Top Ten (9 page)

“Never showed up?” Mills asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean the four hundred pounds of nose candy he was flying in for us never showed, along with him, which if you run that thought out a little, my flyboy friend, you’ll realize it means that the money our buyers were going to give us for the product is not coming our way.”

Gareth was pissed. In general, but some of anger’s shrapnel was coming Mills’s way. “Shit.”

“Shit is right,” Gareth agreed. “Big shit. Because our friend you just spent the night with is expecting another payment. A payment that is going to be
late
.
Late
!”

“He’ll understand,” Mills said.

“He’s a businessman, number five,” Gareth said. “And in his business he doesn’t have to extend credit.”

“We don’t,” Lionel offered, and Mills knew what he meant. He’d once heard Nita talk about Lionel administering a little ‘bible justice’ to a customer who came up short on them. The man didn’t need both his thumbs, Nita had told Mills with a smile. Mills had wondered then just what part of the bible that came from.

“You’re gonna have to do some extras for me, number five,” Gareth said. “Pick up what Skunky won’t be able to.”

“I’ve got other people to service, Gareth.” The Moreno Brothers in Nashville, they had some runs coming up. And Tuck Bannerman in Jersey. There were at least two, maybe three pick-ups for him down in Mexico, and maybe a hop out  west to one of Bannerman’s guys on the coast.

“Of course you do.” Gareth leaned close and told him with cold expectation: “But I want you to make time for me. I need you in Colombia next week. Tuesday. You’ll fly back on Wednesday.”

Mills nodded. What choice did he have? “A big move?”

“Not big enough,” Gareth said with obvious regret. “There’ll be a new plane at Crutch Field for you on Monday.”

“Make it a twin,” Mills reminded him. There was nothing he hated more than flying over open ocean with one engine. “Like this one.”

“It’s only money. Shall we?”

Gareth and Mills and Nita started away from the Beech, heading toward a line of trees on the far side of the rough. There was a glint of sunlight off metal beyond them. The chrome bumper of a car.

But Lionel did not immediately follow them. Instead of leaving the Beech he went to it, taking something from one of the large cargo pockets on the front of his camouflaged pants. It was small and black, a rectangular something wrapped in electrical tape, with a dial on its face that he adjusted carefully before setting it atop the left wing. Right above a fuel cell. That done, he trotted to catch up with the others. A minute later they were moving. Fifteen and they were on an honest to goodness road. Twenty, and they were too far to hear or see the Beech erupt in a ball of orange flame that would consume it.

*   *   *

He’d read her report through once as she stood in his office, and had her explain it to him twice after he’d told her to sit, but still Bernard Jaworski was having trouble making the leap that Ariel Grace had made.

“So you think our freak is going to go after Director Weaver because he decided to rank the ten most wanted list?” Jaworski scratched some of the stubble he’d missed on his chin and squinted at his newest agent. “The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

She nodded. “He’s the logical target, sir. He made the decision that made Michaelangelo angry.”

“Supposedly angry,” Jaworski said.

“Watch the tapes,” Ariel told him. “Watch the parts I’ve noted. Tell me that you don’t think he’s angry.”

“I’ve seen the tapes, Grace.”

She leaned forward in her chair. “When he’s standing for almost three minutes, sir, staring at the most wanted bulletin. The new ones with the rankings went out three weeks ago. I checked this morning—the Pembry Post Office had received theirs and put it up.”

“Admiration,” Jaworski said, remembering the scene on the tape, the period of time Michaelangelo had stood still, staring. Transfixed. Though Jaworski hadn’t noticed the fist, as Ariel had described it... “He could have been admiring himself.”

Ariel shook her head. “Why, because he placed last in a field of ten?”

“You’re making a big leap, here, Grace,” Jaworski warned her. He hated to see agents get the thinking locked on one track.

“Dots, sir. I’m just connecting dots. These are things I saw. He was mad. Pissed off. He berated Doris May with the bulletin he then took. Why take it? He’s been on the list for five months now. What made that bulletin special? So special that it enraged him to look at it? To stare at it for three solid minutes? To come back and shove it in that clerk’s face?” Ariel paused and scooted herself back. She had almost come off the chair. “Sir, in a way, I can understand his reaction.”

Jaworski’s gaze narrowed at her. At that assertion.

“Both he and I were demoted, you might say. Ranked down.”

“Come on, Agent Grace...”

“I’m just telling you that I know the feeling, that initial punch in the gut, when I read that letter Saturday morning and found out I was being shifted from Task Force Five to Task Force Ten. I had come down from it by the time you met me Monday morning, but that wasn’t the case on Saturday. I was livid. I was hot. If Jack Hale had been in the room with me I would have punched him.”

“No you wouldn’t have,” Jaworski told her, and she knew he was right.

“I would have wanted to. It would have taken everything for me not to.”

Jaworski glanced down at her report where it lay on his blotter. Two pages. A theory. A prediction, really, if you dared call it that. All after two days work. He shook his head.

Ariel slid forward again. “Sir, you can think I’m a fool, but if he is as angry as I think, and he goes after the director...”

“He’d never get close,” Jaworski reminded her. The Director had bodyguards. He was not some taxi driver or real estate saleswoman who could be lured to their demise.

“But he might try,” Ariel said. “And if he did, we could be there. Or close. This could be the first chance we have to know one of his victims in advance.”

“Intended victim,” Jaworski corrected her. He didn’t like the certainty that had slipped into her premise.

Ariel accepted his revision with a nod, but said nothing more to it. She let Jaworski taste it for a moment. Chew on it. From the look about him he was.

“You’re either crazy or brilliant,” Jaworski told her, tapping her report with his finger for a moment after that. A moment of thought. “I’m going to request the Albany SAC forward this to the Director’s office with haste. You me be onto something. I like the part about knowing who our freak might go after. I like that a lot.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He shook his head. “This isn’t praise, Agent Grace, and you might not want to thank me just yet. Because if this gets to the director and goes bust, well, it’s your name on it. Chances are you’ll be looked at as a two time loser.”

She hadn’t thought of it that way. Her suddenly slack expression made that apparent to Jaworski.

“Do you still want me to push this through?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she affirmed after a split second’s consideration.

“Okay, Agent Grace. You’ve just rolled some big dice.” Jaworski took a large envelope from his desk and slipped her report in. He’d add a note atop it once she was gone. “I hope they come up.”

Ariel stood to leave. “Thank you, sir.”

“Go connect some more dots,” he said, waving her out with a flip of his hand.

She noticed the crispness of the gesture. She also noticed that he hadn’t coughed once in her presence that morning.

Five

Home Boys

Where the fuck was the call?

Francis Gunther stood in the shadows of the alley off Chippewa Avenue late Wednesday night, a dozen feet from the phone booth out on the street. Two police cars had passed in the ten minutes he’d been there. Neither had shined their lights down the dark and narrow passage between the K-Man Liqueteria and the New 2 U Clothes store. That was good.

What was not good was that damn phone not ringing. Just hanging there silent while he was as exposed as he cared to be. If the damn call would just come he could dash out, get the word, and be on his way to wherever his momma had left the shit for him. Although she’d smack him real good if she ever heard him call her cooking and any clothes she’d picked up for him shit. She didn’t go in for the foul talk...unless of course it was coming from her. He almost laughed recalling that truth, oh yeah. Almost.

‘Cause how could he laugh standing out in the big wide open, which was how he thought of even this dark alley lately. The only good place, the only safe place, was inside. Inside away from the cops and those feds who had plastered a number on him and then plastered his face all over the news. Shit if it didn’t make even buying a bottle a major production. And worse than all that was that even his friends, like his old time buds, no lying, were rumored to be ready to rat him out for the hundred thou the feds and the six or seven banks he robbed were offering in reward. If that didn’t fucking burn, he didn’t know what did.

Well, this came close, he thought, and took the beeper from his pocket. It belonged to his second cousin, but his momma had borrowed it for him, so they could keep in touch, and since that lawyer she got got a judge to tell the feds and the cops to quit following her all around, well, she’d been able to get things to people who would then get them to places where her phone call would tell him to go. Simple. She’d beep him, with the time, just like it said on there now, the 915—nine fifteen. Yeah, simple as simple got, ‘cept shit if it wasn’t that plus some, and so, oh yeah, this was beginning to burn. Burn on a burn, man, yeah.

He’d give it just another minute Francis Gunther decided, putting the beeper back in his pocket just as the phone out on Chippewa Avenue started ringing. He rushed to the end of the alley, gave both up and down the street a good look (the feds were never gonna catch him with some lame ass phone booth set up, no way) and darted out to snatch the handset up on the third ring.

“Talk to me, momma.”

Momma said a whole lotta nothing back to him.

“Momma?”

Silence. But...

...not total silence.

Francis Gunther checked his surroundings through the glass sides of the booth and kept the phone to his cheek. “Momma.”

Breathing. He heard breathing. Suddenly, he was worried.

“Momma, is that you?”

“I’m trying to reach number nine,” a man’s voice said over the phone, and Francis Gunther let it drop from his hand. He backed out of the booth and looked up and down Chippewa again, but there was nothing. No feds. No cops. Nothing.

He looked down at the dangling handset and half-thought about picking it up again, but decided that he needed to be away from this place fast. Someone was fucking with him, somehow, some way, and he didn’t like it. No fucking way did he like it. So with a final glance up and down the street he turned and ran back into the alley, into its darkness, going full bore toward the backstreet side of the Liqueteria where he could hop a fence or two and be in a neighborhood with his pick of cars to boost. And once in a car, it’d be bye bye, Francis.

Except he never even made it to the end of the alley. A hand reached out and clotheslined him as he ran, the bottom half of his body slipping out from under him and his head going back hard against the pavement with a wet crack.

“Unhhh,” Francis Gunther groaned to the dark sky above as he opened his eyes. Eyes that went wide when he realized the darkness was not in the sky—it was coming down over his face.

*   *   *

Gareth Dean Hoag pulled the Jeep Wagoneer to the curb a few blocks from Hartsfield International Airport. A 767 roared low overhead as Mills DeVane got out of the dirty old wagon.

They’d dropped Nita and Lionel off in Tallahassee, and Gareth had driven Mills the rest of the way alone. They’d made small talk, mostly. Talked about women. Talked about bread. Talked about how impressed women were by bread. Light stuff for conversation.

But now as Mills leaned his arms in the open window of the door he’d just closed, Gareth looked at him with full seriousness. “You know Skunky’s probably dead.”

“There’s a lot of water between here and Colombia,” Mills said, and Gareth nodded.

“You have to be careful,” Gareth told him. It seemed more order than request. “I need you. Especially now.”

“I don’t plan on going anywhere,” Mills assured him.

“Good.”

“Thanks for the ride, Gareth.”

“Colombia. Tuesday.” Gareth put the Wagoneer in gear. “Okay?”

Mills nodded and stepped back and watched Gareth pull away. When he was out of sight Mills jogged across the road and hailed a taxi. He gave the driver directions and sat back, thankful to be alone for a while. Well, not quite alone. There was Nick, license number 60067, up there driving. No, he was glad to be
away
. Away from Gareth. From Nita. From Lionel.

If only he could get away from thoughts of Skunky.

His skin crawled suddenly at the thought of going down in water, though there was no evidence to point to that being the case. But logic and circumstances combined here made a pretty powerful argument, one Mills truly did not want to think about.

And so he wouldn’t. There were others things to think about. Other things to do. And as he saw the phone booth aglow with its own lights ahead he knew that there could be something else to plan. So he told the driver to pull over, right to the curb where the glass box stood. Told him to wait, then he went to the booth and closed the doors. From his pocket he fished some change and dialed a number in Charlotte, North Carolina, getting the evening desk of the
Charlotte Register Democrat
. They transferred him to their automated classified ad system, where he left a message, giving the computerized voice a false but valid name and credit card number to pay for an ad that would run the following day.

That done he returned to the taxi and told the driver to go, to take him home, though he knew that was a place he could not go. Not yet.