Panic

17

‘I could kill you!’ Dezz screamed at Carrie. ‘I had him!’ She crossed her arms. ‘Jargo wanted him alive. You were aiming for his head.’

‘I was aiming for the bike. The bike!’

‘If you were aiming for the bike,’ Jargo said, stepping between them, ‘you could have shot it out when you shot the Suburban’s tire, son.’

Dezz’s red face frowned. ‘What?’

‘You hoped Evan would run,’ Jargo said. ‘Give you a reason to shoot him dead. Get over this jealousy regarding Carrie. Now.’

‘That’s not true.’ Dezz shook his head, fished in his pocket for candy. He jabbed a caramel in his mouth. ‘I don’t give a shit who she does.’

‘Why didn’t you take out the bike, then? After lecturing me about tactics earlier this morning?’ Jargo said. He went over, prodded Gabriel with his shoe.

‘I didn’t think he’d try for the bike. Who the hell knew he would fight back, he’s a goddamn film-maker!’ Dezz spat out the title. He whirled on Carrie. ‘He knew how to shoot, why didn’t you warn me?’

‘I didn’t know he could shoot. He never mentioned it.’

‘Dezz,’ Jargo said in a cold voice. ‘His father is a crack shot. It’s not unreasonable that he might have taught Evan about guns.’

Dezz jerked off his jacket, pointed at the scorch in his skin. ‘Where’s your fucking concern for me?’

‘I’ll get you a bandage. Satisfied?’ Jargo said.

Carrie kept her voice cool. ‘If you want to know with certainty what Evan knows, and how big a threat he is, you need him alive. I can find him. He has few friends, few places to hide.’

‘Where will he go, Carrie?’ Jargo asked. He was calm, unruffled, kneeling to check Gabriel’s pulse.

‘Think about it from Gabriel’s perspective. He is ex-CIA. He not only has a bone with you, but with the Agency. If we assume he’s operating alone, he’ll have wanted to maintain total control over Evan. He stole him from the cops, for God’s sake. That means he would have warned Evan off the cops, off the authorities.’ She hoped she’d made a good case and went for the close. ‘He’ll go to Houston. He’ll look for me. He has friends there.’

Dezz jabbed his gun against her chest. It was still warm, the heat spreading through the material of her blouse. ‘If you hadn’t let him head to Austin yesterday morning, we’d be in a lot better shape.’

She gently moved the gun away from her. ‘If you thought before you acted…’

‘Be quiet. Both of you,’ Jargo said. ‘All of Carrie’s theorizing aside, he may be heading straight to the Bandera police. Gabriel’s alive. Let’s take him and get the hell out of here.’

They loaded Gabriel in the back of the dented but drivable Malibu, wiping down and abandoning their own car behind a dense motte of live oaks. Gabriel had two bullet wounds, one in the shoulder, one in the upper back, and he was unconscious. Carrie took a medical kit from the car they were leaving behind and tended to his injuries.

‘Will he live until we get back to Austin?’ Jargo asked.

‘If Dezz doesn’t kill him,’ Carrie said.

Dezz got into the car, jerked the rearview mirror to where he could see Carrie in the back, Gabriel’s head in her lap.

‘I could kill you,’ he said again. But now there was just the hurt of the denied child, the tantrum fading into pout.

It was time, she decided, to start playing a new hand. ‘You won’t,’ she said calmly. ‘You’d miss me.’

Dezz stared at her and she saw the anger begin to fade in his face. She allowed herself to breathe again.

‘Go eat dinner,’ Jargo ordered them when they returned to the Austin apartment. ‘I need peace and quiet for my talk with Mr. Gabriel.’

Carrie did not like the sound of that announcement but she had no choice. She and Dezz walked down the street, under the arching shade of the oaks, to a small Tex-Mex restaurant. It was crowded with young, hip attendees from the massive South by Southwest music and film festivals that dominated Austin every mid-March. Her heart went into her throat. Evan had talked about coming to the festival until just last week; Ounce of Trouble had debuted at South by Southwest a couple of years ago and he loved the craziness, the energy, the deal-making. He loved seeing all the new movies at the cutting edge of cinema, the heady rush of thousands of people who loved to create. But the edits on Bluff nagged at his mind, undone, so he had decided to skip this year’s events.

Crowded around the tables were young people who reminded her of Evan – talking, laughing, their minds focused on art rather than survival. He should be here with her, watching movies, listening to bands, his mother alive. Instead she watched Dezz signal the hostess with two fingers and she followed him to a booth. Carrie excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, left him playing with the sugar packets.

The ladies’ room was busy and noisy. In the privacy of a stall, Carrie opened a false bottom in her purse. She removed a PocketPC, tapped out a brief message, and pressed send. The PDA tapped into the wireless server in a coffee shop next door. She waited for an answer.

When she was done reading the reply, she blinked away the tears that threatened her eyes and washed her face with trembling hands. She came out of the ladies’ room, half-expecting Dezz to have his ear pressed to the door, and then she could simply kill him on the spot. But the hallway held only a trio of laughing women.

She returned to the booth. Dezz dumped his sixth sugar packet into his iced tea, watching a mound of sweetness filter down past the cubes into the tea. She considered him: the high cheekbones, the dirty-blond hair, the ears that protruded slightly, and instead of being afraid of him she pitied him. For just one bent moment. Then she remembered the deputy and the woman on the highway, him shooting at Evan, and disgust filled her heart. She could shoot him, right here in the booth. His hands were nowhere near his gun.

But instead she sat down. He had ordered iced tea for her as well.

‘Sometimes,’ he said, not looking at her, ‘I really hate you and then I don’t.’

‘I know.’ She sipped at her tea.

‘Do you love Evan?’ He asked this in a soft, almost childish whisper, as though he’d spent his day’s ration of bravado and bluster.

There was only one answer she could give him. ‘No. Of course not.’

‘Would you tell me if you did?’

‘No. But I don’t love him.’

‘Love is hard.’ Dezz poked his straw into his sugar hill, stirred it down to nothing. ‘I love Jargo and look how he talks to me.’

‘That deputy. That poor woman. Dezz, you understand why it was a terrible mistake. How you put us at further risk.’ She had to treat it like a tactical error, not a human tragedy, because she was not sure that his unfinished jigsaw of a brain understood sadness and loss.

‘Yeah. I know.’ He crumbled a tostada, flicking the fragments across the table, stuck his finger in the salsa, licked it clean. The waitress came and took their orders. Dezz wanted tres leches cake first, but Carrie said no, dessert after dinner, and he didn’t argue.

Her hate for him did not ease but she wondered what chance he had ever had, with Jargo as a father. ‘Where did you go to school, Dezz?’

He looked at her in surprise, unaccustomed to a personal question. She realized he never regularly spoke to anyone other than Jargo and Galadriel. He had no friends. ‘Nowhere. Everywhere. He sent me to school in Florida for a while. I liked Florida. Then New York, and I didn’t even know if he was alive or dead for three years, then California for two years. Then I was Trevor Rogers. Trevor, isn’t that a name that suits me? Other times he didn’t bother with school. I helped him.’

‘He taught you to shoot and strangle and steal.’ She kept her voice lower than the Tejano music drifting from the speakers, than the laughter from the tables.

‘Sure. I didn’t like school, anyway. Too much reading. I liked sports, though.’

She tried to imagine Dezz playing baseball without taking a bat to the opposing pitcher. Or three-on-three basketball, occupying the court with boys whose fathers did not teach them how to disarm an alarm system or slice open a jugular. ‘You don’t do this often, do you? Just sit and eat with another human being.’

‘I eat with Jargo.’

‘You could call him Dad.’

He sucked a long draw on his sugar-clouded tea. ‘He doesn’t like it. I only do it to annoy him.’

She remembered her own father, her clear and unabated love for him. She watched Dezz swirl the tea in his mouth, look up at her, then look down back to his drink in a mix of contempt and shyness. She saw, with aching clarity, that he believed she was probably the only woman he could talk to, that he could hope for.

‘I’m still mad at you,’ he said to his tea glass.

Their plates arrived. Dezz forked a chunk of beef enchilada, looped a long string of cheese around his fork, and broke the thread with a flourish. He tested out a smile. It chilled her and sickened her all at once. ‘But I’ll get over it.’

‘I know you will,’ she said.

The apartment was quiet and dark. Jargo had rented the two adjoining apartments as well to ensure privacy. He set a small digital voice recorder on the coffee table, between the knives.

‘No objections to being recorded, do you, Mr. Gabriel? I don’t want to trample on your constitutional rights. Not the way you did on other people’s in years gone by.’

‘Fuck you.’ Gabriel’s voice was barely a creak, faded from blood loss, pain, and exhaustion. ‘Don’t you talk to me about what’s moral or decent.’

‘You hunted me for a long time. But your license got revoked.’ Jargo selected a small knife and a long blade geared for holiday duty. ‘This big beauty is designed to cut turkey. Rather appropriate.’

‘You’re nothing but a goddamned traitor.’

Jargo inspected the knife, ran its edge along his palm. ‘That line is awfully tired. Traitor-baiter. Baiting isn’t a very strong action. Catching is more impressive.’ He came closer to Gabriel. ‘Who are you working for these days? CIA or Donna Casher or someone else who wants to bring me down?’

Gabriel swallowed. Jargo held up the thin silver of the small blade, raised an eyebrow. ‘This one’s not for turkey. It’s for sausages.’

‘You’ll kill me regardless if I talk or not.’

‘My son didn’t leave me much of you to work with. But it’s your choice whether the end is fast or slow. I’m a humanitarian.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Not me. Your daughter. Or your granddaughters. She’s, let’s see, thirty-five, very rich husband, living in Dallas. I’ll send my son up to her showcase home. Dezz’ll fuck her, make rich hubby watch, tell them the reason their wonderful lives are being cruelly abbreviated is her dumbass father, then gut them both.’ He paused and smiled. ‘Then I’ll sell your granddaughters. I know a reclusive gentleman in Dubai. He’ll pay me twenty thou for them. More if I don’t break up the set.’

Gabriel’s eyes moistened in terror. ‘No. No.’

Jargo smiled. Everyone, but him, had a weakness, and that made him feel so much better and secure in his place in the world.

‘Then let’s chat like the professionals we are so your family gets to enjoy their storybook life. Who are you working for?’

Gabriel took two deep breaths before answering. ‘Donna Casher.’

‘What exactly were you supposed to do for her?’

‘Get fake IDs for them, get her and her kid to her husband. Then get all three of them out of the country. Protect them.’

‘And your payment was what?’ Jargo moved closer with the larger knife, brushed its edge along Gabriel’s jaw.

‘Hundred thousand dollars.’

Jargo lowered the knife. ‘Ah. A cash basis. Would you like a drink to kill the pain? Kentucky bourbon? Mexican tequila?’

‘Sure.’ Gabriel closed his eyes.

‘And I heard you were off the sauce. Shame to backpedal. Well, you can’t have a drink. Not yet. I don’t believe that hundred thou was the whole payment, Mr. Gabriel.’

‘Jesus, please, don’t hurt my girls. They don’t know anything.’

Jargo leaned close to Gabriel, studied Gabriel’s face as though admiring the deftness of a painting, and flicked out his hand. A shred of cheek parted from Gabriel’s face. Gabriel gritted his teeth but didn’t scream. Blood dripped from the cut, in a slow ooze.

‘I’m impressed.’ Jargo got up, went to the bar, opened a bottle of whiskey. Sniffed at it. ‘Glenfiddich. Mother’s milk, during your glory days at the Company. At least what I heard in the rare moments I gave you any thought.’ He tippled a stream onto Gabriel’s cut. ‘The drink you wanted. Enjoy.’

Gabriel moaned.

‘Now. An old spook like you, a hundred thousand won’t keep you in Fritos and Ripple.’ He produced a piece of paper from his jacket, held it up. ‘We traced this e-mail from you to Donna Casher. Decode it for me.’

The old training died hard. ‘I don’t know what it means.’

Jargo flicked the blade along the ear’s surface, scored blood from the lobe. Gabriel jerked. ‘With two bullets in you, your mouth ruined, this doesn’t hurt much. You want me to dig the bullets out for you?’ Jargo grinned.

Gabriel shuddered.

‘See, Donna Casher turning to an ex-CIA drunk is truly the million-dollar question. Why you? I believe you were willing to take a bigger chance. For more than money. Tell me. For your family’s sake.’ Jargo leaned down, whispered into the man’s devastated ear. ‘Buy their safety.’

Gabriel’s chest heaved. He cried. Jargo restrained himself from cutting the man’s throat. He hated tears. They lessened a person so.

Gabriel found his breath. ‘The message meant she was ready to run.’

‘Thank you,’ Jargo said. ‘Running with what?’

‘Donna had a list.’

Confirmation. ‘A list.’

‘Of a group of people. Inside the CIA… running illegal, unauthorized operations. Hiring out assassination and espionage work to a freelance group of spies she called the Deeps. She had your CIA clients’ names, she had account information on how they had paid for your services. Like I always suspected.’

‘And never proved,’ Jargo said. ‘Describe the data, please.’

‘This freelance group, the Deeps, she said they had clients inside the CIA. Inside the Pentagon. Inside the FBI. Inside MI5 and MI6 in England. Inside every intelligence agency in the world. Inside the Fortune 500. Inside governments, all high-ranking people. Any time someone needs a dirty job, forever off the books… they come to you.’

‘They do,’ Jargo said. ‘You can see why my clients wouldn’t appreciate you taking their names in vain.’ He brought the knife closer to Gabriel’s throat. ‘Did Mitchell Casher know about your arrangement to be his wife’s bodyguard?’

‘She said he didn’t know about her having this client list, or her wanting to run. He was on an assignment for the Deeps – for you – and she said we would meet him in Florida in three days. That was his reentry point after his assignment overseas. She wanted me with her when she talked to him. To convince Mitchell they had no choice but to run. I was to pose as a CIA liaison, tell him they were getting immunity and new identities in exchange for the data. Then they’d run, the whole family, together.’

‘Donna made this a fait accompli.’

‘She didn’t want to give her husband a choice. She was burning their every bridge.’

‘Where was she running to?’

‘I just had to get the Cashers safely to Florida. They would run from there. Anywhere. I don’t know. Didn’t Donna tell you this before you killed her?’

‘Dezz killed her. In a rage. Because she would not speak. She was stronger than you. And she had better training.’ He wiped blood off the knife. ‘And so she summoned Evan to Austin.’

‘Donna planned to explain to him they had to run – tell him the entire truth. That she worked for your network, she wanted you brought down, that she would give me the data to bring down every one of your clients. Then we were driving to Florida. She wanted to avoid airports.’

‘Lucky for him you arrived.’ Jargo brought his face close to Gabriel’s. ‘This client list and some related files were on Evan’s computer. We saw it. We erased it. You’re telling me he didn’t know he had the files?’

‘I don’t know if he knew or not. I’m telling you what his mother knew. He… he doesn’t seem to know much.’

‘Does he know or not?’

‘I don’t… think so. He’s dumb as a stump.’

‘No, he’s not dumb.’ Jargo ran the tip of the blade along Gabriel’s chin. ‘I don’t believe you. Donna cleaned the files off her computer. She sent a backup to Evan’s computer. But she would need the files to convince Evan of the need for them to vanish. You don’t simply just go and run away from your life. So Evan must have seen the files. And taken the precaution of making a copy and hiding it.’

‘He doesn’t know.’

Jargo jabbed the knife into the bullet wound in Gabriel’s shoulder, and Gabriel’s eyes bugged, the veins popped on his neck. Jargo clamped a hand over Gabriel’s mouth, twisted the knife, let the scream run its course under his fingers, removed the knife, flicked away the blood.

‘Are you sure?’

‘He knows,’ Gabriel gasped. ‘He knows. I told him. Please. He knows your name. He knows his mother worked for you.’

‘He fought you.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Beat you.’

‘He’s thirty years younger than me.’

‘Given your reversal of fortune,’ Jargo said, ‘I think you’d like for Evan to bring me down.’

Gabriel met Jargo’s stare. ‘You won’t live forever.’

‘True. Where were you supposed to meet Mitchell in Florida?’

‘Donna knew the location, I didn’t. He wasn’t expecting her. She was intercepting him on his way home.’

‘Where will Evan run? To the CIA?’

‘I warned him off the CIA. I didn’t want…’

Jargo stood. ‘Ego, ego, ego. You wanted the files for yourself. To bring me down. Humiliate the CIA. It would ruin them, you know. Revenge. See where it’s gotten you?’

‘I’ve kept my promise.’

‘Tell me. Do you often respond to any crank who contacts you to help you in your vendetta against the CIA? She must have offered you proof of her credentials. A taste for what was to come.’

Gabriel looked into Jargo’s face and said, ‘Smithson.’ Smiled as Jargo went pale. ‘I’ve told you everything I know.’

Jargo struggled to keep his emotions from surfacing on his face. My God, how much had Donna told this man? Jargo pretended as if the name Smithson meant nothing to him. ‘Evan left a large amount of cash behind in your son-in-law’s Suburban. But no IDs. Presumably you didn’t plan on the Cashers flying out of Florida under their own names. I need to know the identities on the documents you created for Evan.’

Gabriel closed his eyes. As though steeling himself for the answer.

Jargo sipped at the whiskey, leaned over close to Gabriel, and spat whiskey onto Gabriel’s facial gash.

Gabriel spat back.

Jargo wiped the string of saliva from his cheek with the back of his hand. ‘You’ll give me every name Evan’s got documentation for. And then we’ll go-’

Nowhere. Gabriel whipped his head downward and to the right. Jargo still held the long silver blade of the knife in his hand, and Gabriel pounded his throat onto the point with one breathless blow.

‘No!’ Jargo jerked away, letting go of the knife. It wedged in Gabriel’s neck. Gabriel collapsed to the floor, eyes clenched shut, and then his breath and his piss and his life unfolded out of him.

Jargo slid the knife free. He tested for a pulse; gone.

‘You can’t know. You can’t know.’ In a fury, he started kicking the body. The face. The jaw. Bone and teeth snapped under his heel. Blood splattered across the calfskin. His leg started to get tired, his pants were ruined, and the rage drained out of him and he collapsed to the soiled carpet. Smithson. How much had Donna told Gabriel or told her son?

‘Did you lie to me?’ Jargo asked Gabriel’s body. ‘Do you know our names?’ He couldn’t risk it. Not at all. He had to assume the worst. Evan knew.

He could never let his clients know they were in danger. That would start a panic. It would destroy his business, his credibility. His clients could never, ever know such a list existed. He had to bring Evan down now.

He cleaned the blood from the knife and called Carrie’s cell phone. ‘Get back here. We’re leaving for Houston. Immediately.’

No debate now. No discussion. Evan Casher was a dead man, and Jargo knew he had just the perfect bait to grace a trap.