Last Man Standing

39

Sonny Venables was off duty and out of uniform as he sat in an unmarked car and surveyed the area. There was stirring in the backseat as the big man who was lying on the floorboard stretched out his long legs.

“Don’t get antsy, Randy,” said Venables. “We got some time to go yet.”

“Trust me, I’ve waited dudes out a lot longer than this, and from places a lot shittier than the backseat of a car.”

Venables nudged out a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, lit it, cracked his window and blew smoke out.

“So you were telling me about your meeting with London.”

“I covered his backside even though he didn’t know it at the time. Good thing too, though I don’t think Westbrook would have really killed him.”

“I heard about that guy, but I’ve never run into him.”

“Lucky you. But let me tell you there’s a lot worse than him out there. At least Westbrook’s got a little code of honor. Most dudes out there are just flat-out nuts. Kill you just to kill you and brag about it. Westbrook does everything for a real good reason.”

“Like maybe take out HRT?”

“Don’t think so. But he delivered a message to London about the tunnels under the building that was HRT’s target. That’s apparently how the guns came in. London checked it out with Bates. And I heard that he was right.”

“From what you’ve told me about Westbrook, he doesn’t sound like a message boy.”

“He is if the person he delivered the message for has somebody he cares about, like his son.”

“Gotcha. So that person was behind what happened to HRT?” “That’s my thinking.”

“So where’s the Oxy come into to all this?”

“That’s the op I saw in the building that night. They even had some of the product there. No coke bricks, just bags of pills. And I saw computerized records that laid it all out. Millions of bucks in business. And in two days it was cleared out.”

“Why all that trouble to set you up? Why wipe out HRT? That just brings the Bureau down on them like a ton of bricks.”

“It doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Cove agreed, “but that seems to be what happened.”

Venables stiffened and flicked his cigarette out the window. “Show time, Randy.”

Venables watched as a man left the building they’d been watching, walked along the street, turned right and headed down an alley. Venables started the car and it moved slowly forward.

“Is it the guy you were expecting?” asked Cove.

“Yep. You want some info on new drugs coming to town, this boy will know it. Name’s Tyrone Walker, but he goes by T. Real imaginative. Belonged to three or four different crews over the years. Time in jail, time in the hospital, time in drug rehab. He’s about twenty-six and looks ten years older than me and I don’t look all that good for my age.”

“Funny I never ran across T before.”

“Hey, you don’t have a monopoly on information in this town. I might just be a lowly street cop, but I get around.”

“Good thing, Sonny, because I’m tainted goods right now. Nobody will talk to me.”

“Well, old T will, with the right persuasion.”

Venables pulled around the corner, hit the gas, then turned right onto a street that ran parallel to the one where they had been parked. As soon as they turned the corner, T emerged from the alley, which cut through to this street.

Venables looked around. “Coast looks clear. You want to do your thing?”

Cove was already out of the car. Before he knew what was happening, T had been searched expertly and was lying facedown in the backseat of Venables’s car, with one of Cove’s big hands on the back of his neck, keeping him there. Venables drove off while T loudly cursed them. By the time he calmed, they were two miles away and in a better part of town. Cove pulled T to a sitting position. The man looked first at Cove and then at Venables.

“Hey, T,” said Venables. “You looking good. Been taking care of yourself?”

Cove could sense T was about to make a lunge out the other door, so he clamped his arm around T’s shoulders. “Hey, we just want to talk to you, T. Just talk.”

“What if I don’t wanta talk?”

“Then you can just get out of the car,” said Cove.

“Is that right? Okay, stop the car and I’m getting out.”

“Whoa, there, T, he didn’t say anything about me stopping the car before you got out.” Venables cut the wheel, entered an on-ramp, and they pulled onto Interstate 395, crossed the Fourteenth Street Bridge and they were in Virginia. Venables pushed the accelerator to sixty.

T stared out the window at the traffic streaming by and then sat back, his arms folded across his chest.

“Now, my friend here—” began Venables.

“Your damn friend got a name?”

Cove tightened his grip on T’s shoulders. “Yeah, I got a name. You call me T-Rex. Tell him why, Sonny.”

“’Cause he eats little T’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” said Sonny.

“And I just want some information about some new product in town. Crews buying it up and stuff like that. No problems. Just a couple of names and we let you off right where we picked you up.”

“And trust me, T, you don’t want to piss this man off,” added Venables.

“You cops, you ain’t doing nothing to me ’less you want to get your ass sued off.”

Cove stared at the man for a moment and then said, “Right now, T, you better be real nice to me. I’m not feeling good about things, and I don’t give a shit if somebody sues me or not.”

“Fuck off.”

“Sonny, take the next right. Head to the GW Parkway. Lot of quiet places there,” he added ominously.

“You got it.”

In a few minutes, they were on the George Washington, or GW, Parkway, heading north.

“Take the next turnoff,” Cove said.

They pulled into a sightseeing lot that provided a beautiful view of Georgetown and, far below, the Potomac River. A stone wall served as a buffer from the steep drop. Day had turned to dusk and there were no other cars parked in the lot. Cove looked around, opened the door and pulled T out with him.

“If you dudes arresting me, I want my lawyer.”

Venables got out too and looked around. He eyed the drop, glanced back at Cove and shrugged.

Cove grabbed the smallish T around the waist and lifted him up. “What the hell you doing, man?”

Cove climbed over the stone wall and down on the other side while T struggled in vain. There was a narrow strip of ground and then a drop of about a hundred feet into the river, which was filled with rocks. Down the river and on the opposite bank were a number of buildings housing local boating clubs. They were painted bright colors and their members rowed the waters in canoes, sculls, kayaks and other assorted watercraft that required muscle rather than combustion engines to make them move. There were several of them on the water right now and T was given an inverted view of that picturesque scene because Cove was holding him upside down, by the legs, over the drop.

“Holy shit,” screamed out the flailing T as he looked down to oblivion.

“Now, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, and you’re gonna have to decide real quick, because I’m out of time and patience,” said Cove.

Venables squatted on top of the wall and kept a lookout for other cars. “Better listen to him, T, the man doesn’t lie.”

“But you guys are cops,” wailed T. “You can’t do this shit. It’s fucking unconstitutional.”

“I never said I was a cop,” said Cove.

T stiffened and then glanced over at Venables. “But, damn it, he is.”

“Hey, I’m not my brother’s keeper,” said Venables. “And I’m getting ready to retire anyway. I don’t give a shit.”

“Oxy,” said Cove calmly. “I want to know who’s buying it in D.C.”

“Are you one crazy-ass mother or what?” screamed T.

“Yes, I am.” Cove let his grip slip a bit and T went down about six inches. Now Cove had hold of only the man’s ankles.

“Oh, God, oh, sweet Jesus, help me,” whimpered T.

“Don’t be talking to Jesus, T, not after the life you’ve led,” answered Venables. “He might just send a lightning bolt, and I’m standing way too close.”

“Talk to me,” said Cove in his calm voice. “Oxy.”

“I can’t tell you nothing. Then folks come after my ass.”

Cove let his grip slip again. Now he was holding on only to the man’s feet. “You’re wearing loafers, T,” he said. “Loafers slip right off.”

“Go to hell.”

Cove let go of one of the feet and now was holding T by one foot with both hands. He looked back at Venables. “Sonny, I think we better drop this one and go get us somebody else who’s a little smarter.”

“I got just the person. Let’s go.”

Cove started to let go of the foot.

“No!” screamed T. “I’ll talk. I’ll tell you.”

Cove remained motionless.

“No, I mean put me down and I’ll tell you.”

“Sonny, go start the car while I throw this piece of crap in the Potomac.”

“No! I’ll talk, right here. I swear.”

“Oxy,” prompted Cove again.

“Oxy,” repeated T, and he started talking fast, telling Cove all he needed to know.

Claire pulled her Volvo into her driveway and cut the engine. It was a nice neighborhood, not too far away from her office and she had been fortunate enough to buy into it before housing prices soared. She made a good enough income, but the cost of living in northern Virginia had become ridiculous. Builders were cramming places on any scrap of land they could find and yet there were more than enough people willing to buy them.

Her house was a three-bedroom Cape Cod with a nice patch of lawn in front, flowers in window boxes, a cedar shake roof and a two-car garage attached to the house by a breezeway. The street was tree-lined and the neighborhood contained a nice mixture of young and old as well as professional and working-class people.

After being divorced for so long, Claire was close to accepting that she would forever remain single. There were few eligible men in the social circles where she mingled and none of them had captured her interest. She had girlfriends always on the lookout to fix her up with yet another tech mini-mogul or lawyer, but she found them to be so egotistical and self-centered that she figured marrying one of them wouldn’t be all that different from remaining single. As a rebuke, she had asked one very self-involved high-tech chap at a party if he had ever heard of Narcissus. He had wanted to know if it was a new type of Internet software and then gone right on talking about how fabulous he was.

She pulled her briefcase out of the car and headed up to the front steps. She hadn’t pulled the car into the garage because she intended to go out again. The man coming out of her backyard startled Claire. He was black and large, with a head that appeared shaven, though he wore a cap. Claire focused on his gas company uniform and the electronic gas gauge he held in his hand. He passed her, smiled and went across the street. She felt embarrassed for her automatic suspicion of a black man, though she had to admit, also with some embarrassment, that there were few people of color in her neighborhood. Yet who could blame her for being paranoid, after spending time with Web London and men like him?

She unlocked the door and went inside, her mind on her session with Web. It had been shocking in many ways but at least more revealing than shocking. She put her briefcase down and headed to her bedroom to change. It was still light out and she thought she would take advantage of the nice weather and go for a walk. She remembered the pills in her pocket, pulled them out and examined them. The unfamiliar one intrigued her greatly. She had a friend who worked in the pharmacy department at Fairfax Hospital. He could run it through some tests and tell her what this was. It didn’t look like any sleep medication she had ever seen, but she could be mistaken. She also hoped she was mistaken about a drug interaction having made Web freeze up in that alley. That might be something he could never recover from. As crazy as Web’s theory on voodoo was, she would take a curse over something Web had inadvertently put into his body that caused his friends to die without him. No, the answer had to lie in his past, she was convinced of that.

She sat on the bed and took off her shoes, went into her small walk-in closet, disrobed and pulled on a T-shirt and shorts because the heat had returned. Barefoot, she came back out and looked at the phone. Maybe she should call Web and talk to him. At some point she had to tell him what she had learned about Stockton’s death. The timing of it, though, was critical. Too early or too late a disclosure and the consequences could be disastrous. She decided to take the chicken’s way out and figure it out later. Maybe the walk would help her decide. She went over to her drawer and pulled out a baseball cap. She was about to put it on when a hand went around her mouth. She dropped the cap and instinctively began to struggle until she felt the gun barrel against her cheek and she stopped, her eyes wide with fear, breaths suddenly coming in heaves. She remembered she hadn’t locked the door on the way in. It was such a safe neighborhood, or at least it had been. Her racing mind wondered if the gas man was an impostor and he had come back and was now about to rape her and then kill her.

“What do you want?” she asked in a voice that was so muffled by the hand over her mouth that it didn’t sound like her own. She could tell it was a man, though his hand was gloved, because of the strength in it. The hand left her mouth and encircled her neck.

The man didn’t answer and Claire saw the blindfold coming toward her, and the next moment she was in total darkness. She felt herself being led over to the bed and she was terrified the rape was about to happen. Should she scream or fight? And yet the gun was still pressed to her right cheek. And the silence of her attacker was more unnerving than hearing his voice.

“Just be cool,” the man said, “all we want is information. Nothing else from you.” His words seemed clear enough to her. Her body was safe. At least she could hope that.

He guided her down so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She told herself that if he pushed her back and climbed on her, she would fight, gun or not.

And yet she sensed him moving away from her. And at the same time she sensed the entrance of another person. She tensed as this person sat next to her on the bed. A heavy man, she deduced, for the bed went down quite a bit with his weight. But he didn’t touch her, though even through the blindfold she could feel his gaze upon her.

“You seeing Web London?”

She jerked a bit at this question, for it hadn’t occurred to her that this was about Web, though she wondered why it hadn’t. Her life was fairly ordinary, routine, no guns and men killed. That was Web’s life. Like it or not, she was now part of that life.

“What do you mean?” she managed to say.

She heard the man let out a grunt, one of annoyance, she thought. “You’re a psychiatrist and he’s your patient, isn’t that true?” Claire wanted to say that ethically she couldn’t reveal that information, but she felt certain that if she did, this man would kill her. As though he would care about her ethical constraints. To add credence to her belief, she heard what clearly sounded like the hammer of a gun being cocked. She had been around guns as a consulting forensic psychiatrist and knew that sound pretty well. A large cold mass formed in her stomach and her limbs became rigid, and she wondered how Web could deal with people like this every day of his life.

“I’m seeing him, yes.”

“Now we getting somewhere. Did he mention a boy to you, a boy named Kevin?”

She nodded because her mouth had dried up so much she didn’t think she could speak.

“He happen to know where that boy is now?”

Claire shook her head and tensed as he lightly squeezed her shoulder.

“Relax, lady, ain’t nobody gonna hurt you long as you cooperate.

If you don’t cooperate, then we have quite a problem,” he added ominously.

Claire heard him snap his fingers and about a minute passed in silence, and then she felt something touch her lips. She drew back.

“Water,” the man said. “You got dry mouth. People scared shitless get that all the time. Drink.”

The last word was an order and Claire immediately obeyed it. “Now talk, no more nods or shakes, you understand me?”

She started to nod and then caught herself. “Yes.”

“What’d he say about Kevin? Everything, I have to know it all.” “Why?” She wasn’t exactly sure where that bold question had come from.

“I got my reasons.”

“Do you want to hurt the boy?”

“No,” the man said quietly. “I just want him back nice and safe.” He sounded sincere, but then criminals often did, she reminded herself. Ted Bundy had been the king of smooth talkers while he methodically killed scores of women, smiling all the way.

“I have no reason to believe you, you know.”

“Kevin, he my son.”

She tensed at this and then relaxed. Could this be the Big F person Web had told her about? But he had said the man was Kevin’s brother, not father. The man sounded like a concerned parent, yet there was something not quite right. Claire would just have to go with her professional gut on this one. What she sensed very clearly was that these men would kill her. “Web said he saw Kevin in the alley. He said Kevin said something to him and it affected him in a weird way. He saw him later, while the guns were firing. He gave him a note and sent him off. He didn’t see him after that. But he’s been looking for him.”

“Is that all?”

She nodded and then caught herself. She could feel him move closer, and even though she wore the blindfold, she closed her eyes. She could feel tears forming there.

“Ground rules are no more nods or shakes, I need to hear words, last time I’m telling you, you got me?”

“Yes.” She fought back the tears.

“Now, did he say anything else, about anything peculiar happening when he saw Kevin the second time?”

She said, “No,” but she had hesitated a second too long. She could clearly feel it, as though the pause had been a day long in duration. And she thought that he had noticed it, as well. She was correct in that assumption, for she instantly felt the cold muzzle of a pistol against her cheek.

“We having a serious misunderstanding here, like maybe I ain’t making myself clear. Just so we are clear, let me lay this out for you, bitch. To get my boy back, I’ll blow your brains out and everybody you ever cared about in your whole life. I see pictures all over the place of this cute-looking girl. Bet that’s your daughter, ain’t it?” Claire didn’t answer and she felt his hand wrap around her neck. His hand was gloved, which surprised her until she thought of fingerprints and DNA that machines could detect off of corpses. Her corpse! This thought made her feel faint.

“Ain’t it?”

“Yes!”

He kept his hand on her neck. “See, you got you your little girl nice and safe. Perfect little house in a perfect little place. But see, I don’t got me my boy and he’s all I have. Why you get your girl and I ain’t get my boy? You think that’s fair? Do you?” He squeezed her neck a little and Claire felt herself start to gag.

“No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I don’t think that’s fair,” she managed to say in a garbled voice.

“Yeah? Well, it’s a little late for that, baby.”

The next thing she felt was being pushed back on the bed. Her earlier promise to fight if they attempted to rape her seemed ridiculous now. She was so frightened she could barely breathe. She felt a pillow being placed over her face and then something hard jammed into the center of the pillow. It took her a few seconds to realize that the hard object was the pistol and the pillow would serve as a crude silencer.

She thought of her daughter, Maggie, and she thought of how her body would be found. The tears streamed down her cheeks. And then for one miraculous second her wits came back to her.

“He said that somebody had switched the kids in the alley.”

The pillow did not move for some seconds and Claire thought she had lost after all.

Then it was slowly removed and she was jerked up so hard she thought her arm had been dislocated.

“Say again?”

“He said that Kevin had been switched in the alley for another boy. The boy who went to the police wasn’t Kevin. He was taken in the alley before he got to the police.”

“Does he know why?”

“No. And he doesn’t know who did it. Only that it happened.” She felt the pistol against her cheek again. For some reason it wasn’t as frightening the second time around.

“You lying, you ain’t gonna like what I’m gonna do to you.”

“That’s what he said.” She felt like she had betrayed Web to save herself and she wondered if he would have rather died than done such a thing. He probably would have. The tears started coming again, and not out of fear this time but from her own weakness.

“He thinks that Kevin being in that alley was planned by whoever was behind what happened. He thinks Kevin was somehow involved.” She quickly added, “But unwittingly. He’s only a child.”

The pistol was removed from her cheek and her interrogator’s large presence also moved away.

“That it?”

“That’s all I know.”

“You tell anybody we here, you know what I’ll do to you. And I can find your daughter. We been through your house, we know all there is to know about you and her. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes,” she managed to get out.

“I’m just doing this to get my son back, that’s all. I ain’t like busting in people’s homes and roughing ’em up, that ain’t my style, especially women, but what I got to do to get my boy back, I’ll do.”

She felt herself nodding at this and then stopped.

She never heard them go, although her hearing could not have been any more acute.

She waited a few minutes to make sure, then she said, “Hello?” And then she said it again. She reached up slowly to undo the blindfold. She was waiting for hands to stop her, but none came. She finally pulled off the blindfold and she quickly looked around the room, half expecting someone to leap out at her. She would have liked to collapse on the bed and cry for the rest of the day and night, but she couldn’t stay here. They said they had been everywhere in her house. She threw some clothes in an overnight bag, grabbed her purse and a pair of tennis shoes and went to the front door. She looked out but saw no one. She quickly went to her car and got in. As she drove off, she kept her gaze on the rearview mirror to see if anyone was following her. She was no expert in that, but there didn’t seem to be anyone there. Claire entered the Capital Beltway and sped up, unsure of exactly where she would go.