Her eyes misted. She turned, slid open the window that accessed the dispatch area, spoke to people I couldn’t see, “Tell Four Paul Three, not to take code seven until he handles that missing person and then tell Four Sam One I want him to call me ASAP.” She slid the window closed. The conscientious supervisor, she’d been monitoring the cop talk on the radio all the while conversing with me.
I wanted to go around and hug her to help quell her emotional pain. “What happened?”
“What always happens? He met someone else.” She looked away, her chin quivered. “It’s my fault.”
“No it’s not, Barb.”
She looked back her eyes aflame. “You don’t know shit. You have no idea how I respected you, the both of you. I envied you going to work with him everyday, all the overtime, seeing him more than I did. Then you went bad, you made him shoot you. It ruined him. That’s when it really started, three years ago.”
Derek Sams ruined more lives than he would’ve ever known; my daughter, my grandson, my father, and now Wicks and his wife, Barbara. The insidious tentacles of narcotics burrow deep into the fabric of society.
I wanted to lay it all at his door, but couldn’t. I had to own up to my own actions, my own choices.
Shame rose up and heated my face. I wanted to tell her I didn’t ask Wicks to shoot. He didn’t have to. I was going to give up. He didn’t give me a chance. He never gave me the chance.
She continued her rant. “You went bad, then he followed right along behind you.”
I moved to the edge of my chair. “He went bad? What happened? What’re you talking about?”
“The FBI popped him, civil-rights violation. A bad shoot by one of his men. They told him they were going to go back five years to investigate his team and their cases. Look into the culture, the tattoos, a real full-court press.”
“He’s too good. They’d never make him on any of it.”
“I told him that. He was okay for a while, until the pressure got to him. He said he was too old to start over. Even if he beat it, the department, the same people he made all those sensational cases for, demoted him to work in the jail, the watch commander at MCJ while they conducted an internal investigation. It killed him, Bruno. One week in that smelly hole and he was ready to sell out his mother.”
The shame left and in sauntered fear, cold with a knife-hard edge. I saw where this was going.
“They flipped him,” she said, “They flipped the great Robby Wicks. The man who knew the game better than the FBI. The FBI told him all his problems would all go away if he did one thing. Just one. Something they couldn’t do themselves in eighteen months of trying with all their assets. You would have thought with all their satellites, high-tech surveillance devices, the relaxed constitution for terrorism they’d be able to follow one ex-con. Something he refused to get involved in until they played dirty pool.”
She waited for me to say it.
I couldn’t. I said nothing.
“Yeah,” she said, “you know, it’s your fault. That’s why I can’t believe you had the balls to come here. Say it, Bruno. You know what they want. You didn’t need to come here for me to tell you. Say it.”
I loved and respected her too much, I said it. My voice cracked. “Wally Kim. They want Wally Kim.” The Korean kid, the diplomat’s son.
Chapter Forty-Eight
She said, “That’s right. Kim put a lot of pressure on the State Department, who in turn pressured the Justice Department.”
“I’m sorry, Barbara; it’s no longer about that. It’s Robby, he—”
She turned pale, sat down, “What? What’s happened?”
Of course, she still loved him and cared what happened to him. They had been together too many years. I didn’t know how to say it, so I used Mack’s words, “He’s gone off the reservation.”
“How bad?”
I couldn’t answer that one. I couldn’t say the words to her. She stood on the fringe about to be pulled into the vortex of this awful shit storm, one initiated by my actions. Her eyes bore right into me. The phone rang.
It rang some more.
She picked it up. “Yeah, I wanted you to call. Are you paying attention out there? Four Paul Three was about to go to dinner with a missing-person report hanging. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I understand. Just keep your crew straight, all right? That’s not asking too much. Yeah. Thanks.” She hung up.
She said to me, “It’s the million dollars, isn’t it? He killed someone for all that damn money.”
She saw my expression, my jaw drop.
“What’re you talking about?” My thoughts went to Jumbo and the millions wrapped up in the computer chips. He must have killed Crazy Ned Bressler, did it for money. It had not crossed my mind until that moment. If I didn’t kill Bressler, then who did?
Now she mirrored my expression. She closed her mouth, stood up. She’d made a mistake, violated a cardinal rule in interrogation, she gave away more information then she received. “Time for you to leave, Bruno.”
“No, this is important. What are you talking about?” She had the missing piece, the motivation. A million dollars and I needed to hear it.
“No, go. Now.” She shifted her gaze to the window that opened to the hall. The uniformed desk officer appeared outside her door awaiting orders, an obedient watchdog anxious to impress his master with a thirty-inch mahogany nightstick.
“Then just tell me where I can find him.”
“I honestly thought he was looking for you.”
“He found me. Barbara, he said he was going on a cruise, on a long and well-deserved vacation.”
The color drained from her face. “The bastard.”
“Where can I find him?”
The office door opened. She waved the officer off. He closed it. “He’s got his money then?”
“I’m not going to lie to you. I know nothing about a million dollars. He tried to hang a murder beef on me, locked it down tight. I only just now got out from under it. The dog team will be on him in another thirty minutes or so. I want to find him before they do. You of all people know why. If you still care for him, tell me. He might come in for me.”
“I could care less what happens to the pig.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. She came around her desk. I stood. She put her hand on my arm. “Looking for a little get-even time, aren’t you? You’ve got your chance now to do to him what he did to you. Right? Is that it?”
She made me reexamine my motivation. What the hell was I doing? I wanted to track him down to help clear my name, make him talk. Mack could do the same thing, only sanctioned by the law. Robby had the money. We needed the money, money I earned. Now I sounded like a degenerate criminal justifying his criminality.
“That’s it, isn’t it? You want to shoot him in the back the same way he shot you.”
I held my hands away from my sides. “I don’t have a gun. I want to be honest with you. He has a whole lot of my money. And under normal circumstances I really wouldn’t care, but there are some people very close to me who depend on that money. Please tell me where he is.”
“How much are we talking?”
“Two hundred and fifty.”
“Thousand?”
I nodded.
“Two hundred and fifty plus the million. That son of a bitch.”
I remembered that Mack had said that Robby was smart, he’d go for a lot more. One point two was a lot more. Especially if his job went down the toilet. “Where did the million come from?”
“He talked with Mr. Kim, made a deal. Once he found Wally, he’d receive a reward.”
“He doesn’t have Wally.” He didn’t. Robby jumped the gun, took Marie down before she made it to Dad’s. “You said he found someone else. Was that just a woof cookie you fed me or is it the money?”