Ten Grand

by Seamus Heffernan

  Empty.

  I rolled back the small oval rug in the middle of the floor, careful of the wire that connected it to the trapdoor beneath. From there, I worked my fingers into the floorboards until I found the latch.

  Success.

  It opened, and I was face to face with another door. A hatch.

  I punched in the code Cranston had provided. The lock clicked. I turned the wheel, opened it up, and took one last deep breath.

  What was that line?

  “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

  Right. Or as someone else might say, Here goes nothing.

  Leaving the hatch open, I carefully stepped onto the ladder and lowered myself into the darkness. I could hear a faint tapping, just loud enough to be made out over the sound of the blood pounding through my ears. As I got closer to the bottom, the light grew. I stepped off the ladder and turned.

  It was a simple room, the tiniest of fortresses: a single cot, a cement wall shelved full of canned goods and a steel, prison-style toilet.

  And there, with his back to me, typing furiously away on one of three giant screens in front of him and nodding along to whatever was playing on a pair of oversized headphones, sat Yannick Duclos.

  I felt lightheaded with relief and thumbed a quick text to Ayesha. As I slid my phone away, he turned slightly to consult a binder, and caught me in the corner of a bleary eye.

  “Hey,” I said. I raised both my hands in a ‘I mean no harm’ gesture.

  He slowly pulled the headphones off, gingerly laying them down.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  I took two steps towards him. He stood, backing into his desk.

  “Yannick, there is a lot we need to talk about. Some of it is going to be tough, and there are people who have a lot of questions for you. But you need to come with me.”

  “Who are you?” he repeated. “How’d you find me?”

  “My name is Thaddeus Grayle. I’m a private detective. Your wife hired me to find you.”

  “My wife?” he snorted. “Of course. It took all this for her to notice I was even gone, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Look, you might want to sit down. There’s a lot to cover.”

  “No, there’s not,” he said. “I need to get back to work.”

  I looked around the room, spartan and desolate.

  “Are you… serious?” I asked. “We need to go, Yannick. This isn’t a joke.”

  “Sure it is,” he said, sitting down and going to back to his keyboard and screens. “I’ve got work to do. You can stare at the back of my head, maybe have some soup if you fancy it, or you can piss off. I’m not bothered.”

  He resumed typing.

  I strode to the desk and jerked the chair towards me. “Listen to me. This isn’t how I wanted this to play out, but you need to know. Your wife is dead. She was shot, in your house. The police are going to want to speak to you.”

  “I didn’t do it,” he said, calmly.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t see anyone here who can corroborate that alibi.”

  He nodded to a camera in the corner. “That will. I haven’t been out of here in over a week.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I nearly shouted. “Are you absorbing this information in any way? Are you listening to me?”

  He regarded me, curiously.

  “Yes, I am. I am, however, concerned you’re not listening to me. I need to finish this work.”

  “What could possibly be so goddamned importan—”

  He cut me off with a wave of his hand. Standing he pointed to the screens.

  “If you found me here, it’s safe to assume you know a lot of my life already, so I will cut to the chase. I can’t leave. I’m working to pay off a debt. I’m here hiding because it is important to those I am working for that they can monitor me and keep me on their leash.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “The Albanians,” he said. “They asked me to move some money for them. The margins were just too good to be true. I agreed. Then it all went south—perhaps inevitably.”

  I took in the screens, the scrolling numbers, the splayed binders and files.

  “They told you the money you were working with was flagged?” I ventured. “Or you got busted through some banking software and they had to cut and run. All gone, and you had to work to make it back, right?”

  He nodded. “How’d you guess?”

  “An old scam. Drug dealers have been doing it forever. You get some patsy to move your product, you pay some other guys to rob him and bring the product back to you, then bam—you own him. He works for you, now and forever.”

  He nodded.

  “They said I had to make it back. They threatened my family. They took all my money—”

  My heart, pounding up to that point, began to freeze in my chest, my slowed blood feeling almost crystalline in my veins.

  “What?” I managed.

  “Oh yes. All gone,” he said. “And I’m still on to clean about another—” he glanced down at his papers, “—8 million, I’d say. It was safer for me here, in the panic bunker. If I told Annie, she would’ve left me. Taken Aiden. I had already lost the money. I couldn’t lose my son. Safer here. Safer to work. They said it wouldn’t take much longer.”

  His voice hitched a bit.

  “I wanted a place like this for some time,” he said, voice low. “I used to go away sometimes, and now I had a place where I could go whenever I wanted.”

  I sat down, feeling my face go pale.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” I put my face in my hands, cradling my quickly-paling cheeks.

  A painfully awkward pause ensued.

  ”Um,” he said. “I’m sorry, but you’re in my chair.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” I stood and made my way over to the cot, regaining my composure a bit. He returned to his work.

  “Yannick, look, we still gotta go. The cops want to talk to you. You gotta take care of your son now.”

  “I am taking care of my son,” he snapped. “I’m trying to make sure we both survive this and we have a chance to start over somewhere.”

  “For shit’s sake, there is no starting over here,” I said. “Didn’t you hear me? Forever, Yannick. You’re in now to them forever. There is no reality where they let their little financial savant walk away from this.”

  I stood and strode towards him.

  “You need to come with me. The cops can help protect you. You gotta get out in front of this.”

  I pushed my hand out, offering it to him.

  “You have to trust me,” I said.

  “No,” he said, glancing at the camera again. “For all I know this is a test of my loyalty.”

  “This is a test of your intelligence,” I shouted. I reached out and grabbed his shoulders, roughly. “This is over. You’re out of options. So come on—get up the fucking ladder.”

  He reached under his desk, pulling loose a pistol.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. His eyes were darting around, and his speech was picking up speed. “No, no. We’re staying here for as long as it takes. Until the work is done.”

  “Thad?”

  I spun, hearing Ayesha’s voice at the top of the hatch.

  “Hey!” I cried back. “He’s here. We’re talking. Everything is going to be OK—right Yannick?”

  He levelled the gun at me. I took as deep a breath as I could without it betraying my nerves.

  “Everything is going to be OK because you’re a smart guy," I said. "You know you’re just panicking a bit right now. You’re in some trouble, yeah, but it’s fixable trouble.”

  Keeping the gun on me, he slid across the back wall and giving himself a clean line of sight and fire to the bottom of the ladder.

  “You pulling that trigger, though, makes this a lot less fixable,” I said.

  He laughed, a short joyless bark.

  “You said yourself, this isn’t something I can walk away from,” he
said.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Your son needs you to think this through. Just keep talking to me, stay with me here.”

  I caught Ayesha out of the corner of my eye, slowly coming into the light from the bottom of the ladder.

  Duclos spun, training the gun on her.

  Ayesha had hers out already, right hand on the grip and trigger, left hand underneath, holding it steady.

  “Yannick,” she said, her voice calm and smooth as a still lake. “Let’s calm down.”

  He turned back to me.

  “Any closer,” he said, “And I will shoot him.”

  “Thad?” she asked. “You OK?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Guess I should’ve asked you to come with.”

  She took some air in, sharply, between her closed teeth.

  “Yeah. Well. I’m here now,” she said.

  She kept her gun on Yannick, her hands steady as a glacier.

  “Yannick, all three of us are walking out of here,” she said. “So I need you to stay calm and put the gun down. OK?”

  Yannick still had his gun on me, but his hands were decidedly less steady than Ayesha’s. It had drooped a bit, low enough that he would probably take my kneecap off if he squeezed the trigger.

  She stepped forward.

  “Stop,” he said, his voice quavering. He raised the gun back to my eye line.

  She took another step.

  “STOP,” he repeated.

  “Yannick…” she said.

  He looked back at his desk. The screens were still flickering at us from across the ways, the number scrolling.

  I hadn’t noticed it before, but taped to the edge of one of the monitors was a picture of Aiden, struggling to smile for the school photographer.

  “I’m staying,” he said, his voice calm. He turned the gun from me and pointed it now at Ayesha.

  “Yannick,” she said again. “There are lots of ways out of this.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  I leapt across, unable to get to him before Ayesha returned fire. Duclos and I collapsed heavily on the floor. My ears were howling, a high-pitched whine cutting through them. I turned him over.

  Blood was coming from his mouth and ears.

  “Oh Jesus,” I said. I pulled his shirt loose from his waist, and found the wound. Lower abdomen. I pulled off my suit jacket and pressed it into him, trying to get some pressure down while pulling my phone loose.

  “Ash!” I cried as Duclos clawed at my arms and face. “Yannick, hang on, man. Hang on. Ash! Call 999!”

  Yannick gurgled under me. I looked over my shoulder.

  Ayesha was standing very still, but her right hand—her gun hand—had fallen to her side. She looked down at it quizzically for a moment, then slowly slid down the wall.

  A smear of red on the white concrete followed her down.

  “No no no no no no,” came crashing out of my mouth. I rushed over to her side. She was reaching into her coat and shirt, trying to locate the entry wound.

  I knelt beside her. Her breathing was ragged.

  “Yannick,” she said, her voice a low croak. “Help him.”

  “No,” I said. I put my hand on hers, pressing in as hard as we could. I tried not to watch as her blood webbed around my fingers.

  “The money,” she said, her voice trailing off a bit.

  “I don’t care about the money,” I said. “We gotta get you out of here.”

  “No,” she whispered, her voice really laboring now. “Not. For you. The boy.” She grabbed my wrist. “He needs to be taken care of,” she whispered.

  With her left hand, she showed me her phone.

  “I’m calling,” she murmured, her eyelids slipping. “Go.”

  I balled my fists, hard, for a half-second, then turned back to Duclos.

  “Stay with me,” I said to him. I resumed pressing onto the wound. He was pointing towards his desk

  “You need something?” I asked. “What is it?” His eyes were showing a lot of white. He jabbed his finger a bit harder.

  “The picture? Is that it? You want Aiden’s picture?” I started to kneel up but he grabbed me, shaking his head.

  “Folder,” he gasped. “Blue folder.”

  I bolted to the desk, and grabbed it. Blue folder, lots of tabbed pages, and on its front an embossed logo for Bergman Hapsburg—Duclos’ employers. I fanned it open in front of him.

  “What do you need?”

  He reached up and grabbed it. His fingers smeared blood on the stark white paper. He flipped through to the back and pulled what he was looking for loose. A single business card.

  Daniel Worster. Former colleague of Yannick Duclos’ at BH, and the closest thing he had to a friend.

  “Why are you showing me this?” I asked, my voice rising. “What do you want, Yannick?”

  He pressed the card into my chest.

  "Take care of my son," he hissed.

  “Does he know something?” I said, my voice rising. “Does he know something about all this?”

  I could hear sirens, their wail coming in through the open hatch.

  Duclos nodded, opened his mouth as if to speak, but only blood came out.

  Then his eyes rolled back, going white again.

  37

  Two days later.

  As hospitals go, the Royal Brompton wasn’t bad, and under better circumstances—that is to say, less life-threatening—I might’ve even enjoyed visiting hours here. I added my modest bouquet to the sizable collection Ayesha had quickly amassed. She was sitting up in the bed, reading a copy of Heat.

  “How’s your gut?” I asked.

  “Not bad. Surgery was a success. I should be out of here in a couple more days. Just keeping me in for, you know, observation.”

  I sat in the chair across from her. She still had some lunch on her tray.

  “How’s your headspace?” I asked.

  She picked up the remote and flicked on the telly to some talk show.

  “I’m bored. Daytime TV has got to be the biggest weapon against unemployment in this country.”

  I nodded to the magazine. “Never took you for a fan of the celebrity goss.”

  “Figured if anyone was going to bring me a book, it’d be you,” she said. “The flowers are nice, though. Thank you.”

  “Least I could do,” I said. “You’re the first person who has ever been shot in my employ.”

  She smiled a bit at that.

  “No shoot ‘em ups with Charlie?” she asked.

  “Nah. Lotta tail jobs. Guys who are trying to fake injuries or run out on their bills aren’t usually packing heat.”

  “You weren’t expecting Duclos to be, either.”

  I loosened my tie a bit.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for showing up.”

  She muted the TV.

  “No problem,” she said. “They told me he didn’t make it?”

  I nodded.

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  “What’d the cops say?” she asked.

  “I’m on my way to talk to them after this.”

  “Anything about Annie?”

  “There might be some movement on that,” I said. “But I’ll let you know after I talk to Dunsmore.”

  Her bed rose a bit more with a squeeze of a button.

  “I’m going to be out of here soon, you know,” she said.

  “Yeah? And?”

  “So what’s next for you? I’m going to need work.”

  I shifted in my seat.

  “Ash,” I said. “Take some time off. You’ve got nothing to prove to anybody. Rest up.”

  She shook her head.

  “That's not for me,” she said. “Like I’ve said: I like to keep in motion.”

  I looked at all the flowers. The room smelled like mob boss's funeral.

  “Hey, you remember last week?” I asked. “At the bench, before we hit the poker room?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your guy. The person who was special
to you. What happened?”

  “I told you. He died.”

  “In Afghanistan?”

  She shook her head again, but slower.

  “No. It was after he came back. His name was John. He was visiting his mom. Tower Hamlets. You know it?”

  “Yeah. Rough spot.”

  “Yeah, it is.” She smoothed the blanket in front of her. “Anyhow, he went for a drive after. He liked to do that.”

  The silence returned. She reached for a juice box. I handed it to her, saving her the stretch.

  “Car accident,” she said. “Head on collision. It was late at night, the other guy apparently dozed off. He’d been drinking. He made it. John didn’t.” She took a sip. “And that’s it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. She shrugged.

  “You going to put me back to work or what?” she asked.

  “Probably. But in a while.” I stood to go.

  “Thad. Listen to me.” She reached for my hand. “I’m fine.”

  “But maybe I’m not,” I said, buttoning my overcoat.

  “Be serious.”

  “I am.” I took a breath. “Captain Ayesha Gill, served in Afghanistan in 2012 as a Female Engagement Officer, spending six months of her tour in Forward Operating Base Oullette. Deployed within the Upper Gereshk Valley Anna and tasked with working with the locals in one of the toughest parts of Helmand Province.”

  “So you have the internet. Well done.”

  “Also injured in an IED attack that killed six others, including two civilians.”

  She said nothing, turning away.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “You thought I didn’t know the full details?”

  “I did two tours,” she said. “But other than that, great detective work.”

  I pointed to the flowers. “Lot of people seem to care about you, Ash. Surely one of those bouquets came from someone who is young and maybe not so dumb, if you were looking to, you know, mix it up a bit.”

  She sucked the last bit of apple juice from the box and reached over for the tray. “Are you giving someone else… relationship advice?”

  “Nope,” I said. “I’m a PI, not an agony aunt. I’m just making some observations.”

  “What have you deduced?”

  I gave her shin a quick pat as I headed out past the foot of her bed,

  “Call me in six months. I’ll tell you then.” I walked out, giving her a quick nod at the door. Her face was a mask. I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed, furious or merely resigned. Either way, she was a soldier. She understood chain of command. If she wanted to work, she certainly could—just not for me, not for a while.