P. Tracy - Live Bait

Magozzi raised a hand without looking up, picked up a piece of paper and stared at it. It was a photocopy of an obituary from the Brainerd newspaper, showing a photo of the recently deceased William Haczynski, owner of Sandy Shores Resort, with his son, Thomas. The old man and the fresh-faced blond kid had their arms hooked over each other’s shoulders. They were beaming for the camera, cradling rifles in their armpits.

Magozzi had only been looking at the picture for a few seconds, but it felt like he’d been swimming in it for hours. He looked once more at the old man’s son, the light eyes, and the innocent face of a kid he knew as Jeff Montgomery. ‘Jesus Christ, Gino. Thomas Haczynski isn’t in Germany.’

They were all over Magozzi in an instant, looking at the picture. Gino saw the Montgomery kid and said, ‘That little son of a bitch,’ before he realized he still had the phone in his hand, and Angela on the other end. He stepped away from the desk and started talking low and fast, then clicked off.

Langer, Peterson, and McLaren were all frowning at the picture. ‘I don’t get it,’ McLaren said. ‘How do you know he’s not in Germany?’

Magozzi stabbed at the photo. ‘That kid calls himself Jeff Montgomery. He works at the nursery, Lily Gilbert treats him like a grandson, and Morey was paying his tuition.’

Langer exhaled sharply. ‘And he’s the son of a man Morey Gilbert killed last year?’

‘Sure looks that way.’

McLaren shivered. ‘He’s gotta be our guy. Jesus, that’s cold. Morey’s paying his tuition while he’s plotting his murder and a few others to boot. The kid’s a killing machine.’

‘I suspect he had a good teacher,’ Langer said quietly.

‘Goddamnit I just talked to him this afternoon,’ Gino said. ‘It was an overseas connection, I swear to God. You can’t fake that delay…’

‘Maybe he’s got someone covering for him in Germany, but however he did it, it doesn’t matter now,’ Magozzi said, his words clipped and urgent. ‘We’ve got to move on this right now. Gino, call Marty back and give him a heads-up and then do the same for Becker.’

‘I’ll take care of Becker,’ Peterson volunteered, hustling over to his desk while Gino punched frantically at his cell.

Magozzi turned to Langer and McLaren. ‘The kid’s probably at one of two places – his apartment or the nursery – and we need to cover both simultaneously. You two pull together a team and hit the apartment, and don’t be shy with the backup. I have a feeling this kid isn’t just going to roll over.’

‘Will do.’

Gino was stabbing buttons furiously, listening, then stabbing them again. ‘Goddamnit, Marty isn’t answering his cell.’

Magozzi was moving fast, checking the load on his 9-mm, holstering it, snapping cuffs on his belt. ‘Try the nursery, Lily’s house, Jack’s cell. Do we have a cell number for Jack?’

‘Dispatch can’t raise Becker,’ Peterson called out, tension in his voice.

Everyone in the room froze for an instant. Becker, like every officer on the job, had a car unit and a shoulder unit, and non-response was one millimeter away from officer down.

Two seconds later Gino and Magozzi were out the door, their shoes pounding on the tile, the sound of panic echoing in the empty hallway.

Marty was standing directly in front of Jeff Montgomery, the kid’s 9-mm pointed right at his chest, his thoughts slamming against the brick wall of the obvious, bouncing off when they didn’t like looking at it.

In the past hour he’d learned that beloved, elderly Morey Gilbert was an executioner, and so, apparently, was this innocent-looking kid with the smooth face and the clear blue eyes. The real question was why should he be so goddamned surprised?

Too many years working in Narcotics, he thought, where meth freaks looked like meth freaks, street dealers looked like street dealers, where everybody looked exactly like what they were. There was a sick kind of security in that particular segment of the underworld, where what you saw was what you got, which was what had drawn Marty to it in the first place. But out here in the real world, almost everyone wore a disguise. He’d known that as a kid, of course; his father had taught him well; but he’d forgotten.

None of that mattered now, and he freed his mind to race at breakneck speed along the path it was trained to take. The hows and whys and motivations of an armed man were totally irrelevant when a cop found himself on the wrong end of a gun – the only thing that mattered was what happened next.

He was too close to the kid, and too far away, all at the same time. Too close to dodge a shot, too far away to disarm him. Talk was the only option he had. ‘What are you doing, Jeff?’

‘Just taking care of business, Mr Pullman.’

He wasn’t ending sentences with a question mark now, Marty thought, trying to push back the feeling that he was racing around some preordained circle that was going to open up at any moment and launch him off in a direction he hadn’t imagined. It seemed ironic that his last earnest attempt at suicide had been interrupted by Jeff Montgomery when he came to tell him that Morey was dead, and now that same kid who’d unwittingly saved his life was holding a gun on him.

‘What kind of business would that be?’ Marty asked, keeping his voice easy.

It surprised him a little when Jeff smiled at him. ‘I think you must have been an excellent police officer, Mr Pullman. “Engage the enemy’s attention when you find yourself at a disadvantage. Initiate conversation, introduce distraction…” That’s right out of the handbook.’

‘Not any handbook I ever read.’

‘Would you please turn around, Mr Pullman? Then lift your shirt with your right hand, and remove the gun from your waistband with your left. Use only two fingers, then turn to face me again and toss the gun over here, well to my right, if you don’t mind.’

‘You going to shoot me in the back, Jeff?’

‘Certainly not, sir. I wouldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be honorable.’

The funny thing was that Marty believed him, but still, he didn’t move for a minute, a little unnerved by the pervasive politeness of this strange boy.

He turned halfway around and looked at Jack, who was leaning forward on the sofa, wobbling just a bit, his hands gripping his knees. The worst part was his eyes – they weren’t frightened; just big and sad and apologetic when they met Marty’s.

Marty winked at him, then lifted his shirt and eased out the gun with two fingers, just as Jeff had told him to, then turned around to face him again. ‘You don’t want me to toss this gun at you until I put on the safety, Jeff.’

‘You put on the safety before you tucked it in your pants, Mr Pullman. Please don’t patronize me.’

Shit, the kid was on top of it, but Marty still stood there holding the gun at his side, thinking how heavy it was when you could only use two fingers, his mind so busy it was falling all over itself trying to sort out the options.

You don’t give up your gun. Period. Which left him with two choices. Toss the gun, use that off-balance moment when Jeff reached down for it to leap at him; or crouch a little like he was cooperating, but slide the gun back toward Jack, then surge up and hit the kid. Jack was a good shot by his own admission, and if he was fast, he might be able to use the moment to get off a shot. Then again, Jack had put away a lot of booze, and his reaction time had to be down near zero.

‘The gun, Mr Pullman.’

Marty looked at the kid who’d worked by his side for the past three days, the kid who had cried at Morey’s funeral after he’d shot him in the head. ‘I can’t do that, son.’