Don't Know Jack

“Agent Otto, Agent Gaspar,” Sylvia said, rising, as if greeting old friends. “How may I help you?”

Kim selected her best opening. She touched Sylvia’s arm, connecting. Gentle, lowered voice. “Cooper’s cut you loose, Sylvia. He’s setting you up. He sent us to Zurich for evidence against you.”

Sylvia barely flinched, but Kim caught it. She said, “He sacrificed you last time. He’s doing it again. You’ll go to prison.”

“That’s not true.” Faint whisper, quivering chin, dry mouth.

“You think he’ll be your Main Man forever? Come on. You’re smarter than that. Aren’t you?”

“Smarter than you give me credit for.”

Kim said, “I think you’re a very smart woman. That’s why I’m here. Come with us. It’s all set up for real this time.”

No response. Kim felt the clock ticking. Sylvia looked to Marion for guidance. For fifteen years Marion had mentored and protected her younger protege. Sylvia trusted her.

Another betrayal.

Kim pushed as hard as she dared. “I thought Marion was my friend once. But believe me, her own hide always comes before yours.”

No response.

Gaspar said, “Wake up, Sylvia. You were expendable five years ago and you’re expendable now. Cooper would have killed you in that Chevy with Bernie Owens, but he still needed you. When he doesn’t need you anymore, that’ll be the end. And it’s coming.”

No response.

Kim said, “He’s on his way here now to take you away, isn’t he?”

Sylvia’s expression was the only acknowledgement required.

Kim said, “You’re leaving DC. You’re leaving the country. And when no one is around to watch him? He’s going to kill you, Sylvia. You know that. You know it.”

Sylvia looked down at her hands. She was close to panic. Kim recognized the signs.

One last hard push.

“He’s using you, Sylvia,” Kim said. “He doesn’t love you.”

“He does too.” Defensive and insecure, but defiant.

Kim considered telling the truth, that Cooper didn’t love anyone. Was never loyal to anyone. Never had been and never would be. But Kim had read Sylvia’s memoirs. She wasn’t the stone cold bitch Gaspar assumed her to be. She was bendable. Fragile. Somewhere under all that experience, the Iowa farm girl remained.

And Kim knew all about farm girls. She’d been one herself, once upon a time. Impossible to beat your DNA. Couldn’t be done. Even after years of trying. In death, Sylvia’s farm girl DNA would be precisely identifiable. No escape. Only surrender. Kim had to make Sylvia own it.

Sylvia loved Cooper. And she wanted to believe Cooper loved her. But she was as smart as she said she was. Or at least as cunning. Self-preservation was paramount. She knew the truth. So she’d work it out eventually, precisely the way Kim had planned.

But how long would Sylvia take to get there? Cooper was close. Kim felt it the same way she felt the temperature in the room.

She said, “You’ve been betrayed before, Sylvia. You know how it feels. Your heart hurts. Your mind warns you constantly, but you keep going, thinking you’re going to get away, that it’s only fear, that you can break through, you’re really OK. But you know you’re not. You know. Trust your gut, Sylvia. Trust me.”

No response.

Kim said, “We’ve got to get out of here before he shows up. We’re sitting here like targets, Sylvia. Are you coming with us or not?”

She was so focused on Sylvia that Marion Wallace’s voice startled her.

“You should think about it, Sylvia dear,” Marion said absently, rustling the paper as she turned the page. “I mean, why don’t you go with them? He’s rescued you before. He’ll do it again. And when he does, you’ll know for sure that he loves you and everything these people are telling you is nonsense.”

Translation: use the emergency plan. Working girls always had one. And these two working girls were smarter than most and they’d been in tight spots before. Sylvia raised her head and looked directly into Marion’s eyes. Something passed between them. A bond forged in earlier times, and leaner struggles. Sylvia nodded slightly.

“OK,” she said. “Let me get my bag. I’ll hurry.”

And she headed up the stairs.

Marion returned her gaze to her newspaper. “Still too trusting, Agent Otto. She might escape.”

“You told her to come with us. She will.”

“You overestimate me. People do what they do.”

But five minutes later Sylvia came back, with her bag.

***

Sylvia hugged Marion and said, “Until we meet again, sweetie.” Then she led Otto and Gaspar through back hallways to a rear exit originally used for deliveries. They came out in a narrow paved alley running parallel with Dumbarton Street. There was dog manure and broken bottles and empty soda cans and trash and pale leggy weeds all over it. There were overfilled dumpsters awaiting pickup. Overhead, a low grey cloud ceiling masked visibility. Winds whipped around corners and through tunnels between buildings. They walked fast, with their hands stuffed into their pockets for warmth.

They were twenty feet from the end of the alley when Archie Leach stepped out of the shadows.

CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

They all stopped dead. Leach was at least six-three and two-fifty. He filled half the alley’s width. An effective barrier. He was scowling hard but not speaking. He was dressed in jeans and boots and jacket.

Kim said, “What do you want, Leach?”

Leach moved his right arm and brought a shotgun out from behind his leg. Not the Browning A-5 his brother had used in Eno’s diner. It was a Remington SP-10 instead. He pointed it directly at Gaspar. Kim slowed down into extreme high-alert mode. She saw every detail. She heard individual motes of dust jousting in the wind. She smelled garlic and pumpkin and rotten eggs and cat urine.

Leach took six deliberate steps forward, never dropping the shotgun’s barrel a fraction. His eyes were on Gaspar. When he was close enough to be heard, he said, “You killed my brother, and I can’t let that go.”

Gaspar maintained eye contact, and pushed Sylvia out of the way. Kim reached out and pulled her close. But clear of her own right hand. Sylvia was shaking. It felt real enough.

Gaspar said, “You don’t really believe I killed your brother, and no one else will, either.”

Leach advanced, gritty steps loud on the asphalt. He said, “You should have opened that car door before Jim ever got there, asshole. You saw Bernie inside. He could have been alive. You might have saved him. You’re an FBI agent. You should have checked him out.”

That’s crazy, was Kim’s immediate thought. She understood what Roscoe had been trying to tell her. Archie Leach was armed, dangerous, and out of his mind. Kim thought: I could die today. Right here in this alley, among dog shit and weeds and rotting garbage.

What was Leach waiting for?

Then she heard footsteps behind her.

She glanced back.

Michael Hale was there.

***