He had won her over so thoroughly that she had agreed not to call anyone right away. She had also agreed to let Gordo look around in Davey’s room for a few minutes. There wasn’t much to see. A twin bed that might cramp the style of a ten-year-old. Posters of obscure heavy metal bands still on the walls. An aluminum fire ladder attached to the window sill and hanging down to the alley – quite the escape artist was our little Davey. And one thing that might actually mean something, though at this moment Gordo couldn’t imagine what: the business card of a security consulting firm located in Charleston, South Carolina. Gordo found it on the bedside table, which suggested to him that Foerster had it out for a reason. It was a very curious thing, that card.
‘Well, it happens,’ Gordo said now. ‘People go bad. It’s no reflection on how you raised him.’
Mrs. Foerster looked up, and in her eyes Gordo detected the light of hope. ‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Of course I do. Jonah here can vouch for what I’m saying.’
Jonah nodded his head solemnly. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Of course I can.’ But it sounded empty, like the absent-minded blather of a man who wasn’t listening and had no idea what he was agreeing to.
Gordo soldiered on with the lie. Jonah had already tuned the whole thing out, and Gordo himself was even growing a little bored with it. He wanted to keep Foerster’s mom on the hook by projecting compassion, and he even wanted to feel compassion for her. But in reality some plenty warped shit must have gone on in this house during Foerster’s upbringing, and no amount of hand-wringing was going to unmake that fact. In Gordo’s experience, a career whacko like Foerster didn’t get that way entirely on his own. He had help, and the help started early.
‘In our line of work,’ Gordo said, ‘Jonah and I deal with some very bad men. Some of them – not Davey, mind you, but some others – are the worst men in our society. And we find over and over that many of them were raised in good homes. Maybe they have some kind of defect, a chemical imbalance in their brains, or maybe they get led down the wrong path by people they meet on the street. I don’t know what it is.’
‘I don’t, either,’ she said.
‘Whatever the reason in this case, it’s very important that Davey be taken off the street for a while. It’s important that he get help from professionals. And it’s important that other people… well…’
‘That he doesn’t hurt anyone else,’ she said.
‘That’s right.’
She nodded, as if finally coming to a difficult decision. ‘I should have called someone as soon as he showed up here. But I wanted to protect him. I love my son, Mr. Lamb.’
Gordo nodded. ‘I know you do.’ His hand moved to her shoulder. ‘We can make things right for Davey. Will you help us do that?’
She began to cry again, silently this time. Her body shook all over. ‘I’ll do anything you want.’
Gordo held up the business card. ‘Do you know anything about this? I found it upstairs. It could be a clue.’
She took the card in one hand. ‘He told me he has a job lined up in South Carolina. I don’t know if it’s true or not. He’s lied so much that I have no idea whether I’m coming or going sometimes. He wanted me to give him money so he could go down there, but I didn’t believe that’s what he wanted it for.’
‘Did you give him any money?’
‘I gave him forty dollars. He said it wasn’t enough. I was actually afraid of him, what my son might do, to get more money from me.’ She started crying some more at the thought of it, but not as forcefully as before. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks.
‘Do you have any idea what kind of work he might do with a security firm?’
She shrugged. ‘Something with computers, maybe. Like I said, he’s very smart.’
‘Can you do this for me? Can you call the phone company, right now, and find out if by any chance Davey called that number from this phone? I’d do it myself, but I’d have to go through channels and it might take a couple of days. We’re really working against the clock here.’
‘Well, he was only here one night, and he came quite late. I don’t know when he would have called.’
‘Mrs. Foerster, a man like Davey can be quite resourceful.’
‘Well, OK,’ she said, but she sounded uncertain.
‘Good. That’s good. Here’s the phone.’
Gordo and Jonah waited while she sat on hold. Jonah was pacing a little bit, and if he was going to do that, Gordo wished he would go out on the street where Mrs. Foerster didn’t have to look at him. But she was a good girl, a trooper. When she got someone on the phone, she did just as he told her – she asked them to outline all the calls made from her phone in the past twenty-four hours. As she listened, she jotted something down on a piece of scrap paper. She turned it around so that Gordo could read it.
3:07 AM.
She looked deeply into his eyes. He noticed her eyes were bloodshot, and yellowing. He nodded. She nodded.
Jonah floated closer and looked at the note.
‘OK, thank you,’ Foerster’s mom said into the phone just before hanging up. ‘You know, I have some family visiting, and I just don’t like the way they think my phone is their phone. Calling wherever they please, anytime they want. I have to keep close tabs on them.’
Gordo liked the story. She was clearly a veteran liar. She had flowed into it just as smoothly as he would have.
‘Well, you were right,’ she said. ‘He called there in the middle of the night while I was sleeping. But the call lasted less than a minute.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ Gordo said. ‘I wonder what it means.’
***
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ Jonah said as they walked back to the car. ‘The guy called some random office in the middle of the night when he knew nobody would be there. He probably did it so he could lie to his mother a little more about some place that was supposed to hire him. I can’t imagine anybody hiring that guy.’
‘Sure, that could be,’ Gordo allowed. ‘Or he might have called there for a hundred other reasons. He’s a crazy person, so he might actually think that some private security firm wants to hire him. For all I know, he’s so delusional he thinks he works for the government, or for some clandestine foreign spy agency.’
‘Or the New World Order,’ Jonah said.
‘Right. He might go to South Carolina and walk in the office there, and they won’t have the slightest idea what he’s talking about. It could be bad for them because it might set him off.’
They were almost to the car. For some reason, it bothered Jonah to think that any firm, especially a security contractor, would want Foerster to work for them. It burned him up. He didn’t want his mind to think it.
‘Or, and I know this is a little hard to swallow,’ Gordo said. ‘Foerster might have some skill or combination of skills that makes this security company want to hire him. Hey, these guys might be people who hire rent-a-cops with tinfoil badges to hang around empty shopping malls and make sure nobody walks off with the sheetrock or the wiring. But we know one thing about Foerster – he thinks about two steps ahead, and he can be pretty fucking hard to catch. These might be enticing traits to somebody. And we know one thing about private security companies in this day and age – it’s not always clear what they’re really up to.’
‘So you’re saying?’
‘I’m saying I’m going to do a little research on this company, see what I can find out. Then I might give them a call and try to talk to this guy Tyler Gant.’
‘Are you going to tell him why you’re calling?’
Gordo unlocked Jonah’s door, then went around to the driver’s side. ‘That’s the tricky thing. I want to find out if Foerster’s headed there, if I can, but I really don’t want to tip my hand and let this guy know we’re looking for Foerster. I mean, fifty grand is fifty grand. Better we get it than he does.’
They slid into the car, and Gordo started it up. ‘So let me get this straight,�
�� Jonah said. ‘You’re thinking of going down there?’
Gordo gave Jonah a wide-eyed look as if they’d got their signals crossed somehow, as if something so simple a child could understand it had been nonetheless misunderstood. ‘Of course I am. Aren’t you? I mean, if we find out that’s where he’s going. This is the biggest single score we’ve ever seen. We’re not going to give it up that easy.’
Jonah said nothing.
‘Are we?’
Jonah shrugged, hating the tight, petulant sound in his voice that he knew was coming. ‘It’s going to cost money.’
Gordo nosed into the traffic on Richmond Terrace. The new realities – the bikes, the scooters, the pedestrians, and all the rest – meant that if you were still driving a car it wasn’t always clear when you were free to merge. ‘Think of it as an investment,’ he said. ‘I mean, this is the big one. This is the white whale. We can’t just walk away from this, right?’
Jonah wasn’t sure. They had missed the guy twice already, even though the cops had caught him on more than one occasion. Foerster’s slippery moves had Jonah thinking maybe he, and maybe even Gordo, weren’t cut out for bounty hunting after all. Sure, they’d caught a couple of nickel and dime skips. But when they went for the real money, the guy juked them and jived them and faked them out of their shoes. Beyond that, what if the whole South Carolina thing was a decoy or some scam Foerster was playing? What if he headed west, or north, instead of south? They could go down there, spend at least a couple of thousand dollars they didn’t have, go deeper into the hole, and it could all be a washout, a big nothing.
‘Jonah, am I right?’
‘I think we should wait a minute and think about this,’ Jonah said, knowing his words were exactly what Gordo didn’t want to hear. Already Gordo’s face looked pinched, as if a painful cramp had seized his lower abdomen. Jonah plunged on anyway. He had an opinion, so he might as well express it. ‘I think we should be a hundred percent certain he’s headed down there before we make a move that way.’
Gordo followed the flow of congested traffic towards the bridge into Brooklyn. It was amazing to see that on this monster span, one that went so high in the air and had such wicked crosswinds, an entire lane in each direction was now reserved for bicycles. What was next – a lane for oxen?
‘Jonah, don’t kill it, man. We’ll never be one hundred percent sure of anything.’
‘OK, ninety-nine percent. Ninety-eight percent.’
Gordo sighed. ‘I’ll do whatever I can to put together enough evidence so you will know that going to South Carolina is the right move.’
‘Well,’ Jonah said, and again the sound of his voice irritated him. ‘I’ll be waiting to see it.’
Patrick Quinlan
The Hit
CHAPTER 4
There was a delay with the plane.
The pilots were up front, dickering with some part of the instrumentation. At one point, Gant saw the younger of the two take out a screwdriver and remove a panel, then start poking among some wires inside there. Rather than watch these guys fool around with things they probably didn’t understand, things they would need to keep Gant alive and up in the air in the very near future, he went outside onto the tarmac.
It was just after eleven o’clock, and the sun was riding high and hot. Gant walked a little way from the plane and took out his cell phone. He had world service, so he could call Vernon from here. Three goons milled around over by the shed where Gant had stripped down yesterday, waiting for the plane to take off. A black SUV was parked there. The men eyed Gant with unfriendly stares. Did they have some way of listening in to his conversation? He thought not, but supposed it didn’t matter anyway. He could keep it brief and to the point with Vernon.
The phone rang three times. ‘Yessir,’ came the sunny voice. ‘I know it’s gonna be a wonderful day when I see this number calling.’
‘Vernon.’
‘That would be me.’
‘Where are you?’
‘I’m walking down the street. I just had my breakfast at the Charlotte Inn, and man, what a breakfast it was.’
Gant smiled. Vernon often took his meals at the best hotels and restaurants in Charleston – he had the money to spend, and he enjoyed the jarring contrast between himself and the alarmed gentry who ended up sitting at tables near him. Gant could picture Vernon strutting through the historic district like a peacock. Six feet, four inches tall in bare feet, the top of his white Stetson hat adding another four inches, the heels of his snakeskin cowboy boots adding another two. Tight jeans, a black T-shirt painted to his broad chest and shoulders, a riot of tattoos reaching from the razor wire tattooed around his neck, all the way down his shoulders and arms to his big rawboned hands. He was a piece of work, all right – toothpick in his mouth, huge jaw jutting out, daring just about any hard man to go ahead and try his luck. There probably wouldn’t be any takers today, or tomorrow, or any time this month.
‘You ready to work?’ Gant said.
‘I’m always ready to work.’
Gant glanced up and saw the stewardess, flight attendant, waitress, or whatever from the airplane. She clomped across the uneven paving in her high heels and skirt, waving to him. One passenger, one stewardess. Man, it was crazy.
‘Listen, I don’t have much time,’ he said. ‘I’m about to catch a plane here. That thing with the boat? The delivery? I need you to give the green light on that. It’s a go. So tell our supplier we’re ready and tell the boat it’s coming at them.’
‘Got it, boss.’
The woman came almost to within touching distance. ‘Mr Gant, we’re ready for you now. The plane is all set.’
‘Thank you. I’ll be just another minute.’
‘Of course.’ She turned and started clomping back. Without much interest, he watched her big behind move away toward the plane.
‘Also,’ he said to Vernon. ‘What’s the story in New York?’
He sensed a hesitation on the other end of the line. It was uncharacteristic for Vernon, to say the least.
‘Vernon?’
‘There ain’t no story in New York, I’m sorry to say.’
‘What?’
‘There’s no story. At least, none that anybody would want to hear.’
‘Vernon, I don’t have time to dance around. Out with it. The plane’s about to take off without me.’
‘All right,’ Vernon said, but his voice didn’t sound like it was all right. ‘Our man went to make the pickup late last night, and nobody was there. Our boy wasn’t home, even though he knew we’d be coming soon. Nobody was home, and there was no message left.’
Gant thought about it. He started walking toward the plane. ‘Maybe he went out last night to a bar and picked up a girl or something. Tell the guy to wait around a while.’
‘I already did. He’s waiting in the apartment. See, it wasn’t locked. In fact, the door wasn’t even closed.’
Gant felt his breathing become just a tiny bit shallower. ‘Shit.’
‘Yeah.’
‘All right. Keep on it. I’ll be home in a few hours.’
‘I’m on it.’
Gant rang off and trotted up the steps into the plane. He took his seat as the flight attendant pulled the door closed and locked it airtight. He cinched his seat belt as the woman took her fold out seat near the door of the cockpit. The engines roared into life, and without further ado, the plane taxied into position for takeoff. These guys were in a hurry to get out of here. Gant settled back, closed his eyes and relaxed himself as the plane accelerated down the bumpy runway and then left the ground. He took several deep breaths as they went into a steep ascent. Later, when they leveled off, he opened his eyes. Out the window he saw huge, white puffy clouds. Only then did he begin thinking again.
Jesus, that Foerster thing was bad news. This business was about knowing people. It was about relationships, and he was beginning to think the relationship with Foerster was not a good one to have. It wasn’t the first ti
me he’d had these thoughts. In fact, he had it on good authority that his relationship with Foerster should have ended after just a brief fling.
Gant had once known a man named Monty. Monty was restless, a mover, and an adventurer. He had his fingers in a lot of different pies. He was the only man Gant had ever met who wore a handlebar mustache – it gave him the effect of being a man out of time, a museum piece catapulted from the 1800s into the present day. Gant half-expected Monty to pull up on a bicycle with an enormous front tire, instead of the vintage Corvette he normally drove.
Monty was gone now, turned up dead in the Amazon more than a year ago, in the nearly lawless border region where Colombia, Peru and Brazil all met. They found his body in an alley behind a bar in Leticia, Colombia. What he was doing there was never explained by anybody. In fact, the only reason Gant knew he was dead was because one morning when he slid behind the wheel of his car, a small newspaper clipping to that effect from The Toledo Blade was taped to his dashboard. It turned out Montgomery Blaine was born and raised just outside Toledo, and still had parents there. A small handwritten note was taped to the dash along with the clipping.
He would have wanted you to know.
It gave Gant the creeps sometimes, to think of the people who must be watching him. Whoever they were, they must approve of, or at least not care about, Gant’s more unsavory activities. Still, it wasn’t a good feeling to have those eyes following his moves.
In any case, Monty was the one who had given him Foerster. It was during the lead up to the anthrax job, more than two years ago now. Certain people were feeling Gant out about it. Could it be done, take out two Illinois state senators at the same time, in a government office building in Chicago? The key here was that the two good liberal senators, a man and a woman, both very powerful in state politics, shouldn’t look like they were specifically targeted. And whoever took them out either had to escape completely, or know nothing of the reason or the people behind the attack.
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