“Just listen.” Riggs recounted the news story he had just heard.
“You think he’s related to Alicia Crane?” Masters asked, the excitement echoing in his voice, his anger at Riggs completely gone, for now.
“Could be. Ages are about right. Older or younger brother maybe, I don’t know.”
“Thank God for strong genes.”
“What’s your game plan?”
“We check her family. Shouldn’t be too hard to do. Her father was a U.S. senator for years. Very prominent lineage. If she has brothers, cousins, whatever, we hit ’em fast. Bring them in for questioning. Hell, it can’t hurt.”
“I don’t think he’s going to be waiting for you to knock on the front door.”
“They never do, do they?”
“If he is around, be careful, George.”
“Yeah. If you’re right about all this—”
Riggs finished for him: “The guy just killed his own sister. I’d hate to see what he’d do to a nonfamily member.”
Riggs hung up. For the very first time he actually felt hopeful. He was under no delusions that Jackson would be around for the FBI to take into custody. He would be flushed out, cut off from his home base. He’d be pissed, full of revenge. Well, let him be. He’d have to cut Riggs’s heart out before he’d get to LuAnn. And they wouldn’t be sitting targets. Now was the time to keep on the move.
Ten minutes later they were in the car heading for points unknown.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Jackson boarded the Delta shuttle for New York. He needed additional supplies and he was going to pick up Roger. He couldn’t count on him to travel by himself and get to where he was supposed to be. Then they would head back south. During the short flight Jackson checked in with the man following Charlie and Lisa. They had made a rest stop. Charlie had talked on the phone. No doubt checking in with LuAnn. They had gone on and were now close to reentering Virginia on the southern side. It was all working out very well. An hour later, Jackson was in a cab threading its way through Manhattan toward his apartment.
Horace Parker looked around with intense curiosity. A doorman for over fifty years at a building where average apartments covered four thousand square feet and went for five million, and the penthouse that covered triple that space and went for twenty mil, he had never seen anything like this before. He watched as the small army of men in FBI windbreakers swept through the lobby and into the private elevator that went only to the penthouse. They looked deadly serious and had the weaponry to prove it.
He went back outside and looked up and down the street. A cab pulled up and out stepped Jackson. Parker immediately went over to him. The doorman had known him for most of his life. Years ago he had skipped pennies in the lobby’s massive fountain with Jackson and his younger brother, Roger. To earn extra money he had baby-sat them and taken them to Central Park on the weekends; he had bought them their first beers when they were barely into puberty. Finally, he had watched them grow up and then leave the nest. The Cranes, he had heard, had fallen on hard times, and they had left New York. Peter Crane, though, had come back and bought the penthouse. Apparently, he had done awfully well for himself.
“Good evening, Horace,” Jackson said cordially.
“Evening, Mr. Crane,” Parker said and tipped his cap.
Jackson started past him.
“Mr. Crane, sir?”
Jackson turned to him. “What is it? I’m in a bit of a hurry, Horace.”
Parker looked upward. “There’s some men come to the building, Mr. Crane. They went right up to your apartment. A bunch of them. FBI. Guns and everything, never seen nothing like it. They’re up there right now. I think they’re waiting for you to get home, sir.”
Jackson’s reply was calm and immediate. “Thank you for the information, Horace. Simply a misunderstanding.”
Jackson put out his hand, which Parker took. Jackson immediately turned and walked away from the apartment building. When Parker opened his hand, there was a wad of hundred-dollar bills there. He looked around discreetly before stuffing the cash in his pocket and taking up his position by the door once more.