The Negotiator: A Novel of Suspense

by Brendan DuBois

  “Will you be staying for breakfast?” she added.

  “No, I’m sorry I’ve got to get going,” I said.

  She smiled wider, revealing a dimple on one side. “Well, if you ever get back in the area … ”

  “I’ll make sure to stop by, thanks,” I said.

  “We look forward to it.”

  I gathered up my belongings and strolled out onto the porch, down the walkway, trying to plan my day, and I started to the rear of the inn, where my Ford was parked.

  Then my planning was put on hold, because someone else had gotten there first.

  A sour-looking man in an ill-fitting dark gray suit was blocking the walkway.

  Detective Mike Shaye of the Bellows Fall Police Department.

  I paused, and he stared at me. His black hair was a bit disheveled, and his pug nose was reddened, like he was coming down with a cold.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Good morning.”

  “Here’s the deal, final and not open to any discussion. Got it? I see your hands, which are great. But if they start moving, then I’ll blow a hole in your fucking stomach and drop you right there.”

  “That seems pretty direct.”

  “It sure is,” he said. “Designed to be. Well?”

  “Got the message, Detective,” I said. “I’ll do my best not to move.”

  “All right,” he said, and there was a hint of disappointment there, like he was looking for an excuse to shoot me and get vengeance for what I had done at his police station the other day.

  And no surprise, that’s exactly the subject he started with.

  “Who the hell told you that you could leave my custody two days ago?”

  “Nobody.”

  “But you still did it?”

  “I wasn’t under arrest and I wasn’t in a locked room. So I decided to leave. That suddenly against the law here in Vermont?”

  His eyes narrowed and darkened. “You also trespassed and took your pistol back.”

  “I apologize for the trespass, as brief as it was,” I said. “And the pistol … it’s my property. I wanted to retrieve my property with a minimum of fuss or paperwork. No apologies, I’m sorry to say.”

  He continued to glare at me. “Your background … pretty sketchy.”

  “Is what it is.”

  “Almost as sketchy as the Department of Justice fellow that came in the day you walked out, who was also looking for you. He said you were a writer, but that you were also a person of interest in a financial matter involving international terrorism.”

  “Dear me.”

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s go back into the Homestead, you buy me breakfast, and we’ll sort out some things.”

  “Detective, you’re a charming fellow, and I appreciate the offer for a breakfast companion, but I’m really pressed for time.”

  “Book research and all that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That’s truly fascinating, but you’re going to have to delay your research. Either we have breakfast and talk things through, or you’ll be in the back of my cruiser, under arrest.”

  “This isn’t your town, your jurisdiction.”

  “My ex-brother in law is the police chief here,” he gently explained. “Need I say more?”

  I said, “Well, I am hungry. So let’s go in.”

  He nodded crisply. “After you.”

  If Natalie was surprised to see me back so quickly, she kept it under wraps. She took my belongings and stored them in a rear closet, and Detective Shaye and I had a corner table on an insulated porch that offered a nice view of empty farmland and rows of trees that would be cut down in several months for Christmas.

  After coffee was poured and breakfast was ordered, Detective Shaye said, “Not to sound rude or anything, but do you think I’m a fucking idiot or something?”

  I briefly thought of the correct answer and let it loose: “No.”

  “Funny, I think otherwise,” he said. “First of all, you disrespect me, and then you disrespect my department. I bring you in as a gentleman, I secure your weapon, I bring you into my place of work, and what do you do? Do you respect me in return? No. You leave my place of work, retrieve your weapon, and leave, impeding my investigation. Does that sound accurate?”

  “Pretty accurate.”

  “Glad we seem to be making progress,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Do you have any idea who I am or where I’ve been?”

  “No,” I said, “but I’d love to hear more if you’d care to share it.”

  He cocked his head a bit. “That bullshit or are you for real?”

  “Quite for real,” I said. “I apologize for the disrespect, and I appreciate you not arresting me.”

  “See?” he said, as our breakfasts were served. “I love it when two reasonable men can talk together.”

  I had French toast with sausage on the side, and he had waffles with strawberries and homemade whipped cream on top. As we started eating, Detective Shaye said, “Me first. Grew up here in Vermont, up in the Northwest Kingdom, probably one of the most rural, poor, and isolated spots in New England. After getting out of high school, not much seemed open, so I joined the Marines. And please don’t say thank you for your service. I went in on my own, eyes wide open, and did a good job.”

  “What was your MOS?”

  “Very good,” he said. “My MOS was zero-one-thirty-seven. You recognize it?”

  I did, but I didn’t want to let on that I knew his background. I briefly shook my head and Shaye said, “Scout sniper. Where I grew up, hunting in and out of season was sometimes the only thing that supplemented the food banks. So I had the aptitude. Trained at Camp Lejuene and then shipped out.”

  “Iraq or Afghanistan?”

  “Both,” he said. “Fallujah and Mosul in Iraq. In Afghanistan, outside of Kandahar and some mountain villages.”

  “Tough places.”

  “You know it,” he said. “Did three tours, opted out, and decided to come back home and get into law enforcement. And just so we’re clear, I saw a lot of shit and did a lot of shit, but I’m one of the lucky ones who did his job and got home with a clear mind and clear conscience. Not many can say that.”

  “How do you think you escaped that?”

  A shrug as he sawed through a sausage link. “Luck, I suppose. I got clean targets and clean kills. No women, no kids carrying a soccer ball in one hand and a hand grenade in the other. But when I did come home, I made a vow—I was going to protect my own, and protect my town. No matter what.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut, thinking the steady ex-Marine would continue if he was interested.

  And he was.

  “See, in my line of work, you expect and prepared for a certain amount of crime, certain amount of lawlessness. You try to adapt when new things come up, like all this cheap heroin flooding the markets. And I also have that sniper sense, of something not right, something wrong … just about the time you showed up.”

  I gave him a good look. “Your town and your people have nothing to fear from me.”

  “So says you,” he replied. “But this is what happens over a few days, so bear with me. First things first, down Chester way, some neighbors on a rural road hear a series of gunshots, and one hears a vehicle drive away at a high rate of speed. One of my cop buddies checks things out in the neighborhood … finds nothing, but interestingly enough, the next day, some repair work gets done on a house, performed by one of our less reliable citizens, Eddie Century.”

  I kept eating, still keeping an interested yet slightly bored expression on my face.

  “I go see Eddie,” Shaye said, “but he’s not talking. Seems like somebody had tuned him up pretty good. And my buddy down at the Chester PD, he goes b
ack and finds a recently spent 9mm shell in among some juniper bushes at this particular house.”

  “Fascinating,” I said.

  “I’m sure,” he said. “As with many things, it does get better. A motel in Chester also reveals a dead woman contained within, with her throat slit. A day later, we get a call for a shooting outside the Green Mountain Inn and Resort. A white GMC sedan was found in a ditch, filled with bullet holes and one dead driver. The State Police and the FBI swooped in and took over the case, leaving me behind. Okay, I’m a big boy, I can handle that.”

  I kept eating like I was in a cone of silence or something.

  He said, “I ask the Green Mountain staff to call me if anyone suspicious rolls in, and voila, there you are. We chat here and there, and then you depart … just as a man appears at the police station, saying he’s interested in looking at all aspects of this shooting, including you, in one amazing development.”

  “Hell of a coincidence. Who was he?”

  “He said he was from the Department of Justice, which got me tingling even more, and after he departs, I do some checking and learn my mysterious visitor is, in fact, not a member of Department of Justice, despite his earlier impressive set of credentials and references. And now I find you here, still in the vicinity, doing God knows what. What does that tell you?”

  “Tells me that this is a much more interesting part of Vermont than one could be led to believe.”

  It seemed he took a moment or two to decide on how much I was being a smart-ass, and then he decided to give up and go on. “Back in Iraq, only one thing really got me pissed, and that’s when the Bigs intervened. You ever hear of the Bigs?”

  “No, I haven’t,” I said, and this time I was telling the truth.

  “The Bigs … the Big Boys, the Big Cheese, the Big Kahuna … those guys who decide it’s their job to come in and fuck around with things. One example … my sniper unit was chasing down this mullah who was a real piece of work, who had a sniper’s target permanently tattooed across the back of his head. He was responsible for stirring up the tribes, getting them to hate us … he interfered in our civilian work, like building clinics and schools. And he was a conduit for the Iranians shipping over the shaped-charged IED’s that were sophisticated killing machines for our guys in their armored vehicles.”

  “This mullah was public enemy number one, then.”

  “Yeah, we couldn’t get much higher. But we were closing in. And the day I got that goat fucker in my sights, we got word to stand down. Our target was no longer a target. It seems some Big Guy somewhere—or a host of fucking Bigs—decided it was more importantly diplomatically or politically to keep him alive for some future possible negotiations. And there I was, seeing him emerge from a Mercedes-Benz with tinted black windows, easiest goddamn target in the world. And I didn’t take the shot. Even though I knew this asshole was responsible for a number of American deaths—including buds of mine—I let him live. That really pissed me off.”

  “And that’s why you don’t like the Bigs.”

  “That’s right. And after all the blood, toil, tears, and sweat to clear out Fallujah and Mosul, the current Bigs in D.C. decided to give it all away a couple of years ago. Now they’re doing the same in Afghanistan. You can tell they’re not on my Christmas list, ever.”

  “I got that.”

  “And right now, I don’t know who they are, or what they’re doing in my neighborhood, but I can sense the Bigs are among us. And I don’t like it, not one particular bit of it. So here’s the question of the day: Are you a Big, or are you working for one?”

  “No to both,” I said.

  “Then what are you?”

  I was going to answer in my usual rote manner and decided that wasn’t the smart thing to do. “I’m an independent contractor, working out an employment issue.”

  That caused him to smile. “What, you mean you really aren’t a true crime writer?”

  “No.”

  “So that surveillance photo of you in that Honda Pilot?”

  “That was me.”

  “And do you have … knowledge of the car accident that happened later, and the shooting death of the driver?”

  A bunch of things were bouncing through my mind right then, like that game show trick where they put you in a bubble full of dollar bills and run a whirlwind, challenging you to catch the hundred-dollar bills scattered within the singles, seeing just how lucky you were.

  But the detective was opening a door for me. He wasn’t asking if I was involved, or if I was the shooter, or anything else to put me on the spot at this particular moment. Yet he was also leaving himself room if he decided not to trust me and go back on the hunt.

  “Yes, I have knowledge of the shooting.”

  He just nodded and his expression changed, like he was starting to show some sympathy for me, which I found heartening. “Appreciate that. I haven’t heard word one from the State Police about that dead driver. Which means he is or was under some Big’s protection.”

  “A good guess,” I said.

  “Mind telling me your real name?”

  “That, I do mind.”

  A pause. “All right. Then what the hell are you doing out in my neighborhood?”

  That gave me hesitation—a law enforcement official asking me such a direct question—but I decided to go with the flow. “A coworker of mine was murdered. The man who came to your station, the one who said he was from the Department of Justice, he’s the one who pulled the trigger. I’ve been looking for him.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “I’ll leave that to your imagination.”

  “You think he’s a Big?”

  “The biggest. He’s involved in something wide-ranging, something cruel, something bad.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad enough to kill my coworker, bad enough to slit a woman’s throat when she could no longer work for him.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty bad,” he said. “The woman at the Chester Motel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds like a Big all right.”

  We ate in our own separate worlds for a bit, and he said, “I’m looking for some guarantees.”

  “I’m open to hearing you.”

  He wiped his hands on a white cloth napkin. “I could arrest you now, bring you in. Charge you with a variety of offenses. Maybe disrupt your day or two. But in the end … what would be served?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “Shut up,” he exclaimed. “Like I said, what would be served? You’d lawyer up, clam up, and in a day or two, you’d be on your way. And the Bigs out there, the ones tromping up and down in my towns and neighborhoods, they get away with whatever they’re doing. I don’t like that.”

  The waitress dropped off the check in a black leather holder. I picked it up and carefully laid out enough cash to cover the bill and a nice tip.

  Detective Shaye said, “This is what I want. I want you to keep a low profile, do what you have to do, and get the Bigs the fuck out of my life and world. But whatever you do, make sure it doesn’t hurt innocents, doesn’t make a mess for me or law enforcement, or otherwise piss me off. How does that sound?”

  “I like it,” I said. “Can I ask for a favor?”

  “Seems like I’m doing you a lot of favors already,” he said.

  “You are,” I said. “And I appreciate that. But the Big I’m looking for … he called my room here at about four a.m. this morning. My room phone said the incoming call was blocked. If you could find a way to unblock that incoming call and give me the source phone number, it would help me a lot.” I gave him the room phone number.

  A nod. “Call me later today. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.”

  I looked around our breakfast nook, at the nice quiet innocents having a nice quiet breakfast. “Am I
excused?”

  “You are.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said, pushing my chair back.

  “And what’s on your schedule for today?”

  I stood up. “What else? To do good.”

  “Where? Around here?”

  “No,” I said. “Farther south.”

  For the first time the detective laughed. “Good luck with that.”

  Fifteen

  Later that day I took a long and roundabout trip, going someplace I should have gone to earlier, but because of my busy schedule and cowardice—which I freely admit—I had avoided making this journey.

  But it was time.

  I had driven from Vermont down to Massachusetts, and eventually got on the dreaded concrete and asphalt highway called the Massachusetts Turnpike, aka the Mass Pike, and got to the urban sinkhole in and around Boston. I went north to Saugus, a city known for its strip clubs, a former steak restaurant that featured plastic cows out in the front, historic ironworks, and for being the birthplace of a famous author who writes about werewolves. I got off the highway and drove around some suburban streets until I found the place I was looking for: a quiet two-story home with white siding and black shutters on Tremont Court. The lots here were small, most of them fenced so that any encroaching neighbors couldn’t steal a shrubbery, or some grass, or a handful of dirt.

  I parked the Ford and got out. The hum from the nearby Interstate 95 was a constant noise. This was only the second time I had ever come here, and the first was only after a vehicle breakdown eight months ago that had forced me to give somebody a ride here for some assistance.

  I took a breath, went past the sidewalk, opened up the gate to the waist-high chain link fence, and strolled up the path, past a Virgin Mary statue standing in a circle of white stones. I rang the doorbell and waited.

  Movement from the inside.

  The door opened. A woman in her mid-forties stood there, wearing blue jeans and a white sweater. Her face was made up and her hair was thick and black. “Yes?”