“Get down,” Vick shrieked.
The windows imploded and glass rained around them. Vick felt a stinging sensation on her cheek and knew she’d been hit. She put her hand on Pruna’s arm and pulled him down to the floor. Her partners dropped down as well.
Mr. Clean kept firing, pinning them to the floor. Everyone in the restaurant was screaming, some in English, some Spanish, the sounds fueling its own hysteria.
“Stay down!” Vick yelled.
Pruna lay beside her on his side, moaning. A ragged bullet hole had appeared in the front of his tee-shirt. Blood began to seep out of his body like water coming out of a spigot, forming a hideous pool on the floor.
The gunshots stopped. Vick rose on shaky legs while staring through the gaping hole where the windows had been. She saw nothing.
“Is everyone okay?” Vick asked.
“We’re all hit,” Cunningham replied.
Vick checked out her team. Padgham sat on the floor, clutching his arm, his head rocking from side to side as he tried to control the pain. Cunningham and Ayer were aiming their guns at the windows, their faces covered in blood. Hundreds of tiny holes had appeared in the walls and the payphones. Mr. Clean was firing buckshot.
“Ayer, get these handcuffs off our suspect, and try to stop his bleeding,” Vick barked. “Cunningham, follow me outside.”
Vick hopped over broken glass and hurried outside with Cunningham beside her. She aimed her gun at shadows that held no threat while Cunningham searched between the rows of parked cards.
“He’s not here,” Cunningham said.
Together, they ran across the field to the Tire Kingdom, and searched its grounds. Mr. Clean had vanished. Cunningham got on his cell phone and called for backup. Vick stepped away from him, and stood very still, listening to the night sounds. It was quiet save for the hiss of cars and the mournful wail of an ambulance racing down Sunrise Boulevard. People didn’t just disappear into thin air, yet Mr. Clean had done just that.
“Where are you,” she whispered.
Her shoulders sagged, feeling the weight of her own failure. She’d done everything by the book, yet the sting had blown up in their faces. She was going to get blamed for this. It was how the game worked.
She headed back to the convenience store, knowing the worst was yet to come.
Chapter 26
Crutch lay on his cot, listening to the mayhem on his cell phone. The payphone at the Race Trac was off the hook, and he had heard Mr. Clean ambush the FBI agents who’d come to arrest him.
It was as much fun as going to the movies.
But that wasn’t the best part. Far from it. The best part was that he was on a party line, and the FBI was hearing the mayhem as well, and probably recording it. Linderman’s clever sting had blown up in his face.
That will teach you to steal my playing cards, he thought.
He heard sirens in the background. Someone should have noticed the payphone dangling off the hook by now, and had the foresight to kill the connection. But that hadn’t happened. He guessed that Mr. Clean had inflicted some serious injuries, and no one was paying attention to the little things.
He wanted them all to die. He’d counted five voices – four whom were FBI agents, the fifth the poor rube who’d gotten stuck holding the payphone – and he envisioned them all gasping their last breath, their eyelids flickering.
Lights out, sayonara, cheerio, see you in the funny papers.
Kill them all, said the voice in his head.
He heard two new voices in the background. A pair of medics were trying to save the rube. Crutch listened hard to their conversation.
“He’s lost too much blood,” one of the medics said.
“Come on, pal, don’t give up,” the other medic said.
“Shit. He’s going down.”
The medics gave it their best shot. Finally they stopped talking and a respectful silence followed. The rube was officially dead.
Crutch shook his head ruefully. It would have been much nicer if one of the FBI agents had died, but the rube’s dying would have its benefits. The FBI had arrested an innocent man, then gotten him killed. The newspapers and TV news programs would have a field day with this. It was the kind of fuck-up they lived for.
His thoughts shifted to the FBI agents who’d participated in the sting, both here in Jacksonville, and down in Fort Lauderdale. They were probably mourning the rube’s death right about now. Crutch had never experienced feelings for strangers, but he recognized it in others. Displays of caring were how people coped with their own mortality and insecurities. It was weakness, laid out for all to see. He told himself that these FBI agents were weak, even though he’d never met them.
He went to the toilet and dropped his pants. He took a long piss while holding the cell phone above the bowl. He hoped they were all listening.
Part II
Chapter 27
Early the next morning, Linderman checked out of his motel in the town of Starke, and walked to a restaurant in town. There, he began to write a chronology of the events leading up to the botched sting.
He sat in a booth by himself, drinking coffee as he wrote in a spiral bound notebook. Soon the restaurant filled up with workers getting off their shift at the prison. Many wore dreamy looks, their eyes half-shut from exhaustion. The restaurant catered to prison people, and had an electric chair sitting in the back behind a velvet rope. The chair, he’d learned from the hostess, was a spare from the prison, and had never been used.
A waitress refilled his cup. He sipped and continued to write. He had made a mistake with his handling of the sting, and hoped that it didn’t come back to haunt him. He had not used a scribe to record things as they occurred. Scribes were essential to keeping facts straight, and for establishing time lines. An innocent man had died last night, and there would be an internal review by the bureau to find out why. He needed to get his story straight while it was still fresh in his mind. Otherwise, there would be hell to pay down the road.
Wood entered the restaurant and slipped into the booth. He wore yesterday’s clothes, his rolled up sleeves exposing the array of tattoos he’d gotten while infiltrating the motorcycle gangs. Photos of Wood from that era showed a guy with long hair, a scraggily beard, and a crazy grin. The name Little Jesus had fit him just right.
“You sleep?” Wood asked.
“Couple of hours. How about you?”
“The same. I was glued to the Internet.”
“How bad is the fallout?”
“CNN picked up the story around three a.m. Then the rest of them joined in. They’re making us look like total morons.”
“Did you expect anything less?”
“I guess not. Who the hell is Detective DuCharme?”
Linderman put his pencil down. “A useless homicide detective with the Broward Sheriff’s Department. What is he saying?”
“I turned on the TV before I left the house. DuCharme was being interviewed on one of the early morning news shows. He’s claiming that Vick screwed the investigation up from the start. He said Vick was infatuated with the kidnaping victim, and let her feelings cloud her judgement. You and I both know that’s complete bullshit, but the news shows are loving it. FBI agent falls for teen victim.”
“Is that the angle they’re using?”
“Afraid so.”
A waitress took Wood’s order. Coffee and toast. She left, and Linderman flipped the notebook around and slid it across the table. “I need you to take a look at this, and tell me if I’ve left anything out.”
Wood did not look down at the notes. Instead, he continued to gaze at Linderman. He had an everyman’s face, which had made him a perfect undercover operative back in the day. What stood out were his eyes. Dark as coal, their gaze was unflinching.