The Hunger of Crows, page 4
“I see. But if it came from me …”
“Yes. Coming from you, an insider, his old war buddy. Coming from you, the guy who does whatever it is you do for him, it will be huge news.” She sags back into her pillow, her breathing strained.
“Jen, take it easy.” He reaches to touch her shoulder.
She shakes him off. “Look, I know you’re loyal to that one-eyed bastard. I know you believe all that semper-fi bullshit. But the asshole is running for president. The photo could stop his fucked-up campaign in its tracks. That’s what I want!”
Yes, the “semper-fi bullshit” his daughter will never understand is part of it. “Like I said, it’s not simple.”
“I know, Pops.” Jennifer hugs herself with those skinny arms. “I know it’s because you’re in that photo. I mean, I don’t know what you guys were doing there in that room back then. And I don’t really want to know. But McKint lied to Congress about meeting that Colombian colonel. The picture could finish him.”
“I lied to them too, Jen.”
“I know. And I don’t want you in jail. It’s just that …” She pauses to find a way to say it. “Yes, I feel good this morning, but I may not have a lot of time left. You know that. I need you to do this. Find some way to turn it over to the feds without hurting yourself. Trade the photo for immunity or something.”
She’s been this passionate about politics, about everything, since she was a teenager. And he wants to help her, but she hasn’t thought it through the way he has. “Jennifer, if I give this to the media …”
“So, destroy it then!” Her passion turns to anger. He’s seen that switch flip a hundred times since she was a teenager too. “Burn it! Go ahead. At least then I’ll know where you and I stand.”
She doesn’t say before I die. But he hears it.
This is a conversation he’s been having with himself since she gave him the photo. She’s right. He’s still a soldier to the bone. The thought of turning on his own former commander has had him tying himself in knots. Still, Gordon McKint hasn’t become a billionaire and major player in the biggest of the big leagues by adhering to romantic notions like loyalty and camaraderie. D’Angelo knows that.
“Jen, give me just a little more time. Please?”
“Time,” she mutters. “Sure.” She closes her eyes.
“Jen …”
He stops when a short, older nurse bustles into the room carrying a piece of paper. She checks it against the chart on the bed frame, then reads Jennifer’s monitor screen. “How you feeling, honey?”
Jennifer just shakes her head. “I was feeling pretty good for a while there.”
“Yeah. I heard when I came on shift.” The nurse smiles and points one thumb at D’Angelo. “Is this your boyfriend?”
Jennifer opens her eyes, rolls them his way. “This?” She chuckles. “This is my bodyguard.”
The nurse looks D’Angelo over. “I believe it.” She squeezes Jennifer’s foot through the blankets. “Hang in there, young lady. Dr. Singh will be in soon.”
When she’s gone, Jennifer closes her eyes again. All the hopeful health he saw in her face when he arrived has drained back out again. Is he doing her any good being here? Is this visit for her? Or for him?
“Listen, Jennifer …” he says, not really sure what he’s going to say next.
His ex-wife walks in. They’ve obviously had their problems. But right now, he’s very glad she’s there. “Rebecca.” He kisses her cheek.
“Ah, it’s the man of mystery. Welcome back, D’.” She gives him a fond look. “I’d ask where you’ve been that no one could get ahold of you for a week, not even your office, but I know you’d have to have me killed or something if you told me.” She scoffs. “Don’t you ever get tired of that cloak-and-dagger stuff?”
“You have no idea.”
She smiles. “You look good. You here to see your daughter? Or do you have some new bullet holes that need patching up?”
“I was just leaving. I have to get to the office.” He turns to Jennifer. “I’ll be back right after work. I’ll bring you some Imperial Wok. You can’t tell the food from the medicine in this fucking place.”
That gets a laugh out of Jennifer. The first one he’s seen in a while. “Dad, give me a hug before you go,” she says.
D’Angelo leans over the bed. Jennifer wraps her arms around him, a tube dangling from one wrist, a monitor bracelet of some kind on the other.
She whispers, “Do the right thing, Dad. You know what it is.”
CHAPTER
5
IT’S JUST AFTER eight in the morning when Carla’s eyes become so tired she decides to pull off the big highway and take the old switchback road to the rest area on top of the Hoover Dam. As scared and anxious as she is to put miles between herself and Phoenix, she still feels the magic of this place as soon as she steps out of the truck. She’s glad she stopped.
Once again she gasps at the size of the dam, the immensity of the effort it took to build the thing. She can feel it vibrating in the six million tons of concrete beneath her feet. The whole structure hums like a gigantic electromagnet. How many times has she stopped here on her way to or from Vegas with her husband? Or, after the divorce, with some of the other social workers or nurses from the hospital where she used to work? It’s been ten years since she left the hospital. It’s been that long since she’s been here.
She parks and puts the troublesome phone in her purse, walks to the Monument Plaza on the western end of the dam, and reads the plaque beneath the two massive bronze art deco sculptures. Towering over the plaza and mesmerizing her with their strange, stylized dignity, the winged gods sit imperiously on thrones backed against the cliff face. It’s only fitting that they should overlook the celestial star map, a twenty-six-thousand-year clock built into the terrazzo deck. It’s designed to pinpoint the configuration of the heavens on the day of the dam’s completion in 1935. Even if violent lunatics like Gordon McKint finally obliterate life on earth, some alien visitor in the distant future can situate this massive human effort in time.
Carla loves the sound of the words axial precession on the monument’s plaque, though she only vaguely understands how this astronomical clock is calibrated for eons. All of which brings her back to a critical question: with Cosmo D’Angelo and all his first-class computers looking for her, just how much more time does Carla Merino have on this planet?
She pushes the thought out of her mind for the tenth time today and studies the two giant statues a moment longer. She must’ve been eight or nine when she saw them for the first time with her mother—and some guy. There was always some guy. Carla’s well aware that the same could be said of her.
She remembers her mother pondering the handsome bronze faces of the gods, their powerful winged arms straight up overhead, biceps like boulders. “I have to get one of those,” she said.
“You want a statue?” the man with her asked. “For what, the yard?”
“Not a statue, silly. A man with wings.” Her mother winked at her. “And muscles like those. A god. Is that so much to ask?”
Carla was still young enough to be entertained by her mother’s repartee. That didn’t last much longer.
It now occurs to her that earlier, when she fled the apartment, and Phoenix, maybe forever, she left messages for Sally and Manny but not a word for her mother.
Another thing she didn’t do on her way out of Phoenix was stop at a pay phone—as Lisa Yi advised—to arrange handing over the photo to the Times. Somehow the thought of letting go of the thing, even to Lisa, is untenable. If she did, she’d still have to run, and then she’d have nothing to bargain with. Bargain with? Who is she going to bargain with? Cosmo D’Angelo? Just how would you go about that without getting yourself killed?
Her phone rings, and she almost yelps. It’s only Sally again. Carla wants to answer, badly. Wants to talk to someone who isn’t trying to kill her. But if she answers, will that put Sally’s number on D’Angelo’s radar? The phone rings again, the temptation to pick up almost too much. She runs to the stone parapets at the edge of the dam and hurls the thing out into the abyss. It plummets to the Colorado River more than seven hundred feet below.
She looks at the winged gods one last time, gets back in the truck, and drives.
CHAPTER
6
IT’S NEARLY NOON when D’Angelo pulls up to Sidewinder headquarters in south Phoenix.
Something’s wrong. And it’s not just the phalanx of MCKINT FOR PRESIDENT signs incongruously staked out across the lawn. They look like a small army of some kind guarding the otherwise nondescript, single-story concrete-and-glass structure in the equally nondescript business park. The signs are new. And they make him cringe. The idea has always been to keep a low profile. Everything about Sidewinder Security is more or less secretive. The sign on the building is so innocuous you have to know where to look for it. Apparently the announcement by the company’s founder has changed all that. He should have seen this coming. Gordon McKint’s face was on every TV screen in every airport D’Angelo slogged through on his way home from the other side of the planet. He grimaced at the sight of the Sidewinder Security logo looming behind McKint as he told his adoring followers just how he was going to solve, as he called it, the “immigrant crisis.” So much for secretive.
But there’s something wrong inside the building too. Something is different. He can feel it in the taut faces on everyone. The quiet is unusually severe, even for a place housing as many secrets as this one. It puts him on alert.
Trudy, his office manager, looks positively bleak. She says, “Welcome back, boss,” and chews her lower lip. There’s a tremulous emotional catch in her voice. Trudy is not known for wobbly emotions.
He looks around. In the cubicles, the data analysts and tech mavens bow before their computer screens with what could be taken as their usual reverence for all things digital. But it’s not. It’s something else. Something more. He can almost taste it in the air.
It’s fear.
He can see it in Trudy’s face. He can see it in the posture of the whole team.
“What the hell is going on, Trudy?” he asks, pitching his voice low, privately.
She pulls her lips in, hisses, “It’s about Kevin.” Her eyes dart past him and back again.
“Our Kevin?” He knows only one Kevin. “With the yoga mat and the funny hair?”
Trudy looks like she’s about to start weeping.
“Kevin Dykstra?” he asks, and she sniffles and nods.
In his stretchy pants and long-sleeved T-shirts, Kevin Dykstra is a New Agey anomaly among the other Dockers-clad techies and analysts. In his twenties, he may be the youngest person on the payroll here in Phoenix. D’Angelo marvels whenever he sees him ride up to the building on his bicycle—D’Angelo hasn’t ridden a bike since he was about eleven—or sees him sitting on his ergonomic chair, clacking away at his keyboard. He can’t help thinking about what he himself was doing at that age: who he was shooting at, or who was shooting back. Kevin will never know the thrill of either. D’Angelo isn’t sure whether to envy or pity the kid.
He likes him, teases him about his man bun, calls him Buntaro after a Samurai character in Clavell’s Shōgun. The kid doesn’t get it but doesn’t care. He just smiles and keeps on working. A data junkie, he’s happy as long as he has a problem to solve and a computer to solve it with. He can fix anything. Hack anything. Find anything. Anything.
An alarm is starting to vibrate inside D’Angelo. If Trudy were the only one acting this way, he’d write it off as her typically dour mood. But everybody in the place?
“Kevin Dykstra?” He tries to lighten things. “What did he do, hack into the Pentagon?”
Trudy’s face flashes sudden awareness. “Oh my God. You don’t know.”
“Obviously,” he says, the alarms getting louder. “What happened?”
Trudy grabs a Kleenex and sniffles into it, teary eyes shooting around the room again. D’Angelo looks that way too. One of the techs is watching them from her cubicle; her head snaps back to her screen again. What the fuck is going on?
“Trudy?” he says. “Tell me.”
“Not here.” She nods toward D’Angelo’s office. “Inside.”
* * *
He gets Trudy settled in a chair near his desk, still sniffling. “Kevin’s dead!” she blurts, sobbing now.
“Yeah, I was starting to get that. How? What happened?”
When she pulls herself together enough to talk, she says, “He hung himself! In his family’s cabin, up north in the mountains.” She stops. “Didn’t Mr. Lundren tell you?”
Now the internal Klaxons are blaring.
“Mister” Lundren sent D’Angelo out of town, out of the country, to do a job that really didn’t require his vast experience or talent. That alone was a little suspicious and had D’Angelo wondering. Then one of his own people commits suicide while he’s gone? There are no coincidences at Sidewinder Security.
He reins in the anger. “No, I guess he forgot to tell me. When did this happen?”
“Almost two weeks ago, I think. Two or three days after you left on your trip, maybe. I could look it up.”
He forces himself to speak calmly. “Sure, why don’t you do that. Thank you.”
Trudy stands to leave, but stops. “It was so terrible. I mean the way it happened. Poor Kevin. The police think he hung himself from the stovepipe on a woodstove and it broke or something. The cabin caught on fire, and that started a forest fire that burned for days. I think they have it under control now.”
“A fire.”
It’s April and almost a hundred degrees already. Even up in Flagstaff where the daily temps are ten to twenty degrees cooler, there’s little likelihood that anyone has been burning firewood lately.
“Uh-huh,” D’Angelo says. He asks a question he already knows the answer to. He could write this script. “And so I guess there was no suicide note? No texts on his phone to anybody?”
Trudy shakes her head. “I don’t think there was anything left after the fire. Not even much of a body. I’ll get you the newspaper article. But Mr. Lundren can probably fill you in on the details. Do you want me to set up a meeting?”
“No, I need to check in with him anyway.”
A suicide with no note. A body reduced to ash. Perfect.
It wouldn’t have been Phil Lundren himself getting that dirty, of course. He doesn’t have the skill set for that. Or the balls. But there are a couple others at Sidewinder who do. There’s a reason Lundren has leapfrogged past him up the company food chain, though he doesn’t go back anywhere near as far as D’Angelo and McKint do together. And it’s not because of his field skills. He’s never been in the field. Never fired a gun. The business is changing, and Lundren has climbed a very different ladder to the top level. D’Angelo worked his way up with live ammunition and boots on the ground in places like Cartagena and Kabul and Kinshasa, where his job was keeping McKint alive. The rungs on Lundren’s ladder are made of spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. His job is keeping McKint alive too, but in the equally hazardous terrain of board meetings and fund raisers.
Yes, it’s a two-tiered business now, the old-school practices rapidly being replace by newer, more publicly palatable behavior. And D’Angelo is smart enough to know that—the occasional need for his primitive services notwithstanding—it’s never going back. He needs to find out what really happened to Kevin Dykstra. And most importantly, why? What the hell did the kid do? The trick is finding out without anyone knowing he’s looking.
They took out one of their own people?
So much for the “semper-fi bullshit.”
* * *
When Trudy goes back out to her work area, D’Angelo walks to Phil Lundren’s office. He doesn’t call first. He wants to surprise Lundren, keep him off-balance if he can, see if anything about Kevin Dykstra slips out.
He walks past Kevin’s now-empty workstation. The computer screen is dark. His special chair is gone, but his New Age crystal is sitting on his desktop. D’Angelo steps in and picks it up. Puts it in his pocket.
Lundren puts on a show of being pleased to see him, but D’Angelo can see in his face that he isn’t happy he showed up unannounced. “D’Angelo, welcome back.” His face goes a degree or two brighter. “Coffee?”
Phil Lundren is a couple years younger than D’Angelo, almost as tall, with a plain face and a plain midwestern voice. He keeps something like a smile on at all times, as if he’s not sure when one is actually appropriate. He’s a born manager of people. A natural salesman. Which is a requirement for those jobs anyway. It’s not charm exactly. Cosmo D’Angelo has indisputable charm. The kind that gets him what he wants or needs. What Phil Lundren possesses is the ability to get other people things they want. Mainly, Gordon McKint. If Lundren has ever had an original thought or idea of his own, D’Angelo hasn’t seen any evidence of it.
“No coffee, thanks.” The Kevin Dykstra thing has already put him on edge. Snapping at Lundren won’t get him what he wants. He won’t say anything about Kevin until he sees if the subject comes up.
It doesn’t. Lundren wants to share some good news. “You’re getting a bump, my friend. Moving up a notch.”
D’Angelo has been wondering if this would happen. Gordon McKint’s decision to throw his hat into the presidential race means that Sidewinder Security will have to adopt a kinder, gentler public face for a while. Starting with fewer unflattering news items about their handling of detained immigrants along the border. McKint’s plan to privatize the Border Patrol is the centerpiece of Sidewinder’s shift from profitable but messy rebellions and civil wars to nice, stable domestic situations right here in the U.S. He has pledged to remove himself from Sidewinder’s management if elected. But once he’s in office? With the power that brings? It’ll be business as usual on a scale never seen before. And no need to wade through bloody foreign mud.
