Last Man Standing

42

Claire had gone to a very safe and public place, a police substation at a suburban mall. She hadn’t filed a report with the police, she told Web when he showed up.

“Why the hell not?”

“I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Look, Claire, from how you described it, it sounds like my buddy Francis Westbrook and one of his sidekicks, probably Clyde Macy. The last time I saw them, somebody died. You don’t realize how lucky you are.”

“But I can’t tell for sure it was them, I was blindfolded.”

“But you would recognize their voices?”

“Probably.” She paused and looked puzzled.

“What is it, Claire, what’s bugging you?”

“This Francis, how educated would you say he is?”

“In street smarts, he’s a Ph.D. In book learning, nil. Why?”

“The man who threatened me had an odd way of talking. He would alternate between slang and ghetto talk, and the diction and vocabulary of an educated man. I could sense he was uncomfortable with what he was saying, because it felt forced sometimes, as though he were trying to think of appropriate words as he went along, suppressing his natural choices but occasionally erring, and using words that, you know—”

“Would be more along the lines of the person he was trying to impersonate?”

“Impersonate, exactly.”

Web took a deep breath. Well, this was getting interesting. He was thinking about a second-in-command trying to pull a coup on his boss or push the knife in a little deeper, depending on how one looked at it. Antoine Peebles, the wannabe drug king with a sheepskin. He looked at her with new admiration. “You’ve got a good pair of ears, Claire, always waiting for those cues from us poor screwed-up head cases.”

“I’m scared, Web. I’m really scared. I’ve counseled people for years about facing what frightens them, being proactive instead of reactive, and this happens to me and I feel paralyzed.”

He found his arm going protectively around her as he led her to his car. “Well, you have a right to be scared. What happened to you would scare most people.”

“But not you.” She said this, he noted, almost enviously.

As they climbed in his Mach, Web told her, “It’s not that I don’t ever get scared, Claire, because I do.”

“Well, you certainly don’t show it.”

“Yes, I do, just in a different way.” He closed the car door and thought for a moment before glancing at her and actually gripping her hand. “You can deal with your fear in two different ways. Close up like a clam and hide from the world or do something about it.”

“Now you sound like the psychiatrist,” she said wearily.

“Well, I learned from the best.” He squeezed her hand. “What do you say, want to help me crack this thing?”

“I trust you, Web.”

This surprised him, chiefly because that wasn’t what he had asked her.

He put the car in gear. “Well, let’s go see if we can find a little boy named Kevin.”

Web parked in the alley behind the duplex where Kevin had lived, and he and Claire went to the rear door just in case somebody was watching the front, like Bates’s men. He definitely didn’t want to run afoul of the Bureau right now. Web knocked.

“Yeah, who is it?” The voice was a man’s, not Grandma’s, and it definitely wasn’t friendly.

“Jerome, is that you?”

Web could sense a presence just on the other side of the door. “Who the hell wants to know?”

“Web London, FBI. And how are you today, Jerome?”

Web and Claire heard the word “Shit” muttered loudly, but the door did not open.

“Jerome, I’m still here and I’ll stay here until you open the door. And don’t try running out the front like you did last time. We’ve got that covered.”

He heard chains sliding back and locks popping open and he was eye to eye with Jerome. Web was very surprised to see that he had on a white shirt, nice slacks and a tie to go with his sullen look.

“Got a date?”

“Damn, you real funny for a Fed. What do you want?”

“Just talk. You alone?”

Jerome stepped back. “Not anymore. Look, we told you all we know. Man, can’t you stop bugging us?”

Web ushered Claire inside, followed her and then closed the door behind them. They looked around the small kitchen. “Just trying to find Kevin. You want that, don’t you?” Web asked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I don’t tend to trust anyone. I just want to talk, that’s all.”

“Look, I’m busy. You want to talk to somebody, you can talk to my lawyer.” Jerome looked at Claire. “What is she, your date?”

“No, she’s my shrink.”

“Yeah, that’s a good one.”

“No, really, Jerome, I am,” said Claire as she stepped forward. “And I’m afraid that Mr. London has some issues.”

“What does his issues have to do with me?”

“Well, he’s been devoting so much time to this case that I believe he’s becoming almost obsessed with it. That sort of obsession can reach dangerous, sometimes violent levels if not dealt with in a reasonable period of time.”

Jerome looked over at Web and took a step back. “If this man is crazy, I had nothing to do with it. He was crazy the first time he came here.”

“But you don’t want anything to happen to someone, like your- self or others. Mr. London is only trying to find the truth, and in my professional opinion finding the truth, for someone with his particular set of issues, is very important. And to those who help him find it, he would, psychologically speaking, be very grateful. The flip side of that is somewhere you really don’t want to go.” She looked at Web with an expression of sorrow mixed with just the right touch of fear. “I’ve seen the results of that before with Mr. London; that’s one reason why I’m here. To prevent another tragedy.”

Web just had to admire the woman’s work.

Jerome stared back and forth at Claire and Web. Then he said in a far more calm tone, “Look, I told you all I know. I really have.”

Web spoke very firmly. “No, Jerome, you haven’t. I want to know stuff about Kevin maybe you’ve never even thought about. Now let’s cut the shit and get down to it.”

Jerome motioned them to follow and turned and walked down the hallway into the small living room where Web had first spoken to them. Before he left the kitchen, Web noted that it was very clean, the sinks spotless, the floor scrubbed. As he and Claire followed Jerome down the hallway and into the living room, he saw that the trash had been picked up, the floors mopped, the walls scrubbed. Web could smell disinfectant everywhere. A door was leaning against the wall next to the bathroom, and the sheet had been taken down. The openings in the ceiling had been shored up and braced. Grandma’s doing, he thought, at least he did until Jerome picked up a broom and started sweeping a pile of trash into a large garbage bag.

Web looked around at the “new” home. “Your doing?”

“We don’t have to be living in no pigsty.”

“Where’s your grandma?”

“At work. Over at the hospital. In the cafeteria.”

“How come you’re not at work?”

“I will be in an hour, hope you ain’t plan on keeping me long.”

“You look too nice to be planning to knock over a bank.”

“Man, you are a riot.”

“So where’s work?” You don’t have a job, Jerome, just admit it. Jerome finished filling the bag, tied it closed and tossed it to Web. “You mind throwing that out the front door?”

Claire opened the door and Web did so, setting the bag on the front stoop along with quite a few others. When he closed the door, Jerome had pulled a toolbox out of a closet. He took out a screwdriver, Vise-Grips and a hammer. He laid the tools next to the bathroom opening and gripped the door.

“Give me a hand, here, will you?”

Web helped him lift the door closer to the opening and then held on to it and watched as Jerome tightened the sagging hinges and used the Vise-Grips to pop out the door pins. They lifted the door up, worked it into place and Jerome tapped the hinges in with the hammer. He closed and opened the door several times to see that it was aligned properly.

“A handy guy. But that’s not your job, unless carpenters wear ties to work.”

Jerome put his tools away before answering. “I work nights at a company servicing their computer system. Just got the position a few months ago.”

“So you know computers?” asked Claire.

“Got my AS in computer science at the community college. Yeah, I know my way around ’em.”

Web was unimpressed. “Uh-huh. You know computers?”

“You got a hearing problem? That’s what I said.”

“Last time I was here, you didn’t look gainfully employed.” “Like I said, I work nights.”

“Right.”

Jerome stared at Web and then went over and slid a computer case out from under the couch. He flipped it open and fired it up.

“You on-line, man?” asked Jerome.

“We talking skates or what?”

“Ha-ha. Computers. Internet. You know what that is, don’t you?” “Nah, I’ve been traveling around the galaxy the last ten years, I’m so behind.”

Jerome punched a few keys and they listened as it was announced to Jerome that “You’ve got mail” on AOL.

“Wait a minute, how can you access the Internet without a phone?” said Web.

“My computer has wireless technology, a card that lets me do that. It’s like having a built-in cell phone.” He smiled at Web and shook his head in obvious amazement. “Man, I hope most Feds aren’t as ignorant as you are about computers.”

“Don’t push it, Jerome.”

“You know what a cookie is?”

“Sugary thing that gives you love handles.”

“You just never quit, do you? A cookie is a simple piece of text. An HTTP header with a text-only string. The string has the domain, the path, value variable that a website sets and a lifetime. Lots of companies use cookies to personalize information, track popular links or for demographics. It keeps site content fresh and of interest to users. For example.” He hit a few keys and the screen changed. “I’ve been on this site a lot recently and it knows that. So it doesn’t show me the same stuff unless I specifically request it. And they’re starting to use cookies in back-end interactions, like storing personal data a user has given to the site, like passwords and such.”

“Storing personal data. That sounds sort of Big Brotherish,” said Claire.

“Well, it can be, but cookies are just text, no program, they’re not virus-susceptible. It can’t even access your hard drive, although your browser can save cookie values there if necessary, but that’s about it. Some people think cookies will fill up their hard drive, but that’s pretty much impossible. Most ISPs put limits on cookies. Netscape limits them to three hundred, so you get up to that number and it automatically discards the older ones. Microsoft puts them in your TIF folder with a max default setting of two percent of your hard drive. And cookies are usually so small that you’d need about ten million cookies to fill up a gig hard drive. In fact, I’m writing a few million lines of code that will take cookies to a new level, taking out the bad stuff and making them a lot more useful. And maybe I’ll make myself a few million bucks in the process.” He grinned. “The ultimate cookie.”

He shut down his computer and looked at Web. “Any more questions?”

The admiration was clear on Web’s features. “Okay, you convinced me, you know computers.”

“Yeah, I bust my ass in school, finally get a job that doesn’t require me to wear a hair net and the fine folks at Social Services tell us we make too much damn money and we got to leave our home we been at for the last five years.”

“System sucks.”

“No, people who have never been on it think the system sucks. For people on it, we wouldn’t have had anyplace to live without it. But it still ticks me off that I’m making a little more than damn Burger King pays and we get kicked out. It’s not like my employer dropped any stock options on somebody like me.”

“Look, it’s still a start, Jerome. And better than the alternative around here, you know that.”

“I’m gonna keep moving up. Work my ass off and then we are out of here and we’re never looking back.”

“You and your grandmother?”

“She took me in when my mama died. Brain tumor and no health insurance, that ain’t a real good combo. My daddy bit it on a .45 he stuck in his own mouth when he was high on something. You damn right I’ll take care of her, just like she took care of me.”

“And Kevin?”

“I take care of Kevin too.” He glowered at Web. “If you people can find him.”

“We’re trying. I know a little about his family. His relation to Big—I mean, Francis.”

“He’s Kevin’s father. So what?”

“A little more than that. I’ve met Francis up close. Too close, actually.” Web pointed out the remnants of his assorted facial injuries inflicted by the man.

Jerome looked at him curiously. “You lucky that’s all he done to you.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that feeling. He told me how Kevin came into this world. With his mother and all.”

“Stepmother.”

“What?”

“She was Francis’s stepmother. Strung out most of the time. Don’t know what happened to his real mama.”

Web let out a relieved breath. It wasn’t incest. He glanced at Claire, who said, “So they’re actually not brothers. They’re father and son. Does Kevin know that?”

“I never told him.”

“But he thinks Francis is his brother? Is that how Francis wanted it?” asked Claire, while Web watched her closely.

“What Francis wants, he gets, that answer enough for you?” “Why would Francis want Kevin to believe they were brothers?” “Maybe he didn’t want Kevin to know he was screwing his step-mom and Kevin’s mom. Her name was Roxy. She was into drugs and all that, but she was good to Kevin before she died.”

“How did Kevin get shot?” asked Web.

“He was with Francis, got caught in some gang shootout. Francis brought him here, only time I ever seen that man cry. I took him to the hospital myself ’cause cops just arrest his ass if Francis took him. Kevin never cried, not one time, and bleeding like a son of a bitch. But he’s never been the same since. Other kids tease him, call him a retard.”

“Kids can be cruel, and then they grow up and get even more cruel, they’re just a lot more subtle about it,” commented Claire.

“Kevin ain’t stupid. Smart as a whip. And he can draw, man, draw like you can’t believe.”

Claire looked interested. “Care to show me?”

Jerome checked his watch. “I can’t be late for work. And I got to take the bus.”

“To your big cookie shop?” asked Web.

For the very first time Jerome and Web exchanged a smile. “I tell you what, Jerome, you show us Kevin’s stuff and talk to us a little bit more and I’ll personally drive you to work in one bitching machine that’ll have all your friends envious as hell. How about that?”

Jerome led them upstairs and down a short hallway that ended with a very small room. When Jerome turned on the light, Web and Claire looked around in amazement. Every inch of the walls and even the ceiling was covered with drawings on paper, some in charcoal, others in colored pencil and still others in pen and ink. And on a small table next to a mattress on the floor were stacks of sketchbooks. Claire picked up one and started going through it, while Web continued to gaze at the drawings on the wall. Some of them were things Web could recognize, landscapes and people; Jerome and his grandmother were reproduced in amazing detail.Other drawings were abstract in content and Web couldn’t make sense of them.

Claire looked up from the sketchbook and her gaze swept around the room before focusing on Jerome. “I know a little something about art, Jerome, because my daughter is majoring in art history. Kevin has serious talent.”

Jerome looked to Web like the proud father. “Kevin says that how he sees things sometimes. ‘Just drawing what I’m seeing,’ he tells me.”

Web looked at the art supplies and sketchbooks piled on the table. There was also a small easel in the corner with a blank canvas on it.

“All this stuff costs money. Francis contributing?”

“I buy Kevin his art stuff. He gets Kevin other stuff, clothes, shoes, basic things.”

“He offer to ever help you and your grandmother?”

“He offered. But we ain’t taking that money. We know where it comes from. Kevin’s another matter. It’s his daddy. Father’s got a right to provide for his son.”

“Daddy come around much?”

Jerome shrugged. “When he wants to.”

“You think he might be the one who has Kevin? Give it to me straight.”

Jerome shook his head. “As much as I don’t like Francis, if you ask me, he’d cut off his own head before he’d let anything happen to that boy. I mean, he’ll kill you so much as look at you. But around Kevin he was gentle. A gentle giant, I guess you could say. He didn’t want Kevin living with him because he knew it’d be too dangerous.”

“I imagine that was a big sacrifice for Francis, giving up something that he loved so much. But that’s the true test of love, really: sacrifice,” said Web.

“Well, man changes where he sleeps all the time ’cause people looking to kill him. Hell of a way to live. But he had people watching Kevin, making sure nobody got to Francis by going after him. It ain’t like everybody knew of the connection, but he wasn’t taking any chances.”

“You seen him since Kevin disappeared?” asked Web.

Jerome stepped back on that one and put his hands in his pockets, and Web instantly sensed the wall going back up.

“I’m not looking to get you in trouble, Jerome. Just tell me straight and I promise you it won’t go any further. You’re doing really well, keep your string going.”

Jerome seemed to think about this, one hand playing with his tie, as though wondering what the thing was doing around his neck.

“The night Kevin didn’t come home. It was late, maybe three in the morning. I had just got home from work and Granny was up and all a mess. She told me Kevin was missing. I was upstairs changing and getting ready to go looking for Kevin and wondering whether we should call the cops. I hear my granny downstairs talking to somebody, or he was talking—yelling, that is—at her. It was Francis. He was mad like I ain’t heard him mad ever before.” He paused and looked for a moment like he might bolt again. “He was looking for Kevin too. Was sure Granny had him hid somewhere, at least maybe he was hoping that was it. The way he was talking, I thought he be going after Granny. I almost come down the stairs. Now, I ain’t no coward, and I ain’t stupid either; hell, that man probably take only a second to kill me, but it ain’t like I’m letting him or anybody come in here and hurt her without trying to do something about it. You understand me?”

“I do, Jerome.”

“Francis, he finally calmed down, he was getting it that Kevin wasn’t here. So he left. Last time we’ve seen him. That’s the truth.”

“I appreciate you telling me. I guess it’s probably hard to trust people right now.”

Jerome looked Web up and down. “You saved Kevin’s life. That’s worth something.”

Web looked at him warily.

“I read the papers, Mr. Web London, Hostage Rescue Team. Kevin be dead, wasn’t for you. Maybe that’s why Francis didn’t bust your skull.”

“Hadn’t really thought about it that way.”

Web looked at the stack of sketchbooks again. “The other agents who came here, did you tell them any of this?”

“They didn’t really ask.”

“How about Kevin’s room? They search up here?”

“Couple of them looked around, didn’t take very long.”

Web looked at Claire. They seemed to read each other’s thoughts. She said, “Do you mind if I borrow those sketchbooks? I’d like to show them to my daughter.”

Jerome looked at the books and then at Web. “You gotta promise to bring them back. That’s Kevin whole life, right there,” he said.

“I promise. I promise I’ll do everything I can to bring Kevin back too.” He gathered up the sketchbooks and then put a hand on Jerome’s shoulder. “Now it’s time to get you to work. You’ll find my chauffeuring fees are very reasonable.”

As they walked downstairs, Web had one more question. “Kevin was in that alley alone in the middle of the night. Did he do that a lot?”

Jerome looked away and said nothing.

“Come on, Jerome, don’t get tongue-tied on me now.”

“Hell, Kevin wanted to help us out, you know, make some money and we get out of this place. It bothered him that he never could do much like that. He was just a kid, but he thought like a grown-up on some things.”

“I guess a particular environment might do that for you.”

“Well, Kevin, he be out on the streets sometimes. Granny too old to keep up with him. I don’t know who he was hanging with, and whenever I caught him out there, I brought his butt home. But maybe he might be trying to make a little cash on the side. And around here you can get that money, no matter how young you are, you hear me?”

They dropped Jerome off at work and headed back to Claire’s house.

“By the way, you handled yourself like a pro back there,” he said.

“I guess it’s more mental than physical, and that’s my jurisdiction.” She glanced at Web. “You know, you were pretty rough on Jerome.”

“It’s probably because I’ve seen a million guys just like him in my life.”

“Stereotyping is dangerous, Web, not to mention unfair to the person being categorized. The fact is, you can only know one Jerome at a time. And I could tell this Jerome busted your preconception all apart.”

“He did,” admitted Web. “I guess when you’ve been doing my kind of work for so long, it’s easier to lump folks together.”

“Like fathers?”

Web didn’t answer that one.

Claire said, “It is sad about Francis and Kevin. From what Jerome said, he must love his son very much. And to have to lead such a life.”

“I don’t doubt the big guy loves Kevin either, but I’ve seen that same big guy kill a man in cold blood right in front of him, and he’s also cleaned my clock twice, so my sympathy has its limits,” said Web very firmly.

“One’s environment does tend to dictate one’s choices, Web.”

“I can accept a little of that argument, but I’ve seen too many guys from even worse backgrounds make it just fine.”

“Including maybe yourself?”

He ignored her question and instead said, “I figure you pack some things and we find you a safe house with some agents there to make sure those folks don’t come back.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

“I want you to be safe.”

“I want to be safe too, trust me, I have no death wish. But if you’re right and that person was just pretending to be Francis to scare me and throw suspicion on him, I’m probably not in any real danger.”

“Probably is right. That’s only one theory, Claire, and it might be the wrong one.”

“I think if my routine remains the same, they have no reason to think I’m a threat. And I have something I really need to work on.”

“What?”

She glanced over at him and Web had never seen her look so troubled. “I’m thinking about a very brave man going into an alley, listening to a little boy say something quite extraordinary and then being unable to do his job.”

He shot her a look. “You can’t be sure there’s a connection.”

She held up a page of the sketchbook for him to see. “Oh, I’m pretty sure there’s a connection.”

The drawing was stark, exacting, possessing a powerful clarity that seemed beyond a young boy. A figure that looked so like Kevin it could have been a self-portrait was standing in what looked to be a high-walled alley. A man who could have been Web in complete combat gear was in full running stride next to Kevin. The boy’s hand was extended. What was in the boy’s hand had Web fixated. The device was small, easily secreted in a trouser pocket. The stream of light that shot out from it reached across the page and ended at the margin. It was as though the boy held some sort of futuristic weapon that shot light beams, à la Star Wars or Star Trek. Actually, it was a device that all people, especially kids, would be familiar with these days. It was a remote control, and this one was sending out a beam of light. It could have been to a TV, stereo or some other electronic equipment. But Web knew that it wasn’t. He hadn’t even seen a TV in Kevin’s house and there was certainly not one in his room. This remote control, Web felt sure, had activated the laser in the courtyard that, in turn, had triggered the mini-guns when Web and Charlie Team had come thundering into the space. The kid had kick-started it all. And somebody had prepared the boy for exactly what he would see that night, namely men in body armor with guns, for it wasn’t like Kevin Westbrook had come back to his house to make this drawing after the fact.

Who was that someone?

Two cars behind Web’s Mach, Francis Westbrook drove the Lincoln Navigator himself. Without product to sell, a large part of his crew had already jumped ship. Folks didn’t let the grass grow under their feet in the drug trade, and the grass always seemed to be greener someplace else. Of course, when you got to the new place, it was just the same old crap. You lived and died by your wits and the stupid did not survive for very long, yet for every dealer that was killed, a dozen were ready to take his place; the lure of the drug business was strong despite its high mortality rate, because people in Francis Westbrook’s world weren’t exactly loaded down with options. Forget the social scientists with their little charts and graphs, Westbrook could vividly teach the mother of all courses on that subject.

He shook his head as his thoughts returned to his dilemma. Peebles was nowhere to be found, and even the once-loyal Macy had disappeared. The men he had left were not ones Westbrook really trusted, thus he had gone it alone on this mission. He had been watching Jerome’s place in the hopes that Kevin might come wandering up. Instead he had gotten a nice prize in the interim. HRT London and the woman. She was the shrink, he at least had learned that before his men deserted him. He steered with his fingertip, his right hand on the grip of the pistol lying on the front seat. He had watched London and the woman go in and then come out with Jerome. The lady had been carrying Kevin’s sketchbooks, and Francis wondered why. Did the books have a clue to the boy’s whereabouts? He had personally searched this city high and low looking for his son, threatened people, broken bones and overinflated egos in the process, shelled out thousands in cash for snitch work, and with all that, nothing. The Feds sure as hell didn’t have him; they weren’t playing games with him, perhaps trying to get Kevin to testify against the father, of that he was sure. Francis had been real careful on that; Kevin knew nothing about what his old man did, at least not the sort of details that were required on the witness stand. But if he did, Francis would just bite the bullet and take the fall. Above all, he had to do what was best for Kevin. In many ways he had already led a full, rich life, about as much as someone like him could reasonably expect. But Kevin had a lot more living to do. London was a smart guy. Francis’s plan was to follow him and see where that took him. Where he hoped it took him, of course, was to Kevin.