Poisonfeather (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 2)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  “Invest your pennies,” he said.

  “What of it?”

  “At the end of the interview, you asked what Merrick would do when he got out. He said not to worry about him, that he knew how to invest his pennies.”

  “And?”

  “Well, the expression is ‘save your pennies.’”

  “I’m familiar with the expression.”

  “So which was it? Invest or save?”

  She sat back and stared at him. “Why?”

  “Just a theory I’m working on.”

  She sat forward. “What theory?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “Obviously,” she said and waited.

  He waited back. There was no chance that he’d confide in Lydia Malkin. She was too smart and too ambitious to be trusted.

  “You’re really not going to tell me?” She sounded hurt; she wasn’t.

  “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “What about after? I tell you what you want to know now, and you give me the whole story after you do whatever it is you’re going to do?”

  “Can’t do that either.”

  “You suck at negotiating.”

  “I can hurt Merrick.”

  She smiled, showing all of her teeth and none of her heart. “See? Was that so hard?”

  He shrugged. “I suck at negotiating.”

  “He said, ‘Invest my pennies.’ And before you ask, yeah, I’m sure.”

  “Okay, so last question. In the interview, you repeated what he said, but how did he say it? Like what was his demeanor? His tone of voice? Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. His demeanor? Smug. So unbelievably smug. He had this look on his face like he was dying to say something. Like maybe he’d thought of something funny but was worried he might offend me . . . and then he said it.”

  “Got it,” he said as levelly as he could muster.

  Inside, he was the night sky on the Fourth of July, but it wouldn’t do to let her see. There was a way. One way or another, Merrick had been managing his money from prison. Which meant he’d unlocked the back door.

  “I hope it helps,” she said. “So . . . I have a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Those two guys by the bar that keep looking over here. Friends of yours, or do I look better in these jeans than I thought?”

  Gibson looked over his shoulder. Birk and Swonger were leaning against the bar like they’d been drinking here for years. They looked at him and nodded. Gibson nodded back.

  Christ, he thought, they’d done it to him again. When this was all over, he really needed to learn how surveillance worked.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Swonger spun a chair around and sat, resting his elbows on the backrest. He smirked back and forth between Gibson and Lydia as if this were middle school and he’d just caught them holding hands. Birk circled around and took the last chair at the table.

  “Mind if we join you?” Birk asked.

  “Lydia, you should go,” Gibson said.

  “Lydia should stay,” said Swonger. “That cool with you?” He laid an oil-stained hand on her wrist.

  If Swonger meant to intimidate her, he was going to need a new plan.

  “Take your hand off me,” she said as if asking for directions to the bathroom. She made no attempt to shake off his hand.

  “What are you gonna do if I don’t?”

  “I’m thinking I’ll scream.”

  “Maybe I like that.” Swonger’s grip tightened.

  “Maybe you do, but my cousin? Not so much.”

  “Who?”

  “Big fella behind the bar.”

  Swonger’s eyes flickered, and he glanced back toward the bar. The bartender stared back.

  “He hates screaming. His mother, my aunt, used to scream a lot. When he was fourteen he put his dad in the hospital for making her scream. You? He’ll probably kill you.”

  She was lying, but it was a good lie. Told like it was an old story that she’d been telling for years. Felt real, and only the faintest tremor around her eye gave her away. Gibson wasn’t sure he would have caught it if he hadn’t been at the bar with her earlier. She was very, very good. He didn’t know whether to duck or applaud.

  Swonger licked his lips dryly and let go of her wrist. “I was just being friendly.”

  “We’re going,” Gibson said.

  “Uh-uh.” Swonger leaned back in his chair and lifted his shirt to reveal the black beveled grip of a pistol in the waistband of his jeans. “She can go, but you and us have some conversating to do. Unless he’s your cousin too.”

  Gibson looked at Lydia expectantly, but she didn’t budge. He didn’t know why he expected Lydia to bolt for the door; he hadn’t known her very long, but he already knew she wasn’t the bolting type. She took another sip of her drink and leaned forward conspiratorially.

  “So,” she asked. “What are we talking about here?”

  “What are we talking about, Gibson?” Birk asked.

  Lydia caught Gibson’s eye, and he saw something click behind hers like a sniper adjusting a high-powered scope trained on his head.

  “Gibson,” she repeated. “What a nice name, Ben.”

  “Who the hell is Ben?” Birk asked.

  “You tell this nice lady your name is Ben?” Swonger asked.

  “Just let it go, okay?”

  “Ma’am, this here is Gibson Vaughn. Famous computer hacker and varsity asshole.”

  Gibson exhaled wearily. He glanced over at Lydia, expecting the third degree. Instead, she had fixed a shocked, confused, explain-how-the-world-works-to-me-you-big-smart-man expression on Swonger. It was a thing of beauty; her eyes had somehow grown three sizes until she looked like the most innocent babe lost in the most dangerous of woods. It was a hell of an act, one that would keep an attention whore like Swonger talking until the rapture.

  “Who?” she asked meekly.

  “Gibson Vaughn? Guess she hasn’t heard of you, big shot. Look up the Benjamin Lombard hack. That’ll catch you all up.” Swonger winked at Gibson.

  “That was you?” she asked Gibson.

  He nodded. No point in lying now.

  “I remember when that happened. You were an idiot.”

  “Still is,” Swonger said.

  Gibson didn’t feel inclined to argue with either of them.

  “Well, nice to meet you, Gibson Vaughn,” she said and smiled at him. But behind her eyes, he could see her tallying up all the ways he was going to pay for not playing straight with her.

  “What are you two doing here?” What he really wanted to know was how they had followed him to New York. Or had even known to. He hadn’t told anyone where he was going, and when he’d left the farm he’d been pretty damn definitive that Merrick was a no-go. Had they compromised his phone? Could these two hillbillies have hacked him? His natural paranoia fanned from a spark into flame.

  “What did you think? That I wouldn’t catch up with you?” Swonger snorted. “Boy, you can’t hide from me.”

  “No, he means, why are we here?” Birk said.

  “I mean both.”

  “Oh, why? Why’s easy. ’Cause you a backstabbing son of a bitch,” Swonger said. “I wondered why you sat up there talking to that vegetable stand all that time. But then I couldn’t find the magazine after you left. So I wondered, why would Gibson Vaughn take the magazine unless he was up to something?” Swonger held out both hands toward Gibson and Lydia. “And here we are. Are you selling us out to this bitch?”

  Birk put up a hand. “You played us. It’s very disappointing. This is my deal. I brought you in on it.”

  They sat back righteously and waited. For what? For Gibson to break down and confess his betrayal? Lydia was watching intently; he could hear her mental tape recorder running. It was irritating, and he was losing patience with all of them.

  “So?” Gibson asked.

  “So?” Birk repeated incredulously.

  “So you wor
k for us. That so what.”

  “Like hell I work for you, Swonger.”

  “I brought you in on it,” Birk complained.

  “No, the judge brought me in, and the judge is the only thing keeping me in. You mean nothing to me.”

  “I was going to cut you in.”

  “Oh, you were going to cut me in. After I did all the work. Why should I cut you in at all? What do you even bring to the table?”

  “What do you mean, what do I bring? It was my deal. We figured it out,” Birk said.

  “Yeah, that was pretty clever of you. But you already told me everything you know. So, I ask again, what do you bring to the table now?”

  “Oh, so you double-crossing us,” Swonger said.

  “Jesus Christ. I can’t double-cross you if we never made a deal, dummy. You asked me to see the judge; I saw him. Don’t yell at me because you talk too much. Piece of advice: if all you have is information, don’t give it away for nothing.”

  “We trusted you.”

  “Well, it wasn’t mutual,” Gibson shot back.

  Swonger’s hand went to his gun, the expression on his face turning the malignant color of an old bruise. Lydia pushed her chair back, sensing the atmosphere over the table changing for the worse.

  “I think that’s my cue to be going,” Lydia said.

  She stood and paused, turning back to Gibson.

  “Walk me out?” she asked.

  Swonger pushed out his seat a few inches, chair legs grinding angrily over the linoleum floor.

  Gibson shook his head. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Anytime. Ben.”

  She backed away slowly, turned, and left the bar quickly. She sure could cover a lot of ground in a hurry. Gibson hoped that was the last he would be seeing of Lydia Malkin. When she was gone, he looked at Birk and then Swonger in turn.

  “So what now?” he asked. “You planning on shooting me in a bar full of witnesses?”

  “If I have to. I’m about done getting scraped off people’s shoes,” Swonger said and lifted the gun halfway out of his belt.

  “Look,” said Birk, the voice of reason. “It doesn’t have to be like this. I just have concerns about your intentions. The way you left.”

  Swonger looked at his partner pityingly.

  “The way I left was I finished talking to the judge and then walked back to my car. Wasn’t anything sneaky about it. You watched me go. And my intention is to catch the train back to DC.”

  “The hell you are,” Swonger said.

  “Our car is out back. We’ll drive you,” Birk said.

  Gibson let out an unscripted laugh. “The hell you will.”

  “We can talk on the way. Sort this out like—”

  Swonger cut in, way past being reasonable. “Laugh again.” The gun was out now, flush against his thigh where the bartender couldn’t see it. He thumbed the safety off without looking down. “Laugh again, just once. Swear to God, I’m all kinds of done with how funny you think we are.”

  Swonger had been bluffing before; he wasn’t now. He’d stepped over that threshold in the blink of an eye.

  “Gavin,” Birk said. “Let’s just take a minute here.”

  “Shut up.”

  “We didn’t agree—”

  “Shut up. Let’s go,” Swonger said to Gibson. “Out back.”

  Birk led the way and kept glancing back at Gibson every other step. Swonger fell in behind, gun at his side, but smart enough to leave enough room that he could bring it up if Gibson had ideas about making a move on him. Gibson didn’t.

  The back door was at the end of a long hallway by the bathrooms. Gibson slipped on his sunglasses and hoped it hadn’t gotten cloudy. He slowed slightly to let Birk gain a few feet on him. Birk glanced back one more time and then pushed open the door. His hand went up to shade his eyes from being blinded by the sun.

  Gibson took a running start and drove his foot into Birk’s back, launching him out the door. Birk took two dancing steps, trying to keep his balance before pitching forward into the cement-gray Scion parked in the alleyway. His face broke his fall, bouncing unnaturally off the curved edge of the hood. Birk was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  Gibson let his momentum carry him forward and out the door. The door hit the backstop and slammed shut behind him. He had at most a second of silence, but it was strangely peaceful. It almost felt as if he were watching the world in slow motion.

  The Marine Corps martial art was known affectionately as Semper Fu. It wasn’t graceful or elegant. It did not teach respect for one’s opponent or lead to a Zen-like oneness with the cosmos. Semper Fu was economical, brutish, and devastatingly effective. And being a martial art designed by the military, much of it assumed one or both combatants were armed. So Ka-Bar knives, sidearms, and rifles were all incorporated into its close-quarters, hand-to-hand fighting scenarios.

  Gibson had been a natural. Although he’d been given Intelligence as his military occupational specialty (an appropriate if ironic fit given what he’d done to get sent to the Corps), the Marines preached “every Marine a rifleman.” Soldier first, specialty second. He’d taken special pride in going toe to toe with the infantrymen who sneeringly referred to him as a POG—person other than grunt. The sense of grievance and injustice he’d carried with him into the Marines led him to seek out the biggest, toughest Marines as sparring partners. Guys with forty, fifty pounds on him, who thought the idea of joining the Marines to work on computers was a waste of a perfectly good excuse to dead some people. Somehow getting his ass kicked repeatedly yet always coming back for more eventually earned their grudging tolerance. But it wasn’t until he started to beat them that they accepted him. He hadn’t used it in a couple of years, but the instincts were there, dormant in his muscle memory.

  Swonger came through the door angry, gun raised—expecting Gibson to have taken off running in one direction or another. Guns conferred a lot of advantages, but they could also make you feel invulnerable if everyone else was unarmed. Make you reckless. And Gibson hadn’t run. He was right there waiting for him.

  The burst of sunshine blinded Swonger and bought Gibson time to close the distance between them. Gibson put one hand on the gun and jerked it sharply past his hip, down and away. That combined with Swonger’s forward momentum dragged his face in line for a clean, quick punch in the jaw. Gibson uncoiled through the blow, snapping Swonger’s head around like a flag in the wind.

  Swonger had some fight in him, though, and held on to the gun with a pit-bull grip—understandable but a real bad idea. Off balance, his body followed dumbly where his gun hand led him. That momentum was all Gibson needed. He stepped into Swonger’s path and planted an elbow on the bridge of his nose. A twist of his wrists, a hard hip pivot, and Swonger was on his back, gasping for air. Gibson didn’t need to kick him in the head, but he did it anyway. Then he did it again. He wanted Swonger to have something to think about on the drive home.

  It was all over in five seconds.

  Gibson dragged the two men over and slumped them against their car. While he waited for them to shake it off, Gibson unloaded Swonger’s .45 into the storm grate, listening to the bullets rattle down the pipe to the sewer below. He considered taking the gun but vetoed the idea quickly. Who knew where this gun had been or what it had done? Swonger had done time for something. Instead, he disassembled the .45 on the hood of the Scion and pocketed the firing pin and the stop. If it ever came to it, it would be good to know Swonger was not a threat. Unless Swonger knew his firearms, and Gibson bet he didn’t, then he wouldn’t know anything was amiss until he pulled the trigger.

  The gun reassembled, Gibson fished the car keys from Swonger’s pocket and started the Scion. He wasn’t surprised that it worked—the Scion, a patchwork of Bondo, had been sanded and primed for a paint job Swonger couldn’t afford yet was tricked out with an oversized aftermarket spoiler and racing tires. Exactly the kind of car that he imagined Swonger would drive. The Marines attracted its fa
ir share of gearheads, and the Scion was popular among cash-strapped tuners because the base model was cheap and the aftermarket options were almost limitless.

  Gibson shoved the gun under the passenger seat. A six-pack of beer spoke to him from a cooler in the backseat, and he helped himself. It tasted better than cheap beer had any right to taste and helped cut the adrenaline from the fight. He thought about leaving Birk and Swonger in the alley to fend for themselves, catching his train, and putting some miles between them. But what good would that do? They would just follow him. Turn up again when it was least convenient. He was already zero for two and didn’t rate his chances of spotting them the next time. He drank another beer and pondered what to do about his stalkers. He was still pondering when Swonger came around. Gibson offered him a beer, which Swonger held gingerly to his jaw. Birk was slower. He had really taken a shot to the head and was likely concussed. When he finally stirred he moved like a man who’d been dipped in wet cement. It would be a few days clearing those cobwebs, and Gibson was all right with that.

  “Where’s my gun at?” Swonger asked.

  “What gun?”

  Swonger’s mouth opened, shut. He eyed Gibson hatefully.

  “You with us there?” Gibson asked, snapping his fingers at Birk, who nodded, rolled away from Swonger, and threw up against the tire. When he sat back up, his eyes had cleared slightly.

  “All right, now that I have everyone’s attention, let’s get a few things straight.”

  They waited for Gibson to go on, but he didn’t know what to say to them. Nothing that would get them to do what he wanted anyway. Birk might be reasoned with, and if Birk was really running the show, then Gibson might expect him to keep Swonger on a leash. But Swonger was the real threat. Gibson hadn’t seen it clearly enough at the ballpark or at the farm. Sure, he’d seen the prison tats, the missing teeth, heard the busted English. He’d written Swonger off as just another ward of the American penal system. But beneath the ignorance, bluster, and dubious personal hygiene, a carnivorous intelligence lurked in Swonger. Birk thought he was in charge only because Swonger let him think it. Nothing Gibson could say would get Swonger to trust him, get him to go back to the farm so Gibson could take his run at Merrick without constantly looking over his shoulder. A kick to the head hadn’t dimmed Swonger’s determination any. Whatever else you could say about Gavin Swonger, there wasn’t any quit in him. Swonger was a relentless, angry tide that would just keep coming.