Last Man Standing (30 page)

“Billy Canfield is no shrinking violet. I could tell that when he came to the hospital to see me; rough, tough and opinionated.
Some of my team who testified at the trial told me he was a pretty loud presence there too. Came close to contempt citations
a couple of times.”

“He ran his own trucking firm and then sold it after his kid died.”

“If the Frees are behind the killings in Richmond, Fauquier County is a lot closer than Oregon. The Canfields really could
be in danger.”

“I know. I’ve been thinking of taking a ride out there and trying to talk some sense into him.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“You sure about that? I know that what happened at that school in Richmond is something you’d be better off not revisiting.”

Web shook his head. “That’s not something you ever put behind you, Perce, I don’t care how much time goes by. The two teachers
died before we got there. I couldn’t do anything about that, but David Canfield was killed on my watch.”

“You did more than anybody could have, including almost getting killed. And you got a permanent badge from it right there
on your face. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“Then you really don’t know me.”

Bates studied Web closely. “Okay, but let’s not forget about you, Web. If wiping out Charlie Team was the Frees’ goal, they
haven’t accomplished it yet. You’re the last man standing.”

Barely
, thought Web. “Don’t worry, I look both ways before crossing the street.”

“I’m serious, Web. If they tried once, they’ll try again. These people are fanatics.”

“Yeah, I know. Remember, I got the ‘permanent badge.’”

“And another thing. At the trial Wingo filed that countersuit against HRT and the Bureau for wrongful death.”

“That was bullshit all the way.”

“Right. But it allowed them to make some discovery on HRT. The Free Society probably learned some things about your methods,
procedures and such. It could have helped them in setting up the ambush.”

Web hadn’t considered this yet. It actually made a lot of sense.

“I promise if I get any weird-ass phone calls, you’ll be the first to know. And I’ll check my receiver for atropine. Now tell
me about this undercover. Maybe the Frees are involved, but they had to have some inside help. Now, I know he’s black and
it’s hard for me to believe the Frees would work with a man of color, but we can’t afford to discount anything right now.
You told me Cove was a loner. What else do you know about him?” Web hadn’t heard back from Ann Lyle on his inquiries into
Cove, so he had decided to go right to the source.

“Oh, lots of stuff. It’s right in that file over there, marked ‘FBI Undercover Agents, All You Ever Wanted to Know.’”

“Perce, this guy could be the key.”

“He’s not! Take my word for it.”

“All I’m saying is I worked these kind of cases. And contrary to what you think, I didn’t forget how to be an FBI agent when
I joined HRT. I had a great teacher, and don’t let that swell your head. And another pair of eyes is another pair of eyes.
Isn’t that what you always beat into me?”

“That’s not how it works, Web, sorry. Rules are rules.”

“I seem to remember you telling me differently way back when.”

“Times change, people change.”

Web sat back and pondered whether he should play his trump card. “Okay, what would you say if I told you something you don’t
know but that could be important?”

“I’d say why the hell didn’t you tell me before?”

“I just figured it out.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Do you want to hear it or not?”

“And what’s in it for you?”

“I give you info on the case, you do the same for me.”

“How about I make you tell me for nothing?”

“Come on, for old times’ sake.”

Bates tapped the file in front of him. “How do I know it’s really something I can use?”

“If it’s not, then you owe me nothing. I’ll trust your judgment.”

Bates eyed him for a few more moments. “Go.”

Web told him about the switch with Kevin Westbrook. As he went on, Bates’s face grew more florid and Web could tell the man’s
pulse was nowhere near sixty-four and had probably left double digits far behind.

“When
exactly
did you figure this out? And I want it to the minute.”

“When I was having a beer with Romano and I mentioned that the Kevin Westbrook I saw had a hole in his cheek from a bullet
wound. The kid he had, he said, didn’t. Cortez corroborated that. And don’t go after those guys. I told them I’d fill you
in ASAP.”

“Sure you did. Who would switch the kids and why?”

“Not even a good guess. But I’m telling you the kid I saved in the alley and the kid Romano turned over to the ‘alleged’ FBI
agent were two different boys.” He tapped the table. “So what’s your judgment? Worth it or not?”

In answer Bates opened a file, although he recited the facts from memory. “Randall Cove. Age forty-four. Been with the Bureau
his whole career. He was an All-American tailback from Oklahoma but blew out his knees before the NFL draft. Here’s a recent
photo.” Bates slid it across and Web looked at the face. The guy had a short beard, dreadlocks and eyes that could only be
described as piercing. The vitals said he was a big man, about six-three, two-forty. He looked powerful enough to take on
a grizzly and maybe win. Web hunched forward and while he pretended to study the picture in greater depth he was actually
reading as much as he could from the file Bates had open. His years as an FBI agent had left him with many tricks to help
his short-term memory retention until he could write things down. And he had also become very proficient at reading upside
down.

Bates said, “He could take care of himself, knew the street better than most kingpins. And cool under pressure.”

“Yeah, Princeton white-breads named William and Jeffrey just never seem to fit in with Drug Town, USA, I wonder why,” said
Web. “You mentioned before that he didn’t have a wife or kids. So he never married?”

“No, his wife’s dead.”

“And they didn’t have kids?”

“He did.”

“What happened to them?”

Bates shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It happened a while back.”

“I’m all attention.”

Bates let out a long breath and didn’t seem like he was going to start talking.

“I lost my whole team, Perce, I’d kind of appreciate full disclosure here.”

Bates sat forward and clasped his hands in front of him. “He was working an assignment in California. Heavy cover because
it involved the Russian mob, and those guys will fire a missile up your ass for coughing around them. They make the Mafia
look like preschoolers.” Bates stopped there.

“And?”

“And his cover got blown. They traced his family.”

“And killed them?”

“Slaughtered would be more like it.” Bates cleared his throat. “I saw the photos.”

“Where was Cove?”

“They had intentionally diverted him away so they’d have a free hand.”

“And they didn’t go after him too?”

“They tried, later. They waited until he buried his family, nice guys that they were. And Cove was waiting for them when they
came.”

“And he killed
them
?”

Bates started blinking rapidly and Web noted a sudden tic over the man’s left eye.

“Slaughtered. I saw those photos too.”

“And the Bureau just let this guy keep working? What, they don’t believe in early retirement for agents with butchered families?”

Bates spread his hands in resignation. “The Bureau tried, but he wouldn’t go. He wanted to work. And to tell you the truth,
after what happened to his family, the guy worked longer and harder than any UC we ever had. They transferred him to WFO to
get him out of California. Let me tell you, he got into places we were never able to get into before. We got convictions on
serious large-scale operators all across the board because of Randall Cove.”

“Sounds like a hero.”

Bates finally smoothed out his tic. “He’s unorthodox, goes his own way a lot, and the higher-ups can only take so much of
that, even from the undercover dudes, slaughtered family or not. But none of it really stuck to Cove. I can’t say it hasn’t
hurt his career, I mean, it’s not like the Bureau has a place for a guy like this outside of undercover, and I’m sure he knew
that too. But he plays the Bureau games. Always covered his back. You take the dirt with the good and the guy always delivered.
Until now.”

“And the trace on his family by the Russians—would that have been in any way the Bureau’s screw-up?”

Bates shrugged. “Cove didn’t seem to think so. He’s been plugging away ever since.”

“You know what they say about revenge, Perce, it’s the only dish best eaten really cold.”

Bates shrugged again. “Possibly.”

Web was just starting to get worked up. “You know, it just gives me the warm fuzzies that a guy like that was able to stay
in the Bureau and maybe lead my team down the primrose path to Armageddon to avenge his wife and kids. Don’t you guys have
some kind of quality control over this shit?”

“Earth to Web, undercover agents are a different breed. They live a lie all the time and sometimes they get in too deep and
get turned or just go nuts all on their own. That’s why the Bureau switches people in and out, changes assignments and lets
them recharge their batteries.”

“And they did all that with Cove? Switched him out, let him recharge his dreadlocks? Gave him crisis counseling after he buried
his family?” Bates was silent on this. “Or was he so good at his job that they just let him keep rocking along until he finally
erupted all over
my
team?”

“I’m not going to discuss that with you. I
can’t
discuss that with you.”

“What if I told you that was unacceptable bullshit?”

“What if I told you, you were getting way too close to the line?”

The men glared at one another until the fires died down.

“And his snitches? Were they all-pro too?” asked Web.

“Cove always played it close. He had access to them only, not anybody else. That’s not exactly Bureau procedure, but like
I said, you couldn’t argue with the guy’s results. Those were his rules.”

“So we know any more about this target? You said it was the financial guts of some drug op. Whose?”

“Well, there’s some difference of opinion about that.”

“Oh, swell, Perce. I love a puzzle at both ends.”

“This stuff is not an exact science, Web. The area where your mission went down is controlled pretty much by one crew, Big
F’s—I told you that.”

“So it was his operation we were hitting in that building.”

“Cove didn’t think so.”

“He didn’t know for sure”

“What, you think the bad guys carry union cards or ID reading, ‘I’m a member of X crew’?”

“So what was Cove’s opinion?”

“That the money operation was that of a much bigger player. Maybe the ring supplying a drug called Oxycontin to the D.C. area.
You heard of it?”

Web nodded. “DEA guys talk about it all the time down at Quantico. You don’t have to drug-lab the stuff or worry about sneaking
it past customs. All you have to do is get your hands on it, which you can a dozen different ways, and then start printing
money.”

“A criminal’s Nirvana,” added Bates dryly. “It’s one of the most potent and frequently prescribed painkillers on the market
right now. It blocks pain signals from the nerves to the brain and gives you a feeling of euphoria. Normally, it works on
a twelve-hour time release, but if you crush it or smoke it you get a brain rush that some say is almost equal to heroin.
It also can throw the abuser into respiratory arrest, which it has frequently.”

“Nice little side effect. Are you telling me you have no idea who his inside guy might have been?”

Bates tapped the file in front of him. “We have some ideas. Now, this is totally unofficial.”

“At this point, I’ll take rumors and lies.”

“For Cove to get in as deep as he was, we figure the snitch has to be in the inner circle, pretty tight. He was working the
Westbrook angle when he stumbled into the Oxy piece. But I have to presume that whomever he was using to infiltrate Westbrook’s
operation is the person who helped him get on to this new development. Antoine Peebles is Westbrook’s COO, for want of a better
term. He runs a damn tight ship and it’s largely because of him that we haven’t been able to lay a finger on Westbrook. Here’s
Westbrook, and the other one is Peebles.” He slid across two photos.

Web looked at them. Westbrook was a monster, far bigger even than Cove. He looked like he’d been through a war, his eyes,
even staring out from the paper two-dimensionally, had the keenness that you always saw in survivors. Peebles was an altogether
different picture.

“Westbrook is a warhorse. Peebles looks like he should be graduating from Stanford.”

“Right. He’s young and we figure Peebles is the new breed of drug entrepreneurs, not as violent, more businesslike and ambitious
as hell. Word on the street is that someone’s looking to band all the local distributors together, to make them more efficient,
enhanced bargaining power up the line, economies of scale, a real business approach to it.”

“Sounds like old Antoine may want to be CEO instead of just COO.”

“Maybe. Now, Westbrook came up through the streets. He’s seen and done it all, but we’ve heard that he may be looking for
an exit from the drug business.”

“Well, Peebles may have a different agenda if he’s the one behind the organization of the local crews. But giving away valuable
stuff to Cove doesn’t exactly figure with being the heir apparent. If you bust the operation, what does Peebles have left
to run?”

“That’s a problem,” conceded Bates.

“Who else is in the picture?”

“Westbrook’s main muscle. Clyde Macy.”

Bates handed him the photo of Macy, who, to put it kindly, looked like he should be taking up space on death row somewhere.
Macy was so white he looked anemic; a skinhead with the sort of calm yet merciless eyes that Web associated with the worst
serial killers of his experience.