Justice Lost (Darren Street #3)(77)

Well, maybe a little pleasure.





CHAPTER 46

As things turned out, I had one more favor to do for Senator Roger Tate. The FBI agent, Ron Wilcox, had traveled to a country that had no extradition treaty with the United States. Nothing had ever been publicized about what Wilcox had done, but the FBI and the US marshals had searched day and night for him for months. They found him in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, living in a small apartment less than a mile from the Notre Dame Cathedral.

I was not privy to how they found him, nor was I privy to the discussions about what they wanted to do with him. Had they kidnapped him and brought him back to the United States, they apparently would have irritated the Vietnam government, and they would have had to put him on trial publicly, which meant all the sordid details about what he did to Sheriff Corker would come out. The other thing that would have come out would have been the FBI’s gross negligence due to its lack of oversight of one of its own. Had they had a government agent kill him, it would have been a serious violation of diplomatic protocol. But flying a private citizen into the country who appeared to be on a weeklong vacation, and letting him handle the job aided significantly by people who were not what they appeared to be? That seemed to be the answer.

So Roger Tate requested—and I agreed after some intense negotiations—that I travel to Vietnam accompanied by his beautiful granddaughter, Claire, and take in the sights for a week. While I was there, I was discreetly contacted by only three people, one of whom was a man who provided me with what I needed to grant Senator Tate’s request.

On the appointed night, our last night in town, I had a delicious dinner with Claire in the hotel restaurant and went back up to our room on the tenth floor of Saigon’s luxurious Park Hyatt Hotel.

“Are you ready?” she said as I placed the gun beneath my shirt and looked in the mirror.

I nodded.

“Everything is packed. I’ll have a cab waiting when you get back, and we’ll head straight to the airport.”

Claire knew everything, and I was comfortable with that. It brought us closer.

I took a cab to the cathedral at eleven, got out, and walked the rest of the way to Wilcox’s apartment. I got there around eleven thirty. A man came out of the shadows and walked up to me. He looked Vietnamese but spoke perfect English.

“He’s drunk and has already passed out,” the man said. “Follow me up to the room. I have a key.”

I did as he said. Before he opened the door, I removed the Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver I’d been given, along with a silencer, from my pocket. I attached the silencer and nodded my head. When the man opened the door, I stepped inside to a foul-smelling, filthy mess. Wilcox may have been a millionaire, but he certainly wasn’t living like one. There were liquor bottles strewn all over the kitchen and den. A television was on, and the glow revealed a man slumped sideways on the couch. The voices coming from the TV were speaking Vietnamese.

I felt nothing as I stepped up to him.

“This is for the sheriff and for those miserable bastards at the FBI,” I whispered, and I shot him once between the eyes.

I turned, walked out of the apartment, and handed the gun to the Vietnamese man. He locked the door while I went down the steps. I walked back to the cathedral and hailed a cab. A short time thereafter, I was back at the hotel.

Claire was standing in the lobby, dressed casually for the long flight home.

I walked up to her and she hugged me.

“How’d it go?” she whispered in my ear.

“Perfect.”

“How does it feel to have a clean slate?”

“Hard to describe,” I said.

As part of my deal, Roger Tate had secured for me a pardon from the president of the United States for any crimes I may have committed up to and including the day I shot Roger Wilcox. I had a copy, a lawyer I’d chosen very carefully had a copy, the Department of Justice had a copy, and Roger Tate had a copy.

“Everything’s ready to go,” Claire said. “Cab’s outside.”

“Let’s go,” I said, and we walked hand in hand into the humid night.

A clean slate. What would a man with my past and in my circumstances do with a clean slate? I hoped I’d make the best of it and resist some impulses I’d given in to in the past.

But only time would tell.