The Fixer, Season 1

by Rex Carpenter

  And every morning when he looked in the mirror to shave, Lieutenant General M. O. Robinson II saw the face of his father in his own. Saw him bloodied, front teeth broken out, left eye swollen shut, looking up at his son, who didn’t notice that his father wasn’t fighting back. Heard him say those words once again: “Finally. You’re welcome. I love you, son. Now get outta here. And don’t never look back.”

  This morning was a little different. Senator Marcus had called last night. Letting him know their mutual acquaintance was coming to New York. Probably would like to sit down for a visit.

  Good. He was expecting the call. And the visit. Would be nice to see the boy again. It had been too long. Things hadn’t gone well the last time they’d seen each other. And The General didn’t imagine they would go well today. Still, it would be nice to see his best friend’s son again. He’d kept tabs on him after he left the Army. Always from a distance. Never face to face. That wouldn’t have been good for either of their careers.

  Hopefully the boy would not try to kill him today.

  *****

  Daniel Meier was in line at Regan National. Waiting to go through security. He was still shaken up about the previous night. Meier had read the reports about Bannister. Had a pretty good idea about what to expect. Hell, he’d sat across the table from the guy in a bar a few days earlier. But nothing in his life had prepared him for the never-ending chaos that he seemed to be stuck in the middle of.

  The TSA agent beckoned him forward. Meier put his carry on and briefcase on the conveyer belt. Wallet and keys in the tray. Kept his watch on. Walked through, but the alarm went off. Got wanded. Picked up his keys and wallet. Checked it to make sure nothing was missing in sight of the TSA agents running this end of the program. Retrieved his bag, his briefcase, and then was on his way.

  Most of the law enforcement types he’d had contact with were pretty much the same as the TSA agents he’d just gone past. Kind of like cattle. Large, dangerous if provoked into a run, not super bright. They chose the crap-paying job. How bright could they be? Even the military guys Meier had run across seemed to be slightly more aggressive versions of the TSA agents. He’d met The General twice and he was decidedly different. Powerful. Not dangerous now, but in the past he was not the guy you’d want to tangle with.

  But Bannister? Meier shivered again at the fear he felt. Sitting in the bar was no big deal. He knew the script. Kowalski had prepared him beforehand. But inside the library, he felt much more danger. More exposed. And in the side parking lot of the library?

  Daniel Meier had never been more scared in his entire life.

  He had told his dad about the meeting and shooting over the phone. His father had sounded concerned, of course. But also indicated there were some good things to come out of the incident.

  Meier didn’t feel that way at all.

  His dad would pick him up at the Burbank airport. Take him to their insurance guy, then the Bentley dealership. He didn’t need the power of his father to go through these deals. It was just easier. Besides, he really was in no condition to drive.

  Meier was walking down the concourse to the gate for his flight. A food service worker came through an access door and let it slam behind them. Meier jumped about a foot in the air at the loud noise. He started to wonder how long it would take before he could calm down.

  He hadn’t seen the man walking behind him. Hadn’t seen him standing in line behind him earlier. Hadn’t seen the smile when he jumped. The man hadn’t taken his eyes off Meier when the door slammed. He hadn’t jumped either.

  Chapter 12

  A Lot of Hardware

  The sun was up over the horizon and heating up the day. Wouldn’t be terribly hot, but warm enough to make it uncomfortable. Now it was a little cool. Dew everywhere.

  Duke was awake. Looking around, stretching. JC asked him if he wanted any pancakes. Duke groaned. Joan offered to turn on the GPS but JC declined. He still hadn’t given them the details of the job the senator wanted them to do. Hadn’t told them where they were going. Hadn’t allowed them to freshen up before they got there. His team trusted him, but not blindly. There were some real questions that needed to be answered. Before the unspoken doubts grew.

  They were traveling into an increasingly residential area of the City of Brotherly Love. Older houses. Well taken care of, but not wealthy. No expensive cars on the streets. Families here were smack dab in the middle of the middle class.

  Duke was the one to finally break.

  “JC, for crying out loud, man! Where are we going?” he yelled in an increasingly strident tone.

  Joan and JC started to laugh. “All right, kid,” JC said. “Which is more important? The where or the why?”

  “Where,” Duke said.

  “Why,” Joan said at exactly the same time. The two started to argue.

  “Where was my question — where is what I wanna know.”

  “Where is stupid. Doesn’t matter where. You’re along for the ride. Why matters. It will tell you what to expect.”

  JC let them bicker another minute. “All right, knock it off, kids. Playtime is over.” His friends became silent instantly. “We’re going to my cousin’s house. It’s about five minutes up ahead.”

  About two minutes up ahead they saw the fire trucks. And the smoke. Nobody said anything. Partly to avoid jinxing it. Partly because they knew the fire trucks were no coincidence. And partly out of fear of what was happening to or had already happened to JC’s family.

  They were about two blocks away when JC stopped the SUV. Two fire trucks. One police car. House seemed fine. But there was smoke billowing from somewhere.

  “You guys stay here. Come when I call.”

  Duke started to protest, but Joan stopped him. It made sense. Three strangers walking up the street in the middle of this suburban tranquility. Right after a fire. Not good. Things like that make people itchy. Especially police officers and firemen. Makes them want to pay attention and start asking questions. Which is exactly what JC didn’t need.

  JC got out of the SUV and started walking up the street. Decided to play it straight — cousin comes to visit and sees a fire. Got about half a block away and broke into a run.

  “Sir, you can’t be here. You need to step back.” The nametag said Officer Knowles.

  “Hold on, buddy, that’s my cousin’s house. Is everything okay? What’s going on? I gotta see them. I gotta make sure they’re okay.” Distraught, nervous. Maybe a bit too eager, but he still nailed it.

  “Sorry, you can’t go in there.”

  “JC?” A woman’s voice called from the house. “JC! Oh, thank God you’re here.”

  “Linda, is everything all right?” JC firmly pushed past Officer Knowles and embraced his cousin’s wife as she rushed him. The crying started and lasted less than a minute. Stress relief.

  “Ma’am?” Officer Knowles said.

  Linda raised her head off of JC’s shoulder, wiped her eyes. “It’s okay, officer. He’s my husband’s cousin.”

  The officer nodded his head. Took a last look at JC, and then returned to his duties.

  “Linda, are the kids okay? Where’s Jerry?”

  “Everyone’s fine, JC, just fine. The kids are at school. Jerry’s coming back from the shop right now. He went in early today. He should be here in about twenty minutes or so.” Jerry owned and operated a small mechanic’s shop in one of the nicer parts of Philadelphia. More expensive cars, richer clientele. Worked out well for him.

  “That’s good.” JC looked over the house. Everything seemed intact, but there was still smoke billowing from the back. “What happened, Linda?”

  “The garage. I was cleaning up the dishes from breakfast and I looked out to see the whole thing just engulfed in flames.”

  JC felt sick to his stomach. The papers, documents and cash he was looking for were hidden in the garage. In a cardboard box stuck in the rafters. They were just ash now.

  “But you’re okay? And the house is fine?”


  “Yes, yes, I’m fine. The house is fine. We really got lucky. Firemen say it was a pile of old oily rags that started it. Odd, because Jerry is usually so careful about stuff like that.”

  Yeah, odd, JC was thinking. So odd, in fact, it was impossible. Jerry was a meticulous mechanic. His shop was so clean it looked brand new even after ten years. No way Jerry would leave a box of oily rags stuffed in the garage of his house.

  Which meant something else had happened.

  “Linda, can you excuse me. I need to make a call real quick.”

  “Oh, sure, go ahead.”

  “My associates are parked up the street. Didn’t want them to come running in here if something was really dangerous.”

  JC turned and called Joan. “Get up here. Bring a laptop. And anything small enough you or Duke can easily conceal. Now.”

  He hung up. “Let’s go inside, Linda. My associates are coming. Any chance you’ve got some coffee for them?”

  Given something to do, something to focus on, Linda sprang back to herself. “Sure, sure. Sorry I don’t have any tea for you. If I had known you were coming, I would have gotten some.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He walked her back to the house, scanning the crowd gathered near the front lawn. Looked back towards where he had parked the SUV. Saw it: a Toyota Camry parked with two men inside. Wrong side of the street. Semi-casual dress. Sport jackets, maybe. Watching him. One was wearing some kind of hat. He hadn’t seen them when he ran up to the house, which means he had either missed them or they had just pulled in. Didn’t matter. He would be dealing with them soon enough.

  *****

  Five minutes later JC was introducing his team to Linda, lying about their last names and what they did. Ten minutes later everyone was drinking a cup of coffee except JC. Twenty-three minutes later the police and firemen had all packed up and left. It was time.

  “Joan? David and I are going to take a look at the garage. You mind keeping an eye on Linda?” It wasn’t a request. The two guys in the Toyota Camry up the street had JC concerned.

  “Sure thing, JC. I’ll help Linda with the dishes.” Joan smiled. The smile was all an act. She hated the girl duties. Absolutely hated doing the dishes. JC smiled back.

  Duke and JC walked out the back door and over to the smoking remains of the garage. Bits and pieces were visible: the lawnmower, a couple of charred bicycles. Something that looked like it was once a barbecue. Most everything else was twisted, burnt and unrecognizable.

  “Did you see the dark blue Toyota Camry parked on the wrong side of the street when you came up? Two dicks sitting inside doing nothing?” JC asked

  “Yup.”

  “Get the license plate?”

  “Nope. Joan did. She always does.”

  “Good. Ask her when you get back inside. Run it. Find out who they are. Next. What did you bring from the SUV?”

  “My MP5s. Joan’s got her SIG Sauers. I know you’ve got your Glocks. A couple of flashbangs we found in the back. Everything else was too big to easily conceal.”

  “Anything with a silencer?”

  “Funny you should ask.” Duke smiled. “The good guys left us a silenced Beretta 9mm in the back as well.”

  “Good. Give it to me outside, after we leave.” JC stood at what was the entrance to the garage.

  “What the hell happened here, JC?”

  JC looked at the remains. Mixed in with the rest of the ash was one of his best cover identities. Passport, IDs, everything up to date and legit. Plus about four hundred thousand dollars. He told Duke.

  Duke whistled. “That’s some bad luck, buddy.”

  “Seriously? You actually think this is bad luck? Jerry would never leave a pile of oily rags anywhere.”

  “This was set?”

  “You’re damn right it was.” JC was getting increasingly angry the more he thought about it.

  “Who?”

  “Tell me what you think.”

  “Kowalski. Had to be. He’s been tracking the truck. Probably his guys up the block.”

  “OK,” JC responded, letting his junior employee work out the problem.

  “Next question — who else knew of this stash?”

  “Other than Jerry?”

  “He knew?” Duke was surprised.

  “Of course. I wouldn’t put it in my cousin’s garage without him knowing about it. No guns, just legal paperwork.”

  “Doubt the guy burnt down his own garage. So yeah, other than Jerry.”

  JC thought. He had learned a long time ago to keep his mouth shut about his past. Family, hobbies, places he liked to go, things he did when he was a kid. All things that could be used to identify or track him. It was a trick he learned from one man.

  “Hell. The General. I told him I was close to one cousin. That we used to spend summers together. The one person on my mom’s side of the family that didn’t give me grief about joining the military.”

  Duke was growing concerned. Last night’s bravado was replaced with the ever grinding apprehension of the fearsome man. The General was not someone he wanted to be on the bad side of.

  “So. It’s gotta be Kowalski or The General. Who do you think it was?”

  JC paused. “You’re wrong about the car.”

  “The Camry? With the two dummies in it? No, I’m not.”

  “Think back. What kind of clothing were they wearing?”

  “Suits. Lighter colored. Looked like summer weight. Little early, but who knows, right?”

  “Ties?”

  Duke searched his memory.

  “No ties. Open collars,” he said.

  “That’s it?” JC pushed.

  “Oh, man. They were wearing those fancy Mexican, Cuban, Latin American shirts.

  “Guayaberas.”

  “Yeah, those. And one of them was wearing a hat. It wasn’t a bowler, but…”

  “Probably Bolivians.”

  Duke was exasperated. “As if we ain’t got enough going on right now. The Bolivians are after us again? Hold on — was it The Mexican?”

  “My old boss? Who knows? Former president, current president, The Mexican? Any one of a dozen guys I took down when I was there? More importantly right now is whether our friends in the Camry set this fire.”

  Duke grinned. “Let’s go ask ‘em, boss.”

  JC admired the man’s eagerness. He wanted to lecture him on the dangers inherent with that course of action. The possibility that they were not actually Bolivian. Maybe embassy staff. Maybe international businessmen. Or hired thugs of a drug kingpin. Maybe they were just two guys who were dressed inappropriately in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  He didn’t. He was too pissed at the loss of his paperwork. And the danger from whoever burned down the garage. The danger that had been brought to his family.

  So he grinned just like Duke. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

  *****

  Joan was watching the two men talk as they pretended to inspect the garage. She hated being left out of the loop. But she had a part to play. The comforting woman to Linda.

  “So, Joan,” Linda said, “what is it you do?”

  “JC does a lot of private security contracting,” Joan said with a smile and warmth she didn’t feel. “I am in charge of marketing for the company.”

  “Marketing? For a security company?”

  “Sure,” Joan said, turning towards Linda and away from the window. “We need people to know who we are and what we do. JC’s a great guy, but he has little patience for the selling of the business. Besides, most of the people we work with are men. He always said my face sells better than his.”

  Linda laughed at the sexism because they both knew it to be true.

  “Plus,” Joan continued, “If they need their ass kicked, it’s easier to smooth things over afterwards if it was a woman who did it.”

  Linda looked shocked for a second, and then laughed again. “You were Army?”

  “No, I never had the pleasure of serving
. Too much trouble in my past. Just worked hard and learned as I went through the private sector.”

  “Where did you meet JC, then?” Linda seemed curious about Joan and the possible links into JC’s shadow life, light years away from her own suburban reality.

  Joan knew she could spin a fantastic yarn for this Philadelphian housewife. Regale her with outlandish stories. But what would be the point? She decided to stay as close to the truth as she could.

  “We met in Europe,” Joan said, smiling. “Pretty simple, really. Just a case of professionals in the same business crossing paths enough times. I did some checking on him at the same time he was doing some checking on me. The outfit I was working for was going downhill. JC’s company seemed to be doing good things, so I jumped ship.” She left out the part where she was assigned to kill him. Didn’t mention the part where he got the drop on her. Nor the part where he let her live. He explained why that night, but it all boiled down to four words: “No women, no children,” he had said. It defined him, and by extension, his team.

  Linda smiled at Joan’s pause, imagining a romantic reverie. “So… did you guys ever…?”

  “No.” Joan smiled. “That romantic European stuff? Not for me.”

  Linda looked disappointed. “Well, we all hope JC settles down someday. He’s a good man, and we want him to be happy.”

  Joan smiled again. “Yeah, so do I.” She knew JC would be happy settling down someday but not to a life like Linda was imagining. Going into an office or regular job every day, worrying about bills and rent and car insurance and good schools for the kids. The JC she knew would die a slow, suffocating death in that life.