The FBI looked silently through the transparent air, thick with dust visible in the bright beams from over their heads. “I shouldn’t say anything.”
Porter slapped the table. “Yes you should! Comp.!?!”
“Don’t call me that. We haven’t been missionaries for years.” Clusser groaned as their eyes held each other in a silent bond full of crackling electricity. “Raymond Polaski, the suspect in the Wilkinson murder, came forward. He said he was hired by a man called Gerard Jasper. Polaski said, however, that he heard a number of people call Jasper a different name: Peter.”
“Then you have your proof! Polaski can testify and-”
“Polaski shot himself while in Police Protection.”
“Really,” Porter said in disbelief. “Do people in safe houses usually have access to guns?”
“We don’t know how he obtained the weapon. But with Polaski’s information, I was able to find out a bit about this…Peter Arnott.”
“False name,” Porter said with a dull voice. Reality was crumbling around him. With innocence, he looked at Clusser. “You’re FBI. You told me agents handled cases in their own areas, never chasing them personally across the US like in the junk novels, but transferring the info and responsibility to whatever office is closest to the relative location.”
Clusser stood and looked with dark eyes at his one-time companion.
Porter licked his lips. “You have no jurisdiction here.”
With a flat smile, Clusser said, “Just came to help a friend.” He turned to the exit.
“Where are you going?”
The agent stopped and looked back. “Porter…you’re not lying to me… I need to know.”
Porter shook his head.
“Then I’m off to the bat-cave. See you in court.”
May 5
8:40 a.m. PST
Well, the tuna was a little old, but Harvey Goodwill munched away without noticing. He’d waited in his beat-up ‘92 Mustang for over two hours, watching for his mark, one John D. Porter, to show his face.
It would be an effortless assassination.
Goodwill’s mark had a rather simple face with no peculiarities, the kind of kisser Goodwill wanted for himself-Porter would make the perfect killer! The student’s hair was flat and dry brown, his eyes a haze of plain gray. Even when Porter smiled there wasn’t a glow. At least not in the photographs. Goodwill memorized the snapshots before tearing them into the toilet of a motel with no name.
Goodwill had taken easier men down, like the rich fellow of many years who’d been feeding his own organized criminal unit enough funds to make them immortal and beyond reach. That man had never openly posed as a crime lord, and therefore never suspected that anyone knew of his existence. He’d lived in obscurity behind electronic defenses and more than ten angry rottweilers that chewed on whole tires for fun. That guy was a sip of soda. He never awoke from his sleep, and the doctors blamed his death on his yellow liver.
This Porter job wouldn’t be much of a bother at all. It would be over within an hour. Goodwill would be on a Greyhound to Florida before eleven o’clock, reading the sports page and chewing on apple skins.
He smiled at the thought.
The plan was basic. One man on the outside: the hit man. One on the inside: the point man. The point man went by the name Red Rover, while Goodwill was known only as Sunshine.
Goodwill waited and watched as Red Rover took care of all preliminary operations. Someone made the stupid jurisdictional decision to put Porter in a small bus for the trip to court.
The point man had already checked: there was no one else but the driver on board, one Jackie Golb, and he was a competent officer. Golb wasn’t a US Marshall, which was out of the ordinary. And normally, a second Marshall accompanied the driver while transporting a prisoner aboard a bus. These intentional errors in propriety amused Goodwill. Who knows, Goodwill’s employers may have had a hand in setting up this folly. The lax attitude on the part of the administrators would become a point of contentious debate during the investigation that would inevitably follow the assassination. The officers would yell at each other while Goodwill put up his heels and spent his well-earned bucks faraway.
Goodwill took another bite of his sandwich as he replayed the rest of the scenario in his mind. He’d designed it. Of course it would work.
Red Rover, also a excellent officer with a heretofore perfect record, would ask Officer Golb where he was headed. The driver would tell him. The inside man would reply that he had orders to report to the Federal courthouse as well and would playfully be kind enough to “escort” the bus. It was an unnecessary offer, but it would help Golb relax. Not that Porter was a particularly corrupt individual liable to escape, or even to make the attempt, but this way Golb wouldn’t have much to think about besides driving.
A small remote-controlled relay had been placed in the line of the radio power cable in the bus. It was a simple device, which Goodwill called a Snubber, for lack of another term. When activated, the Snubber opened the circuit, resulting in an absence of power to the device the electricity was supposed to operate; i.e., no radio. If Golb had a phone on his person, it wouldn’t matter. It would all be over moments after it began.
Red Rover would then get into his own car when the bus driver looked ready to go. He would radio Golb to confirm the green light and give the naive man a feeling of bland normality. Immediately, Red Rover would hit the remote to the Snubber, killing the driver’s radio. No smoke. No nothing. Golb wouldn’t realize for a moment he’d been cut off from the real world.
Goodwill pulled a green apple from his bag and began skinning it with his teeth, chewing the epidermis like gum.
The next part the inside man would play would make him appear completely innocent of the crime about to occur. It would result in Red Rover’s patrol car pulling to the side of the freeway. He would later report a string of carefully crafted fables followed by the verbal admittance that he “was unsure of what he saw and what really happened.”
Porter would be found dead, the driver also executed. The authorities would come and spin their mental tires until they ran out of gas.
The case of John D. Porter’s death would go nowhere, because there would be no leads to follow.
Worse case scenario: By some devilish miracle, flaws were found in Red Rover’s story.
Fine. Regardless of Red Rover’s moves, the assault on John Porter would never go further than the helpful officer.
Beneath a worn copy of Andrew Boxleiter’s, Natural Contagions, a 10 mm semiautomatic-which had been taken from the evidence locker of this very police building not one day previously-rested on the smooth passenger seat of Goodwill’s Mustang. (The thief was already unknown.) Before catching his Greyhound, Goodwill would drop the gun in a parcel to be picked up by a courier dubbed Guy Smiley, who would keep it. And in the case of mishap, Guy Smiley would plant the pistol in Red Rover’s apartment-just as a precaution. Of course all legal conclusions would have to admit that the patsy Red Rover had committed the murder himself. He would be the necessary scapegoat for the greater good, the fall guy…
And Goodwill would be at a Reggae concert on the beach.
He bit his sandwich with a new lust. But the taste hadn’t changed, and the lettuce was getting soggy, turning to strings in his mouth.
Of course, the assassin took twice as much care not to get caught by his current employers in a similar backstabbing. He took every precaution, including the name by which everyone identified him. In fact, Goodwill had had so many names, it took effort to remember the one his parents had given him at christening.
Like a squirrel suddenly aware of an approaching rattlesnake, Goodwill sat up. He lifted the spy-glass to his face and eyed the crowds coming out of the building.
Four officers talking to each other.
Ah!
Red Rover.