The Undertaker

He motioned toward the dark window. “As you may already have surmised, the gentlemen in the Mercedes are not with the FBI. The good Senator here arranged with Rico Patillo to have the two of you added to the concrete mix of a new Interstate Highway overpass near Paramus. Knowing Rico's people, I am certain those animals would have disposed of you fairly quickly and then amused themselves with Miz Kasmarek for the rest of the night. Unfortunately, sooner or later they would be coming back for me as well. That was the kind of scum I was cleaning out, Pete, eliminating it if you will, until my old pal Timmy sold us out.”

“Ralph,” Hardin tried to reassert himself. “Don't be a fool. You and I can still work this thing out.”

“Work this “thing” out? I think not, Tim. The only thing you and I have to work out is who kills who first, and unfortunately for you, I'm the one holding the gun now.”

Hardin blinked nervously as he looked at the window, at the office door, and then at Tinkerton's automatic.

“Too late, Major,” Tinkerton smiled, taunting him. “If you look real close at that Mercedes, you'll see there is no one inside. Well, there is, but the two grease balls who were in the front seat are now lying in the trunk, and they are very, very dead. Besides, I'm not worried about Rico anymore, because I have the flash disks now, and all of Louie Panozzo's wonderful accounting files. He may have been a fat slob, but he was a surprisingly clever accountant. He's got it all — the drug buys, the women, the meth labs, the crooked businesses and the squeaky clean ones, the bank accounts, the payoffs, the union boys on the pad, the whole enchilada, even all the money he paid you and every other bent politician on the East Coast. So I'll be the one running Rico now, and I can buy myself another Senator on any street corner in town.”

Tinkerton turned and looked at me. “Pete, I count you among my very infrequent failures. God, what a pair we would have made! And Timmy here? If he had not gotten so damned impatient, he might have made the White House the old-fashioned way and I might have ended up as Director of the FBI, or Attorney General, who knows?

The big lawyer's eyes seemed to turn wistfully toward the brightly lit government buildings outside. “Poor Louie,” he said. “He wasn't much of a poker player — too reckless, especially with his own life. I had hoped that the sharp edge of a scalpel might help him understand the precariousness of his position, but he would not tell me where those damned flash drives were. No, Louie wanted to be my partner. Imagine that? Another partner. Just what I needed, when I already had a loyal partner right here in Washington, didn't I, major?”

“Louie Panozzo, what a piece of work!” Tinkerton looked up at the ceiling and laughed. “So tell me, Pete, where on earth did you find them? Please?” He patted the pocket he had put them in. “It has been driving me nuts all week.”

“He hid them inside a car you didn't know about, an old wreck of a Buick. That's how I got out of Columbus. I found them taped inside one of the door panels.”

Tinkerton shook his head, chagrinned. “The door panels in an old wreck of a Buick. That figures.”

“You're a maniac, Tinkerton,” Hardin told him. “Even in Nicaragua and Iraq, the rest of the men thought you were nuts, you and that sicko Dannmeyer. Why do you think I recommended Justice put you in charge of security for the Witness Protection program to begin with? It was because no one could think of anyone as ruthless as the two of you.”

Tinkerton's eyes narrowed. He slowly raised the automatic and pointed it at Hardin's head again. But Hardin wasn't finished. “I'm not impressed by your threats, Tinkerton. You need me. The bodies? Those high-speed chases? Chicago, Boston, and now New York? Like a fool, you've left too many bodies lying around and a lot of people are asking questions now — the newspapers, the local cops, my committee, the FBI — big questions. Without my protection, you're finished.”

“Finished? Perhaps you are right, Major. That's why I want the kitty.”

Hardin looked as if he had taken another unexpected hit. “The kitty? I don't know what you're talking about,” he answered, but his denial came too fast.

Tinkerton raised the Glock again and this time he pulled the trigger. There was a soft “Phutt!” and a Nine-Millimeter bullet tore off the bottom half of Hardin's right ear, before the heavy slug buried itself in the headrest of his big leather desk chair.

“Ah! Ah!” Hardin screamed as he grabbed the side of his face and spun sideways in his chair. When he pulled his hand away, there was blood all over his fingers, running down his neck and onto his shirt. Then Tinkerton pulled the Glock back, as if he was about to give Hardin a backhand blow across the mouth, but the Senator covered his face and shrank away in stark terror. “No, not the face,” he mumbled. “Not the face.”