Long Shadows

Chapter 90

A​t nine o’clock that night Decker knocked on the door of the Perlmans’ home. A lot had happened between their leaving Deirdre Fellows’s estate and now. And the next few minutes could go any number of ways.

Trevor Perlman, dressed in beige slacks and a collared white shirt, answered the door. “Agent Decker. My wife said you had come by earlier. Please come in. Where is your partner?”

“Working on something else.”

“I see.”

Perlman closed the door and escorted Decker into a small furnished room off the main living area.

“Now, let’s fill out the rest of the group,” said Perlman.

Another door opened and a man came in. He was one of the same men from the beach. He had a pistol pointed at Decker. They searched Decker. Perlman took Decker’s gun and laid it on a table behind him.

“And now this,” said Perlman.

He took out a wand and ran it all over Decker. When it didn’t beep he said, “I’m surprised. I thought for sure you would be wired. Please sit.”

Decker sat. “Where’s your wife?”

“Off doing some things, like your partner.”

Decker looked up at the other man, whose face still showed the effects of White’s karate skills. “I bet you didn’t think a person so small could inflict that much pain.”

“We plan on taking care of her later,” he said.

“We have a witness to what happened in Miami,” Decker said to Perlman.

“Oh, you must not have checked your news feed. There was a terrible accident in Sanibel Island. A woman died. The daughter of a very prominent former senator. She apparently fell off her balcony. It was so sad. My other colleague just happened to be in the area when it happened and texted me the sad news. A Deidre Fellows — you may have heard of her. She might have seen something long ago and told you about it? I’m just speculating here.”

Decker took a moment to absorb all this. “How did you arrange for the dead woman in Tanner’s bed?”

“We hired her to be there. As a gift to the soon-to-be senator. He was giddy about the fund-raiser and was appreciative, without ever thinking it through. We knew this would be the case. We had a thick dossier on the man. His brain was in his pants. But, unknown to him, she had been given a drug that would soon kill her. And it did, right in his bed. Tanner freaked out, as we knew he would. I was there right on cue and took care of everything. I told him I was with the president’s team.”

“And then Kanak Roe showed up.”

“That was a complication. He must have heard something. But I’m used to complications. It worked out all right. And Deidre Fellows’s death leaves you with no evidence at all.”

“How did you blackmail Tanner?”

“He never knew it was me, of course. But the room had been wired for picture and sound. After he won the election, he was given a sample of the evidence and he had a choice to make. He chose wisely.”

“I’m not sure this country would think so. And your guy here? My partner and I can identify him as one of the men on the beach that night who attacked me.”

“I received a text informing me that my man who was near Fellows’s home when she died has already left the country. And this gentleman will be on the other side of the world by this time tomorrow.”

“I suppose Draymont and Lancer had no idea who they had run into when they tried to blackmail you.”

“I ate amateurs like them for lunch. I almost laughed when Draymont tried to use something he overheard, and a piece of paper he found, against me. I pretended to be a cowering, helpless target just waiting to pay him money. But what I was doing was collecting intelligence on him and his associates. And when the time was right I returned the favor. I recommended Gamma to Julia. Even if my wife was clueless, I could easily tell what Julia wanted from Mr. Draymont. She even confirmed it when I asked her.” He smiled. “It was our little secret.”

“So you stole the key and security card from Cummins’s house to get the gun from Barry. And you ordered the Slovakian money in Kasimira’s name. Then you had Draymont killed while you were out of town.”

“He was about to leave the house after his little sexual encounter with Julia when my men arrived. They were under strict instructions not to harm her no matter what. We later searched his apartment and took his electronic devices and the information he had on me. We did the same at Lancer’s place. I had learned they were working together when I did my research on Draymont.”

“And Patty Kelly?”

“We saw the text that Lancer sent her. We beat the information out of Lancer and it became apparent that Kelly was a loose end that needed cutting. Her husband, we determined, knew nothing. The fact that she left him behind confirmed that.”

Decker looked at the other man before glancing back at Perlman. “When we told you the judge had also been killed, your wife was stunned, but you were merely confused. Because you knew it was only Draymont who had been killed by your people.”

“Yes, that was puzzling. My men reported that they never saw her. They killed Draymont downstairs, stuffed the money in his throat, and left.”

“You killed a lot of people, Perlman, or whatever your real name is.”

Perlman sat down across from Decker. “What you don’t understand is that the number of people dead is of no significance. This is a war, Mr. Decker. And in any war there are casualties. The key is to have more on the other side than on your own.”

“How many people died from the secrets you blackmailed Tanner into leaking to you?”

“Apparently not enough, since the Soviet Union fell anyway.”

“We did a search on you. Everything was perfect, all the way back to childhood. Too perfect. So perfect it had to be made up.”

“Good, thank you for that. Though technically retired, I will have our people inject such flaws in future background profiles.”

“How did you kill Kanak out in the Atlantic? Were you hidden on the boat, or did you overtake him in yours?”

Perlman shook his head, a weary expression on his features. “What does it matter? After all we did for him. Stumbled onto an incredible opportunity in Miami that ended up making him rich. And he wanted to betray all that simply because he was dying and felt the need to publicly confess. Well, people die every day. As did he.”

“He wanted to save his soul in the eyes of God.”

Perlman pointed a finger at Decker. “That is why religion is so dangerous. It makes you do stupid things. That is why I am an atheist. As Marx said, religion is the opium of the masses.”

“And what happens with me? My partner knows I came here and why. If I don’t show back up, things will get really bad for you, really fast.”

“You have no proof of anything. I could let you go right now and you can go and spew all the theories you want, claim that we all confessed, and what will it amount to?”

“Not much.”

“But I am a man who does not care for loose ends. And you like to go for walks on the beach at night. There is a beach here. You will walk on the sand.” He pulled out a syringe from a drawer of a credenza. “And then your heart will feel funny, like it is racing. You will not be able to breathe. You will stumble and fall and that will be that. And you are a large man and not a young one, so nothing unusual about such a man having a heart attack. And by the time the postmortem is done, what is in this syringe will no longer be detectable in your body.” He uncapped the needle. “So, shall we begin your last walk, Mr. Decker?”

Decker looked at each of the men. “I suppose I can’t convince you to turn yourselves in?”

Perlman shook his head and smiled. “I don’t believe there is a phrase for that in Russian.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.” He rose. “Well, okay, I’m sick of this case. Let’s do it.”

The door was kicked in and a team of armored personnel poured into the room pointing automatic weapons. Perlman’s accomplice quickly dropped his gun, and Perlman the syringe, as they backed up against the wall.

Perlman snapped, “What is going on? You have no right to be here. This is a private house. This man broke in and we were simply defending ourselves.”

One of the armored people took off their helmet. White brushed hair out of her eyes. “You good, Decker?”

“Much better than I was a minute ago.”

Perlman shouted, “You will leave my house now. You have no proof of anything.”

Decker walked over to the table and picked up his gun. He turned, pointed the gun right at Perlman, and pulled the trigger.

Perlman screamed and fell to the floor, his hands over his face.

Instead of a bullet coming out of the gun, though, they all listened to the conversation that had gone on in the room before White and the others had shown up.

“A recording device disguised as a gun?” said Perlman in disbelief.

“It smacks of the old Cold War days, doesn’t it?” said Decker. He lowered the gun and turned off the recorder by pulling the trigger again. “And just so you know, Deidre Fellows is alive and well. As soon as she became a key witness, we put her under protection.”

“But my man, the news feed,” snapped Perlman.

“Yeah, your guy is in custody. We caught him sneaking into the grounds, made him talk, and then we used his phone to text you that the mission was complete and he was leaving the country as planned. And the news feed was set up by the Bureau to make you think what we wanted you to think.”

He looked down at Perlman. “And you walked right into it, amateur.”