House Justice (44 page)

He was hoping that at some point Rudman would leave by himself, and if he did he would take him. But he wouldn’t wait forever for the opportunity to get Rudman alone. If he had to, as soon as the children left, he’d force his way into Rudman’s house and take him there. From reading Rudman’s bio he knew the man had a wife, and he expected that she was in the house with him, but that couldn’t be helped. He would wear a ski mask so she wouldn’t be able to identify him, and he’d restrain her so she couldn’t call the police right away, but that was the best he could do. She would simply have to bear the trauma of seeing her husband kidnapped.

DeMarco sat alone in the car watching Ray Rudman through binoculars.

The congressman lived in a modest, ranch-style home and he was in his backyard barbecuing hamburgers on a Weber grill, a blue apron stretched over his considerable gut. Two little boys who appeared to be about six or seven were running around the yard and knocking each other to the ground in what appeared to be a game of full-contact tag. DeMarco remembered from Rudman’s file that he had two grand-kids and he assumed that’s who the boys were. Rudman’s wife—a
plump, gray-haired woman—was hustling back and forth from the house to a picnic table, bearing Kool-Aid, potato salad, and bottles of ketchup and relish, stopping periodically to pull the boys apart.

Rudman’s house sat on a corner lot at the bottom of a street with a fairly steep grade. If it ever snowed in Anaheim the street would have been perfect for sledding. DeMarco and Angela had parked their car at the top of the hill and from that position could see Rudman’s front porch, a portion of his backyard, and his driveway. But as Rudman’s house was on a corner, it could be watched from four different directions and, consequently, someone else could be watching Rudman, and DeMarco and Angela wouldn’t be able to see this person. Because of this, Angela would periodically leave DeMarco sitting alone in the car and walk around the neighborhood looking for lurking strangers. She wouldn’t allow DeMarco to go with her because the mystery man had seen DeMarco in Myrtle Beach. When she took these walks, she’d change her appearance as best she could: she’d wear her hair up or down, put on a baseball cap and sunglasses. Sometimes she’d wear a light Windbreaker, sometimes not. DeMarco figured she was following some sort of Spy 101 tradecraft that she’d been taught at Langley; he also figured she was wasting her time. The man they were looking for wouldn’t be easy to fool and would be hard to spot.

As DeMarco watched Rudman take the hamburgers off the grill, he couldn’t help but think how
ordinary
Rudman seemed. He looked just like any other middle-aged man barbecuing for his grandkids— grandkids that he most likely loved and cherished. Yet this same man, for completely self-serving reasons, had caused the death of a dedicated American intelligence agent. It was hard for DeMarco to understand how Ray Rudman could be both of these people.

Angela opened the door and entered the car, tossing her baseball cap disguise onto the rear seat.

“Well?” DeMarco prompted. “Did you see anybody skulking about?”

“I got a call while I was out,” she said.

The way her voice sounded, DeMarco turned and looked directly at her.

“They found Tully. He’s dead.”

DeMarco wasn’t surprised that Tully was dead but it was still shocking to hear the news. More than anything else, though, he was worried about what he and Angela were doing. The mystery man had killed Whitmore. And based on what Yuri had told Angela, he had taken Tully away from Yuri’s men. The guy was good, and he was brutal. He was a killing machine—and it was pretty unlikely that he and Angela working alone would be able to keep him from killing Rudman.

“Where the hell’s this team that LaFountaine was supposed to send in to relieve us?” he asked.

The team LaFountaine had promised should have been there hours ago. And since they’d been watching Rudman, Angela had called Langley twice and asked to speak to LaFountaine but was told he wasn’t available. So she had called that guy with the cane, Foley, but he wasn’t available, either.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe they were delayed for some reason.”

“Bullshit,” DeMarco said. “There is no team. And that’s why LaFountaine is ducking your calls. We’re on our own here.”

She didn’t answer.

“I’m telling you, Angela, LaFountaine wants Rudman dead and our only reason for being here is to identify the guy who kills him.”

She still didn’t answer.

The front door to Rudman’s house opened and the two boys burst out. They had a Frisbee and they began tossing it to each other. The boys were dark haired and wiry and filled with energy—and they reminded the florist so much of his own sons. He even remembered his boys playing with a Frisbee once, bouncing it off a window, and their mother yelling at them. The memory almost broke his heart.

Was that the same woman walking past Rudman’s house? Two hours ago he’d seen a woman walking by with long dark hair. This
woman looked similar, but she was wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses and he couldn’t see her hair. He should have paid more attention to the first woman—noted the way she walked, studied her face—but he hadn’t. Now he couldn’t tell if it was the same woman or not. He was getting sloppy.

DeMarco was about ready to go out of his mind.

They had been watching Rudman’s house for hours and he wasn’t sure how much more he could take. He had always figured that to be a good stake-out guy a lobotomy was required.

He finally asked the question he’d been thinking about the whole time they’d been sitting there.

“What about us?”

She looked at him for a long time before she answered, and he was dreading that she was going to say the words he didn’t want to hear. But she didn’t.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just… Look, I don’t know. When this is over …” And she let the words trail off.

And before he could say anything else, her phone rang and he heard her say, “Yes. Where are you?” Then there was a long pause as she listened to the caller and she said, “Just stay there; someone will pick you up.”

“Who was that?” DeMarco asked when Angela finished the call.

“Marty Taylor. He got away from Yuri and he’s hiding in a motel near Julian. He still thinks I’m Pamela Walker, his savior from the Justice Department, and he wants me to come and get him.”

“So what are you going to do?”

She sat there for a moment, then said, “I’m going to call Ryan Schommer, the FBI agent who told us about Yuri and Taylor in the first place. I’m going to tell him that Marty’s ready to roll over on Yuri and he should send some guys to pick him up.”

“You’re not going to check with LaFountaine first?”

“No.”

Well, good for you
, DeMarco thought.

But what about us
?

It was getting dark. The florist hoped that the boys weren’t planning to spend the night with the congressman. He had plenty to drink because the water in the house had not been shut off but there was no food in the place and he hadn’t brought any with him. He hadn’t been expecting a prolonged surveillance.

Rudman’s garage door opened and a car backed down the driveway. Rudman was driving. He was alone. Thank God.

The florist made no attempt to be stealthy. He walked out the front door of the vacant house and went quickly to his car, which was parked only fifty yards away. When he started the engine, Rudman was less than half a block ahead of him.

“I’m gonna take another walk around the block,” Angela said.

DeMarco didn’t like the idea of her walking around by herself in the dark. He started to tell her that he was going with her, and the subject wasn’t open to debate, when he noticed Rudman’s car backing out of the garage.

“Hey,” he said. “Rudman’s leaving.”

“Follow him. But don’t get too close.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The florist glanced into the rearview mirror as he followed Rudman. He could see a car behind him containing two people, but the car was too far back for him to make out the occupants’ faces. He wondered if they could be following him or Rudman, but that seemed unlikely.

Rudman switched his left-turn signal on and a moment later turned into the parking lot of a supermarket called Ralph’s. The florist didn’t
follow Rudman into the parking lot. He parked on the street about half a block away from the entrance to the store. Because he had to concentrate on parallel parking his car, he didn’t notice the car that had been behind him followed Rudman into the store parking lot.

He sat for a moment, then took Benny Mark’s little .32 from the glove compartment and exited the car.

DeMarco and Angela followed Rudman into the supermarket parking lot.

“Can you believe that guy?” DeMarco said.

“What?” she responded.

“He parked in a handicapped space.”

Angela shrugged. “He’s got a sticker; he’s not doing anything illegal.”

“He’s not handicapped; he’s just fat and too lazy to walk.”

They parked and watched as Rudman entered the store.

“I’m going inside with him,” Angela said.

“Why? He’ll buy whatever he’s buying and come back.”

“I just want to keep him in sight,” she said. “Wait here and keep the engine running.”

As Angela entered the store, DeMarco barely noticed the big guy with short hair and a heavy mustache walk in behind her.

Rudman walked directly to the frozen food aisle and Angela followed him. When he stopped to look at the ice cream, she walked past him, stopped at the end of the aisle, and pretended to look at the frozen pizzas. She glanced back at Rudman and he was standing there with the freezer doors open, apparently trying to decide which kind of ice cream to buy.

She noticed another man at the opposite end of the aisle, a big guy with a mustache. He was just standing there and he appeared to be
watching Rudman, too, then he walked down the aisle, stood next to him, and placed his mouth close to Rudman’s ear as he spoke. She wondered if the man might be a constituent who had recognized Rudman and decided to exercise his democratic right to bitch to his elected representative about the job he was doing. But then she saw the look on Rudman’s face. He wasn’t saying a word and he looked scared. He slowly put the ice-cream carton he’d been holding back into the freezer and walked away with the mustached man. She noticed then that the man was keeping one hand in the pocket of the jacket he was wearing.

Rudman was being kidnapped; she was sure of it. And the mustached man was the mystery man, the killer. She reached into her purse for her gun, then stopped. She could draw her gun and tell the man taking Rudman to stop, but she didn’t want to do that in a store crowded with people. The man had killed before, he was certainly armed now, and he might start shooting—and she wouldn’t be able to shoot back because she might hit Rudman or another shopper. And there was another thing: if she apprehended the man in the store, the cops were sure to get involved, and then she’d have to explain why she, a CIA agent, had been watching Rudman. The best thing to do would be to get the guy when he was alone with Rudman.

DeMarco saw Rudman exit the store. With him was the guy that had followed Angela into the store—the big guy with the mustache. DeMarco expected Rudman to split away from the other man and walk to his car but that didn’t happen. Instead, Rudman and the other man both got into Rudman’s car and, because Rudman had parked in the handicapped space closest to the door, they were in Rudman’s car seconds after exiting the store.

Angela walked out of the store immediately after Rudman. She must have seen Rudman and the other man leave the store, and she must
know that the man with Rudman was probably kidnapping Rudman, but she walked right past Rudman’s car and joined DeMarco.

“That’s the guy,” she said. “He’s kidnapping Rudman.”

“I can see that,” DeMarco said. “We need to—”

Rudman’s car was now leaving the parking lot.

“Follow them!” Angela said. “We can’t lose them.”

“We need to call the cops, Angela,” DeMarco said. “This guy’s going to kill Rudman.”

“Follow them!”

“Angela, call the damn cops, for Christ’s sake!”

“We can’t call the cops. We can’t get them involved in this.”

“Yes, we can. It’s time to end this thing.”

“Just follow them!”

Rather than continue to argue with her, DeMarco followed Rudman’s car out of the parking lot—then he reached for his cell phone. If she wouldn’t call the cops, he would. But then Angela took out her cell phone and punched in a number—whoever she was calling, though, didn’t answer. She made another call. This time DeMarco heard her say, “Foley, goddamn you, why haven’t you returned my calls? The guy who killed Whitmore and Tully has Rudman. We’re following them right now. Where the hell’s this team that LaFountaine said he was sending?” DeMarco didn’t know what Foley said to her, but he heard her say, “That’s bullshit, Foley, and you know it. You tell LaFountaine to call me. You
make
him call me. I want to know what he wants me to do.”

“Do you want money?” Rudman asked, the sweat rolling down his round face.

“Just drive,” the florist said.

“You have to know something. I’m a United States congressman. You really don’t want to hurt me.”

“I know who you are, Mr. Rudman. Now be quiet and drive.”

DeMarco wondered where the guy was taking Rudman. He didn’t appear to be headed toward the freeway; he was just winding his way through Anaheim in a seemingly random pattern. DeMarco stayed a couple of car lengths back from Rudman’s car, making no attempt to hide the fact that he was following. He didn’t want to lose Rudman and, for that matter, if the killer knew someone was tailing him he might not kill him.

Rudman turned onto a street that contained a large Goodwill store. The store was closed for the day and there was nobody walking on the street, nor were there any other cars driving on the street except for DeMarco’s and Rudman’s. DeMarco was certain the man with Rudman would realize at any second that he was being followed.