Puppets (38 page)

Flannery just watched him. Despite his sharp eyes, the DA looked more tired and harried than Mo could remember seeing him.

"Put yourself in my shoes, okay? I'm willing to go after Biedermann. Absolutely. I told you, it's a golden opportunity. But I can't get noticed doing it, I can't have anyone in my investigative unit get noticed, looking suspicious of him, can I? Not until I know I've got something more to justify my suspicions. I can't even explain to any of my own staff what I want or why, a couple of them are former FBI, they'll take it the wrong way. I've got something working in Washington to look at his background more closely, but that's very subtle and it'll take a while. And in the meantime there's somebody killing people in my town. So I need to get things moving right away."

"Which is where I come in."

"You're the perfect guy! Dammit, I wouldn't be telling you this if I didn't think you had the smarts and the freedom of movement to do this and, frankly, the fundamental honesty to see the necessity of it. You won't make problems for me ifit turns out to be wrong, because you're not that kind of guy, it's not worth your time to play those games."

Flannery was turning on the charm, staring straight at Mo, looking absolutely the honest-but-desperate guy asking for a reasonable favor.

"Also so you don't take any heat if Biedermann notices and gets offended. But you can still take major credit if you're right."

Flannery looked pleased that Mo had understood. "Sure, taking credit is an issue," he admitted easily. "Hey, Mo, look, it's no secret I'm thinking of bigger and better things. Are
you?
Look at yourself—we both know this kind of thing isn't your game. You're no climber. You wouldn't want what comes with this, you wouldn't know what to do with the opportunities this presents. But me—I'm hungry for this, I'm in position for the next step. Whether this means blowing the lid off an old government secret or maybe nailing a prolific killer who turns out to be employed by one or more federal agencies, either way, it's a news story of national importance. A springboard. A launchpad. And PR aside, the fact is I've given you a potentially big lead here. So if and when we nail this bastard, it was
my
operation. So I thought I'd offer you a little carrot-and-stick thing here."

"What's the carrot?"

"Well, let's see. The stick is the grief I can give you. But figuring out the carrot for a guy like you, that's hard. So in this case I guess the carrot is the simple absence of grief. Standard Pavlovian conditioning." Flannery gave him a conspiratorial wink as if they both thought that was funny.

Conditioning:
Mo felt ice in his spine. But he just blew out his cheeks and looked away with a thoughtful frown. "What did you have in mind?"

Flannery unfolded his arms, pulled back his left jacket sleeve to check his watch. The move goosed Mo's adrenaline, the chance of a peek at the wrists. But the DA wore a rugged, outdoorsy watch with the wide "sports" band. Just part of the athletic image he liked to project, or a way to conceal his wrist? Mo hoped Flannery hadn't noticed his quickened interest.

"It's simple," Flannery went on. "And it's not illegal, but it does require some time. I want you to figure out where Biedermann goes after work. What he does with his free time. You do the legwork here, I'll take care of the Washington connection, keep that ball rolling. We'll make a good team."

"You mean, like what—tail him?"

"Exactly! If he's got extracurricular activities, I'd like to know about them. Where he goes. When. With whom."

Mo was thinking,
Is this ironic or what?

Flannery went on, not at all cutesy conspiratorial now: "You know—kind of like what you were doing today. When you were tailing me." Mo's expression must have shown his surprise, because the deadly nasty look on Flannery's face showed a hint of satisfaction.

47

F
RIDAY AFTERNOON, Mo left the barracks and headed out to the baking parking lot. A lousy week. Slogging around junkyards, really severing it with Carla, fighting with Rebecca. The shadow of Geppetto. The fun meetings with Flannery. Maybe the worst thing was that Flannery was now aware that Mo was suspicious of him. Mo had denied tailing him, said he'd just been driving home, but the DA looked anything but convinced. Just before he'd driven away, he'd told Mo, "The clock is ticking, Detective. I don't know what you're doing, exactly. But you play ball with me or I fuck over your life so it stays fucked, so help me."

The dump initiative had fallen flat but for one last gasp, Rebecca's suggestion that the junkyard might be a relic from Geppetto's past, the site of his own childhood torment. Dumps and junkyards eventually closed up, got covered over, abandoned. In fact, with the advent of stricter controls on waste disposal, there had been a period in the seventies and eighties when large numbers of old dumps were shut down and new landfills built to more hygienic standards. So Mo had asked St. Pierre to call the county land records offices. He found that, yes, they retained older maps, and, yes, the maps would show most disposal sites active from, say, 1945 to 1970. St. Pierre hadn't made it back with the materials by the time Mo left, but Mo planned to give the matter some time over the weekend. It was almost certainly a dead end, one he'd pursue only because his bulldog instincts demanded exhausting a line of inquiry before abandoning it.

That and the continued resonance of Mudda Raymon's "vision."

He had to look into it over the weekend, because next week was shit-hitting-the-fan week. On Monday, he'd have meetings with the union rep and attorney, and then on Tuesday the grand jury hearing. And after that, who knew? The relatives of Big Willie were waiting to hear the results of the grand jury hearing and would decide whether or not to file a civil suit. And in the background, always: Geppetto, no doubt working overtime to reprogram Dennis Radcliff. If it was Flannery, he would have to be feeling some pressure, and since he'd caught Mo following him, he'd be seriously considering countermeasures. Mo wasn't kidding himself anymore about who his targets would be.

There'd been another suggestive development on Flannery. A piece of chuckle gossip had been going around the uniform side of the barracks this morning when Mo got to work. A young trooper named Galliston had pulled over a speeding BMW on Friday evening, and when he got to the window, who should it be but Westchester district attorney Flannery. A tough moment for any rookie, but he dutifully wrote out a ticket. So Mo made a point of dropping casually by Galliston's desk. Heard you pulled over the DA, Jesus, doing eighty in a fifty-five zone. This was northbound on 684? Wonder where he was going—hurrying home for a hot date? Galliston didn't know, but it wasn't home, because Flannery's legal address was an apartment only five blocks from the county building in downtown, and it probably wasn't a hot date because everybody knew his pied-a-terre was an apartment he kept in Manhattan, straight south. Galliston said he'd made the stop only about ten minutes after Flannery had left Mo's house.

Everybody got a laugh out of it but Mo. He was thinking that having to maintain a day job would put a crimp in your private time with your puppets, especially during the workweek. Especially now, when you were maybe beginning to feel things unraveling. If you were in a hurry to get back to your lab in northern Westchester, you might slip up and get caught speeding.

Thinking about it, Mo had crossed the parking lot and pulled out his keys before he noticed the big black car idling next to his Chevy. He could barely make out the interior through the tinted glass, but it seemed there were more heads in there this time. When the window slid down, it was Erik Biedermann's face that emerged.

"Hey, buddy," Biedermann said amiably. "Hop in. Enjoy some government air-conditioning. Cool your heels."

The heat was rising from the asphalt in waves, oven-dry air that singed the nostrils. Biedermann moved over and Mo got inside, and, yeah, it was cool and dark. Zelek was also there in back, and this time there were two guys in the front seat.

"What're we feeding today?" Mo asked. "The hyenas?"

Zelek didn't think that was funny. In fact, his alien face looked downright sour, the mouth a small wound at the bottom of the triangle. The car pulled out, the locks snicked. Nobody said anything until they were on the Cross Westchester Expressway.

"Mo," Biedermann said, "you want to do me a favor and take off your jacket?"

"Not particularly."

Zelek looked at him, ice in the tilted eyes. "Take it off or we'll take it off for you."

"Go ahead," Mo told him.

Biedermann's big shoulders slumped and he looked exasperated. Then without warning he pitched a vicious left hook that smashed Mo's cheek hard and drove his head against the side window. It almost knocked him out. Before he could recover, Biedermann had swung a leg over and was straddling him, pinning his arms with his hands. Zelek began feeling in his pockets, around his waist, the small of his back, the clever fingers searching expertly. He pulled Mo's Glock and pocketed it, then looked through Mo's briefcase. It took only a moment. When he was done, Biedermann got off. The guys in front never looked back.

"Why d'you always have to be a dickhead, Ford?" Biedermann was puffing from anger as much as from exertion. "I mean, here I thought you and I had established, you know, a fucking
rapport,
a little camaraderie. But, no. Why can't anything be easy with you? Why can't you get into the team spirit here? We need to talk, you've been getting very crafty recently, so it's in our interest to see that you're not carrying a recording device. But you can't just cooperate, can you? Prick. What, you think we're kidding around here? Is that what you think?"

"Calm down," Zelek ordered.

Mo put up a hand to probe his cheek. Biedermann's fist had hit like a plank of wood. No teeth seemed to be loose, but the jaw was already swelling and could easily be broken. "What're we doing?" he asked finally. "What's the agenda today?" Talking hurt.

Zelek took the lead: "I thought, I really did, that we had an understanding. That you would honor your word to me. But you and the psychologist
continue
to pursue avenues that jeopardize the integrity of our mission."

"Like what?"

"Oh, like what, like what." Biedermann snarled, as if Mo were playing stupid.

"This isn't about recriminations," Zelek interrupted. "This is about putting things in order again. Since I saw you last, you and the psychologist have interviewed Ronald Parker. You took video-and audiotapes and brain scans of him, given to you by Dr. Iberson in complete disregard of our instructions to him. We also understand that Dr. Ingalls contacted several colleagues to discuss the issue, and,
and,
has now personally requested some FOA documents related to the programs. It suggests that you two are actively engaged in pursuing the larger issues you were instructed to leave alone."

"Didn't you
tell
Rebecca about our discussions?" Biedermann asked. "Didn't you
tell
her it was time to cool it on this line of inquiry?"

The car veered off at an exit, Mo didn't see which one, went around the ramp, and pulled to the shoulder under the viaduct. Between the shadow of the bridge and the tinted windows, it was dark as night in the car. Rush-hour traffic blew past close by, rocking the suspension, and they were smothered in the muffled roar of traffic above.

Mo thought about it, decided he didn't have too many options. "Let's cut to the chase. Are we doing something drastic today? If not, what would you have me do to atone for my sins?"

"Asshole," Biedermann said. "I mean, it's this fucking
attitude
that—"

"We're not recriminating," Zelek said. "And we're not threatening. We're well beyond that. We're in the home stretch here, Detective. We can't afford any problems at this stage. So what we're doing is giving you instructions that
you will follow to the letter.
What you do is, you turn over the observation tapes and brain scans to Erik, along with Dr. Ingalls's interview tapes, her transcriptions, and your notes on the case. You instruct Dr. Ingalls that the behavioral-modification-projects angle is no longer part of the investigation. Then you go back to walking around in landfills, or digging in old files, or whatever else you like to do."

"Fine," Mo said sincerely. "How should I—"

"We'll expect all the materials by Monday noon." Zelek took out a blank business card and jotted a telephone number on it before handing it to Mo. "This is Erik's cell phone number, you can call him at any time day or night, and we'll find you. Sometime this coming week we'll also require a thorough debriefing of you and your signature on a legal document that swears you to secrecy." Zelek's little mouth turned down as he checked his watch. He took Mo's Glock out of his jacket pocket, slipped it into the briefcase, and handed the briefcase back.

Biedermann had been looking out the window, and now he seemed to have gotten control of himself. "I gotta be frank here," he said. "This is one of those times when a guy needs to make the right decision, Mo. It's a biggie for you and Rebecca. Fork-in-the-road time. Don't blow it." His tone was calm, almost regretful, and far more intimidating than his earlier heat.

"And that's all for now," Zelek said. "You can get out of the car."

That took Mo by surprise. But the locks snicked open, and Biedermann reached across him to lever the handle. So he got out and stood under the howling highway overpass, holding the business card in one hand and his briefcase in the other as the car pulled away.

He recognized the exit now, about ten miles from barracks. Calling State Police dispatch to ask for a lift back would require too much explanation. His jaw was killing him. And shit week hadn't even started yet.