Stone Cold (5 page)

CHAPTER 10

S
TONE AND
A
LEX
F
ORD
met at a familiar place for both men, Lafayette Park across from the White House. Here the six-foot-three-inch Alex had guarded the occupant of the Oval Office for years and Stone had respectfully protested against this same inhabitant, as he had against the man’s predecessors, from across the street. The two men sat on a bench near the statue of a Polish general whom history remembered as a sound ally of the Americans in their war for independence. He was also a man, it was probably safe to say, hardly any American alive today would either know or care about.

“What do you have for me?” Stone said, eyeing the manila folder Alex pulled from a trim black leather briefcase.

“I wasn’t sure what you were looking for, so I thought I’d cast a broad net.”

“That’s perfect, Alex, thanks.”

As Stone looked over the file, Alex studied his friend. “Like I told you on the phone, the Justice Department has been interested in Bagger for a long time but can’t make anything stick. I talked to Kate about it. She said Justice hasn’t given up but if they can’t pin something on him soon, they’re going to have to move on. Even Uncle Sam has limited resources.”

“How is Kate?” Stone asked, referring to Kate Adams, the Justice lawyer Alex had been dating.

“Things didn’t work out. She’s seeing someone else.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. She’s a wonderful woman,” Stone replied.

“Yes she is, but just not the woman for me or me the man for her. Speaking of women, where’s Adelphia?”

Adelphia, a strange woman of undetermined origin and interesting accent, had been the only other protester left in Lafayette Park besides Stone. Alex had long suspected that she had a crush on his friend.

“I haven’t seen her for some time,” Stone replied. “She even took her sign down.”

“She was a strange bird.”

“We’re all strange birds.” He closed the folder and stood. “I appreciate this. It will be a big help.”

“Jerry Bagger, Jersey casino operator. So you thinking about doing some gambling?”

“Maybe, just not the way you probably imagine it.”

“From what I’ve heard, Bagger is a real psycho with a mean streak. Not a guy to mess around with.”

“I have no intention of doing anything like that.”

Alex rose too. “Even so, should I be expecting another eleventh-hour phone call for the cavalry?”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Saw our favorite buddy Carter Gray got the Medal of Freedom. It took all my willpower not to call the prick up and tell him to go to hell.”

“My willpower’s obviously not as strong as yours.” Stone then explained what he’d done.

Alex’s expression brightened. “You didn’t!”

“Yes, I did. And on top of that Gray’s asked me to visit him at his house tonight.”

“And you’re going?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

“Why? What could he possibly have to say that you’d want to hear?”

“I have some questions to ask him about . . . my daughter.”

Alex’s expression softened and he patted Stone’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“Life is what it is, Alex. You just have to accept it, because you have no other choice.”

CHAPTER 11

T
HE BOAT
H
ARRY
F
INN
was currently riding on the side of was not quite as fast as the naval vessel he’d piggybacked on previously, but it was more than adequate. Like the military folks, the people he had hitched the ride from tonight had no idea of his presence. He had chosen it because they were heading in the direction he wanted to go. He would have to get home another way, a way he’d already figured out. He had timed out the ride and kept glancing at his illuminated watch in anticipation of when to peel away and swim for shore. A storm was percolating, which was both good and bad for his plan. He’d come prepared; he always did.

As the boat neared where he would be leaving it, Finn reflected on the last conversation he’d had with his wife, Mandy. He’d just finished cutting the grass and gone inside to shower. She stopped him in the bedroom.

“David said he’d talked to you about your work.”

“That’s right. He said you’d told him you weren’t sure what I did for a living.”

“I’m not.”

“You know once I left the military I started doing contract work for Homeland Security.”

“But David can’t know that? And I can’t know more?”

“It’s just better that way. I’m sorry. But you have to trust me on that.”

“At least when you were in the navy I knew what I was getting into. What do they ask you to do now?”

He slipped an arm around her waist. “Like I’ve told you before, I help make us safer. There are lots of holes out there. My job is to patch them up, make us stronger. It’s not even remotely dangerous.”

The tension was clear on her face. “If it’s not even remotely dangerous why can’t you tell me?”

“I just can’t.”

“You never have been much of a talker, have you?’

“I always assumed it was one of the things you loved most about me.”

And they had left it at that. Mandy would never know that he illegally flew in the cargo holds of commercial aircraft, and rode without a shred of authorization on the hulls of military ships, because what spouse needed to know such things? And she would never know of the Dan Rosses of the world and the fates that had befallen them. Or of the Carter Grays who once held all the cards, but no longer did.

Yet it was still troubling for Harry Finn; he was a scrupulously honest man, who did not enjoy keeping anything from the woman he’d loved ever since seeing her walk across a college campus nearly fifteen years ago. He’d been on leave then and visiting a friend after rotating back from deployment overseas. He had always been shy and something of an introvert, an attribute that had graded out well for him in his military career. His line of work called for weeks or even months of thoughtful, meticulous preparation followed by seconds of adrenaline-fueled chaos in the midst of which he had to function with a maddening and lethal calm. He had excelled at both ends of that demanding spectrum.

Yet that day seeing the former Amanda Graham walk across that lawn in her jean short-shorts and open-toed sandals, with waist-length blonde hair and a face more lovely than he’d ever seen before, he had walked right up to the young woman and asked her out for that very night. She had declined at first, perhaps offended that he believed she would be free on such short notice. But Finn was nothing if not persistent. He got his date, and his wife. Finn wrangled from the navy a stint stateside and he and Mandy had married right after her graduation. Less than a year later David had arrived, followed by Patrick and Susie. They were a very happy couple. They had raised good kids, children who would make a difference in their world, perhaps only in small ways, but
positive
differences nonetheless.

Finn had no idea why he had some of his deepest reflections while doing impossibly crazy things, like riding on the sides of boats at high speeds, but he did.

He checked his watch, tightened the strap on the waterproof bag he carried over his shoulder and prepared himself for the next step. This was the tricky part, letting go of his ride at speed and avoiding the screws at the stern. Because when he let go, there was a distinct possibility that if he didn’t kick hard enough away from the direction the boat was going and didn’t go down deep enough in the water his last memory would be the props savagely cleaving his torso in two.

He coiled his legs and positioned them against the side of the boat. Counting to three, he kicked as hard as he could against the boat’s hull and plunged out and then downward even as he felt the force of the screws pulling him toward the stern. He came up to the surface and watched the running lights of the craft disappear. He looked around, quickly gained his bearings and swam hard toward the cliffs.

CHAPTER 12

J
ERRY
B
AGGER NEVER VENTURED
much out of Atlantic City anymore. He had his own Learjet but seldom used it. The last trip on it had been the deadly visit to the unfortunate Tony Wallace in Portugal. He once had a yacht but sold it when he discovered he easily became seasick, an embarrassment for a man who prided himself on toughness. Indeed, he rarely left his casino anymore. It was really the only place he felt comfortable these days.

Ironically, Bagger hadn’t been born in Vegas or Jersey. The ballsy, streetwise urban boy had seen his first light in, of all places, Wyoming, on a ranch where his father labored for something less than minimum wage. His mother had lost her life on Bagger’s first day from pregnancy complications, complications any hospital could have easily taken care of. But there had been no hospital within three hundred miles, so she’d died. Bagger’s father had joined her eighteen months later after an accident involving whiskey and a cantankerous horse.

The Wyoming ranch owner had no interest in raising a bastard child—Bagger’s mother and father had not bothered to marry—and he was shipped off to his mother’s family in Brooklyn. It was in the close confines of this New York melting pot, not in the wide-open spaces of Wyoming, that Bagger was meant to be and had thrived.

He had eventually gone back west. After fifteen years of twenty-hour workdays, nonstop hustling and risking and then nearly losing everything he had about a dozen times, he had his own casino. And soon business was so good he started printing money. Then his temper got the best of him and he was eventually run out of Vegas and ordered never to return. He had honored that request, although every time he flew over it he looked out the plane window and ceremoniously flipped off the entire state of Nevada.

Bagger left his penthouse and took the private elevator down to the casino floor. There he walked through a sea of slots, gaming tables and sport betting rooms where gamblers from the novice to the experienced dropped far more money than they would ever get back. Whenever he spotted a kid sitting bored on the floor, with their parents hovering nearby feeding buckets of nickels into the slots—their hands blackened from the process—Bagger would order that food, books and video games be brought to the child, and he would slip a twenty-dollar bill in the kid’s hand. Then he would make a call and someone from the Pompeii would immediately confront the parents and remind them that while children were allowed in the casino, they could not be in the playing areas.

Bagger would crush any adult who crossed him, but kids were not to be screwed with. That would change when they hit eighteen—then everyone was fair game—but until then kids were off-limits. It was shitty enough being adults, was his opinion, so let the little punks enjoy the time they had not being grown up. Underlying this philosophy might have been the fact that Jerry Bagger had never had a childhood. Dirt poor, he had run his first racket out of a Brooklyn tenement house at age nine and never looked back. That hard life was a major reason for his success, but the scars ran deep. So deep he didn’t even think about them anymore. They were simply what made him what he was.

On his walk Bagger made three such calls for kids left in the playing area by their parents, shaking his head each time. “Losers,” he muttered. Jerry Bagger had never bet one dime on anything. That was for suckers. He was many things, but a fool wasn’t one of them. These idiots would scream and jump around after winning a hundred bucks, forgetting that they’d thrown away
two
hundred bucks for the privilege. And yet this weird psychological quirk humans possessed had made Bagger rich, so he wasn’t complaining.

He stopped at one of the bars and raised an eyebrow at a waitress, who rushed to bring him his usual club soda with a lime. He never drank alcohol on the casino floor, nor did any of his employees. He perched on a bar stool and watched the Pompeii operate at maximum efficiency. All age ranges were represented here. And the whack jobs were aplenty, he knew from decades of experience. There wasn’t a single category of nutcase that hadn’t at one point strolled into his casino. Truth was, Bagger related to them better than he did the “normal” folks.

He eyed a newlywed couple still in their wedding clothes. The Pompeii offered a cut-rate, tips-not-included deal for those wanting to get hitched, which provided a standard room with a sturdy new mattress, a cheap bouquet of flowers, the services of a properly licensed minister, dinner, drinks and twin massages to work out the kinks from all that screwing. And, most importantly, the deal provided fifty dollars’ worth of casino chips. Bagger had no interest in promoting love; he knew from experience that those fifty bucks of free chips typically turned into a two-thousand-dollar profit for the house by the end of a long weekend, even taking into account the freebies.

The couple he was watching seemed to be trying their best to swallow each other’s tongues. Bagger grimaced at this public display. “Get a room,” he muttered. “It’s the cheapest thing you’ll find in this town other than the booze. And the sex.”

Bagger had never married, chiefly because he had never met a woman who could hold his interest. Annabelle Conroy
had
captured and held his interest. She was beyond mesmerizing. He’d wanted to spend all his time with her. In fact, before he found out she’d conned him, he had wondered if after all these years he’d finally found a lady he could escort down the aisle. It seemed crazy now, considering what had happened, how she’d screwed him over. And yet with all that Bagger just had to grin. What a picture that would’ve made. He and Annabelle as husband and wife? What a hoot.

And then, as was often the case, Jerry Bagger had a brilliant idea while he wasn’t even trying to.

He finished his club soda and headed back to his office to make some phone calls to find out one thing. When she’d been conning him Annabelle had told him she’d never been married or had children. But what if in reality Annabelle Conroy had been married? Because if she ever had said “I do” it was a golden way to track the lady down.