Interstate 80, New Jersey; Minot/Bismarck, North Dakota
“Seventeen hundred and twenty miles and we almost there already,” Roger Daltry told Ox.
The big man was taking his turn at sleeping. He had been snoring so loud Daltry had cracked the window open to drown out the noise. Ox woke up after a while. Daltry figured the beast had finally felt a chill.
“Where are we?” Ox asked.
“About to cross the Hudson River.”
“Where’s that?”
“Separates Jersey and New York.”
“How much longer?”
“Hour or so, except I need to take a dump and get something inside my belly. What about you?”
“I’m hungry, too.”
“What about the bathroom?”
Ox reached down to feel his pants. “Must’ve pissed myself while I slept,” he said.
Daltry’s eyebrows furrowed. “You kidding me?”
Ox shook his head no. “I was sleeping.”
“Well, hold on until we find an exit the other side of the bridge. Don’t even think about shitting yourself.”
Ox yawned loud.
Daltry looked to Ox and saw the big man was about to pick his nose. Ox must’ve felt the stare. “What?” he said.
Daltry decided there and then that Ox had to die.
* * * * * * *
Pavlik was at the university library looking over past Minot daily newspapers when Marsha Nordstrom called him back. She told him that Dale Hehn would be out of town until later in the afternoon. Pavlik thanked her and told her he’d meet her at the lounge in an hour or so.
He spent the next forty-five minutes searching for something that might reveal how long James Singleton had been in Minot. He was frustrated for his efforts. There had been some drug arrests over the last few weeks. Some had involved heroin and cocaine, but there was nothing solid except for the murder of the private from the Air Force base who had previously been arrested for heroin possession.
When Pavlik returned to the hotel lounge, he could tell Marsha Nordstrom was a little apprehensive. “You look okay,” she said.
“I know what I told you sounds crazy,” Pavlik said, “but it’s true. I had issues with an agent I think is running things here ten years ago in New York. He’s probably the handler for the guy I’m looking for.”
“Handler?”
“What the FBI calls their babysitters.”
Marsha wasn’t getting it. She set a coffee down in front of Pavlik.
“Can you make a Bloody Mary?” he asked.
“Spicy or mild?”
“Spicy.”
She started to mix the drink.
Pavlik said, “When they make these witness protection deals they have a vested interest in keeping their snitches out of trouble as well as alive. The guy I’m looking for was a drug dealer who gave up a few people back in New York. They had him working the street. He decided to try something on his own and wound up killing three people in the process. The FBI protected him from the murder charges, but he was shot through the eye. My guess is they relocated him out here and now he’s working for them all over again.”
“They actually do stuff like that, the FBI?” Marsha said.
“They do a lot worse than that,” Pavlik said. “Sammy Gravano, the New York wiseguy, he walked away from nineteen murders, nineteen he admitted to, and wound up dealing drugs a few years later in Arizona someplace. Taxpayers treated him to plastic surgery before the government gave him a new life.”
“I knew about that one, but didn’t he bring down a lot of the New York mob?”
“A lot less than they’d like the rest of the world to believe, but he did bring down John Gotti, which was all they really wanted. They didn’t really need Gravano to do that. Gotti had buried himself with his own words they’d recorded with bugs. The FBI didn’t need to let the second in command walk away from nineteen murders. That was a combination of politics and sending a message, the deal they gave that guy. They had tapes and a slew of underlings they’d already flipped. That was the feds taking the easy way out.”
“Flipped?”
“Sorry,” Pavlik said. “I’m talking a different language here. Flipped means they made a deal.”
He could see she was still confused. “Turned rat,” he said.
“And what’s the message?”
“They don’t have to do time. Give up the guy above them and they can skip the justice their victims’ families expect.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It’s how the feds do things, except if the guy they’re protecting is important enough, they turn their backs on all the other crimes their informant might commit, including rapes and murders.”
“And you think the guy with the mask is in the witness protection program?”
“I’m positive,” Pavlik said. “He’s not only in it, he’s actively working with the feds, which gives him even more clout. I’ll guarantee you he’s behind some of these murders here.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It’s the way the feds operate. They stop cops from doing their jobs all the time. They make deals with murderers, pedophiles, rapists, serial killers, and then they hide behind the Justice Department.”
Marsha poured his drink in a pint glass with a stalk of celery. “Well, I hope Dale can meet with you later,” she said. “He said he would try.”
Pavlik set a twenty on the bar and took a long sip of the drink through the straw.
“I hope so, too,” he said. “Because other than him, I’m pretty much on my own right now.”
* * * * * * *
The investment bankers were in their room on the second floor of a Bismarck motel a few blocks from the state penitentiary. They each had a cup of coffee. Todd was looking out from behind the blinds. Joshua sat on the bed flipping through television channels with the remote.
“I can’t believe he left us alone,” Todd said.
“That’s because we aren’t alone,” Joshua said. “Look out at the parking lot. That other guy was with him before is still there. He’s our babysitter. Besides, we have no place to go, we want to run away. It’s zero fucking degrees outside. All we have are light clothes.”
“I don’t like the way this is going,” Todd said.
“Yeah, right,” Joshua said. “You have a better idea?”
“I don’t trust that guy last night.”
“Which guy?”
“The one with the mask. I don’t trust him.”
“Well, he’s a rat, just like we are, so I guess we shouldn’t trust him.”
“What’s to stop him from making a phone call, Josh?”
“A phone call where? To whom?”
“Duh, hello? Las Vegas.”
“To whom, Todd. Think about it?”
“I am thinking about it. It wouldn’t be that hard to figure out who to call there. What’s to stop him from finding out?”
“The same thing keeping us in this shit-hole motel instead of taking a flight to South America. The agents outside.”
“Except they aren’t watching him the same way.”
Joshua rolled his eyes. “Todd, I’m not in the mood for this now, okay? You didn’t sleep all night. Why don’t you try again now?”
“You hear that wind out there?” Todd asked. “Just listening to it makes me cold.”
“So get away from the window.”
“I hate this place.”
“It beats Pelican Bay. I’m sure of that much.”
“Maybe Pelican Bay is safer.”
“You must be losing your mind.”
“I’m serious. Maybe it is.”
“It isn’t,” Joshua said. “Trust me, I know. I can tell from the lock-up shows on cable. I have no intention of going to Pelican Bay or any other prison.”
“Morris doesn’t like us,” Todd said. “That’s the only thing I believe that guy with the eye patch said. Morris isn’t our friend.”
“And neither are we his friend,” Joshua said.
Todd finally turned away from the window. “He’s setting us up,” he said.
“What?”
“He’s setting us up.”
“Who is? Morris? What the fuck for? We’re his case.”
“No, the other guy,” Todd said.
“How the fuck is he doing that? He’s in the same boat as us.”
“He is, I can tell.”
“You’re paranoid, my friend. Take a pill or something.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Then count sheep.”