Riggs’s first thought was the correct one. Family? God, could it be? The connection to Donovan couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? He raced to the phone.
“Sorry I lost your boys, George. Hope that didn’t cost you any brownie points with the top brass.”
“Where the hell are you?” Masters demanded.
“Just listen.” Riggs recounted the news story he had just heard.
“You think he’s related to Alicia Crane?” Masters asked, the excitement echoing in his voice, his anger at Riggs completely gone, for now.
“Could be. Ages are about right. Older or younger brother maybe, I don’t know.”
“Thank God for strong genes.”
“What’s your game plan?”
“We check her family. Shouldn’t be too hard to do. Her father was a U.S. senator for years. Very prominent lineage. If she has brothers, cousins, whatever, we hit ’em fast. Bring them in for questioning. Hell, it can’t hurt.”
“I don’t think he’s going to be waiting for you to knock on the front door.”
“They never do, do they?”
“If he is around, be careful, George.”
“Yeah. If you’re right about all this—”
Riggs finished for him: “The guy just killed his own sister. I’d hate to see what he’d do to a nonfamily member.”
Riggs hung up. For the very first time he actually felt hopeful. He was under no delusions that Jackson would be around for the FBI to take into custody. He would be flushed out, cut off from his home base. He’d be pissed, full of revenge. Well, let him be. He’d have to cut Riggs’s heart out before he’d get to LuAnn. And they wouldn’t be sitting targets. Now was the time to keep on the move.
Ten minutes later they were in the car heading for points unknown.
Chapter fifty-four
Jackson boarded the Delta shuttle for New York. He needed additional supplies and he was going to pick up Roger. He couldn’t count on him to travel by himself and get to where he was supposed to be. Then they would head back south. During the short flight Jackson checked in with the man following Charlie and Lisa. They had made a rest stop. Charlie had talked on the phone. No doubt checking in with LuAnn. They had gone on and were now close to reentering Virginia on the southern side. It was all working out very well. An hour later, Jackson was in a cab threading its way through Manhattan toward his apartment.
Horace Parker looked around with intense curiosity. A doorman for over fifty years at a building where average apartments covered four thousand square feet and went for five million, and the penthouse that covered triple that space and went for twenty mil, he had never seen anything like this before. He watched as the small army of men in FBI windbreakers swept through the lobby and into the private elevator that went only to the penthouse. They looked deadly serious and had the weaponry to prove it.
He went back outside and looked up and down the street. A cab pulled up and out stepped Jackson. Parker immediately went over to him. The doorman had known him for most of his life. Years ago he had skipped pennies in the lobby’s massive fountain with Jackson and his younger brother, Roger. To earn extra money he had baby-sat them and taken them to Central Park on the weekends; he had bought them their first beers when they were barely into puberty. Finally, he had watched them grow up and then leave the nest. The Cranes, he had heard, had fallen on hard times, and they had left New York. Peter Crane, though, had come back and bought the penthouse. Apparently, he had done awfully well for himself.
“Good evening, Horace,” Jackson said cordially.
“Evening, Mr. Crane,” Parker said and tipped his cap.
Jackson started past him.
“Mr. Crane, sir?”
Jackson turned to him. “What is it? I’m in a bit of a hurry, Horace.”
Parker looked upward. “There’s some men come to the building, Mr. Crane. They went right up to your apartment. A bunch of them. FBI. Guns and everything, never seen nothing like it. They’re up there right now. I think they’re waiting for you to get home, sir.”
Jackson’s reply was calm and immediate. “Thank you for the information, Horace. Simply a misunderstanding.”
Jackson put out his hand, which Parker took. Jackson immediately turned and walked away from the apartment building. When Parker opened his hand, there was a wad of hundred-dollar bills there. He looked around discreetly before stuffing the cash in his pocket and taking up his position by the door once more.
From the shadows of an alley across the street, Jackson turned and looked up at his apartment building. His eyes kept going up and up until they came to rest upon the windows of the penthouse. His penthouse. He could see the silhouettes move slowly across the windows, and his lips started to tremble at this outrageous invasion of his home. The possibility that they could have traced him to his personal residence had not occurred to him. How in the hell? He couldn’t worry about it now, though. He went down the cross street and made a phone call. Twenty minutes later a limousine picked him up. He called his brother and told him to leave his apartment immediately — not even bothering to pack a bag — and meet Jackson in front of the St. James Theater. Jackson wasn’t sure how the police had found out his identity, but he couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t wind up at Roger Crane’s apartment at any minute. Then he made a quick stop to gather together some necessary supplies from another smaller apartment he kept under a phony name. Under the ownership of one of his myriad corporate shells he maintained a private jet and full-time crew at La Guardia. He called ahead so that the pilot on duty would be able to file his flight plan as quickly as possible. Jackson did not intend to spend time twiddling his thumbs in the waiting area. The limo would take them right to the plane. That accomplished, he collected his brother from in front of the theater.
Roger was two years younger and slimly built but wiry like his older brother. He also shared the same shock of dark hair and delicate facial features. He was certainly curious about his brother’s abrupt return to his life. “I couldn’t believe you called like that out of the blue. What’s up, Peter?”
“Shut up, I need to think.” He suddenly turned to his younger brother. “Have you seen the news?”
He shook his head. “I don’t usually watch TV. Why?”
He obviously didn’t know of Alicia’s death. That was good. Jackson didn’t answer his brother; he settled back in the seat, his mind racing through a seemingly infinite number of scenarios.
In a half hour they were at La Guardia Airport. Soon they had left the Manhattan skyline behind on their way south.
The FBI did converge on Roger Crane’s small apartment building, but a little too late. Yet they were far more intrigued by what they had discovered at Peter Crane’s penthouse.
Masters and Berman, walking around the massive penthouse, came across Jackson’s makeup and archives rooms and his computerized control center.
“Holy shit,” Berman said, his hands in his pockets as he stared at the masks, makeup bins, and racks of clothing.
Masters held the scrapbook gingerly in his gloved hands. FBI technicians roamed everywhere collecting evidence.
“Looks like Riggs was right. One guy. Maybe we can survive all this,” Masters said.
“So what’s our next move?”
Masters answered immediately. “We focus on Peter Crane. Put a blanket on the airports and train and bus stations. I want road blocks posted on all the major arteries heading out of town. You’re to instruct all the men that he’s extremely dangerous and a master of disguise. Send out photos of the guy everywhere, fat lot of good that’ll do us. We’ve cut off his home base, but he’s obviously got enormous financial resources. If we do manage to track him down, I want no unnecessary chances. Tell the men that if there’s the slightest threat, to shoot him down.”