“I have a collect call from Travis Donnolly for Harry Sinclair.”
“Donovan!” Travis countered. She did that on purpose!
The line was quiet for a second. “Travis Donovan?” the gruff voice asked. “We don’t know no Travis Donovan.”
“I’m Sunshine’s son,” Travis added quickly.
More silence.
“Will you accept the charges?” the operator pressed.
The answer came slowly, suspiciously. “Yeah, we’ll accept.”
Travis let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. “Thank you,” he said gratefully. After the operator left them with a click, the boy said, “Uncle Harry?”
“No,” the voice said sourly. “I’m a friend of his. Who are you really?” The threat in his voice was heavy; palpable even eight hundred miles away.
The sound of the voice launched a shiver down Travis’s spine. “I’m really me,” he insisted. “I’m Sunshine’s kid.”
“This isn’t a joke, is it, kid?” the voice pressed. “This is the wrong number if this is a joke.”
Travis swallowed hard. “N-no, this isn’t a joke,” he stammered. “M-my mom and dad need Uncle Harry’s help.”
Again, the phone line filled with silence. “Okay,” the voice said finally. “Hang on a minute.”
Travis nodded absently. “Okay,” he said. Fact was, the guy on the other end had unnerved him enough that he’d stay right there all day and into the night, if he had to.
“Holy shit, we got ’em!” Paul Boersky whooped, drawing Irene’s attention away from her mountain of paper. “The tap on Harry Sinclair’s phone. Not three hours old, and we already got a hit!”
“Where?” Irene’s voice buzzed with excitement. She had a call scheduled with Frankel in an hour and a half, and this was exactly the kind of scoop she prayed for.
Paul turned his attention back to the telephone and relayed Irene’s question. “They don’t have it pinned down completely, but it looks like it’s from West Virginia. Some place called Winston Springs.”
“Hot damn!” Irene rejoiced. “They’re recording everything, presume?”
“As we speak,” Paul announced. The room came alive, with war whoops and high-fives all around.
While Paul stayed on the line for updates, Irene set herself to the task of siccing the West Virginia State Police onto her fugitives.
Harry Sinclair realized he probably should have mentioned his suspicions to Thorne. Truth be known, he’d been expecting the call since the news first broke yesterday, and while entirely unsure how he could be of much help, he remained committed to doing whatever he could.
He hadn’t counted on the Justice Department, however. Periodically, they put taps on his phones, but never before at a time when they could do any real harm. Thankfully, Harry knew when the taps were to go into place, courtesy of a well-placed associate in the Chicago District of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Harry grew up with the guy’s father back in the old days on the South Side and invested a few bucks in the deli he owned downtown. When the friend got hammered by the Health Department on some technical violations, Harry made a couple of calls to the Mayor’s Office and got him off the hook. Even fronted the money to make the necessary repairs. Kids from the old neighborhood still knew what loyalty was all about.
The timing of Travis’s call could not have been worse. As soon as Thorne told him who was on the line-and after he got over the shock of it being a kid-Harry knew they’d lit a short fuse. How short, exactly, he couldn’t tell.
As Thorne brought the news, Harry instinctively checked his watch. “How long has he been on the line?” he asked.
Thorne shrugged. “Three minutes, maybe?”
Harry nodded. “Okay, scramble the call for a couple of minutes, then bring it up on the digital phone.”
Over the course of the next three or four minutes, the kid’s call would be transferred electronically all over the world, ultimately ending up on a private line in Harry’s Dallas office-officially listed as the residence of a priest- and his staffer there would transfer the call at random to one of four digital phones at the house whose crystals were changed every four days, making them virtually impossible to track. Such precautions were a pain in the ass, but Harry had learned the hard way just how adept his competition was getting at electronic eavesdropping. Just two years ago, in fact, he’d lost a billion-dollar communications contract by a margin of less than a thousand dollars to a wiseass Texas redneck, and he knew then that the rules of engagement had changed. Now this business of call-scrambling was more the rule than the exception. That it also frustrated the occasional eavesdropper-with-a- badge was just so much icing on the cake.
The phone tap shouldn’t have been a surprise, he supposed. God knew they’d slapped them on before, with far less cause. Nothing pissed off the Justice Department quite as much as the act of making a lot of money while employing thousands of workers. If you could do that, then you had to be doing something illegal. Unless you contributed to the president’s reelection campaign, of course, and Harry would light a bonfire with his fortune before he gave a dime to that S.O.B. He’d already slept in the White House, thank you very much, and truth be told, the Four Seasons was a hell of a lot more comfortable.
The instant he got word of the tap, he’d set his lawyers to work getting it quashed. These things took time, though, and the FBI had undoubtedly snagged a recording of the kid’s call being accepted by Thorne. That could be a problem. Didn’t take much these days to establish enough probable cause to cut a warrant, and with that paper in hand, they’d tear his place apart looking for Sunshine. He sighed. The Justice Department lived for moments like this.
Harry’s war with the feds dated back to the midseventies, when Chicago’s congressional representative woke up one morning and realized to his horror that Harry was buying up much of the most valuable real estate in the city and that every penny of the tycoon’s generous campaign contributions was going to the wrong party. Alleging unfair competitive practices, the congressman told an all-too-sympathetic president, who in turn whispered a few words to the attorney general.
And so it was, a few years later, that Harry Sinclair was sentenced to federal prison for income tax violations that would have netted anyone else in the country a wrist slap and a fine.
As outrageously unfair as it was, the experience proved a real eyeopener. Five years was a long time to live in a concrete room, denied privacy and sunlight, while choking down the double-fried slave shit they called food- although not nearly as long as the eight they’d slapped him with initially. Those were years that he’d never get back; places he’d never visit, deals he’d never close.
These days, Harry enjoyed the simple pleasures, rarely making an appearance in his palatial offices downtown. When the mood struck, he’d take a float in the pool or maybe indulge in a round of golf. He had managers now to handle the day-to-day crap. The time had come for him to reap the benefits of his empire.
Freedom meant everything to Harry; he wouldn’t wish jail on anybody. Now his Sunshine’s freedom was at risk again, and he couldn’t bear the thought. He felt an emotion boiling in his gut that he hadn’t felt in years-not since he’d stepped away from the negotiating end of the business. He felt himself bracing for war.
When he heard the chirp of a digital phone, Harry stood from behind his desk and strolled to the blue leather sofa along the opposite wall. Always a man of considerable girth, there was a jiggle now to his ample gut, where once it appeared to have been made of stone.
Thorne handed him the telephone. “Thank you,” he said, then motioned for the other man to stick around. Pausing a moment to find the proper demeanor, he punched the connect button. “Yes?”
“Is this Uncle Harry?” a boy’s voice said from the other end of the line, frustration growling in his throat.
“It is.”
“Finally!” Travis blurted. “God, I thought I’d never get through to you. Jeeze!”
Harry said nothing while the boy ranted, waiting instead for him to settle down to listen. He caught on quickly. The flurry of words ended, replaced with an uncomfortable silence.
“Hello?” Travis asked. “Are you still there?”
“Are you finished?” Harry’s tone carried a stern rebuke.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry. I just…” Travis stopped himself in midsentence, and as he did, Harry watched in his mind as the boy calmed himself and got to the business at hand. “Okay, Uncle Harry, I’m Travis Brighton… No, I’m not, dammit… oh, sorry… I’m Travis Donovan. You don’t know me, but…”
