The Last Family

8

Paul had spent the following day meeting with members of the DEA and poring over the files of agents whom T.C.’s personnel manager had deemed fit for the team and available. He had finally narrowed it to ten possibles. That evening he had dined at La Cote d’Or again, this time with the owner of the restaurant. They had sat and sampled wines for several hours, and a taxi had delivered a rubber-legged Paul to the Willard at one A.M. Paul staggered to the elevator, maneuvering among the ghosts of U. S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Abe Lincoln, and George Armstrong Custer, all of whom had walked through this same lobby. Paul opened his door and dropped his clothes, like a trail of bread crumbs, as he meandered to the bedroom and fell headlong toward the mattress, asleep almost before he hit the bed.

Paul awoke certain that he was not alone in the suite’s master bedroom. There was the faint scent of cologne in the air, a difference in the patterns of air flow. Just enough that a man who had slept alone, and in the absence of commercial fragrances, for several years would pick it up. Just enough for an alarm as he fought toward consciousness. He didn’t move but lay still and let his eye take in the fact that the door was open and he had closed it before he went to sleep. Then he heard the breathing of someone beside the bed, and he was trying to decide how to move when the presence sat down in the armchair by the window.

“You’re awake,” the unfamiliar voice said. “If I planned to harm you, you’d surely be in the hereafter by now.”

The man in the chair twisted the knob on the floor lamp and was illuminated against the dark walls.

Paul rolled over and felt on the table for his eye patch. He located it and put it over the right socket as he sat up. “Who the hell are you?”

The man seated in the chair was tiny, no larger than a ten-year-old child with fifty extra pounds, and skin the pallor of the recently deceased. He had a round, bald head, and his features were remarkable only for their blandness. The eyebrows were light hints of hair above the washed-out blue eyes. He wore heavy framed glasses with lenses that seemed to suggest the body was being piloted by a far smaller being. The face, except where the glasses compressed, was almost perfectly round, and the mouth was a thin line between pink, fleshy lips. He was dressed in a green V-neck sweater and bright-blue pants. He wore twin golf gloves over remarkably small, round hands. There was a battered and old-fashioned briefcase beside him on the floor. The shoes were canvas Converse high-tops that were in no danger of touching the floor.

“Who are you?” Paul demanded. “How did you get in here?”

“My name is Tod Peoples. I picked the lock on the outside door.”

“You picked the electronic lock?”

“Well, no, actually I had a pass key. But I can pick locks.”

“Are you armed?”

“No, but I certainly could be if I chose,” he countered. He locked his small hands to the arms of the chair. “My man outside is.”

Paul couldn’t tell if the dwarf was kidding or not.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Peoples?” Paul asked.

“I’m here to help you.”

“Not to help me sleep.”

“No, you were sleeping fine on your own. Call me Tod.” He crossed his ankles and let his legs swing a few times.

Paul lit a cigarette. “Was I snoring?”

“Cigarettes,” Tod said, like a disapproving teacher.

“They’ll stunt my growth?”

“They’ll kill you. Ever heard of free radicals?”

“Stop, you’ll scare me. Doesn’t anyone worry about themselves anymore?” Paul inhaled and expelled a plume of smoke. Then he crushed out the cigarette. “Lighten up, Tod Peoples, it’s my room, remember? You’re one sight to wake up to.”

Tod frowned. “I’m not sensitive about my height or my appearance. I am aware of what I look like.”

“That’s good. I figure my appearance, much like my breath, is other people’s problem.”

The little man smiled for the first time. “Yes, we share something there. That’s true, isn’t it? I mean, we look fine to ourselves. Amazing how often people are shocked that a man with my power isn’t a ringer for Clark Cable or Cary Grant.”

“So what is it you plan to do for me?”

“I am a friend of friends of yours.”

“What kind of friend are you, Tod?”

“The best kind of all. The kind with information and other friends who possess talents you will need. I was made to understand that you are having trouble finding the right personnel for the job.”

“I can get help just fine. Information on whom?”

“Oh, on everyone. But I think you are interested in one man in particular.”

“And that would be?”

“Martin Fletcher.”

“CIA, right?”

“Me? Goodness no. Let’s say my role is multilateral data collection and interpretation, and dissemination of information. My little group coordinates that information with those who need or deserve it. I might take information to the very top, or I might give a tidbit to some sheriff in a county. Depends. But I have access to information that rarely makes the computers.”

“Pentagon?”

“Let’s not dwell on where I’m from. You can reach me through the DEA switchboard. Just ask for Special Agent Peoples.”

“DEA?”

“I am not DEA, never even been inside the offices, never been inside FBI’s headquarters, either. I meet very few people, Paul, and fewer still meet me.”

“I stand in awe.”

“Your calls will be patched to my office. Give your name to the person who answers and a number where you can be reached and for how long. If you can’t stay by the telephone, tell them it’s an emergency and they’ll find me. But don’t do that if you can help it, because they’ll call my mobile, and that is an unnecessary expense that the taxpayers will have to pick up.”

“You’re shitting me! They don’t make you pay for your mobile phone calls, do they?” Paul laughed.

Tod Peoples frowned. “Unnecessary records of the call. Just follow the instructions,” Tod said.

“That’s fine.” He was enjoying Tod Peoples. If the man meant any harm, he’d have already killed Paul or drugged him, and he figured Martin Fletcher was their mutual target.

Tod lifted the briefcase to his lap and opened the top. He took out a file several inches thick and held it out to Paul. Paul opened it and removed a stack of pictures. The first was of a child smiling into the camera. The front teeth were missing from his cocky grin.

“That’s my earliest picture of your Martin Fletcher. I will furnish you copies of whatever you require for your purposes.”

“I could use a set of slides for team briefing.”

“The pictures won’t actually do you much good. Martin’s had extensive surgery on his face, possibly even his body. He stayed at a plastic surgeon’s clinic in Madrid for five months, five years ago.”

“The surgeon has no after pictures?”

“The surgeon and his nurses are after pictures themselves. They were killed in an unfortunate accident involving a large amount of plastic explosive. Fuse was-”

“Remote radio trigger?”

Tod smiled. “A hands-on sort of guy. I understand that specific, and unnamed, elements of an organization want Martin turned into axle grease worse than you do. The three-letter wonder agencies of this country who might have any interest in Martin Fletcher will stay out of your way unless asked for help. If you need help, the FBI would be my personal choice.”

“You have access to CIA files?”

Tod giggled. “We control the influx of certain information. My people see everything that comes in. We decide who else gets access. Very complicated affair. Also totally nonpolitical. I’d rather confine this discussion to Mr. Fletcher. You only knew Martin a short time, while I have known him, or of him, for two decades. I know his strengths, his favorite foods, the beverages he drinks, his sexual tastes, and most important, what you don’t know-his only weakness.”

“Do you know why he’s killing the families?” Paul said as he flipped through the file.

“Yes, possibly.”

Paul looked up into Peoples’s smug face.

“Well? Are you going to tell me, or do you want me to guess?”

“His only weakness is his mother. He has seen her every year of his life, on or near his birthday, with one exception six years ago.”

“Not that. Why he’s killing the families.”

“You don’t know already? On some level it’s all about the unfortunate attraction of opposites, coupled with the sociopath’s inability to accept any blame for his own misfortune. Don’t you think it interesting that the perpetrator of a horror never forgives his victims? On another level he blames you directly for his troubles. You are his overall scapegoat.”

“Who broke him out of prison?” Paul wanted to see what this critter would allow. He might know more than Paul did.

There was no hesitation. “Two men in suits entered the prison using forged credentials. They were CIA-hired freelance, one brought in from Houston and the other from Seattle. Martin was far too valuable to be allowed to fall into a position where he might trade information for his freedom. The information he has might be classified as embarrassing and destructive to some powerful entities. They flew him south with a promise of life in paradise. Then they tried to kill him.”

“They planned to kill him?”

“They did, indeed. Oh, that’s right, you were in a coma when all of that happened. And it wasn’t a story that received wide circulation through channels you would have had access to, anyway. You haven’t kept up at all, have you?”

“You’ll tell me, though. Tell me what I missed.”

“Certainly. You should know, since it’s surely the main reason he’s back. Well, three young and brutally minded men met him and his wife and child at a small strip in the jungle of Guatemala. They should have sent ten times that many or killed him on the spot while he was unarmed. They struck at night and Martin dispatched them as you would expect. In the hoopla Martin’s wife, technically his girlfriend, Angela something…” He snapped his tiny fingers twice.

“Lopez.” Paul remembered Angela Lopez. She was the kind of woman you noticed and didn’t forget.

“Yes. Miss Lopez and their small child were killed. He blames you, and to some lesser degree your team members.”

“That’s crazy. I had nothing at all to do with it. I was in a coma, doesn’t he know that?”

“Well, Martin Fletcher is stomping-the-ground nuts, and guilty of untold horrors.” Tod Peoples nodded and interlocked his small fingers. “He’s also brilliant. The best example of what a twisted background and our finest brain-and-brawn trainers are capable of producing.”

Paul lit another cigarette. “A bull-goose nightmare.”

“A bull-goose nightmare you could have rid the world of.”

“I wasn’t authorized to order or condone murders. I thought the way I handled it was the right way.”

“But we all know there’s authorization and… there’s authorization.”

Tod Peoples reached over and pulled the cane to him. He ran his hands, as fragile looking as bird eggs, over the length of it and examined the handle.

“Some people seem to think you can take him. Not man on man, naturally. But the feeling is that you’re every bit his equal. Well, you were once, anyway. It is a friend’s opinion that you may not be able to take him due to mental and physical…”

“Shortcomings? I’ve thought about that.”

“I am prepared to offer you a team you can utilize, deploy as you see fit. I have files on all the professionals in the group. They will undoubtedly suit your needs.”

Tod lifted another folder from his valise and passed it to Paul. “These are the men I have chosen for you. If for any reason one of them is not to your liking… I can make substitutes.”

Paul looked at the sheets and photographs. “Rangers, SEALs, and freelance goons,” he said.

“No, sir. Not one goon in the crowd. Each of these pros is capable of taking orders in a team, thinking independently, and staying on task. They will not quit until Martin is stopped cold. They aren’t kids. The sort of people you need aren’t on the DEA payroll.”

Paul leafed through the personnel records. “I’ll think about it. Let you know.”

“Do! No skin off my teeth. There is one long, unbreakable string attached to your little expedition, though.”

“One string?”

“One I know of.”

“I’m listening.”

“A member of your team has been preselected. A young man by the name of Woodrow S. Poole.”

“One member. I see.” Paul started flipping through the file.

“He isn’t in there.”

“If I refuse?”

“You could refuse him, but I’m afraid that without him you’ll find the going much rougher. Red tape tends to ruin everything, and as interference goes, it’s almost impossible to see where it’s coming from.”

“One of yours?”

Tod Peoples shrugged in reply.

Paul crushed out his cigarette, locked his fingers behind his neck, and exhaled the smoke at Tod Peoples. “So, Mr. Peoples, tell me about this Woodrow Poole.”

“As nice a young man as you’ll meet.”

“Nice.”

“I like you, so I’m going to tell you something. There are others after Martin. There is a great deal more at stake than your family. A lot of ebbs and flows under the seemingly calm surface. Crisscrossing interests. And where there is a big interest in something, there is money invested. Investments have to be covered.”

“I see. Martin has friends. Ex-friends.”

“There’s something else I’m going to tell you, but you must never breathe a word of it to anyone.”

“Do I cross my heart and hope to die?”

“Precisely put, Mr. Masterson. Most precisely put.”