Sleeping Dogs (15 page)

He returned to Gate 26 and began his vigil with the idea that nothing would happen until they announced that his plane was boarding.

Jack Hamp took his old carry-on bag out of the car and walked back through the front door, up to the metal-detector station where Marlita Gibson gave him a sober nod as she looked through the fluoroscope at the outlines of his Colt .45 1911 automatic and the spare magazines in the pocket beside it. Hamp had a strong desire not to fire it. The 225-grain semiwadcutter hollowpoint ammunition was what he called the “airport load.” It not only mushroomed on impact but expanded. It wasn’t going through any walls if he missed. If he didn’t miss, the recipient was going to find out that Jesus wanted him for a sunbeam. He snatched the bag off the conveyor and walked on. As he strode along the concourse toward Gate 28, he opened the bag and searched for a ticket folder in his collection that said Hong Kong Airlines. When he found it, he stuck it in his coat pocket where it could be seen.

At the gate, he sat down in the smoking area a few yards away from the nearest passenger and lit a cigarette. If the man spotted him first and was any kind of shot, at least he wouldn’t miss Hamp and put a hole in some kid’s head. And this one might be pretty good. From what Richardson had said, he sounded like a genuine badass. As Hamp inhaled the first sweet, cool smoke from his cigarette, he thought about how much worse the last puff always tasted. He kept his eyes on the passing throng, moving from face to face, first studying, then rejecting. He acknowledged that if he was already thinking about how hot and nasty this cigarette was going to get, it probably was time to quit smoking. All the pleasure of it depended on your being able to keep things from yourself.

He was going on the long odds that this Mr. Ackerman was going to be armed. It was highly unlikely that anybody could get on a plane at Kennedy and still be able to reach into his pants at LAX and come up with anything in his hand that he wasn’t born with. But people who killed a lot for money got into the habit of brooding about such things in their spare time, and, more often than you would think, they found ways.

Hamp glanced at the airline desk in front of the gate and noted that Mr. Sullivan was in position. As soon as Mr. Ackerman showed his face, he was going to meet Jack Hamp.

Ackerman saw the tall, thin, melancholy blond man come into the waiting area at Gate 28 and sit down to light a cigarette, and he studied him with special care. He had a worn carry-on bag, and what looked like a Hong Kong Airlines ticket sticking out of his pocket. He was alone. He was doing pretty much what anybody would do in his position, which was to watch the people around him without letting them notice.

But then Mr. Sullivan arrived. He came up to the second floor by climbing an exterior staircase, popped through the door they never let passengers use, and posted himself at the desk near the gate, but he didn’t make any attempt to do anything that could be construed as work. Ackerman wasn’t going anywhere on Hong Kong Airlines today. He decided he had better try to find out exactly what kind of trouble he was in.

Ackerman moved to a seat that put the pillar at Gate 27 between him and Mr. Sullivan at Gate 28, and kept his eyes on the tall blond man. The tall guy was a possibility. He had even managed to sit in the right place, where he had a clear fire zone in front of him and nobody behind him. But how the hell could they have gotten him here so quickly? Peter Mantino would practically have to keep the guy on call in the airport in case somebody he wanted showed up.

That was unlikely. Ackerman still couldn’t decide. The man had carried himself with a certain amount of confidence, as though he had some reason to be sure what was going to happen if he got into a fight, but as though he wasn’t contemplating anything like that at the moment. It was the walk that came back to Ackerman. That was probably what had drawn his attention in the first place. He tried to picture it again, and when the man moved across his line of sight in his memory, he was favoring his left leg slightly. It was just the sort of unconscious change in his stride that two or three pounds of steel stuck on one side of his body might induce. No, the gun would be in the flight bag, where he could put his hand on it without attracting attention.

Then something happened that was so unexpected that Ackerman didn’t admit to himself that he had caught it at first. Four men entered the waiting area at Gate 28 from different directions. They were all well over six feet tall and heavy, and they looked big and fat and white and obvious. They lurked in different parts of the waiting area, but kept glancing at each other to preserve fixed distances, like a team playing zones. Then each of them looked at the tall, thin blond man as though they had been searching for him. From time to time each of them would watch him for a second and then turn away. Even the blond man knew immediately that they were cops. Ackerman studied the man’s reaction. The shooter couldn’t believe it any more than Ackerman could Whatever the shooter was carrying must have been picked up on the X-ray machine or, more likely, somebody had seen him go wherever it was hidden in the airport and stick it in his bag. Now he was going to get arrested.

Ackerman considered the possibility that he might be able to sit patiently until the cops rolled up the shooter, then stroll across to Gate 28, step
onto
the plane and get out of here. But then one of the cops started to walk toward the smoking area where the shooter was sitting, and the others each in his own time began to move closer. The shooter saw it too, but he didn’t look frightened. He looked angry, which was a very bad sign. It meant that he was at least considering doing something with the gun in his flight bag other than letting them take it and having his lawyer claim the bag wasn’t his. Ackerman couldn’t take the chance of sitting here while the tall guy opened fire. No matter what happened, this wasn’t the way out of Los Angeles. He stood up and turned away, adopting the same purposeful, self-important gait as the men and women nearest to him on the concourse. They all seemed comfortable in the knowledge that airports weren’t about space, but about time. Like them, he didn’t pause anywhere or slow his pace, and he didn’t look back.

Elizabeth dialed her own number and waited four rings before the answering machine kicked in. “Maria,” she said, “it’s me. Please pick up the phone.” After a few seconds, she heard the baby-sitter’s voice.

“Waring residence,” said Maria. If she knew who it was, why did she say that? Elizabeth reluctantly accepted that she would have to explain it again, along with the part about the phone numbers. The line in the office at home was Waring; the one in the bedroom was Hart. Maria had easily understood that Jim’s name was Hart, and that Elizabeth’s name was Hart. But then Elizabeth had gotten overconfident and told her she used the name Waring at work. At first Maria had been suspicious. Did that mean that what Elizabeth did for a living was illegal? No, she was a government lawyer, and Waring had been her name before she was married. What did being married have to do with being a lawyer? Nothing. Then, was being a government lawyer dangerous, like in Colombia? No, not usually.

Then Elizabeth had been subjected to a lengthy cross-examination on precise gradations of risk. When Maria had satisfied herself that nobody was doing anything illegal that would put her in jeopardy of deportation, or anything dangerous that would harm the children, she had clearly decided that there was something disreputable going on. Her questions indicated that she suspected that Elizabeth had never been married, and that Hart was a fiction adopted to protect the illegitimate children. Since she loved the children, she could live with this. So where did “Waring residence” come from?

“Maria,” Elizabeth said, “how are the kids?”

“No good.”

“Not good? What’s wrong?” Her heart stopped beating and began to quiver.

“Jimmy wore dirty old sneakers to school.”

“That’s okay. I told him it was all right.” This was a lie, but it was the only way to close the issue. Maria had been educated by nuns who really appeared to have believed that cleanliness was next to godliness, and she was convinced that going to school every day was a privilege to be celebrated in shined shoes, immaculate shirts and pressed trousers. “What about Amanda?”

“She spit up.”

“How much—a little spit-up, like a burp, or a big one? Should I come home?”

“Not too big. Little bit, but then she happy and go to sleep.”

“Did you take her temperature?”

“Yes, normal.”

“Well, thanks, Maria. I’ll call again later. You have the number here, right?”

“I have it.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Elizabeth stared at the telephone. This was a special taste of hell that somebody had thought up for her. She had wanted children, and from the moment Jimmy had been conceived, she had understood that the term “blessed with children” wasn’t an ironic way of saying it, because it really was how you felt. But there they were, and here she was. She was living the life she had said she would never live. Her children were growing up without seeing her for ten or twelve hours a day while she was out chasing a career she didn’t want. Another woman played with them, dressed them, took Amanda out in the stroller and said the word
tree
or
squirrel
to her for the first time.

She heard the phone in Richardson’s office ring and watched him snatch it off the hook. At first he looked elated, which meant that it was the FBI calling him from Los Angeles and not a file clerk letting him know that she was going to be late. But now he looked concerned, then frustrated. He leaned his head on his fist and let his shoulders slump from the tense shrug that had held them for the past five minutes, and she knew it was over. She drifted to the doorway and looked at him, lifting an eyebrow. “They lost him,” he said.

“Why?” Her throat was dry, and it was just a sound to make anyway. It didn’t matter.

“They don’t know. He paid cash for a ticket to Hong Kong, then never showed up. Our birdwatcher at the airport says it’s because the FBI sent four identical G-man types who proceeded to walk up to him and ask him to point out the suspect. Who, incidentally, was still calling himself Charles F. Ackerman.”

“Today.”

He nodded. “Today.”

“Did the birdwatcher say anything else?”

“He’s a little annoyed. He said if this guy’s so important, how come nobody told the FBI to send the first team.”

“Good question.”

“I thought it was implied in what I told them, but he said they acted like we were after an eight-o-niner.”

“What’s that?”

“I was afraid I was the only one who didn’t know. It’s what he calls a person carrying money out of the country for illegal purposes. They’re not usually dangerous.”

“What’s eight-o-nine, an IRS regulation?”

“No. It’s a telephone area code. Cayman Islands, Dutch Antilles …”

“I’ll remember that. It’s probably where all the HUD money went.” She turned and walked over to her old desk to get her purse. As she picked it up, she tried to remember whether she had left anything in the conference room. No. She could feel her pen, wallet, keys and glasses through the soft glove leather. It was going to be all right. She could be in her office in the other building in time for work, and none of this would have to take up space in her mind. Then she realized that Richardson had followed her out. In a way it was an appropriate gesture. She had given up several hours of her time to a division she didn’t work for, and somehow the fiction had been allowed to grow between them that they had been friends in the old days, so for the moment it was good to maintain the pretense long enough for her to get out of here gracefully. The truth was that when she had left the section ten years ago, she had officially gone on vacation and then never come back. She’d had no impulse to say good-bye to anyone at the time, and when it had occurred to her that she should have, it was too late. Nobody in the office had called her, either.

“Elizabeth,” Richardson said. He was going to thank her for the favor. Fine, she thought. She’d say it was nothing, and then she would be out of here.

But he said, “I’ve got a favor to ask.”

C
arlo Balacontano had been playing gin rummy since he was twelve, and he was very good at it. In October he would be sixty-six, and it was one of the things he could still do as well as he ever had, because even though his arms were no longer heavily muscled and his knees were sometimes a little stiff, his mind was still able to determine and remember the locations of all fifty-two cards, if a game came down to that. Usually he needed to hold only about thirty in his head at once, and he could do that, talk and think about business at the same time. But today he wasn’t doing any of that, because he was sitting across the weight-lifting table from José-Luc Ospina.

Every day Carl Bala came to sit under the overhanging roof of the weight-training area. When he approached in his slow, leisurely stroll, four young men would step up and begin to haul the barbells off the leather-bound table so that he could sit down, take his deck of cards out of the breast pocket of his blue-denim shirt and rip open the package. This ritual had gone on since his second month at Lompoc Federal Correctional Facility eight years ago.