Phillip Margolin - Ties That Bind

Gregaros knew that he should not approach three suspected murderers alone, no matter how uncharacteristic their looks and attire, but the only other car in the lot was a shiny black Ferrari--exactly the type of car these rich kids would drive. He feared that the frat boys would be gone by the time he radioed for backup, so he walked around the corner of the building and ordered the trio to freeze.

Gregaros expected the boys to quake with fear but, after their initial surprise, they had calmly followed his instructions to put their hands against the warehouse wall and spread their legs. While he was patting down his prisoners, Harvey Grant, the smallest boy, wondered aloud what the young policeman would do with fifty thousand dollars? Gregaros had laughed at the brazen and ridiculous bribe. Fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money for someone like Stan, who had been born poor, grown up hard, and joined the force after a tour in Vietnam with the Marines.

When Gregaros asked Grant where he would get that kind of money, Grant asked him if he knew that Jesus Delgado was the dead man in the 7-Eleven parking lot. Gregaros stood back and looked at the boys again. "No, it's not possible," he told himself. These guys couldn't be connected to Mexican gangsters. Then he took another quick look at the automatic weapons and ski masks stacked on the hood of the Toyota.

"Let us go and we'll take care of you," Grant had said. "Who knows, this might not be a one-shot deal. We can use a man inside the Portland police."

Gregaros hesitated.

"There's a downside to rejecting the offer," Grant continued.

"Oh?" Gregaros had said.

Grant had turned his head and smiled. Stan thought that he looked like one of those nerds on College Bowl.

"If you arrest us," Grant said, "we'll swear that we parked our car in this lot so we could smoke some weed, and found the Toyota just as it is, moments before you arrested us. It will be your word against ours. Do you know who we are?"

"Three punks who are starting to piss me off."

"Bzzz! Wrong answer," chimed in Wendell Hayes. "You're looking at the sons of three very influential and very rich men."

"Our daddies will never let us go to jail," Grant said. "We'll have the very best attorneys that money can buy, but we won't need them. Want to know why?"

"I'm listening."

"You're the only witness and you'll be dead."

Stan's response had been to pistol-whip Grant. The blow had brought the future judge to his knees. When he staggered to his feet, blood from a scalp wound trickling down the side of his face, there was a twisted smile on his lips.

"Police brutality," Grant had said cheerfully. "Now you're facing massive lawsuits and your credibility on the stand will be shot to hell. I'm just a little guy, sir, and you're a big brute. Boohoo. We'll have the journalists in a feeding frenzy and there won't be any pension for you. That's assuming, of course, that you're alive to collect it. Is that fifty thou sounding better?"

Gregaros had never regretted his decision to let the three boys go. He was rich beyond his dreams and more powerful than he ever thought possible, even if few people knew it.

While on the force, Gregaros had made evidence and people disappear in cases that affected the club's interests. Pedro Aragon's muscle was used for everyday intimidation, but Stan was used in special cases, like the one tonight.

The club had orchestrated Harold Travis's climb up the ladder of national politics. Then, just as he was on the brink of realizing the organization's greatest dream, the senator's ego had turned him into a liability. First, there was the cocaine and his brutal sexual encounters, culminating in the murder of Lori Andrews. Then, Travis had put himself into a position to be blackmailed by Jon Dupre.

McCarthy had arrested Jon Dupre for Travis's murder before the club could get to him. Then Wendell Hayes had failed to kill Dupre in the jail. It looked like their luck had changed when Oscar Baron brought Dupre's tapes to the meet with Manuel Castillo, but Baron didn't have the tape that could destroy all of the hard work that had gone into killing the anti-cloning bill. Some of the club members had invested heavily in the biotech companies that the bill was aimed at, and they stood to lose billions if anything went wrong.

Pedro's men had not found the tape when they ransacked Ally Bennett's apartment, and Bennett had disappeared the evening that Baron died. All of the club's efforts to find her had gone for naught--until Bennett surfaced to demand fifty thousand dollars for the very tape the club wanted.

Several hours earlier, Tim Kerrigan had visited Harvey Grant in his chambers to tell him that he was going to kill Ally Bennett this evening; a fact that the judge had known for half an hour. Gregaros had installed taps on Kerrigan's home and office phones hours after Kerrigan told Harvey Grant that Ally Bennett had the tape. When Bennett called Kerrigan to tell him where to make the exchange, a trace had located Dupre's safe house. It would have been easy for Gregaros to kill Bennett at the safe house, but the club needed to bind Kerrigan to it. They had lost one chance to win the presidency. Kerrigan presented them with another viable candidate.

Gregaros would take out Bennett if Kerrigan lost his nerve. If Kerrigan came through, the detective would take the murder weapon to the judge, who would put it with the weapons and confessions that the founding members of the club used to secure the loyalty of new members. To make certain that Dupre had nothing else that could hurt them, Gregaros had dispatched a team to the safe house moments after Bennett left for her meeting with Tim Kerrigan. After tonight, everything would be back where it should be.

Gregaros had been following Bennett in a nondescript black Chevy since she'd left Dupre's riverfront house. Stan let a few cars get between them, then settled in behind his quarry. Everything was proceeding smoothly until Bennett left the freeway. Less than a mile later, a police car pulled in behind Gregaros. He checked his speedometer to make sure that he was driving under the speed limit. Bennett passed a car, then pulled back into the right lane. The patrol car's bubble light started flashing. Stan slowed down until he was certain that the cop was pulling over Bennett. There was a strip-mall entrance on his right. He drove in and switched off his lights.

The patrolman approached Bennett's car and began talking to her. Bennett handed over her license and registration. The patrolman walked back to his car to run the information through his computer. When he was through, he walked back to Bennett and returned the paperwork. Then he pointed to her left taillight. Of course. The light was out. Stan hadn't noticed. The cop talked to Bennett for a minute more before returning to his car. It looked like he'd only given her a warning.

Gregaros settled in behind Bennett as soon as she pulled away from the curb. He passed the cop car and saw that the officer was on his radio. A moment later, the patrol car made a U-turn and drove off in the opposite direction.

Traffic thinned as Bennett headed out of town. Gregaros lagged back. There was only a quarter moon and Bennett's car was dark blue, but her lone rear light was all he needed for his tail. When she turned onto a two-lane road that led into Forest Park, Stan turned off his lights and let the distance between them widen.

Bennett turned right, then left onto a narrow road. Stan knew that Bennett had insisted that the meeting be in a secluded meadow on the edge of a deep ravine near the boundary of the park. Gregaros knew the spot and didn't have to worry about staying close anymore. Bennett made a turn onto a dirt-and-grass road that led to the meadow. Suddenly the headlights of a park maintenance truck blinded Gregaros. It was hauling a small trailer loaded with gardening equipment, and had turned out of a side road. Stan figured that the driver had not spotted him because the Chevy's lights were off. The detective pulled to the side of the road to avoid the truck and hoped that the driver didn't honk his horn. The truck drove by silently. Gregaros looked up the road in time to see the red glow of the single rear light of Bennett's car moving like a firefly toward the meadow.