The Negotiator: A Novel of Suspense

by Brendan DuBois

  Her voice was flat, with no emotion. “That’s past. History. We don’t dwell on it.”

  “Well, you should dwell on it,” I said. “Your friend who ran the fingerprints for you … that triggered something for somebody. Which means he’s either dead or has been disappeared.”

  “Or something innocent.”

  “Innocent? Well, look at this … you were next up on their hit parade, until we managed to scramble away. But they’re still out there, either from your Boston office, or someplace else in the Northeast, or anywhere else. Corrupt feds, or somebody working with the corrupt feds.”

  “Over what? The Rembrandt painting? That’s how this all started. What’s the deal, then?”

  “Who knows?” I said. “It’s a murky world. Maybe somebody knows where the Isabelle Stewart Gardner paintings are located, and wants to make a side deal with the FBI, for money or glory or something like that. And before he proceeds, he wants to make sure the paintings are the real deal. Clarence and I go to Vermont, I verify the Rembrandt is the Rembrandt, and when that was achieved, it was time for George and Kathy Salzi to eliminate us both.”

  She played around the edge of her coffee mug, pushing it slightly with a thumb against the handle, until it revolved a complete 360 degrees. “What’s your thought process now?”

  “Now? Short-term, we enjoy our beverages. Long term … this is how I see it. We can do one of two things. Sit around and scurry and wait for them to come at us again. Or we can go on the offensive.”

  “I don’t like sitting around,” Carla said.

  “Neither do I.”

  She gulped down the last of her coffee. “I’m done enjoying my beverage. Let’s roll.”

  Unlike most metropolitan cities, getting a cab in Manchester takes more effort than standing on a corner, waving madly. That’s not how it works here. After talking to the young lady who had seated us, she made a phone call and told us our ride would be coming by in ten or so minutes. I slipped her a couple of dollar bills and walked outside back on Main Street, with Carla at my side.

  Sirens sounded in the distance. Carla winced and I said, “Take my hand, we’re a young couple out for a stroll, nothing to get worked up about.”

  She didn’t pull away. “You’re not that young.”

  “Oh, such a charmer,” I said. “I can’t see why your husband left you.”

  “I left him,” she said, squeezing my hand hard.

  We walked two blocks and at the intersection of Palmer Street and Main Street, we waited, until a dented white Ford Taurus with stick-on letters saying queen city livery pulled up. I opened the rear door, she slid in, and I joined her. The driver was a heavy-set woman with white-streaked black hair wearing a dungaree jacket and a Manchester Monarchs baseball cap. “Where you going, folks?”

  I told her, and off we went.

  About fifteen minutes later, in a run-down industrial section of Manchester, I stepped out of a fence-enclosed parking lot that contained scores of metal buildings, holding storage units. I got back into the Ford Taurus, holding a black nylon duffel bag with web handles. Carla eyed me as I got in, the bag on my lap.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Stuff. You know, bird watching gear, books, that sort of thing.”

  “And you store it here?”

  I patted the top of the bag. “You never know when you need bird watching gear in a hurry.”

  An hour later, I was by myself, slightly chilled, but feeling pretty good. I had changed out my clothes and was wearing a camo wrap designed to be used by trackers and snipers, both professions I have a serious and high regard for. I was now back at my home, in the stretch of woods behind my house, on my belly, keeping eye on the neighborhood. With 7 x 50 Zeiss binoculars in hand, my birdwatching and other gear at my side, I could see everything that was moving, everything that was going on, like the two Smith girls playing in their back yard.

  And also including something that wasn’t moving.

  My friendly surveillance van from earlier in the day.

  Hadn’t moved a bit.

  “Well, guys,” I whispered. “Even by doing nothing, you’re telling me a lot.”

  Which was this: at least two, maybe three guys in that van. They were still sitting here, which meant another two guys had been out there, near the Hanover Street Chop House. That means five. Plus a Mister Big or Doctor Evil either hiring George or being George, along with a minion or two (without the goggles and gobbly-gook dialogue) to help him out.

  Lots of serious men and—including Kate Salzi—at least one serious woman.

  I gently put the binoculars down on the leaves and pine needles at my side, picked up a Remington .22 semiautomatic rifle, with a nice 10x optical sight attached to the receiver. A long time ago a very helpful gunsmith made some adjustments to the rifle so it could be broken down and carried in a duffel bag like the one nearby. It’s a very popular weapon, not particularly high-powered or dangerous, but as I learned a long time ago, there’s no such thing as a dangerous weapon, only a dangerous man.

  Or, thinking of Kate and her H&K MP 5 pointed in my direction, a very dangerous woman.

  That gunsmith also made me a fair number of highly effective and highly illegal sound suppressors, one of which was attached to the end of my rifle’s barrel. I lowered my head, sighted through the scope. I probably could have made the shot using the open iron sights that came with the Remington, but like most things in life, I didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

  I kept steady, narrowed my aim, and fired.

  A harsh chuff and the clink of the bolt ejecting the tiny spent .22 round.

  Three more shots, and I was finished.

  I quickly broke everything down, took off my camouflage wrap, and walked across my back yard like the responsible and tax-paying citizen I was. I gave a slight and silly wave to the folks in the surveillance van—now resting on four shot-out tires—and I got into my Ford with the new car smell, started it up, and drove off.

  I still felt good, though I admit I was a bit concerned about starting up the Ford, thinking maybe things had gotten so far that an explosive device had been attached, but nothing happened, which went a ways to renewing my faith in whatever humanity rested in my pursuers.

  I stopped and took a right onto Route 3.

  Check that, I thought. Our pursuers. For better or worse, I now had a representative of the FBI working with me.

  I almost doubled over in laughter at that thought.

  Twelve

  It was a relatively short drive to where I picked up Carla Pope, at Manchester’s famed Airport Diner, about five minutes’ drive to the silly over-named airport that served this city and its neighbors: the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Yeah, right.

  She got in and said, “Any more coffee and I won’t sleep for a week.”

  “Worse things could happen.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Went fine.”

  “Seemed to take a while.”

  “Oh, I had to make a quick stop on the way over, at that Irving gas station back there.”

  “To gas up?”

  “Among other things,” he said. “I found two tracing devices on the undercarriage of the Ford. They’re now under a Chrysler mini-van with Connecticut plates. I’m hoping the mini-van brings our tracers right to the Nutmeg State.”

  “How do you know there were only two?”

  “Are you doubting my abilities?”

  “Every minute I’m with you I have doubts,” she said.

  Carla started yawning and I knew what was going on: even with the caffeine, she was coming down with the Winston Churchill effect—the relief and let-down that comes from being shot at with no injury.

  “Let’s take a break,” I said, pointing out the windshield at the nearby Holiday Inn Express. “Spend the n
ight here, sleep in late, head out to Vermont tomorrow.”

  “I want to go now.”

  “We go now, it’ll be late by the time we get to Vermont. We’ll be even more tired, more fuzzy, and we’ll make mistakes. We’ll shoot ourselves in the feet. Maybe literally.”

  “But—”

  “That Holiday Inn is used by a lot of flight crews. Fairly anonymous. We walk over, I pay in cash, and we’re gone in the morning.”

  “Separate rooms?”

  “Of course.”

  “Room service?”

  “Sure.”

  “Any limits?”

  “Use your best judgment,” I said. “If you have any left.”

  I like hotel rooms, I like their sameness, the quiet, knowing I’m not responsible for cleaning or dining or anything else.

  So a number of quiet hours passed.

  In the morning we walked back to the diner, had a quick and late breakfast, and then got back into my Ford and started driving.

  I got us onto Route 101 east, planning to take Interstate 93 north a while to Concord, the state capitol. “National technical means of verification,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you remember your history?”

  “Some history, but I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yesterday. The tracking devices. The espionage. Spycraft.”

  We sped east, past the Mall of Manchester and a whole slew of big box stores. I had the quick feeling that I hoped Robert Frost wasn’t looking down, shaking his spectral head in dismay at what happened to his home state. Stopping in the woods on a snowy evening my ass.

  “Back in the days of nuclear weapons talks, both sides agreed that the telemetry for some of their missile launches would be broadcast in the clear, making it easy for the other side to track the performance and ensure there was no cheating going on. But in addition, it was always understood that spying and spy-tools—also known as national technical means of verification—would be used.”

  We were now approaching the tollbooths in Hooksett. From there, we would eventually find a state highway that would take us west to Vermont.

  “Yesterday I checked the undercarriage of the Ford with my eyeballs. Didn’t find a thing. But among my bag of tricks was a surveillance tracking device that located the first one, no doubt descended from something that was used to track Soviet missile tests. But I didn’t stop there and I kept looking … and I found the second one. And this one was tricky, using some sort of new battery technology I couldn’t initially recognize, and which wasn’t picked up by my detection device.”

  “Serious players.”

  “Very serious. But I hope they have a sense of humor when they ended up in Stamford or Hartford.”

  “They’ll probably find out sooner rather than later.”

  “Still, it gave us time to get to Vermont.”

  “Besides the obvious,” she said, “what else is in Vermont?”

  “My personal technical means of verification.”

  We were eventually on Route 113, a state highway that led us through some wooded and pasture lands on our way west, and I felt better about the status of Robert Frost’s spectral viewing from up above somewhere or somewhen. There were small towns, grassy commons, and the occasional statue of a Civil War soldier standing forever at guard. Think state highway and you might think of a four-lane ribbon of concrete and asphalt; in New Hampshire, you’d be thinking wrong. Here, a state highway can be just two lanes of a better-than-average paved road, which we were currently on and driving steadily along.

  I had the radio set low to some classic rock station, but still, the dead air inside the Ford was making me quite uncomfortable, with Carla just staring out the windshield, occasionally squeezing her hands together. So I decided to break the ice, or at least scrape it around some.

  “Tell me more about your brother,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “To pass the time, to learn more about him, that sort of civilized thing.”

  “You worked with him for a couple of years.”

  “Not long enough to know him,” I said. “We had the ultimate professional relationship. He worked well with me, I paid him handsomely in return, and when the job was done, we had a nice meal at a restaurant and then went back to our own respective corners.”

  “You start,” she said. “Then I’ll fill in the blanks.”

  “All right,” I said, driving by a beautiful white Colonial farmhouse, with neat barns and pastureland. Perfect for tourists and landscapers. Disneyworld New Hampshire.

  “Rough and tough, with a fine sense of humor,” I said. “Grew up in Boston, worked off and on for a number of not-so-wiseguys. Freelance at what he did. Divorced with twin sons. Adores his kids and still has fond thoughts about Wanda, his ex-wife, though they’ve been apart for a while.”

  Carla laughed. I had to turn my head to make sure I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. She had a merry smile on her face. “Not bad, save for one thing. He didn’t grow up in Boston. None of us did. We grew up in Providence.”

  “Ah, home to the quiet ones.”

  “H. P. Lovecraft?”

  “No, organized crime. The Providence mob … they’re content to let their Boston cousins to the north get all the notoriety, headlines, best-selling books, and Oscar-winning movies while they quietly did their business. How did your brother get hooked up with them?”

  “High school bored him. What else can I say?”

  Up ahead was an intersection with a blinking red light dangling overhead. I took a left. We hadn’t seen a real traffic light in nearly an hour.

  “What did he do for the boys from Federal Hill?”

  “A lot of traveling, I guess. All up and down the East Coast, running errands, meeting people, doing … whatever he was told to do.”

  “Were you the typical younger sister, trying to get big brother back home where he belonged? Tried to keep him on the straight and narrow? Is that it?”

  She turned her head to look at the peaceful landscape sliding by. “No.”

  Carla said not another word, even when we drove over the Connecticut River and were back in the Green Mountain State.

  A couple of phone calls later, I met up with Tracy Zahn, my own private intelligence agency, who was taking the day off and had on faded blue jeans and a thick black turtleneck sweater. Even with the bulky clothes, she looked pretty damn fine. We met at a Little League baseball field outside of Bellows Falls, which was empty of fans and players. I parked near a squat green concrete building that looked like it served as a concession stand and dugout for the home team.

  Tracy had parked under a maple tree and I walked over to meet her, sitting next to her on the hood of her light green Volvo station wagon.

  “Well, hello there,” she said.

  “Hello there,” I said.

  She looked over my shoulder. “You cheating on me already?”

  “Not hardly,” I said. “She’s … assisting me on this search, from another angle. Two minds being better than one, that sort of thing.”

  Tracy kept looking over my shoulder. “Lean-looking wench, isn’t she.”

  “Haven’t noticed.”

  She returned her look to the baseball park. “Bring back any fond memories?”

  “No.”

  “What, no Little League, peewee football, semipro soccer?”

  “I don’t like team sports,” I said.

  “Says you.”

  She laughed, a sound I decided I still liked. From the rear pocket of her jeans, she removed a folded over piece of white paper. I took it in hand, opened it up. It was still warm from being tight up against her butt.

  George Windsor was written out in neat handwriting. The Putney Homestead Bed and Breakfast.

  “That’s
your man’s name,” she said. “And as of this morning, he was staying at the Putney Homestead.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Just south of here in Brattleboro. Nice little inn. I’m surprised he’s there, after having stayed at the Green Mountain. The Green Mountain is a much better facility.”

  “I don’t think he has fond memories of the place,” I said. “What else can you tell me?”

  She bit her lower lip. “Not as much as I wanted, my friend. All I know is that he’s somebody important, from D.C., and that the cops here are lining up to kiss his bony ass.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Only if you answer a question.”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  She gestured to the ballpark. “Why are we meeting here? Why not in town? Or at my office?”

  I refolded the piece of paper, slipped it into my coat. I said, “Things … might get pretty interesting over the next day or two. I don’t want you to be involved.”

  “I’m already involved.”

  “I like you,” I said. “Any more involvement … bad things might happen.”

  “How bad?”

  “Very bad.”

  She nodded. “All right, thanks for the warning. And here’s a warning right back to you, friend. George Windsor is up here on some sort of federal investigation, looking for a very bad man, and once he finds that man, he intends to, quote, nail his balls to the barn door, unquote.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Be careful,” she said with a sly smile. “I’ve developed an affection for your balls, and the body attached to it.”

  Back in the Ford, Carla Pope of the FBI said, “Local talent?”

  “Local real estate agent,” I said. “She’s got connections, knows the news and the gossip. She’s helping me out.”

  “I’m sure she is,” she said.

  I glanced down at her folded hands. “Gee, look at those claws pop out. You’re something else, Miss Pope.”

  “It’s Mrs. Pope, and you can still keep on calling me Carla.”