Last Man Standing by David Baldacci
“Look, we went into this thing hunting the elder Westbrook ’cause the higher-ups thought it was about time to bring him down so they could toot their own horn. But the more I got into it, the more I realized he’s small fish, Perce. He makes a good living but not a great one. He doesn’t shoot up neighborhoods, keeps a low profile.”
“But if not him, who?”
“There’re about eight main street sellers in this town and Westbrook is just one of them. Collectively they sell a ton of the shit. Now, you multiply that action by every major metropolitan area from here to New York and south to Atlanta, and you got yourself a real heavyweight.”
“What, are you saying one group controls all that flow? That’s impossible.”
“No, what I’m saying is that I think one group is controlling the flow of Oxycontin from rural areas to metropolitan areas up and down the East Coast.”
“Oxycontin, the prescription drug?”
“Right. They’re calling it hillbilly heroin, because the illegal trafficking started in rural areas. But now it’s moving to the cities. See, that’s where the real money is. The hicks in the mountains don’t have the kind of cash the city folks do. It’s synthetic morphine, for chronic pain or for the terminally ill. Abusers crush it, snort it, smoke it or inject it, and they get popped like something close to heroin.”
“Yeah, except it’s time-released, so you do a whole pill like that, bypassing the time release, you could kill yourself.”
“A hundred deaths and counting so far. It’s not as potent as heroin, but it’s got double the kick of morphine and it’s a legal drug, and that makes some people believe it’s safe even if abused. You even got old people selling one pill on the street to cover the cost of the rest of their prescription because their insurance doesn’t. Or else you get docs to write up bogus prescriptions or you burglarize pharmacies or homes of patients using it.”
“It’s bad,” agreed Bates.
“That’s why the Bureau and DEA ran their joint task force. And it’s not just Oxy, you got the older stuff like Percocet and Percodan too. Now you can get ‘Perks’ on the street for ten to fifteen bucks a pop. But they don’t pack the wallop of Oxy. You’d have to take sixteen tablets of Percocet to get the same high as one eighty-milligram Oxy pill.”
During this discussion Bates had looked around casually several times, to see if anyone was observing him, yet there was no one. Cove had picked a good place to meet, actually, Bates concluded, since no one could see him, and the way Bates was facing the wall and holding the map up, he appeared simply to be a tourist in need of directions.
Bates said, “Well, the government watches dispensation of controlled narcotics, of course, and you get a doc and a pharmacy dispensing tens of thousands of the same pills, it raises red flags, but you also don’t have to worry about getting it over the border.”
“Right.”
“How come I didn’t know this Oxy angle, Randy?”
“’Cause I just figured that part of it out. I didn’t know I was dealing with an Oxy pipeline when I first stumbled into this. I just thought it was your run-of-the-mill coke and heroin. But then I started seeing and hearing stuff. Most of the drug seems to be coming in from little pockets up and down Appalachia. For the longest time it just used to be little mom-and-pop operations, mostly by people hooked on the drugs themselves. But I’m sensing a single force out there that’s putting all this together and shipping it to the big cities. See, that’s the next step. This could be the mother of all gravy trains and somebody’s figured it out, at least around here. Bringing it up to the standards of a real drug operation but with profit margins triple what the cartels or anybody else is doing and with a lot lower risk. That’s the people we want. That’s actually who I thought was operating out of the building HRT hit. I thought we could crack this thing wide open if we got to the bean counters. And it’d make sense to hide your money clearinghouse in a big city.”
“Because in the rural areas that sort of thing would stick out,” Bates completed his thought.
“You got it. And they have plenty of incentive. Say you work up to moving a million pills a week with a street value of a hundred mil; well, you get my point.”
“But whoever’s driving the product, they’d have no incentive to waste an HRT unit. That’ll bring them grief they just don’t need. Why would they do that?”
“All I can tell you is the operation I saw in that building was not Westbrook’s. It was huge. Lots of activity, way more than his business could generate. If I thought it was just Westbrook, I would have said no-go on the HRT hit. We would’ve gotten a little fish, but the big one would’ve just floated away. With that said, I think Westbrook is distributing the product in D.C. and so are the other crews. But hard proof of that I don’t have. The guy’s real smart and he’s seen it all.”
“Yeah, but you got to someone in his crew. That’s valuable.”
“Right, but snitch today, dead tomorrow in my line of work.”
“So somebody really put on a damned Broadway production for us by loading up that warehouse to make it look like a big-time drug operation. Any thoughts on that?”
“Nope. After I passed along the intel to you guys and the hit was set, whoever snookered me didn’t need old Randall Cove anymore. I’m figuring I’m lucky to be alive, Perce. In fact, I’m wondering why I am alive.”
“So is Web London. I guess after a massacre there’s always a lot of that going around.”
“No, I mean somebody tried to waste me after the HRT hit. Cost me my Bucar and a couple of cracked ribs.”
“Jesus, why didn’t you let us know? You have to come in, Randy. Get fully debriefed, so we can figure this out.”
Bates looked around once more. This was taking too long. He would have to move on soon. He could only look at the cemetery map for so long without arousing suspicion. But he didn’t want to leave without Randall Cove.
“No way in hell am I doing that, Perce,” replied Cove in a tone that made Bates lower his map. “I’m not doing that because this shit hits way too close to the bone.”
“Meaning exactly what?” said Bates with an edge to his voice.
“Meaning that this shit stinks from the inside and I’m not putting my life in somebody’s hands unless I know they’re going to play fair with me.”
“This is the FBI, Randy, not the KGB.”
“Maybe to you it is. You’ve always been an insider, Perce. Me, I’m about as outside as somebody can get. I come in now, without knowing what happened, then all of a sudden they might not ever find me again. I know a lot of folks uptown think I was behind what happened to HRT.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Crazy as six dudes getting wiped? How’d they manage that without inside info?”
“That crap happens in our line of work.”
“Okay, you telling me you haven’t noticed stuff falling down everywhere? Blown assignments, two undercover agents getting killed in the last year, Bureau strike teams showing up to do their thing and finding nobody home to play, major drug busts going down the tubes because folks got tipped off. I think there’s some big, stinking rat right in the Bureau selling a lot of folks down the river, including me!”
“Don’t go conspiracy theorist on me, Randy.”
Cove’s voice grew calmer. “I wanted to let you know I wasn’t in on it. You got my word because that’s all I got to give right now. I hope to have more later.”
“So you’re on to something?” said Bates quickly. “Look, Randy, I believe you, okay, but I’ve got people I’ve got to answer to. I understand your concerns, a lot of bad things have been happening, and we’re trying to find the source, but you’ve got to understand my concerns too.” He paused. “Damn it, come on, I’ll give you every assurance that if you come in now, I will watch over you like it’s my father on his deathbed, okay? I hope you feel that you can trust me, after all we’ve been through together. I’ve gone to bat for you before.” There was no answer f
10
The neighborhood Web was driving in was identical to most others in the area. Modest postwar homes with boxy shapes, gravel driveways and metal awnings. The front yards were tiny, but there were big back spaces where detached garages lurked and grills sat in protected areas and split-trunk apple trees gave comforting shade. This was the land of working-class families who still took pride in their homes and never took it for granted that their children would go to college. Today men fussed with old cars in the coolness of their garages, women gathered on front porch stoops to drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and exchange gossip under a sun that was very hot for this time of year and skies that were finally clear of the last storm. Kids in shorts and tennis shoes raced up and down the street on scooters that actually required one to use his legs to make it go.
As he pulled up in front of Paul Romano’s house, Web could see Paulie, as everyone called him, laboring under the hood of a vintage Corvette Stingray that was his absolute pride and joy, his wife and kids rating a little farther down on the love and gush meter. Originally from Brooklyn, Paul Romano was a “get your fingers dirty” kind of guy and fit in a neighborhood like this, with its mechanics, power linemen, truck drivers and the like. The only difference was Romano could kill you in a hundred different ways if he wanted to and damn if there was anything you could do about it. Paul Romano was one of the ones who talked to his guns, gave them names like you would a pet. His MP-5 was Freddy, as in Freddy from Nightmare on Elm Street, and his twin .45s were Cuff and Link, named after the turtles in the movie Rocky. Yes, as hard as it was to believe, Paul Romano from Brooklyn was a big Sly Stallone fan—although he was forever complaining that that “damn Rambo character was one wimpy ass.”
Romano looked up in surprise as Web walked over and peered into the guts of the Nassau-blue ’Vette with a white convertible soft top. Web knew the car was a model year 1966, which was the first production year of the famous 427-cubic-inch block engine that carried 450 horses inside, because Romano had told him and all the other HRT guys this about a thousand times. “Four-speed manual close ratio. Top speed of about one sixty-five. Blow anything off the street,” he had said until Web was sick of hearing it. “Police cruisers, morphed street shit-cans, hell, half the damn stock cars racing at the smaller tracks.”
Web had often wondered what it would have felt like to be a kid pulling wrenches and tearing apart cars in the driveway with your old man. Learning stuff about carburetors, sports, women, all the things that made life worth living. Like, hey, Pop, you know how she’s next to you and you’re wondering, should I slip my arm around her, and maybe take a chance placing my hand there? Yeah, there, Pop, help me out, you were young once, weren’t you? Don’t tell me you never thought about stuff like that, because I’m standing here, aren’t I? And when should I go in for the kiss? What signs should I be looking for? Pop, you won’t believe this, but I can’t figure these crazy women out. Does it get easier when they get older? And the old man would wink, smile knowingly, take a swig of beer, a long drag on a Marlboro and sit down, wipe off his greasy hands on a rag and say, Okay, listen up, Junior, this is how you work it. Let me lay it out for you here, and you better write this down ’cause this is the gospel, son. Staring into the Corvette’s chest cavity, Web wondered what that exchange would feel like.
Romano eyed Web and didn’t mention the 450 HP Big Block that could blow away morphed street shit-cans. All he said was, “Beer’s in the cooler. Buck a can. And don’t make yourself comfortable.”
Web reached inside the small Coleman at his feet and popped open a Budweiser without, however, leaving a dollar bill in payment. “You know, Paulie, Bud’s not all there is. Got some wicked South American brews you should try.”
“Right, on my salary?”
“We make the same money.”
“I got a wife and kids, you got shit.”
Romano gave the socket wrench a few more pulls and then stepped past Web and fired up the engine. It sounded powerful enough to burst through the thin metal keeping it all together.
“Purring like a kitten,” said Web as he sipped his beer.
“Hell, like a tiger.”
“Can we talk? Got some questions.”
“You and everybody else. Sure, come on. Got all the time in the world. What the hell am I supposed to do on my day off, enjoy myself? So what do you need? Some ballet tights? I’ll check with my wife.”
“You know I’d appreciate you not ragging my ass to everybody at Quantico.”
“And I’d appreciate you not ordering me around. And while we’re at it, get the hell off my property. I got standards on people I hang with.”
“Let’s just talk, Paulie. You owe me that.”
Romano pointed the wrench at him. “I owe you nothing, London.”
“After eight years doing this crap, I think we both owe each other more than we’ll ever be able to cover.”
The two men stared at each other until Romano finally put down the wrench, wiped off his hands, turned the tiger off and headed toward the backyard. Web took this as an invitation to follow. Yet, part of Web was thinking that maybe Romano simply was going to the garage to get a bigger wrench to hit him with.
In the backyard the grass was cut short, the trees pruned, a fat rosebush billowed out from one side of the garage. The temperature must have been near eighty in the sun, and it felt good after all the rain. They pulled up a couple of lawn chairs and settled down. Web watched as Romano’s wife, Angie, hung clothes on the line to dry. She was from Mississippi originally. The Romanos had two kids, both boys. Angie was petite and still curvy with big blond hair, bewitching green eyes and a “let me eat you up, darlin’” look. She was always flirting, always touching your arm or grazing your leg with her foot, saying that you were cute, but it was all innocent stuff. It drove Romano nuts sometimes, yet Web could tell he really loved that other guys were attracted to his wife. That was just part of what made Romano tick. And yet when Angie Romano got pissed off, you had better look out. Web had seen that side of her too at some HRT get-togethers; the little woman could be a hellcat on speed—she had made intensely confident guys who shot big guns for a living dive for cover when she was on the warpath.
Paul Romano was a Hotel Team assaulter now, but he and Web had come to HRT in the same class and been paired as snipers for about three years. Romano had been with the Deltas before joining the FBI. Though Romano was built like Web, lacking big muscles, the muscle he did have was like cable. You couldn’t break it, and the guy’s motor never quit. No matter what you threw at him, he never stopped. Once, during a night raid on a drug boss’s Caribbean stronghold, the assault boat had dropped Romano off too far from shore, and the guy, carrying sixty pounds of gear, had plunged into fifteen feet of water. Instead of drowning like everybody else would have, he hit the bottom, stood, somehow got his bearings, held his breath for a mere four minutes, walked to shore and participated in the attack. Because there had been a snafu in communications and the target wasn’t exactly where he was supposed to be, Romano had actually ended up nailing the drug lord himself after killing two of his bodyguards. And the only thing Romano had bitched about afterward was getting his hair wet and losing the pistol named Cuff.
Romano had tattoos over most of his body, dragons, knives and snakes, and a cute little ANGIE
Romano had come from the FBI’s New York City SWAT team, where he had the reputation of being extremely intimidating among a group of intimidating folks. He hadn’t looked scared standing in a room with seventy stripped males that first day of HRT qualifying. To Web, he had looked like a guy who loved pain, who was just itching for HRT to start clobbering his butt with it. And the guy could dole out the hurt too. Back then Web hadn’t known himself if he would make the cut for the HRT slots, yet he had known from day one that Paul Romano would. The two had always been supercompetitive and the guy regularly made Web mad, but Web had to admire the man’s ability and courage.
“You wanted to talk, talk,” said Romano.
“Kevin Westbrook. The kid from the alley.”
Romano nodded at his beer. “Okay.”
“He’s missing.”
“The hell you say!”
“You know Bates? Percy Bates?”
“No. Should I?”
“He’s heading up WFO’s investigation. Ken McCarthy said you and Mickey Cortez were with Kevin. What can you tell me?”
“Not much.”
“What’d the kid say?”
“Nothing.”
“So who’d you pass him off to?”
“Couple of suits.”
“Get their names?”