Shockwave (26 page)

I’ll say this for him: the guy was a sensei of empty language. Who could possibly find fault with: “The individual referred to was arrested, and is being held because no bail application has
been filed, much less ruled on. He has not been indicted, and the investigation is ongoing.”

Hell, who could find
anything
in it?

“W
hat if we got a lawyer to file a bail application for him?” I asked Dolly.

“A waste of time,” she told me. “Homer’s innocent, but a bail application isn’t about that; it’s about money.”

“And a million dollars wouldn’t do it,” Mack added. “They say bail is to make sure the guy shows up for his trial. And there’s already a ton of proof that Homer’s crazy. So the only way to make sure he shows up is to
keep
him locked up.”

“He trusts you, Mack. Couldn’t you—?”

“What? Handcuff myself to him? Remember, he’ll always be terrified of daylight, and he lost all his trust in those kids he hung out with because he was with them when he was arrested. He’s absolutely convinced they sent out a secret signal to summon the police.”

“But—”

“He’s getting his meds,” Mack assured Dolly. “I check on that. And he’s in an iso cell, all by himself. It’s got glass—on the outside of the bars—but I’ve got it worked out so he doesn’t see sunlight, ever. For most people, that would be torture, but for Homer, it’s the only way to keep him from …”

He didn’t have to finish that sentence.

“So their plan is … what?” Dolly bulldogged on. “They’re just going to
leave
him there?”

“I saw the lawyer,” I told them, and watched the look of surprise spread across Dolly’s face.

“Swift?” she asked, meaning the man who’d gone from shlub to star when he won the “Mighty Mary” case a while back.

“Yeah.”

“Well, he’s good,” she said, patting Mack’s forearm. “He was the one who got MaryLou off, remember?”

Mack nodded.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I told them. “The only way there’s
ever
going to be a trial is if Homer’s lawyer pushes for one. He’s not going to do that. Why should he? This way, he can keep right on billing for his time, and not have to do much of anything. And, sure, we could get Swift to step in and take his best shot. But that wouldn’t get it done. The judge
—any
judge, Swift said—would rule that Homer’s too crazy to even stand trial. Which means he stays locked up, only in a different place.”

When I asked Swift how much I owed him, he gave me a disappointed look. “I had to ask,” I told him by way of apology, offering my hand. He shook it, and checked my eyes, and the whole thing was over.

“This way, I can see him every day,” Mack added. “If they shipped him to someplace on the other side of the state, he’d lose it. Which means death inside stone walls, one way or the other.”

“We have to get him out,” Dolly said, crossing her arms over her chest, the way she does when she isn’t going to budge. Somehow, when it’s just her and me alone and she tries to do that, her chest is too big to pull it off; but when anyone else is around, she manages it. And everyone gets the message.

But everyone doesn’t get the
same
message. Dolly had crossed over the line, to that place where she knew I was going no matter what she said. We both knew what that could cost.

The question was: Did Mack?

“R
emember when I asked you before? About how far you were willing to go?”

Mack just nodded.

“This would be harder. Doesn’t matter how flexible your job description is, it wouldn’t cover what needs to be done.”

He just nodded again.

“You get caught, you’re going to prison.”

“You, too, right?”

“No,” I told him, watching his face close. I had to know, and there was only one way to know for sure.

“I’ll be doing this alone?”

“No. But I’m not going to prison. I’m either going free or going in the ground. Understand?”

“If I get caught, I’m going to prison for life—that’s what you’re saying?”

“Things go haywire, I’m not drawing any lines—not around myself, I’m not. If you stand around and watch, you’ll be the only one going on trial. If you want to stand
with
me, you’ll have to do what I’m prepared to do.”

“How am I supposed to know—?”

“Try it this way. I’m not going to prison, period. I don’t care for how little or how long. For me, six months would be the same as life. For you, maybe not such a big deal.”

“You’re saying—”

“That I’ll kill anyone who tries to take me in? Yes.”

“So, even if I don’t … do that, I’ll be locked up?”

“If I get away, that depends on what I’d have to do. If I leave bodies behind, probably. And if I don’t get away at all, yes.”

“It’s that black-and-white for you?”

“Everything is.”

“Dolly wouldn’t want you to—”

“Die? No. Go to prison? No. But now she’s got her feet planted, ready to swing. Dolly wants Homer cut loose. And she
knows what I might have to do,” I said, thinking,
La mission est sacrée
. Not the
légionnaire
mantra, not this time. Mine.

I let Mack light a cigarette. Waited until he was done with the smoke. Waited until he said, “I’m in.”

“Pack enough to last you a few days,” I told him. “I’ll be around to pick you up after dark. Then it’s a good ten, twelve-hour drive.”

“I
can do it,” I whispered to my wife.

“Dell, listen. I want Homer out. And, like a fool, I told you I did. But what if—?”

“You know.”

“I won’t lose you.”

“You won’t. But—”

“Don’t even say it,” she said, very calmly. “Blood washes off. Wounds can be healed. Just make sure you—”

“That’s something you don’t need to say, baby.”

“You
better
come back,” Dolly said, reaching for me. Her gesture was a loving one, and followed by more.

I’d heard men curse God—all kinds of gods—but that was the first time I’d ever heard anyone threaten one.

“I
’d bring you in myself,” Mack told the redheaded leader of the teenage crew we’d visited before.

“Yeah? You gonna bring me
out
, too?”

“There’s no paper out on you, Timmy. No wants, anywhere.”

“I know,” the kid said. Something in the way those words came out told me nobody had wanted him for a long time. If ever.

“Homer thinks you gave him up,” Mack said, holding up an
opened palm to stop the redhead from interrupting. “I know you didn’t. But this isn’t something we can fix with logic. Homer’s got to see that
I
trust you, okay? Your crew, it was one of his safe places. I wouldn’t want him to lose that.”

“He’s getting out?”

“That’s being worked on. I’m going on a little trip now. When I get back, that’s when I’d like you to go in with me. It can be after dark,” he said, looking around at the inky night as if it was endorsing the statement.

“You want Homer to know you trust
me
, I get that. Unless what you really want to know is if
I
trust you.”

“I already know you do,” Mack told the redhead.

“Yeah? How?”

Mack nodded in my direction.

The redhead fist-bumped him.

“T
his isn’t my idea of camouflage,” Mack said, referring to our “farm-use only” Jeep.

“Mine, either” is all I said.

“When are you going to tell me—?”

“Before we go in.”

He went back to being quiet. I went back to driving.

I used a burner cell to dial a number. I let it ring once. Then the gates to what looked like a place to dispose of junked cars swung open. If Mack noticed the “B
³
” sign on the gate, he kept it to himself.

I’d only found out about this place by accident. Dolly’s landscaper friends had let me borrow their new Lexus SUV while I was doing something to help MaryLou. I’d needed paper credentials for that. A letter on Swift’s law-office stationery that said I was working for him as a private investigator was a good start, but I wanted to add some more to the package. Johnny
and Martin’s permission to drive one of their cars had been perfect for that.

But permission to use means returning in the same condition you borrowed, and I hadn’t been able to do that. Maybe the Lexus really was an off-road vehicle—it sure didn’t drive like it was—but I’d still been forced to hide it deep enough in the brush to put scratches all over it. The car I returned needed a total repaint, and I’d made them take the money to have it done.

Martin was really the car guy—he had an old Facel Vega that he was going to restore “someday,” and when I’d talked about a new kind of paint that changes colors depending on the viewing angle, he couldn’t pass it up. And when he showed it to us later—showed it
off
, really—he told us where he’d gotten the work done.

“They’re the best,” he’d told us. “But you have to drive through the worst part of Portland to get there. Whoever heard of a custom-fabrication operation built out of cinder block with a barbed-wire fence, and a whole horde of pit bulls running around loose?”

I wouldn’t have had any trouble answering that question, but all I said was, “Apparently, you.”

Johnny thought that was pretty funny.

I filed the info away. Later, I checked out my suspicion. Then I did a favor for the boss of that place. When I came into the garage to tell him his problem had been solved, he looked at me strange—how did I even know he’d
had
a problem?

When I just shook my head after he said, “How much?” he looked a little anxious. But he settled down when I told him, “If you’d
asked
me to do it, I would have told you a price. If we’d had a deal, I would have gotten paid. We didn’t, so I don’t. All I want is for you to know I can be trusted. And that I always pay my way.”

He nodded. Among men of our breed, that’s the secret handshake.

So, when I drove the Jeep into a big gray garage built out of what they call “penitentiary brick,” I told Mack to grab his gear and we walked over to an off-white Ford Taurus. The keys were in the ignition. I opened the trunk, we tossed in our stuff, and I backed out of the garage, to head north.

“Check the glove box,” I said to Mack.

“Registered to the B
³
garage, whatever that is. Insured. And some keys on a ring.”

“The plates will match. And it won’t be reported stolen.”

“At least it’s a lot more comfortable,” he said, tilting his seat back and closing his eyes.

I
’d rented a lot more than just the car from those B
³
guys.

One of the keys on the ring I took from the glove box opened the back door to a “town house”—one of a trio of two-story shacks slammed together on top of a matching set of one-car garages. The whole ramshackle mess squatted at the end of an unpaved road.

The directions had been perfect, and the odometer in the Taurus was dead-accurate. Facing the middle unit, I hit the remote for the garage. That worked perfect, too.

If the units on either side of us were occupied, there wasn’t any sign of it. The entire structure didn’t look any too stable, and the electricity had been cut off. There were contractors’ signs plastered all around the place, and an especially big one standing between twin stakes out front. Apparently, the whole dump was sitting on the future site of one seriously major mansion.

It took us a couple of days to buy enough burner cells so we’d never have to use any of them more than once—incoming
or outgoing. Even if the numbers got fingered somehow, all the phones would show up as local purchases.

Since we were only going out after dark to make the buys, I had plenty of time to talk with Mack.

“E
ver use a firearm?”

“No. I mean, I’ve shot guns. On the range—I’ve got a good friend back in Chicago, a cop. He took me a couple of times. But I don’t think that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m not. Knife?”

“Not like you’re talking about, no.”

“But you’ve been in a lot of fights.”

“Because of my hands?”

“Because of the way you stand, how you shift your weight …”

“Okay.”

“You understand why I asked, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We can’t do this like it was a movie. You could pass for one of them on your face, but that wouldn’t hold for longer than it would take for them to check you for ink. Worse, any story you told would come up wrong when they asked for references—you don’t have any.”

“Then … what?”

“All that leaves is for me to try something I’m not good at, so there’s a real chance it could go wrong. If it does, there’s going to be some kind of killing. Gun, knife, whatever—I already told you, I’m not going to prison.”

“You’re going to do something you’re not good at. If that goes wrong, you’re going to do things you
are
good at.”

“Yeah. So, if you’re going to change your mind, now would be a good time.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay,” I said, opening up what Dolly calls a “notebook.” Mine was a portable encryption device, with enough battery to last seventy-two hours if I left it on all the time. If I just used it when I had to, probably good for over a month.

“What’s next?” Mack asked, after I closed the notebook.

“Waiting,” I told him.

L
ater, when I opened the notebook, a ten-digit number was waiting.

I realized it could have been a sat-phone, and if it was, I’d be expected to know what country code to use. But making a sat-call from a burner cell would be like trying to put out a forest fire with a tissue-paper blanket, and the cyber-shadow would know that.

I wrote down the number, watched the screen clear of its own accord, and shut off the notebook.

“You recognize this area code?” I asked Mack.

“Miami,” he said, so quickly that he must have known someone down there.

Made much more sense to me—if the informant was strictly one-on-one, the FBI man running him wouldn’t want calls from him going through the agency’s system. Or even risk being picked up on a random home-and-cell sweep, the kind his bosses probably triggered every once in a while.