“Let me ask around.”
“It’s the original tape,” Svengrad said, picking up on Boldt’s line of sight.
Boldt knew that already. The neatly typed surveillance title on the spine of the videocassette told him as much. “I thought you were giving it to me. The prior agreement.”
“It’s still possible, but you will have to do this other thing for me.” Boldt suspected this would go on the rest of his career. The tease, the request for another favor. Again he considered LaMoia’s device.
“How would Alekseevich be handled?” he inquired, offering Svengrad the first glimmer of hope.
“However you want. We’d let you know where to find him. You’d pick him up. I’d deny any accusations. I’d need the letter of immunity beforehand.”
That was never going to happen, but Boldt nodded as if it might. The identity of the government snitch would remain protected. “I can make some inquiries.”
“A location for Hayes is all I need. One phone call.”
Boldt retrieved his weapon and cell phone and left. He walked out to LaMoia’s Jetta through a light mist and sat down into the passenger seat.
“So?”
“Blackmail. He wants Hayes. The wire never reached his account.”
“Imagine that,” LaMoia said, knowing Boldt had arranged this, had kidnapped Hayes from the warehouse in order to accomplish this.
“It’s only the two of us. You understand that.”
“Three of us. You have to include Hayes.”
Boldt nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “For a minute there, I debated giving him up. He offered me Alekseevich in return.”
“A lot of good that would do us,” LaMoia said, as angry and frustrated about the protection surrounding Alekseevich as Boldt.
“He was incredibly calm about it,” Boldt said. “I thought he’d be much angrier. Violent, even.”
“That’s good. That means he hasn’t connected it to you or Liz.”
“He’s going to use the tape,” Boldt said. “I sat there, and I looked in his eyes, and I knew that he’d take me down at the first opportunity. He wants to believe Hayes did this to him, but he’s not one hundred percent convinced, I don’t think. He’ll burn us, just to get back at me in case I had anything to do with it.”
“It was a hell of a stroke, Sarge, manipulating him to input that account number himself.”
“It’s the only thing saving us. He can convince himself that Liz didn’t cross him because he typed in those numbers himself.”
“And who else but Hayes could intercept that wire?” LaMoia said, admiration for his lieutenant in his voice.
“Right.”
“I found an outlet,” LaMoia said. “There are a couple on the west side of the building. Do me a favor and go home and spend a night with your family. Don’t do anything on this until tomorrow.”
“You can’t take this kind of risk alone, John.”
“Message received. Just go home and sleep on it, would you?” He added, “Listen, if I do this, the Sturgeon General will be sure it was Hayes. You know he will.”
“The grand jury will sit Thursday. Alekseevich testifies. A week or two from now and Svengrad’s in lockup.”
“So take a vacation.”
“I don’t want you doing this alone.”
“I heard you the first time. So?”
“So,” Boldt said, after a moment of thought, “I’m coming with you.”
“What’s going on?” Liz asked from the warm side of the bed.
Boldt, in the familiar act of dressing into street clothes in the dark, said, “I’ll be back within the hour.”
“Are you going to tell me?” she asked in a groggy voice.
“No,” he said. “Better if I don’t. Better that you could answer questions honestly.”
“Questions from whom?”
“Internal Investigations.” That silenced her for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sensing her own role in whatever it was he had planned.
“Me too,” he said. “But maybe this is the end of it.”
“If only,” she said. “Is it dangerous?”
“I don’t think so. Not particularly.”
“It’s not worth it if it is.”
He stood over her at the side of the bed. He could just make out her face in the gray light that leaked around the perimeter of the window blinds. “You never woke up,” he said. “Never noticed me missing from the bed.”
“If you’re trying to scare me, it’s working.”
He left the room, stopping in the kitchen to make a traveling cup of tea.
LaMoia’s Jetta was parked behind an art supply store in Ballard, as planned.
“Yo,” the detective said, as Boldt slipped into the passenger seat. LaMoia looked like it was twelve noon.
They drove to within a hundred yards of Svengrad’s warehouse in complete silence. Then LaMoia pulled over and withdrew a “drop gun” from the glove compartment. Not SPD issue, and if shots were thrown, it wouldn’t be traceable to LaMoia.
“I don’t like the look of that,” Boldt said.
“Get over it.”
“You’re nervous.”
“I have no idea what that thing in the trunk is going to do. What I do know is that I’m not parking anywhere near that warehouse because cars these days are all about computer chips, and that thing fries computer chips. So here’s the deaclass="underline" You’re the wheel man. You drop me off, wait exactly two minutes, and return to pick me up. I can’t keep a phone or radio on me, the thing will fry them too, so it’s all about timing. You hear shots fired, I’d appreciate some backup.”
“You’ve got the roles reversed,” Boldt said. “If anyone’s putting himself at risk, that would be me.”
“I got briefed on the operation of this thing,” LaMoia said. “Besides, you’re technically challenged operating a toaster, for Christ’s sake.”
“Two minutes,” Boldt said. He came around the car. LaMoia popped the trunk so that it was already open, and Boldt drove them toward the warehouse.
He glided the car into position, LaMoia directing him with hand signals. LaMoia flew out the passenger door, lifted the trunk, then left it unlatched as he slapped the car to signal Boldt’s retreat.
As Boldt pulled away, he saw LaMoia struggling with what appeared to be a very heavy metal box. It looked like a miniature window-mounted air conditioning unit. Three blocks away he reversed the Jetta so it aimed back toward the unseen warehouse. One eye tracked the second hand on his wristwatch while he divided his attention, focused on the darkened street before him.
All at once, Boldt heard a loud explosion, and his foot went to the accelerator faster than conscious thought. He removed his weapon and laid it in his lap as he drove at a breakneck speed down the rough, potholed roadway. He caught sight of the orange glow in the sky and the smudged black plume of smoke billowing from what turned out to be a phone pole. An electric transformer on the pole was afire, raining viscous drops of flame down onto the crusted blacktop below like some medieval cauldron.
Boldt saw LaMoia by the side of the building, embracing the bulky steel device in both arms. The car rocked as LaMoia deposited the device into the trunk. The detective hurried around to the passenger side and said, “Go,” although he was only partially inside.
Boldt hit the accelerator hard, and the Jetta raced off. No sign of any trouble behind them, as both men strained toward their respective door-mounted mirrors.
“Shit!” LaMoia said. He was sweating and breathless. “Little kink they’re going to have to work out. I hit the button and that transformer blew like it was part of the plan.”
“So it worked,” Boldt said, somewhat astonished.
“Apparently so.”
“The transformer. That could help us. Whatever happened in that warehouse, maybe it gets blamed on the transformer’s problems.”
“You think it’s designed to do that?” LaMoia asked, suddenly beaming behind a smile. “Yeah, I suppose that’s possible,” he said. “Power company gets blamed for it. I like that. That’s what they get for raising our bills every six months.”