A World Without Secrets (42 page)

"It had nothing to do with any case I was working on for the FBI. I was only there for about an hour."

"What was your question?"

"I asked him if he knew of any material such as Nitinol that didn't require the application of high heat to return to its original shape."

"Nitinol?"

"It's a paramagnetic alloy of nickel and titanium. If its shape has been altered after manufacture, the application of heat makes it metamorphose to its original shape. I was wondering if a manufactured weapon could be reshaped into a harmless device to get past security screening equipment, then become a weapon again using low heat or no heat." I'd worked out an excuse for my visit to Morris as rebuttal for his claim that I showed him the gizmo should he ever tell anyone about it, but I never expected to use it as a murder defense.

"And this Nitinol is common?"

"It's just a nickel and titanium alloy. Its unique properties were discovered way back in 1959, and you can find it in a number of common products today. Its super elasticity and other properties make it ideal for certain products such as springs, wire, tubing, and foil. I didn’t think Nitinol itself would be useful in the way I envisioned, so I wanted to know if some other product had been developed that would. I thought that on an airplane, someone could heat the alloy using one of the microwave ovens and one of those special oven bags that hold in heat. I was curious if Morris might know something."

"Why didn't you simply call him?"

"Morris is— was— kind of a strange duck. If you weren't standing right in front of him, he sort of ignored you."

"And it had absolutely nothing to do with any FBI investigation?"

"Nothing whatsoever."

"And you have no idea who might be responsible for his death?"

"No idea at all, sir. I hadn't heard anything from him following that visit. I hope my question wasn't responsible. I hope he didn't query someone already working on the idea— someone who felt they needed to protect the secrecy of their project. Or perhaps it had something to do with his research work at the lab. Perhaps he discovered something and tried to sell it to an outside party."

"Would he have done that?"

"I don't know. I'm just speculating here. I thought that's what you wanted from me."

"All I want is facts."

"The facts are that I have no idea who killed him, or why. At least not yet."

Sobert frowned like Snow, but I was sure it wasn't an imitation. "Keep your nose out of it. It's strictly a Jersey homicide case at this time."

"Yes, sir."

"Okay, James, that's all."

"Yes, sir," I said as I stood up. Osborne and Snow followed me out of the office.

"Were you serious in there?" Osborne asked. "There's a metal that can be reshaped and then change back when heat is applied?"

"Yeah. Look it up on the internet. It's not a secret. It's been around for fifty years."

"I think our job is about to get harder. Suppose someone shapes it into a firearm, then heats it up after a murder. Or even a knife that becomes a paperweight or something. There will be no weapon to find."

"Yeah, that's a variation on the idea I had, but it could be employed if research on a material with similar properties has reached that point. Your point about the knife is a good one, but if it was reshaped into a gun after manufacture, you'd probably only be able to fire it once. The hot gases from the cartridge would probably distort the barrel enough to make a second shot impossible. And I read that there are metal fatigue issues from the reshaping as well, which is why I wondered if there wasn't a more suitable material. Well, you guys brought me down here, you gonna take me home?"

"Come on, Sherlock," Osborne said, as he turned and led the way out.

It had been a long day. The almost nine hours on a plane had really taken the wind out of my sails, and then learning that Morris was dead had filled me with feelings of dread. I had warned him not to tell anyone, but he apparently hadn't listened. I wondered who he had contacted and what he had told them.

When also considering the complete loss of what had been a great love life until recently, it was a wonder I wasn't drowning my sorrows in a bottle somewhere as I bored a bartender with the problems I could talk about. With luck, Billy hadn't emptied my fridge while I was gone. I could really use a couple of ice cold beers.

I knew that despite how tired I felt, the first thing I had to do was sweep my apartment for electronic bugs, then use the gizmo to find out who had killed Morris and why. Sobert had told me stay out of it, but I couldn't. I suspected I might know why it happened, but I hoped I was wrong. Perhaps he had simply borrowed money from the wrong people or gotten in over his head with gambling debt. I remembered how excited he'd gotten when he'd seen the gizmo, and his first inclination had been to mortgage his house and gamble the money in the stock market.

I felt exhausted as I climbed the stairs to my third-floor flat, dragging the first of my two suitcases behind me, that I could barely lift my feet. And I still had to return to the first floor to retrieve the suitcase I'd left in the hallway down there. I promised myself that my next apartment was going to have an elevator. Perhaps I would even have a private elevator. Kathy and I had viewed an apartment with a private elevator, although it had been way out of my price range. But if I kept solving major art thefts, I could see myself having a place like that one day. I understood Kathy's concerns for my safety, but I wasn't going to roll back the clock on my life. I would never give up the gizmo while I lived.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I stepped onto the third floor and pulled my suitcase up to join me, but then I tripped on a ripple in the cheap carpet runner outside my door because I didn't lift my foot enough. I stumbled forward, dropping my suitcase as I extended my arm in order to use the wall outside my apartment to stop my forward movement and regain my balance. The damn light bulb in the hall was out again, and I could barely see. The light coming up from the floor below was all the illumination I had so it took me three tries to get my key into the lock, but I finally succeeded in opening the door.

It was pitch black in my apartment, so I slid my hand around on the wall until I located the switch. As I raised the toggle nub, two things happened— the hallway and kitchen illuminated normally and a gun barrel was suddenly jammed up under my chin. It woke me up faster than having an ammonia carbonate capsule shoved up my nose. I'm tall, but the guy holding the gun was taller— by at least three inches— and he was built like a pro football linebacker.

"About time you got home, James," he said. "Your flight landed hours ago. Where you been? We don't like being kept waiting. It makes us angry." He grabbed the front of my jacket and pulled me into my apartment, then slammed me against the hallway wall just inside the door. With the gun in his right hand still jammed up under my chin, he reached over and closed the open door. "Mr. Delcona has been on our ass to find you for weeks. Hands up against the wall, over your head," he said as he spun me around and started frisking me. He found my service weapon under my left armpit immediately and pulled it out, then either jammed it into his waistband or slid it into his pocket because a couple of seconds later he continued the pat down. He found my ID wallet in the inside breast pocket of my jacket next and stowed that somewhere after looking at my badge. I could see with my peripheral vision that he hadn't expressed any surprise, so these guys had known in advance that I was FBI. He found my cell phone next and stored that, then came back for more. As he continued searching me, he felt something in my right jacket pocket and reached in. His large mitt came out with the almost new matchbox I had in there.

"This look like what we're after?" King Kong said excitedly to a weight-challenged man standing in the kitchen a few feet away.

I noticed the other man was holding a gun pointed towards the sink area, but the wall prevented me from seeing who it was aimed at. I prayed it wasn't Kathy.

"Yeah, that looks like what the boss described. Open it up."

The big guy managed to hold the matchbox between his thumb and three end fingers, then slid the box out with his index finger. "There's a piece of paper in there."

"That's it, Diz, that's it" his pudgy associate said excitedly. "Open the paper up."

The man I now knew as Diz pulled the gun away from my neck so he could use both hands. He extracted the paper and unfolded it to its full eight-point-five by eleven inch size. "It's blank."

"That's gotta be it," the pudgy guy said. "Our search is over."

"Turn it on," Diz said to me as he held out the paper and again jammed the pistol against my neck.

"Turn what on?" I asked dumbly.

"The paper. Turn it on."

"It's a piece of paper, not a radio. You can't turn it on."

Without warning, Diz punched me in my left kidney. It felt like he'd hit me with enough force to push it out of my body and into the hallway. As I collapsed against the wall, he put his head close to mine and said, "We know what it is, James. Calloway told Mr. Delcona all about it before I offed that geek. I kinda thought he was just a nutcase, but the boss said his story sounded legit." He spun me around to face him and jammed the gun into my stomach. "Now turn it on or you're going for a long underwater swim in a quiet New Jersey swamp."

I knew the chances were pretty good that an unmarked grave in a Jersey swamp was the intended destination regardless of what I did. Diz had already confessed to murder. He wouldn't have done that if he expected me to live. With the gun jammed into my gut and him practically crushing me against the wall, there wasn't much I could do, even if I thought I might have a chance in a one-on-one fight. The attention of both men seemed to be entirely on the open sheet of paper Diz was holding when a blur suddenly hit Pudgy from the side and knocked him up and onto the kitchen table, sending the small radio there, along with the sugar bowl and salt and pepper shakers, crashing to the floor. The blur was my buddy Billy. After pile-driving into Pudgy, he plowed into Diz while grabbing for the paper Diz was holding up to my face. Diz had been pushed into a position that had him partially blocking the door out of the apartment, so the only route open to Billy was the living room or possibly the bathroom, the door of which was directly across from the apartment entrance.

"What the hell?" Diz said as the bathroom door slammed closed and Pudgy rolled off the table and pancaked onto the floor with a crash and a loud groan.

I'd never seen Billy move that fast on the football field, but I wasn't complaining. His attack had taken the two gunmen completely by surprise. Unfortunately, there was no way out of the small bathroom where he had sought refuge. The small five by eight foot room didn't even have a window, and the interior-style door wouldn't stop two armed men for long. The door was a mid-century style and probably a little stronger than the cheap hollow-core type used these days, but Diz might be able to smash it into kindling in short order.

"Come out of there, now!" Diz screamed at the door. He tried to kick it in, but the hallway was too narrow to get a real good angle, and to my surprise the door held for the moment. "You got two seconds to come out here before I open fire."

I heard the sound of the toilet flushing as Pudgy staggered to his feet and joined Diz at the door just as Diz raised his gun and began firing at the door handle. Pudgy, probably pissed at being blindsided, decided to add his own firepower and began shooting wildly at the door. The noise in the narrow hallway was deafening.

For the moment, both men were facing away from me. Although I was practically standing in their back pockets, they seemed to have totally forgotten me for the moment. I knew that wouldn't last long, but I might have a chance— perhaps my only chance. I dropped my arms as I raised my right leg, pulling my Glock 27 out of the ankle holster. Diz had been so excited about finding the matchbox that he hadn't finished patting me down.

When I was small, I was taught to always be a sportsman and never take unfair advantage of an opponent, but this wasn't a sport and I knew these guys would kill me in an instant if I hesitated to do what had to be done. I was so close that the material of their clothing began smoking when I fired my forty caliber twice into Diz's back, and then twice into Pudgy's. I had fired so quickly there was only the briefest of lulls in the noise as I moved the gun from one to the other.

Both men collapsed against the bathroom door and slid down to their knees. I had shot at the center of their torso, the area that was always the 'X' ring on the targets at the range, but they weren't out of the game yet. Diz began struggling to turn around and bring his gun to bear on me, so I put a round into the side of his head. Part of his skull blew off, covering the door in front of him with blood and brain. His gun arm sagged toward the floor first, and then the rest of him sagged as well. I knew he wasn't going to be getting up again, ever. But Pudgy was still struggling to get turned around, his gun held firmly in his right hand. I couldn't afford to play around with him, so I sent him to join his pal Diz on the slide into hell. At that moment I wasn't concerned in the slightest with what the FBI or New York City's finest might say about my dispatching two killers who were down but not out.

I stopped to get my breath— then remembered Billy. I pulled the grisly remains of Diz and Pudgy away from the bathroom door and let them flop onto the floor at the entrance to the living room, then pounded on the door.

"Billy, it's Colt. You okay?" When Billy didn't respond I said, a little more quietly, "The two gunmen are dead, Billy. Answer me, pal."

I heard the sound of the lock being turned. The door was riddled with holes around the handle, but apparently neither gunman had hit the locking mechanism. Then the knob turned and the door opened slightly.

"Colt?"

"Yeah, Billy."

"You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm okay, Billy. You okay?"

"Uh, no. I think I caught a couple of rounds."