by Mason Cross
One-twenty-two Wilston was a mid-twentieth-century four-story building tucked between two smaller, more modern structures. She approached it on the opposite sidewalk, slowing down and regarding the exterior from behind her sunglasses. FDC’s office was on the third floor, going by the number. She scanned the floor, trying to work out which one it was. On the left side of the building as she looked at it, there were two separate businesses, going by the signs. One was a print shop, announced by colorful window decals. The next was a tailor, more measured in its publicity with a neat logo on half-shut roller blinds. The two pairs of windows on the right side were unadorned. It would be one of those.
She paused under the shade of an awning and took her phone out, wondering if she could risk turning it on to call Blake. No. Before she could even make the call, it would light up her location for Costigane like one of the neon signs this city was so famous for. She lifted her eyes from her phone and looked back across the road at the building. The four windows on the right side of the third floor. There was no sign of life. The meeting place was up there, tantalizingly close. She looked at her watch. If Carol was going to keep the meeting, she would be here within the hour.
Sarah juggled the phone in her hand. Looked up and down the street. Came to a decision.
“Hell with it,” she said out loud.
The building’s air conditioning was either broken or very inefficient. It was hotter inside than out. A radio was on in one of the units on the first floor, playing pop music with an insistent Latin beat. The music faded as Sarah ascended to the second floor landing. A man in a suit emerged from the door on the right, looked her over, and hurried past. She wondered if he worked here, or was a customer. She knew buildings like this were good bases for people in illicit lines of work. Lots of people coming and going; mixture of long-established businesses and flash-in-the-pan outfits. Nobody paid anybody else much attention.
The third floor landing had the same layout. Two doors opposite one another and a window. This one was open. This side of the building was in shade, and she lingered by the window to take in some fresh air.
The door on the left had signs for the print shop and the tailor; the one on the right had two stickers: one, which looked old and yellowed, was for a milliner; the second simply had “FDC Partners.” Nice and anonymous. Not a laundromat or a restaurant or anything that would give the authorities reason to launch a fishing expedition if they were so inclined. Just some partners. Probably finance-related. Quite boring, really. Nothing to see here.
Sarah knocked twice and waited.
She heard movement from within and an old man appeared at the door. He was in his sixties, of Asian or Polynesian appearance, maybe one of the many Hawaiians who had settled in this town. He wore chinos and a mustard-colored shirt that had damp patches under the armpits. He looked at Sarah’s face, and then widened his focus to regard the rest of her. She could tell he was looking for something she didn’t have: she guessed a big bag of diamonds. His face gave nothing away, but Sarah noted that he had a hand on the door to stop it swinging fully open.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m a friend of Dominic’s.”
The old guy just stared back at her for a moment, and Sarah started to wonder if she had made a mistake, gotten the wrong place. But the name was on the door, the same as the email. And then she saw something in his eyes that made her realize she hadn’t knocked on the wrong door. But nevertheless, she had made a mistake.
Her mouth was open, about to say something when it hit her. There was a reason the old man was holding the door that way, and it was beyond a desire to be security conscious. He blinked at her, trying to signal something.
“My mistake,” Carol said, hearing the off-guard phoniness in her own voice. “I was looking for the ...”
All of a sudden her mind had gone blank. She was wracking her brains for what she was looking for when the old man shuddered and then his eyes rolled upwards. He disappeared inside the room as though there was a rope attached to his back. The imposing figure of Trenton Gage replaced him. in the doorway.
Sarah turned and ran for the stairs. She was too late. She felt fingers as strong as steel cable grip her upper arm and pull her roughly backwards. She staggered back and collided with the wall. Gage was on her in a second, his arm under her throat, a bloody knife an inch from her neck. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the old man lying face down on the floor, blood seeping from the wound in his back.
Gage’s cold gray eyes regarded her. She saw recognition in them and knew that he remembered her from the house. From two floors down, she heard the muffled beat of the pop song on the radio, and wondered if anyone would hear her if she screamed as he killed her.
“Not who I was expecting,” he said at last. “But you’ll do.”
60
The Howard Johnson on East Tropicana Avenue was a two-story building with a wide parking lot out front bordered by tall palms. It didn’t take me long to find the car. At the back of the lot, hunching between two larger vehicles, was the green Honda Civic formerly owned by the Flagstaff pawnshop clerk. I parked in an empty space a couple down from the Civic and cut the engine.
I hesitated a second before I got out of the car. Unless she had changed her mind, Carol was inside that building. It couldn’t be anyone else, could it? I looked up at the row of anonymous windows on the top floor.
In reception, there was a young Asian guy in a dark green shirt behind the desk. Matt, I presumed. He gave me an appraising look.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“We spoke over the phone a few minutes ago. My friend is checked in here. Room 27, I think.”
He smiled in recognition. “Of course, sir. She’s waiting for you.” He leaned over the desk to indicate the way. “Take the stairs, turn right at the top.”
I thanked him and followed his directions up the single flight of stairs. At the top was a long carpeted corridor interspersed by numbered doors. I counted along the doors. I knocked lightly on 27 and then, when I didn’t get an answer, I tried the handle. It swung open.
The room was small and unremarkable: exactly what you would expect from a budget hotel. Queen bed, minibar, vertical blinds on the window.
She was sitting in a faux-leather armchair by the window. She had obviously had time to buy clothes and freshen up since Corinth. She wore a sky-blue summer dress with white sandals. A pair of sunglasses was perched above her forehead, pushing her red hair back. Her blue eyes were fixed on mine.
“What kept you?”
“I’m fine, thank you,” I said.
“‘Blake.’ That’s the name you’re going with now, huh?”
“For a while now,” I said. “Carter Blake.”
Carol continued to stare at me, and then looked away. “I figured you would be all right. After all, I thought you were dead before. But that just doesn’t seem to be something you do.”
“Stop. I’m getting all choked up here.”
“I told you I didn’t need your help.”
“I know about the Ellison job. You’re in over your head.”
“In fact I told you more than that. I told you to stay the hell away from me.”
I said nothing. Thanks to the ever-helpful Matt on the desk, Carol had had at least twenty minutes’ notice that I was on my way. She could have been miles away by now. But she wasn’t.
“You’re wondering why I let you find me this time, right?”
“It crossed my mind.”
She stood up and reached down on the far side of the bed, she lifted a small backpack onto the bed. She unzipped it and took out a black case about the size and width of a phone book, and opened it on its hinges. Two million dollars twinkled out at me from within. I glanced at it and then back at her.
“Is that why you’re here?” she snapped. “You want your cut?”
I shook my head in frustration. “What happened to you?”
“What happened to me? You happened to me. You.”
; “I never got a chance to talk to you. To explain everything.”
She shook her head and started to smile, as though I had cracked a joke. The look in her eyes showed anything but amusement. She closed the case and put it back into the backpack, ready to take with her to her rendezvous on Wilston Street.
“You want to know what happened to me? I had to learn how to survive. Do you know what it was like? Running all the time, trying to find the cheapest motel in every new town. Working shitty jobs for tips. Hitching rides with God-knows-who. Looking over my shoulder every day wondering if today was the day someone was going to find me.”
She stopped to take a breath and looked out of the window.
“I didn’t even know who I was running from. I knew who had gotten me into it ...” she snorted. “Actually that’s not even true. I didn’t know you. I never knew you, ‘Blake.’”
I tried not to let the wince show on the outside. I stepped away from the door and sat down on the bed. Carol paused for a second and then lifted the strap of the backpack over her shoulder and walked past me to the door.
“I never thought any of that would happen,” I said.
“I had to leave everybody behind. And the worst thing? The worst thing was that no matter how much I hated you, I actually missed you. I thought about you for months. Even though you destroyed my life, even though for all I knew you killed the senator yourself, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I thought we had something, and you just ...”
“We did,” I said. “And I never stopped thinking about you.”
She stopped, her right hand on the door handle. She didn’t turn around. Waited for me to continue.
“Carlson came to me. He wanted to blow the lid on Winterlong, but he needed proof. Proof I could get him.”
I waited for her to turn the handle and walk out of the door again. She didn’t move. And then she relaxed her grip on the handle, still not turning to face me.
“You know about Winterlong,” I continued. “I read the notebook, I know you put two and two together. I wondered if you would, last year. If you were still out there, if you would hear about it and know it was over.”
“It’s never over,” she said softly.
I thought about how I could tell her everything now that I couldn’t say back then. About the job, about Senator Carlson, about Afghanistan. I thought about telling her what I had done since then, where I had been, who I had become. But it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. Because she was right. What’s done is done. But it’s never over.
“Carol, I’m sorry.”
She turned back to face me finally. She made no move to drop the bag. Her eyes were a little red, but she wasn’t crying.
“Dom was a little like you, you know that? I didn’t see it at first, otherwise I would have run a mile. He seemed normal, down to earth. It was an act. A good one. By the time I found out what he was really like, about his past, it was too late. And I thought, what the hell? I spent the last few years surviving, I’m good at it. Why not?”
I turned away from her and moved to the window, looking out at the cars passing on the street below. Without thinking too much about it, I realized I had assumed Carol’s marriage was fake; somehow part of the setup. Now I knew it had been real, at least to begin with, I wasn’t sure how I felt.
I cleared my throat. “How did he get involved with the Ellison job?”
She sighed. “He was just a hire. Somebody else planned everything out and needed personnel.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, I never met him. The offer came through one of Dom’s friends. A guy named McKinney he did time with. I knew Dom well enough to know something was going on, and I made him tell me everything. He and McKinney, drove out to meet this guy in a big house down in Clark County. Dom said the place was empty, like it was between owners. There was another guy there too: that was Deakins. A minute after they arrived a car pulled up outside and two men came into the house. The man in charge said his name was Walter, and that he specialized in this kind of thing. Putting together the plan and getting somebody else to run it ... like a franchise, he said. Dom thought it sounded like a great idea. It didn’t take me long to work out something wasn’t right.”
“Like what?” I prompted, then added, “Apart from the obvious.”
She shrugged. “It sounded too good to be true. Dom had a lot of good points, but he was no master criminal. He was small-time, they all were. McKinney and Deakins too.”
“So why were they chosen?”
“That’s exactly why they were chosen. They were supposed to be the fall guys. A job like that, they pull out all the stops to find the perpetrators. Their job wasn’t just to do the dirty work, it was to get caught afterwards.”
I thought back to what I had read about the case. The shootout in Boulder City a few days after the heist. An anonymous tip-off. “They were being set up,” I said.
She nodded. “But to do that, I knew that they had to make sure the job went through all right first. And the plan itself was solid. We talked about it. At first I wanted to bail, get the hell out of there and let them find some other idiots to take the fall ... but it was a good plan. And we were talking millions. Between us, we came up with a plan.”
“A heist on the heist.”
“You could say that. We talked to Dom’s friend McKinney, too. We made an agreement. We made an agreement. They knew what they were doing on the job itself, I worked out what we would do afterwards. Logistics.”
I couldn’t help but smile. That had always been one of her talents. I could put together the rest of it myself. The three of them made sure the diamonds were spirited away before the bust. An arrangement to hide the take until the heat was off: one safe, two keys, a secure remote location hundreds of miles away where no one would think to look. And then it was just a waiting game. Lying low, hiding from their pursuers in plain sight. It had all gone perfectly until ...
“Why did you leave Summerlin?”
“Our original buyer disappeared on us. We don’t know exactly what happened to him, but, well, you can guess.”
“You think the men who hired Freel got to him.”
“We didn’t know what to do after that. We talked to McKinney and the three of us decided we had to find a way to cash in. It was only a matter of time before they found us, too.”
She was right. It had taken them a while, but they had found the house. I didn’t know how all of the pieces fit together yet, but it had set in motion a train of events that left Freel dead, and Carol and me in this hotel room. And out there, somewhere, Trenton Gage. I didn’t know what kind of man this “Walter” was, but his employee gave me concern enough. Perhaps it wasn’t too late, though.
“You don’t need to run anymore.”
“You’re right,” Carol said. “I’m sick of running, sick of surviving. After today, I’ll never need to run again. You remember what you told me once? Names are like hotel rooms. I’m checking out of Carol, I can leave all of this behind.”
“Not like this. If you walk out of that door, sooner or later you’re going to find yourself with your back to the wall, staring down the barrel of a gun. Or you can forget about this, leave those diamonds in this room and get out of here with a real chance at a new start.”
She shook her head. “You wanted to know why I waited for you? To say goodbye. I figured maybe it would take if I gave you the message in person this time.”
I had nothing left to say. Carol turned the door handle, and at the same second, my phone buzzed for an incoming call. I looked down at the screen.
“Who is it?” Carol asked, holding the door half-open.
“It’s Sarah.”
61
But it wasn’t Sarah calling. It was Gage.
“We can’t keep meeting like this, Blake.”
I swallowed and tried to keep the anger I was feeling out of my voice. “Put Sarah on the line.”
“Why not? If it’ll make things go faster.
”
A pause as the phone was moved from his ear and then I heard Sarah’s voice.
“I’m sorry, Blake.”
“Don’t be,” I said calmly. “Did he hurt you?”
“I’m okay. I went to Wilston Street and he had already ... the fence is dead.”
“This is going to be fine. Put Gage back on the line.”
Gage wasted no time on pleasantries. “You know what I want, and I know you can find her.”
My eyes darted to Carol, still standing in the doorway. “I don’t know where she is. Even if I did, I’m not giving you Carol.”
Carol’s expression had been puzzled, but now her mouth dropped open as she began to realize what had happened.
“That’s a pity,” Gage said. “For your friend here, I mean.”
“I wasn’t finished. You’re right, I can find her, and I can get you the diamonds. But I need a guarantee Sarah won’t be harmed.” I watched Carol as I spoke. She didn’t move, didn’t react to what I had said at all.
“You’re not in a position to be demanding guarantees, my friend.” He thought it over. “Okay, I’m not an unreasonable guy. If you can get the diamonds, we can all live with that. You want her to come out of this okay, the best thing you can do is make sure I have what I want by two o’clock.”
My watch said eleven thirty-two. “That’s not enough time.”
“You’re being modest,” Gage said dismissively. “It’s plenty. Your friend here says you’re good at finding people, and from what I’ve seen so far, as one professional to another, I’m impressed.”
He wasn’t so bad himself, I thought, but there was no way in hell I was going to tell him that.
“I’ll call this number again in a couple of hours and give you the location,” he continued. “If I don’t see you, unarmed, with the diamonds at two o’clock, I’ll kill Ms. Blackwell here and review my options. Two sharp. I take timekeeping very seriously.”
I believed him. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.
“Blake, are you still there?”
“No,” I said. “I’m too busy finding your goddamn diamonds.”