“What the hell does it matter?”
He was pouting now, she thought. Wimp was pouting because his big plans had blown up in his face and killed him.
“The more you give me, the deeper I can bury him.”
“Six, seven years. I’ve got a nice retirement fund, got a place on Maui, and another I’ve got my eye on in Tuscany. I’d’ve been set, living large, before I was forty. Had to start covering my tracks.”
“Eliminate your partners,” Eve agreed. “Better, smarter, have them eliminate each other. And move to a one-man, more profitable organization. All those listening posts planted in Bissel’s sculptures all over the world—and off—all yours alone now. You can gather your intel, invest, anticipate. Yeah, you’d’ve been sipping mai tais, and still raking it in. I gotta say, Sparrow, it’s brilliant.”
His damp eyes shone for a moment in pleasure. “It’s what I do. Crunch data, think up scenarios, blueprint dirty tricks to compromise or dispose of targets. You have to know how and when to use people.”
“And you knew how to use Bissel. Both of them. And Kade. And Ewing.”
“Wasn’t supposed to be so complicated. Bissel hits Kade, goes under. Was supposed to go under for a few weeks, then make the sale. But he went right after it. Didn’t give it time to settle, for me to see if it worked and cooled off.”
“Cooled off so you could make certain you didn’t need him, so he could be eliminated.”
“You don’t throw away tools until you’re sure they’ve outlived their usefulness. Terminations are part of the game. You know that. Death’s necessary. I’ve never killed anybody, and I wouldn’t have had to do him. Leak some intel, point the right person in the right direction. He’d be taken out. I’m not a murderer, Dallas. I just engaged a tool. Blair Bissel did t
he killing. Every one of them. I was at the Flatiron, corrupting his data units, when he did the hit on his brother and Kade.”
“Why go there?”
“I needed to upload any data he might’ve kept on the operation there, and to crash his units so he couldn’t use them. Just covering tracks. I wasn’t anywhere near Kade’s place when it went down, and I’ve got alibis for the hits on McCoy and Powell. Blair Bissel did the terminations. I’m going to die, but I’ll be damned if he’s going to hang me with murder.”
“I think we can make that conspiracy to murder, accessory to murder, before and after the fact. Multiple counts. We can probably throw in all sorts of nice pluses like obstruction of justice, tampering with government files, espionage, and that big mama, treason. I think you can say bye-bye to Maui, Sparrow, and those pretty hills in Tuscany.”
“I’m fucking dying. Give me a break.”
“Right.” She pulled her hand free of his and smiled. “I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Good news, from your point of view, is you’re not dying. I exaggerated your medical condition a bit.”
“What?” He struggled to sit up and only went sheet-white with the pain. “I’m going to be all right?”
“You’ll live. You might not walk again, and you’re going to have some serious pain with the physical therapy and treatments over the next few months. But you’ll live. Bad news? Doctors say you’re pretty strong and healthy otherwise, so you should last decades in a cage.”
“You said I was dead. You said—”
“Yeah.” She hooked her thumbs in her front pockets. “Cops’re such liars. I don’t know why you assholes believe us.”
“Bitch. Goddamn bitch.” He fought to raise himself, going white, then red as he strained against the stabilizers. “I want a lawyer. I want a doctor.”
“You can have both. Excuse me, Sparrow, I’ve got to go arrange for a meeting between your superiors and mine. I bet they’re going to have a high old time with this recording.”
“You walk out of here with that . . .” He gasped against the pain, and the fear. Eve read them both in his eyes. “You walk out of here with that recording, and I’ll have your records all over the media within the hour. Everything that happened in Dallas. Everything in that file, including the speculation that you committed patricide. You’re finished as a cop when I get finished spinning those records out to the media.”
Eve tilted her head, and smiled. “What records?”
She let her smile widen as she pushed open the door. “Nailed, to the wall,” she said to Peabody.
And she could hear Sparrow screaming for a doctor as she strode away.
“I need you to take the recording, copy it, write the report. I want him charged fast. Go through Whitney, push the grease.”
“What are the charges?”
“It’s all on the record. He’s not going anywhere,” Eve added as they started down in the overcrowded elevator. “And I don’t think Bissel will try for him again, but I want a man on the door.”
“Okay. Are you going somewhere?”