Liars & Thieves: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  Wish I still had it.

  After I parked on the ferry, I abandoned the car and went upstairs to the top deck. From a vantage point near the men’s room, I watched the people coming up the stairs. I was looking for a familiar face—I’d seen a few of these killer dudes—or a figure that tripped the alarms. A man, perhaps, who was looking for someone. That someone would be me.

  I waited until the ferry got under way and the folks all seemed to be on the upper deck, then I went down the stairs and walked along the car deck looking to see who might be waiting in their car. Didn’t see any men the right age with the hunter’s look about them.

  Of course, the most dangerous men were the ones you didn’t see, even after they shot you.

  I can’t let myself get paranoid, I thought. Can’t do my job if I’m frightened of everyone I see.

  Nervous and unable to sit in the car, I climbed back to the observation deck. Gulls followed the ferry all the way across the mouth of the Delaware Bay to New Jersey. I watched people throw crumbs to the birds while thinking about Anna Modin.

  Maybe I should jump a banana boat and permanently disappear. I had joked about it with Grafton that morning, but truthfully, it wasn’t a bad idea. If only I knew how to get in touch with Anna, by God, you could color me gone.

  Rolling up the Garden State Parkway, I called Sarah Houston. “Hey, kiddo. This is your favorite fellow.”

  That remark drew a long silence—well, two or three seconds, anyway.

  “You know,” she said wearily, “that crack is so off the wall I can’t even think of a proper reply.”

  “I have that effect on women. It’s a burden I’ve carried all my life. As it happens, I need your help with a project next week.”

  “Like what?”

  “Are those bad vibes I feel coming my way?”

  “Every time I hear your voice my skin starts to crawl. What do you want this time?”

  “Much better. Professional, brisk, matter-of-fact. I like that. I need some help with a little project at the Hilton in the Bad Apple.” I explained what I wanted.

  She grumped some, but I could tell she was dying to help. You gotta know Sarah Houston pretty well to appreciate that fine, twisted mind. Unfortunately I knew her too well. I once made the mistake of suggesting that she leave her brain to medical science so they could study it after she’s gone.

  This morning I managed to exercise a bit more tact, so we were still on speaking terms when I broke the connection.

  The humidity made New York a steam bath. My shirt was glued to me by the time I got the car parked in a commercial garage a half mile from the Hilton. I left the Colt 1911 under the seat. I was just going to have to outrun anyone who wanted to take a shot at me. However, should you think I was just another yokel tourist, in my pocket I did have my traveling assortment of lock picks in an expensive leather wallet, just in case. I hung my sports coat over my arm and set forth upon the mean streets toward the Hilton.

  The avenues and cross-streets were full of taxis, cars, and trucks, the sidewalks crammed with people; vendors hawked hot dogs, pretzels, and coffee on every corner—all in all, New York was a happening place. I heard snatches of four languages in one block.

  I paused on the corner across the Avenue of the Americas from the Hilton and looked it over. Taxis pulled up in front, uniformed valets opened doors and assisted with luggage … and there wasn’t a uniformed policeman in sight. Nor did I see anyone who might be a federal officer.

  What I did see were surveillance cameras mounted high on the corners of the buildings, focused downward. There were enough cameras to give complete coverage of the sidewalks all around the building, which took up an entire block on this avenue, and probably extended a hundred yards or so toward the avenue to the west. To the west of the hotel was the associated parking garage, a high-rise structure.

  The building was at least forty stories tall, hermetically sealed with a glass and smooth metal exterior and windows that couldn’t be opened. It wasn’t much larger than those that surrounded it, so a listening post across one of the streets equipped with a laser or microwave to read window vibrations was technically possible.

  I walked along the south side of the building until I came to the service entrance. It was equipped with an overhead door that was now open. Inside I could see three trucks at a loading dock. Beside the service entrance was the garage entrance, a ramp that led downward. No doubt there were four or five floors of parking under the hotel.

  I continued westward along the south side of the building, found I would have to walk to the next avenue to circumnavigate the thing, and did so. On the north side was the employees’ entrance. A uniformed security guard was visible through the door at a guard kiosk. I watched for thirty seconds and saw two people enter. He checked their IDs, then let them pass.

  Also on the north side of the building was a secondary entrance to the lobby. I climbed the steps and passed through the circular door.

  The ground floor of the hotel reeked of slightly overdone moneyed elegance, which was about as I remembered it. There was the usual piano bar and café off the main floor, a kiosk that sold theater tickets, the main reception desk, a bell stand, a newsstand selling papers and toothpaste, and the pièce de résistance, a jewelry store gaudily displaying large diamonds and other baubles for the dirty rich. I lingered and gazed enviously into the display windows, which were wired to guard against a smash and grab. A surveillance camera inside the store was aimed right at me. By studying the reflections in the windows, I could see other surveillance cameras mounted high up in the corners of the lobby.

  The denizens of this zoo were about what you would expect: Arab sheikhs, corporate captains, African dictators, embezzlers from Iowa, rich dowagers, and shapely young women with artificially enhanced chests. Here and there a normal person. And, of course, an occasional lowlife like me.

  After an inquiry at the bell desk, I made my way to the employment office. There I met a young Hollywood starlet waiting to be discovered. I thought it unlikely she would be discovered here, passing out employment applications in the bowels of this huge pile of steel and glass, but if I found her others might also.

  “I’ve waited for you all my life,” I told her, and gave her my most dazzling smile.

  She lifted her head enough to see through her bangs as she handed me the employment application. She asked for my driver’s license. I surrendered it, and she copied it on the machine behind her, giving me an excellent view of her back half.

  “We’ve waited for you, too, Mr. Winston,” she said, handing it back. “Unfortunately our corporate offices are all full just now, although in this frenzied age one never knows when there will be an opening. If you’ll take a seat and complete our application, we’ll call you when we need a new vice president.”

  I flashed the grin again and took the indicated seat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “My name is Mikhail Goncharov,” the Russian said slowly.

  He was sitting on the screened-in porch of the Graftons’ beach house with Callie. Sections of the morning newspaper were strewn around. She had been translating news stories for the archivist, trying to get him interested in something … anything.

  His declaration silenced her. She folded the section of newspaper she had been reading and placed it on her lap, then sat watching him, waiting for more. After a long pause he said, “I am retired from the SVR.”

  “Are you married?” she prompted.

  He had to think about it. His bland, relaxed expression slowly disintegrated. “Bronislava. She is dead! They killed her.”

  He looked at his hands, looked around the porch as if seeing it for the first time. “She always wanted children but they never came. Now she’s gone … Life leaks away grain by grain, like sand running through your fingers. Then one day there is no more left.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Yes. Sorry.” He stopped looking around and seemed to focus his gaze inward.
His shoulders sagged and his chin dropped toward his chest.

  Jake Grafton went with me to pick up the van. It was indeed ready, with a spiffy new paint job and professional lettering on both sides. The New York commercial plates looked nice, too. “How much trouble am I going to have with those plates?” I asked the fat man.

  He took his cigar butt from his mouth and spat on the concrete. “Depends on how long you plan on driving that thing,” he said. “Truck they’re off of was in a wreck. It’s in a Brooklyn shop for repairs and paint. Going to be there about ten more days. When it comes out, I figure somebody will start squawking.”

  “Good enough,” I said, nodding.

  I had visited the bank where Willie and I had our business account earlier that afternoon and had withdrawn some cash. Then Grafton and I went over to Willie Varner’s, left him five hundred, and dropped off a six-pack.

  I introduced him to Grafton, just gave Willie his name. “Most of the stitches came out this morning,” Willie said. “Damn things were itching like crazy.”

  “That’s good,” I told him. “Now all you need are some tattoos to cover up the scars.”

  “I’ve had enough needles to last me, Tommy. Any more and they’re gonna have to hold me down.”

  “Think you could help me out some next week? In New York. I’m going to need someone who has it together.”

  “Doin’ what?” he asked, eyeing Grafton. In his jeans and T-shirt, the admiral didn’t look like a cop, but Willie was a careful man.

  “Monitoring some bugs in a hotel. I’ve got a guy to help, but I don’t know if I can trust him.”

  “Don’t ever do nothin’ with people you don’t trust. Nothin’ at all. Don’t even be around them. How many times I told you that?”

  “That’s why I’m asking. Think you can do it?”

  “Long as it don’t involve heavy liftin’ or hard lovin’, I can probably help a little. I’m stiff and sore as a diseased dick but the brain is working. I’ll tell you now, though—you, too, Grafton—I don’t want to go back to the joint. Shit goes down, I never heard of your sorry ass. They’ll have to burn down Washington and sift the ashes to find me.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Don’t wanta shoot nobody neither.”

  “I’ll drop by this weekend and see how you’re doing. We’ll talk about it then.”

  “No offense, fella,” Willie said to Grafton, then focused on me. “You come back, be alone.”

  “Sure. Hang tough.”

  At the garage I inspected the paint job and climbed in the van to inventory the contents. The fat man stood outside with Jake Grafton, who didn’t have anything to say. I could see them in the rearview mirrors, just standing there, the fat man chewing his cigar and Grafton looking like a man waiting for a bus.

  I checked carefully. Even if the guy running the chop shop hadn’t stolen anything, the men working for him might not be as honest. Everything appeared to be as I had left it. Then I hit the jackpot—found another dozen bugs in a small box under the computer. I checked them over. Yeah, I could use them.

  Grafton was hard to figure. Sure, I had worked for him several times in the past when he was an admiral on active duty in the Navy. While he was tan and lean enough for a man his age, he didn’t look like anyone special. He was, though. The people who knew him best, folks like Toad Tarkington and Rita Moravia, swore by him.

  He’d been on the phone more or less continuously since he found me camping out in his beach house. I didn’t think he was talking to his stockbroker. Of course I was curious. Be nice if he shared some info with me.

  When I got out of the vehicle I pulled the roll from my pocket and counted out twenty hundreds, which was all of it, into the fat man’s hand.

  “A pleasure doing business with you,” he said as he pocketed the money. He dropped the key to the van in my hand. “How’s Willie?”

  “Stitches came out this morning. He says they were itching like hell.”

  The fat man chuckled. “Tell him I say hi,” he said, and went into his office. I got in the van and backed it out of the garage. Grafton followed me back to Delaware in his car.

  Maybe I ought to ask the admiral for the lowdown—the straight skinny. That thought was immediately followed by another : I had assumed that he knew more than I did. Was that true? Surely he knew that I didn’t help murder those people at the Greenbrier safe house. Or did he?

  Why was he helping me, anyway?

  Jake Grafton was following along a hundred yards behind Carmellini, just keeping him in sight, when his new cell phone rang. “Hi.”

  “Hi, yourself.” Sarah Houston. “I am up against the wall here at work. I am supposed to be working with the cryptographers, yet I am spending scads of time on my computer.” Jake well knew what she was doing on that computer—spying on Dell Royston and trying to learn what he was telling interested government agencies about the hunt for the Russian defector and the corpses that kept cropping up. “I’ve run out of wriggle room.”

  “Tommy will pick you up at your apartment on Saturday morning. Pack for a couple of days. Bring your laptop.”

  “Oh, Lord. You know I can’t stand him.”

  “I can’t imagine why. He’s reasonably smart, well within the bell-shaped curve on looks, showers daily. Seems like every other girl in town hits on him.”

  “That’s why.”

  “We need your help. He’ll be there day after tomorrow.”

  As he drove along, Jake smiled. So Sarah liked Carmellini. Who would have suspected that?

  When we got back to the beach house there was little light left in the sky. A thick overcast lay just over our heads, one churned by a stiff wind. I wasn’t hungry, but when Callie offered me a beer I thanked her and took it to the porch. Goncharov was already upstairs, in bed I suspected, though I doubted he was sleeping. The man was fighting too many demons.

  The Sunday papers were still there piled up, and since I hadn’t read them, I pulled out the latest and turned on the reading light. After I went through the baseball standings and read about the latest tour event, I glanced through the political news.

  Normally I don’t read political stuff. Just not interested. Maybe that’s the sign of a poor education, but I’ve only got one piddly little vote and one stomach lining, so I sleep better not knowing what the elected ones are doing on a daily basis. If you avoid television, as I do, they are remarkably easy to ignore.

  The storyline du jour was the possibility of a female vice-presidential candidate. The five women the pundits thought most eligible for a political mating were three senators and two governors, who were given a lot of column inches.

  A page over I stopped to read Jack Yocke’s column. I had met him at Grafton’s house a year or so ago, and he seemed like a decent sort. He had a different slant on the woman veep issue, however. According to Yocke’s unnamed sources—journalese for rumor—the president was considering the possibility of nominating his wife, Zooey Sonnenberg, for the vice-presidential spot.

  Wow! If it happened, that would really be news. Not the biggest story since the resurrection, but close. Sonnenberg, who didn’t use her husband’s name, was a politician in her own right, and a controversial one. When she was young she had used her position as the female scion of a prominent wealthy family to make a big splash in the antiwar movement during the height of the Vietnam protests. She had advocated leftist causes in the years since, although she had been moderating her stances since her husband got elected to drive the bus. According to Yocke.

  He went on to analyze the political chemistry. The president’s strongest support was from the conservative wing of his party. Zooey would strengthen him with the liberals, the theory went. She would even steal votes from women of the other party, which was a politician’s nirvana. Jack Yocke said that Zooey Sonnenberg on the ticket would be just what the doctor ordered to reelect the president.

  I tossed the paper down and turned off the light, wondering where Yocke had
gotten that tidbit.

  The country was overdue for a woman vice president, but Zooey Sonnenberg? The first lady? The president’s wife?

  After a while Grafton joined me in the darkness. “Callie says Goncharov has his memory back.”

  “Thank God,” I whispered fervently. “What did he say?” I said, speaking louder.

  “She didn’t question him about the files. Didn’t think this was the time.”

  I took a sip of beer to hide my disappointment.

  I saw the flash of his teeth in the darkness as he grinned at me. “This is going to work out, Tommy. We’ll get these people.”

  “How?”

  “You’ll see. Just bug that hotel. Pick up Sarah Houston at her apartment on your way to New York and take her along. She can’t be of much help if she stays in her office.”

  “I have to go back to Washington tomorrow,” I told the admiral, “to make some preparations. Probably spend the night with Willie Varner, leave for New York the following morning. Do you think I should ask Joe Billy Dunn to help?”

  “You’re worried he’s talking to people at Langley?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you decide if a person can be trusted?”

  I took a deep breath as I thought about the answer to that one. I’d made my share of mistakes through the years. Kelly Erlanger sprang immediately to mind. “Gut feeling, I suppose.”

  “How much help do you need?”

  “One or two other people. Willie can work the van. I can teach him enough in half an hour to stand in for me.”

  “Who would you use if you decide not to use Dunn?”

  “There’s a couple of folks who helped me on a couple of things in the past. Man and woman who run a little electrical business, Scout and Arlene.”

  “Are they honest?”

  “Arlene used to be a crackhead. Was a street-corner hooker to pay for her habit. She beat it, though, which puts her pretty damned high in my book. Scout’s a thief. Willie sent me to them a couple years ago, says they’re good people. I can understand a guy like Scout, maybe because he’s so much like me. I know when he might be tempted and when he wouldn’t. And he thinks I’ll kill him if he crosses me.”