The Big Bad Wolf

house until he left for work. We had agreed not to take him inside the house. I wouldn’t let it go down that way. I just couldn’t do it.
    We all felt that Lizzie Connolly and her daughters had been through more than enough pain already. They didn’t need to see Brendan Connolly—Sphinx—arrested at the family house in Buckhead. They didn’t need to find out the awful truth about him like that.
    I sat in a dark blue sedan parked two blocks up the street but with a view of the large Georgian-style house. I was feeling numb. I remembered the first time I’d been there. I recalled my talk with the girls, and then with Brendan Connolly in his den. His grief had seemed heartfelt, as genuine as his young daughters.
    Of course, no one had suspected he had betrayed his wife,
sold her to another man.
Pasha Sorokin had met Elizabeth at a party in the Connolly house. He’d wanted her; Brendan Connolly didn’t. The judge had been having affairs for years. Elizabeth reminded Sorokin of the model Claudia Schiffer, who had appeared on billboards all over Moscow during his gangster days. So the horrifying trade was made.
A husband had sold his own wife into captivity;
he’d gotten rid of her in the worst way imaginable. How could he have hated Elizabeth so much? And how could she have loved him?
    Ned Mahoney was in the car with me, waiting for action: the takedown of Sphinx. If we couldn’t have the Wolf yet, he was our second choice—the consolation prize.
    “I wonder if Elizabeth knew about her husband’s secret life?” Mahoney muttered.
    “Maybe she suspected something. They didn’t sleep together regularly. When I visited the house, Connolly showed me the den. There was a bed in there. Unmade.”
    “Think he’ll go to work today?” Mahoney asked. He was calmly munching an apple. A very cool head to work with.
    “He knows we took down Sorokin and Federov. I figure he’ll be cautious. He’ll probably play it straight. Hard to tell.”
    “Maybe we should take him at the house. You think?” He bit into his apple again. “Alex?”
    I shook my head. “I can’t do it, Ned. Not to his family.”
    “Okay. Just asking, buddy.”
    We waited. A little past nine, Brendan Connolly finally came out the front door of the house. He walked to a silver Porsche Boxster parked in the circular driveway. He had on a blue suit, carried a black gym bag. He was whistling.
    “Scumbag!” Mahoney whispered. Then he spoke into his two-way: “This is Alpha One . . . we have Sphinx leaving the house. He’s getting into a Porsche. Prepare to converge. Vehicle license is V6T-81K.”
    We heard back immediately. “This is Braves One . . . we have Sphinx in full sight too. We’ve got him covered. He’s ours.”
    Then, “Braves Three in place at second intersect. We’re waiting on him.”
    “Should be about ten to fifteen seconds. He’s heading down the street. Making a right.”
    I spoke very calmly to Mahoney. “I want to take him down, Ned.”
    He looked straight ahead through the windshield. Didn’t answer me. But he didn’t say no.
    I watched the Porsche proceed at a normal speed to the next cross street. The Boxster eased into the turn.
And then Brendan Connolly ran!
    “Oh, boy,” said Mahoney, and tossed away his apple.

Chapter 107
    A MESSAGE CAME OVER the shortwave. “Suspect is going southeast. He must have seen us!”
    I gunned our car in the direction the Porsche had disappeared. I managed to get the sedan up to sixty-five on the narrow, winding street lined with gated McMansions. I still couldn’t see the silver Porsche up ahead.
    “I’m heading east,” I said into the two-way. “I’ll take a chance he’s trying to get to the highway.” I didn’t know what else to do. I passed several cars coming the other way on the quiet street. A couple of drivers sat on their horns. That’s what I would have done too. I was going seventy-five miles an hour in a residential area.
    “I see him!” Mahoney yelled.
    I stepped down hard on the gas. I was finally making up some ground. I spotted a blue sedan approaching the Porsche from the east. It was Braves Two. We had Brendan Connolly from two sides. Now the question was whether or not he’d give up.
    Suddenly the Porsche shot right off the road and into a thicket of bushes that rose higher than the car’s roof. The Porsche tilted forward, then disappeared down a steep slope.
    I didn’t slow down until the last second, then I braked hard and went into a