DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten (the Charlie Fox crime thriller series)

by Sharp, Zoe

  He gave her an odd glance, said, “Tom does know you’re here, doesn’t he?”

  Marie beamed. “I thought I’d surprise him,” she said, and wagged a warning finger. “So don’t you go calling him the minute I’m out the door, Blake. I know he’ll be up to no good without me, but catching him in the act is so much more satisfying, don’t you think?”

  Thirty

  Blake Dyer shuffled his feet closer to the tee, lined up the face of a driver to the ball, and unwound his whole body in one fluid, practised motion.

  The little white dimpled ball catapulted away into the distance almost too fast for the human eye to track. Dyer followed its progress with a hand shading his eyes from the afternoon sun, his expression clearing as he realised the scope and accuracy of the shot.

  “Not bad, Blake, not bad at all,” Tom O’Day said. “Shall we say a thousand bucks a hole?”

  Blake Dyer gave him a wry smile. “Does it matter?” he asked. “If I lose you’ll tell me to donate the money to the Foundation.”

  “True enough.”

  “And if I win?”

  “I’ll ask you, most politely, to do the same thing,” Tom O’Day agreed comfortably.

  Dyer paused as if considering his options. Then he nodded. “Sounds like a fair deal to me,” he said amicably, as if they were discussing playing for loose change one of them had found down the back of his sofa.

  “Just as long as you don’t expect me to contribute, Tom,” Autumn warned as she stepped up to tee off. “That’s a little rich for my blood—not to mention my present handicap.”

  Tom O’Day laughed and nudged Blake Dyer’s arm. “Don’t believe a word of it, old friend. This lady is a shark, on or off the golf course.”

  Jimmy O’Day, partnering his godfather, scowled furiously and fumbled getting his club out of his bag, rattling the shafts together in his frustration. O’Day turned to glance at him, frowning. I think he was more concerned that Autumn not be put off her opening shot rather than that he might have offended his son.

  I was no golf expert beyond knowing which club carried the most weight and which make was least likely to break if you hit someone with it—a Callaway putter for preference. Autumn’s initial swing looked fast and smooth, and her ball seemed to travel almost as far as Blake Dyer’s had done.

  Jimmy sliced his dangerously close to the rough grass at the edge of the fairway. Morton, who’d selected the club for him like a bloody caddy instead of a bodyguard, did not trouble to hide a smirk. How the hell that guy had survived for so long in an industry which is such a fine balance of subservience and authority, I had no idea.

  Tom O’Day, by comparison with his son, uncoiled a big lazy drive off the tee that went further than anyone else’s by a country mile.

  “Shall we?” Autumn asked, slotting her club back into the bag on her electric cart. They’d commandeered a small fleet of the things back at the clubhouse.

  Maybe it was a power play, but Sean had drawn himself driving duty. My immediate role ended once they trundled away towards the first hole. I watched them go for a while, just to keep an eye on who was coming up behind.

  Tom O’Day had supplemented his usual bodyguard, Hobson, with a second man today, an ex-navy SEAL. Both were obviously determined to provide a visible deterrent, making no effort to blend. The group of them had formed a presidential-style cavalcade. Even in an upmarket place like this it was attracting more attention than I would have liked.

  Sean did not look back. After our earlier confrontation, I hardly expected him to. Still, it grieved me. Just when I thought we might be making progress on a personal level, I’d been forced to take us right back to square one.

  I felt more alone now, I realised, than I had done during Sean’s coma. At least then I’d believe that if he woke up—when he woke up—we would be together again. I’d never imagined that he would come back indifferent to me.

  I stepped back to allow the next group to prepare themselves. It was a mixed double of husbands playing a round with either their wives or mistresses. Or it could just as easily have been a pair of wives with their boyfriends, for that matter.

  Morton, in one of the carts with Tom O’Day’s other bodyguard, turned in his seat to give me a mocking salute as they trundled away. As if he knew exactly what doubts and fears were running around inside my head, and revelled in them. I ignored him, relying on my dignity to take the moral high ground. It was a strangely unsatisfying victory.

  As I moved away my cellphone buzzed in my pocket. One of the women players had just been handed a club and she shot me a sharp glance as I pulled it out and checked the number. I nodded to her and walked farther away before I answered the call.

  “Hi,” I said, brusque. “What have you got?”

  “And it’s good to speak with you, too,” Parker Armstrong said dryly. “You OK?”

  I’d called him to report on the crash and its immediate aftermath, if not Sean’s delayed reaction to it later the same night.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “But I’m really hoping you’ve called with something on that bastard Vic Morton, because he’s starting to piss me off no end.”

  Parker saw past the flippancy at once. “Look, Charlie,” he said, his voice suddenly very focused, “I know you have history with this guy and you must hate his guts. Jesus, no one on earth could blame you for that after what he did to you—” He shut off abruptly, as if not trusting what he might have been about to say.

  “It’s OK,” I said, softening. “Whatever I might be capable of, Parker, I’ll do my best not to embarrass you or the agency.”

  “You think that matters compared with—?”

  “Please,” I said, twisting in the face of words that should remain unsaid. I forced my tone to lighten. “I’ll behave, which is a shame really, because that man has a face I’d never get tired of kicking.”

  “Go buy yourself a voodoo doll from the French Quarter and stick pins in it instead,” he said, determinedly matching his tone to mine. “And let me know how that works out for you.”

  “Damn,” I said. “I assume that means you haven’t found anything I can use to get that little waster punted?”

  “Uh-uh,” Parker said. “He moves around quite a bit—never out of work for long, but never in work for long either.”

  “Hired for his professional qualifications and fired for his personal failings,” I said, trying to keep the satisfaction out of my voice. “Sounds like he’s using whatever he can get to keep his record nice and shiny.”

  Close protection was a very fine line, a difficult tightrope act. Safeguarding a principal meant keeping them away from dangerous situations and locations, but that did not mean we could prevent them going somewhere they wanted to go, or from doing something they wanted to do. Not if we wanted to stay in work.

  The pressure to procure for them—alcohol, drugs, sex—was constantly applied. It was a line both Sean and Parker had been adamant was never crossed. Not for anybody. Doing so would have been a firing offence—for operative and client.

  I recalled a low point when Sean and I had been arrested during a police raid on a brothel in Bushwick with our supposed client and a barely legal hooker. Only the fact that nobody was there from choice had saved us.

  But for someone whose moral compass was skewed to start with, it would be an all-too easy step. And once you’ve got that reputation you get all the wrong kind of offers—from people who then don’t really want to see a self-righteous, smirking face in the cold light of day the following morning.

  So they find an excuse to let you go—with a great reference, of course. To do otherwise would be to assure a kind of mutual destruction.

  “I think you got that one nailed,” Parker said now. He paused, almost a hesitation, before launching into one last try. “Look, I know how you feel about this guy, Charlie. If you want me to make some calls, get him blacklisted, just say the word.”

  “Thank you, Parker,” I said, genuinely touched. “But it
sounds like he’ll crash and burn sooner or later without my help.”

  And I can’t go there—won’t go there—not again . . .

  Or where would I stop?

  It was my turn to hesitate. “I think you should . . . convey your suspicions to the husband’s chief of security, though,” I said carefully. “I rather like the wife, and Morton is not the kind of guy anyone should want looking after their loved ones.”

  Thirty-one

  Tom O’Day and his head of PR won their mini golf tournament by a convincing margin. Blake Dyer took losing in good heart but Jimmy O’Day sulked for most of the return journey into New Orleans.

  On the way back to the hotel the four of them decided to detour into the heart of the French Quarter for afternoon coffee and beignets at the Café du Monde. I’d heard of the place but never been there. It turned out to be more laid-back than I was expecting, with the tables crowded together under a green and white striped awning, open to the street.

  This made things awkward from a security point of view, particularly in light of yesterday’s attack on the Bell. I wondered if the choice was a kind of provocation. And if so, who was it aimed at?

  The café was full, the nearby streets bustling with the city’s distinctive, slightly exotic energy. Tourists strolled and gawked, or rode in the elegant four-wheel horse-drawn carriages along Decatur Street, their white knees pinking in the sun.

  I stood at the front of the café with Sean. Tom O’Day’s security guys took a table inside, near to our principals without overcrowding them.

  Given a choice, I would have positioned Morton solo by the entrance to the kitchens, but I was not given that choice. Left to his own devices Morton chose to cluster with Tom O’Day’s bodyguards instead.

  I was initially thankful. Then I saw the way he was talking to the two men, leaning forwards conspiratorially with his head bent—and the dubious looks they flicked in our direction—and I wished I’d kept him close enough to strangle whatever rumours he was spreading.

  I pointedly kept my attention spread between our principal and the street. Across from the café were tall brick buildings adorned with verandas and balconies in the typical New Orleans style, delicate wrought-iron tumbled with greenery. It made for a lot of access points to cover. The only consolation was that the elevation made it harder to pinpoint a target under cover.

  I remembered the RPG and was not reassured.

  “Parker’s not happy,” I said to Sean, sipping the ice coffee I’d ordered.

  He gave me a sharp glance. “Been running to the boss man again, Charlie?”

  “Hey, he rang me,” I said, keeping it as neutral as I could. It seemed whenever Sean had been in close contact with Morton he was prickly with me afterwards, his mood changeable. Something else I’d have to damn well watch.

  “And what did Parker say, exactly?”

  “That he doesn’t like the incident rate so far on this job—not when we haven’t even got to the main event yet.”

  “One car park ambush and one mid-air ambush,” Sean said lightly, still trying to shrug off his assumption and not quite managing it. “What’s not to like?”

  “Where do I start?” I murmured. “If it had been up to me we’d have hauled Dyer back onto his executive jet, in a straitjacket if necessary, and he’d be safely tucked up in bed back home in Florida by now.”

  “You offering to tuck him in, are you?” Sean said, and just when I began to think he’d turned into a total jerk, he added, “Besides, it’s nowhere close to bedtime in Miami.”

  I half smiled, put a hand out to touch Sean’s arm, in solidarity, friendship, but I caught Vic Morton’s lascivious gaze out of the corner of my eye. I could see him almost willing me to touch Sean in some way that could be used against me in the eyes of his companions. I redirected my hand to my paper cup, turning it in my hands before I took another sip. An old saying fell into my head:

  Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me.

  Fool me three times; shame on the both of us.

  I’d once thought Morton was an OK kind of bloke. Not quite the kind I wanted to turn my back on, maybe, but not one who’d stab me in it either. Turned out that should have been the least of my worries about him.

  He was not as silently malevolent as big Clay, or as easily egged-on as Donalson. He wasn’t as intrinsically nasty as Hackett, either—he’d been the one leading from the front there. Leading by example.

  I tried and failed to stop my skin shimmying at the memory.

  “You going to tell me the rest of it?” Sean asked.

  For a second my mind rushed headlong down a completely different track, back to a cold dark night, a hint of mist, a hint of frost, danger lurking like a sleeved blade. I had not seen it coming.

  I would have done so now.

  Sean sighed, not altogether patiently. “What else did Parker say, Charlie?”

  Reality nudged me back into step. The darkness receded, replaced by the bright busy street, the chatter of people, and a muggy heat only lazily dispelled by the overhead fans.

  Along with their coffees our group had ordered the café’s famous beignet pastries. These appeared to be squared-off doughnuts covered with enough icing sugar to make my teeth itch at the sight of them. Even the floor inside the café was dusted with it. Blake Dyer was tucking into his beignet with evident enjoyment. I flicked my eyes back to Sean.

  “Parker strongly suggests that we keep a very close eye on Ysabeau van Zant,” I said.

  “So the rumours Dyer told us about are solid.”

  “What worries Parker more, I think, are the rumours that she might have contracted out a hit on that dealer who got himself shot, Leon Castille. One way to show them she meant business—especially when he wasn’t exactly an upstanding pillar of society.”

  “Did it smell like a pro hit?”

  I shrugged. “One round in the back to put him down, then finished off with one to the head, according to the reports. First round was a through-and-through—never found the bullet. Second round stayed inside the skull but was too mangled to try for a match. The shooter policed his brass. And all this went down in a part of town where there were never going to be any witnesses prepared to come forward. Nothing to go on and nobody to care. Case closed.”

  Sean nodded, took a sip of his coffee. I lifted my own drink just for something to do with my hands, and debated on how much of the rest to tell him.

  Because, Parker had also been in touch with Madeleine Rimmington back in the UK. Madeleine had assumed control of Sean’s close-protection agency when he and I moved over to the States to take up Parker’s offer. She was an information expert who’d since specialised in data protection and counter-espionage for all things electronic. But to protect stuff like that, you had to first know how to steal it. If it was stored on a computer and made up of pixels or binary code, Madeleine seemed to be able to access it.

  In this case, though, all she’d found were the dates of Sean’s last visit to New Orleans, back when he’d been assigned to a fledgling young baseball player called Gabe Baptiste. A babysitting job he’d been reluctant to take on in the first place, but had done so anyway because it was a chance to work in America, the land of opportunity. A chance to gain a reputation, to make a name.

  A job he’d canned early and come home, with Baptiste’s name firmly removed from the list of possible future clients. It would seem he’d expunged any other record of the job.

  But the dates of his trip just happened to coincide with the death of Ysabeau van Zant’s troublesome drug connection.

  A killing with no apparent witnesses.

  But what if there had been a witness? What if Gabe Baptiste had seen what happened and had chosen not to come forward, not to speak out? I already knew he’d got himself sorted afterwards, mentally and financially. Did Mrs van Zant pay him off and tell him to get out of New Orleans and stay out, no matter what?

  Did she, in effect, pave the way for his glittering c
areer?

  If so, perhaps that was the marker he owed her—the one she’d now called in. Not to keep him away from New Orleans, but to force him back here. It would also explain his response to Sean when he saw him again.

  Because the man Sean had been before he was shot would not have liked letting someone get away with murder. Not when it was straightforward assassination anyway. I still hoped he might not see it quite that way in my case—if it ever came to that.

  I had a vision of the old Sean—the Sean who’d come before—disagreeing vigorously with Baptiste’s decision to allow himself to be bought off.

  Sean had a strong sense of justice that did not always conform to legal niceties. In the right circumstances he would have done the job himself, but not to take the heat off some unknown politico—they were never his favourite breed at the best of times.