When it came to colleagues, the preference among spooks seemed to be either long-term allegiances or selling them out for short-term advantage, with nothing much in between. Corrigan’s inside man at the CIA could even be “Frank Fullerton,” his partner back in the day, according to the files Kirby had given me-or whatever his name really is. Kurt and I had got nowhere with Fullerton either. Maybe it was worth putting Gigi on his trail.
And then, something that had tugged at the back of my head since Deutsch had handed me her cell almost an hour earlier, started to crystallize more fully.
My “Deep Throat” not showing up at Times Square. The bearded man at Kirby’s. The CIA at Defcon One over an analyst, meaning they knew he leaked the files. And yet they’d waited until now to do something about it. What had changed?
The call from my “Deep Throat.”
That had to be what had them spooked. But he hadn’t yet given me anything.
Maybe they thought he had.
And then Nick dies. Just after he swore he was going to leave no stone unturned and push the Bureau into doing everything it can to help me. This made him more dangerous to them than I was, and two questions were clawing at me: one, could Corrigan have known just how dedicated Nick now was-I closed my eyes, had been-to tracking him down, and two, could they have killed him?
Impossible.
But the coincidence in the timing was hard to ignore.
I mean, if they’d poisoned him somehow, it would show up in the postmortem. But if they did, if they could kill Nick that easily, what was to stop them killing me where I sat? Especially without having him to look out for me?
I stared at the coffee, then at the sandwich, and decided to leave them where they sat.
I had to get out of here.
Deutsch could see the accident scene up ahead.
The whole southbound freeway was closed and would be for at least another hour. Surprisingly, it seemed that Aparo was the only fatality, though she’d heard that occupants of a few of the other vehicles involved had suffered some superficial injuries and one broken leg.
She left her car at the cordon, flashed her badge and hurried toward a cluster of smashed-up vehicles, Highway Patrol cars and ambulances, one of which headed off noisily as she approached, ferrying more injured to the ER at White Plains Hospital.
A striking woman with curly blond hair was sitting on the tailgate of a Westchester EMS ambulance, an ice pack against her head. An EMT had just finished checking her over and a state trooper stood a few feet away, talking into his radio. It looked like he was waiting to take the woman’s statement.
From the author photographs on the dust jackets of her books, Deutsch knew this was Tess Chaykin-and she could see why Reilly had fallen for her. Even after living through the past couple of hours, there was a poise and self-possession about her that seemed almost otherworldly. A poise she needed to regain herself.
She showed her badge to the state trooper. “Give me a couple minutes, will you?” The trooper nodded, and Deutsch walked over to the woman. “Miss Chaykin?
Tess looked up, and Deutsch immediately noticed her warm green eyes. She pictured her and Reilly and felt a quiver of jealousy, then chastised herself as she remembered that the woman’s partner was languishing in a holding cell and suspected of murder.
“Tess,” the woman replied.
Deutsch held out her hand.
“I’m Annie Deutsch. We talked on the phone.”
Tess shook her hand. “You’re the agent with the jackass for a partner, right? At a bar the other night.”
Deutsch found the stirring of a smile. “Yes. Reilly was very… chivalrous. How’s your head?”
“Sore, but the EMT says it’s not a concussion.”
“That’s something.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over them for a moment, then Deutsch asked, “Where have they taken Nick?”
“He’s on his way to White Plains,” Tess told her.
Deutsch nodded, staring into the distance, following the ambulance’s ghostly wake. “They’ll need to do a postmortem.”
Tess looked crushed, the finality of Aparo’s death clearly still hitting her hard.
Deutsch asked, “What happened?”
“I don’t know. One second he was fine, then he just… went.” She paused, then said, “I need to see Sean.”
“I’m here to drive you back, but before we go,” Deutsch said as she gestured at the waiting patrolman, “they need you to give a statement.”
Tess nodded, then repositioned the ice pack on her head. “I’ll make it quick.”
It wasn’t the best plan I’d ever come up with, or the safest.
In fact, it was definitively one of the craziest, borderline demented ideas I’d ever thought up.
Right now, I had nothing else.
So I took a deep breath and called out for Gallo.
Two minutes later, a junior agent who’s name I couldn’t remember brought me a phone and sat across the table from me to wait till I was done.
I called Tess’s cell. She answered immediately.
“Sean?”
“Are you OK?”
“I’m fine. Sean… God, it was horrible. I can’t believe he’s-” I heard the dam burst and she started to sob.
I let her feel it for a few seconds.
“Tess, I’ll see you soon. Annie’s going to bring you over. OK?”
“Lisa…’ she said, referring to Nick’s ex-wife. “Someone needs to tell her. And Lorenzo… my God.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I told her. “I’ll call her. You’ve been through enough for now.”
“OK,” she said, her breath catching.
I gave her a moment to regroup. I needed her to get what I was going to say.
“It’s all just,” I finally said, “crazy. It’s like the stars are aligned against me lately. Like what you were saying, the other night. About karma and our past lives. Remember?”
I heard Tess hesitate and was silently willing her to get it-given that we hadn’t talked about anything like that anytime recently.
Please, Tess. Focus. Be my wingman on this.
“Of course I do,” she said.
Good girl. Great girl.
“Maybe I did something in the past that I’m paying for now. I mean, how else can you explain all the crap that’s been happening to us?” I paused, more to add a bit of drama for the junior agent’s benefit than out of need. “I wish I could go back and find out. You know what I’m saying?”
It took her a couple of seconds, then she said, “You think that would be useful?”
She was reading me.
“I think it would. Big time.” I thought I’d add an extra hint, just to make sure. “It’s like what Nick always used to say-”
I heard the confusion in her tone. “What?”
Almost imperceptibly, I slowed my words, subtly altering my tone-not so the junior agent could notice any change, but enough that someone I’d spent thousands of hours with would notice.
“He used to say: ‘Close, but no cigar.’ Well, that’s me right now. No cigar. And with Nick gone, I need every grain of help I can get…” I slipped straight back to normal speed and tone. “I need that cigar, Tess. Doesn’t have to be a whole cigar-just a couple of puffs, to give me hope.” I paused. “You understand what I’m saying, right?”
I could hear the cogs in her brain engaging, spinning around and clicking into place.
“You know where that expression comes from, don’t you?” she said, her voice shaky. I knew this was all for Deutsch’s benefit, because Tess was now-I hoped-covering for the fact that she knew exactly what I was trying to tell her. “They used to hand out cigars as prizes at fairgrounds. Back when the games of strength were for grown-ups. So when you slammed the giant hammer down on the metal plate and the bell didn’t ring, the guy would say ‘Close, but no cigar!’”
“You should put that in your next book.”
“Maybe… OK, I’ll see you shortly-I just need to go back to the house first. I…” her voice softened and got a bit muffled, as if her mouth was closer to the phone now. “I need to change. I kind of messed myself up during the whole thing. Do you mind if Annie drives me home first?”