I don’t want to risk them using it as an excuse to start killing again. Later, if we’re getting nowhere, we can think about going public. I don’t know. Steve, what do you think?”
Vail felt his phone vibrate. He looked down at the screen. “711” was typed in. It was the code he and Demick had agreed upon. Someone had called Bertok’s phone. “I’m sorry, sir, Kate and I have to go.”
THIRTEEN
WHEN VAIL AND KATE WALKED INTO THE TECH ROOM, TOM DEMICK was on the telephone, apparently with one of his contacts. He looked up and pointed at the pad of paper in front of him. A single phone number was written on it. “Yeah, Tony, I appreciate it.” He wrote down an address. “Friday, right, and this time I’m buying…. Okay, but I’m buying the liquor.” He hung up and tore the sheet of paper off the pad. “The call to Bertok’s phone came from West Hollywood, a Laundromat, less than a mile from the subway tunnel.”
“Hopefully it was him,” Vail said. “Not exactly a home address, but it’ll give us a place to start.”
“Do you want me to go out there with you?” Demick asked.
“Thanks, Tom, we’ll take care of it,” Vail said. “Can you get all the outgoing calls from the Laundromat phone for the last two weeks?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem, but there’ll probably be a bunch. I should have them by the time you get there.”
“For now, can we keep this between the three of us?” Vail asked.
“The three of us?” Demick said. He leaned closer to Vail in mock confidence. “You do realize that one of us is a deputy assistant director. Who exactly are we keeping it secret from?”
“Okay, let’s keep it between the two of us.”
ONCE THEY WERE IN the car, Kate said, “I know you were kidding back there, but you don’t actually think I’d ever give you up, do you?”
“I’m just passing through your career. You’d have to be a fool not to.”
“Then I’m a fool.”
“Right now we’re in a vacuum, operating with impunity. The director knows we’re doing something less than legal, and he says do whatever you have to do to protect the public. Breaking rules becomes noble, even heroic, so whatever I do, you’re on my side. But what if you’re suddenly standing in front of a federal grand jury and they ask you about committing illegal acts. And don’t think they’ll be concerned about the common good. Are you going to perjure yourself and risk prosecution?” When she didn’t say anything, he continued. “You’re not a fool.”
“I am still on your side.”
“I know you are, but the problem is only a fool can be just on my side. So sometime in the near future I may have to do something alone.”
She stared ahead in silence. “Has that always been effective for you?”
“What?”
“When you feel yourself getting too close to someone, you treat them like they’re not worth your time.”
“Unfortunately, that tactic doesn’t seem to work as well as it once did.”
“I’m not amused.”
Vail pulled to the curb. “This is the address.”
When she still didn’t say anything, he said, “Isn’t one of my assets being able to break rules without anyone knowing, so everyone else can swear on a stack of Bibles? You can’t be in on all the good stuff while innocent of all the bad stuff, because the good and bad are usually inseparable.”
“Okay, okay. It just seems like you’re a little too eager to keep everyone outside the great wall of Vail, and by ‘everyone’ I mean me.”
He laughed. “You think too much of me. I’m no white knight. I do what I do mainly because I have a pathological need to settle all scores, and in spades. Take those two bank robbers. I had them disarmed and all but unconscious, but I threw both of them through the windows for good measure. Anyone who would do what they did to that poor old woman they threatened to shoot deserved a few moments of someone treating them without boundaries. So, yes, I do have issues.”
“Meaning you’re blaming your father.”
“I can blame him only for getting me started. I’m the one holding on to it. I guess I like the way it drives me.”
“That’s your rationalization for not trusting anyone?”
“I’ll tell you what, from now on I’ll do my best to trust you without reservation.”
Kate knew how difficult a concession that was for him, how difficult any concession was for Steve Vail. “And I’ll do