Sailors and Sirens

by Charles Dougherty

  "We didn't discuss it, but she's done this before," I said. "You know how good she is. My guess is she did it the way she usually does. Either she pays cash at the ticket counter or uses a prepaid credit card she bought with cash. I don't know what name she used. She was Mary Louise Brannon when we cleared into the BVI last time. But that doesn't mean much."

  "It's something," Aaron said. "Do you know where she got that passport?"

  "No. She used it when she flew from Miami to Puerto Rico to meet me, and it was fresh then. So she kept using it. Mary has passports stashed all up and down the East Coast. She built most of those identities herself. I only got the one passport for her, through Nora's operation. But you know about that. Did you or Mike help her with any of those identities?"

  "No. She declined our help. She's a control freak."

  "Yeah," I said. "She and I share that. It's what keeps us field agents alive."

  "Do you know for sure she was in Miami when she sent you that last message?"

  I thought about that for a couple of seconds. "No, I guess I don't."

  "Do you still have the message?" Aaron asked.

  "No. You thinking maybe you could trace the origin? Even for our blind web mail account?"

  "Probably not. Unless it was actually sent. You still leave 'em in the drafts folder, like we were doing?"

  "That's right. But I deleted that one after I read it. That's the way it works, remember?"

  "Yeah, sure," Aaron said. "Unless she hit the send key, there's no way to trace a draft email like that. So we don't know for sure where she went when she left you in the BVI, and we don't know what identity she's using. The damn woman's invisible when she wants to be."

  "And that's why Phorcys uses her," I said. "You knew that about her at the beginning. Don't bitch about it now."

  "Yeah, I know. It's a feature, not a bug. But it can still be a pain in the ass."

  "There's no reason to think she didn't fly to Miami."

  "But she stood you up," Aaron said.

  "Yeah, maybe. Could just as easily have been the other way around."

  "I guess we don't have any choice but to wait and see if she shows up at your second rendezvous, huh?"

  "Right. Or she may get a message to me. But…"

  "But what, Finn?"

  "Given her past and the number of people who might be after her, this might not be her doing." I didn't like harboring that thought, much less sharing it, but things like that happen in our business.

  "Yeah, somebody could have snatched her. That occurred to me. She's been damned reliable. This is out of character. Can you think of anyone who might have taken her?"

  I shook my head. "No. But I have an idea for you."

  "What's that, Finn?"

  "You started out with her working through her agent, or broker, or whatever she called the woman."

  "That's right. So?" Aaron asked.

  "So you know who that woman is. Maybe you could question her?"

  "Slow down, boy. First, we don't know who she is. We know how to get in touch with her, but she makes Mary look like a publicity hound. She's so invisible she might not even be a real person."

  "You serious?" I asked.

  "What do you mean, am I serious?"

  "About her not being a real person. You think she's a chimera? A fabrication?"

  "It's crossed our minds," Aaron said.

  "Our?" I asked.

  "Mine and Mike's. She could even be a creation of Mary's, you know."

  "That reminds me," I said. "A few times, Mary hinted at having access to unusual resources — people she could call on for specialized stuff. Once I found out you and Mike sent her to me, I thought maybe it was through you two."

  "Well, yeah. We've backed her up from time to time, but I know what you mean. We ran into that with her. Mike and I figured it was through the broker. You know Mike was her contact, not me, right?"

  "Yes. Maybe you should ask him about that."

  "No need; we discussed it in depth before we decided to bring her on full-time. We don't have a clue. Is something bugging you, Finn? Something she said, maybe?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know. Nothing specific, but early on, I wondered if she worked for somebody — I mean, besides contract clients. Some government agency, like."

  "Our government? Or another one?"

  "Good question. But after I found out about the Dailey and O'Hanlon hits my suspicion faded. Once I got my head around that, I figured her for a top-notch contract killer. That's what she claimed to be."

  "Her performance supports her claim," Aaron said. "We need to move on, Finn."

  "Move on? What are you saying?"

  "Whatever comes out of this Mary business, we need to put you to work. We can't wait on her. Too much shit's happening. Don't take offense, but I have to ask you something before we get into that."

  "Okay. Ask," I said.

  "Can you keep your head in the game with Mary missing? Or is that going to distract you?"

  I laughed. "You aren't serious, are you?"

  "Dead serious. I need to hear you say it."

  "You know what I am, Aaron. It's like I'm two different people. One's a boat bum, and the other is the one you've known about since Fort Benning. You with me?"

  "Yes, so far. But what about Mary? Where does she fit?"

  "She's the same way. The part of her that's a regular 24-year-old girl, that part of her is in love with the boat bum. And vice versa. The other person who's part of Mary, well, it suits that person to work with the Finn that you and Mike know. You get what I'm saying?"

  "Yes, but — "

  "I'm not finished, Aaron. Think of it like Mary and I each have a dark side, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "Our dark sides are separate from the normal sides. The Finn that you know would kill Mary in a heartbeat if she threatened him. And the dark side of Mary? Well, she'd blow me away without batting an eye, if she needed to. You understand?"

  "Yeah. That's bizarre, man. Heavy shit. A shrink would have a field day with you, but as long as you believe what you just told me, that's what matters."

  I locked eyes with Aaron. "I believe it."

  "Yeah, I can see you do."

  "Do you believe it, Aaron?"

  "Yeah. You aren't the first one who's told me something like that."

  "Mike?" I asked.

  "No comment."

  I smiled and nodded. "Tell me about all this work you have for me."

  3

  Sitting on the rim of a planter at the intersection of Jefferson Avenue and the Lincoln Road Mall in South Beach, I sipped my café colado. I watched the crowds of people ebb and flow. It was around 10 p.m.; the tourists still outnumbered the oddballs. I kept an eye on the people coming and going from the Pink Parrot, a trendy nightclub. There were two husky bouncers outside the door to keep the tourists out.

  "You have to be somebody to get in the Parrot," Aaron told me earlier.

  I spent most of the day with Aaron at Mike Killington's house in Coconut Grove. I met with Mike for a short introduction, but my day was filled with briefings from several of Aaron's staffers. Before the show started, Aaron cautioned me that I was to stay anonymous as far as the staff was concerned.

  The briefings covered the extent of the corruption in our government. A good amount of what I heard was for background. Mike and his friends intended to clean up as much as they could by selective exposure and anonymous tips to the news media. They planned for Mary and me to handle the worst of the worst.

  The intent of the briefing was to give me some perspective on the long list of targets. Mike and his friends in Phorcys wanted me to understand that not every politician or bureaucrat was on the list. Without some background, it would have been easy for me to think we were carrying out a wholesale purge.

  After my briefings, I spent several hours in my hotel room catching up on the sleep I missed last night. This evening, I was scouting for my next target, who was known to frequent the Pink
Parrot. Or "The Parrot," as Aaron told me it was called by the in-crowd. My goal tonight was preliminary reconnaissance. The target was a drug lord, although he was known publicly as one of those people who are famous for no particular reason except that they're famous.

  Kyle Brandon, his name was, and he was making noise about leveraging his fame into a run for a seat in the House of Representatives. That wasn't going to happen.

  The pictures from my briefing showed Brandon to be a handsome man in his early thirties. He was described as a hard target, which amused me. After hearing about Brandon, Aaron and I took a break of a few minutes before the next session.

  "Wipe the smirk off your face," Aaron said, when we were alone. "What's so funny?"

  "The notion that a bogus celebrity is a hard target just tickled my funny bone after the hit last night. That's all. When they went on about his lack of security, it was all I could do to keep a straight face."

  "Yeah, well, don't get cocky. Brandon's not the kind of person you've dealt with. It's not a security detail that makes him a hard target. It's the environment. He's shrewd — never goes out in public alone. The only times he's ever exposed, he's surrounded with innocent hangers-on. The potential for collateral damage is high. That would be a disaster."

  And that's why I was sitting here on my perch watching the crowds. I wanted to see for myself what the potential for collateral damage might be. My musing was interrupted when I saw a stretch Hummer pull to the curb on Jefferson Avenue, a few yards from the stop sign at Lincoln Road.

  It was about 50 feet from me when three of the doors popped open. Three bulky men in loose-fitting, brightly patterned shirts jumped out. They closed the doors behind them and scanned their surroundings. In the glare of the street lamps, I could make out the clear plastic tubes running from the backs of their necks to their right ears. Those were the type of radios that top-notch security people used. Their shirts hung outside their belts, and the telltale bulges over their right hips told me they were armed. A fourth man stayed behind the wheel, his eyes in constant motion as he watched the crowd.

  After about thirty seconds, one man took up a position on the corner opposite me, the corner closest to the Parrot. A second man walked up to the doorman and spoke a few words. The doorman nodded and grinned. The bodyguard's lips were moving, though he faced away from the doorman, looking back at the Hummer. I figured he was on his radio, giving the all-clear to the people inside the Hummer. The third man was standing near the Hummer. He nodded and moved his lips. Turning, he opened the left rear door of the big, ugly vehicle.

  Expecting Brandon to step out, I was surprised to see the first passenger alight. He was a small man with unattractive features, dressed in an expensive, custom-made suit with a white shirt and tie. At 11:00 on a sultry Miami evening, he stood out from the crowd. He turned to the interior of the Hummer and barked a command, but I was too far away to make out what he said.

  Two attractive but overdone young blonde women climbed out, their spike heels giving them trouble as they stepped from the running board to the pavement. The overdressed man leaned into the vehicle and gestured impatiently, then stepped back to make way for a third girl.

  With flowing auburn hair, she was by far the most attractive of the three. She gave him a haughty look before planting her left foot on the running board. As she held that position for a couple of beats, her slit skirt fell away to expose her left thigh. Her hand grasped the fabric, closing the gap, but not before I saw the tattoo. Even from 50 feet away, I recognized it. I've been admiring it at close range for quite a while now.

  As I was recovering from my shock, she reached the pavement. I stared at her face, squinting. It was Mary, all right, but I'm not sure I would have recognized her except for the cobra tattoo. She wore heavy makeup like the other girls, and her hair was…well, it was just wrong. Mary wasn't looking in my direction. Her attention was on the little man in the suit, who offered her his arm. I watched as he escorted her and the other two girls into the Parrot.

  Shifting my attention to the Hummer for a moment, I made note of the license plate number. I wanted to know who she was hanging out with. I sent an encrypted text with the plate number to Aaron asking him to run the registration. Meanwhile, I got to my feet and ambled over to the Parrot's entrance.

  The doorman stepped into my path when I was about two paces from the door. He glared at me and shook his head, holding up a big hand in a stop gesture. I took a 100-dollar bill from my pocket and offered it to him. Smiling, he shook his head again.

  "Wish I could, man, but it's a private party. Sorry."

  I nodded and walked away, losing myself in the crowd. The doorman was watching me; I was finished for the night. Walking west on Lincoln Road, I came to the garage where I left my rental car.

  Twenty minutes later, I was back in my hotel room. The message light on my room phone was flashing. I picked up the phone and followed the instructions on the card beside it to retrieve my voicemail.

  "I told you not to try to talk to me again, asshole," Mary's voice said. There was loud music and the sound of shouted conversation in the background. She made the call from the Parrot, given the background racket and the timing.

  "That trick with you and your pal Mike was a onetime deal," she said. "You knew that going in. What is it you don't understand about onetime deal? I did what you kinky bastards wanted; you paid me. The end. And it cost me every damn penny you paid me to get square with Louie after you blew it tonight. His security guys saw you watching me outside the club. Keep it up and they'll make both of you sorry. Nobody messes with Louie's girls like that and lives. Now get — "

  "Enough, bitch. Gimme that phone," a man's voice said, interrupting her. He disconnected the call, leaving me to wonder what she'd gotten herself into.

  I examined the instruction card for the voicemail, but I couldn't find a way to retrieve the calling number. I would leave the recording intact for now and talk with the front desk in the morning. Maybe they knew of a way to pick up the caller ID. Aaron might be able to help, if I asked, but something told me not to. Not yet, anyway.

  It was midnight. I wouldn't hear from Aaron about the plate number until sometime tomorrow morning. Asking him to expedite the license check would invite him to ask for an explanation. So would asking him to find out about the origin of the voicemail. I didn't want to tell him about seeing Mary just yet — not until I found out what her game was.

  As for the voicemail, it told me Mary herself spotted me. Her line about Louie's security men seeing me was bullshit. Whoever Louie was, his goons wouldn't have noticed me. At most, they saw me try to enter the club. Still, I was one of several people turned away by the doorman between the time Louie and his girls went in and the time I tried my luck. So it was Mary who saw me. She didn't miss much.

  She left the voicemail, but why? Was she trying to send me a message? That was the only explanation that made sense. If she were trying to lose me, she wouldn't have made the call. I worried over her words like a stray dog with a fresh bone, but I couldn't find any hidden meaning.

  She mentioned the name Louie, and as good as told me he was a pimp, but I could see that, anyway. A high-class one, maybe, but a pimp all the same. Mary would know that I would have somebody run the license plate; that was the kind of thing people in our business did. I would end up with the name of the Hummer's owner. Would it be Louie? And if so, what would that mean?

  Mary also mentioned Mike. Maybe she wanted to be sure I passed this along to him, whatever this was. Or maybe she wanted to be sure I didn't pass it along. Yawning, I shook my head, fighting to stay awake. I gave up and climbed into the bed. As I was dropping off to sleep, it came to me that Mary borrowed the phone to make the call. Was it Louie's phone? Or somebody else's? And why did she do that? Was there hidden meaning there, or did she just not have a phone of her own?

  I sat up on the edge of the bed while I organized my thoughts. I could wrestle with them tomorrow. Once I was sure they were
committed to memory, I lay back down and surrendered to sleep.

  4

  Fresh from a hot shower, I was shaving when my phone pinged. Probably a text from Aaron with the license plate information. I leaned around the bathroom door, peering at the clock on the nightstand. It was 9:30. Sleeping late was a rare thing for me, but I was tired from several days of irregular rest. Morning wasn't prime time for surveillance of Kyle Brandon, so I slept in.

  He would be easy to find during the workday, but my first choice wasn't to kill him during normal working hours. Too many people would be around, given that he was spending his time at his campaign headquarters. I would prefer to catch him during the evening, when he was arriving or departing from his residence. My thought was that he would have fewer people around him then.

  Finished shaving, I stowed my gear and went into the bedroom. I picked up my phone and entered the unlock code. My guess was correct; there was a text from Aaron's number. I opened the encrypted text app Phorcys used and read his message.

  The Humvee belongs to Louis M. Rayburn. Got a Miami Beach address, but he won't be there. Call me after you check the local news.

  I lifted the remote from the nightstand, but then I thought better of turning on the TV. Hungry, I decided instead to eat breakfast at the diner across the street. I ate dinner there last night.

  The place was a throwback to the days of serious greasy spoon joints. They had an early vintage color TV that made everybody look like a victim of a nuclear blast. Tuned to a local "all news, all the time" station, it hung on the wall and drowned out the continuous, shouted arguments between the cook and his wife. She served as the waitress and cashier.

  The diner was empty when I walked in. I took a stool near where the waitress stood behind the counter. Her mouth hung open as she watched the TV with the oddly tinted people on the screen. After grumbling something at me that could have been "Good morning," she poured me a cup of coffee. Then she stood there, glaring at me with her stubby pencil poised over her pad, annoyed that I was disturbing her.