Inside Man

by Jeff Abbott

  I hadn’t yet asked her. She’d hardly given me a straight answer. She should have said “Jane Doe.” But this was ritual, standing at the grave of a man who’d died trying to help her, a powerful, primal tug, and by going after Steve’s killers I’d earned the right to ask.

  She said, very softly, “Cordelia.”

  That better not be a lie, I thought. Don’t you dare lie to me at this moment.

  “…and Cordelia and I are sorry. Sorry this happened to you. I wish I’d thanked you properly for saving my life all those years ago. My brother and I talked about you, Steve. Like you were a real-life G.I. Joe.”

  Cordelia stiffened next to me. I continued: “You were like the man my brother would have been if he’d had the chance. I enjoyed talking to you. And isn’t that really what a bar is for? The talking. The unburdening. Listening to you was never a burden.” I glanced at her, the beer ready to pour.

  Cordelia said, “I’m sorry, Steve. I’ll make the person responsible pay. But it may be a long wait.” Then she went silent.

  “Who’s responsible?” I said.

  “I don’t know. Yet,” she said.

  And then I upended the bottle of beer, watched it foam on the ground. I thought of doing the same, years ago, on an empty grave. A marker waiting for the return of my brother’s body. He never came home.

  Lager inched through the soil. Whoever wanted him dead could drink a beer. For the moment.

  “Steve. You were right,” I said to the marker. “You were totally right. I was…something.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked me.

  It was my turn not to answer a question. I set the empty bottle against Steve’s stone.

  Cordelia gave me an uncertain look and said, “Leave Miami for a while. Good-bye, Sam.” Then she turned and went to the Jaguar and got in and drove away.

  I went to my car—a nondescript gray Honda I’d rented when I arrived—and followed her.

  If I was something, it was time to start acting like it.

  4

  TAILING SOMEONE YOU’VE just had a talk with is very difficult. She drove into a nice shopping district in Coral Gables and I was right behind her. She turned onto Aragon Avenue and lucked into a parking space close to the Books & Books bookstore. I honked and drove past her and she waved, almost reluctantly. So she thought I’d said my good-bye for the day.

  I turned at the next intersection and parked in a pay lot one street over. I hurried back toward Aragon and on my smartphone called Paige. “Can I swap cars with you right now?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s about Steve. You can have mine for the day.” I told her where to park and where to meet me.

  “Um, okay. I was about to buy ice to take to the bar…”

  “Paige, never mind that, please, it’s important.”

  “I’m on my way,” she said.

  If Cordelia drove off, I’d risk the follow and see where she went, and call Paige to meet me. But I stood in front of the store, which was sort of U-shaped and had a central courtyard with patio tables with big canvas umbrellas. Books are one of my few relaxations and so I’d been here twice since coming to town, buying some recent bestsellers and a book on Miami history recommended to me by the owner, a nice gentleman every customer seemed to know. I stood on the edge of the entryway and through the courtyard I could see Cordelia get a very large coffee and begin tapping on her phone. She came out and I stepped back into the shadows. She sat down at one of the outdoor tables, studying her smartphone’s screen.

  You have to learn the maze, the old burnt man had told me during my CIA training. My instructors had felt I didn’t listen well so they sent me off to talk a few times to one of the Special Project legends, a man who had worked undercover time and time again. Until an enemy caught him, burned him, made his face into a melted candle. He lived in a CIA-run hospital. His voice sounded like smoke and I thought, Why are they sending me to a guy who failed? Who got caught? They didn’t even tell me his name.

  What maze? I’d asked. To be polite.

  When you’re pretending to be someone as an inside man, then there’s a maze you navigate to get in and then get home safe. Find the map.

  I don’t understand.

  Of course you don’t. That’s why they’ve sent you to me. Now, listen…

  What’s your maze, Cordelia? I wondered.

  Then I committed a crime. I pulled out a smartphone Mila had sent me several weeks back, even though the Round Table hadn’t given me a job to spy on anyone. I tapped an app. It scanned every phone in the vicinity of the store, relying on a software bug in the SIM chips that had not been publicized or fixed. There were sixteen active mobile phones in the store.

  A list began to build on my screen. Phone numbers. As the software (illegally, I presumed) accessed provider databases, names began to appear next to the phone numbers.

  It was gear like this that made me wonder who the Round Table really were, who I was working with.

  The seventh name that appeared next to a matching number read CORDELIA VARELA. I slipped an ear-bud plug into the phone, and then the ear buds into my ear, and I listened to her conversation.

  5

  I HEARD CORDELIA say, “I know where you’re all going. The house in Puerto Rico.”

  Then a young man’s voice: “Don’t come, Cori. You’re not welcome. It doesn’t concern you.”

  “I want to know what is happening.”

  “As you appear to be selectively deaf, I’ll say again, it doesn’t concern you. Stay in Miami. Please.”

  “The ten million,” Cordelia said. “Where did that come from? Where did it go?”

  “Cori, you need to leave this alone.”

  “I’m trying to help the family.”

  “You will end up hurting the family. Stay at home.”

  “Stop talking to me like I’m a little girl.”

  “Stop acting like a little girl.”

  “I’ll stop if you’ll stop.” From my vantage point I saw a flush of anger color her face.

  The man on the other end of the phone laughed. “What am I supposed to stop?”

  “Whatever you’ve gotten us involved in that coughs up ten million dollars in cash. I saw the money. I want to know where Papa got it.”

  His voice was weary. “The rest of the family wants you to leave this alone.”

  “I don’t care,” she said.

  “You are sticking your nose in problems you can’t understand. I am asking you to stop. Don’t come to Puerto Rico. Stay home. Feed the hungry and get kids educations and do all that good work you do.”

  “I’ll stop asking questions if you’ll tell me the truth.”

  The man sighed. “Where are you?”

  “The patio at the bookstore.”

  “For God’s sake. Come home and we’ll talk about this.”

  “I don’t understand how you could do this to our family. To Papa.”

  For a long moment there was silence and I’d thought he’d hung up. “Papa doesn’t want you to know about his business. I don’t always know about it. There’s a reason for that. So respect his wishes and stop asking questions.” And then the man hung up on her.

  Cordelia turned off her own phone and set it on the table next to her coffee and put her face into her hands. I watched. Then she reached for her coffee and I could see her hands shaking, ever so slightly.

  6

  PAIGE ARRIVED ABOUT ten minutes later, driving past me in a ten-year-old white Lexus, and Cordelia hadn’t yet left the courtyard. I gave Paige my keys and she took mine. “What’s this about, Sam?”

  “It’s about finding out what got Steve killed. I don’t have enough to go to the police.”

  Paige’s eyes widened. “You’re playing at detective?”

  “No, nothing so dramatic. But the person knows my car and doesn’t know yours. Okay? I just want to find out where she goes. I don’t know her name.”

  “You’re actually going to”—then she air-quo
ted with her fingers—“tail someone.” Paige pronounced this like a verdict of insanity.

  I handed Paige my keys. “The bar keys are on the ring. The alarm-system code is 9999. You all can go in and help yourselves to beers or drinks, but keep the Open sign off and I’ll be there soon.” I hadn’t reopened the bar since Steve’s shooting. I knew the regulars would want to gather, but I had zero interest in serving beers to the curious vultures who’d never graced Stormy’s before and were only there to eye the brick sidewalk where Steve died.

  “Sam…” Paige started. She liked to argue, but she stopped. “All right. Don’t dent her.”

  I retrieved a pair of sunglasses and a dark hat from my Honda; in case I had to follow closer, I didn’t want Cordelia spotting my face. I thanked Paige and she took off in my car. I saw Cordelia get up and I ran to the Lexus. I wheeled the car around, cap and sunglasses in place, and she was listening to her phone, standing at her car door. I slowed and she figured I wanted the parking slot. She got into the car and revved out onto the street. I followed her. She turned onto a major road, LeJeune, and headed south.

  I let a couple of cars get between us. She stayed in Coral Gables. It’s a town of nearly fifty thousand people, so it’s bigger than most visitors realize. She drove into the Cocoplum area. Very nice homes—big ones, usually only four on a U-shaped street. She was waved through a guardhouse and I followed, and I guess because I was in a suit and in a Lexus the guard waved me through too. I saw no sign that these were private roads. I stayed back and saw Cordelia turn and go down another road, to a second guardhouse. How exclusive was this area? I wondered. I followed, a silver Lincoln now between us. The Lincoln got stopped, then waved through.

  I got stopped. I lowered my window with an apologetic smile.

  “What’s your business here, sir?” the guard asked.

  The trick with these guys is to never, ever challenge their power. I held up a wallet. Mine. “Cordelia dropped this at the bookstore over on Aragon, where we were just at,” I said. “She left before I did and the clerk who found it told me and I’m trying to catch up to give it to her and my phone’s dead. Didn’t she just come through in her Jaguar?”

  He studied me. The Lexus and the nice suit helped. I said, “Or you could call her to come fetch it, and then she can just drive back up here.” I put the barest emphasis on the last phrase, like it would be a chore for her. “If she doesn’t mind. Or I’ll just be quick. You can time me.”

  “All right, sir,” he said.

  “You need me to leave my license with you?”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  The bar went up and he waved me through.

  There was one street. Lined with huge palm trees and spectacular landscaping. The house numbers started at “1.” The numbers were the only small aspect of the neighborhood. Each bend of the street held three or four massive homes. Every home looked like it should be on the cover of a design magazine. They were incredible. I grew up with relief-worker parents and I’d seen more poverty in the world’s backwaters than most Americans do and I could not wrap my head quite around this grandeur. They all faced the bay. Driveways of stone, some with elaborate geometric patterns. Some had large privacy walls, others had a dense growth of sculpted foliage that hid as much as a wall would.

  I zoomed forward and saw the Jag turn in, then the silver Lincoln. Huh. I wasn’t the only one following Cordelia. I saw a uniformed guard wave in Cordelia, then the Lincoln, then shut a gate behind them. Cordelia had a shadow. Someone keeping an eye on her, or someone arriving home at the same time? I drove past. I made a note of the house number and U-turned it.

  I thought, Why does she need protection when she has all that security around her?

  The obvious answer was: the people watching over her were the danger.

  I drove back up the road, gave a friendly wave and a thumbs-up to the neighborhood gatekeeper, then drove back to the bar.

  7

  YOU’RE SOMETHING, AREN’T you, Sam? I felt as though I were too many somethings: Father. Bar owner. Former CIA operative. And private spy.

  When my three-year CIA career was destroyed, I’d found a surprising set of allies: the Round Table, a private, secret group of do-gooders around the world, apparently financed by a wealthy few. They’d given me the bars as cover to search for my missing infant son—and I’d found Daniel and rescued him from his kidnappers—and then wanted me to be their pocket spy. I’d agreed, with some reluctance. But I’d run afoul of them, gone against their wishes in a bad job in Las Vegas, and my handler—Mila—was injured and recuperating. I was running the bars for them, but they’d given me no further covert work, aimed me at no more bad guys who were beyond the reach of the law, who’d slipped through the cracks of justice. Mila’s husband, an arrogant Englishman named James Court, blamed me for her nearly being killed and he’d made it clear that I was unwelcome. They had given me the bars, and they could take the bars back, presumably by force or through threat. But Jimmy, as Mila called him, hadn’t fired me from the Round Table, and he’d left me alone.

  Every manager at my other bars had been wrongly convicted of crimes, and owed a debt of their lives and their freedom to the Round Table. They knew that each bar was a safe house. I didn’t know how many other pocket spies the Table had other than me and Mila, or if I alone needed to use the bars. Too much of the Round Table remained a mystery to me.

  But I didn’t have a manager to help me with a covert job in Miami.

  I’d have to recruit my own help. Paige, maybe. She had motive to help me and seemed unencumbered by regular employment. But I didn’t know if I could trust her. I’d see if she’d told everyone about me borrowing her car.

  I parked Paige’s Lexus behind the bar and went in the front door. A half dozen of the regulars stood sipping drinks and eating off paper plates, and casseroles and salads they’d brought lined the bar. I thought it was a nicer remembrance than many people got: not fancy, but heartfelt. I suddenly needed to be around people; it’s not an emotion I often feel. I have gotten comfortable being alone. But I needed to be with people who knew Steve. I thought it might quiet the flame in the back of my head, the one that said, Make the bad guys pay. That said, Do something to protect yourself before Coma Thug wakes up. It was better to remember Steve, to think of the man he was. There were toasts, and funny stories about Steve from years past, and I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I wanted to tell them about the Steve who dragged me from a car on a bomb-ravaged road in central Africa. But I couldn’t.

  Because I had made a decision at his grave.

  By early evening only Paige and I were left and I knew why she’d lingered, and it wasn’t to help me clean up. Paige passed on her usual Sauvignon Blanc and drank a Red Stripe in honor of Steve. I handed Paige back her keys. She pocketed them and slid my keys back to me. I got a glass and poured myself a Red Stripe.

  “You didn’t tell the others I was playing at detective.”

  “I didn’t want to embarrass you,” Paige said. “Did you find this woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she know something about Steve’s death?”

  “I don’t know yet. This might be related to Steve’s work.”

  “I don’t see why you don’t call the police,” Paige said, her voice rising. Her hands closed into fists.

  “This might be…delicate. He wasn’t killed over his motorcycle.”

  “You better call the police.”

  “And that might get more people killed. Including me.”

  “Oh, please, Captain Drama. Do I look like a turnip truck just went over a speed bump and dropped me off?” Paige raised an eyebrow.

  I stared her down.

  “Please be kidding, Sam.” She toyed with the pearl necklace she wore. Her voice lost its mocking tone.

  “I don’t want to say anything yet. I might ask you for help.”

  “Help?”

  “Like borrowing your car today. That let me find where this woman li
ved.”

  “Um, okay,” Paige said.

  “And Paige?”

  “What?”

  “I know you don’t know me well, but I don’t overdramatize. I think Steve could have gotten involved in a very bad situation. But I don’t want to go to the police with no evidence, with no proof. I don’t want to get sued, lose the bar.”

  She sipped at her beer. “Why you? How do you know how to…follow someone?”

  And now I told my first lie, because I couldn’t tell her I was ex-CIA or about my current work for the Table. “Steve worked private security.” Then I paused, let the weight fill the air between us and said, “I used to be in the same business.”

  Paige nodded, said “Ah,” as if that explained it all.

  “If I find hard evidence, you know I’m going to the police. I promise I will. But don’t call the police for me; let me handle that when I have enough to hold their interest. Otherwise they dismiss me as a crank.”

  “All right,” Paige said, but she didn’t seem to want to look at me. “I’ll help you. But I don’t see how I can.”

  “You’re a librarian and you grew up here. I don’t know the background of the town. Or have the connections. The ability to do fast research. You have that.”

  “Research.” She looked away from me. “I can’t help you there. I can’t go on a computer.”

  “Why?”

  She ran a finger along her beer bottle. “Do I look like a criminal?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Well, I’m not supposed to touch a keyboard for another two months. Part of my deal with the district attorney.”

  “What exactly did you do?” I was surprised.

  “You weren’t here for the local headlines. ‘Rogue Librarian,’ the press called me, although my favorite was the columnist who called me ‘Naughty Librarian.’” She took another sip of beer. “A patron at the library, I got suspicious of him…lurking around the children’s section. He never did anything you could say was wrong, I just had a bad feeling about him. I thought he was taking pictures of kids on his phone, but when I challenged him, there weren’t any pictures.” She cleared her throat. “So. I hacked into his home computer. I found a ton of pictures of kids. Awful things. But that was still breaking the law, using the library’s computer that way. He got arrested but I got suspended. Vigilantes are not popular with the police.”