Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (41 page)

“Hello?” she said, sounding soft and tentative.

“Hello?” I replied, a bit confused. “Were you calling me?”

“Is this Callie Webber?” she asked.

As I was saying yes, the female INS agent returned to the room, her face contrite. I asked the woman on the phone to hold for a moment.

“Uh, ma’am,” the lady in front of me said, much more subdued than before. “I apologize for the misunderstanding. You are certainly free to return to the main area until we’re ready to leave the island.”

I wondered what to make of her extreme shift in attitude.

“I don’t understand,” I said, covering the mouthpiece of the telephone. She lowered her voice and leaned toward me.

“You should’ve told me you were here by special request of the Attorney General of the United States,” she said. “None of this would’ve happened.”

The U.S. Attorney General himself? Unbelievable. And Tom had said he knew “someone important” in the Department of Justice! I grinned in spite of myself at the sheer audacity of it. This was so like him.

“If you’ll wait just another minute,” she said, “I’ll show you back out.”

“Okay.”

She stepped away to confer with someone while I returned my attention back to the phone.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “Yes, this is Callie. Who is this?”

“I’m Gordo Koski’s secretary,” she said. “I got your number from his address book.”

“Yes?”

“I just wanted to tell you that…to let you know what’s happened. He kept saying your name all the way to the hospital. He wanted me to call you.”

“The hospital?”

“Gordo got…Gordo’s been hurt. Real bad. The police think somebody roughed him up.”

I felt a surge of bile rise into my throat.

“What?”

“They found him in an alley in downtown Cleveland. Gosh, it was really awful. He’s all banged up and his jaw is broken. He’s in the operating room right now. They said it might be a while before they’re done.”

My own legs began wobbling beneath me, and I sat on the metal bench, steadying myself with one hand against the wall.

“What did Gordo say? What did he want you to tell me?”

“I think he was talking crazy. With his face all messed up, I could hardly understand his words.”

“What was it?” I pressed.

“He said to tell you he got the name of the broken donut?”

“You mean the donor broker?” I asked, heart pounding.

“Yeah, I think that was it. He was pretty sure. He said ‘Callie’s got to know, Callie’s got to know.’”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“He kept saying the name over and over. It sounded like…gosh, I can’t remember. Hold on a second. I wrote it down.”

I sat there and waited, my mind a blur, unable to think or feel anything other than numb. This was my fault. Gordo was in the hospital all because of me.

The secretary was taking forever. As I waited, I could still hear the translating that was going on across the hall.

“Do you know the whereabouts of the Tanigawa brothers at this time?” a male voice asked.

“
Tanigawa kyoudai ga ima donoatari ni iru ka shitte iruka
?” Litman asked.

“Hai.”

“Yes.”

“Where are they?”

“Yatsura wa doko ni irunda
?” Litman repeated.

“Kareraha wa moutaabouto de boruchimoa ni mukatte kita e hashitte imasu,”
was the reply. By my rough translation, I thought absurdly, that meant the Tanigawa brothers were on a speedboat, headed north to Baltimore.

“They’re riding in the back of a commercial truck, heading south toward Florida,” Litman said.

I sat up straight, my lungs suddenly devoid of air. I may not have been fluent in the language, but I knew what they had said, and “south” toward “Florida” in a “truck” was not it!

“Okay, here we go,” the girl said into the phone. “It’s Litman. That’s the name. The donor broker is Jeffrey Litman.”

I inhaled sharply, the hot sting of tears piercing my eyes.

It was Litman! Litman was the donor broker, the person who was working with Maureen Burnham to run tens of thousands of dollars through CNA.

Now, right here across the hall, Litman—the fellow everyone deferred to, the one everyone said was so by-the-book—was deliberately mistranslating the prisoners’ statements, giving the Tanigawas a chance to get away. My heart pounded. Though he had been feigning outrage at the leaks from inside the INS, it was Litman himself who had been the one responsible!

And even though he hadn’t been there to actually do it himself, it was also Litman who must’ve called the shots on what had been done to Gordo Koski—and probably Eddie Ray as well.

I needed help. I was on Litman’s territory now; I couldn’t go up to just anyone and report what I had learned. They were already suspicious of me, and they all respected and trusted him. What was I going to do? I didn’t know who to turn to or where to go.
Then I thought of Hank. Hank was the one person Tom had assured me I could trust.

Numbly, I thanked the secretary and told her that I would get back to her soon. I hung up the phone, but before I could do anything else, the INS agent who had brought me onto the boat now concluded her conversation and reappeared at my side.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “I can show you out now.”

I followed her until we were outside, out of earshot, and then I grabbed her elbow and spoke urgently.

“I need to speak with Hank Quinn immediately.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” the woman replied. “Hank is still…he’s still
under.
”

“For how much longer?”

“As soon as we separate the prisoners,” she said. “Any time now.”

“I’ll wait. But please tell him it’s extremely urgent.”

“Can I help you with something?”

“No,” I said, “I need to see Hank.”

The woman escorted me the rest of the way off of the boat, and I stood near the ramp, waiting for Hank to come ashore, wondering if I should take a chance and tell someone else what I knew. Not only was Litman bad, but the Tanigawa brothers were getting away—and I might have the information that would stop them!

I decided to wait exactly five more minutes and then tell someone else. At three and a half minutes, however, Hank came down the ramp with several other men as the boat started up and prepared to set sail.

“Hey, Callie, what’s up?” Hank said, looking tired and distracted.

I told Hank in no uncertain terms exactly what I had learned, and what I had overheard.

“Are you absolutely positive?” he asked, his brow deeply furrowed. Behind him, the boat eased away from the dock, letting out three short blasts of the horn as it went.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?”

“I didn’t know whom to trust,” I said. “I was waiting for you.”

He nodded.

“Come with me, then.”

Together, we half walked, half ran down the dock to another boat, a smaller, faster police boat. Barbara Hightower was at the wheel, and she nodded at Hank in recognition.

“Officer Hightower, we need to commandeer this boat,” Hank said. “Will you drive us?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, starting it up. “Which way?”

“North, as fast as you can.”

“Do we need to radio ahead?”

“Please,” he said. “We need units to stand by. Coast guard, too. Tell them we’ll radio back with coordinates as soon as we have them.”

Hank and I climbed into the boat as Barbara spoke into her microphone. I found a seat near the back, and Hank pulled out his cell phone, dialed, and spoke into it sharply.

“It’s Quinn,” he said. “Give me—”

“Oh, I don’t think you need to make that call.”

We looked up to see Agent Litman climbing into the boat, a gun pointed straight at Hank.

“Now hang up the phone, nice and easy,” Litman said. “That’s it. Toss it over.”

Hank held up both hands and promptly threw his phone overboard into the water. I stared at Litman, still amazed that this man who had pretended to be so good was, in the end, so truly evil. Looking away, I searched the dock area, hoping to see help coming, but there was no one there. The boat carrying the prisoners had sailed, and the rest of the agents were obviously busy inside the buildings.

Litman sat on the bench between the bow and the main part of the boat, bracing himself firmly, the gun still pointed at Hank.

“Now let me see all weapons overboard,” Litman said. “You too, Officer Hightower.”

Hank and Barbara both dropped their guns into the water.

“Telephones, too, Miss Webber.”

I pulled mine from my pocket and dropped it into the bay.

“Word of advice,” Litman said as he gestured for Hank to take a seat near me, in the back. “If you’re going to talk about someone, make sure they’re not still on the receiving end of your wire.”

He pulled the black earpiece from his ear and tossed it onto the floor of the boat. We all looked down at it, as if it were alive.

Litman told Barbara to get us moving, rattling off directions. Frozen, she just looked at him.

“Let’s go!” he hissed.

Flinching, she quickly untied the ropes, pulled in the bumpers, and started the engine.

The boat roared to life. I braced myself as we backed away from the dock and then turned and sped northward into the cold. As we went, my eyes cast about in the boat for something I could use as a weapon. I could sense Hank doing the same thing, but we both came up empty. I thought of jumping overboard, but I knew that even if I managed to swim away without being shot, I would be hypothermic in a matter of minutes without a dry suit.

We drove for a while, and at that speed, the air was freezing. I held my arms tightly around me, my mind racing. As we drove on, I tried desperately to think of something I could do to change the situation. I came up with nothing.

Finally, Litman told Barbara to slow down and turn to the right. In the distance, I could see what looked like a small town, and as we came closer I realized it was Kawshek. I thought perhaps we were going just north of there to the dock at Russell’s farm—the same place I had ridden to the other night in the dinghy. But then Litman had Barbara make a sharp right turn, and we headed along the river that flowed inland south of Kawshek. I knew the sun would be coming up soon, and already there was a faint purple glow along the horizon.

“Do you know where we’re going?” I yelled to Hank over the roar of the engine. He shook his head.

Barbara drove for about five minutes, and then Litman told her to slow down.

“Turn on the spotlight,” he barked, pointing the gun at her now. “Flash it three times.”

She did as he instructed. A moment later, up ahead in the distance, I could see a light flashing back at us three times as well.

“Looks like somebody’s waiting for us,” Hank whispered to me.

Heart pounding, my eyes searched the shore for some sort of landmark. Finally, just ahead, I could see the shape of the tin building hanging out over the water—the boat repair shop near where Eddie Ray had been killed! My mind raced, realizing the Tanigawas must be using this place as the meeting point for their getaway with Litman.

“Pull up nice and slow,” Litman said to Barbara. “No fancy moves.”

Barbara lowered the throttle, and we eased under the roofline and up to the concrete abutment. There was already another boat there in the water, a six-seat ski runner, tied over to one side, on the cleat I had spotted as suspect several days before.

“Okay,” Litman called, and then suddenly people emerged from the shadows.

There, guns drawn, stood the two Japanese brothers, Kenji and Shin Tanigawa. Behind them was a woman, attractive with black frizzy hair.

Tia Lynch, Russell’s wife.

Forty-Seven

“All right,” Litman said, his voice calm, “cut the engine.”

“What’s going on here?” Shin demanded angrily.

“Slight change in plans,” Litman said. “The woman overheard me throwing the feds off the trail. Just my luck, she speaks Japanese.”

Shin looked at me, venom in his eyes, and raised his gun.

“C’mon, Litman,” Hank said, stepping forward. “You can’t just have her killed like this. Don’t forget, she’s connected directly with the attorney general. You’d better watch your step.”

“And you’d better watch yours,” Litman said. Then he raised his gun and shot Hank cleanly in the chest.

I screamed, watching in disbelief as Hank’s huge body was flung back by the force of the bullet. He hit the side of the boat and went over, his bulk crashing loudly into the water.

“Now out of the boat!” Litman demanded. Stunned, Barbara and I did as he said.

Following his gestures, we climbed onto the cement and leaned against the cold, corrugated tin wall. Roughly, Shin patted us down for weapons. He came up empty, though he pulled a pair of handcuffs from Barbara’s belt and proceeded to jerk her hands behind her back and lock the cuffs around her wrists.

“All right, Ms. Webber,” Litman said, his voice close to my ear. “Let’s hear what you have to say about the attorney general. You’re not like the guy’s daughter or something, are you?”

I refused to reply but simply stood there, staring at the wall.