Tumbler, page 15
“Him hit Beck a couple times,” said Du Pré. “Maybe saying, ‘Open your mouth,’ and he will not so shoot him through his teeth.”
“Somebody was coming by,” said McPhie.
Du Pré nodded.
“One man?” said McPhie.
Du Pré nodded.
McPhie shook his head.
“How you do that?” he said. “Tell from the ground. I mean, I can see a footprint.”
“Got to lift the ground up to your eyes,” said Du Pré. “Catfoot he say that, over and over. Got to lift the ground up to your eyes.”
“Catfoot,” said McPhie. “I only met him the once when I was a kid. Hell of a feller.”
Du Pré laughed.
“He was that,” said Du Pré.
Catfoot in his moccasins and old hat so worn it dripped down his head and his pants with the buckskin seat. Cloth wore out on the saddle.
The state vans left.
“Wonder what they’ll find,” said McPhie.
“Nothing,” said Du Pré.
“There are two others drove with them,” said Du Pré. “Come on, I show you.”
He led McPhie slowly back toward the road. Du Pré pointed to a spot on a skinny pine, dead. McPhie squinted at it.
“Little pieces of bar broke off there,” he said.
“Man stumble,” said Du Pré, “grab that. See?”
He pointed to the ground. A thick branch was buried in the needles and duff. One end was clear of fallen stuff.
“Stumbled on that,” said McPhie.
Du Pré went on to the road. He turned right and he walked down about fifteen feet.
Three cigarette butts sat together on the ground, just off the graded part of the road.
“They were in the car here,” said McPhie.
Du Pré nodded.
“Three together, maybe twenty minutes, half hour, this person is some nervous,” he said.
McPhie looked off into the woods.
“They stay in the car?” he said.
“This one did,” said Du Pré. “Other man walked around front, moved there to see better.”
“Three of them and Beck,” said McPhie.
Du Pré nodded.
“Twenty minutes is a long time,” said McPhie. “They must have wanted something from Beck.”
Du Pré nodded.
“What do you think?” said McPhie.
“Something that they wanted to know,” said Du Pré. “Beck, he knew he was going to die. He probably told them something, maybe they could check, it was not right, so … maybe codes for computer or something like that.”
McPhie nodded.
“I appreciate the instruction,” he said. “I really do.”
Du Pré looked off into the woods.
“Go up there,” he said. “Wait. There will be a small white SUV coming here, any time now. Woman driving it is Allison Ames.”
“Who’s she?” said McPhie.
“Journalist,” said Du Pré.
“Why is she coming here?” said McPhie.
“Somebody tell her to,” said Du Pré. “On the computer.”
“Shit,” said McPhie. “Then they aren’t that good.”
“Non,” said Du Pré. “They are not.”
CHAPTER 33
“I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE this,” said Markham Milbank.” In this world? I can’t believe it.”
He was standing on the porch of the Toussaint Saloon, hands in his pockets. He trembled.
“I get told that if I send a whole lot of money to Macao where it will be for maybe thirty seconds before going off someplace else that your people will be released and I will get the Lewis and Clark stuff. Which I don’t even want anymore. It was a game and it isn’t fun any more. No fun at all. Who are these bastards anyway?”
Bart looked at him.
“It is what happens,” he said, “When you screw around. Past the first couple of million, which you can grasp, it is just funny numbers. They don’t mean anything anymore. But it means a hell of a lot to some people. Hell, people get murdered every day for what is in their wallets, and no one carries much cash anymore.”
“God,” said Milbank, “I’ll pay ’em the money. I don’t care about the money. But how do we know they will let them go? Shouldn’t the FBI come in on this? They do kidnappings, don’t they?”
“Paul Beck was killed,” said Bart. “And Paul Beck isn’t easy to kill.”
Milbank looked up the street. The weird motor home with the satellite dishes on the roof was lumbering toward the saloon.
He had driven alone in a rented Cadillac.
Du Pré sat on the edge of the boardwalk, smoking.
“So what do you want me to do?” he said.
Bart looked at Du Pré.
“Those two you had with you, vice presidents or something?” said Du Pré.
“Pat Henkel and Jerry Soldner,” said Milbank. “Been with me since the beginning. They took off last night. Some fuss at the plant.”
“You got a telephone?” said Du Pré.
“Yeah,” said Milbank, looking puzzled.
“They are not there,” said Du Pré. “So you call and find that out maybe.”
Milbank turned pale.
“Oh, God,” he said. “Not them. Jesus, they don’t need the money.”
Du Pré shrugged.
Milbank ran to the motor home and he went in and he was back in two minutes.
“You were right,” he said. “They never came and there was no emergency. I can’t believe it. They were my friends.”
“What you will find, I expect,” said Bart, “is that they lost a lot of money someplace. The stock market. Some spec venture that took a lot of capital.”
“These days,” said Milbank, “that’s easy enough.”
“Where is your security guy?” said Du Pré.
“Torbert? He went off a couple of days ago to check something or other out. Jesus Christ, you’re not serious,” said Milbank.
“Oh, but we are,” said Bart, “and it seems your nearest and dearest are in this together. Torbert killed Paul Beck, I think. Beck was smart, way too smart for anyone but an old buddy. Beck was a brave man, and he wouldn’t make it easy for them.”
“Jesus,” said Milbank, “what do I do?”
Du Pré put his butt on the ground and he stepped on it and he came back up on the porch.
“You don’t send the money quick,” he said. “You delay. They are not all that far from here, maybe Billings, maybe someplace closer. Your … Soldner and Henkel they are out of the country, they are waiting for the money, someplace. But that Thommassen is here. He has Julie, the Burrows.”
“God!” said Milbank. “I’ll—”
“Do what?” said Bart. “Fire them?”
“Jesus,” said Milbank, “the money started coming in in a flood and then a tidal wave and I had no idea.”
A window opened in the motor home and an arm stuck out and waved.
Milbank ran to the door and he went in.
“That little shit,” said Bart.
“Him don’t mean no harm,” said Du Pré. “He is not greedy. So he don’t think anyone else is either.”
“He pisses me off,” said Bart. “In case you forgot, my niece is out there someplace and she may be dead.”
Du Pré shook his head.
“Non,” he said. “They kill one man, that is bad enough, they kill Julie, the Burrows, you are after them forever, they know that.”
“Goddamned right,” said Bart.
“They are going to screw Thommassen, too, let him pay for Beck,” said Du Pré. “Thommassen he is smart, he will expect that. So we have that trouble there.”
“Henkel and Soldner won’t play for keeps,” said Bart.
Du Pré shook his head.
Milbank came back.
“You were right,” he said. “I told them I had to get some liquidity. They understand that.”
Bart’s shoehorn telephone rang and he opened it and clapped it to his ear and he walked away, listening. He said something and he shut the telephone back up.
“That was Foote,” he said. “If your two clowns left the country, they did it in the dark. Their passports haven’t been used. No airline has them on a manifest.”
“Private plane?” said Milbank.
Bart shook his head.
“Harder than you think,” he said. “What with the military these days, they keep a close eye on all flights. Since the unpleasantness in New York and Washington.”
Du Pré wandered into the saloon. It had just opened and Madelaine had the television on. There had been a bad accident near Billings. An SUV, now in flames. The fire department was there. So was a crew in a helicopter. Du Pré watched the fire trucks shoot foam on the blazing SUV.
A reporter on the ground said it was a single-vehicle accident and there were no witnesses.
A fireman said they didn’t know how many people were in the SUV.
“… back to you, Cicely …” said the reporter.
The camera focused again on the SUV. It was sitting upright in the barrow pit. Du Pré studied the picture.
He made himself a ditchwater highball and he carried it back outside.
He nodded to Bart. They walked away from Milbank, who was hopping up and down a little where he stood.
“Those guys, Milbank’s,” said Du Pré, “they are dead now maybe. There is this accident near Billings, show the SUV, but it did not roll over. Roof is fine and there are no marks. Just tracks down into the pit.”
“Shit,” said Bart. “You want to call your FBI guy?”
Du Pré stood silent for a moment.
“No,” he said. “It is that Thommassen, him, who he got with him now. They are pret’ smart. FBI comes in, they know it, maybe they just run.”
“And leave no witnesses,” said Bart.
Du Pré nodded.
“You sure about those idiots of Milbank’s?” said Bart.
Du Pré shrugged.
“How many SUVs we got here just burst into flames?” he said. “They roll over. They are designed to do that. Good thing, too.”
“But we don’t know,” said Bart.
Du Pré shrugged.
“This guy Thommassen,” said Du Pré. “He worked for who? CIA maybe? This is his one big chance. He won’t take any risks with it. They are dead, you bet, they aren’t worth anything to him any more.”
Milbank went back to the odd motor home.
“Hey, Du Pré,” said Madelaine. “Two bodies in that SUV, pret’ bad burned. News says they are in the back seat, though. Cops, they are looking for the driver.”
“Did we bet?” said Bart. “I would like to give you five bucks anyway.”
Du Pré snorted.
“Du Pré,” said Madelaine, “you got breakfast here now. You, too, Bart.”
They went in to their platters of bacon and eggs and hashbrowns and biscuits.
The news was about baseball scores, and then some young man with a neck wider than his head grunted something when asked questions.
Milbank came in.
“Well,” he said, “it is one of our best and most secure systems. The Department of Defense uses it to protect vital information.”
“How good?” said Bart.
“Anything can be broken, usually,” said Milbank, “but not this one. It has five sets of random interlocks. The math is impossible.”
“Nothing,” said Bart, “is impossible.”
“This truly is,” said Milbank. “It runs all round the world before it comes in. We can’t even do an interval grab on it. It is too fast and too random. No, this is the system that made my money. It is good. Too good.”
“Your vice presidents,” said Bart. “Got burned up in an SUV in Billings. We think.”
“Jesus,” said Milbank.
“Thought you’d like to know,” said Bart.
“Are you sure?” said Milbank.
Bart shrugged.
The news went back to the accident. Firemen and cops were peering in the holes where the glass had been in the SUV. A door was pried open. Something very black was pulled out.
Milbank was chewing with nothing in his mouth.
“God,” he said.
“If this works out all right,” said Bart, “I’m only going to break your jaw.”
Milbank blinked.
“Jesus,” he said, “I meant no harm.”
Bart drank coffee.
“Then why,” he said, “are all of these people dead?”
CHAPTER 34
“WONDERS OF MODERN TIMES, man,” said Harvey Wallace, Blackfeet and FBI. “Here’s what we got on Torbert Thommassen. Classified. Classified. Big glop of Magic Marker. Classified. Classified. Well, he was born 9.17.1943. Wesleyan. After college, and this is just my guess after years of looking at this crap, good old Torbert was out there in badland smiting Commies. He seems to have been very good at his job. I can tell because even though I have a very high security rating, I still don’t get dick, but I do get a lot of Magic Marker. What you got here is one AAA spook. Frankly, these guys scare me.”
“How’s your wife?” said Du Pré.
“She scares me more’n he does. Now, the question is, do you want our help. And my answer is no. You do not want our help. Thing about our help is we have all these procedures and such shit, and once they are set in train they run on and you get Waco. Ruby Ridge. This wouldn’t come to my desk now, anyway. I got promoted. I have nice crimes now. Serial killers, child murderers, that sort of stuff. I don’t do kidnappings. No, my friend, if he is there and you are there, then you have a much better chance of getting those people back alive.”
“So,” said Du Pré, “some dumbass asks you for help you will say no.”
“Bart?” said Harvey.
“No comment,” said Du Pré. “You got any suggestions?”
“Nothing you wouldn’t have thought of. One, demand proof that they are still alive. Don’t buy newspapers, they are hours old. Demand that the three of them be exhibited in good health in front of the tube. CNN is a good backdrop. Up to the minute. Another thing about Thommassen. He will not panic, which is good. He does not care, I would think, to kill Julie Perelli and the Burrows. It is wasteful and in poor taste. He won’t blow a gasket and kill them in a frenzy. So don’t screw it up, and I expect they will be fine.”
“Yah,” said Du Pré.
“Once the money is transferred,” said Harvey, “Torbert will want proof. Once he has the proof, then he just has to get someplace where he can get at his money. Stick his electronic fingers in the pile. So it isn’t like he has to pick up a suitcase or otherwise expose himself, and I would think he has several routes out of the country planned. He will keep it very simple, Du Pré. Simple and easy to back out of. You will not be pounding across the prairie on your hoss after him, hoping to catch him before he makes it to the border. He can wait a long time before he slips away. He’s really smart.”
“Yah,” said Du Pré, “and I am not so smart maybe.”
“Oh,” said Harvey, “you were clever enough to call me.”
“Shit,” said Du Pré.
“A thought,” said Harvey. “Torbert there is a very smart spook and when you complicate things, of course, the odds that something will go wrong increase. It is hard to move three people around who you have captive. If you have help it is hard, and Torbert will probably want to keep his labor costs down. Or the number of people he has to kill. You said that two of that ass Milbank’s employees were betoasted in an SUV?”
“They maybe started all of this,” said Du Pré.
“He’ll have one other person out there,” said Harvey. “Torbert is with his chips. But there is another thing. The person he has eye-balling you all may well not know he’s working for Torbert. Old spook habit. Find a fucking fool to take the pie in the face.”
“Jesus,” said Du Pré, “that reporter, that Allison Ames.”
“You would know better than I,” said Harvey, “and now I must return to the matter of the swine in Phoenix who is dismembering prostitutes with surgical knives. As if those poor women don’t have enough trouble already.”
“Good hunting,” said Du Pré.
“Love to Madelaine,” said Harvey. “Don’t call back, at least not about your goddamned kidnapping.”
“What?” said Bart.
“He say no, we don’t want them,” said Du Pré. “Where is that Milbank?”
“Out in his electronic playland,” said Bart, “awaiting word from whoever has Julie and the Burrows.”
They walked to the huge motor home and Du Pré banged on the door and a flunk came and opened it. They went in.
Markham Milbank was seated before a huge television screen. He had a computer console in front of him, a little thing the size of a thin briefcase.
The screen was blue.
Then it flickered, and a live image showed.
Julie Perelli. Her hands were taped and she had transparent tape over her mouth. CNN News was going on on a screen behind her. Milbank looked at a small television and he nodded.
“Real time,” he said. “She’s there and she’s alive.”
A hand reached out and jerked the tape from Julie’s mouth.
“Uncle Bart,” she said, “we are OK. Conor and Mister Burrows are fine. It is eleven twenty-one on Thursday—” The image went away. Letters appeared on the screen.
Account and routing numbers and a time runoff.
Milbank tapped in a message.
The time runout added sixty minutes.
“He just gave us an hour,” said Milbank. “So what do we do?”
Du Pré looked at Bart.
“Send it,” said Bart. He was writing down the account and routing numbers.
Milbank watched him.
“It won’t do much good,” he said, pointing to the screen. “See?”
Ct #’s invalid check 1245 hours.
“I have to have the bank ready,” said Milbank. “He’ll give us perhaps three minutes to do the transaction. It will go wherever, and be sent out of there and out of wherever is next. It takes a good hour to track a single set of numbers. So with each step he multiples his lead by sixty. Shit, he could have it back here before we plodded through Luxembourg.”
“Those were phony numbers,” said Bart.
“Yup,” said Milbank. “If I’d bitten and sent ’em the money, the bank wouldn’t have accepted electronic delivery of it. He’s good. Wants to see how fast we are.”
“Somebody was coming by,” said McPhie.
Du Pré nodded.
“One man?” said McPhie.
Du Pré nodded.
McPhie shook his head.
“How you do that?” he said. “Tell from the ground. I mean, I can see a footprint.”
“Got to lift the ground up to your eyes,” said Du Pré. “Catfoot he say that, over and over. Got to lift the ground up to your eyes.”
“Catfoot,” said McPhie. “I only met him the once when I was a kid. Hell of a feller.”
Du Pré laughed.
“He was that,” said Du Pré.
Catfoot in his moccasins and old hat so worn it dripped down his head and his pants with the buckskin seat. Cloth wore out on the saddle.
The state vans left.
“Wonder what they’ll find,” said McPhie.
“Nothing,” said Du Pré.
“There are two others drove with them,” said Du Pré. “Come on, I show you.”
He led McPhie slowly back toward the road. Du Pré pointed to a spot on a skinny pine, dead. McPhie squinted at it.
“Little pieces of bar broke off there,” he said.
“Man stumble,” said Du Pré, “grab that. See?”
He pointed to the ground. A thick branch was buried in the needles and duff. One end was clear of fallen stuff.
“Stumbled on that,” said McPhie.
Du Pré went on to the road. He turned right and he walked down about fifteen feet.
Three cigarette butts sat together on the ground, just off the graded part of the road.
“They were in the car here,” said McPhie.
Du Pré nodded.
“Three together, maybe twenty minutes, half hour, this person is some nervous,” he said.
McPhie looked off into the woods.
“They stay in the car?” he said.
“This one did,” said Du Pré. “Other man walked around front, moved there to see better.”
“Three of them and Beck,” said McPhie.
Du Pré nodded.
“Twenty minutes is a long time,” said McPhie. “They must have wanted something from Beck.”
Du Pré nodded.
“What do you think?” said McPhie.
“Something that they wanted to know,” said Du Pré. “Beck, he knew he was going to die. He probably told them something, maybe they could check, it was not right, so … maybe codes for computer or something like that.”
McPhie nodded.
“I appreciate the instruction,” he said. “I really do.”
Du Pré looked off into the woods.
“Go up there,” he said. “Wait. There will be a small white SUV coming here, any time now. Woman driving it is Allison Ames.”
“Who’s she?” said McPhie.
“Journalist,” said Du Pré.
“Why is she coming here?” said McPhie.
“Somebody tell her to,” said Du Pré. “On the computer.”
“Shit,” said McPhie. “Then they aren’t that good.”
“Non,” said Du Pré. “They are not.”
CHAPTER 33
“I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE this,” said Markham Milbank.” In this world? I can’t believe it.”
He was standing on the porch of the Toussaint Saloon, hands in his pockets. He trembled.
“I get told that if I send a whole lot of money to Macao where it will be for maybe thirty seconds before going off someplace else that your people will be released and I will get the Lewis and Clark stuff. Which I don’t even want anymore. It was a game and it isn’t fun any more. No fun at all. Who are these bastards anyway?”
Bart looked at him.
“It is what happens,” he said, “When you screw around. Past the first couple of million, which you can grasp, it is just funny numbers. They don’t mean anything anymore. But it means a hell of a lot to some people. Hell, people get murdered every day for what is in their wallets, and no one carries much cash anymore.”
“God,” said Milbank, “I’ll pay ’em the money. I don’t care about the money. But how do we know they will let them go? Shouldn’t the FBI come in on this? They do kidnappings, don’t they?”
“Paul Beck was killed,” said Bart. “And Paul Beck isn’t easy to kill.”
Milbank looked up the street. The weird motor home with the satellite dishes on the roof was lumbering toward the saloon.
He had driven alone in a rented Cadillac.
Du Pré sat on the edge of the boardwalk, smoking.
“So what do you want me to do?” he said.
Bart looked at Du Pré.
“Those two you had with you, vice presidents or something?” said Du Pré.
“Pat Henkel and Jerry Soldner,” said Milbank. “Been with me since the beginning. They took off last night. Some fuss at the plant.”
“You got a telephone?” said Du Pré.
“Yeah,” said Milbank, looking puzzled.
“They are not there,” said Du Pré. “So you call and find that out maybe.”
Milbank turned pale.
“Oh, God,” he said. “Not them. Jesus, they don’t need the money.”
Du Pré shrugged.
Milbank ran to the motor home and he went in and he was back in two minutes.
“You were right,” he said. “They never came and there was no emergency. I can’t believe it. They were my friends.”
“What you will find, I expect,” said Bart, “is that they lost a lot of money someplace. The stock market. Some spec venture that took a lot of capital.”
“These days,” said Milbank, “that’s easy enough.”
“Where is your security guy?” said Du Pré.
“Torbert? He went off a couple of days ago to check something or other out. Jesus Christ, you’re not serious,” said Milbank.
“Oh, but we are,” said Bart, “and it seems your nearest and dearest are in this together. Torbert killed Paul Beck, I think. Beck was smart, way too smart for anyone but an old buddy. Beck was a brave man, and he wouldn’t make it easy for them.”
“Jesus,” said Milbank, “what do I do?”
Du Pré put his butt on the ground and he stepped on it and he came back up on the porch.
“You don’t send the money quick,” he said. “You delay. They are not all that far from here, maybe Billings, maybe someplace closer. Your … Soldner and Henkel they are out of the country, they are waiting for the money, someplace. But that Thommassen is here. He has Julie, the Burrows.”
“God!” said Milbank. “I’ll—”
“Do what?” said Bart. “Fire them?”
“Jesus,” said Milbank, “the money started coming in in a flood and then a tidal wave and I had no idea.”
A window opened in the motor home and an arm stuck out and waved.
Milbank ran to the door and he went in.
“That little shit,” said Bart.
“Him don’t mean no harm,” said Du Pré. “He is not greedy. So he don’t think anyone else is either.”
“He pisses me off,” said Bart. “In case you forgot, my niece is out there someplace and she may be dead.”
Du Pré shook his head.
“Non,” he said. “They kill one man, that is bad enough, they kill Julie, the Burrows, you are after them forever, they know that.”
“Goddamned right,” said Bart.
“They are going to screw Thommassen, too, let him pay for Beck,” said Du Pré. “Thommassen he is smart, he will expect that. So we have that trouble there.”
“Henkel and Soldner won’t play for keeps,” said Bart.
Du Pré shook his head.
Milbank came back.
“You were right,” he said. “I told them I had to get some liquidity. They understand that.”
Bart’s shoehorn telephone rang and he opened it and clapped it to his ear and he walked away, listening. He said something and he shut the telephone back up.
“That was Foote,” he said. “If your two clowns left the country, they did it in the dark. Their passports haven’t been used. No airline has them on a manifest.”
“Private plane?” said Milbank.
Bart shook his head.
“Harder than you think,” he said. “What with the military these days, they keep a close eye on all flights. Since the unpleasantness in New York and Washington.”
Du Pré wandered into the saloon. It had just opened and Madelaine had the television on. There had been a bad accident near Billings. An SUV, now in flames. The fire department was there. So was a crew in a helicopter. Du Pré watched the fire trucks shoot foam on the blazing SUV.
A reporter on the ground said it was a single-vehicle accident and there were no witnesses.
A fireman said they didn’t know how many people were in the SUV.
“… back to you, Cicely …” said the reporter.
The camera focused again on the SUV. It was sitting upright in the barrow pit. Du Pré studied the picture.
He made himself a ditchwater highball and he carried it back outside.
He nodded to Bart. They walked away from Milbank, who was hopping up and down a little where he stood.
“Those guys, Milbank’s,” said Du Pré, “they are dead now maybe. There is this accident near Billings, show the SUV, but it did not roll over. Roof is fine and there are no marks. Just tracks down into the pit.”
“Shit,” said Bart. “You want to call your FBI guy?”
Du Pré stood silent for a moment.
“No,” he said. “It is that Thommassen, him, who he got with him now. They are pret’ smart. FBI comes in, they know it, maybe they just run.”
“And leave no witnesses,” said Bart.
Du Pré nodded.
“You sure about those idiots of Milbank’s?” said Bart.
Du Pré shrugged.
“How many SUVs we got here just burst into flames?” he said. “They roll over. They are designed to do that. Good thing, too.”
“But we don’t know,” said Bart.
Du Pré shrugged.
“This guy Thommassen,” said Du Pré. “He worked for who? CIA maybe? This is his one big chance. He won’t take any risks with it. They are dead, you bet, they aren’t worth anything to him any more.”
Milbank went back to the odd motor home.
“Hey, Du Pré,” said Madelaine. “Two bodies in that SUV, pret’ bad burned. News says they are in the back seat, though. Cops, they are looking for the driver.”
“Did we bet?” said Bart. “I would like to give you five bucks anyway.”
Du Pré snorted.
“Du Pré,” said Madelaine, “you got breakfast here now. You, too, Bart.”
They went in to their platters of bacon and eggs and hashbrowns and biscuits.
The news was about baseball scores, and then some young man with a neck wider than his head grunted something when asked questions.
Milbank came in.
“Well,” he said, “it is one of our best and most secure systems. The Department of Defense uses it to protect vital information.”
“How good?” said Bart.
“Anything can be broken, usually,” said Milbank, “but not this one. It has five sets of random interlocks. The math is impossible.”
“Nothing,” said Bart, “is impossible.”
“This truly is,” said Milbank. “It runs all round the world before it comes in. We can’t even do an interval grab on it. It is too fast and too random. No, this is the system that made my money. It is good. Too good.”
“Your vice presidents,” said Bart. “Got burned up in an SUV in Billings. We think.”
“Jesus,” said Milbank.
“Thought you’d like to know,” said Bart.
“Are you sure?” said Milbank.
Bart shrugged.
The news went back to the accident. Firemen and cops were peering in the holes where the glass had been in the SUV. A door was pried open. Something very black was pulled out.
Milbank was chewing with nothing in his mouth.
“God,” he said.
“If this works out all right,” said Bart, “I’m only going to break your jaw.”
Milbank blinked.
“Jesus,” he said, “I meant no harm.”
Bart drank coffee.
“Then why,” he said, “are all of these people dead?”
CHAPTER 34
“WONDERS OF MODERN TIMES, man,” said Harvey Wallace, Blackfeet and FBI. “Here’s what we got on Torbert Thommassen. Classified. Classified. Big glop of Magic Marker. Classified. Classified. Well, he was born 9.17.1943. Wesleyan. After college, and this is just my guess after years of looking at this crap, good old Torbert was out there in badland smiting Commies. He seems to have been very good at his job. I can tell because even though I have a very high security rating, I still don’t get dick, but I do get a lot of Magic Marker. What you got here is one AAA spook. Frankly, these guys scare me.”
“How’s your wife?” said Du Pré.
“She scares me more’n he does. Now, the question is, do you want our help. And my answer is no. You do not want our help. Thing about our help is we have all these procedures and such shit, and once they are set in train they run on and you get Waco. Ruby Ridge. This wouldn’t come to my desk now, anyway. I got promoted. I have nice crimes now. Serial killers, child murderers, that sort of stuff. I don’t do kidnappings. No, my friend, if he is there and you are there, then you have a much better chance of getting those people back alive.”
“So,” said Du Pré, “some dumbass asks you for help you will say no.”
“Bart?” said Harvey.
“No comment,” said Du Pré. “You got any suggestions?”
“Nothing you wouldn’t have thought of. One, demand proof that they are still alive. Don’t buy newspapers, they are hours old. Demand that the three of them be exhibited in good health in front of the tube. CNN is a good backdrop. Up to the minute. Another thing about Thommassen. He will not panic, which is good. He does not care, I would think, to kill Julie Perelli and the Burrows. It is wasteful and in poor taste. He won’t blow a gasket and kill them in a frenzy. So don’t screw it up, and I expect they will be fine.”
“Yah,” said Du Pré.
“Once the money is transferred,” said Harvey, “Torbert will want proof. Once he has the proof, then he just has to get someplace where he can get at his money. Stick his electronic fingers in the pile. So it isn’t like he has to pick up a suitcase or otherwise expose himself, and I would think he has several routes out of the country planned. He will keep it very simple, Du Pré. Simple and easy to back out of. You will not be pounding across the prairie on your hoss after him, hoping to catch him before he makes it to the border. He can wait a long time before he slips away. He’s really smart.”
“Yah,” said Du Pré, “and I am not so smart maybe.”
“Oh,” said Harvey, “you were clever enough to call me.”
“Shit,” said Du Pré.
“A thought,” said Harvey. “Torbert there is a very smart spook and when you complicate things, of course, the odds that something will go wrong increase. It is hard to move three people around who you have captive. If you have help it is hard, and Torbert will probably want to keep his labor costs down. Or the number of people he has to kill. You said that two of that ass Milbank’s employees were betoasted in an SUV?”
“They maybe started all of this,” said Du Pré.
“He’ll have one other person out there,” said Harvey. “Torbert is with his chips. But there is another thing. The person he has eye-balling you all may well not know he’s working for Torbert. Old spook habit. Find a fucking fool to take the pie in the face.”
“Jesus,” said Du Pré, “that reporter, that Allison Ames.”
“You would know better than I,” said Harvey, “and now I must return to the matter of the swine in Phoenix who is dismembering prostitutes with surgical knives. As if those poor women don’t have enough trouble already.”
“Good hunting,” said Du Pré.
“Love to Madelaine,” said Harvey. “Don’t call back, at least not about your goddamned kidnapping.”
“What?” said Bart.
“He say no, we don’t want them,” said Du Pré. “Where is that Milbank?”
“Out in his electronic playland,” said Bart, “awaiting word from whoever has Julie and the Burrows.”
They walked to the huge motor home and Du Pré banged on the door and a flunk came and opened it. They went in.
Markham Milbank was seated before a huge television screen. He had a computer console in front of him, a little thing the size of a thin briefcase.
The screen was blue.
Then it flickered, and a live image showed.
Julie Perelli. Her hands were taped and she had transparent tape over her mouth. CNN News was going on on a screen behind her. Milbank looked at a small television and he nodded.
“Real time,” he said. “She’s there and she’s alive.”
A hand reached out and jerked the tape from Julie’s mouth.
“Uncle Bart,” she said, “we are OK. Conor and Mister Burrows are fine. It is eleven twenty-one on Thursday—” The image went away. Letters appeared on the screen.
Account and routing numbers and a time runoff.
Milbank tapped in a message.
The time runout added sixty minutes.
“He just gave us an hour,” said Milbank. “So what do we do?”
Du Pré looked at Bart.
“Send it,” said Bart. He was writing down the account and routing numbers.
Milbank watched him.
“It won’t do much good,” he said, pointing to the screen. “See?”
Ct #’s invalid check 1245 hours.
“I have to have the bank ready,” said Milbank. “He’ll give us perhaps three minutes to do the transaction. It will go wherever, and be sent out of there and out of wherever is next. It takes a good hour to track a single set of numbers. So with each step he multiples his lead by sixty. Shit, he could have it back here before we plodded through Luxembourg.”
“Those were phony numbers,” said Bart.
“Yup,” said Milbank. “If I’d bitten and sent ’em the money, the bank wouldn’t have accepted electronic delivery of it. He’s good. Wants to see how fast we are.”
