Lisa Black - Takeover

“I understand that perfectly, Chris. So here’s your incentive: I want that car parked and running, with the keys in it, outside the door in twenty minutes, or I shoot another hostage. How about that for incentive? I bet that will work.”

“You can have the car, Lucas. You just can’t take a hostage away in it, that’s all.”

“And how are we supposed to get to the car without your snipers taking us out? You worked that one out, Chris?”

“If you leave that bank, just the two of you, no one is going to shoot you. I can one hundred percent assure you of that.”

“We can get in the car and drive away? And how far are we going to get?”

“That, I can’t answer. I can only handle what’s happening on this block of East Sixth.”

“Not good enough,” Lucas told him, and hung up.

Cavanaugh thought for a moment, then redialed.

“Now what?” Theresa asked Jason.

“He’ll keep talking to him. As cool as Lucas plays it, he’s got to be uptight or he wouldn’t have shot that woman. He needs a deal, he needs a way out, but he’s going to play hard to get so that he can look like a hero to Bobby and himself. Chris will just keep talking and talking until he wears him down.”

“My ex-husband used to do that. Especially when he wanted to buy something expensive.”

Jason laughed, startling her. She hadn’t meant it to be funny.

Frank appeared next to a matching set of Vital Records of Concord, Massachusetts and beckoned to Jason and Theresa. They followed him out of earshot to the glass-walled map room at the north corner of the building. Ms. Elliott or one of her staff had set up a second television next to a glossy blue globe; Assistant Chief Viancourt watched Channel 15’s coverage of the secretary of state luncheon. He sat on an antiqued wooden bench with two other men in suits, like overgrown boys in a class they hadn’t wanted to take.

“I’ve got the brother here.” Frank kept his voice low. “Bobby’s brother.”

“Here?” Jason asked. “You brought him here ?”

“He’s the closest thing we’ve got to insight into these two guys. He doesn’t know Lucas, never heard of him. But he knows his brother. Can’t stand him either, but that’s not my problem.”

“Yes it is,” the young man insisted. “If he hates Bobby, the feel-ing’s probably mutual.”

“He can still talk to him,” Theresa said. “If Lucas will even put him on the phone.”

Jason shook his head so hard his tie shifted. “No, you don’t get it. This isn’t TV, where the criminal melts into tears when his sainted mother tells him to come out. These guys are losers who blame everything that’s gone bad in their lives on other people, and most often the people closest to them. He isn’t going to feel sentimental about his family members. He’ll probably hold them responsible for every problem he has.”

“Especially this one,” Frank said. “Eric turned him in. Said he did it to save the aforementioned sainted mother. Her baby’s wild ways wore out her heart.”

“What about her? Would she-” Theresa began.

“She’s dead. He really did wear out her heart.”

“Then why did you bring Eric Moyers here?” Jason asked again.

“Well, gee, I had nothing else to do, and he needed a ride home from work. And because my partner’s in there with an M4 carbine in his face, and this guy is the only life-form we have that can tell us anything about the guy holding the M4 carbine besides his age and ID number. Maybe that’s why.”

“Okay, okay. Did he tell you anything else about Bobby that might help us?”

“Just that’s he’s a lousy thief. I’m guessing Lucas is not only the mouthpiece here, he’s the brains.”

“No surprise there. Okay, we’ll tell Chris what you’ve learned from the brother, but not that he’s on the premises.”

“Wait, you’re not telling your own boss all the facts?”

Jason mopped his forehead with one sleeve cuff. “It’s for his own sake. We don’t know how Bobby will react to even the mention of his brother, and what Chris doesn’t know, he can’t slip and reveal.”

Theresa tried to imagine Leo’s take on this operating procedure. You keep things from me, MacLean, and you’ ll spend a week in the deep freeze putting blood samples from 1994 in numerical order. Then I’ ll fire you.

“Hey.” Channel 15’s reporting turned to how Cleveland had finally won the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction ceremonies from New York City and Assistant Chief of Police Viancourt now tore himself away, clutching Theresa’s plastic evidence bag and a sheet of paper. “I’ve got that postage-meter information.”

“That was fast,” Theresa said.

The assistant chief beamed under her genuine praise; if he’d been born with a tail, he’d have been wagging it. “It was nothing. Hi-Patrick, isn’t it? You’re up for the chief of Homicide, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Theresa goggled. She’d never heard Frank call anyone “sir” before.

“Best of luck to you. I’m glad you’re in on this-we need to keep a cop approach going here. Cavanaugh’s good, but these specialized units can get too wrapped up in themselves.”

Theresa could see a sort of struggle pass over her cousin’s face, as if the desire to be honest-at the moment Cavanaugh seemed their only hope-warred with his desire to be the head of the Homicide unit. Jason said nothing. She intervened. “Could Pitney Bowes trace the postage meter?”

Viancourt’s expression clouded. She could swear he had forgotten what they were talking about, finding the politics of the police department a far more fascinating topic. Then it cleared. “Yeah. They have over five hundred meters leased within city limits, did you know that? Just about any large office concern has one. Anyway, this machine is at a storage facility in Decatur, Georgia. Gray’s Store-All, on Forrest Avenue.”

Frank had his radio in hand. “I’ll get the Georgia cops to send someone out there now.”

“I thought of that. A unit’s on their way,” the assistant chief told him with a touch of reproach. Frank’s stock had just lost a few points on the Dow.

Theresa butted in again, even batting an eyelash or two at Viancourt. “Bobby probably had his car in storage while he served his time. But I don’t understand how the car got to Decatur from here-they’d hardly let him drive himself to prison, would they?”

“Not in this case. It was an interprison transfer, so he’d have gone by bus.”

“Then maybe the storage facility can tell us who brought it there or who paid the bill.” She thanked the assistant chief profusely. He wandered back to the hypnotic waves of broadcast news as she turned to Frank. “Where’s his brother? I’d like to talk to him.”

“So would I,” Jason said.

Eric Moyers’s disposition had not improved greatly since he’d left his workplace. He had gone from one inhospitable climate with a partially stocked pop machine to another. He sat at an abandoned microfilm-viewing station, drinking Sprite without enthusiasm.

Theresa planted her body in front of him and introduced herself. The guy looked exhausted and breathed with a raspy wheeze, but he gamely fielded questions from her and Jason without argument. Theresa had the feeling he’d answer questions from Peggy Elliott, should she care to ask any. An air of hopeless resignation bracketed every word.

“Does Bobby have a white Mercedes?”

“Not white,” the baggage handler corrected her bitterly. “Pearl.”

“And he put it in storage while he served this last sentence in Atlanta?”

“I wouldn’t have any idea where he put it.”