Hostage Zero (18 page)
Evan had never felt his heart hammer so hard. In the past, on the few occasions when he’d found himself in this kind of blustering power play, the worst that would come from the ensuing fight might be a busted nose or a loosened tooth. Here, the penalty for being wrong was the biggest one there was.
But the rules don’t change with the size of the bully. You can’t ever afford to show weakness. What was it that Father Dom always said?
Victory can be claimed, but surrender has to be offered.
To Evan, it was a fancy way of saying,
Die trying.
Victory can be claimed, but surrender has to be offered.
To Evan, it was a fancy way of saying,
Die trying.
“
You
kidnapped
me
, remember?” Evan shouted. “You can’t let me die.”
You
kidnapped
me
, remember?” Evan shouted. “You can’t let me die.”
This time, as he walked toward the car door, he noticed that the henchmen seemed amused, even as Mitch clearly could think of nothing to say.
Evan planted himself back in his seat, closed the door, and fastened his seat belt.
Apparently, in the world of killers and spies, it was never allowable to meet in the same place twice, at least not within too short a time. Thus, the food court at Pentagon City was out, and Founders Park in Old Town Alexandria was in.
If Jerry Sjogren had had his way, they would have met in an underground parking garage à la
All the President’s Men
, but Brandy Giddings had aborted that idea before it could even take a breath. If she was going to be killed by some whack job, she wanted the murder to be witnessed by as many people as possible.
All the President’s Men
, but Brandy Giddings had aborted that idea before it could even take a breath. If she was going to be killed by some whack job, she wanted the murder to be witnessed by as many people as possible.
She’d followed Sjogren’s orders to the tee. Metro from the Pentagon to the Braddock Road Station, and then two taxis just in case: the first one to Reagan National Airport and then a second to the Torpedo Factory—a trendy artists’ colony located in a building on the Potomac River that had in fact manufactured torpedoes through the end of World War II. From there, it was an easy stroll to the park.
Brandy had promised herself that Sjogren would be the one made to wait this time; yet even though she arrived ten minutes late, the man was nowhere to be seen. She considered the possibility that her tardiness had pissed him off and he’d left, but then she remembered that this was his meeting, not hers.
She randomly chose an empty bench and waited to be found.
She never heard him approaching from behind.
“We playing power games now, Missy?” Sjogren boomed from a few feet away on her blind side.
“Jesus!”
Sjogren walked around to her side of the bench and sat next to her. “Being late never gives you the upper hand,” he scolded. “Just so you know. I’ve been here for forty-five minutes. I can tell you everything about everyone we can see, and I watched you arrive. You looked right at me, you know.”
She’d had no idea.
“They call it tradecraft, and if you’re going to play these spooky kinds of games, you’d do well to learn some of it.”
She looked away, stung by the rebuke. It was a little like disappointing your grandfather. Your burly homicidal grandfather.
“Besides, it’s rude to keep people waiting,” he said.
“I’ll keep it all in mind for the future,” Brandy said, struggling to recover face. “I thought you were supposed to be hunting for a homeless guy.”
“In due time. But first I thought you should know that things have gone even further to hell since last time we spoke.”
The familiar fist returned to Brandy’s stomach. She didn’t realize that it was possible to sink farther than dead bottom.
“A private investigator visited Frank Schuler today,” Sjogren went on. “They’ve connected the dots to Sammy Bell’s organization, and they know that Bruce Navarro is involved.” He recounted the details of the conversation he’d heard in the digital audio file he’d received from a contact in the Virginia Department of Corrections.
Indeed, the bottom was only the beginning. “This is unbelievable,” Brandy said. “We go through all of this, only to be taken down by some Lincoln Rhyme wannabe?”
Sjogren clearly understood the reference to the star of Jeffery Deaver’s novels. “I don’t believe I used the phrase, ‘taken down,’” he said. “I’m just reporting facts as I know them.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a folded piece of paper. “I have a research project for you,” he said, handing it to Brandy. “Give me everything you can dig up on this guy.”
Brandy read the name. “Who is Jonathan Grave? Is this the investigator who visited Schuler?”
Sjogren shook his head. “No. That was a lady named Gail Bonneville, an up-and-comer in the Indiana Democratic Party until a shoot-out caused her to resign as sheriff in a little town called Samson. She left that gig to join on with that guy Grave.”
Brandy tried to give back the piece of paper. “Find out for yourself,” she said. “You seem to be doing just fine on your own.”
Sjogren let the note hover between them. “Not this guy,” he said. “I can tell you that he grew up as Jonathan Gravenow in Fisherman’s Cove, and I can tell you that he runs a company called Security Solutions, which in turn employs Ms. Bonneville.”
He paused, and when Brandy tried to repeat her suggestion, he raised his hand for silence.
“I know that he joined the Army,” he continued, “sometime after changing his name from Gravenow to Grave. His father is Simon Gravenow, a mobster now pulling a life stretch in federal prison.”
Another pause. “Sounds like you’re doing just fine,” Brandy said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with this. Our office cannot be linked in any way to—”
“Yours is the only office that can do it,” Sjogren interrupted. “After he entered the Army, he disappeared. I’ve got him through basic training and Ranger school, but then he’s gone. Nothing. Then I find out that he doesn’t even have a set of fingerprints on file. Call me crazy, but that sounds like a guy who learned special enough skills in the military that Uncle Sam made him invisible.”
Brandy chose to say nothing.
“That means, Missy, that your office is the
only
one that can do the research I need done.”
only
one that can do the research I need done.”
Brandy understood the implications—that this Grave guy was some kind of a spook—but she didn’t understand the urgency. “I can’t do this sort of data mining on my own,” she said. “I’ll have to involve others. It seems to me that the risks posed by expanding the universe of knowledgeable parties outstrips the benefit of gaining a couple more data points.”
Sjogren’s face morphed to a patronizing sneer. “Please tell me you’re faking right now. Tell me that you’re not really that dense.”
Brandy felt heat in her cheeks.
“We’re talking about a man with ties to the mob who also has commando training. On the day when two of my best men disappear, an associate of G.I. Joe goes right to the heart of everything in a Virginia prison. Given all of that, you only see data points? Again, please tell me you’re faking.”
Now I wish I was
, she thought.
, she thought.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
HAPTER
T
WENTY
It was hard for Harvey Rodriguez not to feel at least a little like a prisoner. With his beard shaved and his hair cut—courtesy of a hot black chick named Venice, who turned out to know her way around a pair of clippers—all it took was a hot shower and a change of clothes to make Harvey feel and look like a new man. Officially, he was free to come and go as he pleased, but it’s hard to wander around in the open when people you don’t know are looking to kill you.
Still, he needed fresh air. Blame it on the hundred bucks Jonathan gave him. With no bills to pay and a guaranteed roof over his head—in a
mansion
, no less—cash in his pocket meant beer in his belly. The way he saw it, dying with a couple of Coronas on board had to be better than dying parched.
mansion
, no less—cash in his pocket meant beer in his belly. The way he saw it, dying with a couple of Coronas on board had to be better than dying parched.
Jimmy’s Tavern sat on the water, three blocks downhill from the mansion. At 8:30 in the evening, the parking lot was three-quarters full, a surefire sign of the kind of place where Harvey could enjoy killing some brain cells.
His expectations dimmed, however, as he closed within a few dozen yards of the place and noticed that the pull hardware on the doors was fashioned in the form of fish—a yin and a yang, one sniffing the other’s ass as they swam counterclockwise.
He grabbed the fish belly on the right and pulled, hoping to be greeted by the aroma of booze and stale cigars, but instead was assaulted by the stench of chicken fingers and French fries. He missed real bars. This family-fare shit was for the birds.
If you ignored the left-hand side of the building, where a forest of empty tables awaited the dinner crowd, the smaller right-hand side featured a bar fashioned from pine planking and old seafaring barrels of grog. He knew the barrels were supposed to be grog, because the word was stenciled on every other one. The alternating barrels bore the mark of the ass-sniffing fish from the front door along with the word JIMMY’S stenciled in the open circle.
You never judge a bar by its bar, though; you judge it by the number and diversity of bottles stacked against the back mirror, and by the forest of beer taps. Measuring by that yardstick, this place was just fine.
The kid behind the bar didn’t look old enough to be serving liquor. “Welcome to Jimmy’s,” the kid said, sliding a cardboard coaster at him. More of the damn fish. “What can I get you?”
The tap handles advertised an embarrassment of riches. With a hundred unearned bucks in his pocket, he ignored the cheap domestics that he’d normally order and went for a Harp Lager. Three or four of those and he’d be feeling a lot like a leprechaun.
The kid placed a heady pint onto the coaster and extended his hand. “I’m Chris,” he said.
“Harvey.” They shook hands.
“No kiddin’?” Chris said with a chuckle. “You missed a friend of yours by about ten minutes.”
Harvey recoiled, instantly pissed at himself for giving up his name so easily.
“A big guy,” Chris expounded. “Gray hair, mustache. Boston accent.” He mocked the word as
Bahston
. “He didn’t leave a name, but he asked me to keep an eye out for you. Ring any bells?”
Bahston
. “He didn’t leave a name, but he asked me to keep an eye out for you. Ring any bells?”
Absolutely. Big guy he’d never heard of. Sounds just like a guy sent to avenge two friends he didn’t kill. “Not a clue,” Harvey said. He took a pull on his beer, but now it tasted like piss. Maybe that was one of the thirty-four flavors of fear. “Did he say
why
he was looking for me?”
why
he was looking for me?”
“Something about being an old Army buddy.”
A wiry guy two seats down wearing denim on denim and sporting a close-cropped goatee piped in, “Said you were a war hero.” The unspoken rule of neighborhood bars everywhere: Any conversation with the bartender is open for group participation.
“That’s right,” Chris confirmed, his face brightening with recognition. “He said that he found some medals that belonged to you. I don’t know, in a basement or something. Said he wanted to get them back to you.”
New flavor: acid. The next mouthful almost made him gag. He kept his Navy Cross and Distinguished Service Medal in their original cases, hidden in a hole he’d dug under his tent. He fought the urge to bolt from his barstool and tear for the door.
“Now that I see you, though, that might be bullshit,” said Denim. “He must be twenty years older than you. I have a hard time seeing you two serving in the same unit. You might want to be careful.”
Harvey eyed the denim guy carefully, then shrugged it off. He wanted this conversation to end.
“I think we all need to be careful,” Chris said, absently wiping the bar top even though it didn’t need it. “That stuff at Resurrection House the other day. I don’t like stuff like that happening around here. If little kids aren’t safe, then nobody’s safe, know what I mean?” He shook his head sadly, and then seemed to realize he was bringing the mood down, so he became a little too cheerful. “So, where are y’all from?”
Harvey’s gut jumped again. He’d assumed that Denim was a regular.
“I’m from everywhere,” Denim said. “I’m willing to hang my hat wherever I can find work.”
“Oh yeah?” Chris said, clearly intrigued by the prospect. “What kind of work do you do?”
Denim shrugged. “None, right now. I’m sort of looking around.”
Was Harvey imagining things, or was this guy glaring at him as he spoke? One of the problems with being a diagnosed paranoid is that you never know when the paranoia is justified.
“For what?” Chris pressed. “What’s your specialty?”
“I was in the weapons business for a long time,” Denim said. “But this new outbreak of peace is killing me.”
Chris laughed, but Harvey’s hand started to shake. Weapons business. New in town. Happened to be here right at this moment. Coincidence or strategy?
“And you, Harvey?” Chris asked. “Where do you come from? What do you do?”
He knew the kid was just trying to be friendly, but Harvey wanted to shove a wad of napkins in his mouth. He should have prepared an answer for this. “I used to work for a charter fishing company,” he lied. “I got laid off, though.”
Chris looked concerned. “Which one? I didn’t know charters were laying off.”
“In Georgia,” Harvey clarified. He had no idea why he’d just said that. He’d never even
been
to Georgia. “Out of Savannah.”
Please, God, let Savannah be on the coast.
been
to Georgia. “Out of Savannah.”
Please, God, let Savannah be on the coast.
“Well, that’s a great line to be in around here if you’re any good at it,” Chris said. “Where are you staying?”
Jesus Christ, did he not have an off switch? “With friends.”
The kid’s smile brightened even more. “Anybody I know?”
Harvey opened his mouth to say something, but no words formed. His library of lies had just checked out its last edition. He found himself staring.
“Give the guy a break,” Denim said. “He just found out that a stranger is looking for him, and you keep leaning on him for information. Would you want to be answering your questions if you were him?”
A lightbulb went on over Chris’s head. Almost literally. “Oh, jeeze, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push too hard. I was just—”
Harvey waved him off. “Don’t worry about it,” he said.
“Sure looked spooked, though,” Denim said. He toasted him with what looked to be a pint of Coca-Cola.
Harvey forced a smile, and tried to devise an exit strategy. Denim worried him. Assuming he was a bad guy, Harvey would be foolish to leave a public place. The guy would only have to follow him, wait for the right moment, and then do whatever he came to do. On the other hand, waiting would guarantee a meeting with the big Bostonian.
Even if Harvey did leave, where would he go? He wasn’t the most selfless guy in the world, but there’s no way he could lead killers back to the mansion.
When you’ve got no good options, all you can do is hope to choose the least shitty one. In this case, it meant finishing his Harp and getting out of here. He waited a couple of minutes after he drained the pint to ask for the check. While Chris rang the order, Denim defused everything by dismissing himself from his stool and heading to the men’s room.
“I hope our friend isn’t stepping out on his bill,” Harvey quipped as he slipped a twenty into the little plastic folder embossed with yet another set of ass-kissing fish.
Chris smiled and shook his head. “Nah, he looks honest to me.” As he cashed out the change he added, “Sure you don’t want to stick around for your friend?”
Harvey spun himself off the stool. “Chris, I gotta tell you. I don’t know anybody who fits the description you gave, and I’ve never won any medals. If he comes back, feel free to forget you ever saw me.” He eyed the cash in Chris’s hand. “Keep the change.”
The kid’s eyes saucered at the three hundred percent tip. “Forget I saw who?”
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