Last Man Standing

  in the social circles where she mingled and none of them had captured her interest. She had girlfriends always on the lookout to fix her up with yet another tech mini-mogul or lawyer, but she found them to be so egotistical and self-centered that she figured marrying one of them wouldn’t be all that different from remaining single. As a rebuke, she had asked one very self-involved high-tech chap at a party if he had ever heard of Narcissus. He had wanted to know if it was a new type of Internet software and then gone right on talking about how fabulous he was.

  She pulled her briefcase out of the car and headed up to the front steps. She hadn’t pulled the car into the garage because she intended to go out again. The man coming out of her backyard startled Claire. He was black and large, with a head that appeared shaven, though he wore a cap. Claire focused on his gas company uniform and the electronic gas gauge he held in his hand. He passed her, smiled and went across the street. She felt embarrassed for her automatic suspicion of a black man, though she had to admit, also with some embarrassment, that there were few people of color in her neighborhood. Yet who could blame her for being paranoid, after spending time with Web London and men like him?

  She unlocked the door and went inside, her mind on her session with Web. It had been shocking in many ways but at least more revealing than shocking. She put her briefcase down and headed to her bedroom to change. It was still light out and she thought she would take advantage of the nice weather and go for a walk. She remembered the pills in her pocket, pulled them out and examined them. The unfamiliar one intrigued her greatly. She had a friend who worked in the pharmacy department at Fairfax Hospital. He could run it through some tests and tell her what this was. It didn’t look like any sleep medication she had ever seen, but she could be mistaken. She also hoped she was mistaken about a drug interaction having made Web freeze up in that alley. That might be something he could never recover from. As crazy as Web’s theory on voodoo was, she would take a curse over something Web had inadvertently put into his body that caused his friends to die without him. No, the answer had to lie in his past, she was convinced of that.

  She sat on the bed and took off her shoes, went into her small walk-in closet, disrobed and pulled on a T-shirt and shorts because the heat had returned. Barefoot, she came back out and looked at the phone. Maybe she should call Web and talk to him. At some point she had to tell him what she had learned about Stockton’s death. The timing of it, though, was critical. Too early or too late a disclosure and the consequences could be disastrous. She decided to take the chicken’s way out and figure it out later. Maybe the walk would help her decide. She went over to her drawer and pulled out a baseball cap. She was about to put it on when a hand went around her mouth. She dropped the cap and instinctively began to struggle until she felt the gun barrel against her cheek and she stopped, her eyes wide with fear, breaths suddenly coming in heaves. She remembered she hadn’t locked the door on the way in. It was such a safe neighborhood, or at least it had been. Her racing mind wondered if the gas man was an impostor and he had come back and was now about to rape her and then kill her.

  “What do you want?” she asked in a voice that was so muffled by the hand over her mouth that it didn’t sound like her own. She could tell it was a man, though his hand was gloved, because of the strength in it. The hand left her mouth and encircled her neck.

  The man didn’t answer and Claire saw the blindfold coming toward her, and the next moment she was in total darkness. She felt herself being led over to the bed and she was terrified the rape was about to happen. Should she scream or fight? And yet the gun was still pressed to her right cheek. And the silence of her attacker was more unnerving than hearing his voice.

  “Just be cool,” the man said, “all we want is information. Nothing else from you.” His words seemed clear enough to her. Her body was safe. At least she could hope that.

  He guided her down so that she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She told herself that if he pushed her back and climbed on her, she would fight, gun or not.

  And yet she sensed him moving away from her. And at the same time she sensed the entrance of another person. She tensed as this person sat next to her on the bed. A heavy man, she deduced, for the bed went down quite a bit with his weight. But he didn’t touch her, though even through the blindfold she could feel his gaze upon her.

  “You seeing Web London?”

  She jerked a bit at this question, for it hadn’t occurred to her that this was about Web, though she wondered why it hadn’t. Her life was fairly ordinary, routine, no guns and men killed. That was Web’s life. Like it or not, she was now part of that life.

  “What do you mean?” she managed to say.

  She heard the man let out a grunt, one of annoyance, she thought. “You’re a psychiatrist and he’s your patient, isn’t that true?” Claire wanted to say that ethically she couldn’t reveal that information, but she felt certain that if she did, this man would kill her. As though he would care about her ethical constraints. To add credence to her belief, she heard what clearly sounded like the hammer of a gun being cocked. She had been around guns as a consulting forensic psychiatrist and knew that sound pretty well. A large cold mass formed in her stomach and her limbs became rigid, and she wondered how Web could deal with people like this every day of his life.

  “I’m seeing him, yes.”

  “Now we getting somewhere. Did he mention a boy to you, a boy named Kevin?”

  She nodded because her mouth had dried up so much she didn’t think she could speak.

  “He happen to know where that boy is now?”

  Claire shook her head and tensed as he lightly squeezed her shoulder.

  “Relax, lady, ain’t nobody gonna hurt you long as you cooperate.

  If you don’t cooperate, then we have quite a problem,” he added ominously.

  Claire heard him snap his fingers and about a minute passed in silence, and then she felt something touch her lips. She drew back.

  “Water,” the man said. “You got dry mouth. People scared shitless get that all the time. Drink.”

  The last word was an order and Claire immediately obeyed it. “Now talk, no more nods or shakes, you understand me?”

  She started to nod and then caught herself. “Yes.”

  “What’d he say about Kevin? Everything, I have to know it all.” “Why?” She wasn’t exactly sure where that bold question had come from.

  “I got my reasons.”

  “Do you want to hurt the boy?”

  “No,” the man said quietly. “I just want him back nice and safe.” He sounded sincere, but then criminals often did, she reminded herself. Ted Bundy had been the king of smooth talkers while he methodically killed scores of women, smiling all the way.

  “I have no reason to believe you, you know.”

  “Kevin, he my son.”

  She tensed at this and then relaxed. Could this be the Big F person Web had told her about? But he had said the man was Kevin’s brother, not father. The man sounded like a concerned parent, yet there was something not quite right. Claire would just have to go with her professional gut on this one. What she sensed very clearly was that these men would kill her. “Web said he saw Kevin in the alley. He said Kevin said something to him and it affected him in a weird way. He saw him later, while the guns were firing. He gave him a note and sent him off. He didn’t see him after that. But he’s been looking for him.”

  “Is that all?”

  She nodded and then caught herself. She could feel him move closer, and even though she wore the blindfold, she closed her eyes. She could feel tears forming there.

  “Ground rules are no more nods or shakes, I need to hear words, last time I’m telling you, you got me?”

  “Yes.” She fought back the tears.

  “Now, did he say anything else, about anything peculiar happening when he saw Kevin the second time?”

  She said, “No,” but she had hesitated a second too long. She could clearly fe
el it, as though the pause had been a day long in duration. And she thought that he had noticed it, as well. She was correct in that assumption, for she instantly felt the cold muzzle of a pistol against her cheek.

  “We having a serious misunderstanding here, like maybe I ain’t making myself clear. Just so we are clear, let me lay this out for you, bitch. To get my boy back, I’ll blow your brains out and everybody you ever cared about in your whole life. I see pictures all over the place of this cute-looking girl. Bet that’s your daughter, ain’t it?” Claire didn’t answer and she felt his hand wrap around her neck. His hand was gloved, which surprised her until she thought of fingerprints and DNA that machines could detect off of corpses. Her corpse! This thought made her feel faint.

  “Ain’t it?”

  “Yes!”

  He kept his hand on her neck. “See, you got you your little girl nice and safe. Perfect little house in a perfect little place. But see, I don’t got me my boy and he’s all I have. Why you get your girl and I ain’t get my boy? You think that’s fair? Do you?” He squeezed her neck a little and Claire felt herself start to gag.

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “No, I don’t think that’s fair,” she managed to say in a garbled voice.

  “Yeah? Well, it’s a little late for that, baby.”

  The next thing she felt was being pushed back on the bed. Her earlier promise to fight if they attempted to rape her seemed ridiculous now. She was so frightened she could barely breathe. She felt a pillow being placed over her face and then something hard jammed into the center of the pillow. It took her a few seconds to realize that the hard object was the pistol and the pillow would serve as a crude silencer.

  She thought of her daughter, Maggie, and she thought of how her body would be found. The tears streamed down her cheeks. And then for one miraculous second her wits came back to her.

  “He said that somebody had switched the kids in the alley.”

  The pillow did not move for some seconds and Claire thought she had lost after all.

  Then it was slowly removed and she was jerked up so hard she thought her arm had been dislocated.

  “Say again?”

  “He said that Kevin had been switched in the alley for another boy. The boy who went to the police wasn’t Kevin. He was taken in the alley before he got to the police.”

  “Does he know why?”

  “No. And he doesn’t know who did it. Only that it happened.” She felt the pistol against her cheek again. For some reason it wasn’t as frightening the second time around.

  “You lying, you ain’t gonna like what I’m gonna do to you.”

  “That’s what he said.” She felt like she had betrayed Web to save herself and she wondered if he would have rather died than done such a thing. He probably would have. The tears started coming again, and not out of fear this time but from her own weakness.

  “He thinks that Kevin being in that alley was planned by whoever was behind what happened. He thinks Kevin was somehow involved.” She quickly added, “But unwittingly. He’s only a child.”

  The pistol was removed from her cheek and her interrogator’s large presence also moved away.

  “That it?”

  “That’s all I know.”

  “You tell anybody we here, you know what I’ll do to you. And I can find your daughter. We been through your house, we know all there is to know about you and her. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes,” she managed to get out.

  “I’m just doing this to get my son back, that’s all. I ain’t like busting in people’s homes and roughing ’em up, that ain’t my style, especially women, but what I got to do to get my boy back, I’ll do.”

  She felt herself nodding at this and then stopped.

  She never heard them go, although her hearing could not have been any more acute.

  She waited a few minutes to make sure, then she said, “Hello?” And then she said it again. She reached up slowly to undo the blindfold. She was waiting for hands to stop her, but none came. She finally pulled off the blindfold and she quickly looked around the room, half expecting someone to leap out at her. She would have liked to collapse on the bed and cry for the rest of the day and night, but she couldn’t stay here. They said they had been everywhere in her house. She threw some clothes in an overnight bag, grabbed her purse and a pair of tennis shoes and went to the front door. She looked out but saw no one. She quickly went to her car and got in. As she drove off, she kept her gaze on the rearview mirror to see if anyone was following her. She was no expert in that, but there didn’t seem to be anyone there. Claire entered the Capital Beltway and sped up, unsure of exactly where she would go.

  40

  Antoine Peebles pulled off the gloves and sat back, a broad smile on his intelligent features. He looked over at Macy, who was driving. The man’s face was inscrutable, as always.

  “Damn good performance, if I do say so myself,” said Peebles. “I think I got the man’s voice and diction just right. I haven’t said ‘ain’t’ that many times in my whole life. So what do you think?”

  “You sounded like the boss,” agreed Macy.

  “And the lady gets all pissed off and she goes to Web London and the cops and they go looking for Francis.”

  “And maybe us.”

  “No, I explained all that to you. You have to think at the macro and micro level, Mace,” said Peebles as though lecturing a student. “We’ve already distanced ourselves from him. And on top of that he’s got no product and half his crew is already gone because of that. His cash flow is down to almost nothing. In this business you have two-day inventory levels, tops. He had some stuff hidden, I’ll give him credit for that, but that’s gone. And when he shot Toona he lost four more guys just from that.” Peebles shook his head. “And with all that happening, what does he do? He spends every second thinking about the kid. Every night he’s looking for him, roughing people up, burning bridges, not trusting anybody.”

  “Guess he’s smart not to trust anybody,” said Macy, glancing at Peebles. “Especially you and me.”

  Peebles ignored this. “He could write a book on stupid management techniques, killing one of your own guys like that in front of everybody. In front of an FBI agent! He’s got a death wish.”

  “You have to keep your guys in line,” said Macy evenly. “You have to lead from strength.” He looked over at Peebles with an expression that clearly showed he thought his companion lacked that attribute, but Peebles didn’t notice because he was still obviously reveling in his triumph. “And you can’t blame the guy for trying to find his son.”

  Peebles said, “You can’t mix business and personal. He’s screwed himself already, burning political capital, over what? Something that is never going to happen. That kid is never coming back. Whoever took him, that boy is six feet under if there was anything left of him. Now I’ve already got new supply lines set up and his defectors have joined me.” He looked at Macy. “You probably don’t know this, but my maneuver is classic Machiavelli. And I’ve been skimming the best crew members from other gangs over the last six months. We’re just about ready to go and this time we do it all my way. We run it like a real business. Accountability, pay and promotion for merit, bonuses for exemplary performance and rewards for innovation that go right to the corporate bottom line. We’re going to take over our own money-laundering efforts and cut costs where they need to be cut. Not every crew has to have jewelry and five-hundred-dollar-a-night hookers. I’m even envisioning a retirement plan instead of the brothers throwing their money after cars and carats and having nothing when they’re too old to do this anymore. And I’m implementing a dress code for management level, no more of this looking like crap. A professional has to have a professional image. Look at you, you look slick, that’s what I want.”

  Macy released a rare smile. “Some of the boys aren’t going to like that.”

  “They have to grow up sometime.” He looked over at Macy
. “I gotta tell you, it was an awesome feeling having that gun in my hand.”

  “Would you have shot her?”

  “Are you nuts? I was just scaring her.”

  “Well, you pull a gun, some point you may have to use it,” said Macy.

  “That’s your job. You’re head of security, Mace. My right-hand guy. You showed your stuff when you came up with the plan to nab Kevin. And you did the down-and-dirty work rounding up the other crews to join forces. Now we’re going to go places, my man; a lot farther than Francis was taking us, and a lot faster. He’s old school, the new ways are the best ways. That’s why the dinosaurs died.”

  They pulled down an alley and Peebles checked his watch. “Okay, you got the meeting place all set up?”

  “They’re all there, just like you wanted.”

  “Mood?”

  “Good, but suspicious. You got them worried but definitely interested.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear. This is where we stake out our territory, Mace, and where we let the others know that Francis is no longer the force. This is our time. Let’s do it.” He paused as a sudden thought hit him.

  “What the hell was that woman talking about, somebody switching Kevin for another kid in that alley?”

  Macy shrugged. “No clue.”

  “You got the kid, right?”