Like it could help me get to sleep at night.
I watched as darkness descended over the whole of Virginia, and the stars rose cold and bright. I watched as, one by one, the lights went out, and the only illumination was the flicker of the TV screen in the upstairs bedroom window. I watched until even that went dark, and dawn broke across the eastern sky. Then I climbed back into the Beemer and set out on the long drive home.
A Google alert is all it takes to get you dead these days.
Crazy, isn’t it? Lucky for you, though, a Google alert is also all it takes for you to get a call from me, and if your check clears, I maybe bag the guy who wants to get you dead.
Technology’s a hell of a thing.
Take this particular Google alert, for example: a set of race results from Vernon Downs, a small-t ime harness track in upstate New York. Big winner of the day was a mare named McGurn’s Lament.
Only here’s the thing: there’s no such horse as McGurn’s Lament. And if you were to try and make sense of the day’s stats, you’d find that they resist sense-making. That’s because those stats aren’t stats at all.
They’re a book cipher.
The Syndicate’s been passing messages this way for years. Got their fingers in a half a dozen race sites so they can spread the bogus results around, avoid raising any hackles. They use made-up horses as code names indicating the nature of the message—Brown Beauty if they’re moving smack, Luscious Lady if they’re talking whores, and so on—with the pertinent details encrypted in the results that follow. McGurn’s Lament signifies a hit. An in joke of sorts, I guess. McGurn was Capone’s chief hitman, the guy responsible for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He was gunned down himself a few years later, in the middle of a frame of tenpin. You see the name McGurn’s Lament, you know the numbers are going to code for a name—and if you’re lucky, an address. Even money is whoever that name belongs to isn’t long for this world.
It works like this. Say the horse wearing number thirty-eight came in sixth. That means the sixth letter on the thirty-eighth page is the one you want. Big enough block of numbers, you can encode damn near any message you like. Any message like a name and an address. Any message like Take your time or Make it look like an accident or whatever. And because nearly every letter of the alphabet appears in dozens of places throughout the course of any book, there’s none of the pesky repetition that code-breaking programs rely upon to work their mojo. Unless you know what book the code is referencing—and I’m talking the exact edition—there’s no way you’re going to crack the fucking thing.
Lucky for me, I knew what book they were referencing. Convinced a Syndicate guy I popped a few months back to cough it up in return for doing him quick. Nineteen sixty-nine first edition of The Godfather.
Never let it be said that Mob guys don’t have a sense of humor.
The target’s name was Michael Rigby. From what I could gather, he was like the Chicago Mob’s very own IT guy, at least until he took them for a cool twenty-eight mil and then turned stoolie for the feds—decimating their northwest operation in the process. The remainder of the message consisted of a URL, a bounty of twenty-five K, and three short words of instruction: MAKE IT PUBLIC.
The URL led to a piece in the Springfield, Missouri, News-Leader, dated yesterday, about a local Radio Shack employee named Mark Reynolds who hit the jackpot playing slots at a Kansas City casino to the tune of over $2 million. Article asked him how he felt. “Lucky,” was his reply.
Only Mark Reynolds of Springfield, Missouri, didn’t seem so lucky to me. Because Mark Reynolds’s stupid mug was smiling back at me from my computer screen, and he looked an awful lot like a stoolie IT guy named Michael Rigby.
Guess WitSec figured stash a guy in a town called Springfield and even if somebody lets it slip, you’ve got to search the country over before you find the right one.
Then again, maybe Rigby was lucky. After all, between what he stole from the Mob and what he won playing the slots, he had enough money to cover my fee sixty times over.
Which meant maybe he’d live long enough to spend the rest.
***
“Morning, Michael.”
It wasn’t morning. Hadn’t been for hours. But given the rumpled state of Rigby’s slept-in clothes and his gravity-defying hair, it may as well have been. Though where he was going with bedhead at three in the afternoon was beyond me.
I’d been hiding in his garage since six A.M., waiting for him to show. The way he leaped for the gun stashed under his workbench when he saw me, I’d say he’d been waiting for someone like me a while too.
“Don’t bother,” I said.
He bothered. Click click click click click. When he caught on his piece was empty, he threw the fucking thing at me. It bounced off the wall to my right and clattered to the concrete floor. I tried not to take it personally.
“Relax—I’m not here to kill you.”
But Rigby wasn’t listening—he was too busy doing his best Gene Krupa impression on the wall-mounted button that opened the garage door. I’d disabled that too, of course. This wasn’t my first day on the job.
He peered at me a moment with manic Muppet eyes over the top of his tan mid-nineties Skylark, and then bolted for the driver’s side door. Damn near got inside, too, but he froze once I told him the score.
“Or rather, what I should have said is, I’m not here to kill you, Michael, but there are others close behind who mean to. And if you leave, you’re on your own—I won’t be able to protect you.”
He paused halfway through the Buick’s open door, digesting what I’d said.
“You with WitSec?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m not with WitSec.”
Rigby laughed, black and bitter as old coffee. “‘Course you’re not. Figured maybe they saw my picture in the paper, sent you out to keep an eye on me, but I should a known those asshats don’t give a damn about me—not anymore.”
“Wait a minute—you’re telling me you’re no longer in the program?”
“Nope. I told those fuckers to take a hike about a year back. Always keeping tabs. Checking up on me. Poking round my business. Couldn’t get at a dime of the dough I’d stashed, them looking over my shoulder all the time. So I dropped out. Told ‘em I was fine. And I would a been, too, if it wasn’t for that fucking picture. That is what brought you here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. That’s what brought me here. And I’m not the only one who’s seen it.”
Rigby cocked his head, like I was some kind of math problem he could maybe figure out. “So if you ain’t with WitSec, who the hell are you?”
“Who I am isn’t important. What’s important’s who I work for.”
“Okay then—who do you work for?”
“You, actually. Or rather, I will, for the bargain-basement rate of a quarter million dollars.”
“A quarter million dollars.”
“That’s right.”
“Which gets me what, exactly?”
“You know those guys coming to kill you?”
“Yeah?”
“I kill them first.”
Another barking laugh. “Shit—you’re like some kind of hitman entrepreneur? Now I’ve fucking heard everything. But seriously, dude, don’t you think a quarter mil’s a little steep?”
I showed him my palms. “Hey, that’s your call to make. But I would’ve thought a guy with thirty million in the bank would have no trouble forking over a paltry quarter mil to avoid his own grisly murder.”
“Look around, pal—I look like I got thirty mil?”
I looked around. He had a point. I told him so.
“Damn right I got a point. See, the Marshals Service took it personal when I kicked ‘em to the curb. Guess once I did they figured out I wasn’t square with them when I told ‘em I didn’t know shit ‘bout all the money that went missing. Next thing I know, I got a federal prosecutor sniffing around, asking all kinds of pointed questions about unreported income and wondering
if maybe I had any back taxes needed filing. Ain’t been near my stash since, for fear they’d bust my ass. Don’t have to tell you if they locked me up, I’d be shanked within the week, and ain’t no pile of money worth that. So instead I figured fuck it—easy come, easy go. Time to seek out other sources of income. Hence my little trip to the casino.”
“A two mil payout goes a long way toward putting you back in the upper class,” I said. “Picture aside, that was quite a stroke of luck.”
“Luck? You think that shit was luck? Took me eight months to write a patch that could get through the casino’s firewall and hack those slots. I earned every fucking dime of that money.”
“And now that you have it, you’ll have no trouble paying me.”
“Yeah, only that’s just it—I don’t have it yet. Maybe Vegas does it different, but a two-bit slot joint in KC don’t exactly hand over that kind of coin right on the spot. I gotta go back Thursday to pick it up.”
A puzzle piece clicked into place. “Let me guess: big crowd, oversized novelty check—that sort of deal?”
“That’s right,” he said.
“Yeah, that’s where they’re going to hit you.”
Rigby didn’t look too happy to hear that, but he was skeptical still. “What makes you so sure?”
“Their instructions were to make it public.”
Even in the dim light of the garage, I could see him go pale.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Fucking motherfucking fuck.” Then he brightened. “But you said that you could stop ‘em, right?”
“I said if you paid me, I could stop them.”
“Right, but if you stop ‘em, I can get my money, and then I’ll have more than enough to pay you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t work that way. I get my money up front, or no deal.”
“I dunno, dude—that sounds pretty fucking hinky to me. If you’re as good as you’re puttin’ on, why’s it matter if I pay you after?”
“Well, for one, there’s no guarantee you ever would, in which case I’d have to kill you—and that makes two hits I don’t get paid for. And for two, an attempt on your life is going to attract all kinds of attention from the authorities, which makes any subsequent transfer of funds a whole lot riskier than it would have been beforehand. But all of that pales in comparison to the fact that I don’t kill without good reason. No money, no reason. So take it or leave it, but my offer’s nonnegotiable.”
“Everything’s negotiable, dude.”
“Not this.”
“So what then? You’re just gonna leave me here to die?”
“No,” I said, handing him a scrap of paper on which was scrawled the number of a disposable cell, “I’m going to leave you here to make a choice. You can choose to run—to leave this place tonight—and who knows? Maybe you’ll manage to disappear again. You can choose to spend the next three days getting my fee together. If you’re successful, you give me a ring on that number there, and you have my word no harm will come to you. Or you can choose to do nothing and see how long your luck holds. It’s up to you.”
Rigby was silent a long while. Then he shook his head and swore. “Damn—all I figured on getting when I came out here was a breakfast sandwich from the gas station on the corner. Instead, I get you, and all the sudden I ain’t so hungry anymore.” He paused and licked his lips. “But I could sure as shit use something to drink.”
Thursday morning, Rigby called. I knew he would. What I hadn’t figured on was what he’d say.
“You get my money?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he said.
“Then this conversation is over.”
“Wait—don’t hang up!”
I didn’t hang up. God knows why, but I didn’t. Now, of course, I wish to hell I had.
“I’m listening.”
“I want you to take it all.”
“Excuse me?”
“The whole two mil. Every fucking penny. Just get these guys off my ass long enough for me to rabbit, and it’s yours.”
Two million dollars.
Two million dollars.
It was more than I could make in three jobs—in five. And it was just sitting there in front of me for the taking. All I had to do was pop some lowlife Syndicate button man, and bam.
I wanted to do a backflip. To happy-dance around the fucking room. But Rigby didn’t need to know that. So I played it calm, cool. “And how do you propose to get me this money?”
“That’s the beauty part,” he said, relief apparent in his tone. “We just have the casino give it straight to you. See, that big check is just for show—I’m supposed to give ‘em my account info ahead of time so they can transfer the funds directly once the dog-and-pony show is over. But I figure a big-shot hitman like you has probably got a numbered account somewhere, all nice and anonymous-like, am I right? So who’s to say for the purpose of this transaction that account ain’t mine?”
I should have said no. Should have up and walked away. But I got greedy. I got stupid. Two million dollars buys a lot of bad decisions. So what I said instead was, “You try to screw me, and I’ll kill you—you know that, right?”
I swear, I could damn near hear him smiling. “That mean we got a deal?”
Two. Million. Dollars.
“Yeah, we got a deal.”
“Cool—let me grab a pen.”
Pendleton’s Resort and Casino was a tacky riverboat-themed complex overlooking the Missouri River from an industrial park just north of KC proper. And old-timey marquee awash in the light of a thousand bulbs gave way to an interior whose décor was as loud and jarring as the din rising from its endless banks of garish, clanking slots.
Rigby’s ceremony was in a banquet hall just off the gaming floor, sandwiched between a hypnotist’s matinee performance and some country act I’d never heard of. The room was big and dark, with plush carpeting of nauseating green and red and floor-to-ceiling curtains on each wall. A small stage was set up at one end of the room, surrounded by a smattering of linened tables with folding chairs to match. The chairs were mostly occupied, full of drunks and barflies and compulsive gamblers who’d run out of dough, tossing back free drinks and snatching apps from silver platters as they passed. To one side of the stage was a short, stout bar, people crowded all around. At each of the two exits was a security guard—husky, uniformed, armed. Another couple stood just offstage at either side.
I didn’t like it.
The hall was too full, had too few exits and way too much security. Not to mention the half-domes of tinted plastic that protruded downward at regular intervals from the ceiling—security cameras, watching every inch of the room.
The room I was about to pop a guy in.
I told myself that I should walk. That the chances of success—as defined by both me and Rigby getting out of here alive—were slim to none. That to do this job right, I would’ve had to scout the place a week, maybe identify the button man ahead of time. And I wasn’t wrong.
Problem was, I had two million reasons to try anyway.
Least I’d come prepared. Job like this, the key is blending in, so I’d gone full-on gambling cliché. A red-and-white-checked cowboy shirt with white trim. Dark blue boot-cut jeans over a pair of alligator boots. Brown leather jacket with a ceramic knife stashed in the lining of its right sleeve, and a homemade pen-light zip gun in its left-hand pocket. On my head, an off-white Stetson, a pair of BluBlockers, and a big-ass fake mustache. Did I look ridiculous? Absolutely—but then, so did everyone else in here. If I’d walked in dressed for stealth, any hitter worth his salt would’ve made me in an instant. Just like I made the guy I was gunning for.
Seems he went the cliché route too. Black turtleneck. Black jeans. Black jacket, beneath which lurked the telltale bulk of a shoulder holster. Coarse, grim features, and hair so slick it glistened beneath the lights. He was sitting down in front, his hands under the table, casting surreptitious glances around the room while waiting for Rigby to take the stage. In front
of him a gin and tonic sat untouched. As I watched him from behind my tinted lenses, he glanced back my way a moment, but his eyes just slid right off me. And why wouldn’t they? I was just another two-bit gambler playing cowboy, one of thirty in the room.
Seemed to me the key was tagging him all quiet-like, then getting out of here before the crowd got wise he’d died. Figured I’d sidle up beside him acting tipsy while everyone was still milling about, then lean in quick and slice his femoral. He’d bleed out onto the floor beneath his table in seconds, and the floor-length linens would hide the worst of it. Long as he didn’t fall out of his chair, he’d probably just look like another sloppy drunk too soused to play the tables. By the time the room cleared and his body was discovered, I’d be half a state away from here.
That’s what I told myself, at least.
But that’s not quite how it went down.
Oh, sure, I sidled up just like I’d planned, dropped the knife into my palm with a practiced flick. Spied Rigby standing in the wings as I approached the stage, straining to see the audience past the stage lights and looking like he had a king-fuck case of stage fright. Then something kind of weird happened.
And by “something kind of weird happened,” I mean my target doubled over coughing, and then the room erupted in a hail of gunfire.
When the shots rang out, Rigby hit the deck, drywall pocking just behind where he’d been standing. I hit the floor as well, but not quickly enough—a bullet tore through my right side and spilled blood all over where my target should’ve been. But he wasn’t there anymore. He’d turned his double-over into a roll, vacating his chair just before his buddies blew it all to hell and taking cover behind the bar as its patrons fled.
Did I say “target”? I should’ve said “bait.” And did I say “Rigby”? I should’ve said “shit-bag.” Because as I said before, by the time you hear the shot, the bullet’s come and gone, only Rigby managed to duck those ones just fine. And no way could he have seen someone pull a gun past all the stage lights. Besides, it was clear my would-be target’s cough had been the go-ahead to open fire. The fact that Rigby ducked in time meant he hadn’t reacted to the gunfire, he’d reacted to the cough—which meant that he’d been tipped to listen for it.
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