him to bolt. I’d rather not have to tackle him in the snow.”
Gage’s encrypted cell phone rang as Viz walked away.
“That file was a pain in the ass,” Alex Z said, “but I got it, boss. I just e-mailed it back.”
Just then, Arndt walked from the entrance toward his car.
“I’ll look for it. Thanks. I’ve got to go.”
By the time Arndt arrived at his driver’s side door, Viz was bent down sifting through the slush.
Through the gap in the window Gage heard Arndt challenge Viz, “What are you doing next to my car?”
Viz angled his head upward. “Looking for my keys.”
Gage got out of the SUV.
“Do it after I’m gone,” Arndt said.
Viz straightened up. Gage came to a stop behind Arndt, who looked back. The flush of exercise and anger faded from Arndt’s face.
Arndt turned his body sideways in the narrow space between the cars and spread himself flat against the BMW. His head swiveled back and forth between Gage and Viz. Gage had four inches on him. Viz had even more. Arndt’s gaze settled on Viz, a seeming effort to convince them that he hadn’t recognized Gage.
“What do you want?” Arndt said, his voice sounding forced, as though trying to use the words not as a question, but as an accusation.
Gage answered. “Let’s not play games. You know who I am and what I want: the name of your client and why he wanted me followed.”
“You’re asking the wrong guy,” Arndt said, now looking up at Gage. “My name’s not at the top of the letterhead, only in the small print along the side with the rest of the grunts.”
“I’m not sure why it’s on the letterhead at all,” Gage said. “You commit a sin in a past life?”
“It pays the bills.”
“No it doesn’t. I’ve seen your credit report.”
Arndt folded his arms across his chest. “And I’ve seen a hotel surveillance video of you and Strubb taken just before Gilbert’s murder.”
“Is that supposed to worry me? “
Arndt opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it again.
Gage could tell that Arndt had realized that the role the video had been acting in the theater of his mind didn’t match reality.
“I also want to know why you were having Hennessy followed,” Gage said, “and whether you had anything to do with him going over the cliff.”
Arndt’s palm shot out toward Gage. “Wait a second. I didn’t get involved until just before he… he…” His arm now hung there without purpose, the meaning having been drained from the gesture by his inadvertent admission. He lowered it, followed by his head, and then clenched his fists by his side. “I knew it would come to this. I knew it-I knew it-I knew it.”
Gage pushed past the little-boy rant. It was too early to allow Arndt to see himself as the victim.
“Why did Wycovsky want you to manage the surveillance?” Gage asked.
“It sure as hell wasn’t because he thought I was competent,” Arndt said, shaking his head. He still hadn’t looked up. The slushing of club members’ feet as they shuffled from their cars to the entrance was now lost to him. “He just wants everybody’s hands as dirty as his.”
Gage turned and leaned back against Arndt’s Volvo, trying to make Arndt’s position seem less claustrophobic.
“I don’t know all of the details,” Gage said, “but I think your hands may be dirtier even than what you imagine when you’re lying in bed at night-and I’m not talking about Gilbert’s murder. I know why that happened and it had nothing to do with you.”
Arndt looked up at Gage. “Nobody said anything about killing Hennessy. They were just supposed to follow him.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know. They were different than the local people. I took over the Albany end when Wycovsky left for Marseilles.”
“What were they trying to find out?”
Arndt shrugged. “I still don’t know. But I think they were playing defense, not offense. Trying to find out how much Hennessy knew about something and how much he’d shared with others.”
Gage thought of Elaine Hennessy’s empty DVD cases. “And I take it that was the reason for the burglary at his house.”
Arndt’s eyes widened at Gage. “How did you-“
“Putting two and two together,” Gage said, “and that addition puts you in the middle of a conspiracy-but I’m not telling you something you don’t already know. You realized it when Wycovsky came back from France, but by then you had no way out.”
Arndt lowered his head again. The silence that followed was flat and hard. There was no deep meaning to be probed. It had all come to the surface.
Gage looked past Arndt toward Viz, whose frown and set jaw suggested that he’d seen in Arndt what Gage had: one of those men they’d too often found at domestic crime scenes whose sleepwalk through life had ended with the sound of a gunshot and gunpowder residue on their hands.
“I need you to help me with something late tonight,” Gage said. “Do it, and I’ll make sure you never see the inside of a prison. Don’t do it, and you’ll never get out.”
CHAPTER 58
The gasp of opening elevator doors blew down the silent hallway of Shadden Phillips amp; Wycovsky and past the closed door to Wycovsky’s office. Gage felt himself tense. He glanced at his watch: 3 a.m. They’d completed their search of the lawyer’s computer and his file cabinets and were just seconds from slipping away. He pointed at Arndt and gestured for him to hide behind Wycovsky’s desk. Then at Viz and toward the wall to the right of the door. He then switched off his penlight and crouched on the left side.
Shadows of legs in the hallway crossed the gap between the bottom edge of the door and the carpet.
A whispering voice said, “We missed it. It’s back there.”
Shadows again barred the gap, followed by the scrape and click of the bolt sliding and coming free of the latch plate.
As the door opened, a sliver of light expanded into a beam and then into a flood that was blocked by two man-shaped shadows. A head turned and nodded. The face silhouetted on the carpet appeared jagged and angular.
Gage guessed they were wearing night vision goggles. He had only seconds to surprise them before they spotted him. He waited until the first stepped inside, then sprang between them and punched an elbow into the gut of the trailing man and a fist into the kidney of the leader.
Gage lowered his shoulder into the stomach of the one in the hallway and drove the flailing man into the opposite wall. He then felt a massive weight pound into his side, tumbling him down the hallway. He came to a stop facedown.
“Freeze. Police.”
A cocking weapon above his head froze him in place.
Gage heard the words repeated behind him, then glanced over his shoulder and spotted two men in black tactical jumpsuits holding semiautomatic pistols, one pointing down at him, one aimed through the office doorway. The man he’d tackled lay slumped and groaning between them.
“Put the gun down.” It was Viz’s voice. “Or I’ll drop you where you stand.”
Gage guessed that Viz had wrested a gun away from his man and was using him as a shield. Gage used the stalemate to push himself up to one knee, and then onto his feet. He raised his hands, and turned around.
“Stay cool until we find out who these guys are,” Gage yelled to Viz, and then said to the man in front of him.
