Werewolf Cop (6 page)

“Crazy,” she said. “London. Paris. Berlin. Look at that: that's the Acropolis,” she added, pointing to one of the fires. “The Louvre—look at that. Eesh.” The sound was on low. Reporter's voices murmuring:
Unions . . . Islamists . . . Fascists. . . .
She muted them now. “Sit down, sit down.”

She pointed them to the sofa, then took her place in the armchair in front of her vast wood-veneer desk, her thin legs crossed. The men sat shoulder to shoulder on the oversoft cushions, looking at her where she was framed in the glare of day from the big window behind her. The gleaming right triangle that topped the Citibank office tower was wedged into the gray autumn sky out there. The flaming images on the TV set were half-visible on the wall to their left.

Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell was small and taut and wiry. Hair short and wiry. A big nose on a long face—looked like a depressed pony, Goulart once said, a description Zach could never quite get out of his mind. She always wore pants suits, always dark colors—dark blue today—with something bright for contrast—a bright green jacket now. Zach imagined she had gotten this fashion strategy from some magazine article about “Power Dressing” or something. But that was just a guess; such things were beyond his ken.

“So, where are we on Paz?” she said. She addressed herself to Zach. She loathed Goulart. No big surprise. It wasn't as if he was discreet in expressing his opinions about her. And he was just the sort of swinging dick she generally hated on sight anyway. So while she prided herself on her objective appreciation of his professional skills, blah, blah, blah, she would have loved to reassign the guy to a school crossing somewhere.

“Still canvassing, looking for any more videos,” said Zach—while she peered at him with her big, dampish eyes in a very intent
I-am-all-business-Buster
sort of way. “Waiting for the ME prelim, though I've got a hunch our vics died from being chopped into pieces. Our main lead is the boy. He says Abend was looking for something.”

“Something or someone,” Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell corrected him brusquely. “He said Abend was asking about a ‘stupid bastard.'”

Zach didn't want to undercut April Gomez—and didn't want Goulart to open
his
big mouth and undercut her—so he disregarded this and pushed on.

“Since Paz was a fence,” Zach said, “we're going on the theory that what Abend's after is likely some item of stolen merchandise that passed through his hands—or something Abend believes passed through his hands. Whatever it is, if the boy is right, Abend was willing to show up personally to torture Paz into telling him where it is. We figure he either got the information he wanted out of Paz before he killed him, or Paz didn't have what he wanted, so he killed him as the perfect end to a perfect evening. Either way, we figure if we find out what Abend wants, we have a chance of finding Abend.”

“Ideas?”

And what's with all her clipped one-word, two-word sentences? Goulart sometimes ranted. Is that supposed to make us understand just how tough and efficient she is? Talk like a human being, for Christ's sake!

“We're trying to run down who Paz was doing business with,” Zach went on. “And any storage facilities where he might've been warehousing the hot goods.”

“Good,” said Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell. “Follow up on that.”

No
, Zach knew Goulart would say later,
we thought we'd just let it lie there like a lox
. Which was a particularly irritating thing about Goulart: the way he got in your head so you would actually think the things he was going to say later. You basically ended up saying them for him as if to save him the trouble.

“There's something else,” said Zach. “Could be nothing, but. . . . The boy said Abend was asking about ‘stoomp bassard' or ‘stupe bassard' or something. I turned up something online called Stumpf's Baselard. According to the dictionary, a baselard is a kind of sword or dagger folks wore in the 14th and 15th, maybe 16th, centuries. And Stumpf's Baselard—well, we're not sure. It seems to be a dagger that's gone missing. Maybe valuable or something. Anyway, some professor in Germany wrote an article about it and I'm trying to track her down.”

“Interesting,” Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell said. She looked from one to the other of them, waiting for more. That was all they had worth telling. “Okay.” She practically leapt out of her seat in that
I'm-all-business
way she had. “Back to work.” But then, as Goulart started for the door, she said, “Give me a second, Zach, there's something unrelated I wanted to ask you about.” Adding a look at Goulart that said:
Zach alone.

Goulart hesitated, but what was he going to do? Throw a tantrum? “I guess I know when I'm not wanted,” he said with a show of good humor.

“Good,” said Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell. “And if you don't mind, close the door on your way out.”

When he was gone, when Zach was seated on the over-soft sofa again, she brought her chair around the side of the little coffee table and moved it in close to him, her knees near his. Blocking his view of the TV set, of the smoke and fire on the screen, she jutted her long face at him.

“We need to talk about Goulart,” she said.

Zach managed not to groan, but only just. If there was one thing he hated, it was office politics. He considered it girly kindergarten stuff:
If
you're friends with him, you can't be friends with me.
Goulart didn't like Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell, Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell didn't like Goulart. So what? Deal with it. Catch bad guys. Do your job.

“We have reason to believe he's dirty,” said Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell.

Zach was completely blindsided. He reacted before he could stop himself. “Oh, come on, Rebecca!”

“I know.” She held up a hand. “I know. He's your partner—”

“It's not that—”

“And I know what you're thinking. I know how Goulart feels about me. Or about women in general. Or about his ex-wife, whom he projects onto women in general, or whatever it is. I know you figure that must mean I hate him back. Well, I won't pretend he's on my Christmas list. But truth is true, right? That's the whole thing about it. Eyes open or eyes shut, it's just the same. Things happen or they don't. People are what they are. You have a lead, a clue, you follow it, you find what you find, like it or not. The truth is true. We know that.”

Zach's narrow, wind-weathered face had turned to craggy stone. She was right, of course. The truth was true. But she was also right—it was also true—that Goulart was his partner. And unless Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell could prove what she had said—unless she had recordings or pictures—real money shots of Goulart receiving a brown paper bag full of Benjamins in a drug-den men's room—Zach would stand by the man who had walked into that Kansas farmhouse with him three years ago—and his feelings for Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell would turn as stony as his expression.

“There's true—and then there's proving it,” he told her tersely.

She leaned in even closer. Zach could smell her bath soap, feel the heat of her breath. He caught a glimpse of the flames dancing around a marble façade on the TV set behind her.

“You remember that cargo ship we had the Coast Guard stop last month?”

“The
Chevalier
, yeah. What about her?”

“Supposed to be carrying—”

“A container of sex slaves out of Eastern Europe, yeah, only it wasn't.”

“Only it was. Only it might have been, anyway,” said Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell. “A sailor off that ship was busted for killing a hooker in New Orleans last week. He was looking for a deal, so he told the cops there that they'd been tipped off—on the
Chevalier
—they were tipped off that the Coast Guard was coming for them. He says they took the girls out of the container, cut their throats, and threw them overboard. Raped them first, made a party of it.”

Zach flinched at the image, but he said, “What's that got to do with Goulart?”

“Sailor says they got the tip on the Wednesday. That's before we even contacted the Coast Guard. On the Wednesday, no one knew we were onto them but you, me, and Goulart.”

“. . . and the CI who tipped Goulart off in the first place. And whoever told
him
.”

“The sailor says the tip-off came from law enforcement.”

“The sailor also rapes and kills women. That raises some questions in my mind about his character.”

There was a flash of irritation in Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell's green eyes. Irritation—and anxiety, too. Well, yeah: she worried about what people thought of her, and Zach—Zach was the Cowboy—honest to the ground and universally respected. If she lost his good opinion, she'd lose the support of every agent in the division. They'd mutter to one another about her behind her back whenever she passed by. So this was getting tense for her now. She couldn't afford to alienate her best man.

She broke eye contact. Stood. Went back to her desk, around her desk. Zach avoided watching her. He gazed stonily at the TV where some rioters were throwing bottles at some big old church, it looked like.

Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell yanked a desk drawer open, yanked a manila folder out, her motions tight and brisk: more of her
I'm-all-business
routine. Zach just about never lost his temper; but he was, all the same, getting good and angry at her now.

She gauntlet-slapped the folder down on the desktop. “We've put key captures on his work computer. Taps on his desk phone and cell. A trace on his cell.”

Zach stood up. He didn't say anything, but the way he stood up, the way he glared at her, let her know that she was close to losing him entirely. Bugging his partner's phone and computer? She better be right. She damn well better be.

“Why just Goulart?” he asked her. “Why not me? I knew about the
Chevalier
. So did you.”

“Because I know you didn't do it. And I know I didn't. Just hear me out, okay?”

“I'm listening.”

“Goulart has been making multiple calls to burners, untraceable phones.”

“Probably to CI's.”

“He's made several night visits to an abandoned mansion up near Rhinebeck. Windward, it's called. We think he's using it for some kind of message exchange.”

“To meet a source, more likely.”

“And he's got an alias drop.”

“Probably . . . some girl. Or some case or something.” But even in his anger, Zach knew this was suspicious, hard to explain. An alias drop—the old trick where you set up an e-mail account under a fake name, then leave draft messages for your contact to pick up—it was pure dealer stuff, pedophile stuff, a ruse meant to cover the trail of your communications.

Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell saw Zach waver. She seized on it, pressed her advantage. “When we monitored the drop? The receiving end? An untraceable IP. Pinged around hell and gone until we lost it. Very sophisticated. Someone who really-really didn't want to be identified and knew his way around a computer.”

“You read any of the e-mails?”

“They were mostly in coded language. ‘I may go out walking later.' That sort of thing. One said ‘Contact you later.' He kept changing the drop, and we think he was also using a laptop that wasn't on the warrant. We didn't get much but, come on, just the fact of them. . . .”

This didn't sound good, Zach admitted to himself. But it wasn't enough to overcome his loyalty.

“Broadway ain't dirty,” he drawled. “I'd know if he was.”

If Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell had been married to the man, she'd have recognized that drawl. Grace knew it well. It meant Zach was digging in, end of conversation. He was—as Grace often whispered in frustration as she swished from the room—stubborn as a mule in cement when he wanted to be.

But Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell was deaf to it. She kept at him. “Dominic Abend knows we're after him, right? More than that, he probably knows we're the only agency that
is
after him in any meaningful way. Makes sense he'd want someone inside. Doesn't it? Goulart's vulnerable. He has the divorce. The lawsuit on his old house. We know he just applied for a twenty-thousand-dollar loan. . . .”

Which he wouldn't need if he was on the take
, Zach thought—but he was so disgusted with all this now, he wouldn't even grace it with an argument anymore. He knew why Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell hated Goulart. Everyone in the Bureau knew. Goulart wouldn't keep his mouth shut about her, and some of what he said was true. That would get you in Dutch with any boss. But to call him dirty. . . .

Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell could not keep the tension out of her voice anymore, or the gleam of anger out of her big eyes. This had not turned out the way she had hoped or imagined—and she was so desperate at this point not to lose Zach's respect that she wouldn't let it end, wouldn't let him go. She was too insecure to realize that that would have been her best move—or, if she did realize it, she couldn't get herself to do it.

“Look, I swear to you,” she said, “this is not personal. This is not about him and me. All I'm asking: keep an eye out. Make sure. See something, say something. We have a line on Abend now for the first time. That's the only reason I bring this up. Otherwise I would have waited till we had more proof. But I don't want Abend to slip away like that container ship just because we didn't do due diligence. . . .”

There was a light, brisk knock at the door. It clicked open a crack and Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell's receptionist stuck her round, dark, pretty face in.

A flash of green-eyed annoyance from Rebecca Abraham-Hartwell. “What?”

“There's a call for Detective Adams,” she said. “From overseas. A Professor Gretchen Dankl. They sent it up here because she says it's urgent.”