Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

Geller called up a map of the area on his large monitor and highlighted the sites in red as Hardy called them out. There were a dozen of them.

Lukas called Jerry Baker and gave him the locations. He reported back that he was disbursing the teams there.

A few minutes later a voice crackled through the speaker in the command post. It was Bakers. "New Years Leader Two to New Years Leader One."

"Go ahead," Lukas said.

"One of my S &S teams found a convenience store. Mockingbird and Seventeenth."

Tobe Geller immediately highlighted the intersection on the map.

Please, Parker was thinking. Please…

"They're selling paper and pens like the kind you were describing. And the display faced the window. Some of the packs of paper're sun-bleached."

"Yes!" Parker whispered.

The team leaned forward, gazing at the map on Geller's screen.

"Jerry," Parker said, not bothering with the code names that the tactical agents were so fond of, "one of the demolition sites we told you about-it's two blocks east of the store. On Mockingbird. Get the canvassers going in that direction."

"Roger. New Year's Leader Two. Out."

Then another call came in. Lukas took it. Listened. "Tell him." She handed the phone to Tobe Geller.

Geller listened, nodding. "Great. Send it here-on MCP Fours priority fax line. You have the number? Good." He hung up and said, "That was Com-Tech again. They've got the ISP list for Gravesend."

"The what?" Cage asked.

"Subscribers to Internet service providers," Geller answered.

The fax phone rang and another sheet fed out. Parker glanced at it, discouraged. There were more on-line subscribers in Gravesend than he'd anticipated-about fifty of them.

"Call out the addresses," Geller said. "I'll type them in." Hardy did. Geller was lightning fast on the keyboard and as quickly as the detective could recite the addresses a red dot appeared on the screen.

In two minutes they were all highlighted. Parker saw that his concern had been unfounded. There were only four subscribers within a quarter-mile radius of the convenience store and the demolition site.

Lukas called Jerry Baker and gave him the addresses. "Concentrate on those four. We'll meet you at the convenience store. That'll be our new staging area."

"Roger. Out."

"Let's go," Lukas called to the driver of the MCP, a young agent.

"Wait," Geller called. "Go through the vacant lot there." He tapped the screen. "On foot. You'll get there faster than in cars. We'll drive over and meet you."

Hardy pulled his jacket on. But Lukas shook her head. "Sorry, Len… What we talked about before? I want you to stay in the MCP."

The young officer lifted his hands, looked at Cage and Parker. "I want to do something."

"Len, this could be a tactical situation. We need negotiators and shooters."

"He's not a shooter," Hardy said, nodding at Parker.

"He's forensic. He'll be on the crime scene team."

"So I'm just sitting here, twiddling my thumbs. Is that it?"

"I'm sorry. That's the way it's got to be."

"Whatever." Pulled his jacket off and sat down.

"Thank you," Lukas said. "C. P., you stay here too. Keep an eye on the fort."

Meaning, Parker guessed, make sure Hardy doesn't do anything stupid. The big agent got the message and nodded.

Lukas pushed open the door of the camper. Cage stepped outside. Parker pulled on his bomber jacket and followed the agent. As he climbed outside Lukas started to ask, "You have-?"

"It's in my pocket," he answered shortly, slapping the pistol to make sure, and caught up with Cage, who was moving through the smoky vacant lot at a slow trot.

Henry Czisman took a tiny sip of his beer.

He was certainly no stranger to liquor but he wanted at this particular moment to be as sober as possible. But a man in a bar in Gravesend on New Year's Eve had better be drinking or else incur the suspicion of everybody in the place.

The big man had nursed the Budweiser for a half hour.

Joe Higgins' was the name of the bar, Czisman noted. According to my training as a journalist, Czisman thought with irritation, this is wrong. Only plural nouns take just the s apostrophe to form the possessive. The name of the place should be Joe Higgins's.

Another sip of beer.

The door opened and Czisman saw several agents walk inside. He'd been expecting someone to come in here for the canvass and he'd been very concerned that it might be Lukas or Cage or that consultant, who would recognize him and wonder why he was dogging them. But these men he'd never seen before.

The wiry old man beside Czisman continued. "So then I go, 'The block's cracked. What'm I gonna do with a cracked block? Tell me what am I gonna do?' And he ain' have no answer for that. Gee willikers. The fuck he think I was gonna do, not see it?"

Czisman glanced at the scrawny guy, who was wearing torn gray pants and a dark T-shirt. December 31 and he didn't have a coat. Did he live nearby? Upstairs. The man was drinking whiskey that smelled like antifreeze.

"No answer, hm?" Czisman asked, eyes on the agents, studying them.

"No. And I tell him I'ma fuck him up he don't gimme a new block. You know?"

He'd bought the black guy a drink because it would look less suspicious to see a black guy and a white guy with their heads down over a beer and a slimy whiskey in a bar like Joe Higgins', with or without the correct possessive case, rather than just a white guy by himself.

And when you buy somebody a drink you have to let them talk to you.

The agents were showing a piece of paper-probably the picture of the Digger's dead accomplice-to a table of three local crones, painted like Harlem whores.

Czisman looked past them to the Winnebago parked across the street. Czisman had been staking out FBI headquarters on Ninth Street when he'd seen the three agents hurry outside, along with a dozen others. Well, they wouldn't let him go for a ride-along-so he'd arranged for his own. Thank God there'd been a motorcade of ten or so cars and he'd just followed them-through the red lights, driving fast, flashing his brights, which is what you're supposed to do as a cop when you're in pursuit but don't have a dashboard flasher. They'd parked in a cluster near the bar and, after a briefing, had fanned out to canvass for information. Czisman had parked up the street and had slipped into the bar. His digital camera was in his pocket and he'd taken a few shots of the agents and cops being briefed. Then there was nothing to do but sit back and wait. He wondered how close they were to finding-what had he called it?-the Digger's lair.

"Hey," said the black guy, only now noticing the agents. "Who they? Cops?"

"We're about to find out."

A moment later one of them came up to the bar. "Evening. We're federal agents." The ID was properly flashed. "I wonder if either of you've seen this man around here?"

Czisman looked at the photo of the dead man he'd seen in FBI headquarters. He said, "No."

The black guy said, "He looks dead. He dead?"

The agent asked, "You haven't seen anyone who might resemble him?"

"No sir."

Czisman shook his head.

"There's somebody else we're looking for too. White male, thirties or forties. Wearing a dark coat."

Ah, the Digger, thought Henry Czisman. Odd to hear somebody he'd come to know so well described from such a distant perspective. He said, "That could be a lot of people around here."

"Yessir. The only identifying characteristic we know about him is that he wears a gold crucifix. And that he's probably armed. He might have been talking about guns, bragging about them."

The Digger wouldn't ever do that, Czisman thought. But he didn't correct them and said merely, "Sorry."

"Sorry," echoed the whiskey drinker.

"If you see him could you please call this number?" The agent handed them both cards.