A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror (39 page)

“You two are in luck. Everybody wants this whole rat fuck to dissolve along with this joke of an election. They want no more blood, no more dirt, and no more chances for exposure. They see you two as dead meat if you stay in the country. A matter of a couple of days before the Feds scoop you up, and then the rest of your life spent staring at a concrete ceiling; that is, if you escape death row. But that’s a risk for us; that you... But, you’d never expose us, would you? Anyway, you’re leaving the country. As soon as I can get you out of here. There’ll be no messy little problems this way.” He crushed the cigarette into the ashtray and took one of the sandwiches. “You board a plane tonight out of Kennedy. The 11:45 for Quito, Ecuador. From there, you’re on a bus through the mud to Montalvo, where you hang out with the peasants and live on coffee and bananas. You pick up your passport and ticket at Kennedy along with twenty thousand in cash.”

Lou began to chuckle and he couldn’t stop. It came from down deep in his gut.
Ecuador. Come on. The clichés never end.

“But you never show your face in this country again,” Copeland said. “You drive to the airport in the Audi. You’ve got thirty minutes to get down to the car and still catch the flight. Change your clothes.

“Your wife will receive a typewritten letter in the mail informing her that you cut out with your lover. She’ll get a little check every month for the next year, postmarked from various cities around the country.

“I’m out of here,” Copeland said.

“Take it or leave it, right?” Lou demanded.

“You got it, pal.”

“What’s to keep me from coming back from fucking Ecuador?”

“You... you fucking phony. Who do you think you are anyway? You had a chance to scratch the whole thing right in the beginning. You could’ve gotten out way back there at the motel and you know it. But the deal looked too good. You could see all that green rolling in every month. And all you had to do was bang bang, in and out. Now if you’re smart, you’ll take the fucking hush money, and the broad, and lay low like a good boy. That’s all you got left. Take it and run.”

“Take it and run, huh? Take it and run,” Lou growled. “Well, Copeland, remember what I told you about cover, before this rat fuck began? I recorded a little story on videotape. Talked all about Bear Mountain Bridge, Patty Buck, and Bliss, before it ever got off the ground. Named names, dates. If I don’t show up in the next twenty-four hours, every TV station in the country...” Lou lurched up from the couch instinctively, but the booze was strong in his veins. He pitched forward to the floor.

Copeland stood, smiling. He walked slowly to where Lou lay face down; put his foot on his ear.

“You crummy sot. You have no cover. A videotape? It’s an allegation, fuck face. An allegation of what? Conspiracy to rig an election? It’s your word against... whoevers. Is that too much for that little military mind of yours? All you fucking Army turds think linear—like it takes fifty cannons and a thousand grunts to make anything happen in this world. Napoleon at Austerlitz, Hannibal crossing the Alps. Might makes right. Do this, get that. Well, it’s the other way around, asshole. It’s a little prick named Oswald with a cheesy rifle in Dallas. It’s Sirhan Sirhan, Squeaky Fromme, John Hinckley. A loose screw and brass balls. One spark and a can of napalm.”

He gave a mock salute, and slammed the door on the way out.

Chapter Forty-Four

Agent Riegelhaupt jerked the handle on the Elks Club swinging glass door and let Maggie and Kilmartin precede him. Mag led the way down the hall beside the public telephone and the bar and into the auditorium. The room was brimming, people gliding around and between the tables and inspecting the assembled antiques, near-antiques, and household junk that jammed every corner and spilled out into the aisles. She strode to the small table in the far corner to get her bidding card. Kilmartin and Riegelhaupt were right behind.

The elderly man at the registration table slid Mag’s card, number thirty-seven, under the address sheet she had filled out unconsciously, automatically, as she had dozens of times in the past. She turned and came face-to-face with her friend, Virg, her familiar rusty hair rising in mini-tornados all over the top of her head, her blazing blue eyes boring into Mag’s. As they slid by each other, Virg’s eyes instantly shifted away from Mag’s, and she blended into the crowd.

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to sit in the back when the auction gets going. I’ll need a chair to hold my coat. If you’re intending to sit there with me, you’d better do the same. The chairs’ll go quickly,” Mag said to Kilmartin.

“We’ll stand over to the side, Margaret,” Kilmartin said.

Mag slid the shoulders of her coat around the back of the folding chair in the far left corner of the seating area. Ignoring the two men, she began to maneuver through the crowd toward the front of the room. Looking up momentarily from a cut glass pitcher, she saw Virg disappear into the ladies’ room beside the stage. Mag turned away and opened the drawer of an old, cherry wood, jelly cupboard, inspecting it for signs of real, true human wear. Riegelhaupt was at her side; Kilmartin stood in the back.

“I’m going to the ladies’ room, officer,” she said. “You can come if you’d like.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but if you’re not back out here in three minutes, I’m coming in,” Riegelhaupt said.

Maggie walked quickly to the door and pushed it open. Inside, she turned to make sure the door was closed and that she was alone with Virg. She grabbed the slight woman’s shoulders, pushed her into one of the two stalls, and latched the door. Straddling the toilet, the hem of her dress pulled to her waist, Maggie plucked the videotape from the front of her panty hose.

“Virg, let me do all the talking. I have about two minutes. You are a brave, wonderful friend to do this for Lou and me. It is very dangerous. It is beyond anything I could convey to you in the time we have here. Take this tape home and look at it. It’s self-explanatory. It links to the Bear Mountain Bridge thing that’s in the news right now. Unfortunately, Lou’s right in the middle of it. It’s all very sinister and mean.”

Virg spontaneously hugged Mag, grasping the tape all the while.

“Maggie...”

“Shush,” Mag commanded. “Lou is in desperate trouble. I am too. You are our only hope. If I don’t contact you in the next twenty-four hours, it means I’m dead. In that case, take the tape to the media. You know how to do that better than I ever would. Splatter it all over the tube. Longer range, after I contact you, if I don’t get in touch within another thirty days, take the tape to William Severence. He’ll run with it, I’m sure. One more thing. In all of this, when the media talk to you, you must identify one man as somehow mixed up in this. His name is Ross Kilmartin. Remember, Ross Kilmartin of the FBI.”

Virg’s eyes were wild and searching, her mouth agape. Lines of apprehension and incredulity formed across her forehead.

“It’s not a joke, my dear Virg. I have to go now. If I have it right, it’s our one chance to live. Now, I’ll leave first. In five minutes, you come out. The man you see me with in the back of the room is Kilmartin. Remember the face, my dear friend. Goodbye.”

Mag hugged Virg hard, kissed her fiercely on the cheek, and left.

Chapter Forty-Five

“Who’s Squeaky Fromme?” Sydney was on the floor with Lou, picking lint from the carpet out of his hair.

He didn’t bother to answer. He got up sullenly and dropped heavily onto the couch. She bustled in and out of the room, collecting her belongings from all over the apartment, lipstick, jewelry, Kleenex, emery stick, Q-tips, comb, mirror, tweezers, all the tools she used to keep from going nuts waiting to find out what Copeland was going to do with her after dumping her here last night under Stanfield’s supervision.

“I thought we were both goners, “she said.

“Stanfield can’t do anything on his own.”

“Then why didn’t Copeland do it right here?”

“And mess up the rug?”

“Ecuador. Not so bad.”

“They’ve been reading too many Nazi novels.”

“It’s happening. We’re here.”

“‘Bogota’ I might’ve believed.”

“What’s wrong with Ecuador?”

“They just want to get me out of this room.”

“Us, you mean. I’m going.”

“You may be going, but it won’t be to Ecuador.”

“You know I couldn’t really do anything else.”

“Do I?”

“You should.”

“How do I know you’re not with them?”

“Because I’m not.”

“How do I know they aren’t thinking I’ll grab at the chance to go dancing with you? It’s a beautiful cliché.”

“We could just do as they say. Go with the money. Stay for a while. Fly off to Cancun or something. After a couple of months, you could make some kind of arrangements to get back here.”

“There is no fucking Ecuador. It’s been one implausibility after another, but Ecuador is not going to happen. Why would they flash a wad of money? Why would they piss away what they obviously wanted: me, dead?

“Us. They couldn’t watch us forever. The only way they’d find out that you’d, like, decamped would be if you went to the police with the story.”

“My head tells me you’re with them.”

“They dragged me out of the creek, and instead of putting a bullet in my brain, they pushed me into their car. I knew then that the only thing keeping me alive was my connection to you. I told them we’re lovers. They thought you’d do something stupid for me.”

“You saw me first at Grand Central. Tipped them off.”

“No. I tipped you off pointing at them. Anyway, they got what they wanted: the two of us.”

Lou got up from couch, went to the bar again. He chunked three or four ice cubes in the glass, and spilled it half-full with more Wild Turkey, the rest—water. He stole a glance at his watch. Ten p.m. Sydney had moved over to the stuffed chair.

The girl
had
to be with them. As long as she was next to him, they’d know where he was and what he was doing. They spun this fantasy about a ‘honeymoon’ in Ecuador just to get him out of the apartment. Why? They needed to off him somewhere that was in no way connected with them.

He was half numb, partly from lack of sleep, but mostly from the bourbon. Even with a fuzzy view, his mind was functioning. He steadied himself on the back of the sofa and tipped his glass again.

“I know you think I betrayed you, but I didn’t, Sydney said.

After they pulled me out of the creek, Copeland and Stanfield stuffed me in their car and left their guns with the van. The MPs stopped the car at a roadblock a mile or two from the pit. They kept us sitting there in the car while they questioned us outside one by one. They opened the trunk, everything. I was in total self-preservation mode at that point. I should have spilled everything right there, but I just couldn’t. I’m sorry.”

“So, three suspiciously wet and dirty people in a car say they’re out for a drive and the MPs buy it.”

“I guess they could’ve held us. They didn’t. What can I say?”

“Did they follow you?”

“No. They were fooling around all over the car, looking for stuff, is all, I guess.”

“And you told them nothing.”

“Nothing.”

“And you stuck with the goons, voluntarily. Amazing.”

“I was alive. If I’d said something to the MPs, it would’ve been all over for me. I didn’t want the end to come.”

“The MPs must’ve been talking to the FBI, or maybe they were the FBI.”

“There were lots of them. Another car came,” Sydney said.

“They let you go for a reason. Maybe to follow you.”

“You made a videotape? Good move,” she said.

“Not according to Copeland.”

“What does he know? A video like that, boomeranging around the country? They have to know it’s dynamite.”