“We know,” the man said. “We have an asset waiting there.”
This surprised Lendowski. “Waiting? Where?”
“In the city. Where the meet is going to take place. It should be taken care of before Chaykin gets there.”
This didn’t fit. “The city?” Lendowski asked. “That was the message in the text?”
“Correct.”
Something was definitely off. “She’s not heading into the city.”
“Say again?”
“She’s not going into the city,” Lendowski said. “Look, if that’s where she was going, she’d be jumping on I-95 or taking a train in. And I can tell you she’s not doing either. She’s turned off the road that leads to both of them as we speak.”
The voice hesitated, then asked, “You’re sure about this?”
“I’m on her fucking tail,” Lendowski fired back. “She’s going somewhere else. Somewhere local, by the looks of it. This road leads nowhere.”
“We could have a serious problem here,” the man growled. “All right. Stay on it. I might need you to step up. I’ll call you right back.”
Which was timely, as Lendowski now had a call waiting from Deutsch.
“She’s gone,” Deutsch said, her voice breathless. “They faked us. You got them yet?”
Lendowski thought fast. He was alone, following Chaykin, who was likely to lead him straight to Reilly. His employers-who seemed to have deep pockets-sounded like they were in a bit of a panic. The bit about him stepping up to the plate was still ringing in his ears.
He thought he might have an opportunity here.
“Nothing yet,” he told Deutsch, thinking he should buy himself some time. “I’ll call you as soon as I have anything.”
“I’ll put out an APB on the Jeep,” Deutsch said.
“No,” Lendowski countered. Last thing he needed right now was interference. “Let’s not spook her yet. She could well lead us to Reilly. I’ll find her. Just give me a bit more time.”
Deutsch audibly hesitated, then said, “OK. Call me the second you know, either way.”
“You got it.” He hung up.
In Aparo’s apartment, Sandman was livid. “Is he sure? How reliable is he?”
“He’s a Fed,” Roos replied. “The guy knows what he’s talking about. You can’t get there in time, can you?”
“Up to Westchester? I’m an hour away, easy. Depends on when and where they’re meeting.” He cursed under his breath, pissed off at how Reilly had played them.
“OK,” Roos said. “Get up there. I’ll keep you posted.”
Lendowski saw the Jeep’s brake lights flare up and watched as it pulled into the CITGO gas station just before the thruway’s overpass. He pulled over and killed his lights. Tess got out, then the Jeep came back out of the station, pulled a U-turn and headed back toward him. As it drove past, Lendowski’s phone rang again. It was his off-the-books employer.
“OK, here’s the deal, Len. We’ve got no assets nearby and it’s likely they can’t get to you in time, so we’re going to need you to take care of this.”
Lendowski saw Tess now walking away from the station, heading north along the quiet lane. “What do you mean?” Even as he said it, Lendowski knew what the man was going to ask him to do.
There was silence for a moment, confirming that Lendowski had indeed guessed correctly. Then the voice said, “Fifty thousand.”
Lendowski climbed out of the car, feeling a spike of unease at what he was hearing-and thinking. “For your Reilly problem to go away permanently? That’s what we’re talking about, right?”
“I knew you’d see things our way, Len.”
The strangest mixture of elation and abject terror at what he was contemplating now raced through him. “I’m not sure about this.”
“Come on, Len. We need you to do it. And you could do a lot worse than be on our team.”
“You realize what you’re asking me to do?” He was now following Tess, staying well back.
“All I’m asking is for you to take advantage of the unique situation you’re in. Think about it. This’ll wipe out what you owe your bookies-something the Bureau doesn’t know about, right? Like the IRS and those wads of cash we’ve been handing you?”
The threat was implicit. The bastards weren’t content with cajoling him into playing ball. They had to resort to threatening him. Well, screw them, he thought. Them, and Reilly. He’d turn this to his advantage, big time.
He steeled himself, greed now pumping adrenaline all through him. “One hundred. Two if she needs to go too.”
“I don’t have time to play games with you, Len. And I’m not the Sultan of Brunei either. One hundred I can do. Just him or both of them, that’s up to you. But it has to be clean, either way.”
“One fifty.”
“Len. Take the deal. It’s the clever move, trust me.”
Shit.
Still-this was still a big payday. Tax free, one shot, done.
Time was pressing.
Lendowski’s thoughts were ricocheting all over the place as he tried to make sure he had all the bases covered. “But how? I don’t know who you are. How’re you going to get me the money?”
“Check your bank balance on your phone. We’re wiring in half as we speak.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised they knew where he banked, but still the notion still made him feel sick to his stomach. “Bank account? No, fuck that. Cash only. I can’t have a deposit this big show up like that.”
“Don’t worry about it, Len. We’ll swap it for cash once it’s done and clean it up as an honest mistake. It won’t be an issue. In the meantime, it’s yours. Consider it an advance.”
He was screwed. They knew enough about him already to get him kicked out of the Bureau, if not put behind bars. And it wasn’t as if this was about someone he liked.
His face set in a scowl that could force water through ground coffee at espresso pressure, he relented. “Deal,” he said. “I’ll call you when it’s done.”
He hung up, knowing he’d need to explain his absence and his radio silence to Deutsch later. A problem with his car, maybe. Then there was another, more significant problem. His backup gun-a clean Sig P226 with the serial numbers filed off-had been concealed inside the spare of his Explorer when Reilly had driven off with it. He hadn’t yet had time to retrieve it.
He thought he might just have to kill Reilly with his bare hands.
30
New Rochelle, New York
I’d made it as far as Baychester before the urge to close my eyes had become overwhelming. I’d pulled into the Bay Plaza parking lot, smeared a couple of handfuls of halite-dirtied snow across each license plate, then slept in my stolen Caprice for a couple of hours, this crashing-out-in-cars thing becoming far too much of a habit for my liking.
The physical exertion and adrenaline-fuelled nature of the previous few hours seemed to have conspired to mean that, instead of experiencing IMAX-style waking visions of my past lives, I was in fact sound asleep.
Presently, I was sitting in the darkness off Pinebrook Boulevard and reminisced about happier times, specifically the time Tess was screaming at the top of her voice: “It’s all crap. I’m going to smash this laptop to pieces so I never have to write such appalling trash ever again.”
Happier times, indeed.
Tess had been beyond frustrated. She’d been working on her second book and had written herself into a corner. I had saved the day by shutting down the laptop before it was permanently retired and making Tess join me on a brisk walk.
It was obvious that Tess could tell a story-the sales figures from her first book had made that clear-but the sea change from archaeologist-adventurer to desk-bound author had meant that Tess had some pent-up adrenaline to burn off. The bi-weekly Bikram yoga clearly wasn’t cutting it and sometimes cabin fever got the best of her. So I took her to the only trail I knew in the area and walked her from one end to the other and back again, something she now did every week on her “Zen walk,” occasionally alternating with other routes to keep things fresh.