The End Game (18 page)

29

It didn’t take long for Lendowski to catch up with the Jeep. Mamaroneck was a small town and there weren’t too many options if one was aiming to leave it. North or south on the Boston Post Road if you wanted a slow amble, or the thruway if you were on any kind of schedule. Most people going anywhere took Mamaroneck Avenue up to the thruway’s on-ramps.

He caught up with the Jeep just as it was turning onto the Post Road and stayed well back, not wanting to give his quarry any chance of knowing he was there. Then he remembered his cash-only employer and what he’d been asked to do. As the Jeep turned left onto Fenimore, he pulled out his phone and dialed the number.

As before, the man answered promptly. “What’s going on?”

“I’m on Chaykin’s tail,” Lendowski told him. “She’s on her way to meet Reilly.”

“We know,” the man said. “We have an asset waiting there.”

This surprised Lendowski. “Waiting? Where?”

“In the city. Where the meet is going to take place. It should be taken care of before Chaykin gets there.”

This didn’t fit. “The city?” Lendowski asked. “That was the message in the text?”

“Correct.”

Something was definitely off. “She’s not heading into the city.”

“Say again?”

“She’s not going into the city,” Lendowski said. “Look, if that’s where she was going, she’d be jumping on I-95 or taking a train in. And I can tell you she’s not doing either. She’s turned off the road that leads to both of them as we speak.”

The voice hesitated, then asked, “You’re sure about this?”

“I’m on her fucking tail,” Lendowski fired back. “She’s going somewhere else. Somewhere local, by the looks of it. This road leads nowhere.”

“We could have a serious problem here,” the man growled. “All right. Stay on it. I might need you to step up. I’ll call you right back.”

Which was timely, as Lendowski now had a call waiting from Deutsch.

“She’s gone,” Deutsch said, her voice breathless. “They faked us. You got them yet?”

Lendowski thought fast. He was alone, following Chaykin, who was likely to lead him straight to Reilly. His employers—who seemed to have deep pockets—sounded like they were in a bit of a panic. The bit about him stepping up to the plate was still ringing in his ears.

He thought he might have an opportunity here.

“Nothing yet,” he told Deutsch, thinking he should buy himself some time. “I’ll call you as soon as I have anything.”

“I’ll put out an APB on the Jeep,” Deutsch said.

“No,” Lendowski countered. Last thing he needed right now was interference. “Let’s not spook her yet. She could well lead us to Reilly. I’ll find her. Just give me a bit more time.”

Deutsch audibly hesitated, then said, “OK. Call me the second you know, either way.”

“You got it.” He hung up.

In Aparo’s apartment, Sandman was livid. “Is he sure? How reliable is he?”

“He’s a Fed,” Roos replied. “The guy knows what he’s talking about. You can’t get there in time, can you?”

“Up to Westchester? I’m an hour away, easy. Depends on when and where they’re meeting.” He cursed under his breath, pissed off at how Reilly had played them.

“OK,” Roos said. “Get up there. I’ll keep you posted.”

Lendowski saw the Jeep’s brake lights flare up and watched as it pulled into the CITGO gas station just before the thruway’s overpass. He pulled over and killed his lights. Tess got out, then the Jeep came back out of the station, pulled a U-turn and headed back toward him. As it drove past, Lendowski’s phone rang again. It was his off-the-books employer.

“OK, here’s the deal, Len. We’ve got no assets nearby and it’s likely they can’t get to you in time, so we’re going to need you to take care of this.”

Lendowski saw Tess now walking away from the station, heading north along the quiet lane. “What do you mean?” Even as he said it, Lendowski knew what the man was going to ask him to do.

There was silence for a moment, confirming that Lendowski had indeed guessed correctly. Then the voice said, “Fifty thousand.”

Lendowski climbed out of the car, feeling a spike of unease at what he was hearing—and thinking. “For your Reilly problem to go away permanently? That’s what we’re talking about, right?”

“I knew you’d see things our way, Len.”

The strangest mixture of elation and abject terror at what he was contemplating now raced through him. “I’m not sure about this.”

“Come on, Len. We need you to do it. And you could do a lot worse than be on our team.”

“You realize what you’re asking me to do?” He was now following Tess, staying well back.

“All I’m asking is for you to take advantage of the unique situation you’re in. Think about it. This’ll wipe out what you owe your bookies—something the Bureau doesn’t know about, right? Like the IRS and those wads of cash we’ve been handing you?”

The threat was implicit. The bastards weren’t content with cajoling him into playing ball. They had to resort to threatening him. Well, screw them, he thought. Them, and Reilly. He’d turn this to his advantage, big time.

He steeled himself, greed now pumping adrenaline all through him. “One hundred. Two if she needs to go too.”

“I don’t have time to play games with you, Len. And I’m not the Sultan of Brunei either. One hundred I can do. Just him or both of them, that’s up to you. But it has to be clean, either way.”

“One fifty.”

“Len. Take the deal. It’s the clever move, trust me.”

Shit.

Still—this was still a big payday. Tax free, one shot, done.

Time was pressing.

Lendowski’s thoughts were ricocheting all over the place as he tried to make sure he had all the bases covered. “But how? I don’t know who you are. How’re you going to get me the money?”

“Check your bank balance on your phone. We’re wiring in half as we speak.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised they knew where he banked, but still the notion still made him feel sick to his stomach. “Bank account? No, fuck that. Cash only. I can’t have a deposit this big show up like that.”

“Don’t worry about it, Len. We’ll swap it for cash once it’s done and clean it up as an honest mistake. It won’t be an issue. In the meantime, it’s yours. Consider it an advance.”

He was screwed. They knew enough about him already to get him kicked out of the Bureau, if not put behind bars. And it wasn’t as if this was about someone he liked.

His face set in a scowl that could force water through ground coffee at espresso pressure, he relented. “Deal,” he said. “I’ll call you when it’s done.”

He hung up, knowing he’d need to explain his absence and his radio silence to Deutsch later. A problem with his car, maybe. Then there was another, more significant problem. His backup gun—a clean Sig P226 with the serial numbers filed off—had been concealed inside the spare of his Explorer when Reilly had driven off with it. He hadn’t yet had time to retrieve it.

He thought he might just have to kill Reilly with his bare hands.

30

New Rochelle, New York

I’d made it as far as Baychester before the urge to close my eyes had become overwhelming. I’d pulled into the Bay Plaza parking lot, smeared a couple of handfuls of halite-dirtied snow across each license plate, then slept in my stolen Caprice for a couple of hours, this crashing-out-in-cars thing becoming far too much of a habit for my liking.

The physical exertion and adrenaline-fuelled nature of the previous few hours seemed to have conspired to mean that, instead of experiencing IMAX-style waking visions of my past lives, I was in fact sound asleep.

Presently, I was sitting in the darkness off Pinebrook Boulevard and reminisced about happier times, specifically the time Tess was screaming at the top of her voice: “It’s all crap. I’m going to smash this laptop to pieces so I never have to write such appalling trash ever again.”

Happier times, indeed.

Tess had been beyond frustrated. She’d been working on her second book and had written herself into a corner. I had saved the day by shutting down the laptop before it was permanently retired and making Tess join me on a brisk walk.

It was obvious that Tess could tell a story—the sales figures from her first book had made that clear—but the sea change from archaeologist-adventurer to desk-bound author had meant that Tess had some pent-up adrenaline to burn off. The bi-weekly Bikram yoga clearly wasn’t cutting it and sometimes cabin fever got the best of her. So I took her to the only trail I knew in the area and walked her from one end to the other and back again, something she now did every week on her “Zen walk,” occasionally alternating with other routes to keep things fresh.

Am I a great partner, or what?

The Leatherstocking Trail was a gorgeous haven of woods and wetlands, and the strip I was talking about, the southern section of the bigger, fifteen-mile-long Colonial Greenway loop, was where Tess let off steam instead of taking it out on a thousand bucks’ worth of MacBook.

Several of the roads that ran roughly north-south through the east-west trail gave easy access to it, which meant that, overall, the trail was a flawless way to expose a tail or physical surveillance, being no more than two hundred feet wide in most places and giving no consistent cover. Even better, the overcast weather meant that drone coverage would be difficult to pull off unnoticed—assuming they even knew we were here—which, I hoped, wasn’t the case.

Tess and I knew each other’s thought processes well enough for me to be pretty sure that she would hit the trail from somewhere near its eastern end, maybe at Fenimore, and walk west, while she would expect me to approach from the opposite end, which was exactly what I was about to do. If we needed to make a quick getaway, then either car would be an option.

I had been waiting in the Caprice for about twenty minutes and was now as sure as I could be that I was alone. I grabbed the flashlight and one of the Glocks from Lendowski’s holdall—his or Deutsch’s, I had no way of knowing which—climbed out of the car, crossed Pinebrook, and struck out along the trail. After about a thousand yards, I passed the sign stating that I had crossed from New Rochelle into the town of Mamaroneck.

There was just enough light for me to see my way without the flashlight, the combination of dull moonlight and light pollution from the town revealing islands of snow in a sea of thick foliage made up of ash, maple, oak and others trees that were beyond my limited knowledge of upstate flora. The only other thing I knew was that there was poison ivy dotted along the trail. Given how swimmingly everything had gone these last few days, I decided I wouldn’t be surprised if I fell face-first into some before the night was out.

I figured it would take me no more than twenty minutes to pick my way to the center of the trail, which was where the Sheldrake River forked. This was the part of the trail farthest from an intersecting road, and therefore a perfect place to meet. I hoped Tess would think the same.

With my line of sight constantly flicking between the ground and the trail, I continued eastwards.

When I reached the only intersecting road between where I had left the car and the river, I checked in both directions before continuing on my way. Ten minutes later the trail opened out into its widest and most isolated area, where it crossed the easternmost of the two river forks.

I slowly skirted the perimeter, eyes and ears alert for any sign of movement. Apart from assorted nocturnal creatures, I was alone. I concealed myself behind a cluster of trees on the north side of the area and waited.

After another five minutes I heard the faint sound of someone approaching from the east. Less than a minute later, the sound resolved into clearer footfalls. Then Tess appeared. Alone and carrying what I recognized to be Kim’s denim backpack.

She stopped and turned to look back the way she had come, ears straining for any sound behind her.

There was nothing but silence around us.

I watched as she moved into the clearing and waited, then I stepped out from behind the trees.

“Tess.” As low as I could say it and still be heard.

She swung her head, saw me, and walked around the edge of the clearing toward me, her pace picking up with each step.

We closed the ground toward each other in seconds, then fell into each other’s arms, Tess having dropped the backpack to the ground.

“Thank God,” she whispered.

We stayed like that for a long time. The only thing either of us needed right then and there was the warmth of the other’s body.

We finally broke apart.

Her face flooded with concern. “You’re OK, right? The drug? You’re OK?”

“It did the trick,” I said. “The jury’s still out on any long-term effects.” Then I looked her up and down, and the garb sank in. “You’re Kim?”

She half smiled. “I may decide to stick with this look. What do you think?”

“As long as you don’t go getting tats and piercings all over you, young lady,” I said, wagging my finger.

“We should stop. This is getting creepy.”

“Agreed.”

I waved at her attire. “So Kim—she helped you with all this?”

“She didn’t just help—she gave up a date with Giorgio for it.” My face obviously telegraphed my confusion, so Tess added, “He dropped me off.”

I smiled. Kim—Tess’s mini-me—she was key to why we were standing here. I gazed at Tess’s eyes, which appeared dark in the bleak light, but which I knew to be exactly the same shade of green as Kim’s.

“She’s everything that’s great about you.”

She thought about this for a moment. “And Alex has none of your obsessive traits. Yet.”

I nodded. She was right, of course. But none of that mattered. Right now, I was just so damn happy to see her. And I couldn’t have done it without Kim. Or without a silly dad-lesson I’d insisted on one rainy Sunday afternoon a couple of years back.

I’d wanted her to learn Tess and my cell phone numbers, as well as our home number, by heart. I’d explained to her that just because no one knows anyone’s number any more didn’t mean that everyone has suddenly become immune to losing things. I mean, seriously, who remembers anyone’s number these days? Lose your phone when you’re out and it’s unlikely you’d know how to contact anyone because your phone now functions on behalf of—and often instead of—your brain.

So as decreed by Kim, the three of us—we figured Alex was still too young for this—had memorized each other’s phone numbers, her flawless logic being that if she had to learn our numbers, then we should have to learn hers too, an argument she had won at the time by pouting till we agreed. And had just won again, uncontested, since I was able to send Tess the fake text message from a burner phone that didn’t have her number stored in it.

It was the other message, though, that had led Tess here.

I had decided to contact her indirectly, and thought of a couple of options. One was to go through Kurt, then something better dropped into my mind. I found an Internet café and created a fake Facebook account using some photos I’d cut and pasted off some of Kim’s friends profiles, then used that to post a comment on a recent photo of hers. The comment had to get through her rapid-fire fingers and her ruthless indifference filter, and it needed to tell her it was me, without announcing it to the guys in the Stingray van. So I’d used a name that was bound to get her attention.

One of the first times I met Giorgio when he and Kim started dating, I lightheartedly referred to him as Georgie Boy, which went down like a lead balloon. I had intended it as a term of endearment, channeling a nickname Jerry used for George on “Seinfeld.” I mean, it wasn’t like I was calling him Boy George or cracking any lame Armani puns. I’d explained its origin and, given that I get a bit evangelical when it comes to the Seinfeld canon, I’d talked about George’s other nicknames, most notably T-Bone and my favorite, Art Vandelay. Still, the resistance was noted, and “Georgie Boy” only rarely saw the light of day. I was still waiting for the day I’d be able to sit through box sets of the series with her, but there always seemed to be another
Pretty Little Liars
hogging any available viewing time she had.

So “Georgie Boy” had put a “Like” on one of Kim’s photos, along with a comment that asked “How’s Stacy’s mom?”—a reference to a song we liked and joked about—with a winkie face. It had taken a couple of minutes, but when she’d replied—presumably after showing it to Tess—“She’s got it going on, Art!” with a laughing emoticon, I knew she’d got it. So I commented back, “I can’t mow her lawn! How about a quickie on the Zen walk instead?” with a tongue-out emoticon. She’d replied “8OK!” with two of the tongue-out faces.

“‘A quickie on the Zen walk,’ Georgie Boy?” Tess smirked. “I dunno if Kim’s ever going to forgive you for that.”

“Hey, it did the trick, didn’t it?”

She nodded, then her expression darkened. “What’s going on, Sean? Where do we go from here?”

“I’m going to find Corrigan and prove that his guy killed Kirby. It’s the only way.”

She studied me, then just nodded. I guess she knew we were past the point of arguing about this. She gestured toward the ground. “I got what I could.”

“Maybe you and the kids should go to the ranch—” I was referring to her aunt’s place in Arizona.

“No way,” she cut me off. “You need me here. But your guys have the house under watch 24/7. Where are you going to stay?”

“I have no idea.”

“Maybe with whoever’s been helping you?”

A loaded question, by the looks of it. No point denying it now. “Nick tell you?”

She nodded.

Which reminded me of something I needed to know. “What else did he say? When you saw him?”

“What, at the house?”

“Yes, before the . . . before the accident?”

“He said you wanted your laptop safe.”

I nodded. “Where is it now?”

“I brought it back to the house after the accident. I hid it in the loft. I figured the ERT guys had already gone through the house, so it was safe there. I mean, I didn’t know where else to put it. Should I have brought it?”

“No, that’s fine. I just didn’t want them to have access to it to either track down the guy helping me out, or plant stuff on it. What else?”

“He told me everything you told me at Federal Plaza. About Corrigan, your dad, Azorian.”

“What else?”

“That’s it. He just said he was going to do everything he could to help clear you. That with you in custody, he’d use the Bureau’s weight to get to the bottom of this with the CIA. Maybe even ask the president to help.” She studied me, then asked, “Why are you asking me this?”

“I don’t know. It’s just . . . him dying, the timing if it.”

He face scrunched up with concern. “You think he was murdered?”

Before I could answer, we both heard it.

The snap of a branch.

Then silence again.

Tess motioned for me to take Kim’s backpack. “Go. Just go.”

“No.” I jabbed a finger at the trees to my right and hissed, low, “Hide. Quickly.”

Tess sprinted away as I reached for the gun tucked in the small of my back—

But before I had it fully out, a figure emerged out of the trees and came rushing at me, fast, with what looked like a gun in his hand. In a flash, he’d plowed into me, knocking us both to the ground, his left hand locked around my right forearm. Driving a knee into my gut, he levered himself upward and threw a couple of lightning jabs at my head with his gun hand, dazing me enough to let him force the gun from my hand.

He picked up the gun I’d dropped and stood up, tucking it into his belt holster and pointing his weapon directly at me.

“Get up, asshole,” Lendowski spat.

I shook my head and tried to focus my eyes, but what I saw made no sense. For one thing, he was alone.

“Where’s Deutsch?”

His expression went all weird and wry. “She couldn’t make it.”

And then all at once, disparate little observations fell into line. The call outside the bar. The gambling. The unusual levels of interest in my routine. His being here, without Deutsch.

They’d got to him—and now he was going to do their bidding.