AN: Oh dear me... apologies for not updating sooner – I went up to see the family in the north, and the weather was so good I stayed a few extra days. My arms are quite brown, which is nice. The legs remain as pasty as a plate of porridge. Sad...
Prime Real Estate
Chapter 4
Tony's catch didn't even make him out of breath. He watched (and heard) the erratic way the youth was taking, through thick undergrowth and densely planted trees, and chose himself a much easier route to cut him off. As the young thug found a clearer path and slowed to a walk, grinning, thinking he was home free, the tall agent simply stepped out in front of him.
"What the -"
The punk said something unprintable, ending with what could have been an instruction to get out of his way.
Tony grinned easily. "Let's try that again, shall we? What you mean is, 'I know I'm under arrest, and I'm going to drop my weapon and come quietly.'"
The kid let loose a few more profanities and threw a punch, which didn't collect anything but air; the next moment he was on his face on the dirt path, with no idea how he'd got there, and enjoying the feel of a knee placed none too kindly in the small of his back. He continued to swear until his captor hauled him to his feet, yanking hard on his cuffed wrists, when he yelled in pain.
"Ow, man, you're killing my arms! Let up, dammit!" He felt his neck being prodded by his own weapon, and stuttered to a halt.
"There," Tony said, "I knew you'd see things my way. Fine creeping around in the night, slaughtering defenceless chickens -"
"They weren't chickens, they were hawks -"
The youth stopped and shut his mouth with a snap, as Tony hooted with derisive laughter. He prodded him again with the air rifle, holding it by the narrow neck at the front of the stock, where he wouldn't blur the owner's fingerprints. "Mush, Einstein. Move."
The youth tried again. "I didn't say anythin'. You got no witnesses."
"Like I care. I'll soon get the truth out of you in interrogation."
"No need, Tony. I heard. Sorry to spoil your fun." His partner, plus prisoner, fell into step beside him. He added glumly, "Actually, we're probably honour bound to let Virginia SP have first chew at them."
Disappointed sigh. "Aww... So," brightly, "How'd yours go?"
Tim hadn't had to run as far, but harder and faster; just his luck to get a little, wiry greyhound to chase. But the kid had no stamina – from twenty yards behind him Tim could hear the harsh, panicked breathing, and wasn't surprised when, knowing how fast he was being caught up with, the youth stopped and whirled round, gesturing with his air gun.
"Get away from me! I'll shoot you!"
"I'm not a goat, I'm a Fed. You'll find it a bit more difficult."
The boy gestured at Tim's right side. "You're not packing." He was beginning to lift the rifle, when Tim hitched the left side of his jacket to reveal his Sig.
"I wouldn't, if I were you. I can draw this and fire before you can aim." He could, too... and the kid knew it. He dropped the gun and raised his hands.
When he'd heard the tale, Tony grinned hugely. "Way to go, McDuke!" They shoved the prisoners back under the fence, Tim covering them without prior discussion, until Tony had ducked under and taken over.
As they straightened up, the two punks stopped in alarm, and the agents took the scene in at a glance. Ness was putting a dressing on the arm of a pretty young hispanic girl, who they recognised as the one who'd shouted angrily in defence of the livestock. It seemed as if she'd been struck by a pellet herself. Murf stood nearby, holding a first-aid box. Guy, and the girl who'd greeted Tim and Tony had been checking the goats over, but Guy straightened up.
"Foggy's got a graze on his knee. Can't find anything wrong with the – that's them! Well, that one is... he's even wearing the same tee! He's one of the ones who killed the birds. He's on the video! And he shot Sanchia!" The teenager pointed at the girl with the dressing on her arm, then flew at the cuffed youth, and Tim held him off, as gently as he could.
"It's all right. He's already admitted it." That only made the boy wilder, and Tim grabbed his shoulders. "You have to share," he said firmly. "Everyone wants a piece of him." That got Guy's attention. Was that the sort of thing a Fed should say? He stopped, eyes wide with surprise, and Tim shook his head. "He'll get what's coming to him," Tim went on. "There's no need to go down to his level. Hey, and in the meantime, we need him to tell us what he knows."
The boy's shoulders slumped and the rage went out of him. "He'd better," he said bitterly.
Tony said quietly, "McGee, why don't you get Guy to show you the video he just mentioned," and Tim nodded. Get the lad out of here... They headed back towards the house. Tony looked at Ness and the injured girl, and said thoughtfully, "Miz Falconbridge, d'you have an empty loose-box or somewhere we can talk to these two?"
The boss lady caught on. She smiled thinly. "Of course," she purred. "The two foaling boxes opposite the burned out pens are both empty. We had to move the mares; the charred smell was upsetting them."
Tony turned to Murf, raised his eyebrows at him, and said sharply, "Marine!"
Private First Class Murphy played his part, snapped to attention, and said, "Sir!" crisply.
"McGee's looking at these clowns on film. I'm down an agent. Care to help?"
"Yes, Sir. Glad to, sir."
"Ladies," Tony began solicitously. (He'd have been enjoying himself hugely if the spectre of murdered animals and unpleasant, unnamed threats hadn't been hanging over the place. As it was, he was still having some fun.) "Ladies, why don't you attend to things here, and then go get a hot drink in the kitchen? Treat Sanchia for shock?"
"It's only a graze," the girl began, but Ness hushed her.
"I know, dear, but you were very brave, facing people with guns. I need to make sure you're all right. Besides," she said mordantly, with an amused glance at the two youths, "I don't think we want to be around here just now."
The skinny youth that Tim had captured took an involuntary step forwards, before Murf hauled him back. "You can't leave us with -"
Vanessa Falconbridge looked slowly at the burned out aviary. "Of course I can. If I didn't have other things to do I'd join them."
The other girl, who'd been treating the goat, said "That's done, Ness," and the three walked away towards the house. Tony nudged his prisoner forwards without a word, Murf did the same, and a few moments later, the two were shoved none too gently into a loose-box. Tony didn't bother to close the door, he simply stood between it and the two young thugs.
"Now," he said cheerfully, "Who are you two dumbos working for?"
The wiry youth opted for silence. The other tried defiance. "We're not saying anything. We want a lawyer!"
Tony looked round and shrugged. "Don't see one. Who put you up to this?" As he spoke, he removed his denim jacket and hung it over the half door, turning his back on them contemptuously.
"You can't do this!" The defiant one was backing away into the corner. "You can't beat on us, we're in cuffs!"
"Ah," Tony said, as if he'd only just realised. "It seems they're requiring us to demonstrate that we conform to certain operational and moral standards they don't hold to themselves."
Murf watched their reaction and grinned. "I don't think they understood that at all, sir. He means, you want us to play fair," he explained patiently. "You want us to play fair."
"Ah," Tony said again, while the youths were still digesting that.. "Sure..." He reached for his key and released them both, then stepping back he hitched his thumbs through the belt of his jeans. He smiled at them kindly; as kindly as the Big Bad Wolf with the Piggies cornered. "There we are, then... So... who are you working for?"
That was that for the defiance. "We don't know!"
A few minutes later, without lifting a finger, he was calling VSP, to arrange a collection. "You forced that out of us," the street lawyer attempted. "You threatened us... we'll say you beat us up..."
"No we didn't -" Murf began irately, but shut up again when Tony grinned.
"Oh, haven't you got the message about the 'no witnesses' thing yet?" He pointed up at a tiny, lozenge-shaped box in the corner of the ceiling. "It. Doesn't. Work. Foaling boxes always have cameras, you know. No... you don't know. You only know about hurting animals. You know my partner went back to the house to watch us on the monitor, don't you? You don't? Well, he'll have seen just how hard we had to beat you up to get you to talk." He nudged the youths outside again, and cuffed them to a sturdy fence post. "Now, you wait there for the cops – they'll be real happy to see you." He and Murf walked back towards the house.
"They don't know a damn thing," he regretfully told the assembled company, including four VSP officers, back in Ness's comfortable kitchen a while later. They'd be running out of coffee mugs soon. "We've got them bang to rights for the killings, and for hurting Sanchia and the goats. Oh, and for threatening Federal Agents."
"Will they go to prison for all that?" It was young Guy who asked the question, throwing an intense look at Tim as he remembered what this particular agent had told him.
Tim didn't have to answer. "For as long as we can possibly make it," one of the VSP officers told him matter-of-factly. Guy subsided, satisfied.
"Neither one of them is the guy who attacked Private Murphy with the fire extinguisher. Murf's sure of it, and Ness agrees that neither one's build matches up with what's on the tape." Tony nodded to the Sergeant who seemed to be the leader of the State Police contingent. "We'll get you a copy of that, in case it's useful."
Tim said thoughtfully, "How did they keep in touch with whoever was holding their leashes?"
The SFA grimaced. "They spend most of their time down at a pool hall, out in Trinidad... Almond's, very smart place. Not. According to Street Lawyer, the bartender asked if they wanted to earn some cash, and gave them a cell phone." He handed it to the Sergeant in an evidence bag. "That's it – the sum total of their knowledge. They find their money in a locker at the pool hall when a job's been done. We'll check, of course, but the barkeep will say some guy came in, when he said heavy work he thought he meant construction, he won't be able to recall his face, etc. etc. If there's any money in the locker when we go there we'll print it, and the locker, and you know right now we'll come up with nothing."
The Sergeant shook his head. "Our case, we'll do the work. The area's not our jurisdiction, mind you, but we'll ask Metro to do it for us. You've given us those two deadbeats on a plate, which is nice; you concentrate on your case, and we'll keep in touch if there's any way they cross. Got a feeling they will."
Sitting at the big kitchen table, one officer had finished taking witness statements, and rose to his feet. Sanchia rose too, and both agents saw with an inner smile how Guy hurried to her side. It was the signal for the Sergeant to shake hands all round and gather his men, the air-gun evidence and the statements, and depart with a 'Be in touch, Ma'am,' to collect his prisoners.
For a moment there was silence, which Tony broke by remarking heavily, "He's right of course. We've got the tip of the iceberg here."
"We need some way of pulling in information and co-ordinating it," Tim said, still thoughtfully. "We're going to need to talk with Maryland PD, Metro, VSP, and anyone else who's investigating instances of coercion." He sighed, and went to put his empty coffee mug to be washed. "Which is all very nice but it doesn't get us any closer to knowing who attacked Murf," he went on, then stopped dead, looking at a photo in a frame on the wall near the range. "Tony, look at this!"
Ness was smiling as the older agent went to take a closer look. She waited, until Tony said in an awestruck voice "That's..."
"Yes. It's John Wayne. On the set of 'True Gritt' in 1969. The younger man standing by him is my father, Shep Falconbridge. Took me to meet him... The baby the Duke's holding is me. My dad had been a wrangler for Universal, but he got mad at the way horses were treated as commodities, not creatures. I mean – if you wanted a rider to take a spectacular fall on film, you tied a very long rope to a horse's fetlock, and the stuntman would gallop it flat out until the rope went taut, and the horse would go down. The rider'd be fine, he knew it was coming – the horse quite often not so. Wayne disliked the whole way things were, and backed my dad with public approval and a donation, to start the business. As far as my dad was concerned, the Duke was the best."
Tony just nodded, lost for words.
They took the fire extinguisher, and the film from the previous night; beyond that there wasn't much they could do except urge Ness to be vigilant, and to promise her they'd be investigating thoroughly.
As they drove away, Tony said seriously, "Decent people, doing a decent job. Just like your Caroline. You know you mentioned malice having a hand in her problems? It looks like the same here. You want to hack down all the surrounding woodland, get rid of the ranch and build houses in this prime spot -"
"If you can bribe someone in power to get you round the planning laws -"
"But you could build your expensive houses anywhere, so why pick somewhere where something else is already in your way?"
"Mmm," Tim agreed. "It's as if whoever's pulling the strings wants to spoil things for other people who've got what he hasn't."
"Yeah. Warped, twisted, intelligent malice. We need to talk to Gibbs and Ziva. Time off or not."
Tim nodded, reaching for his cell phone. "And we need to get ourselves a co-ordinator. I know just the right person."
The car jerked slightly as Tony twitched the wheel in surprise. "McGoogle, I've said it before, you're a McGenius. It could be just what Jinny needs!"
NCISNCISNCISNCIS
His tutors at law school had taught him many things, some of which he had discarded; others which he had adopted as tenets to live by.
"Don't feel sorry for the innocent if you're defending the guilty. They have their own lawyers to help them. Your only obligation is towards your client."
That had morphed somewhere along the way into simply, 'Don't feel sorry for the innocent'.
"Justice and the law aren't necessary the same thing. What's just in a given situation isn't always as clear as the laws covering it. The law can be flexible; it's up to the ingenious lawyer to bend it if he needs to, to obtain the justice."
The law can be flexible, he was a damn good lawyer; he could bend it whatever way he liked, to get what he wanted.
Nobody ever noticed the lawyer... he was the anonymous figure at the banker or businessman's side, who shuffled papers and produced them when necessary, and only spoke when invited to. For all his brains, he was looked down on, or not even seen by those he served, who made use of his brain without ever acknowledging that it was better than their own.
This lawyer was going to change all that. He was thirty-seven; if anyone had been asked, they would have put him at a good ten years older, and this was something he cultivated, by dress, voice, hairstyle, actions... He was the archetypal grey man, who nobody would remember...
He deferred to the likes of Ackerman; he had a few more like him, each one happily thinking that they were his boss, while he dreamed of the day when they'd be sitting in their cells, knowing that he'd duped them, while he sat in his beach palace on Mustique raising a glass to their health. He was smarter than all of them put together, and he hated them like he hated just about everybody. No particular reason; he was just built that way. The world was peopled by fools, and he despised every one of them. He played his unassuming, unregarded part, until the day when he could spit in all their faces.
Thorley Swinson drummed his fingers on his desk. Those two idiots should have reported in by now, to let him know how their latest harassment had gone. Since they hadn't, it was quite likely that they'd been caught. No matter; they couldn't be linked to him, and even the bartender who recruited them had no direct connection to him. He was well paid for keeping that locker in a back corridor and not looking to see who went near it.
But... not everyone who worked for him was an idiot, and there were those he had direct contact with who he couldn't entirely trust... and now he had three police departments and a federal agency meddling in his affairs.
He'd known at once who Special Agent McGee was, having encountered him as a witness for the prosecution in a case where he'd defended the guilty and hadn't won... he'd known that would be impossible the moment he'd met his client; unless you could gag the man in court his own stupid mouth would condemn him, and so it had.
He knew who the other formidable members of McGee's team were; DiNozzo had also been a prosecution witness in that trial, and he didn't underestimate that cocky bastard any more than he did McGee, or the other members of the team. He'd not forgotten the Metro police detective either; he was another one whose interest he'd rather not have drawn, him and his team.
Swinson needed something to deflect attention away from identifying him; or rather, someone. An idea had been slowly growing for a while now. His mind went back to that court case... When it had been clear that his client was going to prison no matter what, there were many things he could have done to plead mitigation, and got him a much shorter sentence, but by that time he loathed the man so much that he hadn't tried any of them. He'd barely blinked, and smiled inwardly, when the man had raged about the eighteen years he'd been handed down.
It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, and now he couldn't think of a more appropriate front-man to take the heat for him when the time came. Never mind, poor, dear Arthur, you've been in there almost a year... I'm going to get you out of jail – for the time being...
NCISNCISNCISNCIS
They met at one of their favourite diners; Gibbs still with the light aroma of sawdust around him, Ziva in gym clothes and glowing with vitality. Tony and Tim had to hand the story back and forth between them in order for either of them to actually eat, and they were both ravenous after their 'day off'.
"Yeah," Gibbs said after a while, "It looks as if you're on to something here."
"I hope it will lead to better things for Jeanette," Ziva said, remembering her time working with the Metro detective on the Frandsen case. "This tin...can of worms you have opened up may prove to be very large." She smiled at getting the expression right, then frowned in puzzlement when there was no reaction from Tony. He appeared to have tuned out for a moment, and was staring into space.
Tim saw her bewildered glance and grinned. "Oh, take no notice," he told her. "He's just met someone who once met John Wayne."
AN: So, two really nasty baddies for the price of one... please let me know what you think!