The Brothers Read online

  Chapter 11… The Hospital

  “He is aware of my presence, Mushir.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “It was bound to happen sooner or later, Mushir. We have had eyes on him since before we accomplished the first part of our mission. He was bound to detect us sooner or later.”

  “ʼAḥmaq! We should have killed them both at the same time as we had planned. It is now much more complicated.”

  The insults were bound to come. Killing both men at the same time would have been the ultimate tipoff that their deaths were no accident and would not only have aroused suspicion, but would have led to an obvious investigation. The opportunity had presented itself for one of the assassinations, but not the other. He was not going to be the fool in this mission. “I was successful with our first target and made sure his death would escape any suspicion. Do you not think that both of them dying by induced heart attacks at the same time would not have aroused the very suspicion you are looking to avoid? Do you even know if that was possible to achieve? You have placed me in a very precarious situation and it is because of you that his own government is monitoring him. If you continue to call me a fool and an idiot, I will be more than happy to return to Yabrud and continue the jihad in a more traditional manner. It is your choice, Mushir, but I am not the only one who will have to explain if this mission fails.” The Americans would have called this his fuck you speech.

  After some silence, the Mushir said, “Those accounts are very important to us and we have much invested in them. They must remain undetected until we can set up other means to funnel the money to our causes.”

  “You are reminding me of something I already know. If you would like me to complete this mission, you will need to listen to my recommendations. Otherwise you may obtain another munāḍil, another fighter who will follow your orders without question as you might prefer. It is up to you, Mushir, but you and I will both face Allah together should you decide to take that action.” Now the Mushir had as much at risk as he did. Now their lives depended on each other’s actions and it was up to the Mushir as to whether he lived or died by his own hand, for it would be like cutting his own throat should he bring this to confrontation between the two of them. That decision would bring shame on them both, a shame that would be a hundred times worse than dying honorably in the eyes of Allah.

  “These deaths cannot be traced back to us,” the Mushir said, his fury at having been threatened evident in his voice. “Complete this mission immediately as you have been instructed. The lives of your family depend on it.”

  * * * * *

  “Easy now, Mister Curlander,” the young nursey said as she tried to help Harry out of the wheelchair and back into the bed. Harry was 6’1”, and 215 pounds. She was 4’11” and ninety-eight pounds if she carried a brick in her pocket.

  “How old are you?” Harry asked.

  “Nineteen,” the young thing replied.

  “Huh, I’ve got ties older than that,” Harry muttered lowly. “And you’re a nurse?”

  “Well, no, not exactly. I just completed my first year in the LPN program at Jersey College.”

  “So you’re not a nurse.”

  “Well... no, not yet. I’m still studying, and I’ll be one around this time next year.”

  “So what are you now? Like, an assistant nursey or something?”

  “I am a patient care nursing summer intern,” she said proudly.

  “And what does a patient care nursing summer intern do, exactly?”

  “I help with treatments and I assist patients with tending to the personal care activities of daily living. Would you like a sponge bath?”

  “No, I don’t want a sponge bath. I want to go home.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I can’t help you with that. That would be up to the doctor. I can get you a magazine, if you’d like. Or maybe a toothbrush and some mouthwash. I think you need it.”

  Harry gave her a look. “Oh, I do, do I? Do they teach bedside manners at Jersey College?”

  “That’s one of the elective courses, and I elected not to take that right now. You could use that sponge bath too, you know.”

  Denise returned from the nursing station down the hall. “He’s not giving you any trouble, is he?” she asked the young patient care summer intern nursey person.

  “Oh no, absolutely not. He’s a real angel,” she replied, smiling back at Harry. “He could use a sponge bath, though.”

  “I’ll give him one when he gets home,” Denise said. “The doctor said we’ll be out of here in half an hour.”

  “That means sometime today—maybe,” Harry responded grumpily. “These bandage wraps are killing me, they’re so tight.” He tried to change his position and the pain shot through his chest like a lightning bolt. Three broken ribs will do that to you. The doctor said he was a centimeter away from a punctured lung, hence the overnight guest appearance in the hospital. Now it was all Harry could do to keep his mood out of totally-pissed-off territory, at which he was being only moderately successful. “Don’t you have someone who’s waiting for you to stab them with a needle or something?” he said to the nursey person.

  “And I was saving that for you,” she shot back. “I’ll bet he’s a ball of fire on Valentine's Day,” she said to Denise, and she was out the door.

  Denise said, “She’ll make a good nurse someday.”

  Harry said, “Yeah, right,” and he turned away, thinking about what happened the night before.

  Picking up on it, Denise said, “I’m going to the cafeteria to get some coffee. Do you want anything?”

  “My cell phone,” he said coldly. “Did you bring Detective Pruitt’s phone number?”

  Denise had known him long enough to know there was no sense consoling him or trying to be nice when he got like this. He’d probably feel better if he just punched something. She reached into her purse and handed him Pruitt’s number and his phone, kissed him on the forehead and said, “I’ll give you some time.”

  Harry noted the date on the phone display. It was Thursday, May 16th, almost two weeks after the reunion and Hutch’s death, and only three days since the funeral. It seemed much longer than that, he thought. Being just a regular Thursday, it was a normal workday and Harry figured that’s where everyone would be—at work. He had several calls to make. The first of them would be to Pruitt.

  There was a lot to talk about with her, and he wasn’t sure where to start. Perhaps he could start with the most recent occurrence about the human resources impostors who had attempted to obtain Hutch’s cell phone and laptop from Suzanne. Or, there was the fact that he, Harry, now possessed the number of the last person that Hutch had talked to on the phone before he died. Even more interesting was why Jerry Brennan had followed him from Cambridge halfway to Point Pleasant after the funeral, and why the tall, dark-skinned fake Brendan Phillips had been introduced as such at the wake when the real Brendan Phillips was verifiably dead, also of a massive heart attack, coincidentally—or maybe not so coincidentally. And what about the mysterious email exchange he’d had about a month before the reunion about Hutch wanting to meet him in New York City to discuss something because he, Harry, could “keep his mouth shut?” What a juicy little tidbit that was.

  It was all true, but it sounded too hard to believe and he wondered if Pruitt would buy in or think he’d gone bananas. He shifted his weight in the bed, wincing as pain stabbed through his chest again. Trying to catch his breath and sucking in air laden with the wonderful aroma of hospital room bouquet, he wondered if he should even say anything to Pruitt about what Doc had found out from Doctor Kadam. Probably not, he figured. Putting himself in Pruitt’s shoes, if he was on the receiving end of someone telling him about CIA assassins inducing heart attacks by using futuristic radio frequency weapons, he’d think they were nuttier than a Mr. Goodbar. One thing was quite believable, however, someone had been after him last night, and it was believab
le because he’d lived through it—albeit barely. It wasn’t beyond reality that he could have ended up like Hutch, and certainly Pruitt was bound to see that reality and get an investigation going on whatever was going on here. Floating above all this was whatever Hutch might have been working on at the bank, along with whatever conversations he’d had with the U.S. Treasury Department, which to Harry seemed interconnected somehow, but which no one seemed to have a handle on. Harry thought: was he into some shit, or what?

  Picking up his cell phone, he was about to dial Pruitt’s number when the phone vibrated in his hand, startling him. Not recognizing the number, he hit the answer button. “Hello?”

  “Yo, Dirty Harry, Al Fiorello here. I got your cell number from the folks at your office, and they said something about you bein’ in the hospital. Is everything okay wid’ you?”

  It was Fighting Al, and Harry remembered immediately that Al had agreed to look into what would be involved in filing a malpractice suit against the doctor that had examined Hutch for his bank-required physical. “Hello Al, I’m a little banged up but I’ll make it.”

  “How banged up?”

  “Three broken ribs and some internal bruising. I have to take it easy for a few days.”

  “No shit. What the fuck happened? You weren’t, like, mugged or something, were ya’?”

  Harry debated whether he should go into it. “I might as well have been. I think someone was after me last night, and I sort of ran off the road trying to get away.”

  “Fuckin’ A, Harry... for real? Do you know who it was?”

  “Not exactly, but a lot of strange things have been happening to me since the reunion and this whole deal with Hutch; I have a feeling it had something to do with that.”

  “Harry, hold on a second and let me close my office door.” Al put the phone down and was back in a few seconds. “Listen, Harry, normally I don’t stick my nose where it don’t belong, but if you’d like to find out who was trying to jump your ass last night, I know some guys who sort of specialize in finding out stuff people don’t want found out, if you get my drift.”

  Harry was getting the drift, all right. Hesitating, “Listen, Al....”

  “Hey, Harry, just sayin’, okay? It’s just that with the work I do, I get to know people, that’s all. Sometimes real life ain’t like what you see on TV, ya’ know?”

  Harry let the conversation hang there, wondering why he was even thinking about it. “I’ll get back to you on that, okay Al?”

  “Whatever you think, Harry. You just need to say the word, but uh... well, the reason I called. You’re not gonna like what I have to say.”

  “It’s okay, Al. Spit it out.”

  “So you’re still convinced that this thing with Hutch really stinks, huh?”

  “More than ever.”

  “Well, I looked into the whole malpractice angle like we talked about, and I don’t think that would get us anywhere.”

  “Bummer. Why not?”

  “Well, when we talked about this at the wake with Ducky’s wife.... And by the way, is she hot as a pistol, or what? She’s got some great rack on her, don’t ya’ think?”

  “Yeah, Al, great rack. You were saying?”

  “What is she, ten years younger than Ducky?”

  “I never asked, but she looks it.”

  “I’ll say. Lucky dog that Ducky. I’ll betcha he’s playin’ motorboat with those puppies every night.”

  “Al, you were saying?”

  “Right. She said that the ME’s report didn’t indicate there were any severe blockages or coronary artery disease in Hutch’s body.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, if that was the case, then it would be almost impossible to prove negligence in that we’d be saying that the examining physician should have found something that wasn’t there. Do you see my point?”

  Reluctantly, Harry said, “Yeah, I’m afraid I do.”

  “There’s another reason. In order to even bring a malpractice suit in a situation like this, we’d have to claim that it was something the doctor did that caused the harm. Now, I know we talked about bringing suit mainly for the purpose of getting an investigation going, but I don’t think we’d even get that far. I don’t think there’s any way we could claim that it was something the doctor did that caused Hutch’s death. If this case came in my front door, I’d probably turn it away.”

  Harry nodded to himself, knowing Al was right. “Well, it was worth a shot, right?”

  “Hey, anything is worth a shot, especially in this situation. Hutch was one of our brothers, man, and I agree with you—I think this thing is fucked up.”

  You don’t know how fucked up, thought Harry, then he recalled what Al had said a few moments earlier. “Hey Al, let me ask you something else.”

  “My time is your time, as we lawyers say.”

  “You said before that you know people who know people, right?”

  “You’re driving at something, Harry. I can smell the rubber burning right through the phone line.”

  “Between you and me, if we needed to get hold of some phone records without anyone knowing about it—”

  “You mean without a search warrant or a subpoena.”

  “That can be such a complicated procedure sometimes, don’t you think?”

  “I do,” Al replied.

  “And it seems such a waste of time and expense to go through all that for the little bit of information we’re looking for,” Harry went on. “I thought you might know someone who could help us streamline the process.”

  Fighting Al paused and said, “Phone records, huh? Yeah, I might know a guy. Gimme a couple ‘a days.”

  * * * * *

  “So let me see if I got all this,” said Pruitt, who went on to recap everything Harry had just told her on the phone: Jerry Brennan following him on I-95, the Brendan Phillips impostor, the human resource pretenders who were trying to get hold of Hutch’s cell phone and laptop, the email exchange about Hutch wanting to meet Harry in New York City on the sly, and finally the fact that Hutch had been contacted by, and had made a visit to, the Treasury Department in D.C. some months back regarding topic unknown, as was whatever he was working on, seemingly, at First International Bank. Harry didn’t say anything about cardiac-arrest-inducing radio frequency weapons. It sounded too farfetched and he needed Pruitt to believe him right now rather than think he was some sort of obsessed whack-a-doodle.

  “You got it,” Harry said when she was finished.

  “And you say someone tried to run you off the road last night.”

  “Not tried—did,” Harry corrected.

  “And where is that cell phone right now?” Pruitt asked, not bothering to mention that she’d already asked Mister Hutchinson’s wife the previous day if she could send it to her.

  “His wife Suzanne has it, along with the laptop those phony human resources people were after.”

  “I might be able to look into some of this on my own time,” Pruitt said, “but there is no official investigation open at this point. You understand what that means, don’t you, being a lawyer and all?”

  Harry did indeed understand. “If I can convince Hutch’s wife to give you that phone and laptop voluntarily, would that be in violation of any privacy laws, or would there be any reason why you couldn’t take a look-see as to what’s on those devices?” Harry also didn’t say anything about the fact that he was now in possession of the phone number belonging to whomever Hutch talked to just before he died. He needed to know where Pruitt’s head was with regards to this investigation before he divulged much more.

  “If she turns over those items voluntarily, no, I don’t think there’s any problem, but I’ll double check with ADA Brimton just to make sure. You said Mrs. Hutchinson lives in Cambridge?”

  “North Cambridge, to be exact. That’s probably about an hour and a half from Northampton, which is where you’re located, right?”

&nb
sp; “That’s correct. If she agrees to let us inspect those items, call me back and I’ll make arrangements to pick them up. Just one thing, Mister Curlander.”

  That sounded ominous. “What’s that, Detective?”

  “Be sure she understands how important those devices are and to not let them out of her sight.”

  Harry almost bopped himself in the head as he suddenly recalled that Suzanne was all alone and whoever had tried to get hold of those items might try again—and a little more forcefully this time. “I’ll give her a call right away,” he said to Pruitt. He had a bad feeling about this.

  * * * * *

  CIA Special Agent Darryl Breckenridge slammed down his headset and said, “Shit.” Picking up his cell phone, he called the same Boston 857 number he’d been using since he’d been assigned to this operation. “We’re fucked,” he bellowed into the phone. “I tried to tell you before that we were fucked, and now I’m telling you again. We’re fucked.”

  “Slow down, Breckenridge. What’s got your panties in a bunch this time?”

  “Someone ran our man off the road last night and it sounds like he almost bought it.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I just got done listening to his wife talking to her mother for the last half hour. If we’re gonna protect this guy, we gotta have more eyes on this thing.”

  “And where to do you suggest we get that? I’m lucky I got authorization to put you on this.”

  “Listen, if what his wife just said was true, this is turning into one piss-poor exfiltration operation. It sounds to me like he’s getting in deeper and he’s not even aware of it.”

  “I hear ya’, Breckenridge, and I’ll carry the message up the ladder, but you stay on plan for now until I tell you different. We don’t want any blowback on this.”

  “We’ve already had one protected source burned in this operation, if we lose another we’ll have a lot more to worry about than blowback. These tangos think he’s an accomplice, boss, and we’re leaving him out there as bait without him even knowing it. I’m telling you, either there’s a cell closing in on this guy, or we’ve got a mole in this operation. Either way we’re fucked and we’ve got to bring this guy in from the cold.”

  “That’s not part of this op.”

  “Then we need to make it part of this op, or there will be a lot more than just blowback in the shit storm I’ll create.”

  “What the fuck, Breckenridge? I’m hearing you loud and clear, okay, but we have no proof that we’ve been penetrated.”

  “Then you tell me how they got to him. I’m telling you, someone is doing a damned good dry clean on us, or we’re blind as bats. You don’t want to pull the plug, fine, but then you do something so that Curlander isn’t the meat in this sandwich. I, for one, do not plan on spending quality time in a federal prison over this.”

  “I could have your ass for this, Breckenridge.”

  “Yeah, well, better I get fucked that way than by being some dude’s shower bitch.”

  * * * * *

  “The problem,” said Monica, “is threefold.”

  “Threefold?” Pruitt questioned. “Explain it to me.”

  Monica swiveled in her chair and gazed out her office window: nice mid-May day in Northampton, the type of beautiful spring weather that happens in New England. She was thankful that Pruitt was doing more than just taking an interest in the case, as evidenced by the fact that Pruitt was there on her day off. She needed to be careful with her language here so that Pruitt would stay motivated to keep this case-but-not-a-case on her agenda.

  “First off,” Monica began, “in cases where digital evidence might be involved, the search warrant process is becoming a two-step process.”

  “How’s that?” Pruitt asked.

  “Existing rules are premised on a one-step process of search and seizure: the police obtain a warrant and enter the place to be searched and retrieve the property named in the warrant.”

  “Yeah, got that,” said Pruitt. “How is this different?”

  “Computer technologies tend to bifurcate the process. Not only does the computer need to be designated in a traditional warrant, but then the specific information being sought on that computer must also be named on a separate search warrant. In this sense, computers are treated like another storage location, and as you know, warrants are needed to search any specific location involved in an investigation.”

  Pruitt nodded and said, “According to your friend Curlander....” She paused. “He is your friend, isn’t he?”

  “More a friend of my husband, but close enough.”

  “According to him, some people posing as bank employees are trying very hard to get hold of the late Mister Hutchinson’s cell phone and laptop from the wife. Curlander thinks there’s some information there that will cast doubt that Mister Hutchinson’s death was attributable to natural causes.”

  Monica was listening very carefully. “Okay,” she said, urging Pruitt to continue.

  “So if the wife is in control of the property in question and she gives us consent, and we find evidence that substantiates Curlander’s suspicions, is that enough to establish probable cause for an arrest?”

  Pruitt was eyeing her closely, Monica noticed, and it was clear why her reputation preceded her. When Pruitt made an arrest, there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that some perpetrator would get off on a technicality. Monica said, “I think that if we proceed as you’ve described and we come across something that warrants reclassifying Hutch’s death as suspicious, there’s a very real possibility that we might have to go back and obtain a search warrant to make admissible in any possible proceeding any evidence that we know already exists due to our search by consent in an unofficial investigation.” Monica paused here. “That’s the third element. We have to be very cognizant of Fourth Amendment admissibility even though we don’t have a case and we don’t have any suspects at the moment.”

  Pruitt just shook her head. “I think I know what you just said. So it’s okay to get hold of that cell phone and laptop from the wife?” she questioned. She didn’t bother to tell Monica she’d already spoken to Suzanne and had now decided to actually drive to North Cambridge.

  “I just have one more question,” said Monica. “Who actually owns those items?”

  Pruitt leaned back in her chair and sighed, “Oh darn.”