Poisonfeather (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 2)

by Matthew Fitzsimmons

  At the next table, an inmate cradled his son. Fa assumed it was a boy; he had trouble judging the sex of white babies, but Americans liked to color-code their children, and this one was swaddled in blue.

  It was an interesting country. Some of his colleagues held a romantic fascination for its culture, but Fa kept it at an objective distance. China and the United States were rivals, not sweethearts, and it didn’t pay to become enamored of these laowai. Despite their protestations to the contrary—their delusional American exceptionalism—there was nothing special about them. For sixty short years they’d mattered as a country. Perhaps in another five thousand they might have a case. Until then, they should remember that they were little more than children. Pompous children, at that.

  The rear door of the visitation room opened, and Merrick came through. The devil himself. Fa had built this moment up in his mind for years, but all he could think was that Merrick was shorter than he’d expected. Yet every bit as grand as his portraits suggested. A guard pointed him to Fa’s table, and Merrick’s chin, tilted imperiously upward, turned in his direction. Fa saw Merrick hesitate, wondering at the identity of his visitor, then make his way over between the tables like royalty among lepers.

  “Henry Susman, I presume.” Merrick brushed off the seat of the chair before sitting opposite Fa. The Susman line seemed a private joke of some kind, so Fa smiled politely. Merrick smirked at his own cleverness.

  Fa waited until Merrick was settled. It seemed an elaborate pantomime until everything was just so. Merrick looked up expectantly.

  “Well?”

  “Do you know the recidivism rate in this country, Mr. Merrick?”

  If the question caught Merrick off guard, he didn’t show it. “I’ve no idea.”

  “Sixty percent.”

  “That high?”

  “Within the first year. Do you know why that is?”

  “Why is that?” Merrick asked, leaning forward to read Fa’s name tag. “Mr. Lee Wulff . . .”

  “A felon such as yourself must declare his criminal record on job applications. And since it is not illegal to discriminate against convicted felons, few will hire them. What option does the criminal have but to resume a life of crime?”

  “A tragic cycle,” Merrick agreed.

  “Certainly you will never be permitted to take the Series 7 exam, never be a stockbroker again.”

  For a moment, Fa saw regret in Merrick’s face, but the man blinked hard, and when he opened his eyes again, the arrogance had returned. Still, it satisfied Fa to know that Merrick could be ruffled.

  “I wonder to myself: What will become of Charles Merrick after he leaves this place?”

  “What is it you want?”

  “To help you through this difficult transition.”

  “To help me? And how would you do that?”

  “Money, of course. A great deal of it.”

  “How much money?”

  “Something in the seven figures, certainly.”

  “Hmm.” Merrick studied his cuticles. “That’s very generous of you.”

  An interesting reaction, to say the least. A starving man would dance for a dollar. For a million, a starving man would do almost anything. Even a man with a million dollars would sit up at the chance to double his money. But Merrick wasn’t dancing, hadn’t even asked what the money was for. The offer of a million dollars had barely registered, which meant two things, only one of which pleased Fa. First, it meant that Merrick wasn’t a starving man at all. He had money. Enough that a million dollars hadn’t tempted him, not even for a moment. That was problematic, because what did a man like Charles Merrick care about besides money? Second, it meant that if Merrick had money, then the American government had not seized all his assets as they had claimed. Why? And why had they lied about it? Fa thought he knew the answer to that but knew with certainty that he would learn nothing more from Merrick today.

  He stood and thanked a stunned Merrick for his time.

  “That’s it?” Merrick asked. “What about this seven figures? Aren’t you going to stay and tell me what that’s about?”

  “As if that would do any good.”

  “Well, you’re the oddest visitor I’ve had, I’ll hand you that.”

  “I’ll see you again. Good luck upon your release.”

  Fa left Merrick at the table and went through the exit procedures. It was raining lightly when he left the prison, but he hardly noticed. The rain felt good, and he smiled at what he’d learned from Merrick’s behavior. Without question, Merrick had traded something valuable to his government, and in exchange the Americans had permitted him to plead out to a lighter sentence and keep some of his assets.

  It had to be Poisonfeather.

  What else could that valuable “something” be? Fa could imagine how it had played out. Looking at twenty years in prison, Merrick had sold out his source in China’s government to the CIA. And the CIA had made Merrick’s mole their own. It would have been a simple matter for the CIA to flip Merrick’s source, turning him into Poisonfeather. Selling strategic investment secrets to Merrick Capital would have earned the traitor a date with a firing squad. The very threat of such exposure would have ensured Poisonfeather’s loyalty to the CIA ever since.

  This was Fa’s way back. If he learned the identity of Poisonfeather, not even Zhi could prevent Fa’s return to grace.

  Merrick would give him Poisonfeather’s name. Not now, of course. First, Fa had to guide Merrick into a more agreeable frame of mind. Once Merrick was starving, he would dance. He would dance for Fa and sing him a pretty song in the bargain.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Charles Merrick’s impromptu sit-down with Agent Ogden hadn’t rattled him until the visit from Lee Wulff. The man calling himself Wulff spoke with no discernible accent, but Merrick recognized him as a Chinese national. And that scared him. Suddenly Ogden’s paranoia didn’t seem quite so paranoid. Merrick had considered notifying Ogden directly but didn’t trust the CIA agent not to overreact. If Ogden had any reason to believe that the Chinese were onto him, mightn’t he make good on his threat to rendition Merrick? Why take the risk? No, better to handle this himself. Once he was free, he’d have more than enough money to protect himself.

  All this fuss over one magazine interview. It boggled the mind. Still, Merrick allowed that perhaps the interview hadn’t been the best idea. Although, it would have been fine if that witch from Finance hadn’t goaded him. There ought to be a law, he thought sourly. But the situation was salvageable . . . if only he could make a phone call.

  That was a problem, because it wasn’t the sort of call that could be made from the prison pay phones. The prison didn’t listen to every outgoing call, but you never could be sure. After his early-morning visitor, Merrick had passed word to Slaski and waited in the library until lunch, but the guard hadn’t shown up, cagey about being seen together out in the open. Merrick knew why, but he still found it infuriating. They had a system and a schedule, and Merrick had never deviated from it. Until now.

  Yes, it was a risk, but it was a necessary one, and Slaski could put on his big-boy pants and do as he was told. Yet here he was again, twiddling his thumbs for a second straight afternoon because Slaski was too cowardly to show his face. Ridiculous. Even after eight years in prison, Merrick chafed at being kept waiting. He snapped through the pages of Starting a Business for Dummies and did the only thing he could do—kept waiting.

  Either by design or by accident, there was virtually no cellular reception at the prison. The guards complained about it all the time. Apparently, it was an issue in town too. Not a large enough customer base to warrant more cell towers to avoid dead spots. The prison was one such dead spot. However, it was generally agreed that the southwest corner of the prison library offered the best cell phone reception in the prison. A narrow blind behind a column offered a modicum of privacy. Inmates who had deals worked out with guards called it “the booth.” But even the booth only offered two bars, and som
etimes no service at all if the technology gods were in a fickle mood.

  Merrick looked up as Slaski came in and spoke to the guard on duty. After a minute, the guard stood and left the library. When he was gone, Slaski huffed his way back to Merrick on his stout Polish legs.

  Merrick stood and walked back into the stacks. Slaski went down the next aisle and stopped on the far side of the bookshelf. They talked through the self-help section in hushed tones.

  “Where have you been?”

  “This isn’t our regular day.”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  “I’m not scheduled to work library today. That’s why we meet on Monday. People will want to know what I’m doing up here.”

  “Couldn’t be helped.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I need to make a call.”

  “No way,” Slaski said. “That is not the deal. Text only.”

  “Give me the phone. I’ll be quick.”

  “I don’t have it on me. It’s not our day,” Slaski said stubbornly.

  Merrick sized him up. “That’s a shame. A bonus would have been in order.”

  “What kind of bonus?”

  “Double.”

  “Triple,” Slaski countered.

  “Triple?” Merrick said. “I just need to make a simple call.”

  “If it’s so simple, use the prison phones.”

  “Fine. Triple.” Merrick held out his hand. “Just clear the library.”

  “You’ve got five minutes.” Slaski slid the phone across to him.

  Merrick palmed it and went on flipping through the book. When Slaski was out of sight, he slipped the SIM card out of the cheap flip phone and swapped it for one that he hid in the hem of his pants. A precaution in the event that Slaski decided to get nosy about Merrick’s business or got caught by the warden providing a cell phone to inmates. He powered the phone up and dialed the number.

  The phone rang once, less than once, as if a hand were hovering at the other end, waiting to pounce. Merrick cleared his throat to speak but didn’t get the chance.

  “Are you out of your mind, Charles?”

  “Hello to you too.”

  “Have you read this?”

  “It’s a good photo, no?”

  “You’re not amusing.”

  “I think it captures me quite well.”

  “Interesting choice of words.”

  “I had a visit from Agent Ogden.”

  An arctic silence whistled from the other end.

  “Are you there?”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised. You all but trumpeted the fact.”

  “I made a vague allusion.”

  “Is that what Ogden thought of it? A vague allusion?”

  “Ogden is paid to be overly cautious,” Merrick said. “But we’ll need an escort to the airfield.”

  “Why do we need an escort? What’s happening?”

  “Nothing.” Merrick saw no good in mentioning the visit from the Chinese national. “Ogden felt it was possible that interested parties might get the wrong idea from the article. I think it’s wise to take precautions.”

  “Oh, you are such a fool. What were you—”

  The line went dead. He pressed redial.

  “Did you hang up on me?”

  “No, West Virginia hung up on you,” Merrick said.

  “What kind of escort?”

  Merrick described what he had in mind.

  “That’s going to cost a small fortune. It comes out of your half. I’m not underwriting your vanity.”

  Small fortune? Merrick smiled. To some, perhaps, but not to him. Not once he was on the outside. Still, it wasn’t in his nature to give anything away for free.

  “If I don’t get safely to the airfield, neither of us gets a penny.”

  “‘A penny’? Is that more of your wit, Charles? It wasn’t I who gave that ridiculous interview.”

  No, he supposed it wasn’t.

  THE COLD ROCK

  Hell is empty

  And all the devils are here.

  —William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When Niobe Federal Prison limped into view, Gibson pointed for Swonger to pull over.

  “So you just gonna go in and ask him for the money?” Swonger asked, letting the Scion idle. “That the plan?”

  “Just want to look at the prison.”

  “That ain’t no prison.”

  “I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Dog, I need a toilet. Drop me at the hotel; you can sightsee all day, all night.”

  “In a minute,” Gibson said again and got out of the car. He needed to stretch his legs and clear his head. Swonger drove with video-game abandon, and the trip to West Virginia had been a flickering strobe of tailgating and testosterone lane changes. After five hours of imminent death, Gibson felt exhausted. He’d never missed Dan Hendricks more.

  “Where you going?” Swonger called after him.

  “You’re worse than my seven-year-old.”

  “I need a toilet. It’s a DEFCON 2–type deal.”

  Gibson walked up the road until he couldn’t hear Swonger anymore. His phone rang. Nicole. He stared at the phone, unsure whether to answer, until it went to voice mail. What she might say scared him. She called back immediately, but he still didn’t answer. He put the phone away and looked down the road toward the prison.

  There was a lot of beautiful country in West Virginia, but this wasn’t any of it. Niobe Federal Prison sat at the end of a narrow dead-end road. One lane in, one lane out—sounded like a lost Johnny Cash record. The prison itself didn’t look like much, a series of low-rise concrete slabs that fanned out behind a central hub at the main gate. Apart from the coiled barbed wire, the fences looked no more imposing than those found around a high-school sports field. More of a helpful reminder to stay put than an out-and-out deterrent. A failed escape attempt meant a one-way ticket to one of Swonger’s real prisons, which was the only deterrent anyone should need.

  It disappointed him that this was Charles Merrick’s prison. The Charles Merrick that he had gotten to know was a grand, larger-than-life figure, and Niobe Federal Prison seemed wholly inadequate to contain him. Merrick deserved a more fitting jailer. Gibson took his own odd sentiment as a good sign. Hacking a target required understanding, and often a strange parasitic sympathy developed. Often, he wanted the best for his targets even as he prepared to unlock them.

  Funny how that worked. And here it came, right on schedule. He had a feel for the man now—how the man thought, how the man would react under pressure. Gibson let his mind work back through the problem. This was, without doubt, a unique dilemma. He had exactly twenty-one days to separate Charles Merrick from his money. Tricky enough if he knew where it was, but he didn’t. Pretty much impossible to rob a bank if you didn’t know the whereabouts of said bank. So the first step was to find it. Correction, the first step was persuading Charles Merrick to show him where it was.

  Shouldn’t be too hard . . . the man had only concealed money from his investors since founding Merrick Capital in 1995. But Merrick had gotten sloppy. The interview was proof of that. Maybe it was being this close to the finish line, but after successfully lying low for all these years, the man had lost his self-control. The question was, could Merrick be goaded into another lapse in judgment? And if so, where would the money be? Where would a man like that hide it? Chewing that over, Gibson got back in the car, and Swonger swung the car around for the drive into Niobe.

  The Wolstenholme Hotel had seen better days itself, but Lea had been in love with the place since arriving in town two years ago. Defiant in the face of decay, which only worsened if you ventured inside, the old girl had managed to keep her dignity, and that endeared her to Lea. A broad-shouldered brick building in the Queen Anne style, it had dominated downtown Niobe since the end of the nineteenth century, when coal money had flowed into the state. The hotel had been built by Clarence and Bessie Wolstenholme, we
althy eccentrics from Philadelphia with visions of establishing a cultural outpost in the wilds of West Virginia. Its long, slow slide into disrepair paralleled the town’s own. It was also the only hotel for ten miles, so if anyone came into town, which they rarely did, they stayed at the Wolstenholme.

  Rarely . . . except during the last few days. Unfamiliar faces had begun popping up around town, driving cars with out-of-state plates. Lea recognized the orange and black of New York plates on an SUV parked in the hotel lot. She assumed the worst: the cars belonged either to Merrick’s victims looking for a little redress or else to opportunistic, mercenary raiders. Being a criminal himself, Merrick couldn’t very well go to the authorities for protection. That made him the perfect mark, and unless Lea missed her guess, the jackals had already begun to circle. She wondered how many were in town already. How many more were on their way? Jimmy Temple at the Wolstenholme Hotel would know better than anyone.

  At the top of the stairs, she had to put her shoulder into the heavy wood doors to push them open. The groan of the hinges echoed through the cavernous lobby. Jimmy Temple wasn’t behind the front desk, but a friendly sign promised he’d be back soon. In addition to being owner and manager, Jimmy Temple was also the hotel handyman and spent his days making repairs to his hotel. His dreams of restoring the hotel to its former glory reduced to polishing brass on his own personal Titanic.

  Lea rang the bell and called his name but got no response. As she leaned against the reception counter to wait, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” played over the lobby stereo, making her smile.

  Jimmy had inherited the hotel in 1981, after his father passed. By that time, no one passed through Niobe anymore; after the bridge collapse, Niobe had become out-of-the-way overnight. With the hotel failing, Jimmy and his wife, Donna, had nearly sold out to an investment group in 1998. Jimmy and Donna had planned to move to the Florida Keys and watch the sunsets for as long as their eyes held out. But that winter, Donna came down with pneumonia. Christmas was her favorite holiday, and she held on until the twenty-sixth. Jimmy, who had no use for sunsets without his wife, put the kibosh on the whole deal. He sold their house, moved into the hotel, and ran it more or less on his own. Ever since then, Christmas music had played 365 days a year in the lobby of the Wolstenholme.