Boldt - 05 - Pied Piper, page 42
They crossed the sky bridge, he and his daughter’s kidnapper, fleeing the FBI, she in disguise, he with his head down, mixing in with dozens of other impatient travelers.
He glanced out of the sky bridge windows, down to the taxi stand, where FBI agents in blue suits hurried about, checking taxis, jumping onto various buses—bees in a disturbed hive. Their blatant disregard for covert techniques informed Boldt that Flemming had indeed panicked. Two dozen FBI operatives were scrambling to salvage their operation. Boldt realized that he was his own worst enemy; he had to break away from Crowley to avoid alerting Flemming. And yet he had to stay with her.
At the end of the sky bridge, he stopped and fished the cell phone from his pocket, using it as a prop. Crowley continued straight ahead into the parking area, not downstairs to rentals, just as Boldt had expected.
It was Gaynes who had put him onto this over the phone; she had followed the Taurus from the Park and Ride to Sea-Tac, where the driver, a male, had parked it on the sky bridge level and then lost her. Boldt took the male to be Roger Crowley, the car having been left for his wife. Boldt had ordered Gaynes to drill the Taurus’s taillight.
Drilling taillights was something Boldt had learned from an ATF agent named Reisnick twelve years earlier. Vehicular surveillance, even with a team of three or four tails, had less than a thirty percent success rate, contrary to its representation in film and on television. Improved technology, namely Global Positioning, had permanently changed things, but that required the surveillance team to place a transmitter on the suspect vehicle—SPD’s planned course of action. In the right hands, a drilled taillight was nearly as good as GPS. The tiny hole in the taillight emitted an unexpectedly brilliant spike of white light, laserlike in its quality, that could be seen clearly at a distance of several blocks, or from a helicopter. It singled out a vehicle from all others. Though less effective, the technique even worked in daylight hours as the brakes were applied; at nighttime it was foolproof.
Boldt’s challenge was to double-cross SPD’s attempts to follow Lisa Crowley and to get the suspect safely out of the airport, while still keeping her under surveillance himself.
To accomplish this, Gaynes had drilled the taillight. He and LaMoia had assembled a motley crew that included a variety of snitches hungry for a hundred-dollar hit and waiting for orders.
The question remained: Would it work?
CHAPTER
The Taurus backed out of its parking space just as Boldt reached Gus Griswold on his cellular. Griswold had been an SPD informer for seven years. He worked part-time as a butcher for one of the supermarket chains. He lived out of the back of a Ford Country Squire, which he referred to as his mobile home.
“You on top of this?” Boldt asked the man.
“You want me on top of her? I thought you just wanted me to follow.” All snitches were wise-asses. The headlights from the Taurus threw long shadows across the concrete. Boldt spotted the drilled taillight without any problem. Gus Griswold’s rusted Ford pulled out of a parking space right behind that tiny white light.
“You see that taillight?” Boldt asked.
“Later,” Griswold said. The line went dead. The two cars disappeared into the guts of the parking garage, their engine noise fading.
While Special Ops’ identification of Crowley played out in his right ear, Boldt cut through a tangle of parked vehicles in the darkened garage. He caught a last glimpse of Griswold’s taillights as the snitch followed Crowley down the spiral exit ramp. Boldt broke into a run heading for the fire stairs, aware that Special Ops had closed two of the three exit lanes and had placed an SPD undercover cop behind the garage’s only open cash register window. The SPD plan was to fix a GPS transmitter to whatever vehicle the suspect drove out of the garage, rental or not. The cashier was to intentionally drop the rental contract or the parking receipt as it was being passed to the driver. The cashier would then quickly leave the booth as if to retrieve it and, in the process, slip the magnetized GPS transmitter onto the undercarriage of the car. From then on, Special Ops would be able to track the vehicle’s movement and location electronically, either from the command van or the Public Safety Building, as long as the transmitter remained within the cellular telephone network.
Special Ops—“Zulu”—also had four surveillance vehicles in place. These vehicles, called trailers, were to rotate line-of-sight surveillance, keeping the suspect in view at all times. A dozen SPD patrol cars were established along the more commonly used routes awaiting instructions.
It was the reliance on the GPS technology that Boldt intended to exploit. A few years earlier, a similar surveillance operation might have used six or more trailers, but trailers were cops being paid overtime in city-owned vehicles burning fuel and requiring maintenance. A GPS, once installed, required one technician sitting at a computer terminal studying a moving map and directing dispatch.
Boldt raced down the cement stairs to ground level and cracked open the steel door, gaining a view of the exit booths, their red-and-white striped barrier arms blocking lanes. With several flights having arrived within minutes of one another, and only one booth open, seven cars were lined up awaiting the cashier. The third car back was a brown Taurus, followed immediately by Griswold’s Country Squire.
The first car paid and left, then the second. The Taurus pulled up to the booth. An exchange of radio traffic confirmed this. Boldt understood the level of tension inside that command van. SPD’s success relied entirely on their ability to place the GPS. He understood this well, because the success of his operation relied on preventing it.
Boldt looked on anxiously as the cashier reached out for the parking stub, intentionally lost hold of it and then shoved his head out the booth announcing to Crowley, “I’ll get it!”
But Gus Griswold beat him to it. Having left his vehicle, ostensibly to fix a wiper, he lunged for the fallen parking stub like a good Samaritan, blocking the cashier from exiting the booth.
“Back in your car,” the undercover cashier ordered somewhat desperately. “I’ve got it.”
“No sweat,” the snitch answered, passing the stub to the cashier and making eyes at Crowley. The GPS transmitter remained inside the booth. The red-and-white arm lifted and the Taurus motored ahead.
Boldt hurried past the booths, the cashier’s back to him, and out into the dark and the drizzle. The Country Squire passed a moment later, and Boldt climbed inside.
“How’d you like that shit?” Griswold asked.
“You’re a natural,” Boldt said, strapping in, the Taurus’s drilled taillight shining as brightly as an evening star, calling him, tugging at his heart, leading him toward his child and her abductor.
“The bird is not in place,” Boldt heard in his right ear. “Repeat: The bird is not in place.”
The dispatcher’s professional calm never ceased to amaze him. Command ordered Zulu’s mobile surveillance units to be on the lookout for the brown Taurus.
Boldt winced at mention of the Taurus. Without realizing the mistake, Command had more than likely just handed Flemming everything he needed to know.
CHAPTER
Lisa Crowley’s Taurus followed signs to Seattle via 509 North; Griswold and Boldt were fifty yards back and following. Her one stunt had been to drive around the block in an effort to spot any surveillance, but Boldt picked up the ruse before her second turn, instructing Griswold to drive past, take two lefts and wait at the intersection. Moments later the Taurus sped past, silencing Griswold who was, at the time, exercising his right of free speech. They reentered traffic and followed, allowing several cars to come between, Boldt monitoring the steady flow of radio traffic as SPD attempted to keep watch on Lisa Crowley.
“They’re two cars back,” Boldt informed the Griz.
“Cops?”
“Yes.”
“So we’re fucked.”
“We’re challenged,” Boldt corrected.
“It’s that taillight. Can see the fucking thing for miles, I’m telling ya. I never knew how bright.”
“That’s the idea,” Boldt said. And as he did so, another idea took its place. “You just earned yourself a bonus, Griz.”
“No shit?” Griswold sat up a little higher in the seat. Squared his shoulders. “This cop shit’s okay,” he said. Regarding his filthy dash, littered with candy wrappers, he added, “Wish like hell this thing had a siren.”
Bernie Lofgrin had used his considerable clout as director of the Scientific Identification Division to trick the motor pool into giving him another of SPD’s surveillance vans, a steam-cleaning van confiscated in a drug bust and presently outfitted with surveillance hardware.
Acting as the Gang of Five dispatcher, Lofgrin monitored SPD’s progress at Sea-Tac from an I-5 Park and Ride five miles north of the airport. The step van had full radio capabilities, a cellular phone “switchboard” that allowed real-time conferencing between up to six separate cellular numbers, digitized video surveillance and four separate computer terminals, two of which were specialized for law enforcement. Lofgrin was like a bear in a honey jar, enjoying his chance to work the high-tech gadgets to where he had nearly every major component of the van’s electronic arsenal working in some regard. He even had the video camera trained out the back at the on-ramp’s approaching traffic, a color SONY playing to his left.
Boldt called Lofgrin a few minutes before eight o’clock and requested he reposition the van at the intersection of 99 and South Lander in a parking lot on the southeast corner facing the traffic light. Boldt paged Raymond, his snitch who spent a majority of his time at the Air Strip but was on that night driving a lime green Corvair with whitewalls. The page went through; he would be hearing back from the man within minutes, in however long it took Raymond to leave the Corvair and walk to the pay phone. LaMoia was given specific instructions and told to rendezvous in the same parking lot on South Lander, as soon as he had switched cars with Gaynes, who was parked on South Jackson, a block from the Kingdome. With quick access to either I-5 or 99, Gaynes remained on standby; Boldt’s wildcard, placed well north of Sea-Tac, Bobbie Gaynes was his last line of defense.
“What the hell are you planning on doing?” Griz asked, having overheard the series of calls.
Boldt didn’t feel like explaining himself, nor was he sure he could. He finally mumbled, “I’m pulling an end run on my own people,” voicing his own realization of what he was doing. It didn’t sound right to him; he wished he hadn’t said it.
Griswold knew to let well enough alone. He said, “You ever want a quarter of beef real cheap, I’m your man.”
“Freezer’s full,” Boldt said. Pointing, he said, “Change lanes.”
Griswold pulled out from behind the truck and accelerated past it. Boldt pointed back into the right lane; Griswold obliged him. “Pork bellies are cheap right now.”
“My locker freezer needs defrosting. If I get around to it …”
“Yeah, okay.” He reached for the car’s radio. “You mind I listen to the Sonics? It’s the fourth quarter.”
“I mind,” Boldt answered.
Griswold debated turning on the radio anyway, but he caught Boldt’s eye and withdrew his hand and placed it firmly on the wheel.
“Hang back a little,” Boldt instructed.
“That same truck’s gonna come right up my butt.”
“Hang back,” Boldt repeated firmly.
“Sweet mood you’re in,” the driver muttered.
“And put a sock in it,” Boldt added.
He didn’t know the whereabouts of Flemming’s surveillance crews, but he doubted they were far off; in the panic of briefly losing Crowley, both the Taurus and the drilled taillight had been mentioned over the airwaves. Minutes later, SPD’s mobile surveillance had reacquainted themselves with Crowley; two cars unmarked were currently trading the tail back and forth. Boldt could only hope that what was good for the goose was good for the gander, and that if SPD took the bait he offered, Flemming might too. He had little doubt of the FBI’s participation in the tail, although unlike SPD he had yet to identify the offenders. As in so many on-the-fly, real-time operations, it all came down to a matter of timing and coordination, and of luck, good or bad.
Another truck passed them—SYSCO Food Services—blocking Boldt’s view of the pinprick taillight, followed by another surge of adrenaline that swarmed his system in a flood of heat and anxiety, a kind of mock flu with which he lived for weeks on end. He chastised Griswold not to lose the taillight, not to allow himself to be passed, and so the Country Squire pulled out and struggled to regain its position. “Seattle drivers suck,” Griswold said, swerving and confirming his statement. The SYSCO truck sped up, preventing them from passing it. Boldt wondered if it was FBI and if they had made the Country Squire. “Faster,” he said, as if this might help.
The Country Squire grumbled and complained and then sounded as if a rocket had been ignited beneath it. It lurched forward, throwing their heads back in unison, and roared ahead. Griswold smiled warmly and said, “The old girl has got it when you want it.”
They traveled another ten minutes this way, blocked by a vehicle, passing it, blocked again, passing again. Car tag. Boldt used the cell phone to check on his troops. He felt grateful for the Seattle drool, the light drizzle that leaked from the sky, for it delivered extreme darkness and low visibility, and yet was hardly the kind of weather to keep Seattle’s homeless off the streets. The closer they drew to the city, the more abundant and apparent the city’s nomads. One or two clung to hand-scrawled signs proclaiming “I’ll Take Any Job.” One man sold flowers at a stoplight.
Boldt bought a bouquet of daffodils for three bucks. If anyone had been considering the Country Squire as a possible surveillance vehicle, Boldt had just shattered that image. He rolled up his window, confident he and Griz were now off any such list for consideration.
“What the hell you do that for, Big Spender?”
Boldt set the flowers down gently onto the trash-strewn dashboard. “Try to get the stink out of this thing,” Boldt answered. The car crashed through a set of potholes. It felt like an amusement ride.
“We’re what, two, three miles from the light at Lander? You want I do anything special when we get there?”
Boldt heard the man, but only as a distant hum, his words indistinguishable, his attention riveted instead on the dash, where with each bounce of the poorly sprung car the bouquet of flowers shook additional yellow dust—pollen—onto the candy wrappers. He wetted the tip of his thick finger and touched it into the pile and returned it to arm’s length where his tired eyes could focus upon it. “Daffodils,” he said softly.
“Hey, you gotta give it a rest, man,” the driver suggested.
“Arrest?” Boldt replied, mishearing. “They grow daffodils in Skagit, don’t they?”
“Every damn flower there is, far as I know.”
“Bulb flowers,” Boldt said.
“Whatever. Flowers is flowers.”
“No,” Boldt said, grabbing up the bouquet and shaking it violently, his hand open beneath it catching the fine mist of yellow dust that fell. “It’s tulips mostly in Skagit, and tulips produce all kinds of pollen, but none of it’s yellow, not this kind of vibrant yellow. You see? There can’t be that many daffodil farms.” It made the FedEx vehicle manifests all the more important.
“One mile, maybe.”
“Stay with it.”
Boldt called Liz and asked if Theresa Russo had dropped any papers by, and before he finished with the woman’s name, Liz confirmed that she held an envelope for him. A long thoughtful pause hovered between husband and wife, all the unspeakable questions lingering between them, unintentionally driving Boldt’s sense of guilt to higher places. “We’re making some progress,” he said. It was all he could think to say.
“I’m praying.”
He wasn’t sure if he should thank her or not. He was going to have to learn more about his wife’s faith and how to respond to it. The idea of a strong faith nibbled at his conscience, tempting him. With all he had seen, all he saw in the line of duty, he wondered if he could bring himself to such a place. Others had. It worked for some. As the Country Squire closed that last mile to South Lander, Boldt caught himself in a state of silent vengeance; not the pure faith required of him, but an attempt to make a connection with something, someone, greater than himself and to seek partnership and to gain confidence in what he had planned. Not exactly prayer, but he was trying.
“Is that Lander?” Boldt asked his driver, indicating a traffic light in the distance.
“That’s the one.”
He dialed Lofgrin in the surveillance van. As he did so, he instructed Griz to negotiate the Country Squire immediately behind the Taurus. Griz was beyond questioning him; he accelerated past several cars and then pulled in behind the drilled taillight.
“Okay?”
“We’re all set,” Boldt said.
He looked ahead to the right and the mostly empty parking lot that included a lime green Corvair and SPD’s steam-cleaning van, the command van, the destination of his phone call.
“Yeah?” Lofgrin answered from inside that van.
“Do it,” Boldt said. In the next minute or two he hoped to throw both SPD and Flemming off Crowley’s scent. He sat back and watched, reduced to spectator, frustrated, tired and angry.
Mounted to the dashboard of the steam-cleaning van was a small gray box that might have been mistaken for a radar detector. All fire trucks, ambulances and certain police vehicles—including all command vans—carried such boxes, the function of which was to transmit radio signals to upcoming traffic lights, switching and holding the lights to green. Aimed as Boldt had directed, Lofgrin engaged the box and stopped traffic on 99, including Crowley and Boldt directly behind her, a half mile and closing.
