The Betrayer (41 page)

“If Smith’s FBI, why do Morris and Fiermonte think he’s an undercover cop?”

“Because that was Smith’s way in. He approached the police commissioner and the FBI director, told them everything, except that I was alive. Dickey provided the proof that Fiermonte had both arranged my murder and framed me. The FBI has a history of working with paid informants, even men like Dickey, and they knew he had provided me with my covers over the years. So Smith was set up in Morris’s precinct, and as far as Morris was concerned, Smith was an undercover cop who had managed to infiltrate Dickey’s crew and was now working with the FBI’s Organized Crime Task Force. We knew Fiermonte would be interested in Smith. He would see Smith as a chance to maybe get information on Dickey’s business, which would help him both as a prosecutor and an informant to the cartel. And then later, when he found out Dickey was hiding me, there was the chance that he could use Smith to find out where. It was made to look like Smith was in deep financial trouble, that he was far from being a Boy Scout, and eventually Morris approached and recruited him. The more Smith proved himself to them, the more they trusted him. And the more they trusted him, the more responsibility they gave him. Smith had been moving up in Fiermonte’s organization, hoping to position himself as one of the men Fiermonte gave orders to directly. That’s what we’ve been waiting for. And it may have finally happened two days ago.”

“What happened two days ago?”

“Fiermonte put Smith in charge of Gregorian and another professional killer, a woman Fiermonte had brought in from a Russian-controlled mob boss in Detroit. Fiermonte even told Smith to use one of Dickey’s old warehouses as a base, so if things somehow turned to shit, it might look like they were working for Dickey. If over the past few days Smith has received direct orders from Fiermonte — orders involving his hired killers — then we’ll have what we need.”

“Is he wired? Is that how you plan on getting proof?”

“There’s a state-of-the-art digital recorder built into his bullet-resistant vest. Transmitters aren’t safe; their signals can be too easily detected. Everything Fiermonte has said to Smith in the past two days should have been recorded.”

“If Smith does have proof, wouldn’t he have told you that by now? Called you or something?”

“Cell phone communication isn’t possible. Calls can be intercepted, and phones themselves can be confiscated and searched through. When you’re undercover, your cell phone is a ticking bomb in your pocket. And stopping to send a text or an e-mail isn’t always an option. And even if you’re using codes, there’s no way of knowing for sure if the text or e-mail you are receiving is from your agent or someone pretending to be your agent. And vice versa.”

Johnny thought about the coded text message he had received from Haley, sent to him as Richter and his men held her blocks from their apartment.

He also thought about Haley waiting to hear from him right now.

Waiting with Cat, and Fiermonte, in the Gershwin Hotel.

“Times and locations arranged in advance were our only way of exchanging information with Smith,” John Coyle said. “It slowed things down a bit, but it was a necessary trade-off. One of those prearranged times is now, but he’ll only wait around for an hour.”

“That’s if he’s even there,” Dickey said.

“What does he mean?” Johnny asked his father.

“We came up with a long list of times and places, but they’re only chances to meet. Dickey would make every scheduled meeting, and if Smith didn’t show after a certain time, Dickey would leave and make the next meeting, hoping Smith would show then. Smith sometimes missed three or four meetings in a row before he was able to safely get away. The next prearranged time after tonight isn’t for another thirty-six hours, but we can’t wait that long.”

“Why not?”

John Coyle hesitated, met Dickey’s eyes in the rearview mirror, then said to his son, “Cat and your girlfriend were last seen leaving the hotel with Fiermonte. They got into his car and lost the men assigned to tail them.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Johnny.”

Johnny didn’t respond. He looked out the window. Despite the darkness and the rain, he quickly recognized their surroundings. They were on Route 9, heading south.

The same road he and his father had followed that October night three years ago when they went to get Jeremy.

“If their lives are in danger,” John Coyle assured Johnny, “Smith will help them, even if it means blowing his cover. I promise.”

Johnny thought of Smith firing just an hour ago — not at Johnny, but into the empty space above the downed woman beside him.

And he thought of Smith raising his hand suddenly as if about to say, “Don’t shoot.”

“But if he’s waiting at the meeting place,” Johnny pointed out, “then he isn’t with them.”

John Coyle said nothing.

Dickey was looking at Johnny in the rearview mirror again.

He, too, said nothing.

All Johnny could think of right now was the fact that he had simply led Haley from one life-threatening situation — the two of them being cornered in that guesthouse in Thailand — to another.

All his efforts in between, everything he had done to keep her hidden and safe, had been for nothing.

He was reminded of what Fiermonte had said about Jeremy — had likely said for Jeremy’s benefit, Johnny now realized, to propel the troubled boy even further in his dangerous pursuit of the man he believed ordered the murder of their father.

And who ordered the murder of the woman he loved, and loved him.

Jeremy oughtn’t have bothered.

Johnny thought then of his brother fighting for his life in a stranger’s house somewhere in Westchester.

“Any word on Jeremy?” Johnny asked.

John Coyle looked to Dickey.

“He’s still in surgery,” Dickey answered. “He’s in good hands, I promise,” he said to Johnny. “Richter will call as soon as he knows something.”

Johnny was staring out the window again.

He had only one last question.

There was only one thing that mattered now.

“How long till we’re at the meeting place?”

“Thirty minutes,” his father answered.

A long time to wait, Johnny thought.

A long time to wonder.

He decided to do what Haley would tell him to do if she were here.

He breathed.

Breathed through the pain.

And visualized her, wherever she was, doing the same.

Johnny watched from the backseat of the Mercedes as John Coyle crossed the empty parking lot toward Smith’s car.

The figure behind the wheel leaned across the front seat, and the passenger door swung open.

John Coyle climbed in and pulled the door closed.

Nothing for Johnny to do but wait.

He was holding his cell phone — his only conduit to Haley. He had reattached the battery and powered it up, hoping to find a text from her waiting for him — a text comprised of one of their prearranged codes. There was no way of knowing what this meant, of course. And he didn’t dare text her.

Like his father had said, there was no guarantee that any reply Johnny might get was actually from her.

Fool me once, shame on you…

Johnny’s life now had been reduced to one thing — finding Haley.

No, two things — finding Haley and finding Cat.

All other concerns had fallen away. What he and Haley would do after that didn’t matter. And how Johnny would accomplish finding them didn’t matter. Everything he was, everything he had been raised and trained to be, he would call in to play if necessary.

Even the resurrection of his father would mean nothing if he failed.

Johnny knew he needed to calm himself. Only cool heads prevailed. Physical toughness was nothing; it was mental toughness — emotional toughness — that mattered. A man’s body could keep going as long as his mind willed it.

Johnny focused on everything he’d just been told, sifting through it for any information that might prove pertinent, that he could use.

He also focused on the three black cases on the floor beside his seat.

Impact-resistant plastic, two of them handgun cases, one of them much larger.

After a moment Johnny remembered something Dickey had said earlier. He looked into the rearview mirror, saw that the man was already looking at him.

Before Johnny could speak, though, Dickey said, “What’s wrong with your collarbone?”

Johnny realized then that he’d been rubbing it. He lowered his hand. “Nothing.”

“How long has it been bothering you?”

“I don’t know,” Johnny lied.

It was obvious he didn’t want to talk about it, so Dickey let it go. “What’s on your mind, Johnny?”

“You said that none of us kids would exist if it weren’t for you. What did you mean by that?”

“Your father met your mother because of me.”

Johnny nodded, was content to leave it at that, but Dickey continued.

“Actually, your father was going to call the whole thing off at one point. He believed life with him would be too dangerous for her. But I talked him out of it. She didn’t care about the risk — she loved him, couldn’t imagine her life without him — so why should he care? It was as much her choice as his.” Dickey paused, then said, “A month later they were married, and less than a year after that, Cat was born.”

Johnny thought about that, then said, “Cat says you’re a mass murderer.”

Dickey smiled. “Of course she does.”

“Are you?”

Dickey seemed to understand the necessity of the question, and what it really implied.

How could my father be friends with you?

“We come from different worlds, Johnny. Different generations. The New York your father and I grew up in is not the New York you and Cat know. Your father had a choice when he joined the FBI. It was a choice faced by every kid in our generation who grew up in New York and went on to become a cop or a Fed. We all knew each other as kids. A kid from Queens who grew up to become a Queens cop had once been friends with the crooks he’d spend his career chasing. Neighbors as kids, sworn enemies as adults. Your father and I grew up together in Hell’s Kitchen. When he became a Fed, he could have come after me — I would have been easy pickings. But he saw the bigger picture. He saw beyond black and white. He realized he could use me to his advantage. He knew I’d be using him, too, but the good that would come out of it would far outweigh the bad.”

“You were his informant.”

“His protected FBI informant, yes.” Dickey said that as if the distinction was an important one.

Or maybe it was important to him that Johnny view him as something other than a run-of-the-mill, street-level snitch.

“Your father couldn’t have done what he did without me. He knew it, and the FBI knew it. The fact that I prospered while others were carted off to jail was the price of our doing business. It was a price the FBI was more than willing to pay.”

“You saved him from Tambov because he was your meal ticket.”

“You can think that if you want to, Johnny. But just like you wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for me, I wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for your father. And his father. I would have been killed a long time ago by my own. An interesting lesson in compassion, don’t you think? The fact that your father had saved my life meant I’d be around to save his fifty years later. And yours tonight.”

“And the purge after he was taken?”

Dickey shook his head. “Never happened. I knew who the betrayer in my crew was, so why would I need to go looking? Fiermonte was the one doing the purging. It suited him that everyone thought it was me, though. And it suited me, for obvious reasons.” He paused again. “The Feds all but broke the back of the New York underworld a decade ago, Johnny. Antiracketeering laws put a lot of crime bosses in prison for life. Which is where I would have ended up sooner or later if I hadn’t agreed to work with your father. If he hadn’t offered me the chance when he did.”

Johnny thought about the night he and Haley were instructed to close the bar early so a porn movie could be shot there.

He also thought of the number of legitimate businesses — restaurants and bars, for the most part — that Dickey seemed to have an active hand in.

All that made sense now.

Then Johnny remembered something about that night he and Haley had closed early.

The young director talking to his three naked actors had had a thick Russian accent.

And Tambov, who had gotten close enough to Dickey to betray him, was Russian as well.

Johnny pointed these two things out.

“After the Soviet Union collapsed, Fiermonte’s Russians spread across Europe fast, and within a decade they were looking to come over here. Like I said, the New York underworld was on the ropes, but after 9/11 the FBI suddenly became more interested in spending its resources chasing after Arabs. They literally backed off overnight, and the city was wide open again. The Russians saw their chance and came in droves. You studied history down there in DC, Johnny. Magna cum laude and all that. Tell me, what happened when the conquistadors came to the Americas looking for gold?”

“The indigenous populations were wiped out.”

Dickey nodded. “Exactly. Something like ninety-five percent of them in the first year alone. And history always repeats itself, right? I was in better shape than a lot of other bosses, my family was still strong, but I could see the writing on the wall. At first I tried to work with the Russians. My family lives here, I didn’t want war in the streets. As long as they saw me as valuable — as long as I could help them make money — we stayed on friendly enough terms. Business is business, right? And porn, Johnny, is a very lucrative business. A billion dollars a year in this country alone. Who wouldn’t want a slice of that?”

“That doesn’t explain why Tambov was working for you. Why a Russian was so far into your inner circle that you sent him to look for your oldest friend’s son.”

“Why expend resources trying to destroy an enemy from without when you can more easily destroy him from within?”

It took Johnny a moment. “Tambov was your spy.”

“A good one, too. He was part of that first wave of Russians to come over here, but his family was back home. They’d been mistreated by his bosses and he wasn’t happy. He was easy enough to buy, and over time he proved himself to me. Still, he was expendable, and not so clearly connected to me, both of which were good reasons to send him instead of Richter to look for your brother. Another good reason was that if anything went wrong, suspicion would fall on the Russians. But the best reason was this: if I’ve learned one thing about Russians in the past ten years, it’s that they have a knack for certain jobs.”

Johnny remembered how Tambov had lured Jeremy out of hiding.

The girl who called herself Penny.

And who, once Jeremy had been taken, simply disappeared.

As Johnny thought about that, he realized something else.

“Smith is doing to Fiermonte what Tambov did to you.”

Dickey nodded. “It’s an old trick, Johnny. The oldest in the book. The fact that it’s still around means it usually works. Ultimately, Fiermonte was able to buy Tambov away from me with the promise of something I couldn’t offer — a new life for him and his son, via the Witness Protection Program. Before Tambov’s betrayal, the info he provided helped me stay one step ahead of his bosses. Even though the Russians and I were partners in a number of ventures, they were always looking for ways to edge me out and take more. They have an eye for weakness, and Tambov helped my family appear stronger than it actually was. But for the past three years I’ve been fighting a losing battle. It’s only a matter of time before they control everything. New York isn’t their home, Johnny, their families don’t live here, so they don’t care if there’s fighting in the streets. They’re just here to exploit the resources for as long as there are resources to exploit. And they don’t fear the FBI. The real bosses stay in Moscow, drink champagne, and fuck their women while the grunts do the work. If a grunt gets arrested, who cares? If all of them get rounded up, it doesn’t matter. Another wave of grunts is waiting for its chance at a share of the American Dream.”

Dickey paused. “Maybe Patton was right. Maybe we should have joined forces with the Germans in forty-five and declared war on Stalin. We should have wiped the fuckers off the map while we had the chance. Imagine how different the last sixty years would have been if we had.”

Johnny said nothing.

The two men looked at each other’s reflection for a long moment.

“I’ve eliminated rivals, Johnny,” Dickey said finally. “By any and all means possible. I’ve extorted, murdered, you name it. I’m a crook — a crook who betrayed other crooks. I don’t apologize for any of it. But Fiermonte, he’s a traitor, plain and simple. He took an oath when he became a prosecutor and quickly broke it. All he wants is to get rich — richer than he already is. If the world turns to shit in the process, so be it. And the men he works for, they’re as much of a threat to our national security as the Soviet Union ever was. Maybe even more so, because they aren’t bogged down by ideology and bureaucracy. Tell me, Johnny, you must have seen the sex trade in Bangkok, right? In Vietnam, too.”

Johnny nodded.

“There’s a market that Fiermonte’s friends do very well in, and it makes Thailand look like a pajama party.”

Johnny knew what Dickey was referring to. He read the papers, knew the world, the history of it, the way it was now, and the way, in too many cases, it would always be.

“Human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar-a-year business,” Dickey said. “You sell a kilo of cocaine, and that’s it, you’ve gotten all you’re going to get out of it. Same thing with weapons or stolen military tech or depleted uranium, all of which Fiermonte’s Russians have sold to the highest bidder in the past year. But there is one commodity that can be sold over and over again. It’s the only thing in this world that can be, and that makes it a very attractive property to those who love money.”

Johnny felt a wave of dread flood his stomach as he waited for Dickey to continue.

“With the smallest investment, Johnny, you can generate a
literal
lifetime of profit from a human being. Women and children mainly, but there’s a market for men, too. And if you think it’s a problem limited to the Eastern Bloc countries or Southeast Asia, think again. Two hundred thousand kids were sold in the US last year. Traffickers run ads in the back of the
Village Voice
, for Christ’s sake. The global numbers, though, are in the tens of millions. That’s yearly, Johnny. That’s people sold to other people. Certain nationalities are in high demand — it depends on what part of the world you’re in. The Gulf region loves Ukrainian and Lithuanian women. Nigerian women are big in Italy and Germany. But there’s one nationality that’s wanted everywhere and will always bring huge sums to the seller, not to mention years and years of returns to the buyer. That’s Western women. White women. A beautiful, natural redhead with exotic tattoos, for example, could easily bring a few hundred grand. And the man who buys her, when he’s done with her himself, will get top dollar for her again and again. For as long as he keeps her alive and dependent on him, which men like that have down to a science. Cat’s not that pretty, of course, but her pedigree would appeal to certain types. I mean, what criminal boss wouldn’t want his turn with a captured FBI agent?”

Dickey paused, then said, “You father wants to protect you from this, Johnny, and I can understand that. But I think you need to know the real danger Cat and your girlfriend are in, if they are with Fiermonte right now. Like I said, he’s in this to get rich, no matter what it takes or who it hurts.”

Dickey stopped there. He and Johnny looked at each other. After a moment, his cell phone rang.

Dickey answered, and Johnny could hear Richter’s voice coming through the earpiece. Even if Richter had been sitting next to Johnny, his voice probably would have sounded as far away and tinny.

All Johnny could focus on now was Haley and Cat.

A half-minute later, Dickey closed the phone.

“Jeremy’s out of surgery,” he announced. “They closed up the artery, but he’s lost a lot of blood.”

It took Johnny a moment to speak. “He’ll need a transfusion,” he said. He spoke softly, absently.

“Richter’s the same type as you guys. And they’re arranging for other donors, too.”

Johnny nodded. His vision was blurring at the edges again. He looked away, blinked once, then again. It did little good.