Favors and Lies

by Mark Gilleo

  “Jesus. Look at that. He’s hardly sweating.”

  “I know,” Major said. “A thing of beauty.”

  “Can’t say the same for the treadmill. I think the engine is burning.”

  “I smell it. I’ll turn it off. I think we have seen enough.”

  Ridge dismounted, returned the weights to the rack, and joined Reed Temple and Major in the corner.

  Major was holding up a throwaway phone in a zipped bag.

  “That is the phone?” Temple asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see who put it there?”

  “No. It was obviously a plant. A ruse at our expense. It is a low-quality, throwaway Chinese model. Goes by the name of GoodBuy.”

  “I am sure the uncle was behind this,” Reed Temple replied.

  “Probably. We were in and out in a few minutes, but the location had some complexities. If it was a stakeout, then I am sure we were captured in photos.”

  “Which means we have all been seen.”

  Major replied. “We have all been seen, but Ridge and I were not benefitted by a disguise. You were the hunter. We were the hunted.”

  “Any prints on the phone?”

  “Two sets of prints. It would be easy enough to match with the uncle through typical surveillance and dusting.”

  “Easy enough? Didn’t we try this with the DC police already?”

  “Yes. We provided a gun—a murder weapon—with the uncle’s prints to the police.”

  “Obviously, there was a hiccup.”

  “According to the now deceased mugger-for-hire, the uncle’s prints should have been on the gun used to kill the police detective. The hired help indicated that during the confrontation on the stairs of the promenade, the uncle possessed the gun, held it, dismantled it, and threw it over the wall. That is where we found it, and where it was used on the Asian detective when he surprised us. The weapon was white gloved. We left the gun five feet from the detective’s body. We can’t do the police’s job. We gave them the evidence. We can’t force them to use it.”

  “We better figure out something. The uncle is on to us. I’m not sure how, but he is making progress. He is becoming a potentially serious hazard to operations and career longevity.”

  Major smiled. “We were told not to kill the uncle. Does that still stand?”

  “For now.”

  “What about other collateral damage?”

  “Not my concern, as long as it doesn’t come back to us.”

  Major held up the bag and eyed the phone before smiling even wider. “Christmas may have come early. We just need to decide where to hide the present.”

  Chapter 23

  —

  Dan parked in front of Prospect House, a massive white condominium in Rosslyn. The fourteen-story building had been constructed in the seventies and was the proud owner of one the finest views in the DC area, if not the entire East Coast. The front of Prospect House conjured little envy. The west façade peeked down on sprawling blocks of low-rise apartment buildings that ran down the still-affordable side of Route 50 between the Potomac and Courthouse. Low-rent Latino strongholds mingled with swanky townhouses and blocks of squat brick apartment buildings heavy with military and student clientele. It was a prime example of real estate owners embracing their middle class tenants until they received an offer too good to refuse, finally forcing the under-financed to locations further afield.

  The east-facing side of Prospect House was another matter entirely. Balconies and two-story windows perched over the Iwo Jima Memorial, in perfect alignment with the Mall on the other side of the Potomac. The Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument stood at attention. The Capitol, over three miles away, was the cherry on the visual sundae. Dan’s date for the evening lived on the top floor of residences, on the sexy side of the building.

  Dan walked through the glass doors of the lobby and approached the front desk. “I’m here to see Haley Falls. Apartment 1212.”

  The man behind the desk did a quick measure of Dan and nodded in the direction of the intercom on the lobby wall. “Punch in the name.”

  Dan ran through the names and found Haley’s number. The speaker crackled after a quiet beep.

  “I’m in the lobby.”

  “I’ll be down in five.”

  Haley Falls strolled from the elevator in a leather skirt and a tight-fitting white sweater that left little to Dan’s imagination, other than the question of whether it was the chilly air or his mere presence.

  Dan opened his arm and Haley, a leggy brunette, walked into his embrace. The man behind the desk looked up and then eyed the monitor on the desk, scanning the feeds from the other security cameras.

  “You up for a walk?” Dan asked.

  Haley looked down at her red heels. “How far are we going?”

  “Two blocks.”

  “The Quarterdeck?”

  Dan winked.

  “I’m wearing a white sweater.”

  “I will get you a bib.”

  Haley Falls, formerly known as Lena Pavlovna, whispered a curse in Russian, her rusty native tongue.

  —

  The Quarterdeck was an Arlington institution. Nestled on the corner of two residential streets that ran along the north side of Fort Myers and Arlington Cemetery, the Quarterdeck wasn’t on the tourist maps. The faux 7-ll next door, with which the Quarterdeck shared its parking spaces, had been there nearly as long as the seafood and crab shack. Rumor hinted there was once a strip club in the back, but any patron old enough to have firsthand knowledge wasn’t talking. As men get older and wiser, they learn wives never forget. And there was no sense in dredging up suspicion from decades ago.

  Dan and Haley stood in line on the back deck for a couple of minutes before the waitress led them inside to a quiet corner. The waitress plopped down a stack of newspapers, a pair of wooden mallets, and a scratched-up laminated menu. “Y’all having crabs?” she asked, the presumption already made.

  “And two beers,” Dan added.

  Haley Falls waited until the waitress walked away. “I got a call about you. Ginger was out at Good Time Charlie and a DC detective was asking questions about you. A lot of questions.”

  “Good old Ginger. Always keeping her ear to the ground.”

  “She is a good friend. And she always liked you. What about the detective?”

  “I figured he would ask around.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Not yet, but I am working on it.”

  The waitress dropped two light beers off on the table without breaking stride.

  “I should have asked for the best American beer in the house.”

  “It’s a crab shack.”

  “I’m trying to balance snobbery without drinking piss-water.”

  “You take a woman to a crab shack, you have to lower your expectations.”

  “Isn’t the saying you can take a woman out of a crab shack but you can’t take the crabs out of . . .”

  “Careful.”

  Dan made a quick toast in Russian. “To another year alive.”

  The crabs came, steaming hot, and the wooden mallets were put to work, bits of shell rocketing from the table onto the worn tile floor. Beer mixed with crab meat dipped in butter sprinkled with Old Bay. When they were finished, Haley and Dan pushed their chairs against the wall and sat parallel to the table.

  “A whole meal and you didn’t ask for a single favor,” Haley said. “It must be important.”

  “Are you saying I can’t have dinner with a friend without something in it for me?”

  “No, I’m saying you were never much for small talk, so the last hour must have killed you.”

  “You have no idea. Seventy-two minutes of crabs and chit-chat. I deserve a star.”

  “We shall see,” Ha
ley said, slugging her beer with a flip of her hair.

  Dan noticed Haley’s radiant skin and perfect brown hair. Her smile warmed the table. Smiling himself, Dan finally succumbed. “I have a favor to ask.”

  Haley looked at her watch. “Seventy-three minutes.”

  “Eighty-eight minutes since we left your front door.”

  “But who is counting?”

  “I need help from one of your girls.”

  “Dan, darling. Women.”

  “Women then.”

  “What kind of help?”

  Dan looked around the room and lowered his voice amidst the din of crabs being pounded by hammers. “I’m looking for a particular kind of customer.”

  “Someone with a little foot fetish?”

  “No. Someone with certain knowledge of the intelligence variety.”

  Haley sighed and swigged another mouthful from her beer. The room was emptying, the mix of office workers and neighborhood couples heading home for the evening. “What about the Dan Lord rule book? No spooks was at the top of the list, if I remember correctly.”

  “Good memory. No spies, no mafia. Those are my rules.”

  “I also recall you touting that those rules keep you alive.”

  “They have.”

  “So if you have rules that keep you alive, and those rules state you are not to do business with intelligence personnel or members of organized crime, what are we discussing?”

  “This time it’s personal.”

  “Conner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “His death was not an accident?”

  “It is currently labeled as an overdose. The official test results have not come back yet.”

  “I don’t know, Dan. You have rules. I have rules too. Rules that will keep me alive. A woman has to think about her future.”

  “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Yes, you will. For starters, the next time I need a check on one of my girls, or a client, you’ll do it gratis.”

  “The next five times.”

  “Ten,” Haley added.

  “Russian negotiation tactics?”

  “The first rule of negotiation is that nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.”

  “Then I will stop talking before I owe a debt I can’t repay.”

  “What exactly are you looking for?”

  “Someone who can be compromised. Someone who has been around the block. I don’t want some wet-behind-the-ears rookie. I’m not looking for a desk-jockey. I’m not looking for a computer whiz. I already have one of those charging me more than I can afford. I’m interested in someone long in the tooth. Someone with real experience.”

  Haley cursed in Russian and then switched back to English. “Jesus, Dan. You are not ordering from a catalog.”

  “We’ve done this drill before.”

  “Not with this type of clientele.”

  Dan lifted his beer and drained his bottle. “I’m trying to find a ghost. I need someone who can help me find someone without a name. Can you help?”

  “I have a client in mind, though it is hard to say for certain. Remember my first rule: people are generally full of shit. Cab drivers claim they were once doctors in their home country. Office workers who have trouble ambling up the stairs claim they are former athletes. High school dropouts claim they have PhDs from Harvard.”

  “Politicians who claim to be honest.”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what about this client makes him more believable than the rest? Why is he not a liar?”

  “This client talks in his sleep. I haven’t met anyone who lies in their sleep. Yet.”

  “Brilliant.”

  “You have to come up with a plan that doesn’t implicate me or my employee. And if you compromise this guy and he stops seeing one of my employees, you are going to need to pay for the lost income. Regular customers are becoming rarer. This guy has been a regular for a long time.”

  “How much compensation?”

  “The going rate for services is three hundred an hour. So if this guy has weekly appointments, you are looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of seven thousand for, say, six months of compensation.”

  “Not a problem. What else can you tell me about the client? Married? Potentially angry wife?”

  Haley just smiled.

  “Nothing else?”

  “Be prepared. That is all I can say. Remember, there is a reason you have your rules.”

  Haley took a slow sip of her beer and then ran her finger around the edge of the glass bottle neck. “You want to come back? Have a nightcap?”

  Dan felt a tingle below his waist—an old tingle but one without complications.

  “Is that part of the deal?”

  “No Dan, not with you. Paybacks, favors—those were never part of the equation when it came to you.”

  “I might not have my A-game. I have a lot on my mind.”

  “I’ll take your B-game.”

  “I’ll get the check.”

  “I’ll make a call and get you the latest information on your spy.”

  —

  Dan put his shoes on in the living room, overlooking the flickering lights of the city and the illuminated National Mall.

  “Great view,” Dan said aloud.

  Haley was in the kitchen wearing only her sweater, talking on the phone. She stopped at the kitchen counter to scribble on a piece of paper then walked into the living room, her long legs and exposed derrière shining in the reflection of the glass wall.

  “Another great view,” Dan added as Haley ended her phone call.

  “Thanks, Dan.” She handed him the piece of paper. “Here is the address and the time.”

  “Standing weekly meeting?”

  “Regular as clockwork.”

  “Thanks, Haley.”

  She bent over and kissed him on the neck. “Walk me down to my car. I have to go into the city. Have an employee issue to straighten out.”

  “One of your girls get busted?”

  “Not yet. And I was hoping to keep it that way.”

  Chapter 24

  —

  Detective Wallace kept a running tab of murder scenes—no small feat in a city averaging a murder a day since the advent of crack. With twenty-five years on the force, he had processed over four hundred murder scenes. Some locations were hotbeds. Recurring supply for the morgues. The five years he spent in the lawless blocks that ran from little Trinidad to Catholic University revealed widely accepted drop-zones for those on the wrong end of a drug deal. Pull your car down one of the narrow backstreets, push the door open, and roll the body to the curb. No fuss, no muss.

  Wallace had seen the city grow meaner, more callous. Where the narcotics trade had once been the most risky extracurricular activity in the city, a mere accidental shoulder bump with a stranger was now likely to end with an upward tick on the city’s body count.

  The alley behind the Ritz Carlton residence was a murderous first for the detective. The broad stretch of clean concrete was immaculate, less for the dead woman between the spotless Dumpsters that were emptied twice a day to keep away the rats. The Ritz could afford the extra garbage pickup. It couldn’t afford not to.

  A squad car blocked each end of the alley and Detective Wallace could feel the stares from the Ritz Carlton guests in their windows above. The manager of the hotel, a squat man in a tailored suit, had spoken with the first officer on the scene and begged, nearly wept, for expediency in processing the scene. Dead bodies did even less for hotel ambiance than rats.

  A white uniformed police officer stood behind Detective Wallace as he kneeled, processing the scene. The officer took turns taking notes for the detective and eyeing the alley for rubberneckers. Detective Wallace spoke over his shoulder without taking
his eyes off the victim.

  “White female. Mid-thirties. Leather skirt and white sweater still intact and unmolested. Looks like strangulation. Ligature marks on the neck. Dead maybe five hours, but the coroner will be able to give a more exact time.”

  “The coroner is on the way. He had a busy night.”

  “Not in this section of town,” Detective Wallace replied, opening the small red purse next to the deceased’s hand. “Any surveillance cameras?”

  “We have one above the back entrance, but we’re doing a canvass for horizontal views from ATMs and other establishments.”

  “What does the back entrance camera show us?”

  “Not much. The back door is used by staff. The camera is focused on the doorway. Probably theft prevention. There are three other fire doors, one-way exits with alarms. None are reported to have been accessed.”

  Detective Wallace opened the purse with his latex-gloved hands. He placed the contents of the small bag one-by-one on the concrete next to the body and described the inventory as the officer continued to take notes.“One red lipstick. L’Oreal. A folding hairbrush. A Samsung cell phone. A pair of sunglasses, still in their case. A set of keys. A car key to a BMW, three keys that look like house keys, and one key that probably fits a post box, meaning she likely lives in an apartment building.”

  Wallace unsnapped the women’s matching red pocketbook. He read the driver’s license and paused as he always did when a name came with the body, when the dead took back a moment of life to tell the detective who they were. “Haley Falls, resident of Arlington County. Lives at Prospect House, unit 1212.”

  “So, you were right about the keys being to an apartment building.”

  “She’s a considerate victim. I’m used to working without an ID.”

  “A considerate victim would have let you sleep in.”

  Detective Wallace continued with the inventory of the pocketbook. “Three hundred and forty-two dollars in cash. Five credit cards and a check card.”

  “A cell-phone, credit cards, and over three hundred in cash?”