she turned to me. “You sure I should go in like this?”

I looked her up and down. Her makeup was smeared, and Val’s suit would need to be thrown in the dumpster. Just as I was about to tell her not to worry about it, that it was somehow appropriate for the occasion, Hector stepped forward and told her, “You look great.”

Her eyes twinkled, and Hector raised his right arm to escort her. “If you’re not embarrassed to be seen with a cable guy, I’d be honored.”

She stared at him for a moment, grinned, and took his arm. “The honor’s all
 
mine.”

I told them not to go too far, and then Pinkerton and I followed them into the reception room. “Everything go according to plan?” I asked the judge quietly.

He eyed me hard. “Without a glitch.”

“Nice work, Your Honor.”

He winked. “You, too, you sorry-ass tart.”

I nodded toward the reception. “Let’s finish this before we gush anymore.”

“Do I look like the gushing type?” he said as we followed Angie and Hector into the ballroom. It was filled with a few hundred local players making the rounds, drinks in tow, as they schmoozed it up. I recognized several faces from the news, even someone I would have guessed to be the mayor. There were also quite a few lawyers I recognized from the courthouse, and not surprisingly, they were all happy to see the Honorable Francis Lloyd Pinkerton.

“Didn’t know you were supporting Dane,” one of them told the judge.

“I wouldn’t say I’m supporting him,” Pinkerton said. “I’m just here to see how he fares.”

That made for curious grins.

“Speaking of the man of the hour,” Pinkerton said, “where is he?”

“Good question,” another bystander said. “The party line is that he got stuck at the office.”

We helped ourselves to the spread of appetizers, especially the trays of Chick-fil-A nuggets. I left the judge and stood close to Angie and Hector, and we all grew tired watching the number of hands Pinkerton had to shake. “He sure knows a lot of people,” Angie remarked.

“He sure does,” I said. “And doesn’t he look miserable?”

Just then, the ballroom erupted in applause, and we knew Dane Parker had finally arrived. Although the news reports on the TV monitors around the room were predicting he would win by a landslide, Dane didn’t look like a man on the eve of victory. He was pale, wizened, and glistened with sweat, and seemed to struggle to shake hands without trembling as he wiped his mouth and face nervously.

And he hadn’t even seen us yet.

Angie and I stayed hidden in the far corner for a while. It didn’t take him long to step to the podium and address his crowd. “Good evening,” he began in a sketchy voice. Everything about his demeanor said he wanted to make an appearance and get the hell out of there as soon as possible. “I’m sorry to be so late. It’s, uh, it’s been a hard day in the office.”

He paused, as though waiting for laughter, but there were only a few awkward chuckles and many more uncomfortable stares.

“I, uh, I do want to thank you all of your hard work during this campaign. No matter what happens tomorrow, we’ll know that we all gave it our best. And for that, I’m very grateful.”

I leaned forward and whispered for Hector to give us a minute. Then I took Angie by the hand and led her through the crowd, until we were squarely front and center of the podium.
 
Parker was about to speak again, but when he saw me hovering half a foot above the crowd, his pores seemed to open up like a geyser and he let out an audible whimper of exasperation. Then he saw Angie by my side and nearly fell over. A woman in the audience gasped, and someone tried to give him a hand as he reached for the rickety podium.

“I’m fine,” Parker announced, and told them to carry on enjoying their evening. He stepped away from the podium and waited for the noise of the crowd to provide some cover; then he pulled out his cellphone. It looked like he was placing a call, and whoever he was trying to call wasn’t answering.
 

I had a pretty good idea who that was.

Angie and I stayed put. Parker glanced in our direction, so I smiled an invitation to him. It didn’t take him long to accept. “Porter, isn’t it?” he said, as he approached with an extended hand.

I didn’t take it. “That’s right. And I think you know my friend, Evangeline Hunter?”

He cleared his throat and nodded, leaning forward. “What do you want?” he whispered. “Should we go somewhere and talk? I’m sure it’s not too late to work something out.”

I looked to Angie. “Mr. Silver?”

She nodded. “No doubt about it.”

I shrugged. “Sorry, Dane, but it’s too late to work something out. I saw you trying to call someone. That wouldn’t be Lieutenant Shields, would it?”

Somehow, the last remnants of color left his face, and he swallowed hard. He shook his head faintly. “Who? I mean, what about him?”

“I’m afraid he won’t be joining us tonight, Dane,” I said, smiling slightly, like a gator does before he invites a nutria to dinner. I leaned forward and whispered in his ear, so Angie wouldn’t hear: “Did you know that the Right Reverend Bob Hunter, Evangeline’s daddy, was a sniper during the Vietnam War?”

“Is that so?” he whispered.

“And you see that judge over there?” I nodded toward Pinkerton.

“What’s
he
doing here?” Parker gasped.

“He’s with us now. But he spent most the day alone. Funny what a retired judge with too much free time on his hands can accomplish in a day’s time. It sounds like this one sent a copy of a special DVD to
The Tribune
and
The
Times
. Guess what was on it.”