Last Man Standing

  not prevent them from having forcible sex with them.

  But what had Billy meant when he told Gwen that he knew? Knew what?

  His ringing cell phone interrupted Web’s thoughts. He answered it. The woman was nearly hysterical.

  “Claire, what’s wrong?”

  He listened to her frightened tones and then said, “Stay right where you are. I’ll be there as fast as I can.” He hung up, called Romano, filled him in and was on the road in a few minutes.

  42

  Claire had gone to a very safe and public place, a police substation at a suburban mall. She hadn’t filed a report with the police, she told Web when he showed up.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “Look, Claire, from how you described it, it sounds like my buddy Francis Westbrook and one of his sidekicks, probably Clyde Macy. The last time I saw them, somebody died. You don’t realize how lucky you are.”

  “But I can’t tell for sure it was them, I was blindfolded.”

  “But you would recognize their voices?”

  “Probably.” She paused and looked puzzled.

  “What is it, Claire, what’s bugging you?”

  “This Francis, how educated would you say he is?”

  “In street smarts, he’s a Ph.D. In book learning, nil. Why?”

  “The man who threatened me had an odd way of talking. He would alternate between slang and ghetto talk, and the diction and vocabulary of an educated man. I could sense he was uncomfortable with what he was saying, because it felt forced sometimes, as though he were trying to think of appropriate words as he went along, suppressing his natural choices but occasionally erring, and using words that, you know—”

  “Would be more along the lines of the person he was trying to impersonate?”

  “Impersonate, exactly.”

  Web took a deep breath. Well, this was getting interesting. He was thinking about a second-in-command trying to pull a coup on his boss or push the knife in a little deeper, depending on how one looked at it. Antoine Peebles, the wannabe drug king with a sheepskin. He looked at her with new admiration. “You’ve got a good pair of ears, Claire, always waiting for those cues from us poor screwed-up head cases.”

  “I’m scared, Web. I’m really scared. I’ve counseled people for years about facing what frightens them, being proactive instead of reactive, and this happens to me and I feel paralyzed.”

  He found his arm going protectively around her as he led her to his car. “Well, you have a right to be scared. What happened to you would scare most people.”

  “But not you.” She said this, he noted, almost enviously.

  As they climbed in his Mach, Web told her, “It’s not that I don’t ever get scared, Claire, because I do.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t show it.”

  “Yes, I do, just in a different way.” He closed the car door and thought for a moment before glancing at her and actually gripping her hand. “You can deal with your fear in two different ways. Close up like a clam and hide from the world or do something about it.”

  “Now you sound like the psychiatrist,” she said wearily.

  “Well, I learned from the best.” He squeezed her hand. “What do you say, want to help me crack this thing?”

  “I trust you, Web.”

  This surprised him, chiefly because that wasn’t what he had asked her.

  He put the car in gear. “Well, let’s go see if we can find a little boy named Kevin.”

  Web parked in the alley behind the duplex where Kevin had lived, and he and Claire went to the rear door just in case somebody was watching the front, like Bates’s men. He definitely didn’t want to run afoul of the Bureau right now. Web knocked.

  “Yeah, who is it?” The voice was a man’s, not Grandma’s, and it definitely wasn’t friendly.

  “Jerome, is that you?”

  Web could sense a presence just on the other side of the door. “Who the hell wants to know?”

  “Web London, FBI. And how are you today, Jerome?”

  Web and Claire heard the word “Shit” muttered loudly, but the door did not open.

  “Jerome, I’m still here and I’ll stay here until you open the door. And don’t try running out the front like you did last time. We’ve got that covered.”

  He heard chains sliding back and locks popping open and he was eye to eye with Jerome. Web was very surprised to see that he had on a white shirt, nice slacks and a tie to go with his sullen look.

  “Got a date?”

  “Damn, you real funny for a Fed. What do you want?”

  “Just talk. You alone?”

  Jerome stepped back. “Not anymore. Look, we told you all we know. Man, can’t you stop bugging us?”

  Web ushered Claire inside, followed her and then closed the door behind them. They looked around the small kitchen. “Just trying to find Kevin. You want that, don’t you?” Web asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I don’t tend to trust anyone. I just want to talk, that’s all.”

  “Look, I’m busy. You want to talk to somebody, you can talk to my lawyer.” Jerome looked at Claire. “What is she, your date?”

  “No, she’s my shrink.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good one.”

  “No, really, Jerome, I am,” said Claire as she stepped forward. “And I’m afraid that Mr. London has some issues.”

  “What does his issues have to do with me?”

  “Well, he’s been devoting so much time to this case that I believe he’s becoming almost obsessed with it. That sort of obsession can reach dangerous, sometimes violent levels if not dealt with in a reasonable period of time.”

  Jerome looked over at Web and took a step back. “If this man is crazy, I had nothing to do with it. He was crazy the first time he came here.”

  “But you don’t want anything to happen to someone, like your- self or others. Mr. London is only trying to find the truth, and in my professional opinion finding the truth, for someone with his particular set of issues, is very important. And to those who help him find it, he would, psychologically speaking, be very grateful. The flip side of that is somewhere you really don’t want to go.” She looked at Web with an expression of sorrow mixed with just the right touch of fear. “I’ve seen the results of that before with Mr. London; that’s one reason why I’m here. To prevent another tragedy.”

  Web just had to admire the woman’s work.

  Jerome stared back and forth at Claire and Web. Then he said in a far more calm tone, “Look, I told you all I know. I really have.”

  Web spoke very firmly. “No, Jerome, you haven’t. I want to know stuff about Kevin maybe you’ve never even thought about. Now let’s cut the shit and get down to it.”

  Jerome motioned them to follow and turned and walked down the hallway into the small living room where Web had first spoken to them. Before he left the kitchen, Web noted that it was very clean, the sinks spotless, the floor scrubbed. As he and Claire followed Jerome down the hallway and into the living room, he saw that the trash had been picked up, the floors mopped, the walls scrubbed. Web could smell disinfectant everywhere. A door was leaning against the wall next to the bathroom, and the sheet had been taken down. The openings in the ceiling had been shored up and braced. Grandma’s doing, he thought, at least he did until Jerome picked up a broom and started sweeping a pile of trash into a large garbage bag.

  Web looked around at the “new” home. “Your doing?”

  “We don’t have to be living in no pigsty.”

  “Where’s your grandma?”

  “At work. Over at the hospital. In the cafeteria.”

  “How come you’re not at work?”

  “I will be in an hour, hope you ain’t plan on keeping me long.”

  “You look too nice to be planning to knock over a bank.”

  “Man, you are a riot.”

  “So where’s work
?” You don’t have a job, Jerome, just admit it. Jerome finished filling the bag, tied it closed and tossed it to Web. “You mind throwing that out the front door?”

  Claire opened the door and Web did so, setting the bag on the front stoop along with quite a few others. When he closed the door, Jerome had pulled a toolbox out of a closet. He took out a screwdriver, Vise-Grips and a hammer. He laid the tools next to the bathroom opening and gripped the door.

  “Give me a hand, here, will you?”

  Web helped him lift the door closer to the opening and then held on to it and watched as Jerome tightened the sagging hinges and used the Vise-Grips to pop out the door pins. They lifted the door up, worked it into place and Jerome tapped the hinges in with the hammer. He closed and opened the door several times to see that it was aligned properly.

  “A handy guy. But that’s not your job, unless carpenters wear ties to work.”

  Jerome put his tools away before answering. “I work nights at a company servicing their computer system. Just got the position a few months ago.”

  “So you know computers?” asked Claire.

  “Got my AS in computer science at the community college. Yeah, I know my way around ’em.”

  Web was unimpressed. “Uh-huh. You know computers?”

  “You got a hearing problem? That’s what I said.”

  “Last time I was here, you didn’t look gainfully employed.” “Like I said, I work nights.”

  “Right.”

  Jerome stared at Web and then went over and slid a computer case out from under the couch. He flipped it open and fired it up.

  “You on-line, man?” asked Jerome.

  “We talking skates or what?”

  “Ha-ha. Computers. Internet. You know what that is, don’t you?” “Nah, I’ve been traveling around the galaxy the last ten years, I’m so behind.”

  Jerome punched a few keys and they listened as it was announced to Jerome that “You’ve got mail” on AOL.

  “Wait a minute, how can you access the Internet without a phone?” said Web.

  “My computer has wireless technology, a card that lets me do that. It’s like having a built-in cell phone.” He smiled at Web and shook his head in obvious amazement. “Man, I hope most Feds aren’t as ignorant as you are about computers.”

  “Don’t push it, Jerome.”

  “You know what a cookie is?”

  “Sugary thing that gives you love handles.”

  “You just never quit, do you? A cookie is a simple piece of text. An HTTP header with a text-only string. The string has the domain, the path, value variable that a website sets and a lifetime. Lots of companies use cookies to personalize information, track popular links or for demographics. It keeps site content fresh and of interest to users. For example.” He hit a few keys and the screen changed. “I’ve been on this site a lot recently and it knows that. So it doesn’t show me the same stuff unless I specifically request it. And they’re starting to use cookies in back-end interactions, like storing personal data a user has given to the site, like passwords and such.”

  “Storing personal data. That sounds sort of Big Brotherish,” said Claire.

  “Well, it can be, but cookies are just text, no program, they’re not virus-susceptible. It can’t even access your hard drive, although your browser can save cookie values there if necessary, but that’s about it. Some people think cookies will fill up their hard drive, but that’s pretty much impossible. Most ISPs put limits on cookies. Netscape limits them to three hundred, so you get up to that number and it automatically discards the older ones. Microsoft puts them in your TIF folder with a max default setting of two percent of your hard drive. And cookies are usually so small that you’d need about ten million cookies to fill up a gig hard drive. In fact, I’m writing a few million lines of code that will take cookies to a new level, taking out the bad stuff and making them a lot more useful. And maybe I’ll make myself a few million bucks in the process.” He grinned. “The ultimate cookie.”

  He shut down his computer and looked at Web. “Any more questions?”

  The admiration was clear on Web’s features. “Okay, you convinced me, you know computers.”

  “Yeah, I bust my ass in school, finally get a job that doesn’t require me to wear a hair net and the fine folks at Social Services tell us we make too much damn money and we got to leave our home we been at for the last five years.”

  “System sucks.”

  “No, people who have never been on it think the system sucks. For people on it, we wouldn’t have had anyplace to live without it. But it still ticks me off that I’m making a little more than damn Burger King pays and we get kicked out. It’s not like my employer dropped any stock options on somebody like me.”

  “Look, it’s still a start, Jerome. And better than the alternative around here, you know that.”

  “I’m gonna keep moving up. Work my ass off and then we are out of here and we’re never looking back.”

  “You and your grandmother?”

  “She took me in when my mama died. Brain tumor and no health insurance, that ain’t a real good combo. My daddy bit it on a .45 he stuck in his own mouth when he was high on something. You damn right I’ll take care of her, just like she took care of me.”

  “And Kevin?”

  “I take care of Kevin too.” He glowered at Web. “If you people can find him.”

  “We’re trying. I know a little about his family. His relation to Big—I mean, Francis.”

  “He’s Kevin’s father. So what?”

  “A little more than that. I’ve met Francis up close. Too close, actually.” Web pointed out the remnants of his assorted facial injuries inflicted by the man.

  Jerome looked at him curiously. “You lucky that’s all he done to you.”

  “Yeah, I’m getting that feeling. He told me how Kevin came into this world. With his mother and all.”

  “Stepmother.”

  “What?”

  “She was Francis’s stepmother. Strung out most of the time. Don’t know what happened to his real mama.”

  Web let out a relieved breath. It wasn’t incest. He glanced at Claire, who said, “So they’re actually not brothers. They’re father and son. Does Kevin know that?”

  “I never told him.”

  “But he thinks Francis is his brother? Is that how Francis wanted it?” asked Claire, while Web watched her closely.

  “What Francis wants, he gets, that answer enough for you?” “Why would Francis want Kevin to believe they were brothers?” “Maybe he didn’t want Kevin to know he was screwing his step-mom and Kevin’s mom. Her name was Roxy. She was into drugs and all that, but she was good to Kevin before she died.”

  “How did Kevin get shot?” asked Web.

  “He was with Francis, got caught in some gang shootout. Francis brought him here, only time I ever seen that man cry. I took him to the hospital myself ’cause cops just arrest his ass if Francis took him. Kevin never cried, not one time, and bleeding like a son of a bitch. But he’s never been the same since. Other kids tease him, call him a retard.”

  “Kids can be cruel, and then they grow up and get even more cruel, they’re just a lot more subtle about it,” commented Claire.

  “Kevin ain’t stupid. Smart as a whip. And he can draw, man, draw like you can’t believe.”

  Claire looked interested. “Care to show me?”