Kira sat down over a retention drain at the end of the school grounds, hanging her feet over its ledge. “I like that they don’t know shit about me.”
“Agreed child. So want me to go back and tell them they can fuck themselves?”
She reached into her bag and felt around its bottom for the familiar object underneath the clutter. She found it and clutched it into her palm.
“You think these guys will lead to repeat business?” Kira racked her brain to find the wise course.
He would have known what to do.
“Yes. The others have made a living working for one client at a time. But this is up to you. There are other clients.” She heard Uncle Dick shuffling through some papers on the other end of the line.
“Where do they want to meet?” She pulled her hand out of the bag and rolled the object between her hands.
“I think we should pick the place and the time. And Kira?”
“Yes Uncle?”
“I want to go with you so there are eyes on you.”
“Thanks. Most definitely. Let’s do something crowded where they can’t make you.” She knew he would have a spot in mind.
“The Galleria Mall. The fountain at five.” He was ready with an answer even quicker than she expected.
“I’ll be wearing a Yankee hat and glasses. Have them wire the money to be transferred once we meet. You can set it up so my iPhone gets an alert like last time, right?” She loved the idea of more money. As far as she was concerned mowing lawns and baby sitting was for suckers.
“Of-fucking course I can.”
Kira smiled. “The second we meet, transfer the money from their holding account. If you can’t transfer for any reason, send that text instead.”
They were both silent for a long moment. Finally Uncle Dick broke the quiet. “Okay then. We’re a go. I’ll inform them.”
“Very well.” She nearly clicked the phone off but asked hurriedly instead, “What will you be wearing?”
“You will know me child. But they will not. See you at the fountain at five. Though, be early. So we can see what’s coming.”
“Okay. Good-bye Uncle”.
“Don’t fucking call me that.” He hung up the phone without saying goodbye in return but Kira smiled anyway. The old man was nothing if not predictable.
I am prepared. I have been trained for moments like these.
She took a moment to collect her thoughts and then looked down into her palm. The carved chess piece fit snug in her hand. She rolled her fingers along its crafted curves feeling the pawn’s outline.
She tossed the pawn back into her bag where it rolled around for a moment before coming to rest against a Baby Browning Featherweight .25 caliber pistol.
Chapter 4
Sydney Price pulled up to the address listed in her file. As she brought her Ford Escape to a stop along the gutter that lined the street, she glanced at the quaint two-story brick home. The lawn was well tended and a few small lilac clusters adorned a line of trimmed plants in a re-bloom for the autumn season. A single oak tree sprung from the center of the yard but it was obviously a new tree standing just taller than Sydney.
She scooped up her file and got out of the car to make her way up the driveway and towards the home. She caught her reflection in the mirror though and realized how unprofessional she looked in gym shorts and a t-shirt covered by a thin jumper. Her dark hair was jutting out in about eight different directions and she felt compelled to grab a band from around her wrist and pull her frizzy mane back into a ponytail.
I look like shit.
After giving herself one more look she walked up the drive. She hoped he couldn’t tell that she had been crying a few minutes earlier. But he was a detective, so small hope there. She felt around her eyes with her fingers, feeling the puffy skin. That always happened.
Figures.
Sydney passed a small solitary bay window and then she was in front of the red door that marked the entrance to the Vaughn household. She took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
Bap Bap Bap
While she waited she glanced at the black and white photo of Alex Vaughn, paper clipped to the front of her file. His hair was dark and slicked back and he resembled a ruthless gangster. His eyes looked devoid of emotion and he appeared fairly gaunt. Dark circles rimmed his eyes.
The man who answered didn’t resemble the photograph at all. He had two days worth of growth on his face that ran down the top of his neck in a perfectly even pattern. His hair was brown and hung just above his shoulders.
“Can I help you?” he asked as he opened the door.
A little girl with auburn hair ran shrieking across the living room behind him, with what appeared to be her mother chasing her with a stuffed animal of some sort. The toddler was running with the wobbling legs of inexperience. Alex looked back at her and smiled, then turned back and looked at Sydney. She had her badge out now and flipped it open while she identified herself.
“I’m Sydney Price, Special Agent in Charge, Buffalo field ops, F.B.I.”
Alex’s brown eyes were shining with a dance of laughter from whatever happened moments before she arrived. But in the slow blink of his eye, the laughter vanished.
“Criminal Division, I take it?” He took a step towards her on the doorstep and pulled the door closed behind him, obviously wanting to keep the conversation private.
“Criminal Division.” Sydney confirmed. “Special emphasis on organized crime.”
Alex leaned forward looking at her badge, his brown eyes locked onto hers, “Well Agent…Price. Then I’m sorry you wasted your time coming out here, but I made my statement already. Six months ago. I’m a private citizen now, a civilian.”
He turned around to go inside, his hand on the doorknob. Sydney’s ears went warm and her heart skipped a beat. She knew she had to talk fast.
“Just listen, Alex.” She barely got the words past her lips when he swung back around and stepped so close to her that their noses almost touched. He was looking somewhere beyond her shoulder, refusing to even look at her.
“No you listen. I have a little girl. You don’t know what’s out there. All your training, all your briefing videos, your conference calls, didn’t prepare you for shit. You’re inviting me to the dance and that’s fine. But I’m not picking the devil as my tango partner. Not this time.” He gave a snort and turned around again.
“So I guess you don’t give a shit about justice then Vaughn. You hung up your cleats and you don’t even care about the game anymore?” Sydney watched his hand fall off the door handle.
For a second Alex just stood there facing the door, and when he spoke he still didn’t face her. “It’s not a game Sydney. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. These guys killed my best friend. A good cop. And then a dirty cop ordered my execution and just before some jerk-off put a bullet through my teeth a guy I would have put away for life gave me mine back. And another, he came into my home after I killed a man hoping it was him, and he took back his stuff and left me and my family alive. But he could have just as easily killed us. And I know he could have.” His voice sounded like it aged as he spoke. It broke off in a trailing whisper by the end.
Sydney felt a twinge in her conscience but she had no choice.
I need this guy.
“Things get tough Alex.“ She paused trying to think of something, anything to say. The only thing she could grasp was the quote from the Sullivans. “But people like you and me, we stick together.”
He turned around again and faced her. His eyes regained their twinkle but this time the edges of them creased downward and his lips tightened.
“You just don’t get it. Maybe you never will. There aren’t people like you and me. Hell, I’m not even like you. The things I’ve seen. The things I’ve done. Agent Price, there are just people. Plain and simple.” He placed his hand on her shoulder giving it a squeeze. “The sooner you realize that, the easier your job will be.”
Sydney could tel
l that he was determined not to help her, at least for now. She nodded her head.“Fine. If you change your mind, if you decide you want to help us find out who would be able to kidnap the most lethal and undetectable assassin this division has seen in a generation, and more importantly why; if you decide that justice still means something and that your friend’s death mattered; come and find me.” She handed Alex her business card and stomped off his porch with out looking back. His door slammed behind her.
The slam turned her and she stood staring at the door that divided her from the man she needed to help get a handle on exactly what was going down on the streets of Buffalo. After a second, a squeal reverberated behind the door as the little girl in the house voiced her delight with something going on inside. Despite herself, Sydney smiled.
Several thoughts jammed the funnel that allowed information into her brain, but one that made it through was of her father. Even now, more than thirty years later, she could remember the ways he would make her squeal like that. She closed her eyes to center herself and to push the thoughts away.
No time for that Syd. Pull yourself together.
She wheeled about and jogged lightly towards her Escape, bringing her cell phone out of the pocket of her jumper. She flipped it and hit redial.
“Yo, it’s Briggs. Have good news for me?”
Sydney climbed into the leather captain’s chair, threw the file on the passenger seat, and put the keys into the ignition.
“Not this time. It looks like Vaughn is going to be a slow burn, if at all.”
“Sometimes people gotta marinate a bit.” Scott switched gears and Sydney knew it was something business related by the way his voice took on a solemn tone. He only did that when it was important, the only problem was, Scott Briggs always thought whatever he had to say was important. “Sydney we did a field analysis of that Scotch. It’s preliminary, but there is no doubt that there’s a foreign substance in that alcohol. Legs isn’t proof positive yet, but it seems to be some sort of anesthetic.”
“Legs? Damn it Scott, you can’t call her that. How many times have I told you?” Sydney smiled but she would be damned if she let Scott know that she thought it humorous too. She started her car and began to make her way towards the field office in downtown Buffalo.
Scott’s voice retreated a bit, but he said, “You’re right. I mean Dr. Tolbert.”
“Lauren has more degrees than half the bureau. Anyway, Dr. Tolbert says there is a foreign agent in the Scotch, so we know how Rontego was taken without a fight. The questions are why? And by who? I want to see every person who went to that floor during the gap when we knew he was there and when he disappeared. Play the film fifty times if you have to.” Sydney weaved around a car that decided to play it safe and drive ten miles per hour.
“Sure thing. I have the nerds on it now and I’ll poke my head in too. That might give us a face we can make but I’m not sure we are going to get more then that without some feet on the ground.” Sydney gripped the wheel and just made a light that flipped red as she went under it.
“We’ll talk more in a minute. I’ll be at the field office in ten.” She hung up and let her mind wander down this new rabbit hole. At first, she hoped that Rontego had just beaten the rush on the hotel room. Maybe he made the agents before they entered the hotel.
We always knew he was elusive.
But the Scotch indicated otherwise.
Is it coincidence that he was taken just before our men went in?
Sydney shook her head as she drove. She didn’t believe in coincidences. Perhaps the Italians had heard about the Feds moving to seize the assassin. They surely would want him dead.
If they wanted him dead they would have done it right there in the hotel. They wouldn’t have moved him somewhere else.
No it couldn’t be the Italians. But who could it be?
Sydney came to a stop just outside the commercial district of downtown Buffalo. Brilliant skyscrapers peered down on her from their gloss finished windows that reflected Coca-Cola Field in the distance, home of minor league baseball’s Buffalo Bisons. She ignored the sentinels of commercialism and grabbed her keys.
She jumped out of the car and slammed the door; then the realization hit her like she suddenly swallowed a can of pepper-spray. She leaned against the hood of her Escape and tried to catch a breath but it fought her throat like a cat clinging to a bed sheet. Her heart took the cue and clawed at her stomach, leaving what felt like ulcer slices in her abdomen. She grimaced with the pain and tried to ignore it, knowing the heartache was going to be much worse.
Fuck. Don’t let em know. Compose yourself.
She took a breath that steadied her weak knees and, file in hand, walked through the distressed old wooden door on the corner of Booth Aly and Washington Street. They had their small ten-man operation running out of the second floor of a small brick building that housed a bar called Washington Lounge underneath. The bar was nice enough, a hole in the wall to grab a drink, but it was a location that few suspected of housing FBI agents.
And who could blame em?
It lay right on the corner facing the minor league park, but behind it a rundown and dilapidated building clung to the earth in a slow sideways crawl. The fire department shared the block and the music from the bar got intolerable at night, but her guys liked the location. A dozen eateries that boasted Buffalonian staples like roast beef on weck and the almighty Buffalo Wing along with a tasty dose of Aunt Rosie’s Loganberry to wash it down lay within easy walking distance.
In their stomachs, the place had everything you needed.
The walk up the flight of stairs behind a wall on the outside of the bar’s kitchen took Sydney longer than it usually did as she pushed her thoughts down to laces for the time being.
If her crew had an informer or a leak, then she had to be careful. But she couldn’t act out of the norm or their dipshit might get wise to the fact she was onto something. She grabbed the handle to an unmarked wooden door, looked into the camera angled down at her and flashed a smile.
There was a buzz on the other side of the door and it unlocked.
Sydney pushed her way into the familiar office. From the outside it looked like it might be a two or three bedroom flat above the Washington Lounge, but once you entered the inside it looked anything but a place for civilians. All the walls were knocked out, leaving a massive stretch of space where the previous tenants’ tiled floors were gutted and replaced with wood. Six low and sleek metal desks lined the perimeter, leaving a long glass table in the middle of the room where Sydney held her briefings. She could still remember the first time she had addressed her men.
They became her men the moment her old boss Peter Askearn had retired and she got the call to be temporary Agent in Charge. It hadn’t been so temporary after all. Fourteen months later she was given a vote of confidence and officially promoted by Operations Director of the Criminal Division, Randall Smith. He might have resisted putting a female in charge, but a certain Congresswoman whispered in the right ears and Randall had given her a call.
“Special Agent Price, you’re in charge over there in Buffalo.” His voice strained as he swallowed the humble pie and pretended not to notice.
“For good sir?” He may have not wanted to give it to her, but she took it with both hands and she wasn’t prepared to let this asshole pry the job from her fingers.
“For good. Buy a fucking coat.”
And then he hung up.
Sydney walked further into the room, realizing that the place was a bevy of activity. Special Agents Michael Conrad and Craig Timms were shooting the shit in the corner where their two desks faced each other. Timms had his feet up as usual and was flicking a rubber band at Conrad who still had his vest on from being in the field. The two of them were exactly unremarkable in their features but could ably follow orders and it made them perfect for tailing suspects.
Except for today apparently.
The side room that was used as a lab had the do
or closed.
I guess Legs is busy. Lauren. Doctor Lauren Tolbert.
Sydney smiled but chided herself. She did have long legs. She had barely taken a step towards her office, the only other room in the building besides the bathroom, when Scott Briggs walked up to her side with a coffee in his hand. His dark eyes and short black hair matched his black T-shirt. His vest was off and slung over his desk.
“Hey Syd.” He didn’t break stride and handed her a flash drive as he walked.
“I see you really give a shit about doing that paper work I told you to take care of.” Sydney said it a bit louder than she intended and she closed her eyes hoping to siphon the tension out through her eyelids.
Briggs raised an eyebrow and took a step back. “What do you mean?”
Sydney pointed with the flash drive at the desk. Briggs shrugged and changed the subject. He was always going a hundred miles an hour.
“So that flash drive you have has video footage of the exits to Salvatore’s Grand Hotel. It also has all the footage of the elevators and stairwells that lead up to the room where Rontego was staying. Of course, Salvatore says the floor he stayed on just happened to have a faulty camera and so he doesn’t have anything useful for us in that regard.”
Sydney glanced at the flash drive. “But we have the floors below and above?”
Briggs smiled. “Yes ma’am we do. And we have a time frame that is very narrow.”
“Excellent. Run through this with Travis. Make sure you note anyone that came or went during that time. If they didn’t get off at any of the floors above or below, then put them on the list, have Travis run facial recognition software for possible matches to suspects and maybe we can generate a lead on that.”
Sydney continued walking to her office and opened the door. Briggs was still following her.
“Yes Briggs?” She tossed her zip-up on the leather chair that faced the doorway behind a dark oak desk.
Buffalo Soldiers (An Upstate New York Mafia Tale Book 2) Page 5