Shakedown

Chapter Seventeen

There was no doubt that Wendy was her mother’s daughter. They shared the same silky, honey-colored hair, strong chin, intoxicating green eyes, and full-face smile.

A psychologist at the drug treatment facility said that Wendy felt guilty for having stayed after school the day Kevin was taken, believing she could have saved him had she been there. The shrink said that she compounded her guilt by blaming herself for the disintegration of our marriage, punishing herself further by making choices she knew would turn out poorly. It was the only explanation that could make us feel worse and it did.

Through it all, she still loved us. That counted for a lot, even when she accused me of not doing enough to help her mother, even after we tried counseling, rehab, and AA. Some things, I once told her, can’t be fixed, and her mother had decided that she was one of them. “Not good enough,” Wendy had said. “You love her, you fix her, like you fixed me.” I did but I couldn’t, telling Wendy she fixed herself. Then I didn’t love Joy anymore and I stopped trying. Two more things I regretted but couldn’t change.

Wendy met Colby Hudson last December at a holiday party for agents, staff, and their families, telling me later that she thought he was cute and edgy.

“Don’t date an agent,” I told her. “Especially that one.”

“Why not and why not him?”

“Because you might fall in love with him, decide to get married, and end up spending the rest of your life unpacking your suitcase and hoping he comes home vertical and sober. That’s a tough way to live, especially for someone with your history. A lot of agents and their spouses can’t hack it. But Colby is the kind of guy who ups the ante. If he’s edgy, it’s because he lives on the edge. You don’t want to be holding on when he falls off, and I’ve seen enough guys like him to know that sooner or later that’s where he’s headed.”

“I’m not you and I’m not Mom. I don’t give up. If he falls, I’ll catch him.”

“And who will catch you?”

“You,” she said with the wide-eyed smile that never failed to open my heart.

Dinner was at Fortune Wok, a Chinese restaurant in a strip center at 143rd and Metcalf in Overland Park. Five years earlier, the owners would have been serving wontons in the middle of a cow pasture. Now they were stoking the appetite of the latest wave of suburban migration for everything wok roasted.

There were too many cities on both sides of the state line for me to keep up. There were forty-plus burgs in five counties, each with a budget and a city council dedicated to high growth, low crime, and good times. Overland Park was one of the biggest, cramming farmland down its throat and regurgitating rooftops so fast that it wouldn’t be long until Denver was just down the street.

Lions Gate, the subdivision where Colby was house hunting, bordered the strip center. I was early, so I drove through its manicured streets, past the clubhouse and the villas on the golf course. I remembered a friend who decided to sell his house and downsize to a villa only to discover that a villa was half the house for twice the money. The houses in Lions Gate were bigger and more expensive than the villas, proving that size mattered but not as much as money. There were no Chevy Impalas in anybody’s driveway.

I circled back to the restaurant, parked, and stopped short of the entrance when I saw Colby sitting in a Lexus two cars down from mine. I tapped on the passenger-side window and let myself in. He was on his cell phone.

“It’s nothing, man. I just needed some air. Call you later,” he said to whomever he was talking to,?ipping the phone shut. “Don’t you knock?” he asked without looking at me.

“I tapped.”

“Next time, knock and wait. The people I talk to don’t want anyone listening. They play close attention to everything, including the background noise. They know I’m in my car, they hear the door open, and then they start asking a shitload of questions about who opened the door, who got in the car; who got out of the car, how come I let someone get in the car with me while I’m on the phone with them. Crazy shit like that.”

“You should get one of those Do Not Disturb signs the hotels use and hang it on your rearview mirror. Maybe get a bumper sticker that says ‘Undercover FBI Agent driving car he can’t afford.’ “

Colby looked at me and grinned, running his hand across his freshly shaved chin. He’d washed the red out of his eyes with sleep or Visine and was wearing crisp jeans and a black, short-sleeved polo. With his hair brushed back, he was indistinguishable from the thousands of other doctors, lawyers, and accountants who were living large.

“You remember that case we had last spring, the one where the stockbroker husband made a career move to peddling dope and the wife called us and turned him in after she caught him cheating on her?”

“Yeah. Thomas and Jill Rice. He went away and the wife got an emergency divorce.”

“And,” Colby said, laughing and shaking his head, “the wife called the office a few weeks ago and I took the call. Said how much she appreciated that we got rid of her husband for her. Then she says that she got his Lexus in the divorce settlement and did I know anyone at the Bureau who’d be interested in it, that it was her way of showing her gratitude. I told her I’d be interested but I couldn’t afford it. So she says, ‘you don’t know my price.’ “

“She make you a good deal?”

“A helluva deal. Says she doesn’t care about the money. She just wants her ex to know that she sold his car to an FBI agent for next to nothing.”

“Love is a beautiful thing.”

“It’s better looking than you think. I go over to her house to pick up the car and she says her ex was so pissed off that I was buying the car that she’s decided to do the same thing with her house, really make the poor bastard suffer. Says she’s leaving town and wants that to be her going-away present to him. So I figure, what the hell. Even with what’s she’s asking, it’ll stretch me, but I figure I can?ip it, sell it to someone else, and make a bundle. I just came from her house. It’s a done deal.”

“Sounds like you can’t lose.”

He brushed the soft leather seat with the palm of his hand. “Like you said. Love is a beautiful thing.” He studied me, losing the grin. “You doing okay, Jack?”

“Yeah. Swell. I’m going to see a doctor at KU Hospital. He’ll adjust my vertical and horizontal holds and I’ll be good as new. How’s it going with the Marcellus Pearson case?”

Colby shrugged, looked away. “The usual grind. Run the forensics, run the family, friends, and neighbors. Line up the known bad guys and listen to their bullshit alibis. Hope somebody snitches so we can all declare victory and go home.”

Colby had told me more than once that he thought Ben Yates was a tightass and that Troy was so straight you could stick him through a keyhole. Ammara would struggle with breaking the rules. Colby would look for the chance. I decided to push him, make him decide whether to talk to me about the case.

“Did we pick up Marcellus’s mother?”

“Yeah.”

“Get anything from her?”

“Just a lot of crying about her baby.”

“Who’s Troy looking at? Javy Ordonez? Bodie Grant? Is he still obsessing about a leak from our squad?”

Colby put his hands on the steering wheel, sliding them slowly around its circumference and looking at the instrument panel like it was the first time he’d seen it. His arms tensed, as if he’d rather be fighting the wheel around a hairpin curve than answer my questions. A horn blared behind us, making both of us jump. Colby glanced in his rearview mirror, a smile creasing his face. I turned around to see Wendy waving from her car. Colby waved back, opening his door. I reached for his arm. He pulled away.

“Look, Jack. I can’t talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“Orders. Ben Yates put the lid on it. Troy has him shitting in his pants that there might be a leak, that someone at the Bureau might be involved.”

“I’m not exactly an outsider.”

“You are now. People think you cracked up. No one expects you to come back.”

“Do I look crazy to you?”

My words came out in a staccato rhythm, tripping over another round of tremors.

“Face it, Jack. You’re not right. Stay out of the case before you make things worse for everyone.”