There was a good chance that Mick Wolfe was dead, about now…
Wolfe was feeling half-dead with fatigue, but still keeping up with that Crown Victoria without being too obvious about it. He was maintaining the SUV at about half a block behind the unmarked car, hoping that whoever was driving it didn’t know he was on their tail.
Sleet was starting to fall again, and that actually helped. It blotted out the back window of the car up ahead, and blurred their sideview mirrors, so they didn’t have a good view of anything behind them.
Wolfe had the wipers going, and they labored at shoving the semi-frozen rain off the windshield. Some of it piled up in the corners.
The unmarked car was turning left up ahead, just as the light was turning red.
That could be a problem. If he went through the light they might see his headlights and think about how someone was going through the light just to keep up with them.
Wolfe stopped at the corner and waited impatiently. The light seemed to take forever to change to green, but at last it switched and he turned quickly left, the SUV fishtailing a little on the slushy street. Where was the Crown Victoria? Gone. He’d lost it. He drove up to the next corner, looked right—and saw the car pulling up at a brownstone about halfway down the block.
Wolfe kept going, then pulled up at the curb just out of the line of site of whoever was getting out of the unmarked car. He got out of the SUV as quietly as possible, then put his hand in his jacket on the butt of the .45.
He stole up to the corner, wormed through shrubs next to a modern apartment building, and peered round the building’s corner. Down the street he saw the familiar silhouettes of Tranter and Grampus crossing to the brownstone. Another man followed them, had the look of an off-duty police officer, to Wolfe. Probably another crooked cop, partnered with Tranter.
The phone in his pocket vibrated.
Wolfe drew back so Tranter wouldn’t spot him, and checked the PearcePhone. A text was showing on the screen.
Checking in. Ignore this if risky. P.
Wolfe clicked to call the number and in a moment Pearce answered. “Any progress?”
“Got messy. Interesting to see if they can keep it out of the news. I had to smoke a Graywater, for one thing.”
“You had to kill him, then you had to,” Pearce said, sounding completely unconcerned. “I had to snuff one of my own people today. He killed another one—one you know. Pussler.”
“Pussler! I kind of liked that guy.”
“Yeah he was all fucked up but not a bad guy. So, Wolfe—I saw an area around that auditorium was blacked out awhile.”
“Yeah. This phone is pretty fly, man. I’m gonna sell it to a big corporation , make a billion dollars.”
“If you’re taking time to make jokes I assume you got away okay.”
“Yeah, and I followed Grampus. He went into a building about half a block from here with Tranter and a thuggish kinda guy I took to be a dirty cop out of uniform.”
“Grampus! You found him?”
“He was at the party, man. With Marlon Winters. They separated after the thing got messy. I’m afraid these Purity people are gonna start covering stuff up after this. I got in and got out, and they know it—anyway they know somebody did. They’ll get paranoid.”
“You mean more paranoid. But I see what you mean. Leave it to me, I’ll make them think it was some imaginary socialist with a gripe toward Winters. He’ll be eager to believe it.”
“How you going to do that?”
“Digital evidence can be faked evidence. Never mind. What was going on there?”
“Purity, is what. Invitation-only gathering for far-right militia types. They seem to be ramping up for ‘the coming social chaos’. Only Winters and Van Ness made it sound like it was something they were going to arrange for Chicago. Just to start with.”
“They didn’t say how?”
“Not when I was listening—and I doubt they announced what that’s going to be. Bad security. They were just spouting ideological hype and the giving the ‘get the Minutemen ready for the Redcoats’ kind of talk. You sure this line is secure, by the way?”
“I’m sure it is, as much as you can ever be. Was Verrick there?”
“Not that I saw. He could’ve been but, my guess is, he’d be too smart for that.”
“Good enough for now.”
“I should tell you where I am—”
“Don’t waste your breath, I know where you are. I’m tracking that phone.”
“Oh yeah, of course.”
“So this place they took him to—wait. I’ve got it. ctOS cameras caught them going in. I can see the address. Okay—I want to deal with this myself… I’ll tell you what I find out, later…”
“You’ll tell me if you get out alive. I think I should be there, back you up.”
“I told you—I’ll deal with it myself.”
Wolfe hesitated. “Pearce—wait—”
But Pearce hung up.
Aiden Pearce was there within half an hour, using a completely different vehicle than the one he’d taken to Pussler’s safehouse. He was sorry to have to abandon the Porsche but it was better security to change rides as often as possible.
He found a new, black Ford Explorer with electronic lock and ignition, and drove it to the block containing the brownstone where Stan Grampus was stowed away under the underworld version of police protection.
Pearce parked, switched off the lights and engine, and did a general area check with his phone. Checking the cameras all the way around the block, he didn’t see any Club sentries on the street, or any parked cops. There didn’t seem to be anybody on the roof of the building either. Yeah, Wolfe was right—these must be dirty cops. Bad cops were always overconfident.
He got out of the Explorer, walked through the thinning precipitation, across the slippery street to the sidewalk in front of the building, then turned left, strolled down the sidewalk a little. He glanced around to see if he was unobserved, then cut into a yard one door down, and circled around back of the building. Dogs barked in the contiguous yard; but the backyard here was clear. He climbed a short fence, his stomach complaining again, his head thumping painfully when he dropped to the ground.
Ouch. He was going to go home and go to bed, finish his convalescence… once he’d taken care of this little matter of Stan Grampus. He walked through a garden shriveled with winter, and climbed another fence, into the backyard of the brownstone. He winced as he dropped to the ground again, and kept going to the backdoor.
Time to do some hacking…
He stepped into a dark place, between the fence and the side of the building, and performed a local wifi hack. It didn’t take long to get an image of a face scowling at the screen. A face he knew from the image enhancement software. Stan Grampus.
Grampus wasn’t looking at Pearce—it was a one-way view. He was looking at Grampus through a webcam on a PC.
His fingers were a bit clumsy with the cold and it took Pearce a few extra seconds to access what Grampus was doing. The hitman was writing an email. It read,
Kribble frebb snortum bogus ++8 Freeb %# Clodno Neanderthal snout Imperial flagon Squag…
Well, that was unhelpful.
It was heavily encrypted—Grampus was using a program that hid the text in code the moment it was typed. Must be hard to copyedit.
Pearce ran a decryption program on the text…and came up blank. There was always a new encryption system; it always had to be decrypted or hacked. Leading to a new system—and so on.
He told his system to copy the message in its entirety and any reply, then checked for any cell calls from the building.