by Mike Knowles
Another car was turning into the lot. Carl saw it. “We’ll watch him.”
The Jeep pulled away, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The new visitors were cops. There were no direct markings, but the signs were all there. The clothes, the nondescript black sedan, the haircuts, and the durable shoes. Every promotion got a cop farther and farther away from a uniform, but their shoes never went far from beat cop. Sure, the shoes were nicer, but they always had the kind of comfortable soles a man who was on his feet all day would prefer.
The cops had been in for half an hour when Alison Randall arrived. The widow showed up in a green Bentley. The car was one of the newer models that ran in the six figures. The blonde who got out of the car was closer to pin-up girl than debutante. She wore the debutante clothes, a sensible dress that covered her in all of the proper ways, but the body underneath had a way of making everything look sexual. The high neckline, the low hemline, all of it somehow screamed sex when it moved on Alison Randall. She didn’t wear clothes; the clothes seemed to ride her. She walked to the door and pulled. When the door didn’t open, she called someone on her cell phone. A few minutes later, Andrew Dickens was holding the door for the woman. She stepped into the building and then the two cops walked out. Both men were watching the woman that had passed them and the two cops collided when they didn’t realize that they were moving at different speeds.
I waited for the cops to leave before I got out of the Chevy. I took the duffel bag Miles had passed me to the white BMW parked in the spot reserved for the director and stopped next to the driver’s side door. I bent as though tying my shoe and snaked my hand into the open bag. I brought a small metal box out of my pocket and held it under the car. The powerful magnet took over and the box adhered to the underside of the BMW with a loud thunk. The box was a GPS unit that Miles and Carl had crossed state lines to pick up. The box was something paranoid husbands and private detectives used. The unit had a lithium battery and was motion activated, so it would stay running for a month before I had to recharge it. That was twenty-six days longer than I needed. I went back to the Chevy and pulled the laptop from the duffel. The laptop had a full charge, a wireless card, and the GPS software was already installed. I checked that everything was working and then closed the screen.
Alison Randall walked out of the building forty-five minutes later, rolling her hips like a big-screen seductress. The walk must have been natural, or meticulously practised, because there was no one other than me watching. She got in the Bentley and drove out of the lot. The widow drove the Bentley fast, like someone who had enough money to buy another after lunch if necessary.
The widow was the last appointment. Dickens didn’t leave right after her, though. He spent another hour inside before walking out into the sunshine at three thirty. Dickens left the lot with much more care for his vehicle than the widow had shown. He drove to a nearby gym and pulled a bag from the trunk before walking inside. A few minutes passed before I saw Dickens again. He walked in front of the large window facing the parking lot on his way to the free weights. He had changed the professional clothes for a pair of shorts and a sleeveless Under Armour shirt. He was a tall man with more weight around the middle than his expensive suit let on. In the tight workout gear, his skinny arms and round gut had nowhere to hide. I watched Dickens work out and then disappear for a few minutes before coming out into the parking lot with wet hair.
After the gym, Dickens went home. The pay for running the Buffalo Met must have been good because home was inside a luxury high-rise condo downtown. Andrew pulled to a stop in front of a metal garage door and waited for it to lift. The BMW drove into the parking lot and the garage closed behind it. I found a parking spot a few blocks over and walked by the building. The front doors opened to a small interior room containing a wall of buzzers. Beyond the interior room was a security guard stationed at a desk. The guard was looking down, but he wasn’t sleeping. The small head movements told me that he was watching a monitor of some kind. I noted the address of the building and went back to the Chevy. Twenty minutes later, I was back at the motel.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THURSDAY
I didn’t watch the director leave his place the next morning. At least, not in person. I sat in a diner next to Miles waiting to order. Carl and Ilir sat opposite us. Ilir’s foot bounced under the table and caused the salt shaker to slowly vibrate its way across the scarred tabletop.
“He’s going,” I said when the laptop received an update from the tracking program about the device being activated.
Miles looked at the clock above the diner counter. “Eight forty-five again. Poor Andrew is not an early riser.” He shrugged. “Must be one of the perks of being the boss.”
A waitress, who already looked exhausted, sauntered up to the table and went for her pen and pad. “What can I get you?”
I ordered oatmeal. Miles and Carl asked for eggs and bacon. Ilir got a waffle with whipped cream, strawberries, and chocolate sauce.
“What?” he said when he caught us looking at him. “It’s good.”
“Do all gangsters eat this way or is it just the Albanians?” Miles asked.
“Shut up,” Ilir said.
“You want me to ask the waitress if they have crayons and those paper placemats with a maze on the back? I don’t want you to get bored while the grown-ups are talking.”
Ilir gave Miles the finger.
We all drank coffee while we waited for our food. After the waitress dropped everything off, I put three cell phones on the table next to a hard cardstock FedEx envelope.
“Your own phones go in the envelope. The burners go in your pockets,” I said.
The three men shot each other looks. The envelope was something we had never talked about. The three men at the table were all criminals, and all criminals share one thing in common: they hate being told what to do. Telling them to put their phones in the envelope automatically raised everyone’s backs. The demand was also a statement about the pecking order. They would think I was marking my territory — I wanted it that way. Marking territory was something they understood, and if they thought they understood my actions, they wouldn’t question them.
“There are three numbers programmed in each of them. No names — the numbers are assigned alphabetically,” I said.
“So Carl, me, Miles, and you,” Ilir said.
“Good job, sport, now eat your waffle,” Miles said.
“Shut up, man. I’m just making sure is all. Where does the envelope go?”
“To Ox. He will give everything back when we’re home.”
“That really necessary?”
“There’s a reason they’re not called dumbphones, kid. A good tech guy can pull all kinds of incriminating things off a phone. It’s best to have it out of the picture.”
I picked up the envelope and pointed it at Carl and Ilir. Both men put in their phones without complaint. Miles kept his hands on the table. I shook the envelope in his direction and he rolled his eyes. “I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s a business phone. I got contacts in this thing.” I shook the envelope again. Miles looked at Carl and Ilir, but he found no help — they had already put their phones inside. Miles looked at the envelope. I watched his eyes narrow as something in his mind raced around looking for an escape. He noticed me watching him, and his face, still reflecting his racing mind, decelerated into something jovial. Finally, he fished into his pocket and pulled out a white cell phone.
“I’m on level 78 of Angry Birds. I swear to God if anything happens to that phone, or my save, I’m going lose it.”
“Angry Birds,” Ilir said. “What are you, twelve?”
“You have whipped cream on your nose, gangster.”
Ilir swiped at his face and then licked the dab of cream from the edge of his palm. We all stared at him.
“What?”
Miles put the phone in the envelope and immediately went for a swig of his coffee. He brought the cup up to his face, but it never got high enough to block his view of the envelope.
“You get anywhere on the men who tried to rip off the widow at her place?” Carl asked.
Ilir nodded as he sliced an edge off of his waffle. “They were Albanians.”
“That wasn’t in the papers,” Carl said.
“And it won’t be, but my uncle has connections to the Albanian community over here. They are mourning four dead. Do the math.”
“He have any idea how they got wind of the violin?”
Ilir shovelled the last quarter of a waffle into his mouth and chewed. The high pile of whipped cream that had been sitting on top pushed through the Albanian’s pursed lips while he tried to get everything down.
“It’s not like the violin was a secret.”
“So coincidence,” I said.
Ilir licked his lips with a tongue that was white from pushing around heavy cream. “Looks like.”
I ate some of the oatmeal in front of me and thought about how many times a claim of coincidence had turned out to be just that. On the job the score was still zero. Coincidences didn’t happen — people just said they did.
“You think they’ll take another run at the violin?” Miles asked.
I shrugged. “What did the almighty Albanian eight-ball say?”
Ilir spoke with his mouth full, but each word made it less so. “He doesn’t know the four guys personally. He just knows they’re Albanian. But something like this has to come from the top.”
“So is that a yes?”
“I don’t know, Miles.”
“There’ll be a lot of heat when the cops figure out the names of the guys who murdered that old cop —”
“He was retired,” Ilir said.
“Try telling them that,” Carl said.
“Going after the same thing again would be a bad idea,” Ilir countered.
“Are you saying this is a bad idea?” Miles asked with a smirk on his face.
“People will see it that way,” I said. “That will give us a blind spot we can manipulate. The question is, will the Albanians see it the same way?”
We all looked at Ilir. He was scraping his plate with his fork and licking the syrup off the tines. He stopped when he saw us looking. “You asking me?” He put the fork down on top of the plate and took a drink of coffee. “Those men were soldiers. There are plenty who can replace those four. If their boss wants it bad enough, they’ll try again.”
“The fun never stops,” Miles said.
Ilir craned his neck left and right until he saw the waitress. He raised a hand and she came over to the table. “Could I get some more waffles?”
The waitress walked off leaving four empty plates and three pairs of eyes staring at the young Albanian. “What? They’re good.”
“I guess we’re staying a little while longer,” Miles said.
The we didn’t include me — I had other plans. None of us had slept more than a couple of hours. We had been over everything we had learned and spent the end of the afternoon into the early hours of the morning polishing the plan into something sleek and efficient. We all had our roles to play and mine didn’t include watching the young Albanian challenge his metabolism to a game of tug-of-war. I got up from the table. “Don’t let the kid get too hopped up on sugar. He needs to spend most of the day sitting still.”
Ilir spoke through the mouthful. “Quit talking about me like I’m a child.”
“He gets like that when he’s tired. Maybe we can get him down for a nap later,” Miles said.
“I am not a kid. I keep telling you that. I am a gangster, damn it.”
“Kids today,” Miles said as he tousled Ilir’s hair.
“You’re lucky this waffle is so good, asshole, or I would come across this table.”
I leaned over the table and took the envelope. “Be ready for when I call.”
“Why don’t you let me mail it?” Miles said. The words came quickly out of his mouth.
“You don’t trust me, Miles?”
“It’s not that, Wilson. You just seem like you’re in a rush to get out of here is all. I’m just trying to lighten the load.”
“You just get your part done,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to see a man about a bicycle.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The part about the bicycle wasn’t a lie. I did need to see a guy about getting a bicycle. The stop that I needed to make before I met with that guy wasn’t a lie either — technically, it was an omission.
I pulled into the parking lot of another diner, this one a Denny’s. I walked inside, sat down, and ordered a glass of iced tea. From the look I got from the waitress, the tea was just barely enough to hold the table. I wasn’t thirsty, and I wasn’t getting addicted to sitting in diners — the Denny’s was where I had been told to go, and the iced tea was what I was told to order. The tea came and the condensation had not even dripped onto the paper napkin before a man peeled away from a table of four and approached my booth.
“Mr. Wilson?” The voice was higher pitched than the heavy jowls would have suggested. The British accent clashed with the Steelers golf shirt he was wearing, too.
“Mr. Menace,” I said.
“Call me Dennis,” the British man said as he worked to suppress a chuckle over his choice of names.
“Dennis,” I said. The tone of my voice told the larger man that he was the only one who was amused.
“Yes, well,” he said regaining his composure. “I believe you have something for me, mate.”
I handed him the envelope. “There are three phones in there. I want everything you can get off them. Specifically numbers called in the last five days and any numbers belonging to phones in the States.”
“It will take a little while,” he said.
I nodded. “You have three hours.”
Dennis shook his head. “Won’t be enough time. Not for three.”
“Start with the black Samsung,” I said. The phone belonged to Ilir. With the four men in police custody coming up as Albanian, he was the best place to start.
“Alright.” Dennis passed me a card. There was a number written in pen on the back. The pen had been leaking and there were blots wherever Dennis had started or stopped writing.
I put the card in my pocket and brought back a wad of bills. Dennis was smart enough not to count it at the table.
“I’ll get right on it,” he said.
“Make sure that the envelope gets dropped in the mailbox when you’re done.”
Dennis nodded, got up, and then weaved his way back to his table. When I crossed the dining room, I saw the Brit shovelling the remnants of a plate of eggs, sausage, and toast into his mouth. If he felt any pressure to get the job done, it didn’t show. I sighed and shoved open the door. I had no choice but to rely on the chubby Brit to do what Ox promised he could do in the time he promised he could do it in. I had used Ox to find me someone to work with because the job didn’t give me any time to shop around for someone else who could hack into a cell phone. After what had gone down in the park with the Albanians, Ox was eager to help me any way he could. I took the help, not because I trusted Ox anymore, but because the job was for Pyrros Vogli. If the Albanians were scary enough to make Ox turn on me, then they would be scary enough to keep him in line.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
FRIDAY
Saturday was going to be one of the biggest days in Andrew Dickens’ professional life, but you would never know that on Friday. I sat around the corner from the Buffalo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra director’s home, this time in a stolen Volkswagen, watching a blip on a computer screen. The blip was the white BMW that belonged to Dickens. He had gotten behind the wheel at
three thirty, the same time as yesterday, and driven out of the parking lot of Samuel Hall. There had been no stop at the dry cleaner today, no stop at the gym either. Instead, Dickens stopped at a mall. The blip on the screen stayed put for half an hour in the mall parking lot before it began its route home. When the dot stopped at a light three minutes away, I got out of the car and took the bicycle out of the trunk. I was dressed in blue coveralls and a blue baseball cap. I walked quickly with the bicycle beside me, a white drop cloth tucked under my arm. A paint can hung from the handlebars, making steering awkward.
I walked down the incline to the garage door Andrew Dickens had used the day before and leaned the bike against the wall. The wall was made of painted white brick that had been stained beige by city stink. I opened the drop cloth and pulled out the spray paint and brush that had been set between the folds. I popped the cap and sprayed a squiggle on the beige wall. I set the can down and draped the cloth over the bike. I jimmied the lid of the paint can and began immediately painting over my tag. I dipped the brush and streaked it across the centre of the still-damp graffiti in one smooth confident motion. The wet spray paint mixed with the topcoat and created a dull grey splotch that would be noticeable if anyone chose to stop and stare. I dipped the brush again, but the touch-up was short-lived. A white BMW pulled into the ramp and the garage door began to rise. Andrew Dickens didn’t even make eye contact as he passed. The snub was fine by me — he didn’t notice me pulling the bicycle from under the cloth, or me jogging under the ramp with it.