Liars & Thieves

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

We locked up the van and strolled across the street to a bar on the corner. Inside were small tables along the window where we could watch sidewalk traffic and people coming and going from the Hilton. If I craned my head I could see the side of our parked van. There was a television truck of some kind in front of it, so the side was all I could see. Willie Varner ordered a beer and I ordered coffee.

When the waiter left, Willie said, “Okay, man, what’s going down?”

“Grafton says he’s got it.”

“Got what?”

“It, goddamnit.”

Willie nodded vigorously. “Fuckin’ it, man. He’s got it and I’ve been lookin’ for it all my life. That what you’re sayin’?”

“Yeah.”

“So why’d we bail out of the van?”

“Shit happens.”

“You mean there’s a good chance another bunch of assholes are lookin’ for us?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Why take a chance when we can sit here drinking beer and good coffee?”

“Well, I’m here to tell you, I really hope Grafton does have it! I’m tired of that crappy little motel room in New Jersey and tired of New York and tired of that van and tired of you.”

“Okay.” I was watching people on the street, looking for folks I might recognize. Didn’t see a one. Amazing, isn’t it, how with all the millions of people in New York, everyone is a stranger.

The drinks arrived, and Willie drank deeply of his beer. When he put the mug down he sighed. “I want to go back to the neighborhood, man, where I can sit at my window and watch the kids sell crack. Watch the po-lice hassle the niggers ’cause they’re poor and black. Watch the winos get drunk and vomit and sleep it off on the sidewalk. Watch the buildings crumble down.” He took another long swallow of beer.

“Home sweet home,” I said.

“Manhattan ain’t America. Too busy, y’know? Ever’body goin’ somewhere to do somethin’, ever’body in a hurry, all day, all night, ever’ day. Never stops. Wears you out just watchin’.”

He finished the beer and signaled the waiter for another. I called Sarah Houston.

“Hey.”

“Hey yourself.”

“We’re in a bar across the street from the van. Keep an eye on the penthouse video, will you?”

“How long have you been there?”

“Oh, ten minutes or so.”

“Then you missed the show. Zooey Sonnenberg went into Royston’s suite five minutes ago. You would have thought she was Britney Spears or the queen of Xanadu from the way those fools were acting.”

“I have a weak stomach. Glad I missed it.”

“So why are you in a bar?”

“Grafton thought it would be a good idea. He’ll be here in a couple of hours. I’ve got my cell.”

“Stay sober,” she remarked, and hung up.

Willie wiped the beer foam off his lips and asked, “What’s the it that Grafton’s got?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or you ain’t tellin’.”

“One or the other.”

For Jake Grafton time seemed to stop. The gunman ten feet in front of him against the car was frozen like a statue, across the street was another gunman who didn’t know what was happening on this side, and two killers were double-parked near his house while they searched it, looking for him and Callie and the Russian archivist. Both sides of the street were lined with cars. Over this tableau floated the sound of rock music, loud voices, and laughter. At least ten people were crowded onto the porch of the party house, having a fine old time.

“Are you Grafton?” the man in front of his gun muzzle said, barely loudly enough to be heard.

“Yes.”

“It’s Goncharov we want, not you and your wife.”

When Jake didn’t reply, the man shifted his weight slightly. “You’re one trigger squeeze away from the Pearly Gates, Jack,” the admiral said softly, which stopped all movement.

“Tell us where Goncharov is and we’ll let you go.”

“You’re not a very good liar.”

“These are very heavy people. Regardless of what happens here in the next few minutes, if they want you, you’re dead.”

“They want Goncharov and he’s still breathing.”

“Not for long.”

Seconds ticked past. One of the women on the porch began taking off her blouse as her audience clapped and urged her on.

“How long are we going to do this Mexican standoff?” the man asked.

“Until I let you move.”

Jake could see him breathing deeply, thinking.

“Maybe you should drop the weapon before you get tempted.”

The man released his gun, and it fell with an audible clatter on the gravel. In the darkness it was hard to see what it was, but it appeared to be a submachine gun of some sort.

“You know,” the man said, his tone matter-of-fact, “I’m thinking of walking across that boardwalk and up the beach.”

“Your funeral.”

“Those guys come out of your house, they’re going to come looking for me and the guy across the street.”

“I’ve got enough bullets for them, too.”

The girl on the porch threw her bra onto the lawn as her audience cheered appreciatively.

“When they come out of that house,” the gunman said just loudly enough for Jake to hear, “I’m going to leave my weapon where it is, get up, and walk toward the boardwalk to the beach.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You won’t shoot me in the back.”

“This isn’t a cowboy movie. Why don’t you just lie down right where you are and put your hands behind your head? Tomorrow you’ll still be alive.”

Perhaps the man would have obeyed the admiral if he had had time to think about it. But time was up. A bus braked to a halt on the highway, blocking the entrance to the street, and a dozen soldiers carrying weapons piled out of the door and came running down the street.

The man in front of Jake simply started to his left, toward the boardwalk and the darkness beyond it. He walked normally, his hands at his sides.

Jake Grafton pointed the MP-5 at the center of his back and pulled the trigger. The silenced weapon bucked and coughed; five bullets hammered the gunman to the ground before Jake released the trigger.

“There’s two of them in the house,” Grafton roared at the top of his lungs.

The man across the street fired a burst toward Jake. The weapon wasn’t silenced — the thunder filled the street. The man tossed a burst toward the oncoming soldiers, then turned and dashed for the boardwalk.

As he ran he sprayed bullets in Jake’s direction. He managed four running steps before Jake’s bullets scythed him down. The dying man held the trigger of his weapon down as he fell, emptying the remainder of the magazine into the ground and a nearby car in one long drumroll.

Curses and screams came from the party porch. Half the people there tried desperately to crowd through the door into the house; the others threw themselves flat.

Five minutes passed before the gunmen in Grafton’s house surrendered. The soldiers had them lying facedown on Jake’s small front lawn when the first police officer came running from the highway with his pistol in his hand.

Willie was on his third beer when the van blew up. I was scoping out a hot chick two tables over who was giving me the eye over her boyfriend’s shoulder when I heard the detonation and felt the concussion, which rattled the window and caused glasses behind the bar to fall off the shelf and break. I looked toward the van in time to see the expanding fireball and pieces flying into the air.

“Damnation!” Willie exclaimed. “Somebody blew the son of a bitch up! Did you see that?”

Pieces began raining down on the sidewalk and street outside the bar. The bigger ones fell first and bounced, then the little bits fluttered down. Metal snow.

“Shit like this don’t happen in Washington,” Willie remarked, which was of course a lie without a hair on it. His collection of scars proved that.

“Stay here!” I ordered, and charged for the door.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. The van wasn’t crumpled or burned out — it was gone! Whoever had decided to take it out had not stinted on the explosives. Anything worth doing is worth doing right, I suppose. The asphalt where the van had been parked was on fire, giving off stinking black smoke. The carcasses of two of the tires were on fire — where the other two and the spare had gone I had no idea. There was a misshapen lump of metal in the middle of the asphalt fire that might have been the remains of the transmission and drive train. The vehicles parked in front and behind the van were severely damaged, smashed in as if they had taken hits from Thor’s hammer. I looked around for the bodies of pedestrians or winos — didn’t see any, which was a miracle.

The bomb was detonated by either a timer or radio device. I assumed that whoever had blown up the van probably didn’t know Willie and I weren’t in it. They didn’t care about the van; they wanted us dead.

The windows of the ground floor of the hotel were missing, blown to bits and fired as shrapnel into the hotel by the blast. Across the street a jewelry store and drugstore had lost their windows, and indeed, smoke was coming out of them. Burning debris must have been thrown in there by the blast.

As I watched, security people began running out of the hotel, milling around with drawn weapons. A police cruiser roared up and screeched to a stop — in the distance I could hear a wailing siren. And onlookers were beginning to gather. Gawkers arrived in twos and threes, wandered up and stood staring at the smoking, stinking fire and rubble, a scene made all the more ghoulish by the flashing lights of the police cruiser’s beacon.

There was a body, ripped up by flying debris. The onlookers pointed it out to the police.

Then someone found the remnants of a second person.

The hell of it was that I had a pretty good idea who had planted the bomb. I wondered if he was the button pusher or if he left that chore to someone else. Or did he just use a clock? If he were real smart he would be two states away when the thing blew. Then again, people who plant bombs often have this sick desire to be around when the thing goes off so they can watch the fire and the firemen, see the blood and gore, smell it, count the bodies…

I thought he might want to be close by.

But where was he?

About that time the gas tank in the truck that had been parked in front of the van ignited. Perhaps the burning asphalt got to it.

The first fire truck roared up, then another; police vehicles came from all directions. Extinguishing the fires in the street was the firefighters’ first priority, so that they would have room to attack the blazes taking hold in nearby buildings.

How much explosives had that guy used?

The sidewalks were filling up with onlookers as the firefighters fought the fires in the drug and jewelry stores, police investigators and paramedics examined the corpses, and investigators poked and prodded at the remains of our van. The police quickly rigged yellow crime scene tape. A uniformed female cop pushed me and a bunch of other folks back as the tape went up in front of us. She was a slip of a thing, her hat cocked at an angle. She looked like a sausage in her bulletproof vest, complete with belt, holster, gun, spare ammo, mace, and radio. I don’t know how she walked.

I knew it was time to leave when the first television crew turned on their lights and got their reporter on the air.

That’s when something jabbed me in the back and a familiar voice said softly, “I didn’t think you’d be in that van when it popped. Told them that, but they said to blow it anyway. I think the bugs you planted pissed him off.”

The lady cop immediately in front of me had her back to me and was oblivious to my situation.

If I tried to elbow the pistol out of my back as I turned, more than likely he would put one in my kidney.

He grabbed my upper left arm and jabbed the pistol barrel deeper into my back, then whispered in my ear. “I owe you for sticking that gun in my face, Carmellini. Just wanted you to see it coming. Adios, motherfucker.”

I had run out of time and options. I spun left, trying with my left elbow to sweep the gun aside, while I gathered up the female cop with my right arm.

A tremendous force hit me in the lower back, nearly dropping me. The sound of the shot came simultaneously with the impact — and for that reason didn’t really register.

Somehow I stayed on my feet and kept turning.

Joe Billy Dunn’s second shot hit the cop in the lower abdomen — I heard her grunt as the bulletproof vest absorbed the bullet’s energy.

I pushed her forward into Dunn. His muffled third shot went off point-blank against the vest. Squeezing the trigger had been a reaction, probably, not intentional.

She collapsed at his feet. As he turned to run, trying to create space between us, the crowd impeded his progress. I leaped over the cop at him… too late. I sprawled on the sidewalk.

He ran as the crowd parted.

The cop sprawled and groaning, the noise, flashing lights and stench, screaming, running people… that was the way hell was going to be when I got there, probably in the very near future.

The only bright spots in this mess were that the right side of my lower back was numb, and I could still make my legs work, so the bullet hadn’t hit my spine.

I scrambled up and ran after Joe Billy.