Rising Phoenix (44 page)

“No,” Colombar replied calmly. “You’ll go and find him. I want to hold this man’s eyes in my hand.”

Perez shuffled uncomfortably. He had seen Colombar in this mood only twice in the years he had known him. The cartel leader’s levels of rage went from shouting in his practiced European Spanish, to screaming in the Spanish of his youth, to killing people with his bare hands, to dead calm. Dead calm was the worst. That’s when he had someone pick you and your family up for a long, slow appointment with death.

“I’ll leave immediately, Luis. Should we inform the others of this development?”

“No.”

T
he Reverend Simon Blake watched his wife over his pool cue as she walked across the spacious basement. She was carrying a silver tray with a single mug on it.

“I was making hot chocolate for the kids and thought you might like some,” she said, setting the mug on a long table behind a leather sofa.

Blake eyed her sadly, wondering how his actions would affect her. Things were out of control, and for the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Gods voice had been silenced.

“Thanks, honey,” he said, missing the side pocket with the two ball.

“Are you having fun?”

The pool table had been a gift from her and the kids for his birthday. Erica had read somewhere that pool was an especially therapeutic and relaxing pastime. He could feel her eyes on him, and made an effort to look happier and more energetic than he felt.

“Sure am. I’m starting to get pretty good, too.” The statement was accentuated with another miss. He was having trouble concentrating on anything these days.

She nodded, and padded silently out of the room. As he watched her go, he felt tears well up in his eyes.

His plan hadn’t worked. In retrospect, it had been a stupid and desperate move. The man he had informed on was dead, as was his killer. And John Hobart was still a shadowy figure perched at the edge of every news report. Why hadn’t he just told the FBI Hobart was behind it? He had asked himself that question a hundred times a day since Nelson’s death. In the end, he discovered that the answer wasn’t complicated. Fear. He had always been afraid of John Hobart—his cold demeanor, the eyes devoid of passion and morality. That twinge of fear had been a small price to pay to have Hobart’s ruthless efficiency behind the workings of the church. But now control had shifted. Hobart was clearly in charge. Unhampered by Blake’s values and religious sensibilities, he had no limitations.

Blake leaned his cue against the table and reached for the hot chocolate. Steam rose around the whipped cream piled on top. He sipped the hot fluid loudly, knowing he would regret it later. These past few months he had suffered from a constant sense of anxiety. It was an indescribable sensation—as if he was always on the verge of hyperventilating. As if something dreadful waited for him just around the next corner. Sugar and caffeine were definitely contraindicated.

He was nestled into the sofa, finishing his drink, when his cellular phone rang. It was always with him, used to transact business that his parishioners might not fully understand.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Reverend.”

Blake’s breath caught in his chest. Hobart.

“What can I do for you?”

“I know it was you.”

“What are you talking about, John. I fired you months ago. What are you doing calling me at my home?”

He had devised this plan over the past week. There was no real evidence connecting him with the CDFS. He had never really been involved, beyond letting Hobart drain some insignificant dollars from the church’s accounts.

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Blake waited anxiously to see if his plan had worked.

“If you want out, Reverend—fine. But you better stay out. If the Bureau gets another tip, I’m coming for your family.”

Blake’s jaw dropped.

“I’ll make you watch while I cut them to pieces. And if I’m caught, I’ll have someone else do it for me. Do you understand?”

Blake’s mind churned uselessly, words not able to escape his throat. How could he have put his family in the middle of something like this?

“Do you understand?” Hobart’s voice repeated. There was no hint of annoyance or threat in his voice. It was cold and matter-of-fact.

“Yes.”

“That’s good, Reverend. Good-bye.”

The phone clicked, but Blake didn’t move. When the dial tone started, he put the phone on the table next to him and wept.

Fifty miles away, John Hobart flipped on his computer Things were going to have to be wound up
pretty quickly. He still had the number to the church’s computer, and the passwords necessary to access all of its accounts. It looked like he was going to have to get out of Dodge, but there was no reason to take off without a little extra pocket money.

“Reverend Blake? There’s a man here to see you. He says it’s urgent,” Blake’s secretary said quietly.

“Does he have an appointment?” Blake asked, peering at the calendar at the top of his desk. It was blank.

She stepped through the door and closed it quietly behind her. “No sir, but he’s from the FBI.”

Blake’s expression didn’t change. The adrenaline that had been coursing through him for the past two months had finally dried up. He didn’t care what happened anymore. He just wanted release from the pressure.

“Please show him in.”

“Reverend Blake, I’m sorry to disturb you without an appointment, but it is an urgent matter.”

Blake took the agent’s hand. It was cool and dry. “Don’t think anything of it.” He pointed toward the conference table in the corner of the office.

The FBI must be paying pretty well,
Blake thought, watching the sheen of the man’s expensive suit as he walked toward the table. The watch on his wrist looked like a Rolex.

“I am special agent Alejandro Martinez,” the man said, flashing his credentials. His speech had more than a hint of accent. It reminded Blake of Ricardo Montalban in
Fantasy Island.

“What can I do for you, Agent Martinez?”

“I believe that a man named John Hobart once worked for you. I’d be interested in any information that you could provide me on him. Especially in regards to his whereabouts.”

The last of his adrenaline was squeezed out into his bloodstream at the mention of Hobart’s name. “I really have no idea where he is, I haven’t seen him in some time. Have you tried his home? I can get my secretary to get you the address.”

“We’ve been by his home, yes. It would appear that he hasn’t been there in quite a while.” Martinez smiled engagingly. “And I already took the liberty of asking your secretary to copy Mr. Hobart’s personnel file.”

Blake shrugged noncommittally. “May I ask you why you’re looking for John?”

“I apologize, but I am not at liberty to say,” he answered gravely. “But it is a matter of the utmost importance, I assure you. I would also like to stress how important it is that you do not mention my visit here.”

“Of course. Sorry I can’t be of more help, but as you probably know, John’s employment here was terminated a couple of months ago.”

“Yes, we were aware of that.” The agent pulled out a small notebook from his jacket pocket. “If you have a couple of minutes, I would like to ask you a few general questions about Mr. Hobart. Things that might make it easier for us to locate him.”

Blake adjusted to a slightly more comfortable position in the chair.

“Sure, go ahead.”

M
ark Beamon nimbly sidestepped a young man with a box-filled handcart and walked through the door to SIOC.

The place was a mess. The conference table had been pushed against the wall, and a stack of large cardboard boxes had taken its place as the focal point of the room. Around the boxes were endless piles of car registrations, each with a copy of a driver’s license attached with a paper clip.

Laura saw him come in and strode over with a wide grin. “We’re just getting rid of some of the low priority stuff. It’s getting hard to move in here.”

Beamon nodded in agreement. “So you’ve got registrations to every red Cherokee in Maryland?”

“Actually, we have registrations for every Cherokee, period. Maryland doesn’t put the color on the registration. Laura beamed. She was in her element now. As much as Beamon hated details, she loved them.

“How many?”

“Let’s see …” She chewed the end of her pen
thoughtfully. “I think it ended up being almost seven thousand.”

Beamon let out a long breath. Thank God she was here to sort through all this crap.

“So where are we?” he asked through a yawn.

“We started investigating our top thirty this morning.”

The suspects were being prioritized by matching the pictures, height, and weight on the license with the descriptions obtained by eyewitnesses, and the rather vague drawing obtained from the costume store shopkeeper.

“Already?” Mark replied “Now how the hell did you manage to go through seven thousand documents that fast?”

“Only about fifteen hundred, actually. We started with the red ones.”

“But you said that the color wasn’t on the registration.”

“It’s not, but the VIN numbers have color information in them. We got Chrysler to cross-reference for us.”

He bowed deeply at the waist, almost dropping his old trench coat. “As always, my dear, your efficiency leaves me speechless.”

She smiled. “The thirty in process are over there if you want to take a look.” She pointed to a blackboard that was covered with neat rows of driver’s licenses. In the top right-hand corner of the board was the artist’s sketch of their suspect.

“Why not? Let’s grab a couple of cups of coffee and take a look.”

Beamon looked ruefully at the nearly empty coffee
pot, and glanced back over his shoulder. “Who drank all the coffee and didn’t make more?”

The agents in the room suddenly got busier, redoubling their efforts on whatever they were working on.

“So what have you been doing all morning?” Laura asked. It was almost ten o’clock.

Beamon made a face like he had just bitten into a lemon. “You know that senator whose son died from bad coke a couple of weeks ago?”

“James Mirth?”

Beamon nodded. “I just spent the morning with him. He wanted me to come by personally and tell him why I hadn’t caught the people who murdered his son yet.”

“Oh,” Laura said sympathetically. “And how did that go?”

“Shitty. Now let’s see what you’ve got.” He headed for the blackboard, patting his pockets for his reading glasses. Tom Sherman gave him a wave from the corner of the room, where he was talking quietly into a phone.

“Here they are,” Laura said, gesturing to thirty color copies of driver’s license pictures taped onto the blackboard. Each had a name and brief description of the subject next to it. The description at this point consisted of little more than basic driver’s license information. Finding his glasses, Beamon began inspecting each picture, starting at the top left. Somewhere into the fourth row, his face went blank for a moment.

“Son of a bitch!” he shouted loudly enough that Laura sloshed a good portion of her coffee on her blouse. “I know this asshole!”

Beamon ripped the picture off the blackboard and moved past Laura, who was walking in circles pulling her shirt in and out, trying to cool the dark stain spattered across her chest. He slapped the picture down on the conference table. “Christ, Laura, quit playing with yourself and come over here. This is him!”

The agents in the room suddenly finished the tasks that a moment ago were so important, and began crowding around him, looking at the picture that was now stuck in the middle of the conference table. Sherman hung up his phone and took a seat at the end of the table.

“I worked an investigation in Baltimore with this guy—must have been ten years ago,” Beamon started. “He was working for DEA at the time. I was impressed with him at first—he was quiet, but really bright and insanely dedicated. So he’s got this informant that he wants me to meet. I get there a little late and he’s beat the shit out of him. Broke his arm. Lying son of a bitch almost got me thrown out of the Bureau.”

He turned away from the table and went through a rather elaborate pantomime of a football player spiking a ball.

“Call up the guys investigating him. Tell ’em he’s damned dangerous.” He was grinning from ear to ear and seriously considering breaking into song.

“Sorry to ruin the mood, Mark,” Sherman cut in, “but aren’t you forgetting something?”

Beamon thought for a moment. “Let’s see, find out the identity of the criminal, catch the criminal. Nope, I got it covered.”

Sherman pointed to a phone anchored to one of the rooms glass walls. “Call Calahan.”

“Don’t suppose you’d like to do it for me.”

Sherman shook his head. “You did the work, Mark. Can’t hurt for you to take the credit.”

Beamon sighed and dialed the direct line to the Director’s office. It was picked up on the first ring.

“Calahan.”

“Mark Beamon, sir—I think we’ve identified our man. We believe he’s an ex-DEA agent named John …”

“When can you pick him up?” came the Director’s excited reply. He sounded like he was already planning his press conference.

“I don’t really know, sir. We believe he’s in the Baltimore area. Hell, we may just be able to pick him up at his house—but I doubt it. If he hasn’t been seen there in a while, we’ll have to assume that he’s relocated somewhere else in the city. In that case, I figure we bring in a bunch of guys from New York and Philly to help out. With that kind of manpower, and assuming we’re right about him still being in the Baltimore area, we should have him in a couple of weeks at the outside.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. “If he isn’t at his house, bring the Baltimore Police in on this. They’ve got far more manpower than we can muster.”

In the back of his mind, Beamon had known that the Director would make that suggestion. He had been hoping that the back of his mind would be wrong this time.