Burned Bridges

by A. J. Stewart

  “Wild Turkey,” he said.

  The man turned and grabbed the bottle and dropped it into a purpose-sized paper sack. He put the sack on the counter and continued his one-way phone conversation. He looked at Flynn but didn’t offer a price. Flynn handed him a fifty. That would cover it, and then some. Maybe it was enough for two bottles. But he didn’t want two bottles. He wanted one, and only one. The Chinese guy looked at the bill with suspicion. Felt it between his fingers like that was the defining characteristic of counterfeit money. He wasn’t wrong. The paper was the most difficult part of US currency to copy. But it must have felt right because the guy dropped the bill in the register and handed Flynn his change and turned his eye to the next customer in turn, still talking into his phone.

  Flynn stepped out onto the street, and Hutton eyed the paper sack in his hand.

  “Is this the time for that?” Hutton asked.

  “To be determined.”

  They arrived back at Hutton’s office. The cubicles were mostly empty. Mostly, but not completely. A number of staff burned the late-evening oil.

  “We’re a twenty-four-hour kind of place,” Hutton said as they reached her office.

  “In a twenty-four-hour kind of town,” said Flynn.

  Hutton smiled. Then she called Hedstrom.

  The driver had gambled again. And he’d won again. Or perhaps he wasn’t giving himself enough credit. It was an educated guess. The target and the woman had walked along the north end of Union Square, and he had followed in the Yukon. They had walked to Chelsea Market, which presented a problem. Parking was scarce. Parking enforcement was plentiful. And he preferred to deploy his twitchy little friend only when absolutely necessary. He bet on them coming back out the way they had gone in. He figured he could pick up the trail then. They hadn’t walked a crazy route to get there, so they showed no signs of suspecting a tail. So he sat and waited, got told to move on a couple of times by parking inspectors, but they didn’t have arrest powers, so he paid them little mind.

  His partner was squirming in his seat and complaining that they had lost them and there would be hell to pay if they had, so the driver gave a satisfied grin when the target and the woman walked out of the market via the same door they had entered, jogged across the street, and then dropped into a steady pace for the return to the office. They made one stop at a convenience store, but only the target went inside. The woman stayed on the street looking around, and the driver thought he might have been made, but she was just killing time, waiting for the target to come out. Then they had walked along 17th which was one way east to west, so he couldn’t follow. He cut up onto 18th and continued along until he turned right onto Park Avenue, and he was again parked kitty-corner across from the woman’s building when she and the target wandered past and went inside.

  He had earlier checked the tenant board for the building and found eleven listings. The building was a low five floors: a large retail space on street level topped by four mixed-use levels. In the city, they could be offices or loft apartments or a mix of the two. The tenant board suggested they were all offices. He didn’t know who she was, or what her relationship to the target was. The driver looked up and saw lights in the window of just one floor. The top floor. He checked his personal phone. The photograph he had taken showed the tenant board. The retail space was not listed. The next three floors were denoted 2, 3 and 4. The fourth of the office floors was denoted PH—penthouse. There was a single tenant. Hutton Hedstrom Associates.

  He opened his phone’s web browser and typed that name in and found multiple listings for a security and private investigation firm. He tapped through to the company’s website and found a listing of the principals. The woman might be an office drone working late to impress the boss. Or she might be something more. She might be Hedstrom.

  Definitely not Hedstrom. The page that opened on his phone showed a bald, broad-shouldered Nordic-looking guy with a heavy mustache. Nils Hedstrom. The driver scrolled down some. And saw the woman. It was a professional shot. She was wearing makeup that he hadn’t noticed on her in real life. Not blush and gaudy colors. Subtle. Like TV makeup. Designed to stop the skin from shining in the bright camera flash. He looked the photo over. She wasn’t his type. She was one of those women who looked like a hawk. All angles and a beak nose and eyes that bored into their prey from a thousand yards. He preferred women who didn’t seem to be reading his every thought, every moment of the day. Which this woman seemed to be doing from the screen of his phone.

  He shut it off and pulled the other phone from his pocket. Hit the button to call one of only two numbers stored in it.

  “She just returned to the office,” he said.

  “Who is she?”

  “It looks like she’s a private eye or something.”

  “Maybe he’s hired her. Maybe he’s looking for our thing.”

  “What is this thing?”

  “Nothing of value to you.”

  “Do you know this woman?”

  “Don’t worry about the woman. Stay on the guy.”

  The call ended in his ear. He shook his head. He was starting to think the job was more work than it was worth. But once engaged, there was no begging off. He knew that. He knew how his contact could react when displeased. Had seen it firsthand. It wasn’t pretty. But his confidence in the contact wasn’t high. How was it he knew who this woman was but they didn’t? The whole thing felt like it had been thrown together on the run. He’d been involved in jobs like that before. They never ended well for the guy in his position.

  Hedstrom didn’t look cold despite having spent close to two hours on the roof of the building. He was built for the conditions. He strode into Hutton’s office and closed the door but didn’t sit.

  “You had a tail,” he said.

  “Black Yukon,” said Flynn.

  “With a sun-bleached hood,” said Hutton. “They followed us to Chelsea.”

  Hedstrom grunted. “They were here earlier too. They just took up their post on Park Avenue.” He gestured out the window with the spotting scope, which he had returned to its bag.

  “What do you think?” Hutton asked.

  Hedstrom glanced at the meeting table where Flynn sat. His eyes lingered on the plain paper sack in the middle of the table.

  “No hurry,” said Hedstrom. “You know they’re there, they know you’re inside.”

  “Time to plan,” said Hutton.

  Flynn said nothing.

  Hedstrom placed his spotting scope on the table by the paper sack and turned to Hutton. “I gotta get going though,” he said. “The Russian oil guys.”

  “I know. Be safe.”

  “Call if you need anything. We’ll be done around two, unless they decide to hit the bars.”

  Hutton nodded and Hedstrom walked out. She turned her attention to Flynn. She was concerned. She had seen a paper sack like the one on the table before. In Iraq. Flynn had gone out walking alone. She had seen him from the stairs, closing the door to his room, a fifth of bourbon in his hand. She had figured it for a coping mechanism. Everyone had one, at least everyone who coped. And in the scheme of things, there were worse ways to handle it, but there were also better ways. Especially years after they had returned. At the time it hadn’t seemed to affect his performance. He had been sharp the following day, and she hadn’t smelled anything on his breath. But it had worried her all the same. The second time he had gone walking and returned with a bottle, he hadn’t needed it. He had found solace with her. That couldn’t happen now.

  “Is there a back way out of your building?” he asked, pulling her from her thoughts.

  “Of course. Going somewhere?”

  “Need to check something. Might help decide what the next step is. Don’t want an audience.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Flynn marched the cold streets with purpose. Amber light spotted his way and the city pulsed around him. He felt alive. It wasn’t a good feeling. Not this way. The woman who would be his wife was d
ead. His only link to a family, to a normal kind of life, was gone. He should have been inconsolable. He should have taken the bottle that was in the paper sack in Hutton’s office and found a vacant, darkened room, and he should have exorcized his demons. But as he hit the cold Manhattan street and his walk dropped into that familiar cadence of a march, he realized that his regular process wasn’t required right now. Right now he felt alive. More alive than he had in years.

  It wasn’t about Beth. He loved her. He knew that. He wasn’t so alien that he didn’t understand love. He had loved his mother, and he had been infatuated with girls back in school. And there had been Hutton. He wasn’t sure how to classify that feeling. He had never found an adequate pigeonhole for it. But with Beth, he’d had someone to call home. Somewhere to be. Someone to be there with. A woman who didn’t understand his background because she could never know everything about it, but who gave him her love anyway. Convention said he should be grieving that loss right now. Instead he felt alive in pursuit of her killers. He shivered. He told himself it was the cold wind heaving down the canyons of buildings. But he knew better. Shivers from the cold didn’t emanate from within.

  Hedstrom stopped by on his way out. He had changed into his black suit and black tie. He looked like a Secret Service agent, which was what many of the clients wanted. Not just security, but visible security. And in their minds, security had a certain look. Someone could start a clothing line: The Secret Service Collection. Hutton thought he looked good in a suit, but she knew he would struggle all night not to keep pulling at the collar.

  “Where is he?” Hedstrom asked.

  “Wanted to check something, he said. I think I know what.”

  “You okay with this whole thing?”

  “Are you asking do I trust him?”

  “That’s in there somewhere.”

  “Yes, I trust him.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “Because of the French general?”

  “That’s just an example. He could have—hell, he should have followed orders. He should have stood down and given it up. But he didn’t, knowing that it might go as bad as it did. And that counts for something.”

  “It counts for something, not everything.”

  “You know the rest. He’s giving me a chance to find out why it all went down the way it did. I’m never going back to the Bureau, you know that. But it’s still eating at me. I don’t like not knowing.”

  “I don’t have to go to this thing tonight.”

  “Yes, you do. You can’t leave a client hanging.”

  Hedstrom growled a sigh. “Call me. Anything.”

  “Go. Do your job.”

  Hutton had killed the lights and was watching the Yukon through the scope when Flynn arrived back.

  “He’s still there,” he said.

  “Yes. Traffic cops aren’t so vigilant after rush hour.” She dropped the scope from her eye. “What do you know?”

  “Good news and bad news.”

  “Bad news,” she said.

  “I heard back about my contact.”

  “The phone store was still open?”

  “Probably. This is the city that never sleeps. But I went elsewhere. No pattern, remember?”

  “Where?”

  “Not important. But as I say, the news isn’t good.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “That isn’t good. How?”

  “He was in the Legion. Training accident in Algeria. Eighteen months ago. Helicopter went down. Six guys lost.”

  “Suspicious?”

  “Not on the face of it. But one dead contact can be explained away. Two dead contacts gets harder to do.”

  “I agree,” she said, closing the blinds. Flynn flicked the lights on.

  “What’s the good news?”

  “It’s dark.”

  “I noticed. So?”

  “So my options for finding whatever it is they want me to find are played out. I’m done.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Time to go on the offensive.”

  “Can I remind you this isn’t Iraq? There are rules.”

  “I agree. But they made the rules. Not me. They killed Beth. Now they get to play by those rules.”

  “I don’t know if I can be a party to that.”

  “And I’m not asking you to. I needed your help to find Beth. That’s not the objective now. I don’t want to cause you trouble, Hutton. I wouldn’t have come to you if I thought it would cause you harm. I’ll just take my gun back and go.”

  “Go where? What do you plan to do?”

  “I plan to get in their faces. There’s no way the guys watching me are the top of the tree. From little things, big things grow. They’re the first link in the chain. They’ll tell me where to go next.”

  “What are you going to do? Attack a vehicle in the middle of Park Avenue?”

  “No, not on Park Avenue.”

  Hutton leaned against her desk and looked at him. She was looking at Flynn, not Fontaine—the guy she had known in Iraq. He was different now. Still the same man in a way, but also changed.

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing. I told you, I’m leaving.”

  “Flynn, this was my career. I loved being in the FBI, and this thing killed that. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do now, maybe even more. It’s good being the boss. But the FBI is unfinished business for me. I didn’t leave it on my terms. Someone screwed me over. I want to know who.”

  Flynn walked to the window. The wind had dropped, but it was still cold. There were people around despite the late hour. The Yukon was down there. It was the first thread in a much bigger blanket. It was time to start pulling the blanket apart.

  The black Suburban pulled into the loading dock of the Watergate Hotel. It would raise no eyebrows. People in this town were used to seeing large black SUVs discreetly pull into the rear of hotel complexes. It could be a senator or a governor or a self-important lobbyist. It wasn’t any of these people. The team leader stepped out first, and his contact met him on the loading dock and ushered him inside. The rest of the team leader’s men were hard at work in the vacant office, replenishing their energy on delivery pizza and Gatorade.

  The team leader was led through the kitchen and down a corridor to the security office. The on-duty security officer had been told to take a hundred bucks and go relax somewhere for an hour. The large bearded man sitting before the monitors barely acknowledged the two men as they entered the small room.

  “What do you have?”

  The security guy hit a few keys on his keyboard with a force that suggested he wasn’t impressed about being dragged in on his day off.

  “This is her checking in,” he said, starting the video.

  The image came from a camera on the ceiling behind the desk. The team leader watched an attractive blond woman at the front desk. The woman looked professional and at ease with her surroundings. Staying in an expensive hotel was nothing new for her. But the team leader wasn’t that interested in the woman. He didn’t know her, other than having read her dossier.

  “Is she with someone?” he asked.

  “Not obviously,” said the security guy. He fast-forwarded the video to another shot, this one looking at the elevator. The woman sped into shot, followed by a man. They stood at the elevator with their backs to the camera.

  “Maybe that guy?”

  “Got a facial shot?”

  The couple got into the elevator.

  “Elevator shot?” asked the team leader.

  “That’s car two. Video’s on the fritz.”

  The security guy scratched at his beard and then tapped at the keys. The video on the monitor changed to a shot of an elevator lobby on one of the room floors. The couple got out, but the man was readjusting what looked like a backpack, and his arm covered his face. The couple entered one of the rooms.

  “Room surveillance?” asked the team leader.


  The team leader’s contact shook his head. “Not at the Watergate. Could you imagine?”

  The team leader didn’t care about the history. The security guy fast-forwarded the video and then slowed it as the couple came back out of the room. They were dressed differently, in running gear. The man wore a hoodie, masking his face. The couple stepped out the front doors and ran away. It only took seconds for the security guy to have them back, heavy breath visible in the clear air. They made their way to the room again, and then the woman left alone.

  “You wanna see where she goes?”

  “I didn’t come here for the sparkling company.”

  The security guy frowned and scratched his beard again and used his keyboard to follow the woman. She entered the elevator and took it up to the bar on the roof. The rooftop space was sparsely populated, and the woman appeared to shrug her shoulders against the chill on the air. She looked around the bar and was then approached.

  “Who is that?” asked the team leader’s contact from the rear of the room.

  The team leader wasn’t sure, but he knew the new person looked out of place in that environment. He watched them speak on the screen and a look of recognition sweep across the face of the blond woman. The team leader saw it in her eyes. She knew the name but not the face. They spoke some more and then turned back for the elevator.

  “Too cold,” said the security guard.

  The video captured them getting back in the elevator, and then the security guy switched to the lobby camera and they saw the two of them stop by the bar near the lobby and then turn and walk out the front door. The view switched to a camera on the hotel forecourt, and they saw the blond woman being ushered into a waiting minivan.