Damnable

  “Tell me the address. And you’re really certain about this?”

  “What kind of a relationship would this be if we started off lying to one another?”

  He heard her grumble something unintelligible and ignored it. He repeated the address several times, then hung up and left the Laundromat. Outside, he stepped into the street and hailed a cab. The driver told him it would take about twenty minutes to get to the address Fred had given him.

  It was obvious she was lying. That meant she had no right to expect the truth from him. Or did it? The question suddenly seemed important, but he decided not to dwell on it. He settled back into the seat and closed his eyes. In an op, you took sleep where and when you could get it. And he was starting to get the feeling this was the last chance he was going to have for the rest of the night.

  THE TAXI DROPPED HATCHER OFF IN FRONT OF A DARK brick building with cascading fire escapes. The gloaming sky was fading to black, but he decided not to wait for nightfall. Hadn’t even asked to be dropped off a block away. There was no sense in trying to be stealth in a zero-sum game. His play had either worked, or it hadn’t.

  He rubbed his eyes and pulled out the cell phone. He brought up the call log again, then pressed send. There was still only one number. It rang twice.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here.”

  “At the door?”

  “Yes.”

  Hatcher heard a buzz and moved to the entrance, keeping the phone at his ear. The door clicked open when he pulled and he made his way through the small lobby to a set of stairs that cornered at a landing.

  “I’m inside.”

  “Third floor. Apartment E.”

  The third-floor hallway was narrow, with uninviting doors of almost identical painted metal staggered on each side. He scanned the tiny labels beneath each peephole until he found one marked E. The doorbell was a small square. It sounded cheap and efficient through the door when he pressed it.

  The door opened and Fred gestured for him to come inside. Fred bolted the door behind him.

  “It’s not much, but it’s home.”

  Fred’s apartment looked more like Hollywood’s idea of a command center than someone’s residence. In the center of the living room, a giant pane of glass divided a billiard-sized table and stretched toward the ceiling. One half of the glass was a transparent outline of the United States, the other seemed to be a diagram of New York City. Tiny circles and squares and arrows were drawn on the glass in an array of colors indicating various points on the maps. The surface glimmered with reflections from electronic equipment that lined bookshelves along the walls, industrial-type units with display screens and dials. Most of them were turned on, circular panels casting a glare, some in digital green, others gray, shimmering with bars of light that circled like the fast-moving second hands of a clock. They left faint image trails as they made their circuits, ghostly specters that quickly faded. Hatcher could hear the squawking of a police band as monotone voices traded barely audible numeric codes. The staticky whir of a shortwave radio droned consistently in the background, like an alien wind.

  “Cozy,” Hatcher said.

  Fred chuckled and circled the table, gesturing across the see-through maps for Hatcher to follow him. He passed another long, cafeteria-style table with fold-out metal legs. That table held an array of gadgets in various states of construction and deconstruction, with microchips and stripped wires and assorted computer input adaptors scattered among miniature screwdrivers and a precision soldering iron. Beyond that table was the entryway to the kitchen.

  Hatcher followed Fred out of the room and saw Susan Warren sitting at a small dinette. She was huddled around an oversized cup of coffee, choking it with her hands. Her face came into view gradually as she raised her head. Her eyes were heavy and pink. Her mouth quivered into a weak smile. It was as sad an expression as Hatcher could ever remember seeing. And he’d seen some of the saddest.

  Fred asked Hatcher if he would like a cup, and Hatcher nodded. Fred poured him some and set it on the table across from Susan, waving his hand for Hatcher to take a seat. The chair scraped lightly across the linoleum floor as Hatcher pulled it out, causing Susan to flinch.

  Hatcher watched her for a moment, then said, “You were in love with him.”

  Susan said nothing. She dipped her chin and peered into her cup.

  “How many months along are you?”

  She’d been like a statue sitting there, but seemed somehow to become even more still as the words sunk in. Her eyes shot up in a delayed reaction.

  “Your shoes,” Hatcher said.

  Susan rubbed away from the corners of her eyes with her palms. Processing what Hatcher had just said seemed to exhaust her. Fred stepped over and handed her a napkin. Her bottom lip trembled as she took it.

  “How . . . ?” she said.

  “You’re wearing a loose blouse. Stretchy, casual slacks. Maternity clothes. Something didn’t seem quite right about the look. Then I realized you hadn’t gotten around to comfortable shoes yet. The heels are low, but they’re too dressy for that outfit. I’m guessing you couldn’t bring yourself to wear tennis shoes or sandals. Not yet.”

  “You got all that from my shoes?”

  “That, and the fact you’re showing. Well, almost showing.”

  Hatcher was lying, but felt justified. The shoes had been a minor point of curiosity that got him thinking. Something about them simply seemed out of place. But he knew even less about women’s fashion than he did men’s, and he didn’t have more than a vague idea what maternity clothes looked like. It was her reaction to the news about Garrett’s death that really triggered the thought. The look of someone suddenly alone in more ways than one. But he didn’t see any use in being honest. Telling her that her emotions gave it away would just bring them back to the surface. Shoes were safer.

  “I can’t believe he’s gone. I just can’t.”

  “Can you tell me what he had going on? Why the police were watching his office?”

  Susan glanced over to Fred, whose body jerked as if stirred from a standing sleep. He took a seat at the table, set down a steaming coffee mug of his own.

  “Garrett was investigating a certain someone. Collecting evidence.”

  “My husband,” Susan said. “There’s no need to hold back now. He was investigating my husband.”

  “Why?”

  Susan began to fidget with the napkin. Hatcher watched as she absently twisted it into a rope. “I came to Garrett a few months ago. I had a feeling my husband was hiding things from me. He started playing golf.”

  “Lots of guys play golf.”

  “Not Brian. All he was ever interested in was his stupid Star Wars stuff. Then, all of sudden, he was off golfing all the time.”

  “And you figured maybe he wasn’t golfing at all.”

  “Things hadn’t been good for quite a while. People were calling the house and hanging up. I decided I needed some information. He was very secretive about his business. I didn’t really care if he had a girlfriend. I was planning a divorce.”

  “How did you and Garrett meet?”

  “There was a woman where I get my hair done. I overheard her telling someone about how she caught her husband cheating and hiding money. We started talking, and she said her investigator was the best, that he saved her life and didn’t even charge much. She gave me his number.”

  “Why didn’t your lawyer hire someone?”

  “I didn’t have a lawyer. I didn’t have access to that kind of money, not without asking my husband for it. And more important, once I did hire one I knew I would be starting something I might not be able to control. Like I said, I just wanted information first. Garrett was willing to let me pay him when I could.”

  Hatcher glanced at Fred, who merely shrugged. “You’ll have to forgive me,” Hatcher said. “But that doesn’t make much sense. Lawyers deal with this kind of thing all the time.”

  “I was scared, okay? Too scared to go to
a lawyer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I had this feeling something wasn’t right. More than Brian just hiding money or seeing another woman. Sure enough, Garrett found out he had taken out a life insurance policy on me. A big one. I didn’t even have a job. What did he need life insurance on me for?”

  Hatcher scratched his chin, thinking. “Is that who Garrett was meeting when he was killed? Your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think your husband killed him? Or had him killed?”

  “I’m not sure.” Susan shook her head. “Garrett was much more street-smart than Brian. Much tougher. It’s hard for me to imagine my husband taking him on. He’s a wimp when it comes to stuff like that, guys like that.”

  “But you thought he was planning to kill you?”

  “Garrett confirmed he was. That was what he was meeting Brian about. He was gathering proof. Enough to have him arrested.”

  “Proof? You mean he was wearing a wire? Working with the police?”

  Fred straightened in his chair, gave a little cough. “He was wearing a wire, but he didn’t get it from the police. He got it from me.”

  Hatcher stared at Fred, who broke eye contact and looked away. He could hear the guilt in the man’s voice, the strain of believing he was somehow complicit in Garrett’s death, either by having assisted Garrett with the wire or simply by not having stopped it from happening. Hatcher knew the man was a bit off, a crazy old guy living in a world of grassy knolls and tinfoil hats, but from that tone alone he also sensed that this was someone who rewarded friendship with extreme loyalty. Maybe because friends were so rare.

  “But if the subject had already been brought up, why wouldn’t he get the police involved? Let them do the heavy lifting? Make the evidence more credible?” Hatcher watched Fred’s eyes as they peeked through the thick lenses at him. They were unnaturally steady, holding a rigid gaze. Like he was waiting for Hatcher to catch on.

  “Because,” Hatcher continued, answering his own question. “He wasn’t really gathering evidence to prosecute him. He was gathering evidence to blackmail him.”

  “He was planning on turning the information over to the police later,” Susan said. “It wasn’t blackmail. Not really. He just wanted leverage to make sure I got what I was entitled to, half of what he owned. It was my money that started that company. I inherited it. From my aunt.”

  Hatcher didn’t respond. A picture was starting to take shape. Blurry, incomplete, but a picture nonetheless.

  “He said it would make it impossible for him to hurt me, that it would make the divorce a slam-dunk and give me plenty of money. Then he and I, Garrett and I—then we could be together. Brian wouldn’t be able to use the pregnancy against me.”

  “Where is your husband now?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been staying at a hotel, waiting for Garrett to call. I knew something was wrong, but he made me promise I wouldn’t go home until I heard from him. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “How was he supposed to contact you?”

  “TracFones,” Fred said. “Susan got one.”

  “What’s a TracFone?”

  “A type of pay-as-you-go cell phone. You can buy them anonymously, prepay for minutes. It’s how you called me. The phone I slipped you is one. Garrett bought a bunch of them. They’re practically untraceable.”

  Hatcher nodded. Made sense. Garrett clearly had been a cautious man. Problem was, cautious men tended not to be killed by their marks. Hatcher was starting to wonder whether his brother had become an unrelated statistic, someone who’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to save the wrong woman. If he was really his brother.

  “How did the police know about the murder-for-hire stuff?”

  “The wire,” Fred said. “I made him a state-of-the-art digital recording apparatus, sewn into the sleeve of his jacket. Microphones at the cuffs. Lens for streaming video in one of the buttons. Top-shelf stuff. They must have found it. I doubt they would be able to recover the video, based on the accident. But the audio’s another story.”

  Hatcher sat staring at the table for a moment. Ironic, he thought. The police knew what was said, but they didn’t know who said it. He knew who said it, but not what was said.

  But something told him there was more to it than that.

  “I think I need to take a cab over to Susan’s house, have a word with our friend Mr. Warren. I’d sure like to know what’s on that tape.”

  Fred’s face brightened. “It just so happens I have a way you can.”

  CHAPTER 13

  BRIAN WARREN STOOD IN THE DOORWAY TO HIS CLOSET, wondering how much to pack. Would two weeks be long enough? The police couldn’t possibly have anything on him. He’d been very careful, never giving his real name, using only that untraceable phone Garrett had provided him. Now Garrett was dead, which was just as well, since that meant no one could find out what he’d been up to. So what if he’d been having lunch with him? They couldn’t prove anything. Certainly not some murder plot.

  But still. Susan had dropped out of sight. Nowhere to be found, no messages, no phone calls. The timing was too coincidental. She must have figured something out.

  One month. He figured that ought to be enough to get a handle on where he stood. Most all of his business was with Asian laboratories. A business trip to visit his offshore contractors would be hard for the cops to use against him. Several countries, not too hard to string out for that long. Besides they’d have nothing. She’d have nothing. This was just precaution.

  He pulled a rolling garment bag out of the closet, grabbed several pairs of pants by their hangers and laid them out on the bed. He tossed a dozen shirts on top of them. The checklist was short. Underwear, socks, a couple of belts. He could pick up anything he forgot to pack later, but he needed to take enough to make it look like a normal trip. Just in case.

  Once he was safely out of the country, he could send for Jenna. Nobody knew about her. He was sure of it. Not Susan, not that scary client with all the bucks. No one. She was great at keeping things on the Q.T. And smart, like when it came to the insurance. Yes, this was looking like it could work out pretty well.

  Of course, his client might not like it, but that guy was starting to give him the creeps. He didn’t know what he was doing with all those genetic products they were smuggling in, and he didn’t want to. He would have to call him after he got settled into a hotel in South Korea. Explain what happened. And if he didn’t understand, well, fuck him.

  He paused to blow his nose. He was stuffing his handkerchief into his pocket, his thoughts already starting to shift toward withdrawing several thousand in cash and getting an expedited visa, when he heard a knock at the door. Rap, rap, rap.

  The police? No. Maybe. Shit. Calm down!

  He paced the floor of his bedroom, a balled fist drawn up to his mouth. It could be anyone. Even if it was the police, so what? Ignore them. All that would mean was they identified him as having been at the diner. Big deal. So they had a few questions. Nothing to worry about. Unless they found some records that Garrett had kept. Shit.

  Quit it. Hit men don’t keep records like that.

  Another knock, same set of three. Not too slow, not too fast. Patient, but determined.

  They’ll go away, he thought. They don’t have a warrant; they don’t know anything. Hell, it might not even be the cops. It could be a delivery boy, or a process server. Maybe Susan filed for divorce. The more he thought about it, the more that made sense.

  The seconds ticked by, accumulating and spilling over into a minute. There were no more knocks, and Brian finally let himself breathe. He even let out a chuckle as he started to put his clothes into the garment bag.

  He bolted up at a noise from downstairs, freezing in place. It had been a muted thump. He stood still, slightly hunched over, listening. Nothing.

  He reached for some more clothes and froze again as this time he definitely heard something. A clinking, like glass
or china. The quiet afterward was interrupted by another soft bump, followed by some rattling.

  Susan, he thought. It had to be. She was in the kitchen. Maybe she’d lost her keys. Brian realized he had come in through the back door, wondered if he’d neglected to lock it. Or maybe she had a spare hidden back there. The sense of relief started to give way to annoyance. She was the reason he was in this mess. He didn’t want to have to deal with her. Bitch did nothing but cause him trouble.

  Brian descended the stairs and crossed the living room, headed toward the kitchen. He stopped in the entryway and immediately pulled away, ducking behind the wall. It wasn’t Susan in the kitchen. It was some guy, rummaging through the refrigerator. Pretty big son of a bitch, too, though it was hard to tell just how big the way he was hunched over, leaning with an arm over the door.

  Goddamnit! Why wasn’t there a gun in the house?

  He owned one, a Ruger forty caliber. But Susan had freaked when he brought it home, threw a fit until he agreed to keep it at the office. And that’s where it was. Sitting useless in a safe. That ditz messed up everything.

  He needed a weapon, and if it wasn’t going to be a gun, he had to find something else. The sound of food packages and drink containers being slid around gave him the courage to bolt across the entry and make his way toward the foyer. He glanced briefly at the front door, tempted to yank the knob and run. But his keys were on the bed, along with his wallet—stupid!—and he couldn’t risk going back upstairs. He babied the closet door open, listening for noises from the kitchen. His golf bag was wedged in the corner, behind a heavy parka and his raincoat. He winced at the noise as he unzipped the bag’s rainslicker, removed the nine iron. He slipped off the nylon headcover and stuffed it in his pocket. The club felt good in his hands as he hefted it. The head seemed heavy and meant to do damage. He realized he’d never actually swung it before. The club head was shaking as he held it out, prompting him to take several deep breaths.

  The man was still at the refrigerator when Brian peeked around the corner, but now he had the freezer door open, his head hidden behind it. A plate with a large slice of chocolate cake was sitting on the island between the two of them. The man lifted a carton of ice cream and balanced it on the top of the door as Brian crept forward, but he never seemed to stop searching the contents of the freezer. Brian’s hands were really trembling now, his legs felt unstable. He circled the island and started to raise the golf club, then hesitated as he drew within a few feet.