by Kim Oh
Her smile was almost tinged with pity. “Kim –”
“And what was all that talk about how they shouldn’t have just left me there? Really?” Looking straight at her now, I felt even more disgusted than before. “You’d rather have had them go ahead and kill me, just so you could run off and have a good time? That sucks. You can’t mess around with people like that. Though I suppose you think you can.”
“What? Who said anything about having you killed?”
“You did.” Jeez, I thought, what a cow. “That’s what you said to him.” I pointed at César. “I heard it on the video from the security camera –”
“Pardon?” César’s brow creased. “What security camera?”
“Talk to your pal Jorge about it. There’s a bunch of stuff the two of you need to sort out. But that’s not the point. The main thing is that your friendly Miss Lynndie here came in after your guys whacked me over the head, and I’m lying there on the floor, and she says something like, There’ll be trouble. You should take care of her.”
“Oh, crap. You know . . .” Lynndie drained her glass and set it on the table. “This is kinda funny, in a way.”
“Sure,” I said. “Frickin’ hilarious.”
“That’s not what I meant –”
“Really? Because where I come from, when you take care of someone, you take care of them for good. As in, boom, they’re dead. When somebody hires me to take care of someone, that’s what I do.”
Lynndie gave a big sigh. “You know,” she said, “there are people who don’t do what you do for a living. People like me. And when I say take care of someone – like you – I mean pick them up and carry them back here, and make sure they don’t die.”
“Oh.” I’d had a good rip going on her, and now I felt completely deflated. I supposed what she’d said made sense. Damn. This would be just one more thing I’d tried to figure out about the world, on my own, and I’d gotten it wrong. “You sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.” Lynndie picked up her glass, realized it was still empty, and set it back down. “I don’t need you dead. I need you alive. Seriously.”
“Okay. Okay, I’ll give you this one. But if you’re so concerned about my state of health, why have me whacked over the head to begin with? I mean . . . I could’ve died.”
César’s turn to sigh. “I give to you my apologies, Miss Oh. Kim. All that? My fault. But it is difficult – you know? My men . . .” He gestured to the two guys sitting over by the window, whose placid expressions indicated they weren’t following a single word of the English being spoken. “They are very good and loyal but not . . . professional. Not like you. I sent them to do a job, and they did it the way they know how.” He spread his hands apart. “Lo siento. I’m sorry. I should have explained better to them, what was called for.”
I wasn’t buying that. I’d seen him on the video, and he hadn’t seemed all that upset, looking at me lying on the floor. The screw-up had probably been his.
“So when we heard you were all right,” said Lynndie, “it was kind of a relief.”
“I don’t know about all right.” I rubbed the side of my head. “All right usually starts with not getting whacked over the head. And . . . if it wasn’t just so you could run off and have a good time, the way you’d like, then why’d these guys do it at all?”
“Well,” said Lynndie. She wasn’t smiling now. “There’s fun. And then there’s real fun . . .”
NINETEEN
Here’s what she told me.
That stuff she’d told me, when we were on the plane coming down here – about her father. That was the reason. For everything.
Yeah, he’d been stealing from her. Embezzling from her trust fund accounts, the money her mother had left to her. And not just a little – a lot. I already knew about that. Like I said a while back, I’d checked him out pretty good before I took the job. In my line of work, you wind up doing business with people like him, a lot more than you’d ever really want to. People like that . . . they’re richer than you can ever dream of being, and for them there’s still no such thing as being rich enough. Or at least not enough to keep him from stealing from his own kid.
And yeah, he’d been caught at it, with his hand in the cookie jar. That part even made the newspapers. And he’d stopped stealing from her, dipping into the trust funds . . .
“Only he didn’t stop,” Lynndie told me. In that other hotel suite, she’d leaned close to me, her gaze locked on mine. “He just got smarter about how he did it.”
Maybe . . . if she hadn’t already hated his guts, maybe she wouldn’t have done anything about it. She would’ve just let him go on doing it. Taking little bites out of her mom’s money, and all the other little sneaky things he did, the diversions and the tax fiddles and the shifting back and forth between accounts, so that a little fell into his hands every time. We’re talking about so much money that a bunch of it could go missing, and there’d still be enough left over that you could buy yourself a small country.
But something else had gone on between them, that wasn’t the money. Lynndie didn’t tell me how long ago it’d been, or what it was, and I didn’t want to know. People like that – people like her father – when they think they can do whatever they want, it doesn’t stop with the money. It doesn’t stop anywhere.
And so she was going to take care of him. Not exactly the way those words take care mean to somebody like me – but close.
“And that’s why I need you.” Lynndie actually laid her hand on top of mine. “To help me.”
This was the scheme. And I had to admit it was a good one. Even though, as a general rule, I don’t like scheming people.
She had to come down here with somebody to look after her – somebody like me. If she’d come down here on her own, even just to have a good time with her partying friends, her father would’ve known that something was up. Rich girls like her don’t travel without protection. And this time, that protection was me.
“Or it could’ve been somebody else,” said Lynndie. “But you were the one who got the job. From my father.”
So really – I was just there as cover.
And maybe a little more.
“You see,” said César, “her father doesn’t know yet. That his daughter has been kidnapped. By myself and my compadres –” He pointed to the other two men, one of whom had produced a pack of cards from inside his jacket. They were engrossed in one of those games that seemed to consist of slapping cards down on the table as loudly as possible. “Somehow we got past her protection –”
“You can say that again.” I rubbed the side of my head.
And now, they would tell him, they wanted money – a lot of it – for her safe return. Typical kidnapper stuff.
Which surprised me.
“That’s it?” Baffled, I stared at Lynndie. “You set up a bogus kidnapping, just to shake your father down for the ransom? But he can get the money – easy. He could even pull it out of your trust funds, and nobody would blame him.”
“No . . .” Her eyes had narrowed to cold little razor cuts. “That’s not it . . .”
She and César told me the rest of the scheme.
The kidnapping would go wrong. The way kidnappings often do. Something happens, the bad guys get scared, they think the police are just about to come down on them, even if they’d warned the victim’s father not to call in the authorities. And they’re stuck with the evidence – and the witness – on their hands. And they have to get rid of her as quickly as possible.
When things go wrong in a kidnapping, somebody dies. And it’s not the kidnappers.
And that’s what would happen to Lynndie. They would take care of her. Permanently –
Or at least that’s what would get told to her father. About what happened to his daughter, and why she wouldn’t be coming home.
“You see,” explained César, “that would be the other thing you would do for us. You would be the one who had been here when it all happened, and you would be
the one who had tried to find her. But to no avail. Because she is dead, murdered – though not really. But that is not what you would go and tell her father. You would tell him that she is very dead.”
“Sure,” I said. “And why the hell would I want to do that?”
César had made no reply, but had stood up and gone to the desk at the other side of the suite. He had pulled open the top drawer and taken something out, then walked back over and placed it on the glass-topped coffee table in front of me.
“For the same reason you do anything, Miss Oh. We pay you.”
It was an impressive stack sitting there. Wrapped snug in paper bands with a South American bank’s logo on them. But US dollars – the top one showed 100 in both the upper corners, and I was pretty sure the ones below were the same.
“Okay.” I didn’t touch the money. “So I go back home and convince him that his daughter’s dead. Then what?”
That was the beauty part of Lynndie’s scheme.
When her father knew that she was dead – when he had been tricked into believing that – she knew just what her father would do. He’d raid her trust fund accounts. Big time. He’d strip every last nickel out of them. She was really the only one keeping an eagle eye on the money her mother had left her. With Lynndie gone, it would be open season on the accounts, with nobody to stop him.
And she’d be sitting down here in the comfy – if not exactly five-star – hotel, sipping the drinks with little paper parasols in them that room service brought up to her, and watching on her iPad as her father did exactly what she knew he’d do. And when he was done, she’d pack her bags, give César a goodbye kiss, and head for home –
And bust her father’s ass for embezzlement.
What could he do? She’d have all the bank transfer records she needed for evidence. And what would he say? That he only did it because he’d thought she was dead? In a kidnapping that he’d conveniently forgotten to tell the police about? Yeah . . . that’d fly in court, all right.
He’d be going to prison, and not one of the nice ones. It wouldn’t exactly be a first offense for him – he’d been caught dipping into his daughter’s money before. He’d barely been able to escape doing time then. And there was nothing judges liked better than bringing serious weight down on some rich bastard who was so stupid as to think he could get away with the same thing he’d already tried.
And when somebody like her father goes into prison – a mean one – he doesn’t come back out. Not alive.
I had to hand it to her. When all this got told to me, I kind of admired Lynndie. Lots of people hate somebody else – really hate them – and want to kill them. I know; I’ve been there. It wasn’t simply natural aptitude that had gotten me into this line of work. Lots of people . . .
But not everybody was as creative as she was about it.
† † †
“So. This much now.” César placed his hand on top of the stack of cash and slid it closer to me. “Then the same again – payment en todo – when you have returned home and spoken to Miss Lynndie’s father. About her unfortunate death.”
I nodded. With that much cash in hand, a lot of problems would be solved for me and my brother Donnie. Things had been running kind of tight for us – this is a business that has its ups and downs. With that money stashed in our account, I could take a breather, spend a little while lining up the next gig. Rather than having to jump at the first thing that came along, just to avoid being booted out onto the street. Hey, maybe I could even take a real vacation, instead of this b.s.
Not, of course, that I had any problem with the way things had shaken out. Yeah, it was annoying to find out that I’d had a number run on me, and that things weren’t really the way I’d been led to believe they were when I took the job – but that comes with the territory. As long as I got paid – and got paid this much – I could get over any hurt feelings. I never figured I could afford those, anyway.
“Are you okay with all that?” Lynndie had gotten her drink refilled by César. She swirled the glass’s contents, took a sip, and watched for my reaction.
“No problema.” I supposed I could divide the stack of cash in two and stuff it into the pockets of my jacket – my shoulder bag was lost somewhere out there on the malecón. “How’s the second half getting paid to me?”
“Don’t worry about that,” said César. “You’ll receive it. Your services will have been valuable.”
I wondered how much Lynndie would be paying him. He obviously wasn’t working for free. No skin off my nose, whatever it might be – she was good for it.
“Real valuable.” Lynndie smiled at me. “And I appreciate it.”
Go stuff it, I thought. I didn’t need her patronizing attitude. And I still didn’t like her. Putting up with people like her was the real job – the killing people part was just something I threw in for free.
“So we have a deal?” César had topped up his own glass as well, over at the suite’s wet bar. He came walking back over with it.
“Yeah –” I shrugged. “I mean . . . I’ll do what I can for you. Lynndie’s father is a pretty hard character. I’ve talked to him before, you know. When he gave me this job. There’s no guarantee he’s going to fall for whatever story I’m going to hand him.”
“Sí.” César gave a judicious nod. “I’ve spoken to him as well. So I know what you mean. Just do your best – that’s all we can ask.”
“Really?” Lynndie frowned as she gazed across the rim of her glass. “When did you ever talk to my dad?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead he walked over to the table by the window, where his two associates were still playing cards. He set his glass down and said something in Spanish to one of them. The man reached inside his jacket and laid something in César’s hand.
“Perhaps I can help you with that, Miss Oh.” He came around the back of the couch and placed the muzzle of the gun against Lynndie’s head. He squeezed the trigger, and the shot sent her sprawling forward across the coffee table.
I looked down at the drops of blood that had spattered on me, then back up at César.
“There.” His smile was gentle, even sympathetic with the shock that registered in my gaze. “Now you will be much more convincing. Because you won’t be lying about his daughter being dead.”
The other men continued slapping cards down on the table by the window. They might have glanced over when the shot had been fired, but that was about it for them.
I pulled my feet back to avoid the rivulet of blood pouring off the coffee table. One side of Lynndie’s face lay against the glass, her blanked eye gazing sightlessly ahead.
Inside my brain, a final little piece – not of Lynndie’s plans, but César’s, and Lynndie’s father’s – fell into place.
“Señor Heathman is a very persuasive gentleman.” César wiped the gun muzzle off on his trousers. “And he pays well.”
“I guess.” I was finally able to speak. I picked up the stack of cash, before the spreading blood could get on it, and tucked it beside myself. “So he’s the one who’ll pay me? The other half, I mean?”
“You are a good businesswoman, Miss Oh. Sí, that is the arrangement.”
I had my own plan now. Which this César guy didn’t need to know about. Or at least not all of it.
“You know . . .” The cash went into my jacket. “I’d feel better if I took him some proof. Rather than just telling him about what happened.”
“I would not think that necessary.” César shrugged. “But whatever you wish.”
“Okay,” I said. “What do you call a hardware store? En español.”
“Un ferreteria.”
“Is there one nearby? I’ll need a couple of things . . .”
TWENTY
“Really kind of embarrassing – you know?”
Mavis and I sat in the executive lounge at the airport. Which was one of the perks that came with flying on Lynndie’s tab. Pretty nice, actually – but then, outside of the US, these
lounges for first-class and VIP passengers usually are. Came with a free buffet, too, and a serve-yourself espresso machine, which was good, because none of us had had time for breakfast before checking out of the hotel. I’d managed to squeeze in a quick shower while packing, but that was about it.
“I mean,” continued Mavis, “I totally got it wrong about that Umberto guy. I thought I had him figured out, which is why I gave you all that advice I did. And then he turned out to be a creep, and tried to kill you and everything.”