Inside Out (40 page)

94

Winter held his SIG out in a two-handed grip as he approached the Cadillac parked in front of Manelli's house. He peered in at the rear seat, where a lifelike dummy was secured by a lap belt. Sean had never been in the car at all. Sam had somehow gotten her; no matter what Winter had to do, he was going to find out where she was.

He was at the front door of the house when he heard two crashes behind him, but he ignored them. He went inside, moving rapidly down the wide hallway, following the sound of a man singing. He swung his gun, aiming from the hallway into every room as he moved toward the rear of the house. Winter shouldered the kitchen door aside and, stepping into the kitchen, aimed the SIG at the Cadillac's driver, who was wearing the Braves cap Sean had on when he had last seen her. The man sat at the counter over an open sandwich, with a cigarette hanging from his lips and a mayonnaise-smeared kitchen knife in his hand.

“U.S. marshal! Where's Manelli?” Winter demanded.

“It wasn't my turn to watch him,” the man quipped. He set the knife down on a dish beside his dinner plate. Winter reached to the driver's shoulder holster and took out a heavy Colt Python revolver.

“I got a permit for that in my wallet.”

Winter placed his gun in his own shoulder rig, cocked the revolver's hammer, and aimed the magnum at its owner's forehead. “Where is she? Where did Manelli take the woman?”

“Where's your warrant?” the man asked, unfazed. “Mr. Deputy, that pistol ain't a search warrant.”

Winter shifted the magnum slightly and fired. The explosion was a muted
whomp
to Winter, thanks to the earplugs, but deafening for the driver. First vaporizing the lobe of the man's left ear, the bullet punched a black circle into the refrigerator door. The muzzle blast also blew the Braves cap off and left a comet-shaped powder burn the width of a silver dollar on his cheek. Blood trickled down the man's neck, staining his collar bright red.

The shocked driver reached slowly up to cover his ruined ear with his hand. “You
shot
me?”

“Wrong!” Winter yelled. “You shot yourself with your own gun and I couldn't stop you.” Winter spoke loudly so the driver could hear him over the ringing in his ears. Immediately Winter swung the barrel to the left, aiming at the other ear. “And you are going to keep shooting pieces off yourself until you tell me where they are.”

“You're a cop!” he shrieked.

“Not today.”

“I don't knooow!” the man hollered, his terrorized eyes now the size of quarters.

Trammel exploded into the room aiming the AR-15 before him. He was red-faced, wet from the rain, and breathless, but obviously relieved to find Winter was all right.

“He shot me!”
the driver wailed.

“He'll do that,” Hank said. “I'll see you kids aren't interrupted.” Hank pushed the door open and took up position behind the doorjamb so he could see down the hall to the front door and have cover.

“I swear ta God! I don't know! They took her off in the green van. That's all I know,” he pleaded.

“Who
took her?”

“I don't know!”

“Blow his dick off!” Trammel called out. “That's an order.”

Winter dropped his aim accordingly and the man collapsed into a fetal position on the floor tiles. “What make van?” Winter yelled.

“I don't know where or why. An eyeless Ford! Mr. Sam and some of his guys.”

“What do you mean,
eyeless?”

Three ambulatory members of the SWAT team came in through the open front door and scattered through the house, yelling, “FBI! FBI!” Special Agent Finch hobbled in behind them.

“United States marshals!” Hank hollered.

The Crown Victoria's airbag had skinned Finch's forehead and nose, and he was walking like a hunchback in an old Frankenstein film. The knees of his trousers were open and bloody flesh was visible through the holes. He stared down at the driver and then up at Winter holding the driver's pistol. “Where are Manelli and Mrs. Devlin?” he asked. Finch managed to bow and lift the Braves cap by the bill from the floor. “This is our bug,” he said. “Where is she now?”

“Manelli outsmarted you,” Winter said acidly. “Did you people even make sure that he was here to begin with?”

“We didn't have enough time,” Finch protested.

“She was never in his car! This putz put your cap on a dummy so you would think it was her. There's nobody else here—not so much as a guard. They are somewhere else, you idiot. Where's Archer?”

“There was some kind of a booby trap in the road. I never saw it. Archer's dead,” Finch said solemnly.

“Know how you said that lever the guard threw before the Caddy rolled in might have something to do with that bridge? Winter, the end of that damn bridge shot straight up in the air and Finch here drove right slam into it—Archer's head did its best to go through the windshield, but I guess it broke his fool neck,” Hank said.

“He didn't have his belt on,” Finch said defensively.

“House and basement are clear!” a voice yelled from the hallway, bringing Finch around a little.

“Maybe there's hidden doors, false walls . . . a secret cave,” Finch said.

“Secret cave?” The driver, still lying on the floor, laughed.

“He knows where they are,” Winter said, pointing down at the driver. “Leave us alone and I'll get it out of him.”

“He's FBI,” the driver said. “He ain't gonna let you shoot me no more. You crazy ass-bite. I'm suing all you bastards!”

Finch shook his head and stared at Winter. “You interfered with an FBI operation, Massey. The attorney general is going to—”

“The only thing I interfered with was that bastard making a sandwich, you moron,” Winter snapped. He wanted to scream with rage and beat the truth out of the driver. The FBI had screwed up and he had followed right along with them. Finch sat down on a stool and stared at the half-made sandwich. The SWAT team leader came in. “The houth is keer, thir,” he said. The words sounded wet and soft because he was missing his front teeth and his lips were like torn pillows filled with meat.

“Check all the walls for—” Finch started.

“Secret caves,” Hank offered.

“We're done here,” Winter said. “Let's go, Hank.”

“You're both under arrest,” Finch said.

“I got a permit,” the driver said. “I wasn't doing nothing wrong and he shot me!”

“Massey, put that gun down,” Finch said. “It's obvious that she informed the driver about the cap. No telling where she is.”

“No way she did that,” Winter snapped. He put the driver's gun on the sandwich. “You think this is gonna stay a secret, Finch? I know Archer wanted Sam to kill Sean and that he planned to have your SWAT team kill Manelli. I know it and so does Director Shapiro, and soon the world will, too. You're finished and Archer is going to be glad he's dead. And if anything happens to her you'd better hide where I can't find you.” Winter started from the room with Hank behind him.

“Hawt!” The jar-headed SWAT team leader aimed his MP5 at Winter's back.

“You planning to stop me, Finch, you tell him to kill me.”

“Let them go,” Finch said, resigned.

Winter stopped at the open door to Sam's den. On his way up the hall earlier, he had looked in. Now he was drawn into the room by the multiple cabinets packed with guns.

95

Sean clenched the wheel as she steered through the French Quarter. Two blocks from the parking garage, light bloomed in her periphery and, seconds later, again. She could only pray the aspirin tablets could stop the migraine, or slow it. She cursed herself for having left her pills behind at the hotel in Arlington.
Dear God, not now.
Archer either hadn't believed she was getting sick or didn't care. She fought back the urge to panic.

Squinting now just to see, Sean drove up to the fourth floor of the garage, where the Cadillac's driver, facing her from the far ramp, flashed his headlights at her. The brilliant lights brought the headache whipping into her brain like a tornado. Sean pulled into the first open space, her left tire rolling up over the concrete stop. In her pocket she carried a note that she had written in her hotel room:
FBI following me. I'll call after I shake them.
All she had to do was somehow get Archer's stupid baseball cap inside the Cadillac while the driver was reading the note. If the FBI would just follow the Caddy a few blocks—long enough for her to get away. She had made no plans beyond surviving the day.

The plan.
She fought to keep her thoughts ordered despite the pain in her head. She wanted nothing but to curl up in the backseat.

She forced herself to climb from her car, steadying herself by putting her left hand on the roof. The driver slid the window down. She was looking at him as though through a dimly lit tunnel. She had the note clenched in her fist, but before she could pass it on, she was aware of the sounds of someone approaching fast. Before she could turn, a hand covered her mouth. Another set of hands felt her roughly all over. Someone snatched off her cap and she caught sight of a man opening the Cadillac's back door and slipping the hat on a figure seated in the rear. While the men wrestled her inside a van parked nearby, the Cadillac pulled off, tires chirping. She was trying to fight, to escape.
This is all wrong! Not yet! Please, God!
The men pressed her into the bench seat between them and one of them belted her in.

“Calm down before you hurt yourself,” Sam Manelli said from the seat just behind Sean. He leaned forward, his warm breath on her neck. “We jus' give the feds a little time to get after the car.”

Through the pain and darkness, she managed to say, “Migraine.”

She was aware that the guard beside her handed Sam the note she had failed to pass to the driver. As he read it, he squeezed her shoulder with his free hand. Behind her, a radio came to life.
“Covered wagon is headed to the barn. Cowgirl is in the back. Signal track is ten-ten.”

“The FBI is all idiots,” Sam said with total conviction as he crushed the note into a ball.

Through the curtain of pain in her skull, Sean was aware of these things: that her neck was surrounded by Sam's thick arm, that if he chose he could crush the life out of her, and that she was helpless to do anything about it.

“Go by Merle's place,” Sam instructed the driver. The driver crossed Canal and parked in an alley off Baronne Street. Sam stepped out of the van and the man in the front passenger seat accompanied him to a door. Sean closed her eyes. After what seemed like a couple of minutes, Sam and his bodyguard returned. As he climbed in, Sam handed a paper bag to the man seated beside Sean. Sean had to squint to see what was happening. The man reached into the sack to remove a syringe already filled with a few CCs of liquid.

“Please,” Sean pleaded in a whisper.

“Doc said this will fix a migraine headache,” Sam said.

The man slipped the covering from the needle and held her arm stiffly in place. Sean resisted until she felt the sting of the needle.

Sam placed his hands on either side of her head and rubbed gently. “How's your headache now?”

“Don't hurt me, Sam. I didn't know. . . .”

She was fully expecting Sam to increase the pressure until it hurt worse than the headache. “You sleep a little now, and when you wake up you're going to tell me what I need to know. Then you won't have nothing to worry about.”

One thought rang out in her clouded mind.
Winter will come.

As the van headed away from New Orleans, she closed her eyes and slept.

When Sean awakened, the headache was a dull shadow of its former self. She was in a dimly lit room, lying on a wide bed. She sat up and looked around. When she realized exactly where she was, fear seized her. This was a room she had been in before. It was Sam Manelli's bedroom.

96

Winter concentrated. The photographs in Sam's den depicted the gangster with various other men in hunting outfits over the years. One man with prematurely silver hair appeared in several of the pictures—Winter figured it was Manelli's underboss, Johnny Russo. In one picture there was a green Ford van behind the men. An elderly black worker standing by the van wore a coat with
INTERNATIONAL LIQUID STORAGE
emblazoned on the back.

“Might be smart to get the hell out of here, Winter.”

“And go where, Hank?”

“Get with Chet. Run down Manelli's possible hideouts listed in the files. Warehouses, offices, those kind of—”

“No time. He'll find out about this soon or he'll finish his business with her and have an airtight alibi. We have to get to him fast.”

Winter was studying the items in the room like a tourist in a museum. He noted a lodge in the background of several pictures and a boathouse in others. “I'd bet when Sam got his hands on Sean he took her where he feels secure.”

Winter was thinking and trying to decompress, to ditch the frustration and anger he felt. He had to distance himself emotionally, to depersonalize Sean, but he kept seeing her in his mind—at the mercy of butchers and knowing that nobody was in any better position to help her than he was. If he was going to help her, he had to forget that this was anything but a riddle to solve.

“Manelli is a sadist. He went to a great deal of expense and effort to kill her and Dylan. He believes that Dylan and Sean were responsible for putting him in jail, and almost taking down his empire. Manelli will take his time with her. He'll need to find out what she told and to who. He'll want to show off his power over her, his reach, his cunning, his winning out in the end like he always has. I suspect he'll want to do everything to her he wasn't able to do to Dylan. Fact is, our only chance to save her is if he keeps her alive as long as he can to torture her. We need time and a lucky break.”

Hank crossed the room and joined Winter to stare at a large satellite picture in a heavy cypress frame. It was a remarkably crisp aerial photograph of rural, industrial acreage. The photo was centered around a storage tank farm.

“You used to be able to call NASA and order one of these on a whole city, or just your neighborhood. I saw a picture just like this in the offices of an oil exploration company of an operation in Alaska. You could see elk grazing in it, not a quarter mile from the derricks.” Hank touched the glass. “That's a towboat pushing a double line of barges. Mississippi River.”

Winter studied a tanker moored at a dock from which three large white pipes ran up and through the levee, then over the road before they dropped down on the other side of a fence and entered a building. Smaller pipes exited the control house and channeled liquids out to each of the thirty storage tanks, each capable of holding maybe millions of gallons. A black lid on a tank had the company's initials painted on it in white letters. When he spotted something at the edge of the marsh, outside and south of the farm's fences, he took the picture down from the wall. “I know where she is, Hank.” He twisted it—the glass breaking as the frame snapped apart. He pulled the picture out, folded it and slipped it into his jacket.

A SWAT team member standing in the hall ignored them as they passed. As soon as they reached asphalt, they ran back up the driveway and across the grass, toward the Jeep. As they crossed the road they saw the red lights of approaching ambulances.

Injured SWAT team members and dazed technicians were huddled near Archer's corpse. Through the drizzle, they looked like wet birds on a line, waiting for the sun.