Strip

by Thomas Perry

  “Good. Can you please unlock these handcuffs so we can have a real discussion about this?”

  “Want to know what I thought?”

  “Sure I do, but I’d like to have these handcuffs and ropes off first.”

  “Sorry. What I was thinking was that the way you and your partner treated me, and the way you treated my ex-boyfriend, well, it was kind of overbearing. The word Joe Carver used was ‘thug.’ I wouldn’t have used that word, but I might have said ‘bully.’ And then I thought, ‘Would a cop do that?’ and ‘Would a cop really sleep with me?’”

  “Have you walked by a mirror lately? Ninety percent of cops wouldn’t be able to help themselves. The others are straight women. As for your boyfriend, I was doing my duty. A police officer, even if he’s just made what’s technically an error in judgment, sleeping with a witness, can’t let a contact with an angry civilian turn into a free-for-all, with everybody having an equal right to throw punches. We don’t hold debates or try cases. We have to take charge and remain in control.”

  “Wow. Did you see that on TV?”

  “It’s part of standard police training.”

  “So is not getting citizens to sleep with you.”

  “I admitted I made a mistake. Rules are rules, but you’re the strongest temptation I ever came across, by a mile. I know it was against regulations, but at that moment, I honestly didn’t care. Right now I feel sorry that I failed, but I’d do it all over again.”

  “You’ve got the Oscar wrapped up, so don’t overact.”

  “Why are you suddenly being so cynical?”

  “While you were asleep I decided to do some checking. Your name is Detective Sergeant Allan Reid. That’s what it says on your ID. But your driver’s license, credit cards, and everything say Jerry Gaffney. Your badge says ‘patrolman.’”

  “My police ID is accurate. My badge is the one I got coming out of the academy, because the number belonged to my father. I still carry it because it makes me feel like he’s looking over my shoulder.”

  “You tricked me, and you used me. But I had fun with you yesterday and last night. And without intending to, you forced me to take a look at what I was settling for as a boyfriend. It’s something I needed. For those reasons, I’m not inclined to call the cops—the real ones—and have them come and haul you away like this. Instead, I’d like you to put on your clothes and skedaddle.”

  Jerry Gaffney looked at his feet, then into her eyes. “I guess I’d be stupid not to leave, huh?”

  “I have the impression that impersonating a cop is a felony.”

  “It is. Want to unlock me?”

  “You have to promise not to try anything.”

  “All right. I promise.”

  “I sure hope you’re not under the foolish, mistaken impression that I won’t have the heart to shoot you if you pull something. I’m a farm girl from Missouri. My dad is a gun nut. All the Belknaps are shooters.”

  She walked around to the front of him, pressed the magazine release on his gun and took out the magazine, then pulled back the slide to eject the round in the chamber, closed it, and tossed the gun on the bed. Then she reached into her nightstand and took out a .38 revolver. “If I have to shoot you, I’ll use my own gun. I’m used to it.”

  He smiled. “Shoot lots of guys?”

  She looked into his eyes for a couple of seconds, as though searching for some sign of intelligence. Then she tossed his clothes on the bed, walked around behind him, unlocked his handcuffs, and stepped back, her gun in her hand.

  Jerry Gaffney dressed, not slowly, but not making any unexpected or quick moves. When he was ready, he said, “Sandy, I apologize for lying to you. I regret it more than you know.” He stood and walked toward the side door.

  “Wait.”

  He stopped and looked back at her.

  “Oh, this is stupid,” she said. “Never mind.”

  “What?”

  “I said never mind.”

  He turned and went to the door, opened it, and stepped across the threshold.

  “Wait.”

  He stopped.

  “Are you really a thug working for a gangster?”

  “I’m a security professional working for Manco Kapak. He’s not a gangster. He owns Wash in Hollywood and a couple of clubs in the Valley. Once in a great while I’ve had to step in and physically prevent somebody from doing something foolish. I don’t think that makes me a thug.”

  She sighed. “Better, but still not nearly enough. Don’t you see? I’m a daylight person. I can’t have a guy who’s even a little bit of a thug once in a while—a night person. Even dating a cop was going to be a bit over the line, but I kind of tried you on, because I thought you got your scars protecting people from bad guys, and if it didn’t work out, at least I gave a heroic guy a nice time. I could do that. But not somebody in a shady business, especially not somebody who’s a bit of a con man. I can’t be in a relationship with a guy and know there’s no particular reason to believe anything he says. So that’s that. You have to go. If I see you again, we’ll have to do the police thing again, using real police. If you come in the wrong way at the wrong time, I’ll have to shoot you.”

  “I understand.” He stood there for a moment, then went out and closed the door. He walked slowly and deliberately to his car, got in, and drove. He put his Bluetooth earpiece in his ear and pressed his brother’s number on his phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “Jimmy. It’s me.”

  “Not only did my phone already tell me that, but since you’re my brother, I might recognize your voice by now. Where you been?”

  “Where you left me, using Sandy Belknap to get to Carver.”

  “Did you?”

  “He called. The son of a bitch called and told her we work for Kapak.”

  “You didn’t deny it?”

  “Of course I did. She found some problems with my ID, so here I am.”

  “How did you leave it?”

  “We left it that if she sees me again she’ll call the police or shoot me.”

  “Sounds like the way you leave it with all your girlfriends. Did she mean it?”

  “I’ve seen her cell phone, and I’ve seen her gun.”

  “Are we getting any closer to Joe Carver?”

  “She and I noised his name around town for a while, and it got his attention. He called her once, and he’ll call her again. She’s wonderful.”

  “Can we put something on her phone to record it when he calls?”

  “I’m planning to try, of course” He actually hadn’t thought about his next move yet. His rejection still stung too much. “What about you? Have you just been sitting on your ass waiting for your big brother to get to Carver?”

  “Last night, Kapak had me and Voinovich put all the money from Siren, Temptress, and Wash in the safe at Siren and sit with it. Carver and that girl you met at the bank the other night robbed us.”

  “You must be okay, since you’re talking to me. Is Voinovich?”

  “Nobody’s hurt, but they hauled the safe away in that big-ass SUV Voinovich drives—that Sequoia. He’s kind of sensitive about it.”

  “Jesus. Carver never sleeps. And that crazy girl, where did she come from? Did she fire any rounds?”

  “She couldn’t wait. Right inside the storage area in the back of Siren—bam! Right through the roof, to show us she wasn’t shitting around. Every minute that woman was waving that big .45 around, I felt as likely to die as live. She gave me the impression that she actually wanted to kill us, but that Carver wouldn’t let her.”

  “The whole thing gives me the creeps,” said Jerry. “How did they even get into the building?”

  “The police are looking into that,” Jimmy said. “Look, I’ve got to get going on this other thing right now, so I’ll talk to you later.”

  Jerry could tell that what Jimmy wasn’t telling was that it was Jimmy’s fault somehow. Jimmy had let them in, and it was probably something embarrassingly stupid. Jerry
felt a wave of compassion for his brother. Having awakened naked and handcuffed, he understood, but compassion wasn’t the kind of emotion that lasted. “What other thing?”

  “I don’t want to go into it on the phone. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Jerry stared at his phone for a second, then put it in his pocket. He had a mission now. He drove to Sherman Oaks and stopped around the corner from the Eye Spy Shop, then walked the rest of the way. He knew that there must be cameras and things recording everything that went on at the store. If they had all that stuff, how could they resist using it?

  Jerry stepped into the store, and he could see himself in the big monitor on the wall in high definition, stepping into the store. He surveyed the counters and shelves, which were full of gadgets that looked as though they were exhibits in a museum commemorating some repressive government that had fallen: buttonhole cameras that could peek out of a hat or coat or briefcase, microphones that could be inserted into telephones, others that could be plugged into electric outlets to transmit speech from rooms. There were video cameras disguised as clocks, radios, and audio speakers. There were lots of computer gear—keystroke counters, programs for collecting and reviewing instant messages.

  He judged that the customers must be about evenly divided between parents who wanted to spy on their babysitters and nannies, and people who wanted to spy on their spouses. He found what he wanted right away. It was a radio transmitter hidden inside a surge suppressor. He had seen a power bar very much like it under the desk in Sandy Belknap’s apartment from his hiding place behind the sliding door in her closet. It had several things plugged into it: a laptop computer, a phone charger, a printer.

  He bought the proper receiver and recorder too. The transmitter had a range of only three miles, but he could listen to the recorder by telephone. He took his purchases back to Sandy’s apartment building, and then drove in ever-widening circles until he found an apartment two blocks away. He found it in time to catch the building manager before he went off to work, and persuaded him to accept a deposit on the place and give him a key.

  After another few minutes he called Sandy’s apartment. There was no answer, so he drove by and studied the windows and looked for her car. He parked, walked to the front door, pretended to knock with his left hand while he slipped a credit card into the crack between the door and the jamb and opened it. He set his surge suppressor beside Sandy’s and was pleased with the close resemblance as he plugged his into the outlet. He plugged her devices into his suppressor, making sure that they were in the same receptacles, took her surge suppressor with him, and left.

  At his new apartment he set up his receiver and drove a few miles away to have lunch at a pancake house. In the lot he took out his telephone and called the receiver and listened. He heard a few sounds in her empty apartment, picked out the noise of a car going by outside, heard a siren. He hung up.

  He had a late breakfast of pancakes with so much sweet syrup that it made his teeth feel as though they had a sticky film on them. It had been meant to be a consolation for losing Sandy, but it only accentuated the feeling that he had made another enormous mistake in a life that was full of them.

  He went out to the car and called Voinovich’s cell phone. “It’s Jerry,” he said. “I heard you and my brother had a bad night.”

  “They got my car, the safe, and maybe sixty thousand dollars in cash.”

  “Jimmy told me. Sorry about your car. Let’s hope they’ll leave it someplace without doing any damage.”

  “The cops got it back an hour ago, but they didn’t get Carver or the girl. The cops want me to come in and get it, but I’m not sure Carver didn’t leave our guns in it. I could go in and sign my name and have them push me into a cell. It happened to my cousin in Moscow years ago.”

  “This isn’t Moscow. What I’d do is say they’re Carver’s guns.”

  “They could have our prints on them.”

  “Then think of a reason for that and have it ready in case you need it.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you say if things are going against you. That’s how I ended up here, so many thousands of miles from home. I had a job unloading ships in Odessa at night—foreign ships. The owners seemed to understand that by losing a little cargo, they were gaining a lot of goodwill. But then, my bosses started having setbacks. There was a police captain who needed to be paid off, and he wanted more than there was. So my bosses were going to leave. They sent all their money ahead of them to New York to put it into an American bank. Then they flew in. But when they were going through customs, the older one, Anatoly, fell down with a heart attack and died on the spot. He was carrying all the paperwork for the money transfer, and so the American police started asking questions. Andrei, the other one, got deported. The money couldn’t be sent back with him.”

  “How did that get you stuck here?”

  “I had come to New York ahead of time. I was supposed to make everything smooth. I rented apartments, leased a good car. I was waiting at the airport when I saw the ambulance come and take Anatoly away. The others had my name and address with the paperwork, so I couldn’t ever go back to Odessa either. It was because Anatoly’s luck changed.”

  “Do you think Kapak’s luck has changed?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m watching. When it happens, it can take an hour. A minute. And who would take over if Kapak died?” asked Voinovich.

  “That’s a good question,” Jerry said. “He hasn’t made any arrangements that I’ve heard of.”

  “When a rich man dies, relatives show up,” said Voinovich. “Then we’ll see how our luck is.”

  Jerry said, “Maybe we should figure out how we want this to play out, and then make sure it happens the right way.”

  “Who would be in on it?”

  “You, me, and my brother Jimmy.”

  27

  SPENCE KNELT ON the bare floor in the apartment under the window and assembled the rifle. It was before noon, but there was no point in waiting to get ready. The girl, this Sonia, worked in an office, and that meant she left for work at eight in the morning and came home at six. Today she must have called in sick or left early, because she was home. But for Spence, it didn’t matter what time it was.

  He raised his head from his work and looked through his second-floor window down into the girl’s apartment. She had changed into a pair of black sweatpants and a T-shirt that had been printed with the words “Mackinac Island.” It wasn’t a great sign. If she was expecting Carver to visit, then she should be dressed better than that.

  But he wasn’t going to assume Carver wouldn’t show. He might arrive much later, when he would feel safe. She seemed to be fooling around in the kitchen, doing some kind of cooking, so maybe she was making a fancy dinner. And maybe he showed up here only at bedtime, when the sweatpants and T-shirt came off.

  Spence was resigned to the fact that he might have to keep coming to this apartment and watching for weeks before Carver showed up. Spence moved back from the window to a dark spot on the floor where the sunlight didn’t reach him and stared through the rifle sight at Sonia. He had the rifle’s elevation sighted to a distance of a hundred yards, and this distance was under a hundred feet, so he would have to remember to adjust. She was turned to the side and staring down at whatever was on the stove. He sighted low on her temple, aware that the bullet would take her an inch above, but it would blow through her skull and embed itself in a wall. With the magnification he could see individual wisps of hair that had escaped from her ponytail and trailed near the delicate pink rim of her ear. He moved the crosshairs to the diamond stud in her earlobe. She turned toward him as though she had felt an unexpected chill, but her eyes were low, looking out her window at the empty lawn between the two buildings.

  He didn’t intend to shoot the girl, not even later. She was just bait. He lowered the rifle, released the empty box magazine, and set the rifle across the arms of his easy chair. He reached for the box of ammunition and opened it.


  He heard a metallic snick-chuck-snick sound that made his breath catch— shotgun! He dove toward the side and rolled, trying to get closer to the corner of the wall where he could scramble out of the line of fire.

  A voice said, “Stop, or I’ll have to take your head off.”

  Spence already had the fingers of his right hand touching the handgrips of the pistol in his jacket pocket, but he knew he wouldn’t have the time to get it out before the muzzle flash brought obliteration. “So why haven’t you already?” He could see the man at the back of the room, standing and holding the short pump shotgun in his direction—not aiming, just carrying it with the muzzle at Spence’s chest level so he could hardly miss. He knew that the man must have come in and sat in the bedroom or the bathroom waiting for him to arrive, then stood and watched him.

  “Because I wanted to talk to you, Spence. That’s why I brought you here.”

  “So this was for me—the girl and everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because as I watched you and Kapak and his men, and listened to what you all said, it seemed to me that you were the solitary guy, the one that the others were afraid of and maybe didn’t quite trust. So it had to be you.”

  “When did you get close enough to see that?”

  “It doesn’t get me anything to tell you how I do things. But this is the last time I try to talk to any of you. It’s too risky to arrange meetings just to keep explaining over and over again.”

  “What do you have to explain?”

  “I’m not the guy who robbed Kapak.”

  “Your girlfriend down there told me that.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend. I met her just after I came to town, but when I heard that what she told the Gaffneys was what made Kapak think I was his robber, I realized she was the way to get to you. That’s all.”

  “If you did or didn’t rob Kapak, why did you stick around after you heard we were looking for you?”

  “I figured if I hid out and waited awhile, then the real robber would turn up, rob somebody else, or even rob Kapak again. He’d get caught, and that would be the end of it. But when your friends started getting close to finding me, I knew I’d better go see Kapak. I talked to him and let him see my face, so he’d know I wasn’t the one. I thought at first that he was persuaded, but when I was walking away, he took a shot at me.”