Liars & Thieves: A Novel Page 10
“This isn’t supposed to happen in America.”
Isn’t that what Dorsey said? The words kept running through my mind as I lay under that bush waiting to find out if those dudes at Willie’s made their telephone call before I killed them.
At least it wasn’t raining.
Ah, me! What day is this, anyway?
Let’s see. Yesterday was Tuesday, so this must be Wednesday. Believe it or not, a mere twenty-four hours had passed since the shit hit the fan. I checked my watch. Twenty and a half hours, to be precise.
I lay there listening to the insects, watching a snail, thinking about the problem. I needed a place where these two women and I could drop out of sight for a few days while Kelly read the Goncharov files. Of course, we only had one of the seven suitcases containing his notes, but still, there might be something in that mess that pointed the way.
An hour ticked away. I was proud of myself. I only looked at my watch twenty-three times in that hour. I stopped glancing at it finally, and let the warmth of the air of that June day and the cool, moist earth on which I was lying sort of settle me down, put things in perspective. I must have dropped off. How long I slept I don’t know, but a movement to my far right brought me instantly awake.
I lay there under that bush like a dead man, with only my eyes moving. Something had alerted me, but what?
I was completely awake, totally alert … and couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I listened. Birds, very distant traffic noises from the road beside the river … the droning of an airliner. The buzzing of a small plane, fading … and …
And …
I began moving my head to the right. Glacially, as slowly as I could make my muscles move. Of course, that would be the direction the threat would come from since I had thought it the least likely and the bush obscured my vision—and hid me—and I would have the devil of a time getting the MP-5 turned that way. I already had my eyes two-blocked that way, so as I moved my head I could see …
Limbs, leaves … more leaves … and a man.
No ghillie suit this time, just a head-to-toe camouflage outfit. He even wore a camo hat and had grease on his face. I spotted him initially only because he was moving. He hadn’t yet seen me because I wasn’t, and because I was embedded in vegetation.
I lay there motionless as a week-old corpse.
He had appeared from behind the house and was moving to my right, toward my rear. Every step he took put me at a larger disadvantage.
He was carrying some kind of assault rifle.
Oh, Jesus, I was up against the first team! This guy knew what he was doing and he was hard at it, sneaking along with every sense alert, looking for something to kill.
The stupidity of my choice of an ambush position became brutally obvious. I was hidden, all right, but I had no ability to change positions or engage the man. If I twitched a muscle, I was dead. I knew it and lay frozen with sweat popping from every pore. A few minutes of this and he would smell me.
He was sneaking out of my range of vision to my right. Since I couldn’t move, I looked around in the other direction.
If there were two of these camo guys out here I might as well shoot myself now and be done with it.
I didn’t see anyone else. That didn’t fill me with confidence—this guy was so good he didn’t need any help. I had a nearly overpowering urge to pee and restrained it with difficulty.
I was going to have to do something soon. He was moving behind me, and when he saw me he would finish me instantly, without remorse. Exactly the same way I’d shoot him.
My mind was going a hundred miles an hour and I couldn’t think of a goddamn thing!
He was going to finish me in just a few seconds. My whole life … and it was ending. Here! Now!
Whump. I heard the noise and for a second it didn’t register. Then I heard it again. Shots! Two of them. From inside the house.
I took a chance, turned my head another inch to my right.
He had turned and was surveying the windows of the house. Now he looked around, scanned everything quickly, then advanced toward the back of the house, back along the direction he had come. One of his buddies must have gone in the back door.
I lay there frozen until he passed behind the house, out of view. Then I came out of that bush, as quickly and silently as I could, and got pointed in the right direction, the MP-5 in my hands.
I ran for the corner of the house, came up short, and eased an eye around.
He was standing outside the basement door, looking in the other direction, about to enter.
I snicked the safety off, shouldered the weapon as I rounded the corner and gave him a hell of a burst, at least half a clip. The bullets spun him, knocked him off his feet, hammered at him until I released the trigger. I ran toward him while looking around to see if there was anyone else.
Didn’t see another soul. The camo man lay sprawled out like he’d been hit by a Freightliner. I don’t think one of those 9 mm bullets missed. There wasn’t much blood. He looked unnaturally plump. I bent down, tugged at his shirt. He was wearing a bulletproof vest, which hadn’t saved him from the slugs that hit him in the head and neck, at least three of them.
I eased the door open with my left hand—the glass had been cut out and the lock opened from the inside—and passed through, the submachine gun at the ready.
Taking my time, I slipped through the basement, a room I had never been in, until I found the stairs up. I could hear a woman sobbing.
I climbed as silently as possible, then pushed the door at the head of the stairs open inch by inch and looked out. I was in the passageway just off the kitchen. The sobbing was louder now.
I moved toward it, the submachine gun at the ready.
Dorsey was sitting on the bottom stair, her face in her hands. She was sobbing. Kelly Erlanger was sitting beside her, her arms around Dorsey’s shoulders.
In front of them lay a man. He wasn’t moving. Blood was everywhere, a widening lake.
Keeping the gun on him, I walked over, stood in the blood, and turned him onto his back with one foot.
It was Baldy from this morning, Johnson Dunlap. He looked at me, tried to focus his eyes, and went limp, staring at nothing at all.
She had fired twice. The first bullet hit him in the body apparently—I could see the bullet hole in his shirt—doubling him up but not injuring him; he, too, was wearing a bulletproof vest. The second slug, however, whacked him on the inside of his right thigh. Severed the femoral artery. Johnson Dunlap had bled to death in Dorsey O’Shea’s hallway while she sat sobbing on the stairs.
I wouldn’t have tried to save the bastard either.
After running my fingers through Dorsey’s hair, I unlocked the front door and went out that way. I thought maybe I ought to make a circuit of the house, just to make sure there were only two men sneaking about. Undoubtedly there was a getaway car somewhere, but I had zero chance of tracking these guys back through the forest to find it.
On the bright side, maybe now Michelle would get herself a better fella.
Basil Jarrett and Linda Fiocchi stood on the porch of their vacation cabin on the bank of the Greenbrier River staring at the sleeping form of Mikhail Goncharov, stretched out in the sun by the woodpile. They knew nothing about him, not his name, nationality, age, or condition … nor, of course, were they aware of the previous day’s events at the CIA’s Greenbrier facility six miles from their cabin. Not only had the CIA not informed the press or local law enforcement agencies of the murders at the facility, the fact that the spy agency owned anything at all in this state was classified. Jarrett and Fiocchi had never even heard a CIA rumor.
Basil Jarrett owned two sawmills that manufactured decorator fencing. His fences lined suburban lawns in thirty-seven states. Fiocchi, his cabin co-owner and live-in girlfriend of ten years, was an accountant. “He’s not a drunk or doper,” Jarrett said.
“How can you tell?”
“Look at him! He’s a healthy man in his
mid-sixties, I’d say, properly nourished yet not fat, reasonably fit, seems to have most of his teeth, bathes regularly …”
Fiocchi didn’t argue. She, too, had seen her share of derelicts, and obviously the sleeping man wasn’t one of them. “So who is he?”
“I haven’t the foggiest.” Jarrett held up the clothes Goncharov had come in, which were now dry. The new trousers and shirt were brands that were sold in many large clothing chains nationwide.
Fiocchi shrugged. “He knows we are here and went to sleep anyway. On the other hand, he did break into the cabin. Should we wake him and demand an explanation, or should we go to Durbin to call the law?” There was no telephone in the cabin—no electricity at all—and no cellular service this close to the Radio Astronomy Observatory.
“Take hours for a deputy or trooper to get here,” Jarrett replied gloomily. “They have to come all the way from Marlinton. Maybe we should find out who he is before we toss him overboard. Maybe he’s sick or crazy and wandered away from a cabin or farm around here.”
Linda Fiocchi didn’t think much of the police option either. “He’s probably sick. He looks harmless enough.” She went into the cabin for a blanket, which she arranged over the sleeping man.
I loaded the women, the submachine gun, and Mikhail Goncharov’s suitcase in Johnson Dunlap’s car and set sail on the highways of America. At my insistence, we left the two thugs right where they had fallen. I also left their weapons beside them; I could use the ammo, but I decided to buy what I needed at a sporting goods store. When the police found those dudes—which would probably happen sooner rather than later—I wanted the record to accurately show the weapons they brought with them.
I figured that the police were already involved in this somehow and might be looking for cars—mine, Kelly’s, and possibly Dorsey’s. I just hoped they weren’t looking for Dunlap’s. Yet.
Every time we passed a police cruiser I twisted for a look, and ogled the mirrors, waiting for the driver to turn around and snap on the lights and siren and give chase. What I would do if a cop did give chase I didn’t know, but I was absolutely certain that I didn’t want to kill or wound a cop. If cops were involved, they were merely following orders from their sergeant or captain or whoever. Johnson Dunlap, the camo man, and the dudes who were slicing up Willie Varner were a different breed of cat. They weren’t trying to arrest anyone—they went to kill. I had no regrets icing them and I certainly wouldn’t lose sleep over them.
Dorsey would, however. When I wasn’t rubbernecking for cops, I watched her in the rearview mirror. She was in the back seat staring out at traffic and the scenery. I didn’t think she actually saw much of it. Her eyes were dry, but she had a look on her face that hadn’t been there before.
I debated telling her about my visit with Michelle Dunlap earlier that morning, then decided against it. Maybe it was best for Johnson to remain an anonymous thug who broke into her house to kill her. She didn’t need to hear a sob story or a description of the widow.
See, that’s the way guys think. As far as I was concerned Dunlap and his pals were assholes who sold out to another asshole and went sallying forth to kill people they didn’t know for money. Dunlap got wasted—his tough luck. Dorsey didn’t appear to see it that way or she wouldn’t have been leaking tears earlier or staring out the window now.
For Christ’s sake, I wasn’t crying about the camo man. I was actually sort of pleased that I used the submachine gun and hosed him good before he did it to me. I hadn’t suspected he might be wearing a bulletproof vest; if I had only squeezed off a round or two with the pistol, my dick might have been on the chopping block. We played for keeps and he lost. What’s for dinner?
Kelly Erlanger was busy reading files in the passenger seat. She had arranged the pages into some sort of order and was skimming through them. Reading in a car always made me sick, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
“So who’s hungry?” I asked brightly.
Erlanger didn’t look up from her reading. Dorsey kept her face pointed out the window.
I stopped in Annapolis at a hamburger joint. “Anyone need to use the facilities?”
No response.
They never pee in James Bond movies either.
I went inside, visited the men’s, then ordered burgers, fries, and three soft drinks—Diet Cokes, of course. A county mountie sneaked in while I was paying, and I didn’t see him. I nearly dropped the load when I turned around and found him behind me in his Foster Grants watching me juggle the bag and the drinks. Gave him a noncommittal “Hi” and walked on by. Not a friendly, neighborly “Hi” or a go-to-hell, kiss-my-ass-fool kind of “Hi,” but more of an I-don’t-give-a-shit “Hi.” You know, just a “Hi.” I guess he didn’t see the automatic under my shirt, because he didn’t pull his piece or shoot me or even say “Hi” back.
I used my butt to open the door of McDonald’s and stuffed the food in the car and fed it gas. Neither of the women was hungry or thirsty.
We crossed the Bay Bridge and headed east.
I turned on the radio and got an easy listening station in Baltimore ; rolled down my window and stuck my elbow out.
“Where are we going?” Dorsey asked, the first words she had spoken since she gunned down Johnson Dunlap.
“To visit a friend.”
“Let’s see … You’ve roped me and Willie Varner into this mess already. I had to kill a man and Willie is in the hospital—you did say you took him to the hospital?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Anyone else?”
I hadn’t yet mentioned Sal Pulzelli to her and now didn’t seem to be the right time.
“Now you have another friend in mind. What do the Catholics call it when the devil comes calling?”
“I don’t know.”
“If your friends hold up a crucifix, will you still cross their threshold? Or will it take a silver bullet through your heart to slow you down?”
I bit my lip. You can never win these kinds of arguments with women, and only a fool would try.
“Being your friend is a dubious honor, Tommy. What do I have to do to get my name erased from the list?”
I almost said to stay away from porno movie producers, but managed to stifle myself. The miles rolled by while Kelly Erlanger read and Dorsey glowered at the back of my head. I kept the car five over the speed limit, slurped on a diet Coke, and listened to the radio.
CHAPTER TWELVE
They were in their apartment in Moscow when they came to arrest him. They came in the middle of the night, as they always did. They smashed at the door with a sledgehammer. The furious pounding woke him, the sound of wood splintering, someone somewhere screaming. Bronislava was beside him, startled awake.
He could see everything in the small apartment in the light from the street that came through the window, see the door panel bulging and splintering under each impact, hear the grunting of the man swinging the hammer. And there was no other way out. No exit. They were trapped! When they found his notes he and Bronislava would be taken to the Lubyanka, thrown into the cells, and interrogated and tortured until they told everything or died. He had seen them there so many times, people praying to die … and now it was his turn. The hammering … they were almost through the door …
He awoke in a lather, fighting the blanket that was over him. He sat up, stared at his surroundings.
Oh, God, where was he? Nothing looked familiar … nothing. Only the dream had been real, the same dream that had tortured him for twenty years …
There was a woman sitting on the cabin steps—a young woman, perhaps thirty years of age, with medium-length dark hair, wearing a blouse, slacks, and a sweater. She spoke to him in a language he didn’t understand. He shook his head slowly, completely lost, confused.
He urgently needed to go to the bathroom. He stood, folded the blanket that had covered him, and, with it draped over one arm, stepped behind some bushes and relieved himself. He zipped up his pants and stood looking around.
She spoke again. He understood not a word. While she was talking a man joined them on the porch. He was slim, apparently in his mid-thirties, with a lean, tan face and short hair. He spoke to Goncharov also, and to the woman, back and forth. Mikhail Goncharov had no idea what they were discussing.
After a while she led him inside. He looked around again. Everything was strange. He sank into the nearest seat, scanned the entire room, then arranged the blanket over his legs. He was chilly.
The woman made him a sandwich. He ate it slowly, savoring every bite. She gave him more of the hot liquid to drink.
When he finished the food, the man brought a notebook and a ballpoint pen. He handed them to Goncharov, pointed to Goncharov’s chest, then widened his hands before him in the universal gesture of a question.
A name, Goncharov thought. He wants my name.
But what is it?
Startled, his eyes widened as he realized he didn’t even know who he was.
He picked up the pen, made the point go in and out, examined the white paper, but for the life of him he could think of nothing to write.
“He doesn’t know his own name,” Linda Fiocchi said heavily.
“Apparently not,” Basil Jarrett agreed.
“So what should we do?”
“Damn, woman, I don’t know.” Jarrett went to the woodstove and opened it. He wadded up a sheet of newspaper from a nearby pile, added kindling, and struck a match. When the paper caught, he closed the door and adjusted the draft.
What should we do with a man who is obviously suffering from some kind of severe mental confusion? Not that Linda or I know a solitary thing about mental illness. Boy, you come to the cabin for a quiet, restful weekend, some fishing, reading, wine, and lovemaking … and you’ve got a mental patient on your hands.