Absolute Risk (26 page)

Casher nodded.

“We thought about it, but he’s not the kind of guy who’d give in to grilling and we’re not the only ones who are tracking him. Not only are the Chinese intercepting his calls, but somebody—we don’t know who—has added physical surveillance. It would be tricky to haul him in without being noticed.”

“Doesn’t all that suggest that we’re not the only ones trying to use him to find out what’s going on?”

Casher thought for a moment, then said, “The problem for us and for them is that Gage travels fastest on the tiniest of trails. And we’ve lost him. Maybe the other side has, too. We don’t know.”

“Does that mean you have to sit on your hands?”

“No, we’re pursuing our own leads, but because we don’t know everything Gage knows, they may take us into a minefield.”

Y
ou want to go after Wycovsky?” Viz asked as they drove south along the Hudson River toward Manhattan.

“I’m not sure yet,” Gage said. “I’m trying to think through the dynamics. Gilbert threatens Strubb with Wycovsky, the guy who Gilbert is afraid of. But it looks like Gilbert was also reporting to Arndt. That means that he’s probably the underling. The gofer.”

Gage withdrew his laptop from his attaché case and located the law firm’s Web site. He found Wycovsky’s photo among the partners. Sitting at the far end of a conference table, the five other partners semicircled behind him, Wycovsky looking like a wolf among hounds and terriers. Gage navigated to his personal page. A ten-year gap between when he graduated from Brooklyn College and when he completed Flatbush Evening Law School.

Arndt’s page showed him to be a second-year associate with a Yale Law School degree, wireless glasses, and a haircut like a Chihuahua.

“How does an Ivy Leaguer end up taking orders from a guy like Wycovsky?” Gage asked.

“Maybe bottom of his class and lots of student loans to pay off.”

Gage returned to the home page and looked for a tab for notable cases or firm achievements or recent cases or trial wins. There was none.

Whatever kind of work they did, they didn’t want to advertise it.

“Don’t close it up,” Viz said, then reached into the console and pulled out a memory card reader. He handed it to Gage along with Hennessy’s cards. “The SIM is shot. The other one is okay. It has only one file on it, but I couldn’t open it.”

Gage plugged in the reader and copied the file onto his computer. He tried a few different programs, but none would activate the file.

“I better let the genius give it a try,” Gage said, then forwarded it to Alex Z.

Three hours later, Viz dropped Gage off two blocks away from Milton Abrams’s apartment, then drove over to Shadden Phillips & Wycovsky to watch for Arndt.

Gage had just finished filling Abrams in and going over Hennessy’s notebook, when Viz called.

“I spotted Arndt leaving work early. I called his office pretending to be a friend from Yale. His secretary said he had an appointment near his home in Scarsdale, then was going to work out at his club.”

“Did you get the name?”

“I played dumb and she spilled it,” Viz said. “I’ll come by and pick you up.”

Thirty minutes later, Gage was riding with Viz toward Scarsdale, and sixty minutes after that they were looking in through the storefront windows of a 24 Hour Fitness center.

Gage found it easy to spot Kenyon Arndt wiping his face with a towel as he ran on a treadmill in the middle of a line of others.

“I don’t think anyone’s face is supposed to be that red,” Viz said.

Gage nodded as he cracked a window to keep the windshield from fogging. “He’s getting into heart attack territory.”

Arndt reached up and punched at the display. A few seconds later his legs accelerated.

“Should I go in there and stop him before he kills himself?” Viz asked.

“It looks like that’s the point. With debts like Alex Z says he’s got, money from his life insurance may be the only way out for his family.”

A personal trainer wearing a club jersey and shorts walked up to Arndt and pointed at what looked to Gage to be a bruise on Arndt’s forehead, then down at the display.

Arndt stared forward, shaking his head.

She made a football referee’s timeout signal with the fingers of one hand T’d against the palm of the other and held it in front of Arndt’s face.

Arndt shook his head again, and she yanked the safety cord. Arndt’s legs slowed to a stop. He threw his towel against her chest, then turned and marched away.

“Kind of a punk,” Viz said.

“I suspect there’s a lot going on in his head that we don’t know about,” Gage said, then pointed at Arndt’s Volvo parked two spaces away, between two BMWs. “Why don’t you head on over there. When he comes out, pretend you dropped your keys in the slush.”

Viz looked over. “I guess it’s my turn for the cold job.”

“Only because he might’ve seen a photo of me, either from Davey Hicks or somewhere else, and I don’t want him to bolt. I’d rather not have to tackle him in the snow.”

Gage’s encrypted cell phone rang as Viz walked away.

“That file was a pain in the ass,” Alex Z said, “but I got it, boss. I just e-mailed it back.”

Just then, Arndt walked from the entrance toward his car.

“I’ll look for it. Thanks. I’ve got to go.”

By the time Arndt arrived at his driver’s side door, Viz was bent down sifting through the slush.

Through the gap in the window Gage heard Arndt challenge Viz, “What are you doing next to my car?”

Viz angled his head upward. “Looking for my keys.”

Gage got out of the SUV.

“Do it after I’m gone,” Arndt said.

Viz straightened up. Gage came to a stop behind Arndt, who looked back. The flush of exercise and anger faded from Arndt’s face.

Arndt turned his body sideways in the narrow space between the cars and spread himself flat against the BMW. His head swiveled back and forth between Gage and Viz. Gage had four inches on him. Viz had even more. Arndt’s gaze settled on Viz, a seeming effort to convince them that he hadn’t recognized Gage.

“What do you want?” Arndt said, his voice sounding forced, as though trying to use the words not as a question, but as an accusation.

Gage answered. “Let’s not play games. You know who I am and what I want: the name of your client and why he wanted me followed.”

“You’re asking the wrong guy,” Arndt said, now looking up at Gage. “My name’s not at the top of the letterhead, only in the small print along the side with the rest of the grunts.”

“I’m not sure why it’s on the letterhead at all,” Gage said. “You commit a sin in a past life?”

“It pays the bills.”

“No it doesn’t. I’ve seen your credit report.”

Arndt folded his arms across his chest. “And I’ve seen a hotel surveillance video of you and Strubb taken just before Gilbert’s murder.”

“Is that supposed to worry me? “

Arndt opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it again.

Gage could tell that Arndt had realized that the role the video had been acting in the theater of his mind didn’t match reality.

“I also want to know why you were having Hennessy followed,” Gage said, “and whether you had anything to do with him going over the cliff.”

Arndt’s palm shot out toward Gage. “Wait a second. I didn’t get involved until just before he … he …” His arm now hung there without purpose, the meaning having been drained from the gesture by his inadvertent admission. He lowered it, followed by his head, and then clenched his fists by his side. “I knew it would come to this. I knew it—I knew it—I knew it.”

Gage pushed past the little-boy rant. It was too early to allow Arndt to see himself as the victim.

“Why did Wycovsky want you to manage the surveillance?” Gage asked.

“It sure as hell wasn’t because he thought I was competent,” Arndt said, shaking his head. He still hadn’t looked up. The slushing of club members’ feet as they shuffled from their cars to the entrance was now lost to him. “He just wants everybody’s hands as dirty as his.”

Gage turned and leaned back against Arndt’s Volvo, trying to make Arndt’s position seem less claustrophobic.

“I don’t know all of the details,” Gage said, “but I think your hands may be dirtier even than what you imagine when you’re lying in bed at night—and I’m not talking about Gilbert’s murder. I know why that happened and it had nothing to do with you.”

Arndt looked up at Gage. “Nobody said anything about killing Hennessy. They were just supposed to follow him.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know. They were different than the local people. I took over the Albany end when Wycovsky left for Marseilles.”

“What were they trying to find out?”

Arndt shrugged. “I still don’t know. But I think they were playing defense, not offense. Trying to find out how much Hennessy knew about something and how much he’d shared with others.”

Gage thought of Elaine Hennessy’s empty DVD cases. “And I take it that was the reason for the burglary at his house.”

Arndt’s eyes widened at Gage. “How did you—“

“Putting two and two together,” Gage said, “and that addition puts you in the middle of a conspiracy—but I’m not telling you something you don’t already know. You realized it when Wycovsky came back from France, but by then you had no way out.”

Arndt lowered his head again. The silence that followed was flat and hard. There was no deep meaning to be probed. It had all come to the surface.

Gage looked past Arndt toward Viz, whose frown and set jaw suggested that he’d seen in Arndt what Gage had: one of those men they’d too often found at domestic crime scenes whose sleepwalk through life had ended with the sound of a gunshot and gunpowder residue on their hands.

“I need you to help me with something late tonight,” Gage said. “Do it, and I’ll make sure you never see the inside of a prison. Don’t do it, and you’ll never get out.”

T
he gasp of opening elevator doors blew down the silent hallway of Shadden Phillips & Wycovsky and past the closed door to Wycovsky’s office. Gage felt himself tense. He glanced at his watch: 3
a.m.
They’d completed their search of the lawyer’s computer and his file cabinets and were just seconds from slipping away. He pointed at Arndt and gestured for him to hide behind Wycovsky’s desk. Then at Viz and toward the wall to the right of the door. He then switched off his penlight and crouched on the left side.

Shadows of legs in the hallway crossed the gap between the bottom edge of the door and the carpet.

A whispering voice said, “We missed it. It’s back there.”

Shadows again barred the gap, followed by the scrape and click of the bolt sliding and coming free of the latch plate.

As the door opened, a sliver of light expanded into a beam and then into a flood that was blocked by two man-shaped shadows. A head turned and nodded. The face silhouetted on the carpet appeared jagged and angular.

Gage guessed they were wearing night vision goggles. He had only seconds to surprise them before they spotted him. He waited until the first stepped inside, then sprang between them and punched an elbow into the gut of the trailing man and a fist into the kidney of the leader.

Gage lowered his shoulder into the stomach of the one in the hallway and drove the flailing man into the opposite wall. He then felt a massive weight pound into his side, tumbling him down the hallway. He came to a stop facedown.

“Freeze. Police.”

A cocking weapon above his head froze him in place.

Gage heard the words repeated behind him, then glanced over his shoulder and spotted two men in black tactical jumpsuits holding semiautomatic pistols, one pointing down at him, one aimed through the office doorway. The man he’d tackled lay slumped and groaning between them.

“Put the gun down.” It was Viz’s voice. “Or I’ll drop you where you stand.”

Gage guessed that Viz had wrested a gun away from his man and was using him as a shield. Gage used the stalemate to push himself up to one knee, and then onto his feet. He raised his hands, and turned around.

“Stay cool until we find out who these guys are,” Gage yelled to Viz, and then said to the man in front of him. “Show me a badge and some ID.”

The man reached into his pocket, but instead of retrieving a badge case, pulled out a cell phone, pressed one button, then put it to his ear.

“This is Madison,” the man said into the phone, then listened for a few seconds and asked, “You Gage?” Gage nodded.

Madison holstered his gun, looked behind him down the hallway, and said, “Lower your weapons,” and then handed his cell phone to Gage.

Gage held it down by his side and asked, “You have a search warrant?”

Madison pointed down at the phone. “Ask him.”

“I’m asking you.”

“I’m not a lawyer.”

“Then I’ve got my answer.”

Gage raised the cell phone and asked, “Who is this?”

A male voice answered, “I’m a friend who’d like you to ease on out of there and let us do our work.”

“I’m not interested in playing games. Tell me who you are.”

“I’m not authorized to do that.”

Gage disconnected and pulled out his own cell phone. He yelled down the hallway, “Viz, these guys are either CIA or something close to it,” and watched Madison stiffen.

Madison’s phone vibrated. Gage answered with, “You’ve got five seconds to identify your agency, or I’ll make a call on my phone and whoever is on the other side of this thing will know where I am and what I came for.”

“Don’t.” This time it was a female voice. “Stand by. I need to go up the chain of command.”

Gage pointed at Madison, then past him toward the lobby. “Collect all your people down there.”

Madison didn’t move.

“Look, pal,” Gage said, “the war is over. It’s only a question of the terms of surrender.” He pushed a couple of the phone’s buttons, and then said to the woman, “You’re on loudspeaker. Tell him.”

She spoke again, now issuing an order. “Stand down.”

Madison kept his dignity by saying, “No problem,” then turned away.

“How far up the chain are you ready to go?” Gage asked her.

“That depends on what you found.”

“I found most of the answers I was looking for. And they’re probably the same ones you came after.”

“Hold on.”

The phone line went silent.

Gage watched the agent lying on the floor use the wall to leverage himself onto his feet. Moments after that, another agent limped out of the office, grimacing and holding his side.

The office lights came on and Viz appeared at the door.

“How bad is the damage inside?” Gage asked.

“Things got knocked around, but nothing broken.”

Gage pulled out his digital camera, with which he’d taken photos of the office before they disturbed it, and then walked down the hallway and handed it to Viz.

“Put everything back the way it was.”

Gage glanced into the office. Arndt was standing behind the desk, his arms wrapped around his chest, biting his lower lip.

“It’s okay,” Gage said to him. “Things are under control.”

The phone came alive with a rush of static. “Would you be willing to come to Washington?” Gage looked at his watch. He wanted Arndt present at whatever meetings took place to reassure him that he’d done the right thing in throwing in with Gage and to give him confidence that he’d be protected when Wycovsky realized what he’d done.

“No,” Gage said. “I’ve got someone to protect. We’ll have to do it here.”