Most Wanted

40

“LUCKY I SHOWED UP,” DAN SAID. “YOUR TRANSMISSION is shot. You’d better come with me.”

Standing there in the sunlight, he looked so trustworthy he practically sparkled, but appearances could be deceiving. If she really wanted to get the truth, she’d go with him now. She’d play along, keep her eyes open. If she said no, he’d realize she suspected something, and she’d lose her advantage. She wasn’t scared. She refused to believe Dan would hurt her. She would never believe that.

So she pretended to smile back at him and got out of her car.

“I’m parked right over here,” he said. “I’ll get the A/C going for you, see if I can find a garage out here in the middle of East Buttfuck.”

He opened the door of his car for her, then walked around to the driver’s side. She got into the passenger seat. He must’ve had the air-conditioning going just minutes earlier, because the interior was cool. It smelled of coffee and, beneath that aroma, something clean that she realized with a start must just be him. She breathed deeply, then caught herself. What was she doing? She couldn’t let herself feel anything for him-not trust, not physical attraction, nothing. She’d decided that already.

She reached out and touched the coffee sitting in the drink holder. It was still hot.

“That’s for you,” he said. “Bought it at a diner down the road. Thought you might need some caffeine.”

“You were expecting to see me? So I guess it’s no coincidence you’re here?”

“No, of course not. You hung up on me this morning. I got worried about you, so I tracked you down.”

“How on earth did you find me?”

“Trained investigator, sweetheart.”

Yeah, right, she thought.

He flipped on the air-conditioning, turning the vent to point directly at her. A blast of air whipped her hair up into her face, where it stuck to her lipstick. She brushed it back with her fingers.

“Cool enough for you?” Dan asked.

“Definitely.”

“See? Who’s your daddy? Do I take care of you or what?”

“Why didn’t you just call me, rather than driving an hour and a half to Otisville?” she asked edgily.

“With how upset you were, I figured you wouldn’t answer your phone.”

“You thought I wouldn’t answer, so you hopped in your car and drove for two hours instead? That makes no sense.”

His cell phone rang.

“Oh,” he said, pulling it from his pocket, “I’m working a lead. This might be it.

“Yeah?” he answered. When he heard the voice on the other end, he looked at Melanie like it was important. Holding the phone with his shoulder, he set the timer on his digital watch. “Fucking right I was out there last night…Look, you don’t want me shaking the trees for you, you fucking return my beeps… When? You been telling me that for three days. How long am I supposed to wait?…You know the game. You want any protection, you gotta give me something…I told you, you deliver Slice and I’ll take care of that… I’ll handle it when the time comes…This afternoon or nothing. This is the end of the line… Where?…Okay, yeah, four o’clock, but if you don’t show, that’s it. You’re fair game on the street. And you know how people get hurt in an arrest situation, regrettable as that is… Right, bye.”

“Who was that?” Melanie asked when he hung up.

“Snitch of mine. He could deliver Slice on a silver platter if he wanted to, but the guy’s fucking playing me. He won’t come in, won’t meet. So I’m trying to track him through the phone company.” He dialed his phone hurriedly. “Yeah, gimme the Compliance Department… Vinnie Maresca, please…Yeah, Vin, Dan O’Reilly. Did you get it? Great! Hold on a second.”

He leaned across her and rummaged through the glove compartment, his body inches from hers. She closed her eyes and held her breath, willing herself not to feel anything. Sexual attraction, claro. A chemical thing. Her brain could override it, she told herself. He pulled out a pen and a small notebook and sat up again. She breathed out. She opened her eyes and saw him scribbling something down.

“Millbrook, New York. Never heard of it…Dutchess County? Huh. Strange. Listen, thanks though, I owe you a beer. Later, buddy.” He hung up and turned to Melanie. “Where the fuck is Millbrook, New York?”

“Millbrook? It’s a fancy little town just south of here. Horses, antiques, that sort of thing. Jed Benson had a country estate there. Why?”

“Huh, that’s gotta be it. Why else would a scumbag Bushwick drug dealer be in Millbrook? My snitch must be at Benson’s place. Looking for something. You don’t happen to know the address?”

“Of Benson’s house? Yes, actually I do. I reviewed those records just last night, and I remember it. Why?”

“We need to get there right away. If I can get my hands on this guy, he can take us right to Slice.”

DAN FOLLOWED THE SIGNS BACK TO THE HIGHWAY, then pulled a road atlas from the space between the two front seats and flipped it open in his lap, consulting it as he drove.

“So who’s this snitch? Would I recognize his name?” she asked, studying his profile.

He smiled. “You’re very nosy, you know that? So many questions today. How about I ask a few for a change?”

“What do you want to know?” she asked warily.

“I want to know why the first thing you do after Amanda gets hit is rush up here to talk to Delvis again? What did he have to say that was so important?”

“I don’t know. I never spoke to him.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“He was transferred to Leavenworth this morning.”

He took his eyes off the road and looked at her with genuine astonishment. She made a mental note. Whatever Dan was involved in, he hadn’t known about Delvis’s transfer.

“You look surprised,” Melanie said.

“I am. Diaz has been at Otisville since day one. It’s weird he’d get moved all of a sudden. Why do you think they transferred him?”

“Leona said there was no reason given in the order,” she said, evading his question.

He looked over at her quizzically. “Any relationship between you coming up here and Delvis getting moved?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Hey, can we stop playing games here? What’s the matter, you don’t trust me or something?” He looked upset, kept his gaze on her. The car swerved slightly in its lane.

“Will you watch where you’re going, please? I don’t want to end up dead,” she said.

“Answer my question.”

“Of course I trust you.”

“Well, you’re sure not acting like it.”

Dan’s mouth set in an angry line. They drove on in silence for some time. Eventually, he signaled and pulled off the highway onto the exit ramp for Millbrook. Within minutes they were on a winding road flanked by views of red barns and pastures dotted with creamy white sheep and picture-book horses. Dan consulted the atlas sitting open in his lap and adjusted the route slightly. They drove for a while longer, the scenery getting better by the minute. On either side were gentleman’s farms, graced by painstakingly restored nineteenth-century farmhouses with freshly painted shutters and elegant landscaping. Their late-summer gardens competed in lavish display with the first blazes of color appearing in ancient, towering trees.

Dan focused on the road, staying quiet.

Finally he asked, “Is it that you’re upset with Randall? I vouched for him, and he didn’t come through? If that’s it, you should tell me.”

“Naturally I’m upset,” she said, seizing on the explanation he offered. “I know he’s your friend, but his performance has been a problem, and it’s past the point where it can be overlooked. Blowing that interview with Delvis was one thing. But he was supposed to be guarding Amanda. And now she’s dead.”

“I know, I know. You’re right,” he said, shaking his head.

The pain in his voice sounded real. She studied his face in profile, wishing she could see through into his brain. Every instinct told her he was just as true-blue honest as he looked, but the facts suggested otherwise. And after all, how well did she really know this guy?

“Were you able to get in touch with him this morning?” she asked.

“No, and that has me worried. I can’t get him at home or on his pager. Oh, hey, I think this is it.”

Dan pulled into a gravel driveway that sloped gently up and away from the road, got out and opened a latched iron gate that stretched between two large brick-and-limestone portals on either side of the drive.

“Wow. Not bad,” Melanie said when he got back into the car.

Farther up the drive, though, the Bensons’ spread started to look less scrupulously tended than the neighboring estates. A small outbuilding on the way to the main house had two broken windows. Its door sat slightly askew, blown open by the wind. The fenced paddocks sloping away from the drive on either side were emptied of horses and badly overgrown.

“Looks abandoned,” Dan remarked.

“Yeah.” Melanie shivered slightly in the air-conditioning.

At the top of the rise, a semicircular drive led to a gracious Georgian brick mansion, its three stories perfectly symmetrical, with evenly spaced mullioned windows and white shutters. The house veritably gleamed in the hot sun, yet the windows seemed blank and dark. A separate four-bay clapboard garage stretched off to the right, one of its bays, oddly, thrown open.

“Do you think your informant’s still here?” Melanie asked, a high-pitched note of anxiety in her voice.

“He better be. If not, I’ll prob’ly never get my hands on him. Place sure looks empty, though. Let’s check it out.”

“We don’t have a warrant.”

“So what? The garage door’s open. If you’re nervous, stay in the car.”

“I’m not nervous,” she said. But she was, terribly. Palms sweaty, heart rate elevated. She couldn’t decide whether to follow Dan into the garage, on the theory that she was safer with him than alone, or stay in the car, on the theory that he might be leading her into a trap.

Dan sprang out of the low seat and strode deliberately toward the open garage bay, hand at his waistband near his gun. She opened the passenger door and got out tentatively, lingering in the drive. From the top of the rise, the blue shadows of the Catskills were visible to the west. A delicious summer breeze washed over her, carrying the scent of wild anise and a whiff of animal dung. The deep lowing of a herd of cows made its way up from the valley, providing a counterpoint to the high chirp of sparrows and jays from the surrounding trees.

She looked longingly at the cool grass under the trees. It was so beautiful here. Suddenly she felt exhausted by all the sad things that had happened. For just a minute, she wished for a completely different life. She and Dan, no murders, no Benson investigation. Up here for the weekend, as lovers, maybe even married to each other, with a picnic lunch. As if they’d met when she was single, before Steve. But then she shook herself. If she’d never married Steve, she wouldn’t have Maya. Not to mention that Dan might somehow be complicit in a string of brutal murders. Oh, yeah, that.

“Hey, nature girl,” Dan called from the gloom of the bay door. “There’s a brand-new Hummer in here. Thing is fucking huge. You like cars. Come check it out.”

Inside, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She flipped a switch near the door, turning on overhead fluorescent lights to reveal a well-maintained garage, its floor freshly painted a glossy gray. Five heavy-duty black rubber trash cans stood along the far wall, their lids off, empty but still emitting a sour smell. A large refrigerator stood beside them.

“Did you check the fridge for bodies?” she joked.

“Yeah, actually, that’s the first thing I did. There’s some skanky-looking meat in there, but I’m pretty sure it’s venison. Get a load of this car, though. I found it sitting open like this.”

He stood in front of the only car in the garage, an enormous black Hummer with aggressive metal piping, a row of spotlights across the roof, and military-style flat windshields. Solid and massive as a bank vault on wheels, the vehicle sat with its four doors wide open.

“Wow,” she said.

“Yeah. Thing’s insane, but you gotta love it.”

“You think it was Benson’s?”

“Who else?” he said. “Look at it, it’s like a fricking death star. I’ll tell you, it sure looks like it belonged to a drug dealer.”

“Or else some crazed rapper.”

“Same difference,” he said.

Dan climbed up into the high front passenger seat, rummaged through the glove compartment, and brought out a handful of papers. “Yup, it’s registered to Benson,” he announced. “Bought two months ago.”

From where she was standing, Melanie noticed an odd glint of red shining in the lower-left-hand corner of the small rear windshield. She came around to inspect it, running her finger over a metallic red sticker. It was affixed on the inside and bore the image of the Looney Tunes Road Runner cartoon character.

“Hey,” she called to Dan. “You were right, drug-dealer car. There’s a Road Runner sticker back here. This car has a trap.”

Dan jumped down from the front seat and raced around to where she stood. Like Melanie, he instinctively brushed his finger over the sticker. They’d both done enough drug cases to know what it meant.

“Jesus, whaddaya know. Jed Benson with a trapped-out car.”

The Road Runner was the most famous trap installer in the five boroughs of New York City and had been for a decade. He’d never been caught. Traps-also called hides, stashes, or secret compartments-were the kingpins’ preferred way of moving contraband. If you wanted to transport drugs, you needed one, a good one, one nobody could find. The Road Runner’s were the best. Legend had it he’d been a structural engineer back in Colombia, and it showed in his work. His traps were customized to fit into the least expected places in bad guys’ cars, with the carpeting and leather matched exactly to camouflage their location. Their triggering mechanisms were the most sophisticated ever seen, opening hydraulically on complex, coded electronic sequences sent by normal vehicle functions. You could rip a car apart down to the floorboards and still not find his traps, unless you knew the precise code for opening them. The traps were so good that bad guys could afford to indulge themselves by flaunting them with the Road Runner’s signature sticker in the rear window. It was a status thing-show off for your homies, taunt law enforcement. Yeah, I have a trap, asshole, the sticker said, but you’ll never find it.

“I can’t believe it,” Melanie said.

“I’ll say. Last time I checked, the Road Runner was charging ten grand for his simplest trap. To trap out a car like this, you gotta figure fifteen, twenty K easy.”

“Laundering money is one thing. But why would Benson have a Road Runner trap unless he was-”

“Unless he was moving drugs?”

They looked at each other. “Yeah,” she said, “moving drugs. Our victim got his hands dirty.”

“I’m really starting to believe you about this guy,” Dan said. He walked to the front and climbed up into the driver’s seat. Melanie followed, coming to stand beneath where he sat.

“Do you know how to open it?” she asked.

“Every trap is different. The Road Runner’s sequences are so complicated it’s almost impossible to figure them out without a snitch or an expert.” The keys were sitting in the ignition. Dan turned the car on, and the engine sprang to life with a rich, satisfying roar. “I can fiddle around with things and see if we get lucky, but I don’t think we have time.”

“You mean if we want to find your snitch?”

“I mean if we don’t want him to find us first. I’m betting he was sitting right here before we showed up, trying to open this trap just like we are.”

Dan wasn’t prescient. He just had good instincts, refined by many years on the streets. At that very moment, as their eyes met and the significance of his remark hit her, she heard a low growl. An enormous black dog, clad in a biker’s regalia of harnesses and chains, stood at alert in the open garage bay ten feet from them, salivating and poised for attack. She froze, rooted to the ground, fascinated by the intricate pattern of scars on the dog’s battle-worn hide. He’s not real, she thought as he leaped directly at her in slow motion.

“Slice’s dog! Get in!” Dan shouted, grabbing her around the waist and hauling her into the car as he stepped on the gas. She sprawled across his lap, then righted herself and clambered on all fours into the passenger seat as the car charged forward. Dan slammed his door. Off balance, she reached for the handle of her door, leaning out over open space for a harrowing second before managing to yank it closed, sitting up just in time to see the dog disappear with a thunk under the front wheels of the vehicle. They lurched out into the sunlight and hit the crunchy gravel of the circular drive. Instinctively they both turned to look back through the rear window. The dog jumped up, uninjured, and bounded after them.

“Shit! Get the back doors!” Dan shouted.

She threw herself over the gearshift and toppled into the backseat, her fall broken by soft, fragrant leather, pulling the driver’s-side rear door closed just in time. The dog bounced off it with a loud thumping sound, barking wildly, the second after it slammed shut. Melanie reached out for the passenger door and slammed that, too. The dog continued to pound insanely against the other door as they both gaped at him in astonishment, his powerful back legs propelling him all the way up to the high window, which threatened to shatter under the impact.

“Duck!” Dan yelled, drawing his gun, “I’m gonna shoot the fucking thing!”

“No, don’t!”

“Get down!”

Dan reached over the seat with one hand and pushed the top of her head. She hunkered down on the back floor as he leaned over, aimed, and shot through the closed window. The dog yelped; small chunks of shattered window glass rained down on her.

“Shit, only grazed him!” Dan fired three more shots in rapid succession. Melanie raised her head and climbed shakily up to the backseat, brushing away pebbles of sea green glass. Dan opened his door and stepped down, leaning over to examine the dog.

“Is he dead?” she asked, looking out through the empty space where the window had been.

“Yeah.”

Melanie descended gingerly from the Hummer, picking her way over to where Dan stood. She looked down at the viscous puddle seeping into the white gravel under the dog’s carcass, and then back at Dan.

“Look,” he said gently, reading her face, “I hate to hurt an animal, sweetheart. But this one, Slice ruined him. It’s like he was rabid.”

She nodded. Nervously, she looked over her shoulder toward the house. “Wait a minute, now. How do you know this was Slice’s dog? Why would your snitch be here with Slice’s dog?”

“I ever tell you you ask very good questions?”

Standing over the dog’s carcass, scanning the seemingly deserted house, he snapped the cartridge from the base of his gun, examined it quickly, and snapped it right back in. Before she could ask him another one, the glass of the Hummer’s side window exploded, followed a split second later by a loud pop that reverberated from somewhere above them. Suddenly she was on the ground, breath knocked out of her, hands and knees scraped, with Dan’s bulk on top of her.

“Shit! We’re under fire!” He held her head down with one hand as he shot off several rounds toward the house. A window shattered on the second floor, followed by silence, the only sound the rustling of leaves in a sudden breeze.

“Is he still there?” she whispered after a moment. “Did you get him?”

“No way.” He spoke into her hair, his warm breath tickling her ear. “He’s inside. The only way to get him is gonna be to go in after him.”

“So let’s go,” she whispered harshly.

“I can’t take you into a gunfight. This ain’t no exercise-these are live rounds we’re talking.”

“Okay, so you go. I’ll make a run for the garage.”

“He’ll pick you right off. He’s got a bird’s-eye view from up there.”

As if to emphasize Dan’s point, several more rounds exploded in the gravel around them, ricocheting wildly, kicking up clouds of dust.

“Oh, my God!” Melanie cried, hunkering down in the scratchy gravel, finally comprehending the danger they were in.

“See? Jesus, what an idiot I was to bring you here!”

“What should we do?”

“The car is between us and the house,” he murmured. “In a minute I’ll start shooting. That’ll provide some cover for us to get to it. Stay low to the ground. I’ll make a run for the driver’s seat. You jump in the back and stay down on the floor, okay?”

“But then we won’t get him.”

“I’ll drive you to a safe spot, you jump out, and I’ll come right on back and find the guy.”

“Okay.” She wasn’t about to argue. She wanted to live to put her daughter to bed that night.

“Here we go. Ready? One, two, three-”

She could feel the kick of the gun in the way his body jerked into hers as he fired. Ears ringing from the deafening reports, she ran, crouching as low as her legs would allow, and dove headlong onto the floor of the backseat. None of the rough chunks of glass she landed on had edges sharp enough to cut her. She knew that Dan had made it into the driver’s seat only because the car lurched forward. That was when she realized that the shots whizzing past the remaining windows were not from his gun. A bullet buried itself with a clang in the side of the car. The acceleration kicked in, and they shot down the driveway. She lifted her head enough to see out the side window. They careened off the gravel and bounced over grass and flower beds, sideswiping a picket fence before righting themselves. They made it to the main road, and Melanie grabbed the front seat, vaulting over the gearshift to settle in beside Dan. One side of his yellow polo shirt was streaked with blood.

“My God, are you hit?” she cried.

He looked down in surprise, nearly swerving off the road before righting the steering wheel.

“I didn’t feel anything.”

“Keep driving!”

She turned sideways in her seat and tugged on his shirt with both hands, pulling it up to expose his abdomen, slightly sticky with blood, but smooth and unmarred. She ran her hand around his belly, and he drew his breath in sharply.

“I think the blood must be from the dog. You’re fine.”

After a few minutes, he pulled off the road into the parking lot of an old metal-sided diner.

“Here we are.” He nodded toward the diner. “I hear the blue plate special is good. Get me one to go.”

As he leaned across her and pushed open her door, the inch of space between their bodies seemed to vibrate like a magnetic field. She wondered if she would ever see him again. Her suspicions about him temporarily forgotten, she stepped down, her legs shaky as her feet touched solid ground, and looked back up at him for a long second.

“Please. Be careful,” she said.

“It’s nice to know somebody cares.” He flashed a gorgeous smile and winked at her, then slammed the door and backed up. She watched until the now battered Hummer disappeared from sight.