Inside Man

by Jeff Abbott

  I heard the back door slide open. Footsteps across the concrete porch. Clink of glass, the door shutting. Someone cleaning up the forgotten beer bottles on the patio?

  We stayed still. I could see Jimmy’s hand on Mila’s back. Mila stared at me. I looked at the dirt.

  Footsteps again. Heading our way. We froze. I hated that we’d retreated; we were trapped. I tensed my legs in case I need to spring out and fight. But I just heard the slide of the shed door, a moment of silence, then the sound of a clang against the door of the shed.

  I waited ten seconds and then I risked a glance around the shed’s edge. Immediately I felt Jimmy’s fingers in my hair, starting to yank me back in anger. But I saw enough.

  Ricky, carrying something I couldn’t see in his arms, heading back into the house.

  He certainly liked to visit the homes of the recently deceased. I started to move and then I felt a cool circle of metal against my neck.

  “Be still.” It wasn’t Jimmy’s voice. It was Mila’s.

  I let two minutes pass. The gun stayed exactly in place. They were really scared I was still working for the CIA. This wasn’t like Mila.

  “I know him,” I hissed. “He works for Galo Varela. He’s here to find out who Nesterov worked for.” I knew Mila wouldn’t shoot me. I got up but stayed crouching behind the shed. She didn’t shoot me.

  “He won’t find it,” Jimmy said.

  Meaning, I assumed, that Jimmy had already found the evidence. Or that there was nothing to be found. I heard a car in front of the house start up. Ricky, leaving. I peered over the fence. I could see him, pulling away quickly from the curb, eyes ahead.

  “He’s gone.” I looked back at the happy couple. “You know who Nesterov was working for beyond Marianne? This mysterious Mr. Beethoven?”

  “No,” Mila said. “We don’t. We’d like to.”

  I walked back into the house and then I smelled it: the combined stench of fuel and natural gas. The quiet hum of the microwave. And then loud sparking noises.

  “Run!” I screamed, and Mila and Jimmy, following me inside, spun and ran. We bolted past the patio and started over the wooden fence when the house blew. The roof boomed and the windows shattered and the house seemed to shift on its foundation.

  Then the flames, spread by the gasoline, started to accelerate.

  “We can’t be seen here,” Jimmy gasped. The fence had blown apart, already weakened by age, planks of it lying on us.

  We ran. Nesterov’s house was now ablaze, a few neighbors drawn by the boom of the blast out in their yards, all apparently calling the fire department on their cell phones. I followed Jimmy and Mila one street over to a Mercedes. My car was parked farther down the street.

  I headed toward it and Jimmy grabbed me. “Where are you going? Off to the CIA?”

  “You said we couldn’t risk discovery here. Shall we meet back at the bar?”

  He nodded. I shrugged off his hand on my shoulder and headed toward my car.

  Jimmy, for once, didn’t try to stop me. We each got in our cars and drove away as the sirens began to wail.

  My phone rang. Mila. “Jimmy wants to know everything you know about the Varelas.”

  Eventually. Instead I said, “Our friend who torched the house was cleaning up.”

  “But this is going to make Nesterov’s disappearance that much more interesting to the police,” Mila said. She had me on speaker and I heard Jimmy mumble a curse.

  I saw them take a left turn. I waited until they were gone and I let more traffic pass and then I took a right, peering ahead through the windshield. There he was. “And bringing attention to Nesterov, it doesn’t benefit the Varelas.”

  “Because he doesn’t work for the Varelas,” Mila said quietly. “He works for the clients attacking them. This pressures the Varelas.”

  “I think you’re right,” I said. “I can go and confront Ricky and Galo directly…”

  “You will do no such thing,” Jimmy said, exactly like I figured he would. Thanks, Jimmy.

  “I’m supposed to get Cori Varela out of town,” I said. “That’s what her family’s expecting me to do.”

  “Fine,” Jimmy said. “Go. Pick her up, take her to New York, to our bar there. We can question her at length. You can write me a report on the Varelas. And only me, Sam, not for the CIA. We don’t share.”

  “You don’t want to bring the Varelas down. You want to know what they’re smuggling.”

  “We want to know, true,” he said.

  “Why? You won’t go to the police.”

  He laughed. “You haven’t worked for us long enough to know what we’ll do, Sam.”

  You’ll use it, I thought. Whatever the Varelas have built, like bees taking over another hive. The Round Table wasn’t just do-gooders, they were something more, the same way the Varelas were more, and I was tired of not knowing. I’d taken their help at my most desperate time, then I’d been in denial about what they might be. They had done nothing but good—but who were they really? If I let them take over whatever the Varelas were doing, I was no better than Rey.

  “That’s true,” I said. “I don’t know what you’ll do.”

  “You will, however, take Cori Varela to New York. For her own safety, and so we can find out what she knows. As well, she might serve as a useful bargaining chip, given the family psychology about abduction.”

  I measured out my words. “I’m not kidnapping Cori. If she wants to go to New York, I’ll take her.” But I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t leave her to Jimmy’s tender mercies. And I had learned two pieces of information that Mila and Jimmy didn’t know: the fact that the casino chips were used, infrequently, as some sort of covert payment system, and that Sergei, Zhanna’s father, had contact with Lavrenti Nesterov.

  “I don’t think you know everything you think you do about Cordelia Varela,” Mila said. “Where are you?”

  “I think I’m ahead of you,” I lied. “I cut through a bunch of cross streets to avoid traffic. What don’t I know about Cori?”

  “Her charity. It’s an interesting setup. We had someone hack into their computer systems. She gets money from donors. She distributes money not directly to the needy but to other charities overseas. She’s like a clearinghouse for donations.”

  “So?” I was already tired of arguing with them.

  “So we’d like to know more about these other charities, considering her father tried to hand her ten million in cash.”

  “You think she’s cleaning the money and it’s being disbursed to, what, bad guys?”

  “Perhaps. We don’t know yet. Hence our desire to talk with her.”

  “And what about Steve?”

  “Who?” Jimmy asked.

  I took a deep breath to steady my patience. “My old friend they killed.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, the thug that is still alive could be a problem. Wait, where are you?”

  I hadn’t followed them in their car. Instead I’d caught and followed Ricky. He was staying on side roads, which was making it hard to be unnoticed. I had to hang back much farther than I liked, risking losing him altogether.

  “I stopped to get gasoline,” I lied.

  “Sam,” Jimmy said.

  “I am not meeting the CIA,” I said. “I swear to you on my son’s life I’m not.”

  This shut him up for all of five seconds. “I know you, Sam, even when you think I don’t. You’re following the arsonist,” Jimmy said.

  “Nothing gets by you.”

  “Sam…” He wanted to tell me to break off the pursuit; but he knew it was useless, so he didn’t. Then he surprised me. “Be careful.”

  “I know what I’m doing, Jimmy, and I will tell you all.”

  “My wife is insisting that I trust you, and so I am,” he said.

  “Are you supposed to meet Cori?” Mila asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “At the bar, so yes, I’ll be back soon. Paige is supposed to give me a report on what she’s learned about the Varelas off the Miami grap
evine of old and established families.”

  “We deal in facts, not gossip,” Jimmy said.

  “I think the Varelas’ past has everything to do with their present,” I said. “Then I’ll get Cori out of town.” I’m such a liar sometimes. Not really a good example for my son.

  “See that you do,” Jimmy said. “Mila will take over the surveillance on the Varelas.”

  “Fine,” I said. I turned off the phone.

  Ricky turned into a lot. The hospital where Coma Thug had been taken, and was now presumably chatting with the police. Maybe about me.

  44

  RICKY PARKED AND walked inside, carrying a bag. He pulled on a white medical jacket, and I could see what looked like a hospital ID clipped to his pocket. A very basic disguise.

  I felt cold. I knew, instantly, why he was there, and now. Coma Thug talking to the police was not only a threat to me, but to his employers. Burn down Nesterov’s house in case he had hidden evidence. Make sure the Colombian can’t talk.

  You tried to run him down. What do you care what happens to him? If he’s dead he can’t tell them about you.

  I walked into the hospital. The entrance was crowded, busy, but I knew at that very moment my face was being recorded on a camera. Hospitals have more security than you first think.

  I had no idea where Coma Thug was being kept. The police might have moved him, even. Ricky wasn’t in the lobby. I checked the directory and saw the floor for the ICU. I took the elevator up.

  At one end of the hall was a large waiting room, full of families and friends of the sick, hostages to fate. At the other end was a shut door, with glass in it, the portal to the patient cubicles. You would be admitted only if you had a family member inside.

  Then I saw a stairwell door open and out came Ricky. He was twenty feet away from me, his back to me, and I turned and ducked into an alcove, where there was a soda machine and a linen closet. I risked a glance around the corner.

  He headed away from me, toward the ICU, but before he reached the double doors he veered into a room marked Staff Only. He peered inside for a moment, as if making sure it was empty, then slipped inside.

  The syringe I’d stolen from Nesterov’s SUV in Puerto Rico—the one I’d stuck into Marianne’s neck but not injected—was still in my pocket. I put it in my hand and hurried toward the door, hoping he’d have his back to me.

  I opened the door, soundlessly. He was six feet away, searching through a locker, and before he could turn I jabbed him with the needle and injected the sedative. He stiffened and dropped a tablet computer he had in his hand. I shoved his head into the open locker and finally he collapsed.

  I took off him the white jacket with the ID clipped to it. I felt a little weight in the pocket. A syringe, loaded with a pale yellow chemical. Well, well. This was no errand of mercy.

  In the open locker I found a stethoscope—perhaps this was the prop he’d stopped to steal—and put it around my neck. I also found a pair of prescription glasses and I put them on. I dragged Ricky to a back corner of the room, where there was a cart of dirtied scrubs and towels and dumped him in it, covering him with the laundry. I would just have to hope he wasn’t noticed.

  I picked up the tablet computer he’d dropped. The open app was one for patient records.

  I looked as much like a doctor as I might.

  I walked into the ICU. The cubicle with the police officer stationed outside it was four down from the entrance. I didn’t even glance at him, I stepped into the next cubicle. Inside, an elderly woman dozed. I counted to sixty, then stepped out, tapping at the tablet.

  Then I walked toward Coma Thug’s room. At the nursing hub was one nurse; he was on the phone and peering at a computer screen, not looking at me. I heard voices, raised in a slight hubbub, behind the curtain of a room down the hall; an emergency demanding the attention of most of the staff.

  I tapped at the pad and nodded at the police officer, who gave me the once-over, and I stepped inside.

  Coma Thug lay in the bed in front of me. He looked wasted, spent, his neck in a brace. He hardly noticed me.

  I went up to the supply shelf, pulled off a strip of gauze tape and put it across his eyes. He moaned, put up a hand, started to cry out. “Hush and listen, Carlos,” I said in Spanish.

  He went very still.

  “A man came to the hospital. He was here to kill you. To inject poison into your IV feed so you would die. I stopped him.” I continued speaking Spanish. “You’re safe for the moment. For a price,” I said.

  “What?” he whispered.

  “Do not speak to the police about Steve Robles or anything about the motorcyclist you saw that night,” I said. “Not a word.”

  “Are you here to take me away?”

  Interesting idea. I paused. “Are you expecting to be taken away?”

  “They’ll get me out,” he said. “They’ve already talked to the police. There aren’t going to be charges against me.”

  “Who could promise that?”

  He seemed surprised by the question, his mouth twisted. “Aren’t you?…”

  “Who is Mr. Beethoven?”

  “I don’t know that name.”

  Outside, I heard the cop’s newspaper’s pages rustle.

  “I have the syringe the killer brought. I’m uncapping the needle.” He writhed in the bed and I made my voice a whisper. “Think again. Who is Beethoven? Who does he work for?”

  “Please, I don’t know,” he whispered. “My partner handles the business side. I swear I don’t know. Please.”

  So he’d heard the name, at least. I didn’t want him screaming. “Shhh. Shhh. All right, I believe you. Keep your promise. Nothing to the police about Steve Robles. Not a word. Or I will go to Bogotá and see your family. They don’t have a cop sitting outside their room.” This was an idle threat, but he didn’t know it.

  His mouth worked. He was helpless, his body broken, bound to the bed. I never wanted to feel that helpless. “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you stay silent, I’ll tell the police tomorrow it was your partner who killed Robles, and I’ll give them the name of the man who was sent here to kill you. But if you talk, I’ll tell the police you shot Robles.”

  “I understand.”

  I left the gauze taped across his eyes; he could take it off himself. I nodded at the officer as I went out and I walked to another room, an empty one, then I turned and left the ICU. Carlos Tellez did not scream out or cry for help. He was a businessman; he understood these arrangements. Part of me, a dark part, wanted to end him in that bed. Part of me knew it would mean nothing.

  I went back into the locker room. Ricky was still out. I wiped the tablet computer and stethoscope clean of my prints, left the jacket, clipped the ID on Ricky’s shirt.

  Then I walked out of the hospital and drove to Stormy’s.

  45

  NIGHT HAD FALLEN by the time I reached the bar. Mila had the Open sign on.

  I walked past the pair of couples drinking on the patio to find Paige inside and Mila tending bar. There was no sign of Jimmy.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “I want to get the bar in order before you go,” Mila said.

  “Where’s your husband?” I expected him there, ready to argue with me more.

  “He’s off doing,” Mila said, “whatever it is he does. But he said he was trusting you at your word.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Where have you been, Sam…” Paige started, and I raised my hand.

  Oh, Paige, you don’t want to know, I thought.

  Paige glanced at Mila. No one else was in the bar.

  “I like your new manager,” Paige said. “She makes a forceful cocktail.” She raised a martini glass instead of her usual wine.

  “I see you’ve moved to the hard stuff,” I said.

  “I needed it.”

  “This librarian, her I like. She’s the right kind of customer,” Mila said. She gave Paige
a smile.

  Great, a mutual fan club. “I did the favor you asked me,” Paige said. “Can we talk?”

  “Yes.” I took Paige upstairs while Mila helped a pair of customers who’d just walked into the bar. Paige turned on me when I closed the door.

  “What are you?” she said.

  “Sam the bartender.”

  “Whose compatriot happens to be some sort of a mysterious Russian woman.”

  “She’s Moldovan, that’s totally different.”

  “But you’re not, like, an undercover agent. You’re just…doing this.”

  “Yes. For Steve. Like you. You said you had some information?”

  Paige took another sip of her cocktail. “Ricky Vega. Please be careful of him,” she said.

  “I already am.”

  Paige tapped a manicured nail against her martini glass. “I talked to friends of friends of friends, who went to high school with him and Galo Varela. In some corners, Miami is still a small town—people remember, and they know each other’s family histories. Ricky and Galo grew up together, went to school together. Back before Rey Varela was rich, they lived in a tougher neighborhood. Ricky got bullied. A lot. Galo stuck up for him and Galo was bigger than every other kid and so everyone left Ricky alone. Then FastFlex took off and the Varelas were suddenly rich and Galo moved to a private school. Ricky got left behind.” She swallowed some of her martini. “It got very bad for him, without Galo as a protector. Like—he was bullied so much that he went a little crazy. Finally Rey Varela got him moved to the private school where Galo was. Paid for him to be there. That’s not cheap. Then they went on together to University of Miami, again paid for by Rey. Ricky studied criminal justice. Then he left Miami for a year, working up north, I can’t find out what he did. I mean, I can’t find an official record. His mother told people he was working in Virginia at a private security firm called Crossfire Protection. Then he came back and he’s worked for the Varelas ever since, as a private bodyguard and errand boy.”

  This didn’t seem to jibe, since I was sure Ricky was working for someone outside the family. But his loyalty to the Varelas should be rock-solid. Had I read the situation wrong? “So you think Ricky will be very loyal to the family.”