Hostage Zero

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

According to the meticulous research package that Venice had assembled, at the height of his career, Bruce Navarro had lived the life of the privileged. Big house, expensive cars and mistresses on both coasts, with a couple more rumored to be ensconced in Europe and Asia. On his tax returns, he reported an annual income north of two million dollars. The bulk of it came from perfectly legitimate clients as the result of legitimate and capable legal work. Nothing in the record proved that Sammy Bell or the old Slater crime syndicate had any direct connection to The Navarro Firm, but Venice had been quick to point out that in her haste she might easily have overlooked a “legitimate” client that was in fact a cutout for a criminal enterprise.

The information provided by Alice Navarro Harper turned out to be invaluable. The man once known as Bruce Navarro was now Tony Planchette, and his new address was Standard, Alaska, twenty miles or so west of Fairbanks. He’d stayed in reasonably steady contact with his sister over the years, despite the continuing surveillance from both sides of the law, by blanketing Jersey City with junk mail advertising whatever bogus product best served the coded messages on the cards. Technically it was mail fraud, but Gail thought it was a brilliant-albeit expensive-means of covert communication. He mailed thousands of cards so he could communicate with his one sister.

When Alice shared the stack of coupons she’d accumulated over the years, Gail realized that the accumulated newspapers and magazines in the house were a ruse to camouflage the stack of messages in the minds of anyone who might want to conduct a search. Bruce used a random rotating cipher, the key for which was embedded in the numbers under an otherwise meaningless bar code. The text itself often read as gibberish that must have annoyed the crap out of some of the recipients, but at the rate of one every six or eight weeks, apparently no one ever got angry enough to call the authorities.

Besides, this was America. If you wanted to pay the freight to post gibberish to the community, it was your God-given right to do so.

The essence of the various messages was fairly chatty, offering details on how he was adapting to an invisible life. Gail got the sense that they were as much a reassurance to his sister that he was still alive as they were any real communication.

And, unless Alice was concealing something, there was no mechanism in place for Bruce to get any information in return. For Bruce’s safety, Alice had to assume that all of her outgoing communication was carefully monitored, and all it would take to raise the heat to intolerable levels would be for them to suspect that she was corresponding with Bruce. That alone would confirm that he was alive, and from there, nothing good could possibly follow.

This was Gail’s first trip to Alaska, and as she drove her rented Jeep away from the airport parking lot of the Fairbanks airport, she was surprised how featureless an area it was. No hills to speak of, lots of trees and squatty construction that looked as weather-ravaged as any she’d ever seen. It wasn’t that the place was ugly; it just wasn’t as exotic as she’d wanted it to be.

Gail had spent the final two hours of her flight from Dulles studying the satellite photos that Venice had been able to download for her, showing the location of Bruce Navarro’s home and the geographical features that surrounded it. It had taken some doing, too, since the public satellite mapping sites don’t have a lot of detail of this part of the world. Venice had had to enlist the aid of SkysEye, a private satellite mapping company owned by Lee Burns, a longtime friend of Jonathan’s. For a ridiculous annual subscription fee plus even more ridiculous tasking fees, Lee Burns’s orbiting spy network could accomplish amazing things.

Navarro’s change in lifestyle had been huge. He went from manicured acreage with horse stables and a swimming pool in the midst of unspeakable wealth in Great Falls, Virginia, to a foundation-mounted double-wide in the middle of nowhere.

Standard, Alaska, turned out to be less a town than a navigational benchmark along the Alaskan Railway north of Gold-stream Creek. If you wanted to disappear from the face of the earth, this was a good place to go.

Navarro would be armed, she reasoned. Certainly he had firearms at his disposal. Out here, he’d be out of his mind not to, just to take care of the occasional marauding grizzly bear. Plus, he’d assumed the mantle of a loner specifically because people were hunting him with the intent to kill. If that didn’t make someone quick to the trigger, she didn’t know what would.

Gail opened her door and stepped out into the pleasant fresh air. She pegged the temperature to be somewhere in the mid-seventies; perfect weather, complete with a pleasant breeze that would help mask the noise of her approach.

Close up like this, the house was more substantial than it appeared to be from the satellite photos. The footprint of the building was the same as a double-wide trailer, but it had clearly been built in place. The weathered clapboard siding appeared to have once been dark green-forest green, she supposed-but unrelenting heat, cold, wind, and rain had taken the luster away.

Nerves kicked in as she climbed the three steps from the ground onto the covered stoop. She fought the urge to draw her weapon as she rapped on the door.

Through the open window on her left, she heard movement-a lot of movement, in fact, as if someone had jumped from height onto the floor. The noise was followed by mild cussing, and then silence.

“Mr. Planchette?” Gail called. “Are you all right, sir?”

No words, but more movement.

“Please don’t be frightened,” she said. She stepped away from the door and back to the front edge of the stoop, where she could have a broader view of the window. “I’m not with the police, I’m not with the government, and I’m not with Sammy Bell. I’m here because I need help. It’s important enough that your sister Alice told me where to find you.” She hoped the data dump would establish her bona fides with him. She decided not to use the word Navarro, however, because she worried that it would spook him.

“Are you armed?” a voice asked from the darkness behind the window.

“Yes. Isn’t everybody out here?”

“You’re not from around here.”

She smiled. “No, sir, but you are.” She let it go at that. She didn’t venture to interrupt the long silence that followed. This would be difficult for him to process.

“Is Alice all right?” he asked, finally.

“Yes, sir, she is. She sends her regards. Not being able to communicate with you has been a terrible burden. But I have to say that the whole coupon plan is brilliant.” Keep throwing stuff out, she thought, and sooner or later he’ll relax. Right?

“Step out into the yard and put your gun down,” the voice ordered.

“I don’t think I’ll do that,” Gail said. She’d learned a long time ago that in tense negotiations, stating the truth as matter-of-factly as possible-even when denying a request-served to put the other party at ease. “If I were any of the people you fear that I might be, we wouldn’t be talking right now. We’d already be shooting at each other. Just the same, I’d rather not make myself any more of a target than I already am.”

The sound of more movement made her tense, and then the door opened. The man on the other side bore the same features as the photos Gail had studied, but all semblance of polished corporate lawyer had eroded away, leaving a much thinner, more drawn and haggard-looking alternate version. He wore blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt, and if anyone had asked, she would have said that this man was more attractive than the softer one from the past. He stared at her, cradling a sawed-off side-by-side shotgun in his arms. His finger lay poised outside the trigger guard, and the muzzle was not threatening her.

“Say what’s on your mind,” Navarro said.

“I’d like to come inside.”

“I’d like to be twenty again,” Navarro replied. “Which do you think will happen first?”

Gail smiled. Good guy, bad guy, or somewhere in between, you had to admire a sense of humor. “I’m going to reach around to my back pocket,” Gail said. “I have a note from Alice. I’m hoping it will put your mind at ease.”

Navarro nodded.

Avoiding any jerky motion, Gail reached with her left hand to her pocket, where her fingers found the edge of the invitation-sized envelope. She withdrew it and handed it to Navarro.

He accepted it, then appeared hesitant to look away from her.

“I’ll wait in the yard,” Gail said. She walked back down the steps to the lawn. She figured the distance would make Navarro feel less vulnerable.

The envelope appeared sealed, but of course she’d already read the contents-it would have been foolish not to verify that Alice hadn’t given her brother an order to kill Gail on the spot. The note was short and sweet, oddly devoid of personal information despite the years. Perhaps the separation hurt less if the communication stayed businesslike. That it took Navarro over a minute to look up from the note told Gail that he must have read it several times.

When he was finally finished, he turned on his heel and disappeared into the house, leaving the door open behind him. Gail took that as her invitation to enter.

The interior was every bit as well-groomed as the yard. Navarro had decorated the place as if it were a New York apartment, in stark colors with minimalist furniture that must have cost a fortune to begin with, and then another fortune to have delivered. At first glance, the place was very dark, but as Navarro walked deeper in, he flipped wall switches that bathed each room with light that seemed to emanate from behind the walls. Maybe through the walls. Overall, it was a stunning effect.

“Your home is lovely,” Gail said, perhaps for no other reason than to say something.

Navarro stopped in front of a conversation cluster of two chairs and a love seat near one of the front windows. “I believe it’s best to make do with what little you have,” he said. He gestured to one of the chairs. “Please,” he said. He took the love seat, clearly the most worn piece in the room, for himself. The dent in the pillow confirmed for Gail that he had been sleeping when she knocked on the door. He never relinquished the shotgun. On the other hand, he never menaced with it, either. It was just there in the crook of his arm if he needed it. Behind him sat a rack bristling with firearms. It said something about Navarro’s personality that he chose the shotgun over the others. She wasn’t sure exactly what it said, but there was definitely a conclusion to be reached. Maybe he just wasn’t a very good shot.

The cushions crinkled as Gail sat on them.

“They don’t get sat in very often,” Navarro said, reading her thoughts. “Under the circumstances, I’m not all that fond of visitors.”

Gail gave a pleasant smile.

“You must be proud of yourself for finding a man so many have been hunting for so long,” Navarro said.

“I had certain advantages,” she said. “It helps to be doing the right thing for the right reasons.”

Navarro nodded. “My sister’s note mentioned something about a kidnapping.”

Gail revealed the details of the assault on Resurrection House and the information they’d learned since. As she laid out the story, the lines in Navarro’s face grew progressively deeper.

“Mr. Navarro,” she concluded, “you are the common denominator in this story. Arthur Guinn is being threatened in order to silence his testimony against Sammy Bell and the Slater syndicate, Marilyn Schuler worked for you, and you worked for Sammy Bell. The smart money says you’re the one who can untie this knot.”

For the longest time, he just sat there, mulling over the story he’d just heard. Gail gave him space. After a minute or so, she saw the shotgun lift out of the crook of his arm, and she went to high alert-but only for an instant. He swung the weapon in a wide arc, the muzzle never in play, and set it down on the coffee table in front of the love seat.

He stood, shoved his hands into his trouser pockets, and turned to look out the front window.

“Life never ceases to surprise me,” he said, his back turned to Gail. “You don’t get into the kind of trouble I’m in and expect to survive all that long. It’s been a good run for me-nine years is about ten years longer than I had a right to. I always figured that when I was finally busted, there’d be a lot more violence.”

He turned to make eye contact, and Gail tried to conjure her most pleasant smile.

“If I tell you this, what happens to the information?”

“We use it to rescue a child.”

Navarro thought for a moment more, then resigned himself to the inevitable.