The Widow File

by S. G. Redling

  “How much do you know?”

  Dani laughed an unamused laugh. “Between me and Choo-Choo? We barely know our own names. I know that I underestimated you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “Hey, all we did was get away. You got away with a gun and a Stringer code.” Dani saw the guarded expression on Ev’s face. “First things first. Which are you? A Stringer or a Face?”

  “I don’t like to limit myself.”

  “Cute, but which is it? And what about Hickman? Was he like you?”

  “You mean glamorous and deadly?” Ev didn’t quite manage to pull off the quip and Dani’s humorless reception didn’t help. She sighed. “No, Hickman was straight Face. Literally. He was the faciest Face I ever knew. The man was born to it. He could talk the underpants off a nun and have her thanking him for the opportunity.”

  “I never got the impression that you two were close,” Dani said.

  “We weren’t. Who is at Rasmund? Don’t tell me you and the Slavic Stud are in love?”

  It took the rest of Dani’s tattered and overworked control to keep from kicking the table into the redhead. “Why don’t you cut the shit with the cute names, okay Twyla? What? Shocked by that? Didn’t think we all knew your real name, Twyla Dawn Cruickshank?”

  A mottled flush rose up from the collar of Ev’s jacket, leaving a blotchy path along her neck and cheeks. Maybe Ev was dangerous, Dani thought, but if she thought Dani and Choo-Choo were just going to whimper and grovel, she had an unpleasant surprise coming. Before Ev could spit out whatever it was she had planned, Choo-Choo glided in among them on a cloud of night air and cigarette smoke.

  “Swapping secrets, girls?” He crossed his legs at the knee. “What next? Braiding hair?”

  “What’s next,” Dani said, “is that we’re going to order some drinks so we don’t draw any more attention to ourselves and then we’re going to settle back and let Ev regale us with what she knows. How about it, Ev?”

  Once again Ev got cut off, this time by the arrival of the waiter. Ev and Dani ordered beer, Choo-Choo asked for house honeyed wine.

  “You like tej?” Dani asked.

  “I loathe it.” He waved to the dark room around them. “But I’m a slave to conformity.”

  Dani started to laugh then caught Ev’s glare. “Don’t let us keep you, Ev. You were just getting ready to tell us everything you know.”

  “If you’re waiting for some big exposition and reveal, you’re going to be disappointed. I don’t know much more than you, I’d guess. Someone sold us out. Someone got inside and hit us. They took Maureen and they’re not going to stop until—”

  “Maureen?” Dani and Choo-Choo spoke as one and Ev’s blush deepened.

  “Mrs. O’Donnell. They got Mrs. O’Donnell and they’re holding her. They called me and let me talk to her, so I know she’s alive.”

  “She called you?” Dani didn’t think it was possible to be surprised after all that had happened but that did it. “Wait, how did you get out? Why weren’t you inside?”

  This time Ev looked relieved when the appearance of the waiter interrupted her. She ignored the offered glass and drank right from the bottle. Dani did likewise, trying not to get distracted by Choo-Choo’s dainty sips of the pale wine. “Maureen was afraid something was up. She knew the Swan job was screwy. She’s been real irritated the past few weeks, real snappy. I knew something was on her mind.”

  Choo-Choo shot Dani an expressive side-eye and Dani phrased her question carefully. “Did you and… Maureen… work together a lot? Outside of the usual job?”

  When Ev nodded, Choo-Choo snorted a soft laugh. “I’ve had jobs like that before.”

  “It wasn’t like that, you fucking man-whore.” Ev looked like she might smash her bottle against his skull and Dani leaned in.

  “Relax, Ev. Take it down a notch, okay? We don’t need any more attention.”

  Ev huffed back in her chair, wiping her nose with the back of the hand that held the beer. Some splashed from the bottle onto her sleeve and she ignored it. She sniffled, her lips set in a stubborn pout. Dani risked a glance at Choo-Choo and saw the same confusion on his face that she felt. It was difficult to reconcile the surly, almost adolescent-acting woman before them with the cold, polished Face they had known before. Or thought they’d known.

  “I started out as a Stringer.” Ev’s voice was soft, with nasal traces of an accent that suggested an upbringing in Southern mountains. “Nah, I started as a mess, a runaway with a record and a habit. I got picked up once for B&E and next thing I know I’ve got U.S. Marshals asking about me, wanting to put me in witness protection if I’d testify about what I’d seen at this house. Well, I hadn’t seen anything and I kept telling them that and then they started getting pissed, like I was playing them. Hell, I would’ve told them anything if I’d only known what they wanted. They started threatening me with jail time—like that was something I was afraid of, you know?—but they were serious. They wanted something bad and they wanted me to give it to them and when they thought I wouldn’t, I seriously thought they were going to make me disappear.

  “Then Maureen showed up.” Ev took a deep breath, just uttering the name making her accent disappear, her usual throaty tone back in place. “She said she would give me a choice. Of course my track record to that point had proven that my choices always ended badly for me, but she told me to trust her. Funny, because that usually ended badly for me, too, but there was just something about her, something so strong and calm. She told me she worked for a company who could put my skills to a more positive use. How did she put it?” Ev smiled at the memory, mimicking Mrs. O’Donnell’s low tone to perfection. “‘I work for people who will appreciate your lack of squeamishness.’ That’s what she told me and that’s how I came to work for Rasmund.”

  Dani found it hard to swallow her beer. “As a hit man? Hit woman?”

  Ev shot her a dark look over her beer. “That’s the smallest part of what I do. Don’t get so hung up on titles, Dani. I could get into places others couldn’t. Especially back then. Nobody looked twice at a kid like me. It was Maureen who taught me to appreciate style, to lift myself up from the dirt I’d been wallowing in. She cared about me. We care about each other.”

  “Well that’s good. That’s really good.” Dani shut down Choo-Choo’s questioning look with a small flick of her fingers. She watched Ev pick at the label on her bottle, saw the jagged nails and dirt underneath them. The flush on her cheeks had broken down into hot little islands of burn and her eyes were redder than Dani remembered them being before. Stress. Ev was showing signs of cracking under the pressure of missing Mrs. O’Donnell. Since childhood, Dani had had her share of experience talking to women who were cracking. While she had no doubt the woman was plenty dangerous when angry, Dani could only imagine how volatile she could be when panicked. Dani kept her voice warm and soothing.

  “It’s really good that Mrs. O’Donnell—Maureen—knows you’re out here looking for her. That’s going to go a long way toward keeping her courage up. Did she give you any indication what might be behind all of this? Who hit us or why? Or what they want?”

  “She always said that Rasmund had a lot of enemies, that a lot of people wanted to keep us from doing the work we do.” Ev seemed pacified by Dani’s encouragement. “She said that we had important work to do, work that other people wouldn’t do, and that real heroes never worked for the glory, they worked for the just cause.”

  Choo-Choo made a hmm sound, nodding as he shifted in his chair. When he’d turned enough that Ev couldn’t see his face, his eyes flew wide open in a look that Dani understood perfectly. What the hell was Ev talking about?

  “Wow, yeah, that’s powerful stuff, Ev.”

  “Yeah it is. Maureen really knows how to put things. She’s really got her head on straight.” She rolled her beer bottle between her palms. “It’s like I finally have a direction, you know? Like, a mentor I can really trust and, like, what I do matters, you know? I�
�ve never had that before.”

  “Yeah, that’s really important, isn’t it?” Dani made a point of mirroring her, a trick she’d learned from her father, watching him defuse bar fights and card games gone wrong. She’d watched her father talk jacked-up truckers and freaked-out hitchers into putting down guns and knives and tire irons. He’d talked her mother down from hurting herself. Dani didn’t have a tenth of her father’s natural charm but she didn’t have the luxury of worrying about it. When Ev leaned forward on her elbows, Dani shifted subtly until she too sat that way. Beer bottles hung from their fingertips and Dani meted out the eye contact carefully as she’d seen her father do. Too much meant aggression; too little seemed shifty. Dani had to convince Ev they were in agreement.

  “You know, I’m not a Face or a Stringer. I’m just a Paint. I never really could get the hang of what you all do. I don’t think I could ever pull off the polish you all do.” When Ev didn’t come back with a biting remark about her miserable fashion choices, Dani felt she might be getting somewhere. “I never got the chance to work as closely with Mrs. O’Donnell as you did.”

  “Well, you needed to have clearance.”

  “I did, well, I mean, I could have had it.” Dani readjusted her strategy. “The truth is I always doubted myself. Maureen,” she made a point of using the first name, “used to invite me to other jobs, used to encourage me to try new things, but I guess I just chickened out.”

  “That’s too bad,” Ev said with what sounded like real sympathy. “The work has been good, really challenging. And I mean, look at what happened. You don’t provoke an attack like this from an enemy unless you’re really doing good work.”

  Dani heard Choo-Choo’s teeth clink against his glass as he drank. She struggled to find the proper words. “That’s so true, isn’t it? So it looks like you’re the lead on this, Ev. Maureen is obviously counting on you to come across, to keep her team intact.” The muscles in Ev’s jaw clenched and her eyes got wet once again. Dani risked leaning forward and touching her knee. “You’re not in this alone, Ev. We’re a team, remember? We’re Maureen’s team. Damn it, we’re Rasmund and nobody pushes us around. We have to work together to make this right. We can’t let them get away with this.”

  “No we can’t.”

  “So did Maureen ever tell you what this might be about? What the enemy wants?”

  Ev looked offended. “Of course she did. What are you—stupid? What else could it be about?” Dani was about to kick herself for pressing too hard, that she’d made Ev go back on the defensive, but then the redhead leaned in closer, whispering in a voice for just the three of them. “It’s the tunnel at Rasmund. It’s the transport of the prisoners. They want to shut that down.”

  Booker’s phone rang before he could dial Dani. The client was speaking before he got the phone to his ear.

  “… a file. We’re assuming it’s a digital file but it’s possible it’s microfiche or a photo. There isn’t any way to know for sure but we do know it is a file.”

  “Hang on.” Booker helped an elderly woman lug a loaded wire cart onto the train, slipping his phone into his pocket until he’d gotten her settled on the Metro seat. Once she patted his arm in thanks, he fished the phone out once more. “I’m assuming you’ve learned something?”

  “Yes, goddamn it, aren’t you listening to me? You don’t put me on hold!” The client sounded as if he’d been screaming for hours. “You threaten my family and now you want to put me on hold? You told me to get you the information. Do you want it or not?”

  “Of course I want it. If it’s useful, that is. What did you learn?”

  The sigh that came through the line told Booker more about the client’s anxiety than any words ever could. “The situation is changing. I’ve learned some information that may call for an adjustment of our game plan.”

  “Our game plan.” Booker knew from experience that when clients like this started talking about changing the game plan, that usually meant they were being pressured by someone higher up, someone with the authority to pull the job, someone who usually suggested tying up the affair by trying to either stiff Booker or kill him. In the fifteen years he’d been doing this job, many had tried to do both and none had succeeded. More than one client had died trying.

  “First things first,” the client said, clearing his throat and trying to sound calm. “We believe we know what the girl is carrying. Marcher copied a file, an extremely important file that is most likely digital. Of course we can’t rule out a photographic record or an alternative information storage system, but all signs indicate digital.”

  “An important file,” Booker said. “So important that you’re just now learning of its existence? Or is this related to that widow you had me looking for? A widow file?”

  “That is irrelevant to the job at hand.”

  “Ah, I see.” He did see. This file Dani supposedly carried was not what the client had originally believed it to be. The client’s superior, whoever was really pulling the strings of this operation, probably sensed the mission was falling apart, and was shedding some light on the true purpose of the job. And judging from the badly controlled tension and anger in the client’s voice, the news didn’t look good for the client. Booker resisted the urge to laugh. Welcome to the food chain, he thought.

  The client continued. “We have reason to believe we will ascertain the target’s location shortly, if not completely secure her presence.”

  “Uh-huh, the target? You mean the girl. Taking care of her is still my job.”

  “Of course. Of course.” He hurried to reassure Booker. “As a matter of fact, we are making arrangements at this time that should facilitate your task. If we can secure the girl, that should expedite your duties. I should have an answer for you shortly.”

  “Thanks for the update and the opportunity. I’ll be expecting your call.” Booker ended the call. Now he knew. They were planning to kill him.

  “When you say prisoners in the Rasmund tunnel,” Dani kept her tone casually curious despite the chalky taste of panic she kept swallowing down, “what prisoners exactly? I mean, specifically.”

  “What do you mean?” Ev sounded genuinely confused by the question. Fortunately Choo-Choo recovered his wits and picked up the thread as if they were discussing yachting or an especially engaging polo match.

  “Well of course the tunnel is a target. Why else blow the building?” He patted Dani’s knee and winked at Ev. “You have to excuse our girl here. She spends all her time in her beanbag chair up in her Paint room. I bet she’s never even seen the tunnel, just does the paperwork for it. I think what she’s getting at is who would want to target it? Do we know if this was targeted for one prisoner in particular?”

  Ev banged her beer bottle against her leg, lost in thought, then said, “I’ve been trying to figure out the same thing. It’s not like we’re advertising our services, you know? By the time they get to Rasmund, these prisoners are pretty much off the map. Of course, guys like these live under the map, don’t they? They’ve got their own resources and information networks even we haven’t dreamed of. That’s why we interrogate them. But I still can’t see how anyone could have tracked them. Even the Brits don’t know where we operate and we’ve got some of their cargo too. It’s part of that, what do you call it, receptacle… receivable…”

  “Reciprocal?” Dani offered and Ev nodded.

  “Of course,” Choo-Choo said with a wave of his hand, “the reciprocal prisoner interrogation arrangement that we have with the Brits. And that we perform at Rasmund. Where we work.” He tilted his head toward Dani. “While prisoners are interrogated.”

  Ev snorted. “I was a little leery of working with the Brits, but they’re a lot tougher than you think when you get to know them. They’re not afraid to do what needs to be done. Speaking of things needing to be done, I’ve got to take a piss. Get me another beer?”

  “Sure thing,” Dani said, unable to take her eyes off of Ev as if she might suddenly sprout
another set of arms.

  “Yeah,” Choo-Choo said as he flagged down the waiter. “I think I’ll switch to beer too. We might as well all be on the same page, right?”

  Ev slapped him on the back. “You mean we might as well all be pissing like racehorses, right?” Choo-Choo laughed along with her as she stepped away from the table. He kept laughing and kept his eye on her until she disappeared down the hallway toward the restrooms. Then he crowded close to Dani, his voice a low hiss.

  “What the hell is she talking about?”

  Dani shook her head, her eyes as wide as his. “I have no idea. Do you think she really knows what’s going on? Do you think she really knows anything?”

  Choo-Choo leaned on his elbows. “I don’t know. At first when she started talking about her relationship with Mrs. O’Donnell, excuse me, Maureen—nothing weird about that—I thought she was just being Kooky Cathy McCutsHerself. But the more she talked, the more I think she really does know something. Or she thinks she does.”

  “But prisoners? Prisoners interrogated at Rasmund?” Dani fought the urge to scream. “In the tunnels? What kind of prisoners does a private investigation firm move through an underground tunnel?”

  “A mighty full-service one, I’d wager. With quite an international scope.”

  “Oh my God, Choo-Choo, what is happening here? Are we being targeted by some kind of terrorist organization? Or are we part of one?”

  He held up his hand to stop her. “Here she comes. Let’s just play this by ear. Keep her talking, find out what she knows. If she’s really in contact with the people who took Mrs. O’Donnell, maybe we can find a way to end this, strike some kind of bargain. If nothing else, maybe we can at least get enough information to go to the police with.”

  “It sounds like we should be going to the Feds. It’s pretty freaking clear that we are grossly underinformed about the situation.” She smiled as Ev returned. “So, any brainstorms?”