A Bridge to Treachery From Extortion to Terror Page 31

  “There’s a ranger across the lake,” she mumbled finally. “But he drove out this morning in his pickup.”

  “Is he alone in the house?”

  “He has a dog, that’s all.”

  “You stay right here. Don’t move. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

  “I can’t wait here. I can’t. I have to get away.”

  “You stay! Hear me? I’m going across the lake to the ranger’s cabin. I’ll call you from there with his number. As soon as you see anything, ring me on the phone. They’ll be coming. As far as they know, you’re the only one left who knows anything. One more thing: if you run, I’ll come after you, understand?”

  Lou jogged toward the van as fast as his stiffened thigh would allow. He slammed it into gear and roared off down the gravel road past the peeling white bungalow. At first, he couldn’t see the cabin across the lake; a point of land that jutted up from the water blocked it from view. But as the road curved around the point, he could see the cabin clearly on the far side.

  The dog was a big, black lab. He was tied to a stake at the side of the house. He had a deep throaty bark, but he wasn’t that anxious to get off the tether. Lou pushed on the front door. It swung back easily. The cabin was dark inside—a single man’s place.

  The curtains were dusty and yellowing. A strong smell of pipe tobacco hung in the air. The breakfast dishes lay where the ranger had finished with them that morning. A lumpy armchair sat beneath a floor lamp in the back room. A mound of ashes filled the fieldstone fireplace. A glass doored gun rack sat in the corner. He picked up the plain black phone and twirled the rotary dial. She answered on the first ring.

  “The number is 555-8943,” Lou said. “You see any car at all, you call. Hear?”

  He had his choice from among several rifles and a shotgun. He took the Savage, double-barreled, over-and-under. He found the shells in the desk drawer on the other side of the room, loaded the weapon, and shoved the rest of the box in his pants pocket. The lab on the front porch didn’t even bother to look up at him. He limped down the front steps and to the van, squinting against the sun, trying to see across to the other side of the lake. Then he heard the telephone.

  He made it back to the porch on the second ring. The door swung free and slammed against the wall. But that was all he heard, just two rings. Then he heard the lab outside again.

  A boat tied to a steel hook embedded in a boulder bobbed at the edge of the water. It had an electric trolling motor but there was no battery. Lou propped the gun against the rock and went back to the van to scavenge. Carrying the heavy battery wasn’t easy with only one good leg. He made it back to the boat, pushed the two leads onto the terminals, and tried the rheostat. The engine sprang to life. The anchor was a cement block at the end of a soggy rope and Lou got wet to his knees hefting it into the boat, weapon tucked under his arm.

  He steered toward the point of land that protruded from the water. The engine was barely audible even to him. He looked back at the ranger cabin receding into the trees above the slowly spreading vee formed by his wake. Up front, the barrel of the shotgun propped against the gunwale.

  He felt the cold, morning air cutting through him. He shoved one hand, then the other, into his armpits. He slowed as he approached the shore and glided in for a gentle landing.

  Another car was parked directly in front of the bungalow. Lou crouched in the bushes beside the lake, waited. There was no movement at the house. He rose slowly, hobbled to the other side of the road, and doubled back behind the line of cabins that ran parallel to the lake. Now he had a covered route to within fifty feet of the bungalow. He edged up to the corner of the cabin next door and peeked around at the back door. Nothing.

  Slowly, with the shotgun up and at the ready, he stepped into the clearing between the buildings. He paced cautiously across the open, fifty-foot span, his eyes straining to detect the slightest movement. He made it to the bungalow; still hearing nothing inside, he edged along toward the front. At the corner, he pressed his back against the crumbling, whitewashed clapboards and peered around the building’s edge.

  There! Right in front of him—Stanfield—walking from the car to the front door. They came face to face. Lou stumbled backwards, caught the heel of his bad foot on a clump of sod, and fell backward to his rump. Stanfield stood frozen; his face a mask iced in complete surprise.

  It was comic: Stanfield paralyzed, his hands stuck out in front, fingers clutching air; Lou on his ass, staring for what seemed an eternity in suspended animation. Then, simultaneously, they broke into wooden motions like clutching athletes: Stanfield reaching for a shoulder holster, Lou raising the shotgun.

  “Don’t do it!” Lou screamed. But it was no good. He saw the blue steel of the pistol barrel and he pressed the trigger.

  Stanfield disappeared in the blast, sprawled twisted against the rear wheel of the car. Stanfield was the big mouth, but he wasn’t a coward. Lou rose to his feet, propping himself against the clapboards until the sudden wave of dizziness passed. He stumbled along the wall toward the back of the house, and then turned the corner, ready.

  Copeland was halfway out the back door, his shoulder pointed directly at Lou, his pistol, the Lorcin L-25, up and ready. Five feet separated them.

  “Hold it!” Lou screamed with all his strength. It came out high-pitched and panic-stricken. He was crouched with the shotgun at waist height and pointed directly into Copeland’s face. The pistol in Copeland’s hand canted upward. He didn’t move.

  Lou knew he was thinking, thinking. “I’ll do it. You know that,” he said softly.

  Copeland let the pistol fall from his hand to the leaves at the bottom of the step. Lou released his breath and felt his knees go limp with the release of panic-driven energy.

  “Back yourself right into the kitchen.”

  Inside, Ashley Corcoran cowered in the corner of the front room, her face buried in her arms. She refused to look up when he spoke to her.

  “You all right...? Okay, screw it then. Copeland, you get your ass over there on the floor with her. We’re staying right here.”

  He slumped to the floor himself, his back against the wall directly across from them, the stock of the shotgun wedged under his arm.

  “All right, Christopher. Tell me what you want. One thing I know about you is that you like money.”

  That was it, the final indignity, the last blast of punk bravado.

  “Stand up!” Lou screamed. “Get on your feet!”

  Copeland stood. Lou roughly rammed the shotgun muzzle into Copeland’s cheek, shoving him to the wall, forcing him to the corner, pinned to the wall shelf.

  “I’m going to kill you, punk!”

  “Do it.”

  Lou pushed harder on the butt of the shotgun, mashing Copeland’s ear against the wall, forcing him to his tiptoes.

  “Who are you?” Lou’s voice broke.

  Copeland gasped out the words. “My name is Aguirra.”

  “Yeah, and mine’s Cook!” Lou cocked the weapon erratically.

  “Aguirra.”

  “Panama.”

  “Yes.”

  “You did all of this for Panama?”

  “Yes.”

  Lou jerked the shotgun down and wheeled to slam the butt hard against the side of Copeland’s head. He lurched along the wall. Lou moved forward and kicked him viciously in the ass. He rolled into the corner. Lou pinned him to the wall with the muzzle again.

  “Three seconds, mister! I want answers! One...two...”

  “What answers?”

  “Why?” Lou screamed. “Why? One...two...”

  “You. You fucking Americans think you can fuck with us all you want.” The words were laced with a heavy Latin accent.

  Lou pointed the shotgun at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The room rocked with the roar. The two men shielded their heads from a shower of plaster and dust. The girl screamed.

  “Now, you phony prick, spill your guts or I’m doing it for you! Why? That
’s what I want. Why?”

  “Why? You know why!”

  Lou jerked the trigger. The wall beside Copeland’s head disintegrated in dust and plaster shards. Lou’s ears rang as he jammed two more shells into the chambers.

  “Liar! You’re going to die! One...two...”

  “Kill me!”

  Lou pulled the butt of the shotgun back to club him across the room.

  From the bedroom, the jangle of the telephone, like the sudden scream of an incoming rocket, froze them all.

  “Who the hell...?” Lou croaked, looking at Ashley. She shook her head. “Get it,” he said.

  * * *

  She looked around the doorframe: “They say to take a look out the window.”

  “Move and you’re dead,” he said to Copeland.

  He limped to the window; pulled back the curtains; looked up the gravel road toward the water tank. A blue and white police patrol car blocked the road; at the other end, where the road curved around the point of land, sat a plain green Plymouth. Three other black vans with red lights on the roof lined the road, parked at crazy angles.

  “They say come out with our hands in the air. They have the area completely surrounded.” She sounded desolate.

  “Sit down!” Lou growled. Copeland fell against the wall and slid to the floor. Lou dropped to his knees, then his butt.

  “Tell them we’re not coming out.”

  It was over now. But for a while he could hold this one spot, hold control: these two under the gun; the threat of death to anyone who entered or rushed him. Control, until they blew them away from all sides at once. He was ready. He watched the two of them against the opposite wall through swollen eyelids.

  “They’ll have to come and get me,” he said in a whisper.

  A bullhorn voice blared: “MR. CHRISTOPHER, THE AREA IS COMPLETELY CORDONED OFF. COME OUT AND THERE WON’T BE ANY SHOOTING.”

  He screamed so they could hear: “Stay away! I have a gun!”

  “MR. CHRISTOPHER, THERE’S NO NEED TO RESIST. YOU’RE SAFE NOW.”

  “Stay where you are!”

  “YOUR WIFE IS HERE WITH US, MR. CHRISTOPHER. LOOK OUT THE WINDOW.”

  “Get away,” he screamed.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Maggie sat on the passenger side of the Subaru. Agent Riegelhaupt was at the wheel. He screeched up behind Kilmartin’s green sedan, killed the engine, grabbed Mag, and dragged her across the seat out onto the grass where they crouched clear of the line of fire. She saw three armed men in black scramble up into the rocks above the tiny bungalow.

  A cluster of men huddled behind a black van. A uniformed policeman spoke into a giant bull horn. Another in a black jumpsuit motioned to the men climbing the rocks to disperse further right and left. Three more men in black crouched in firing position at the corners of the vehicle. Kilmartin spoke into a bulky car phone.

  Mag sat on the ground behind the Subaru and stared at the stones. Lou was in that wreck of a cottage. Maybe wounded. Maybe dead. Her head swirled with the news stories that had filled the hours before she finally collapsed in exhaustion after returning home from the auction and her final talk with Lou.

  The story had swamped television news since last night. Eager news readers pushed their resident studio pundits into more and more speculations about who was behind the attack, then cut away to video crews interviewing police and bystanders up in Stony Point who recounted the chaos at the scene. Mag winced at the portrayals of a pitifully bungled bonfire on Bear Mountain Bridge. The election was over. Bliss had lost, but the story lived on and grew.

  Reporters stormed the headquarters of the State Police and Fort Montgomery PD. Commuters at Grand Central recounted a strange chase and apparent arrest at the station last evening. Reports leaked out of the 53rd Precinct in the city about that bizarre incident and mysterious disappearance, possibly of the man involved. Every half hour, it seemed there was more “breaking news” of some development in the saga, none of them actually that relevant.

  And then that headline in the scandal loving New York Post this morning: “LOVERS STILL FREE”. She knew the story by heart: the chief perpetrator and some coed in the attack force luridly portrayed as a variation on Bonny and Clyde. It was all a lie. She knew it was. The imagination of some wild-eyed cub reporter. Yet, it stung. It reached down into the center of her heart and lodged there like a jagged chunk of flint.

  Maggie pulled in a huge gulp of air that swelled her chest. She stared hard into the stones and grass at her feet. Focus. Concentrate. Cling to the calm that had settled into the pit of her stomach when Riegelhaupt rapped on the bedroom door and told her to come quick. They had Lou.

  It was the last act. Lou was alive in that wretched shack. He was. He was. She knew he was.

  Mag heard one loud crack reverberate through the trees to the water tower, across the lake to the ranger’s cabin and back. A dog’s low howl came drifting out over the water. A tiny puff of white smoke rose from a cleft beside one of the boulders above them.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Copeland, feet splayed, his back firm against the wall in front of Lou, suddenly jerked violently and canted to the side noiselessly. A small black hole appeared above his left eye; a thin stream of blood oozed down the bridge of his nose and onto his cheek. Where his head had rested moments before, a large blob of blood and brain matter spattered the wall.

  Ashley screamed and scuttled desperately across the floor; clung in a ball to Lou’s left foot. Lou shook her loose and slid to the window. He broke the shotgun, checked that he had two rounds, and then cracked it closed again. He glanced up at the window; saw a small hole in the top pane. A piercing glint of reflected light leaped from the boulders across the road and above a Subaru—his Subaru.

  “Sniper,” he muttered. “Keep out of sight.”

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God, guard us in our hour of need...” Ashley blubbered into the crook of her elbow.

  The bungalow door flew open. Lou raised the shotgun to fire. “HOLD YOUR FIRE! HOLD IT!”

  The first man who entered had been made in the mold of Antonio Banderas in the movie Pancho Villa with the handlebar mustache and all, but he was still credible. He wore a black jumpsuit and combat boots. His baseball cap was on backwards. Lou looked up into his eyes as the man walked over calmly and lifted the shotgun from of his hands. Several more plainclothesmen followed. They stood Ashley on her feet and walked her toward the door.

  Without a weapon, Lou felt the last vestige of energy spill out onto the floor to mix with Copeland’s blood. He slumped back against the wall and let his chin drop against his chest.

  “Louis.” He opened his eyes and saw Kilmartin squatting in front of him. “Why the hell did you leave Fort Lee? You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “It didn’t seem like sticking around was good for my health,” Lou said, closing his eyes again.

  “Granted, it was not a pretty sight in the parking lot. The prints from the apartment will probably confirm that we had it right from the start on the Panama connection.”

  “Sure. Don’t waste your breath. Just do whatever you’re going to do.”

  “We’re almost certain this guy’s name is Nidi Aguirra,” he said, nodding to Copeland, whose eyes now stared lifelessly at them. We’ll know for sure in a little while.

  “Right.”

  “He’s registered at the college down the road. A post-Vietnam vet from Cristobal. Took the Army route to citizenship. Together with the other one out there on the ground—the one with no face, Javier Lomedico from Caldera—we have our Panamanian perps, dead unfortunately. We have you. We have some more corpses: Walter Anspach, who you knew as Red; Chester Frawley; Sydney Winkler; and Patricia Buck. The four we picked up near the bridge rounds out the picture. So it’s a wrap. Correct?”

  Riegelhaupt came in and whispered in Kilmartin’s ear. “You’ve got a visitor,” Kilmartin said to Lou.

  * * *

  Maggie came in smiling. He looked up at
her face, but couldn’t smile. He wasn’t ready for this moment; the surge of joy and shame together took over. She came to him, knelt on the floor in front of him, and took his hands in hers. His eyes were dry but his mouth betrayed a flood of emotion.

  “Maggie,” he said, slowly, in a hoarse whisper, trying to hold himself in control. “If they let you, go far away from here.”

  “Shh,” she said.

  “Be smart.”

  “Remember what I said on the phone,” she said.

  “I’ve ruined everything for us.”