“Which you didn’t, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“OK, so there’s nothing to worry about,” she said, maybe more to seek out some reassurance for herself.
“It’ll be fine,” I said. “But until that’s sorted out, I thought-” and here, I glanced at Nick, who was watching-“it would be better if I handed myself in so no one got the wrong idea.”
She went quiet for a moment, probably realizing how out of character that was for me.
“Good,” she just said. “Hang on.”
I heard her ask the agent, “Are you charging me with anything, or am I free to go?”
“Go where?”
She was firm. “Where do you think?”
He demurred, then said, “Let me make a call.”
She came back on the line. “I’ll take the first flight up. I should be with you by eight.”
“No,” I told her. “Go to the house first. I’ll have Nick meet you there. They might want to send people over to have a look around and you should be there. I wouldn’t want your mom to have to deal with that on her own.”
“She can handle it, Sean.”
“I don’t doubt that,” I said. “But still… go home first. Then come into the city once they’re done.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said, the prospect of having my own house searched by an ERT crew curdling my insides. “Tess, I’m-I’m really sorry about all this. I really am. But just… bear with me. We’ll ride it out, you’ll see. OK?”
“Of course,” she said. She paused, like she wanted to say more, but couldn’t.
“Get some sleep,” I finally said. “Tomorrow’s probably going to be a long day for us both.”
“I love you,” she said.
I echoed the feeling, then hung up.
FRIDAY
16
Federal Plaza, Lower Manhattan
So here I was, in a room I was all too familiar with, only this time I was the guy sitting at the bare metal table and cut off from the outside world by a steel-and-glass door and an eight-digit passcode.
It wasn’t even dawn yet, but we’d been at it for over an hour. Just me, Gallo, and Nick at this point, in the austere, windowless twenty-third floor interview room at Federal Plaza. The forty-one-story building that forms the western edge of Foley Square was the hub of the law enforcement and judicial machinery in Manhattan. It had also been my home away from home for over ten years now. Now, it was my jail. I can’t really say I ever pictured that happening.
I hadn’t lawyered up, although I knew I might well have to bring one in soon. The cameras, which were located high up on opposite walls, were switched off. Gallo had agreed to that, but not before putting up some stern resistance, which was all for show, of course: he knew keeping our initial conversation off the record covered his ass as well as mine and he needed to get a better handle on what he was dealing with before deciding how best to tackle it.
The thrust of my argument was simple. Why would I kill Kirby? He’d helped me the first time around, and I needed his help again. Gallo’s cynical response was, I had to admit, one that was hard to bat away: by my own admission, I was charged up, I was desperate for answers; maybe I pulled my gun to threaten him. Maybe he charged me in a fit of rage. Maybe we struggled for the gun, and he ended up dead. And that was aside from the far-from-inconsequential admission that I had admitted blackmailing an employee of the CIA into passing confidential files to me.
I was getting a taster of how hard it might be to convince a neutral third party about the mystery man in the beard. Of course, Nick and the guys in DC would rake the area for witnesses or CCTV footage that might back up my claims, but frankly, short of a video recording showing him along with what actually happened in that garage, I couldn’t see how that was going to help exonerate me.
This wasn’t looking good.
Also, it hadn’t been as easy to keep Kurt’s name out of it as it had with Nick.
“How’d you ID Kirby as a soft target?” Gallo had asked.
He may be a prick, but he’s not a dumb prick.
I’d ducked the unspoken question with Aparo. I needed to duck it again now. “I asked around.”
“What do you mean, ‘asked around?’ Who?” Gallo’s ego didn’t take kindly to being deflected like that.
“That’s not relevant right now, all right? I needed someone with access and I asked some people and his name came up. Can we move on?”
It took a couple of more to-and-fros, but we grudgingly did.
Gallo’s expression darkened gradually the more I spoke. It was like his eyes were receding into a couple of abysses deep in his skull with every word. I was under no illusions that this was due to any concern over me. It was all about him, obviously. How his lack of oversight could have allowed this to happen, especially seeing as he knew from day one that I was trying to find Reed Corrigan and was getting stonewalled by the CIA at every request.
This risked sinking him too, perhaps not as badly as me, but still-for someone like Gallo, any impediment to the sacred career path was a major disaster.
Which is what Nick and I were banking on. And Nick adroitly steered Gallo to the conclusion we wanted. Whether or not he’d go through with it was another matter.
Throughout all this, an angry cocktail of emotions concerning my partner was roiling inside me. Even though I understood where he was coming from, I was still uber pissed off at how he’d railroaded me; on the other hand, I appreciated how clear-minded and committed he was during all these initial proceedings. I’ve always chided him for his cynical outlook on life, a perspective I’d dubbed “pragmatic nihilism,” as in: life is pretty much bullshit, so you’d better be fully present in those exceptionally rare moments when good stuff happens, because otherwise it’s just completely remorseless bullshit. This wasn’t good stuff in any way and I know he wasn’t enjoying it in any way, but he was totally present and in my corner. But I could see that, even with all the best will in the world, this probably wasn’t going to be enough.
Especially not when the CIA decided to join the party.
They arrived at around seven thirty, two of them.
Annie Deutsch and Nick brought them in before she left again, giving me a glance and a little nod that spoke volumes about the confusion and concern swirling inside her. The door closed, sealing us in, and curt introductions were made. The clear alpha among the two was called Neil Henriksson. He was tall, slim but solid, had carefully trimmed hair that was somehow more beige than blond, and an expression that seemed locked in disdain mode. I could just imagine how much fun he had to be around the house. I didn’t register the name of his minion.
As they were sitting down, Henriksson said, “OK, Special Agent Reilly, let’s start from the beginning, shall we?”
Gallo just turned to them calmly and said, “Special Agent Reilly has taken the Fifth and won’t be answering any questions without the presence of his lawyer.”
Henriksson’s expression shifted dramatically-as in he panned his head around by forty-two degrees.
“Excuse me?”
Gallo said, “You heard me.”
The ADIC was going to try to keep me under his roof. Again, not out of any sudden outpouring of empathy for me. It just gave him more to bargain with in terms of limiting the blowback to his CV before giving me up. And it gave me more time to think and figure out what my next step should be.
Henriksson didn’t miss a beat. “Maybe you don’t quite grasp what we’re dealing with here. This isn’t a run-of-the-mill murder investigation. This is a matter of national security.”