“No. He hasn’t been going home either. He’s been staying at a crib down by the river.”
I knew the river area and I headed there with a red lamp on my car roof and a siren bleating. I had met Ramon Ramirez, and I knew about his parents; they were musicians, and addicts. Ramon played baseball with Damon. He was twelve. I wondered how deeply Damon was involved, but this wasn’t the time for questions like that.
I parked and Damon and I walked into a dilapidated row house down near the Anacostia. The row house was three stories, and most of the windows were boarded.
“You been in this place before?” I asked Damon.
“Yeah, I was here. I came to help Ramon. I couldn’t just leave him, could I?”
“Was Ramon conscious when you left him?” I asked.
“Yeah. But his teeth were clenched together, and then he was throwing up. His nose was bleeding.”
“Okay, let’s see how he is. Keep up with me.”
We hurried down a dark hallway and turned a corner. I could smell the stench of garbage and a recent fire.
Then I got a surprise. Two EMS techs and a doctor were in a small room; they were working over a boy. I could see Ramon’s black sneakers and rolled-up cargo pants. Nothing moved.
The doctor rose from her kneeling position over Ramon. She was tall and heavyset, with a pretty face. I hadn’t seen her around before. I walked up to her, showed my badge, which didn’t seem to impress her much.
“I’m Detective Cross,” I said. “How is the boy?”
The woman focused hard on me. “I’m Kayla Coles. We’re working on him. I don’t know yet. Someone called nine-one-one. Did you make the call?” She looked at Damon. I realized she was the doctor Nana had talked about.
Damon answered her question. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you take any drugs?” she asked.
Damon looked at me, then at Dr. Coles. “I don’t do drugs. It’s dumb.”
“But your friends do? Do you have dumb friends?”
“I was trying to help him. That’s all.”
Dr. Coles’s look was severe, but then she nodded. “You probably saved your friend’s life.”
Damon and I waited in the bleak, foul-smelling room until we heard the news that Ramon would make it. This time. Kayla Coles stayed there the whole time. She hovered over Ramon like a guardian angel. Damon got to say a few words to Ramon before they took him to a waiting ambulance. I saw him clasp his friend’s hands. It was nearly two in the morning when we finally made our way out of the row house.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded, but then his body started to shake, and he finally began to sob against my arm. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” I consoled him.
I put my arm around Damon’s shoulder, and we headed home.
Chapter 60
THOMAS STARKEY, BROWNLEY Harris, and Warren Griffin took separate flights to New York City, all leaving out of Raleigh-Durham Airport. It was safer and a lot smarter that way, and they always worked under the assumption that they were the best after all. They couldn’t make mistakes, especially now.
Starkey was on the five o’clock out of North Carolina. He planned to meet the others at the Palisade Motel in Highland Falls, New York, just outside the United States Military Academy at West Point. There was going to be a murder there. Two murders, actually.
Then this long mission would be over.
What was it Martin Sheen’s commanding officer had told him in Apocalypse Now? “Remember this, Captain. There is no mission. There never was a mission.” Starkey couldn’t help thinking that this job had been like that for them, a long haul. Each of the murders had been complicated. This was Starkey’s fourth trip to New York in the past two months. He still didn’t even know who he was working for; he’d never met the bastard.
In spite of everything, he felt confident as the Delta flight took off that evening. He talked to the flight attendant but avoided the kind of innocent flirting he might engage in under other circumstances. He didn’t want to be remembered, so he stuck his face in a Tom Clancy thriller he’d picked up at the airport. Starkey identified with Clancy characters like Jack Clark and John Patrick Ryan.
Once the jet leveled off and drinks were served, Starkey went over his plan for the final murders. It was all in his head; nothing was ever written down. It was in Harris’s and Griffin’s head too. He hoped they didn’t get into any trouble before he got to the Point tonight. There was a raunchy strip club in nearby New Windsor called the Bed Room, but they’d promised they’d stay at the hotel.
Finally, Starkey sat back, closed his eyes, and started doing the math again. It was a comforting ritual, especially now that they were close to the end.
$100,000 apiece for the first three hits.
$150,000 for the fourth.
$200,000 for the fifth.
$250,000 for West Point.
$500,000 bonus when the entire job was done.
It was almost over.
And Starkey still didn’t know who was paying for the murders, or why.
Chapter 61
SHARP, STEEP CLIFFS of granite overlooked the Hudson River at West Point. Starkey knew the area well. Later that night he drove down the main drag in Highland Falls, passing cheesy-looking motels, pizza shops, souvenir stands. He went through Thayer Gate with its turreted sentry tower and stone-faced MP on guard. Murder at West Point, he thought. Man, oh man.
Starkey put the job out of his mind for another few moments. He let impressions of West Point wash over him. Impressions and memories. Starkey had been a cadet here, been a plebe like the two youngsters he saw jogging back to barracks now. In his day, he’d shouted the cadet motto, “Always the hard way, sir!” a thousand times if he shouted it once.
God, he loved it here: the attitude, the discipline, the whole physical plant.
The Cadet Chapel stood high on a hillside overlooking the Plain. A cross between a medieval cathedral and a fortress, it still dominated the entire landscape. The campus was filled with mammoth gray-stone buildings, which created a fortress effect. An overwhelming sense of solidarity and permanence. Soon to be shaken badly.
Harris and Griffin were waiting for him on the grounds. For the next hour, they took turns watching the Bennett house on Bartlett Loop, an area of West Point reserved for officers and their families. The house was redbrick with white trim and plenty of ivy creeping up the walls. Smoke curled lazily from the stone chimney. It was a four-bedroom, two-bath unit. On the housing map it was designated as Quarters 130.
About nine-thirty the three killers reconnoitered on the seventeenth fairway of the West Point golf course. They didn’t see anyone on the hilly course that formed one of the boundaries of the military academy. Route 9W was just to the west.
“This might be easier than we thought,” Warren Griffin said. “They’re both home. Relaxing. Guard down.”
Starkey looked at Griffin disapprovingly. “I don’t think so. There’s a saying here, ‘Always the hard way, sir.’ Don’t forget it. And don’t forget that Robert Bennett was Special Forces. This isn’t some big-city architect having a sleepover on the Appalachian Trail.”
Griffin snapped to attention. “Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again.”
Just before ten o’clock, the three of them made their way through the bramble and woods that bordered the backyard of Quarters 130. Starkey pushed back a stubborn branch of a pine tree and saw the house.
Then he spotted Colonel Robert Bennett in the kitchen.
War hero, father of five, husband for twenty-six years, former Special Forces in Vietnam.
Bennett was holding a goblet of red wine and seemed to be supervising the preparation of a meal. Barbara Bennett stepped into view. She was doing the real work. Now she too took a sip of his wine. Robert Bennett kissed the back of her neck. They seem loving for a couple married well over twenty years. That’s too bad, Starkey thought, but kept it to himself.
“Let’s do it,” he said. “The
last piece in the puzzle.”
And it truly was a puzzle — even to the killers.
Chapter 62
ROBERT AND BARBARA Bennett were just sitting down to dinner when the three heavily armed men burst through the back door into the kitchen. Colonel Bennett saw their guns and camouflage dress, also noting that none of the men were wearing masks. He saw all of the faces and knew this couldn’t be worse.
“Who are you? Robert, who are they?” Barbara sputtered out a few words. “What’s the meaning of this?”
Unfortunately, Colonel Bennett was afraid that he knew exactly who they were, and maybe even who had sent them. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he recognized one of them from a long time ago. He even remembered a name — Starkey. Yes, Thomas Starkey. Good God, why now? After all these years?
One of the intruders pulled shut the colorful curtains on the two kitchen windows. He used a free arm to sweep the dinner plates, chicken, salad, and wineglasses crashing onto the kitchen floor. Bennett understood this was for dramatic effect.
Another man held an automatic weapon pressed to Barbara Bennett’s forehead.
The kitchen was totally silent.
Colonel Bennett looked at his wife, and his heart nearly broke. Her blue eyes were stretched wide, and she was trembling. “It’s going to be all right,” Bennett said in the calmest voice he could manage.
“Oh, is it, Colonel?” Starkey spoke for the first time. He signaled the third intruder, and the man grabbed the front of Barbara’s white peasant blouse and tore it off. Barbara gasped and tried to cover herself. The bastard then yanked off her bra. It was for effect, of course, but then the man stared at Barbara’s breasts.
“Leave her alone! Don’t hurt her!” Bennett yelled, and it sounded like a command, as if he were in a position to give one.
The man he knew to be Starkey hit him with the butt of his handgun. Bennett went down and thought that his jaw was broken. He almost blacked out, but managed to stay conscious. His cheek was pressed into the cold tile of the kitchen floor. He needed a plan — even a desperate one would do.
Starkey stood directly over him. And now it got insane. He spoke in Vietnamese.
Colonel Bennett understood some of the words. He’d done enough interrogations during the war, when he’d run several Kit Carson scouts in Vietnam and Laos.
Then Starkey spoke in English. “Be afraid, Colonel. You’ll suffer tonight. So will your wife. You have sins to pay for. You know what they are. Tonight your wife will know about your past too.”
Colonel Bennett pretended to pass out. When one of the gunmen leaned over him, he pushed off the floor and grabbed at his handgun. Getting the gun was the only thought in Bennett’s brain. He had it!
But then he was struck viciously on the head. Then on the shoulders and back. He was being screamed at in Vietnamese as the severe beating continued. He saw one of the bastards punch his wife right in the face. For no reason at all.
“Stop it. Don’t hurt her, for Christ’s sake.”
“Mày se nhìn cô ay chet,” Starkey yelled in Vietnamese.
Now you get to watch her die.
“Trong lúc tao hoi mày.”
While I interrogate you, pig.
“Mày thay canh này có quen không, Robert?”
Does that sound familiar, Robert?
Starkey then forced his pistol inside Colonel Bennett’s mouth. “Remember this, Colonel? Remember what happens next?”
Chapter 63
SAMPSON AND I got to West Point a little after five o’clock on Thursday evening. All hell had broken loose there.
I’d received an urgent heads-up from Ron Burns at the FBI. There’d been a murder-suicide at the Point that had immediately aroused suspicions when the news got to Washington. A highly decorated colonel had supposedly killed his wife, then himself.
Sampson and I flew into Stewart Airport in Newburgh; then I drove eighteen miles to West Point. We had to park our rented car and walk the last several blocks to the officers’ housing.
The streets were roped off and closed to through traffic. The press was on hand, but they were being kept away by military police. Even the cadets couldn’t help looking curious and concerned.
“You’re getting chummy with Burns and the FBI,” Sampson said as we walked to the murder scene on Bartlett Loop. “He’s giving a lot of help.”
“He has it in his head that I might want to work with them,” I told Sampson.
“And? Might you?”
I smiled at Sampson, didn’t confirm or deny.
“I thought you were getting out of police work, sugar. Wasn’t that the big master plan?”
“I don’t know anything for sure right now. Here I am, though, headed to another completely fucked-up murder scene with you. Same shit, different day.”
“So, you’re still hooked, Alex. Bad as ever, right?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not hooked on the case, John. I’m helping you out. Remember how this started? Payback for Ellis Cooper?”
“Yeah, and you’re also hooked. You can’t figure out this puzzle. That makes you angry. And curious as hell. That’s who you are, Alex. You’re a hunter.”
“I yam what I yam” — I shook my head and finally smiled — “said Popeye the sailor man.”
Chapter 64
THE BENNETT HOUSE was roped off and secured. Sampson and I identified ourselves to a nervous-looking MP at the perimeter of the crime scene. I could tell that he’d never seen anything like this before. Unfortunately, I had.
After we put on disposable paper boots, we were permitted to climb three stone steps that led into the house. Then we went looking for a CID officer named Pat Conte. The army was “cooperating” because of the other cases. They’d also let in a couple of FBI techies to show their good faith.
I found Captain Conte in the narrow hallway leading from the living room. The murders had apparently taken place in the kitchen. Techies were dusting for fingerprints and photographing the scene from every angle.
Conte shook hands and then told us what he knew, or thought that he knew at this point.
“All I can give you so far is the obvious. From the looks of things, Colonel Bennett and his wife were engaged in an argument that seems to have turned violent. For a while she must have given as good as she got. Then Bennett retrieved his service revolver. He shot her in the temple. Then Colonel Bennett shot himself. Friends say that he and his wife were close but that they fought a lot, sometimes violently. As you can see, the shooting took place in the kitchen. Sometime last night.”
“That’s what you think happened?” I asked Conte.
“At this point, that’s my statement.”
I shook my head and felt my anger rising. “I was told that because of the possible connection of these deaths with the others that we could expect cooperation here.”
Captain Conte nodded. “That’s what you just got, my full cooperation. Excuse me, I have work here.” He walked away.
Sampson shrugged as we watched the CID officer shuffle off. “Can’t say that I blame him too much. I wouldn’t want you and me messing around at my crime scene either.”
“So, let’s go mess around.”
I went over to see if I could get anything from the FBI people, the Evidence Response Team, also known as ERTs. They were being their usual thorough selves in the kitchen. Given the normal amount of dislike for the FBI, it’s remarkable how much respect is given to ERTs. The reason is, they’re very, very good.
Two members of the ERT were taking Polaroid shots in the kitchen. Another, wearing a white coverall called a “bunny suit,” was looking for fibers and hairs using an alternative light source. Everybody had on rubber gloves and paper booties over their shoes. The head man was named Michael Fescoe; I had already met him down on the Appalachian Trail, where he had supervised the crime scene investigation in the woods.
“CID giving you their full cooperation too?” I asked.
He scratched his light bro
wn crew cut. “I can tell you my version, and it’s a little different from Captain Conte’s.”
“Please,” I said.
Fescoe began, “The killers, whoever they were, did a thorough job with both the setup and the cleanup. They’ve done this before. They’re professionals through and through. Just like the killers in West Virginia.”
“How many of them?” I asked.
Fescoe held up three fingers. “Three men. They surprised the Bennetts at dinner. And then they murdered them. These men, they bring force to bear without conscience. You can quote me on that.”
Chapter 65
IT WAS TIME to celebrate! The war was over. Starkey, Harris, and Griffin ordered obscenely large, very rare porterhouse steaks topped with jumbo shrimp at Sparks restaurant on East Forty-sixth Street in Manhattan. For anyone with wads of the green stuff, there was no better place to get happy in a hurry than New York City.
“Three years, but it’s finally over,” said Harris, raising a glass of cognac, his fourth after-dinner drink of the evening.
“Unless our mysterious benefactor changes his mind,” cautioned Starkey. “It could happen. One more hit. Or maybe a complication that we didn’t plan on. Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t party tonight.”
Brownley Harris finished his cheesecake and dabbed his mouth with a cloth napkin. “Tomorrow we go home to Rocky Mount. The good life. That’s not so terrible bad. We’re finally out of the game, undefeated and unscored upon. Nobody can touch us now.”
Warren Griffin just grinned. He was pretty well plowed. So was Harris. But not Starkey, who said, “But tonight, we party. We damn well deserve it. Just like the old days, Saigon and Bangkok, Hong Kong. The night is young, and we’re full of mischief, piss and vinegar.” He leaned in close to his friends. “I want to rape and pillage tonight. It’s our right.”
After they left the restaurant, the three friends strolled to East Fifty-second, between First and York. The brownstone they stopped at was a walk-up that had seen better days. Four stories. No doorman. Starkey knew it as Asia House.