“I’m listening, Cooch,” I said.
“Good,” said Kennedy.
My heart was banging. My eyes closed. Deep breath.
Dell shook his head. He couldn’t believe I had the audacity to take a call and interrupt him. “Can you believe this guy?” said Dell, throwing a hand at me.
“I just got a call from the associate director of the FBI. I’d asked for intel on Sarah Callan, the woman who posed as Clara Reece. It just came back at the highest level. Sarah Callan was an alias for Sophie Blanc—a CIA operative. She’s listed as KIA last year in Grand Cayman, following an armed assault on her convoy, which was targeting a witness in an ongoing investigation.”
“Cooch, you know what that means?” I said.
“Patton, was Sinton carrying a weapon?” said Dell.
Patton pulled a Glock from his waistband and gave it to Dell. The treasury agent in the aviators slugged back the coffee.
“Dead women don’t go to lectures on GSR. Dell lied to us. Sophie and Dell have set this whole thing up together. They’re going to steal the money and frame David for murder and the theft of the eight billon.”
All I could do was bite my lip. Dell and his girl framed David for murder. They wanted him to take the plea so he would be sent to jail to die. And he would surely die, because they’d framed him not only for murder, but for the theft of the money itself. It was brilliant.
Dell checked the weapon Patton gave to him. Popped the magazine, slotted it back in.
“What does the DA have on this guy?” I said.
“We don’t have much yet. But we’ve got enough to arrest. We’re coming up. Full tactical assault. Hold on for two minutes.”
“Call me when you hear back from the DA,” I said. I put the phone down on the table.
Dell widened his stance, turned, and casually shot Agent Patton in the face. The treasury man dropped his coffee and swung his feet off the desk, and Dell put a bullet through his aviators. Dell lowered the gun, pointed it at Sinton. I was on the opposite side of the table, and as far as he was concerned, I was unarmed and no threat.
I had two choices. I could clap my hands. Or I could make a move myself. The situation was too complex to rely on anyone else.
I ducked, and in half a second Dell’s backup piece was in my hand, the barrel pointing over the table at Dell’s head. The piece was still warm from sitting at my back all day.
“Don’t move,” I said. I had the drop on Dell.
My hands were shaking, my back soaked in sweat. The sight on the Ruger’s slide quivered in my grip as I tried to hold it firm, and I saw something on the weapon. Or rather, I didn’t see something. There was no serial number on Dell’s Ruger. Same as the murder weapon. The only place you can get a gun without a serial number is if you tell the manufacturer that’s the way you want it. The United States government could do that, if they didn’t want weapons traced back to them. The kind of weapons used in CIA black ops.
Dell looked at the gun in my hand.
“That’s my piece. I want it back.”
Nobody moved.
“Dell, you double-crossing son of a bitch,” said Sinton.
The CIA man silenced Sinton with a punch to the face.
“Hands in the air, Dell,” I said. He stepped back, kept the piece pointed at Sinton, and turned slowly to face me.
“You ever shot someone before, Eddie? It’s not as easy as it looks. You don’t have to kill anyone and you can walk out of here, you know. There’s always a deal to be made, right? But I need to understand how much you know. And how much it would cost for you to keep quiet. I’m going to put two rounds in Gerry’s head. You see, Gerry Sinton just killed two treasury agents. Then I’m going to leave here and meet a special friend. And that friend can send you fifty million dollars. You’ll have it by tomorrow. That same friend is gonna spread traces of the money over Gerry’s accounts—seventy or eighty million, say. And the same for David Child, you, me, and your wife. We’ll be clear and rich. So tell me, how much do you know, and is it worthy fifty million?”
“No…” said Sinton.
I kept my eyes on Dell’s hands as I spoke. I needed time. Kennedy was on his way.
“It’s worth a damn sight more than fifty, Dell. You told me Grand Cayman was the Panama Canal of dirty money. My guess is you knew every operation going and you made a lot of money skimming off the top. But that kind of business is risky. You said so yourself. The fewer people involved, the better. I think Sinton got the idea of using technology to move the cash, and he laid you off along with the other money mules. You didn’t like that. I think Bernard Langhiemer is in the CIA’s pocket—your pocket. I think he’s your special friend. You got him to frame Farooq so you could lean on him and get whatever information you needed to pretend to go after the firm. Farooq told you about the algo, the piece of tech that replaced you, so you wanted your revenge on David as much as the firm.”
Dell nodded, smirked.
“Sarah, or Sophie, or whoever she is, created Clara Reece to get close to David. She faked Clara’s death, murdering some other poor girl and wiping out her face so the cops couldn’t ID the body. Then Clara hid in the panic room until it was clear and walked out of the apartment in a hazmat suit. Langhiemer helped you frame David by setting up the car crash. You used me, you used Christine, and you used David. His arrest put the firm into meltdown and caused them to trigger the algo. They didn’t want David talking to the FBI. You needed the firm to panic and hit the wash button so you could be waiting to grab the whole pile when it landed, framing David for the robbery of eight billion dollars.
“If you wanted information from David, you could’ve picked him up and scared him into giving you whatever you wanted. No, you needed a patsy. You needed David to plead guilty to the murder. That’s the only reason you got me involved. Shit sticks, right? You told me that yourself. Nobody would believe David didn’t steal the money after he pleaded guilty to killing his girlfriend. You weren’t just setting him up for murder. You were setting him up to take the fall for your robbery. This was always about the money. David’s setup was elaborate and brilliant—easily worth eight billion. That’s how much I know. That costs a lot more than fifty,” I said.
“You son of a bitch!” screamed Sinton.
Dell had turned his attention on Sinton. “You paid me to wash the money, but you didn’t need me anymore after Child came up with his algorithm. I don’t like being fired from the criminal organizations that pay me for my services; it sets a bad example for the rest of them. This is the greatest robbery of all time. Don’t you see that? I set you running like a hare, and you were very quick to kill your old partner. I got to say, I enjoyed that. It made things easier for us. How do you feel now? I’m taking it all, Gerry.”
The gun shook in my hand, I’d never shot anyone before, but now seemed a good time to start.
“Eddie, I’m going to pull the trigger. It’s all over for Gerry. Don’t shoot. Before I do that, I need to know, do we have a deal? One hundred million sound fair?”
“If it’s dirty money, why the elaborate frame-up, Dell?” I said. I needed to buy time. I wasn’t about to give up David or anyone else, and I knew Dell would kill me the second he had a chance. I knew I shouldn’t have pulled the gun. I should have clapped my hands. Come on, Kennedy, where are you?
“Oh, I’m not worried about the cops. No, I’m worried about the organizations who own big chunks of that money. The cartel already sent their man up here to check this out. Only way I can survive this is if they go looking for someone else—someone like David Child.”
The elevator chimed and the doors opened. I thanked God that Kennedy had made it. Slowly, Dell turned, shielding the gun as he did so. My gut tightened when I saw that it wasn’t Kennedy. Twenty feet away, standing in front of the elevator, were the last two people on earth that I’d expected to see.
A figure in black. The man with the tattoo of the screaming soul—El Grito. In one hand he held a gun. His other hand was wrapped around the throat of Sophie Blanc. Her hair was cut short and dyed black. A livid bruise seemed to almost fold her face in two. But it was her. Sarah, Clara, Sophie, did she even know who she really was anymore? Right then it probably didn’t matter. She knew she was dead already.
“We’ve been watching you,” said El Grito, in a thick Latin American accent. “Langhiemer is dead. No one is coming to get you out of this. I found this little whore in Langhiemer’s apartment. Drop the gun and take me to the money. And then she will die quickly. This is the best I can offer. You know this, puto.”
The cartel’s hit man gave me a small window; a single moment of distraction was all I needed. I dropped the Ruger at my feet. I raised my arms above my head and clapped my hands. The window came in around me, covering me in a wave of shards. The thunder of breaking plate glass was answered by gunfire. El Grito threw his hostage on the floor and started shooting. The doors beside the elevator burst open—Kennedy came in low, Weinstein and Ferrar behind him.
I ducked, leaned over the slate table, grabbed the edge with both hands, and heaved the whole thing over onto its side. The table weighed a ton, and as I pulled it, I tore the muscles in my back and let go of the damn thing just as it smacked into the side of my head. I went down behind it. The lights in the whole building went out. Standard FBI tactical assault.
Deaf.
I could feel the vibrations from the weapons. Blood and teeth-shattering cracks roared in my ears.
Blind.
The visceral dance from the coruscating muzzle flash. Fireworks from the parade bloomed phosphorous flowers in the black Manhattan sky. Inside, the deafening ballet was punctuated only by the teeming black of the room, which seemed to fight against the glimmer of muzzle flash. The dark wanted this place, and fought for it. I couldn’t tell if it was the darkness or the men that did the killing.
I lay flat on the floor and watched sparks from the exploding TV ignite the carpet.
And then silence.
The quiet came before the smell—that sour odor from hot metal burning and tearing through flesh and bone and life. The shattered window let the Manhattan breeze into the place—almost in a futile attempt to wash the smell away on the air.
My body would not move. It felt as if my limbs were betraying me, paralyzing me, so that I couldn’t get up and catch a bullet. I thought of Christine, and Amy, and somehow I moved.
I still couldn’t see much. My eyes stung from the smoke coming off the burning carpet. On my hands and knees, I couldn’t find the Ruger. Ahead of me, a Glock. I took it and stood up.