Текст книги "Greed"
Автор книги: Dan O'Shea
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 24 страниц)
CHAPTER 24
The next morning, Lynch and Bernstein were watching the show the surveillance guys had pieced together on Hardin on Lynch’s computer. Hardin gets off the plane. Hardin takes the bus to the car rental center. Hardin rents a white Ford Fusion.
They got the plate on that, called the Hertz people. Hardin had used an ID that said he was Nigel Fox. Ran that, Nigel Fox had been at the Hyatt down on Wacker until yesterday. Turned out he was a British newsie Hardin ran with back in Africa. Guy had kicked the bucket a few months back. Ran the plate numbers on the Fusion through the system. Hardin had it parked at the Grant Park garage from maybe forty minutes after Stein got hit until yesterday morning. Then he dropped the car back at the airport, took the L back into town, then jumped a BNSF commuter train to the western burbs. That’s where they lost him. No cameras on the trains, and the train he caught was a local: twenty-five stops between Chicago and Aurora.
“He had to drive back from our South Shore crime scene to the garage, right?” said Lynch. “Just before he took his rental back to the airport? But according to the tape, that rental hasn’t moved since he parked it. So let’s rewind on that, see if we can find the other car.”
They got back on the phone with IT. The entrances to the Grant Park garage were all near Hurley’s Millennium Park, the mayor’s zillion-dollar-over-budget vanity fiasco. It was like some garish nouveau riche attempt to one-up Central Park in ten percent of the space. There was the bandstand that was supposed to be another of Chicago’s architectural marvels but looked pretty much like a beer can that had been blown open with a firecracker. There was the Great Lawn, the one the security guys were always chasing the actual Chicagoans off of because they had to keep the grass nice for when the paying customers from the North Shore came down for the concerts. There was the Bean, a giant, stainless steel kidney bean parked right in the middle. It was supposed to be called Cloud Gate. Lynch remembered the artist getting his knickers in a knot when even the media started calling it the Bean. Lynch wondered what it was about Chicago sometimes – some sense of civic inferiority or something – that made the city break out the checkbook for any artist looking for a payday. You had the Picasso, God knows what that was supposed to be, a winged baboon or something. Across from that, next to the county building, there was what looked like a cement amputee with a fork in her head. You had the red spider down by the Federal Building. Had some white carbuncle in front of the State of Illinois building, looked like a giant wadded-up tissue. What was that thing called again? Monument with Standing Beast? Thing always smelled like urine because it had all these crannies homeless guys and drunks could get into when they had to take a leak. Even had a giant metal baseball bat in the West Loop.
One thing about Millennium Park though, it being Hurley’s baby. It was wired for cameras, wall to wall.
It only took a few minutes. The IT guy pulled up a shot of Hardin ducking into one of the stairwells off Randolph, tracked him back through the park, got him parking a black Grand Marquis on Columbus, behind the Art Institute. They ran that for a while, saw the tickets stacking up and then one of the blue city wreckers hauling it off.
“Looks like the right ride,” said Lynch. He and Bernstein were at the auto pound on lower Randolph, gloves on, taking a first look at the car. The Marquis had some blood on the inside of the right rear door, some on the seat next to it. Also, there was a bullet hole through the front passenger seat. Looked like the round hit the radio.
“Got a shell casing stuck in the seat cushion there,” Bernstein said, pointing.
“So if the gun ever turns up, we can match it. Match the blood to Skinny from down on South Shore, and we got this Hardin guy roped in to that solid.” Lynch popped open the glove compartment, took out a sheet of paper and unfolded it. It was a picture of Hardin at the car rental place at O’Hare – the same picture the tech guys had dug up for Lynch and Bernstein when they’d started running him down. On the bottom, in block printing, was: WHITE FUSION GL4 655 GRANT PARK GARAGE NORTH END.
Lynch held the paper out to Bernstein.
“This shit with Hardin and the mob, that went down yesterday early, right?” Lynch said.
Bernstein nodded.
“So who was pulling up surveillance shots before we even knew who we were looking for?”
“Good question,” Bernstein said.
“And what were a couple of goombahs doing with Hardin’s license number and location before we even had it?”
“Could see where that might kinda eat at you,” said Bernstein.
The pound attendant came back down from the office. Lynch had sent him in to run the VIN.
“Got reported stolen up at Old Orchard three days back,” the attendant told them. “Retired couple up in Glenview. Plates are off a junker, scrapped better than a year ago.”
Lynch pulled out his cell and called McCord. “Hey,” Lynch said. “We found your car from South Shore, or at least one of them. You’re gonna have to get some techs over to the pound and process it.”
“Got something for you too,” said McCord. “That pen? Got a hit on the prints. Michael Xavier Griffin. He’s in the DoD database. Marines, 1986 through 1994.Nothing in CID, so he’s been a good boy, far as we know.”
“Sure, except he used to be Michael Griffin and now he’s Nick Hardin. You know a lot of good boys who change their names?”
“Don’t know too many good boys who know how to kill somebody with a pen either,” said McCord.
CHAPTER 25
Hernandez watched out the window of the Gulfstream as it made its descent into DuPage Airport, coming in from the southwest, over the east side of Aurora. From the air, he picked out the parking lot where his brother had died. Where his brother had been killed. The brother he had never avenged.
Sandoval, he was dead. Hernandez had been with the crew that grabbed him, had watched while they used the blowtorch on him, had used the torch himself. He’d cut Sandoval’s throat himself, holding Sandoval’s head up, starring into the one eye he hadn’t burnt out, making sure the cabron’s last vision in this world was Hernandez’s face. He’d learned all there was to learn from Sandoval.
All these years. His brother in the ground all these years, and Griffin alive and breathing somewhere. Hernandez had never stopped looking. Or so he told himself. But was it true?
You forget, just a little, he had to admit that to himself. His power grew. His wealth grew. The complexities of running the business grew. Whole states in Mexico where he was the power as much as the government, more than the government. Distribution networks – into Mexico, into the US. The gangs in the major cities all over America, managing those relationships, trying to keep over-armed teenagers focused on moving his product instead of on their silly imaginary wars with the gang up the street that looked sideways at their girls.
Had he done all he could? Who could know? He had contacts looking all over the world. Every night, before he slept, his last thought was of his brother. And it was in that moment, the night before, that this Lee had called. Griffin’s fingerprints. In Chicago. He’d read through the email package from Lee. The Hardin identity, the murder scene, Corsco’s people involved. Hernandez would talk to Corsco.
The wheels hit the tarmac. Lee would be waiting. Hernandez’s Chicago contacts would be waiting. Soon, very soon, he would be Griffin’s last vision of this world. And by that time, Griffin would be glad to see this world go.
CHAPTER 26
“Is Hernandez on the ground?” Agent Jeanette Wilson asked from the back of the room at the emergency DEA briefing at the Chicago field office.
“Don’t know yet,” said Brad Jablonski, head of Chicago’s DEA field office. “Still sorting through what’s coming in from the CIs. We do know this – he’s got his whole organization on a war footing, and it’s all about finding this Griffin. You guys want to fill us in there?”
Lynch and Bernstein were seated up front. Lynch took the podium.
“We got a hit on a set of fingerprints at a murder down in Area 2 – the South Shore thing down at the old US Steel site, the business with the Corsco soldiers. You’ve all heard about that. Anyway, the fingerprints match those of a Michael Xavier Griffin in the DoD database.” Lynch hit the button to advance the slide show on the screen, a split-screen shot with Griffin’s official Marine photo on one side and screen grab from one of the city cam shots on Columbus on the other. “Griffin was in the Marines from ’86 to ’94, his last six years as a scout/sniper in Force Recon. So he does qualify as a genuine bad ass. You guys already know the story on Hernandez’s kid brother. This Griffin was home on leave, out for dinner with some other guy…” Lynch turned to Bernstein.
“Esteban Sandoval,” said Bernstein.
“Sandoval, right,” Lynch said. “Anyway, Griffin gets in a beef with Tiny Hernandez, that’s Jamie Hernandez’s kid brother. Thing ended up with Tiny and two of his goons DOA – and it was Griffin who killed all three of them.” He hit the advance button again: Sandoval’s driver’s license picture from ’93, and then a crime scene shot from the basement of the crack house on the west side where they’d found his body in March of ’95.”Cops say Sandoval had nothing to do with it, other than he happened to be out with Griffin the night it happened, but I guess that was enough for Hernandez. This is what Hernandez did to Sandoval.” In the back of the room, Jeanette Wilson turned away for just a beat. Surprised Lynch a little. He knew Wilson’s rep. She wasn’t anybody’s idea of a shrinking violet.
“Here’s what else we know,” Lynch continued. “Griffin has been living for almost ten years as Nick Hardin. French national. Been in West Africa pretty much that whole time, some kind of glorified gofer for TV news guys. Between ’94 and the TV gig, we got nothing. Rumor is maybe the Foreign Legion. Which would explain his having a clean French ID. Evidence indicates he was here to see Abraham Stein – got a witness that puts him in Stein’s box the night of his murder. Hardin may have been trying to sell some diamonds, but we don’t have everything on that yet.”
“You like Hardin for the Stein hit?” One of the DEA suits about halfway back.
Lynch shook his head. “Possible, but we don’t think so. Our witness saw Stein alive after Hardin left. Could’ve snuck back in, but it doesn’t feel like it. So we don’t think it was Hardin, Griffin, whoever–”
Jablonski butted in. “Let’s just say Hardin, keep the confusion down.”
Lynch nodded. “So, Hardin. With Stein, it could be diamonds. Don’t know what’s behind the business with Corsco. But whoever shot Stein also killed Beans Garbanzo down at the South Shore site after Hardin had left the scene – left in a different car than the shooter was driving. So again, could it be Hardin, some kind of three-rail shot with multiple vehicles? Could be, but I’d give that about a five percent chance right now. We do know this. Our shooter, Mr .22, whoever he is, he took out an African refugee named Membe Saturday a couple blocks west of the Stadium the same night he shot Stein. So it looks like we got a second party involved here, a shooter with an agenda around Hardin. That’s all we know so far. You guys have any tie in on the narcotics side that might clear any of this up?”
Jablonski blew out a breath. “Hernandez and Corsco, they gotta play ball to some degree. Could be Corsco made a run at this Hardin for Hernandez and blew it. Don’t know what to tell you about the other guy. Anybody got ideas?”
Some general mummers, but nobody ready to put a hand up.
“OK,” said Jablonski. “Work your networks. We got no warrants on Hernandez, but we know how this guy works. If this is about his brother, then he’s gonna be hands– on. So it’s a real chance to take him down hard. I’ll be coordinating with Chicago PD on this, so I want what you got when you got it. We’re putting a BOLO out for Hardin. We get him in the bag, get him to play ball, we got a real leg up. Let’s hit it.”
CHAPTER 27
Hardin called the number Fouche had given, asked for Lafitpour, listened to some hold music for a few minutes, then a voice came on the phone, started giving him instructions – no introduction, nothing.
“There is a self-serve Italian restaurant called Pompeii in Oak Brook Terrace. It is on Route 56 near Highland, in front of the Home Depot.” Deep voice, smooth voice, some hard-to-place rich guy accent. A voice Hardin bet people usually listened to. “Be there at 2pm.Sit near the windows. Have a sample with you.”
“How am I going to know you?” said Hardin.
“I’ll know you, Mr Hardin. You’re famous. That’s part of your problem, as I understand it.”
So Hardin was sitting near the windows, trying to decide whether the pizza was any good, but he’d lost his frame of reference. He hadn’t had good pizza in fifteen years.
Hardin was also getting his mind right, same ritual he’d gone through dating back to his days in the Corps, clearing his mental baffles, getting all his thinking done before the shit hit the fan so he wouldn’t have to do any thinking when it did. Eliminate the uncertainties, because that’s when fear crept in. Fear, when you got down to it, was an idea, a thought, a shadow cast by the memory of pain and the promise of mortality. Nobody wasn’t afraid, but you had to be clear on what you were afraid of and why. Then you did the math. Was the risk worth the reward? Had you done what you could on your end to control the downside? Was the current course of action your best bet? If you could answer yes, then your mind wouldn’t wander off at a bad time, you could keep your head in the game.
The stakes were pretty clear – $10 million or better against his life. Couldn’t think of anything he’d overlooked on the risk control side, and like it or not, the course of action had been set the second he jumped the couriers back in Liberia. Things had gone south some, but there was no way to turn back the clock and, truthfully, he wouldn’t if he could. He’d put his life on the line dozens of times – for a Marine paycheck, for a Legion paycheck, for a network paycheck. At least this time he was hanging his ass out for a decent number.
A large man walked in, looked around the room and then stepped aside. A medium-sized man walked directly to Hardin’s table. Tan suit, natural shoulder, very Brooks Brothers but a couple dozen notches up the couture food chain. Starched white shirt, maroon tie. His graying hair was combed straight back and gelled in place. He sat.
“You have your sample?” the man asked.
“Nice to meet you, too,” said Hardin.
The man smiled briefly, but not like he meant it. “The sample,” he repeated.
Hardin pulled the small canvas bag from his pants pocket, the same one he’d given Stein. Lafitpour held it out a little to his side and shook it, still some dirt on it, then held it up at shoulder level. The larger man came, took the bag, and left the restaurant.
Hardin had another bite of the pizza. The man sat across from him, hands folded on the table, looking him directly in the eyes. He didn’t seem to blink much.
“I can’t decide,” Hardin said. “The pizza any good here? Been a while since I had any.”
The man smiled again, said nothing. His phone rang. The man held it to his head, listened for a moment, ended the call, put the phone away. He pulled a business card from his pocket, and slid it across the table to Hardin.
“Your sample checks out. Be at this address the day after tomorrow at 8pm.Have your account information and the rest of the material with you. You can bring the pistol you are wearing on your left side under the jacket if it makes you feel any better.”
“Thanks,” said Hardin. “It does. I will. Do I get my sample back?”
The man smiled again, got up, and left.
“I guess not,” Hardin said to the empty chair.
CHAPTER28
Hardin drove back to the Motel 6, walked into his room, and saw a woman sitting in the desk chair, the chair turned toward the door. Late thirties maybe, medium height, lean, dark hair cut short, gray slacks, white blouse, blue blazer, black S&W.40. Not pointed at him, not exactly. It took a second.
“Hello, Juanita,” Hardin said.
She smiled. “Hello, Mike. Or should I say Nick? I like Nick, actually. Suits you. Mike always seemed a little pedestrian for you. And I’m Jeanette, by the way.” She picked a leather badge case from her blazer pocket and tossed it to him. Hardin flipped it open.
“Agent Wilson. Nice to meet you.”
“We’ll see, Nick. We’ll see.”
Hardin stood, Wilson sat, some kind of charge building between them.
“I guess the time was never right,” she said. He didn’t have to think about what that meant. “I’ll be here when the time is right” – those were her last words to him, all those years ago.
Hardin didn’t know what to say. “After Esteban, I just, I don’t know. I didn’t feel like I had the right.”
She nodded. “I wish… I guess I wish a lot of things.”
They looked at each other for a long time. She was leaner than she had been, harder. The long black hair he’d loved was cut back to a few practical inches. Hardin tried to see what he used to in her eyes, but there was nothing to read.
“I was thinking about looking you up,” Hardin said finally.
“If you had looked for Juanita Sandoval, I would have been a little hard to find.”
Hardin closed the badge case and flipped it back to her. “I guess,” he said. “DEA, huh? Is Hernandez in this already?”
She nodded. “Your prints turned up at a crime scene and word got around. That and you were on Oprah. You stick a pen in some guy’s neck yesterday?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On who’s asking. If it’s Agent Wilson, then I guess I need a lawyer.”
She set the badge and the gun down on the desk next to the chair. “It’s just me.”
“OK, yeah. The guy was fixing to shoot me at the time, though.”
“Well, you got a lot of people looking for you.”
“I was hoping I might be kind of hard to find, too.”
Wilson gave a little snort. “Took me about six hours. Of course, I had an idea of where to start looking. But how long before someone else is showing the kid down at the desk your picture? And you’d better hope that someone is just a cop, not one of Hernandez’s people. And not one of Corsco’s people.”
“Guess I’ll just have to keep moving,” Hardin said.
“How long do you need?”
“A day, maybe two.”
Her face went still for a moment, her mouth half-open like she had something to say but had to weigh the words first.
“So my place. No one will be looking for you there.”
The statement hung between them a long moment. Hardin shook his head.
“There’s no way I’m putting you in the middle of this. I can make it through tomorrow. If you want to do me a favor, then just walk away. If you can’t do that, then take me in. I’ll go. There’s no way I’m hurting you. Not again.”
A hard smile from Wilson, her hand moving from the armrest of the chair to the desk next to the S&W. “Hurting me? You’re assuming you could.”
She sat, he stood, each of them looking at the other, neither of them knowing what to say next.
“I used to think what it would be like,” he said, “seeing you again. This isn’t what I expected.”
“You were thinking a husband, a couple of kids?”
“Something like that.”
“Tried the husband thing,” she said. “Didn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
She locked her eyes on his, held his gaze. “Because I kissed this guy goodbye at an airport a long time ago. The goodbye part didn’t take.” She stopped for a moment, their eyes still locked. “I’ve thought about seeing you again, too,” she continued. “I’ve thought about that a lot. I’ve thought about how every good moment in my life falls on the other side of the day you got on that plane. And I lived with that because there was no way not to.” She stopped again, then said, “This isn’t just your decision.”
Hardin felt something turning in his gut, wondered if it could really be like this. She’d been a kid, he’d barely been more than that, and all of it was most of a lifetime ago. Her picture in his wallet all these years, that had been a talisman, a fantasy. And now here she was, and she was no one that he remembered. He thought of some of the things he’d done, what doing those things had made him. And yet for a moment the years were gone. She got up from her chair, took a step toward him, he took one toward her. He went to put his arms around her, but she reached up, put her right hand flat against his chest, her eyes finally leaving his, looking down.
“I’m not who I was,” her voice cracking just a little.
He pulled her hand from his chest and held it to his mouth, kissed her palm. He felt her shiver. He lifted her chin until their eyes locked again.
“Who is?” he said.
