The Professionals

by Owen Laukkanen

  “This is bullshit,” said Sawyer. “Where’s the goddamn money?”

  “We got sirens, Sawyer,” said Pender. “We gotta go, now.”

  Tiffany glanced up at Pender. “Maybe the money’s underneath.”

  “There’s no money,” said Pender. “Forget it. We got played. Now drive.”

  Sawyer stared at Tiffany for a long moment and then stomped on the accelerator and the minivan leapt forward with a roar. Pender slammed the side door shut, and Sawyer steered down the side corridor of the lot, cutting off a Buick coming out of the drive-thru line and pulling out into traffic just as the first police cruiser rounded the corner, lights blazing, siren loud.

  “Go,” Pender told him. Sawyer nodded, found a hole in traffic and aimed for it, the van’s engine howling as Sawyer kept his foot on the gas.

  They ran a red light and kept driving, Tiffany laughing—laughing—in the front seat, hysterical, and Sawyer staying calm, picking his spots and changing lanes, one eye on the rearview mirror and the other plotting his course.

  Pender glanced back toward the McDonald’s and saw a light show of red and blue out front of the restaurant, two cruisers and an unmarked sedan angled across traffic, blocking the parking lot and nobody even looking in their direction. “Slow down,” said Pender. “Make a turn, and, for Christ’s sake, slow down.”

  “Slow down?”

  “Blend in. Make for the highway. I don’t think they saw us.”

  Sawyer took his foot off the gas, and Pender let himself breathe. Even Tiffany was quiet, both hands gripped tight on the armrests. “Holy crap,” she said, gasping. “That was fun.”

  Sawyer and Pender ignored her. “How did they not see us?” Sawyer asked. “Either they’re blind or they’re running game.”

  Pender looked down at the laundry bag, the pile of useless clothes. “Somebody’s running game,” he said. “I just have no idea what it means.”

  sixty

  Sawyer got them on the highway and kept the van moving, hovering just above the speed limit and blending into traffic. He caught Pender’s eye in the rearview mirror. “Where are we going?”

  “Drive,” Pender told him. “We’ll figure it out on the way.”

  Sawyer nodded and turned back to the road. Tiffany twisted in her seat. “What are we going to do?” she asked Pender.

  “I need to think,” he said. He looked up at her. “What does all this laundry mean?”

  Tiffany shook her head. “Maybe it’s a joke.”

  “Some joke,” said Pender. “This is your life he’s playing with.”

  He picked up the garbage bag and spilled the contents onto the floor of the van. Clothes. Mostly sweaters and a couple pairs of pants. No explanation given. He thought about it a moment, realized, this isn’t so bad. “I think we’re in pretty good shape here,” he said.

  Sawyer found him in the rearview. “How do you figure?”

  “The guy set a trap. We got out. We got his daughter, and he knows he pissed us off. He’s going to be eager to settle. All we have to do is get a hold of him and let him know how mad we are. Double the ransom. He won’t screw up again.”

  “It’s good,” said Tiffany. “Only this time, don’t expect me to leave once you boys have the money.”

  “Are you kidding?” said Sawyer. “You’re the goddamn hostage.”

  “I’m part of your team,” she said. “I’m nobody’s hostage.”

  Sawyer glanced in the rearview. “Boss?”

  Tiffany twisted back in her seat. “Don’t listen to him, Pender. I’m one of the bad guys now.”

  Pender was barely listening. He’d spotted something in the pile of laundry. Something small and metallic, about the size of an old film canister. He unwrapped it from a faded warm-up jacket and untangled it: an MP3 player, the cheap kind that comes free with your fifth oil change or the purchase of a DVD player. Headphones attached. Pender held it up, showed it to Tiffany. “This look familiar?”

  Tiffany shook her head. “I have an iPod.”

  “You’ve never seen this before in your life.”

  “I told you no, didn’t I?”

  “Anything on it?” said Sawyer.

  Pender pressed the on switch. The thing came to life, its little LCD display firing up radioactive green. One track. Pender put the headphones to his ears and pressed Play.

  Sounded like a telephone call. A girl’s voice. “Hello,” she said, her voice calm. “Mr. Prentice, this message is for Tiffany. It’s, uh, Haley Whittaker from school, and I’m kind of in trouble. Tiffany’s hooked up with these dangerous guys, these, uh, kidnappers. They’ve pissed a bunch of people off and one of those people is standing right next to me and he wants to know where Tiffany’s friends are.”

  The girl paused for a moment, then came back on. “Um, please don’t call the police,” she said. “They promised they won’t hurt Tiffany if she just gives up her friends. But the guy said he’d hurt me if Tiffany’s friends didn’t show up in the next two days. So I’m really hoping you’ll pass this along and tell Tiffany to check her e-mail soon. Okay. Thank you. I’m sorry for all this. What?”

  There was another pause. “Oh. Oh yeah,” she said. “Um, please, please don’t call the police. He said he’ll kill me if you do. Okay. I’m sorry. Bye.” There was the click of the phone hanging up, and then the file ended.

  Sawyer was staring at him in the rearview mirror. Pender took off the headphones. “What do we got, boss?”

  “Tiffany,” said Pender. “Who’s Haley Whittaker?”

  Tiffany frowned. “She’s my friend. She came to South Beach with me. Why?”

  Pender stared down at the pile of laundry. Haley Whittaker. Andrew Prentice. The guy wanted the police to catch us, he realized. But he put this message in here just in case we got away clean. Is it legit? Who would have kidnapped this girl?

  Donald Beneteau’s people, obviously. The same people who shot up the hotel on South Beach. They lost our trail, so they reached out for whatever they could find to get us back. They snatched up Tiffany’s friend, and now they’re holding her for ransom. And we’re the goddamn ransom.

  He handed over the MP3 player, and Tiffany put the headphones in her ears. Pender watched her in profile as she played the message, her eyes getting wide and her hand moving to her throat. Sawyer turned back to Pender. “Jesus, boss. What’s up?”

  “Beneteau’s people snatched her friend to bait us.”

  “How the hell did they find her?”

  “Damned if I know,” said Pender. “She was on South Beach, too.”

  Tiffany put down the headphones. “I need to check my e-mail. Now.”

  “We’ll find a place as soon as possible,” said Pender. “We gotta figure some things out first.”

  “We’re going to get her, right?”

  Pender didn’t answer. “Boss,” said Sawyer. “What the hell are we doing?”

  Pender shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. There was no chance of getting money from Andrew Prentice now that he knew the score. They had to get Mouse to a doctor, and they had to save Marie, too. Could they afford to go running after Haley Whittaker just so Beneteau’s people could settle the beef? “We need cash,” he told Sawyer. “We need it now.”

  Tiffany sat up. “Haley’s got fifty thousand dollars,” she said. “From her grandmother. Graduation present. Will that help?”

  “Will she pay us?”

  “If we save her life,” said Tiffany. “Of course she will.”

  Sawyer glanced at Pender. “We could fix up Mouse with half that money.”

  Tiffany nodded. “Exactly. The minute we get Haley free we’ll get Mouse to a doctor. You can use the rest to help Marie.”

  Sawyer and Pender swapped looks. They needed money, and they needed it yesterday. For fifty grand, Pender would have built a rocket and flown to the moon. “All right,” he told Tiffany. “We’re in. We gotta get that money, though.”

  “No problem,” said Tiffany. “Bu
t I gotta check my e-mail. Now.”

  Pender nodded, and Sawyer flicked on the turn signal, cutting across three lanes of traffic toward an off-ramp and a stack of neon motel signs in the distance. Fifty grand, Pender thought. I guess we’re in business again.

  sixty-one

  You’re never going to believe this,” Windermere told Stevens, handing him a coffee. “Tiffany Prentice tried to hold herself for ransom.”

  Stevens rubbed his eyes and took a sip, watching the procession of travelers stream past the baggage carousels at Detroit Metro Airport. “One more time?” he said.

  Windermere led him out of the terminal and across to the parking garage, talking quickly as she walked. “Prentice called her dad in Pennsylvania a couple days ago. Said she was a hostage with a million-dollar ransom. Forty-eight hours. No cops.”

  “A million bucks,” said Stevens. “Those kids are getting desperate.”

  They walked up a flight of stairs and deep into the garage, where Windermere pressed a button on her key chain and a forest-green Crown Victoria chirped in response. “Get this,” she said. “Daddy Prentice didn’t have any idea his daughter was in Florida, much less that she’d gone missing.”

  “He thought she was in school.”

  “You got it. Anyway, he got the money together and he was going to pay it, the whole drop-it-off-at-McDonald’s deal, when he gets this phone call.”

  They reached the Crown Vic and climbed inside. Windermere turned the key, and the car rumbled to life.

  “You know how Prentice’s friend reported her missing, right?” she said. “Haley Whittaker. She went and got herself kidnapped a few days later. Someone snatched her from a Miami motel room.”

  “Get out of here,” said Stevens. “Our gang?”

  “No, sir,” said Windermere. She drove the sedan out of the garage. “Somebody else. Somebody who made Whittaker call Daddy Prentice and beg him to make Tiffany give up her friends.”

  “Beneteau’s people. D’Antonio. He’s using Whittaker as bait.”

  “So Prentice hears Whittaker’s message and decides he’s not going to pay. He drops off a phony bag and calls the cops, but they get there too late to pick up our boys.”

  “Too late?” said Stevens. “Come on.”

  “City cops, right? But he also put the message from Whittaker in the bag, so I guess he’s hoping Tiffany will give up on her boys and come on home.”

  They were driving up I-94 now, cruising past the miles of low factories and railroad yards toward the city. “What are we hoping?” said Stevens.

  Windermere shrugged. “We’re hoping they think Marie’s more important. We don’t know where D’Antonio is or how he managed to snatch the Whittaker girl. Frankly, nobody’s too happy with the idea of these kids getting caught up in a personal vendetta against Beneteau’s crew.”

  “So let’s keep pressing McAllister,” said Stevens. “Maybe we leak something to the press, something that will get the boys interested again. Do they know she’s in Detroit?”

  “Not sure,” said Windermere. “We can get that on the news. Try to angle the boys up in this direction.”

  “Sure. In the meantime we can press Beneteau’s people for information on D’Antonio. Talk to your people in racketeering. Maybe they’ve got something on the mob scene in Miami, huh? What about this guy Zeke?”

  Windermere changed lanes, pulling out to pass as the highway curved alongside a giant Ford complex. “Still nothing on Zeke,” she said. “No known address or aliases. Miami PD is supposed to be on it, but they’re corrupt as shit. Probably it comes back blank.”

  “This guy’s a professional, anyway,” said Stevens. “He’s not risking a kidnapping unless he knows he can beat the rap.”

  “Maybe,” said Windermere. “Maybe we get lucky, though.” She glanced across at him. “You owe me for that prisoner move.”

  “Why’s that?” said Stevens. “No fun?”

  “The girl said not a word for fifteen hours straight. All the way up from Jacksonville, she just sat there staring at her feet. Every time I asked her something, she told me she wanted her lawyer. It’s not like I was interrogating her. I just wanted some company.”

  “What about the marshal?”

  “Clayton?” Windermere laughed. “We talked football for a minute. Then I asked him if he’d read a good book lately, and he clammed up real tight.”

  “Aw,” said Stevens. “You missed me.”

  “Hell, no. I know you can’t read, either.”

  Stevens laughed, smiling out the window as the bleak Detroit landscape appeared on the horizon.

  “Good visit home?” said Windermere.

  “Sure,” said Stevens. “It was good. Uneventful.”

  “Tough to leave?”

  He shook his head. “I’m happy to be back. This case is gonna fall.”

  “Give it up,” said Windermere. “You missed me, too.”

  Stevens glanced at her. “Maybe just a little,” he said.

  Windermere stared at the road ahead, the hint of a smile at her lips. “Get your fix while you still can, Stevens. We’re taking this thing down in a week on the outside.”

  Stevens laughed again and turned back to the window, letting his smile slip away as he focused once more on their labyrinthine case. As Windermere drove, he watched the skyline approach, searching for the big FBI building on Michigan Avenue where Marie McAllister sat alone, the cheese in their better mousetrap, waiting for Pender and Co. to get hungry enough to bite.

  sixty-two

  D’Antonio sat in Zeke’s living room, choking down a noxious tuna casserole, drinking beer to mask the taste, and watching the news for any sign that the cops were making progress on the Whittaker case.

  There was nothing about the girl, but as the news switched to regional and D’Antonio closed out his dinner, he heard something on the TV that made him forget about Zeke’s girlfriend’s cooking and sit forward in his seat.

  “A startling new development in the South Beach shooting that left two men dead at Miami’s historic Dauphin Hotel,” the anchor was saying. “Federal investigators now name twenty-year-old Tiffany Prentice a suspect following a bizarre kidnapping attempt in suburban Philadelphia.”

  D’Antonio listened as the anchor outlined the new developments. The kidnapping had been foiled, according to official reports, thanks to the timely arrival of Bryn Mawr law enforcement officials on scene. But the cops hadn’t captured the kids, and the girl was still at large.

  D’Antonio listened, trying to make sense of the twist. They’d tried to stage a kidnapping. The kids were desperate, and the girl was in on the game. Interesting.

  He turned off the television and carried the dirty dishes into the kitchen. Then he grabbed Whittaker’s laptop and walked down the hall to the girl’s room.

  She’d at least poked around at the tuna casserole this time, D’Antonio noticed. The girl had had maybe a forkload or two before she opted out, and now she lay paging through her novel on the bed, her meal cold and forgotten.

  D’Antonio closed the door behind and walked into the room. “So you’re a carnivore now.”

  The girl made a face. “That was supposed to be meat?”

  “It was tuna.”

  “I decided you must be trying to poison me, so I didn’t eat it.” The girl sighed. “I feel so dirty. Can’t you bring me a change of clothes?”

  “Where would I get a change of clothes?”

  “At least a shower. This is cruel and unusual.”

  D’Antonio walked to the bed and sat down beside the girl, watching the way her hair splayed out on the comforter, reading over her shoulder as he opened the laptop. “Good book?”

  She shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  He peered down at the page. “Who’s Alexis?”

  The girl frowned at him. Then she glanced down at the book. “I guess she’s supposed to be some kind of advertising executive in Manhattan.” She shrugged. “I don’t really read this kind of stuff.
I just borrowed it from Tiffany.”

  D’Antonio turned back to the laptop and opened the girl’s Internet browser.

  “Do you read?” she asked. “Can you read?”

  “Of course I can fucking read,” he said.

  “So?” She looked up at him. “What do you read?”

  He stared at her a second. “I read a lot of those books they sell in airports. Paperback thrillers. Self-help books sometimes. My brother-in-law buys them for me every year for Christmas. I don’t know if they do any good.”

  “They make self-help books for killers?”

  “For businessmen,” he said. “He doesn’t really know what I do.” He cleared his throat. “Time to check your e-mail.”

  The girl stared down at her book for a moment or two. Then she twisted her body so she was facing the computer, her face nearly touching D’Antonio’s leg. “You think she wrote back?”

  “There was a dustup in Pennsylvania,” D’Antonio told her. “Your friend tried to hold herself for ransom.”

  The girl looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “She tried to fake her own kidnapping. Something went wrong. I think your little phone call made an impact.”

  The girl typed in her password, and they waited as the screen loaded up. She twisted on the bed so she was lying on her back, staring up at him, her long hair fanned out and her eyes fixed on his. “I was thinking,” she said. “Maybe we could work something out.”

  Here it comes, D’Antonio thought. “You tried this one already,” he said.

  “I’m serious this time. You kind of like me. I can tell.” She sat up and pressed against his arm, her body close and her lips brushing his ear. “You could have me if you wanted. You could do whatever you liked.”

  She put her hand on his leg, high. This is fake, D’Antonio told himself. You have a job to do. He shook her off. Pointed to the computer screen. “There. One new message.”

  She barely glanced at the screen. “I’ve got fifty thousand dollars,” she said, “I could pay you. Like a ransom. I’d give them false information. I could tell them you were, like, a black guy from Jamaica or something. Nobody would have to know.”