Ocean Prey (A Prey Novel #31) - John Sandford Page 0,127
gun. “Think it’ll work?”
Rae shrugged and said, “What difference would it make? Lucas told me you couldn’t hit the side of a barn if you were standing inside it.”
“That’s an unwarranted exaggeration,” Virgil said.
Lange looked from Rae to Virgil and back to Rae, and said, “I argued against shooting you two, but Jack and Marc overruled me. Anyway, remember me.”
“Shut up,” Rae said.
CHAPTER
THIRTY
Kent Pruitt had been in the Manhattan federal lockup, in solitary confinement for just short of twenty-four hours when the cell door rattled, and he got to his feet and a large marshal with a don’t-fuck-with-me look stepped in and said, “Sit.”
Pruitt sat. The marshal was followed by an elegant, chilly-looking woman with a brown file envelope in her hand. She had short salt-and-pepper hair, narrow steel-rimmed glasses on her nose, a gray suit, and a gold Hermès scarf around her neck—all the better to strangle her with, Pruitt thought—though the presence of a second, even larger marshal behind her made the thought go away.
“I will not ask you any questions. I’m here to present you with a further development in your situation,” the woman said. She didn’t bother to introduce herself, but Pruitt knew the type—a killer. “We have two undercover marshals in imminent danger of being revealed and murdered by the Sansone organization, because, we have learned, you have alerted Sansone to our surveillance. If the marshals are murdered, we will seek the death penalty for your involvement in this conspiracy.”
“I want a lawyer,” Pruitt said.
“You will get one, in about forty-eight more hours,” the woman said. “The marshals may be killed in the next few minutes.” She turned as if to leave. “If you have no further comments or suggestions, I’ll be going.”
Pruitt noticed that the marshal standing behind her had clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles were white. With that, and with the words “death penalty” rattling around his brain, he held up a hand and said, “Wait, wait, wait . . . How could I . . . ?”
“We’ve been informed that you have an emergency alert system in which you call Sansone each night while you’re delivering drugs to your salespersons,” the woman said. “If you don’t call, the alert is automatic. So, you’ve alerted him . . .”
That was all true: the feds knew and he really couldn’t deny it. Or he could, but it wouldn’t do him any good if Sansone ordered hits against some marshals. Which Sansone would do, if he thought he could get away with it, and Pruitt suspected Sansone wouldn’t lose a single minute’s sleep if his old pal Kent Pruitt got the needle.
The woman continued: “. . . and that’s enough to get you the death penalty as a critical accomplice in the murders of the marshals.”
“What do I get if I . . . comment?” Pruitt asked.
“We won’t push the charges any further than those we are already planning to file, having to do with the delivery of drugs. Unless the marshals are already dead,” she said, adding elegantly, “in which case, you are, as the marshals would say, shit out of luck.”
Pruitt stared up at her and saw no mercy at all in the gray eyes behind the steel rims.
“I was supposed to call between three and four o’clock today,” he said. “When you picked me up yesterday, I’d already called for the day.”
“So it’s seven-thirty now. He’s already scrambling his organization?”
Pruitt shook his head and said, “It always takes time for them to get everything going—right now, a lawyer will be looking for me. Doug won’t be sure there’s a problem until the lawyer gets back to him. If the lawyer doesn’t come up with something in a couple of hours, three or four hours, maybe, depending . . . Sansone is gone. He might be gone already.”
The woman nodded, turned, and left the cell. The marshal backed toward the door, but before he was out, he muttered, “You better hope that none of our guys been killed, or you’re gonna be shit out of luck a lot sooner than the lady expects.”
* * *
As she walked down the hallway, the woman took out a cell phone and punched in a recall, which was answered on the first ring: “Davenport.”
“Lucas. Pruitt was supposed to call between three and four,” the woman said. “He says they’ll be looking for him, but that Sansone is probably already worried and maybe worse: he could be in the wind.”