by Jack Bunker
Fifteen minutes after she picked him up again, Hobbs pulled into a tiny used car lot on the edge of town. He was there for twenty minutes, and when he pulled out, it was in an old blue pickup truck with plates that read, “Farm Use.”
Following him was harder now, but she didn’t have to work at it for long. He drove on for another mile and then pulled into the Palm Court Motor Inn. She drove past and pulled into the strip mall next door. She left the car and walked quickly to where she had a view.
If there ever had been any palm trees at the motor court, it looked as if they had been sold long ago to pay the power bill. Or the water bill. One thing was certain, the money hadn’t been used to buy a new coat of paint.
Hobbs stumbled as he came out of the office, and dropped the key as he caught himself. Wellsley could see that this old bastard was going to be sleeping awhile, for sure. She watched him go into room number three and close the blackout curtains.
The strip mall had a prepaid mobile phone store. She bought a Motorola i290, a refurbished candy-bar phone that, instead of a fancy touch screen, sported actual buttons. She also bought a Samsung Galaxy Prevail, a smartphone with a big screen. She signed up for sixteen gigabytes of data and unlimited cell service for three months for both of them. When the salesman, a young black kid in a Cuban shirt, asked her for her address and credit card numbers, she smiled at him and said, “Is it OK if I pay cash? I just moved here.”
He upped the price without batting an eye. She laid bills on the counter and said, “Keep the change.”
When she got back into the Maserati, she plugged a charger into the cigarette lighter and connected the cheap phone.
She pulled the car around where she could keep an eye on the old truck, just in case. Then she went to work on the phone. It was one thin bar off a full charge. Good enough. Wellsley went into the settings and muted every sound the phone might make.
Then she used the phone’s crude web browser to navigate to a site called ZippyMapper. A few painfully awkward clicks with the phone’s keypad interface started a download.
Then she turned her attention to the Samsung. She navigated to ZippyMapper using the touch screen, and signed up for a new account using a Tor Mail e-mail. Theoretically the FBI could track it, but it would be very difficult, and they could only really do it if they knew what they were looking for.
When that was done, she activated the software on the Motorola, connected to her account, and waited. It took two minutes before the large display on the Galaxy showed her location. Her ghetto LoJack was open for business.
She drove north, back along the boulevard, until she came to a home improvement warehouse. There she bought a roll of duct tape. She carefully wound tape around the outside of the Motorola until she had doubled its diameter. Then she drove back to the motel.
In the heat of the afternoon, nothing was stirring at the palmless Palm Court Motor Inn. The pickup truck was parked nose-in. She walked in the shade of the balcony above, right to the front of the truck. Then she bent down, maybe tying a shoelace, maybe picking up a dime, and tried to slide the wrapped phone in between the bumper and the frame. Too big. She took two wraps off the duct tape and it wedged in nice and tight.
As she drove away she allowed her guard to slip for a moment. She closed her eyes at the light and let the excitement shiver out of her. A car horn let her know the light had changed. She also needed rest. But there was one more thing she needed to do. This car was about to be the second-hottest vehicle in Florida.
FIVE
Pedro López-Famosa y Fernández, known to his few friends as Perrucho, stared at the expensive green sports car that pulled onto his car lot. This car, he thought, might be worth more than his entire inventory. What were the odds that two such expensive cars driving onto his lot in one day was coincidence? Zero, thought Perrucho.
The cars that Perrucho sold were, of course, crap. Sold to people who could not, or would not, pay. The kind of people who spent the money that should have been their car payment on renting ridiculous wheels at exorbitant rates. Whatever they had left over would go to purchasing used tires.
It was good for business that he did not identify with the creatures he called his customers. That kept the conscience pure and the interest rates high, and made it easy for Perrucho to take the cars back. But, as this blond woman in a suit entered his tiny office, he realized he might understand this gringa less than he understood his usual customers. For a second he thought she might be a cop, but a cop in that car? Could not be. And a cop who looked like that? It was the kind of thing that could make a man like Perrucho pray for the handcuffs, but not the squad car.
“Can I help you?” Perrucho asked, wearing his most professional smile.
“I’ve got a trade-in, and a friend of mine told me you could help me out.”
“Señora? You mean that beautiful car? I do not know what friend we could have in common, but he or she was very badly mistaken. I would not know what to do with such an expensive car. I cannot sell it to my customers. They are all too poor. Besides, none of my cars would be suitable for your luxurious tastes.”
The woman frowned. “But my friend was just here, he told me he got a very good deal.”
“I have made no deals today, I am sorry. Perhaps you mean Flaco’s place? His place is a little further down,” he said with a smile. “Besides, for a deal such as that, there is much paperwork. And I do not even have the forms. I sell cars, I do not buy them.”
The blond woman said, “What I am looking for is an exchange.”
“What you are suggesting sounds like it would be very illegal,” said Perrucho, having fun with it. “I do not think I could do something like that. Señora, my nerves, they are not so good.”
The woman reached into her pocket and pulled out her FBI ID and badge. “Then how about if I place you under arrest?”
Perrucho laughed and leaned forward in his chair. He leaned across the desk and presented his hands. “Please, put me in the cuffs. Because I ask myself. If you are here to arrest me, then why do you not have backup?”
The woman said nothing.
“I think you are in more trouble than I am. If someone is looking for that fancy car, then, señorita, you need me more than I need you.”
The blond woman had no response to this. She stood there blinking back tears. Perrucho thought they were tears of weakness and frustration. Exhaustion at the end of a long and difficult road. Leverage.
“I do have an offer for you. If you can buy one of my cars for the bargain price of twenty thousand dollars, then I will take the Maserati and dispose of it quietly. How does that sound to you?”
“I don’t…”
“I know, I know,” said Perrucho, holding up a hand. “You don’t have the money. And there are many, many excuses for this. Believe me, I have heard them all. And I sympathize. I am not a man without a heart. So I tell you what I will do. I will give you a five-thousand-dollar discount if you let me see those breasts of yours.”
The blonde grew red in the face. She started to speak, but he cut her off again.
“But wait, for you, a special price, ten thousand dollars to solve all of your problems if you strip naked in this office, right now. And I want you to know, that is a better deal than I gave your friend. Of course, you are free to reject my deal. But then I am afraid that, law-abiding citizen that I am, I would have to call the police and report such strange behavior.”
SIX
When she was done, Wellsley flipped the Closed sign, locked the door, and went through Perrucho’s pockets. Even though that filthy, patriarchal prick had deserved it, she avoided looking at the work she had done. The hole in his face was small, but the soft, expanding bullet had torn the back of his head almost completely off. She repositioned a poster on the wall to cover the splatter and bits of hair.
In his pockets she found a Mercedes key fob and a wallet. There were $200 in cash and no family pictures. Yeah, she thought, this one she could probably g
et away with. Even if somebody called it in, police departments waited seventy-two hours before they would classify someone as a missing person. And how long would it be before somebody missed this greasy prick?
A week on the outside? But she was sure she wouldn’t need that. She’d get the money and be gone. South, over the border from Texas somewhere. The north of Mexico wouldn’t be a good place to hang out, but Cabo San Lucas would be fine for a blond American girl. And from there Panama, where a second passport was easy to get. Especially if you were willing to buy property.
She knew how and where money was laundered. And she knew to broker small deals and not take any chances. Hiding her identity and cleaning the money would be a full-time job for a while, but it would pay well. She might have already been done with it if she had gotten the money the first time. And having a hurricane to cover her tracks, that would have been perfect.
As she drove away in Perrucho’s battered old Mercedes—with what was left of Perrucho in the trunk—she told herself that it would be fine. It would all be fine, if she took it slow and got it right this time. She’d get away, and nobody would ever have her under their thumb again.
She checked the GPS tracker on her phone. Hobbs was still at the motor court. Now all she had to do was wait.
She got a room at the motor court, number twelve, across the horseshoe from where Hobbs was. She set an alarm for three thirty in the morning and tried to get some sleep. But she was too jittery to get to sleep. She thought about kicking the old man’s door in, pistol-whipping him, and forcing him to take her to the money. Better to let him lead her unthinkingly. That way he couldn’t lie.
When three thirty rolled around, the blue truck was still there. She watched for a little over two hours. Then she fell asleep in the chair. When she woke up the truck was gone. Her heart raced, and she cursed her weakness. But the tracker still had him. Three miles south on 319.
She caught up with him in Medart. The truck was parked at a dive center, and a young kid was helping him load gear into the back of the truck. She saw him moving slowly as she drove by, and turned her head away as she passed. She didn’t think she’d have any problem taking care of this one old man. He looked dog tired and it wasn’t even ten in the morning. She felt like a lioness, stalking the weakest member of the herd.
He headed west, following the right angle of US Route 319. The afternoon sun was blinding through the windshield, and the air conditioner in the Mercedes strained. If this took too much longer, she thought, Perrucho was going to start to smell.
When Hobbs pulled off, she missed it. She couldn’t see anything with that sun. It wasn’t until she had gotten up onto the long bridge that she realized he must have taken the small dirt turnout before. As the monotonous length of the bridge shrank before her, she checked the GPS. Three pings in a row showed the car stopped back at the foot of the bridge. This must be it.
She doubled back, then back again. She parked the Mercedes over half a mile before the turnout and continued on foot. She told the trunk, “Wait here,” and chuckled to herself at her gallows humor. Why shouldn’t she be happy, she tried to convince herself, she was about to be rich.
She dogtrotted down the side of the road. No cars passed in either direction. A good sign. When she got to the turnout, the road sloped down and turned left sharply. The road was hemmed in by the low vegetation of the brackish marsh. As she drew her weapon, she felt as if she were entering a tunnel.
She thought of the words Freeze, FBI, shouted, cheesy, like in the movies. She considered how false those words had become for her—she having crossed way, way over to the wrong side of the law—but she would yell them, if she thought they would do any good. She was done taking chances. Her whole life the guys—the bad guys, were there any other kind?—had been winning, and she was sick of it. Now she was going to get hers.
She realized, with disappointment, that she couldn’t shoot to kill. She needed him alive, just in case this wasn’t where the money was.
She saw that the truck was backed up next to the concrete edge of the bridge footing. Hobbs was nowhere in sight. She advanced cautiously. She heard a sound and froze until she could identify it. Bubbles. It was bubbles.
At the water’s edge was a steady stream of bubbles coming up from a scuba rig. They made the long, brilliant sunlight of the afternoon dance on the surface of the water. He must be down there, right now. All she had to do was wait until he came up. Verify that the money was down there, then shoot him and take the scuba gear for herself. All she needed now was a little patience.
She relaxed and held the pistol by her side. Wellsley hadn’t realized how tightly she had been gripping it. A rookie mistake. She passed the gun to her left hand and flexed her fingers. It felt good and bad all at the same time. Then…
SEVEN
Hobbs slept like a dead man and woke with a powerful hunger. He pissed for what felt like twenty minutes, pain shooting through his bladder. He felt ossified by old age and abuse. He ate breakfast in the diner next to the hotel. The eggs were good, the coffee was terrible.
The heat was off enough that he could take it slow. The Escalade was the most stolen car in the United States. He had paid $30,000 to get rid of it. The guy would either chop it for parts, or put it on a boat and sell it overseas. He doubted anybody would ever find it. Which made that rattly old pickup truck safe as houses. Sure, there was a chance the guy would report it as stolen to get the insurance money, but it wouldn’t be worth the hassle or the heat. Car dealers defrauding insurance companies was an old racket, and even filing an honest claim brought suspicion.
As long as that pickup truck kept running, he was home free. He smiled and thought about returning to Grace. About sleeping for a whole day in their bed with the feather pillows and the green comforter with the leaf pattern that he had hated so much at first. Then napping the following day—all day—in the hammock. And never taking a job again.
He caught himself smiling and shook it off. He touched the wound in his side to remind himself. This was a job. Maybe the end of a job, but a job all the same. Get careless, get dead. There had been enough mistakes for one job.
He saw Alan’s face for an instant. Bright and cocky. Then he saw the image of the kid’s corpse jumping in the rain as the bullet went through his head. And Hurlocker, that rough old bastard. A shame that he was dead, but not a tragedy. Not the same as the kid. That kid had had his whole life before him.
He walked back to the motor court and watched very carefully for a while. He didn’t see anything, but that didn’t calm his nerves any. He put the key into the truck’s ignition and was grateful when it started. He headed south.
He thought of Grace. He closed his eyes and he could see her face, with sunlight on it. Not the glaring tropical burn of the Florida sun, but the clean, cool sun of late summer filtered through the leaves of tall green trees.
He made Wellsley at the dive shop, as the kid was loading up the tanks. Wide eyes and a flash of short blond hair in a silver Mercedes that drove by just a little too slowly. Never look directly at someone you are following. Sometimes they feel the eyes, even when they aren’t looking for them.
He remembered that Mercedes from Perrucho’s car lot. Parked right out in front. Perrucho had been proud of it. How had she tracked him? Could Hobbs have done the same if the roles had been reversed? What had happened to Perrucho?
He didn’t care. He closed his eyes and could see her, standing under the tungsten light as the ocean roared and the rain came down. Her short hair plastered to her skull, fear and greed gleaming in her wild eyes.
Stupid girl. She had done it the wrong way. She had to be new. As corrupt as the FBI was, she could have found people to go in on it with her. Heist the heister. The second-oldest scam in the book. The easiest way was to underreport the money recovered. Hell, the FBI could even drop the serial numbers of marked bills from its database. It had been in on scams like this since Dillinger. Long before the civil asset forfeiture racke
t. Hell, when you got right down to it, that’s how the whole thing started. Wasn’t the American Revolution a heist?
An honest criminal couldn’t make a living anymore. But crooked cops sure were a growth industry.
He thought of three ways to lose her and all the reasons he should. He was tired. He was slow. He was old.
Alan bleeding to death on the sand.
He wanted this to be over. More than he could remember ever wanting a job to be over. He wanted to walk away. But instead added an extra three tanks. And a speargun.
“Don’t let them game wardens find you using that in fresh-water. You’ll be in a mess of trouble then,” said the guy at the dive shop.
He continued to the bridge. That crooked FBI agent hung way back, but the afternoon sunlight glinted off the silver car as if it were a signaling mirror every time it came into view. Jesus Christ, she was green. He felt even worse about having let her get the better of him.
Around a curve he gave the rattly old pickup all it was worth to stretch the distance between them. He skidded into the turnoff before she came into sight. He jumped out of the truck, his knee buckling painfully, and limped up to the road. He stepped into the brush and listened to her car roar past and onto the bridge. No turnaround in the middle of that long span. That should give him the time he needed.
He pulled the truck up to the foot of the bridge and worked quickly. Hobbs hauled a tank from the back of the truck and dragged it to the edge of the river. Then he opened the valve until he heard the first rush of air. With all the strength he could muster, he heaved it out into the river. It sank like a stone, sending up a quiet trail of bubbles.
Then he grabbed the speargun out of the bed of the truck and grunted as he pulled the three-ply surgical tubing to the catch. He laid one of the three-pointed, barbed spears into the track. It was a grisly weapon. A gun would be cleaner and more professional. But he did not have a gun. And even though it was unprofessional, he didn’t want this to be clean.