by Mike Cooper
A woman pushing a jogging stroller went past on the sidewalk, a toddler dozing in the seat. There was a can in the cupholder on the stroller’s handle, and the green band on the aluminum looked familiar—Dave’s favorite beer.
Harmony put her hand on my arm.
“It’s a good thing we’re on the same side,” she said.
I couldn’t look away from her eyes. “Uh, yeah. A real . . . good thing. Good.”
“I’m not sure anyone else could have figured this out.”
“No, it’s—I mean, ah. Never mind.” I cast around for a reciprocal compliment. “You’re one hell of a shooter.”
She took her hand away. “Uh-huh.”
Shit, wrong thing to say. “Because, you know, I’ve seen a lot of gunnery, and . . .” I gave up, and the moment slipped away. Harmony sighed and crossed her arms.
I looked at the hardware store, then up the street. A long pause.
I was pretty sure Dave wouldn’t have screwed that up.
“How about you?” I said, finally.
“What?”
“Your call?”
“Oh.” Harmony nodded, and we were back to business. “The guy who hired me. And fired me, for that matter. He seemed upset I hadn’t left town yet.”
“How did he know?”
“Yeah, that’s a good question, isn’t it?”
Watching the airport. Visiting her home in LA. Having observers here in Clabbton who’d seen her. None of the obvious answers would make her feel better.
“It’s all speculation,” I said. “There’s no proof for any of this—Markson, the Russians, whatever.”
“It’s good enough for me.”
She wasn’t flustered, but her hair seemed looser, her hands a little more in motion. The vest hung open, obviously to keep free access to whatever cannon she had holstered in the small of her back. Another button seemed to have come undone at the top of the white shirt.
“What?” she said again.
“Huh?”
“You’re staring.”
“Oh.” Nothing to do but brazen it out. “What kind of holster do you use?”
“Sam Andrews. You?”
“Nothing that fancy.” A custom Andrews could cost three hundred dollars. “Sometimes I just push it into my belt.”
She shook her head. “Not worried about shooting your willy off, huh?”
“Nice.” If casual razzing was all that was on offer, I’d just have to be happy with that.
A van pulled up next to the hardware store, and the panel door slid open. Four men emerged—dirty, cement dust on their jeans and hair. They gestured brief goodbyes, and the van drove off.
All were short and dark-skinned. Their voices were inaudible from this far, but I’d have bet they were speaking Spanish. Day labor, earning their forty or fifty dollars.
Not so much difference, me and them.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go conduct an investigation.”
—
“I remember them.”
The woman behind the counter was at least fifty or sixty, gray haired and short. She started to read the receipt, but when I said “duct tape” that was all it took.
“Two of them, and didn’t they have trouble? Wandering around the aisles for ten minutes and never asked for help.”
The store wasn’t large—twenty feet this way, thirty that, every shelf and pegboard crammed. Heavy plastic bags of grass seed were piled at the front in what passed for a seasonal display with some hand trowels and spading forks by the register. At the end of the store, directly down the aisle from the door, a rack of color chips sat on a short bench over a paint-mixing machine. A wall of screws and bolts, a narrow trash can holding rakes and shovels upside down, sacks of charcoal.
“I thought they might be thinking about robbing the place.” She didn’t seem fazed by the possibility. “It’s happened before. Not that I ever have much cash in the drawer. Everyone uses plastic nowadays.”
“You’ve gotten held up?” Harmony looked interested.
“Once. And my husband one time—that was after closing, at eight o’clock. They pointed a gun right through the glass in the door.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“No one hurt, thank God. It was kids both times. Drugs, I imagine. Not much younger than you two.”
A man in overalls had been finishing his purchase when we came in, taking a plastic bag and a coil of hose. The door’s spring was broken, and he had to stop to push it shut behind him, its bell jingling. We seemed to be the only other customers.
“What’s your interest?” the woman said.
“Um.” Maybe we should have thought about that beforehand.
“Someone broke into my car,” said Harmony, picking up the slack. “Smashed the passenger window and stole all the change from the pockets. Broad daylight, can you believe it? Like no one would notice them or care.”
She was subtly imitating the woman’s gestures and voice—a little broader, a little louder, a little more inflection. I moved back a half step, happy to cede the limelight.
“So of course the police are like, how much did they take? And when I told them maybe ten dollars, they wouldn’t take a report. Even for the insurance on the window. Now it’s true I have a glass rider, but still.”
The woman nodded. “There’s plenty worse crimes they need to deal with, sorry to say.”
“Well, I guess that’s true. All the same. So we looked around, and this paper bag was sitting on the ground right next to my car. Like maybe they dropped it.”
“Duct tape,” the woman said. “Some candy and a Maglite. I remember.”
“We found the duct tape. I saw on TV once, someone’s breaking into a house, they put tape over the window so when they break the glass, it doesn’t fall and make noise. Maybe that’s what they were thinking.”
“Was there tape on your car?” She leaned forward, keen.
“No. So maybe not. But we thought we’d follow up because it was only about a mile from here.”
“I can’t tell you anything about them, really.” She straightened up. “Two men. Large. About your size.” She nodded to me. “Dark hair? I don’t know. Customers come and go all day.”
“But you remember these two,” said Harmony.
“Because they wandered around for so long. I was starting to wonder. But then they found their duct tape and flashlight, and one picked the bag of candy, and that was that.” She gestured to a small display of candy on the counter. “Paid up and left.”
What they looked like didn’t matter so much—we’d seen them ourselves. Or some of them. For that matter, these particular two might even be dead. There’d been substantial attrition among the Russians at the mill.
“They didn’t happen to say where they were going?” asked Harmony. “Or maybe where they were from?”
“No, they did not.”
A few more questions, and no more information. Harmony glanced at me, offering the floor, but I couldn’t think of anything to add.
“I guess we should just let it go,” she said. “Maybe the police are right. Insurance covers the window, like I said.”
“Not worth it,” the woman agreed.
But on the way out, just as I’d pushed open the door, she called over the jingling of the bell, “Oh, one thing.”
We stopped and looked back. “Yes?” Harmony said.
“They weren’t driving.”
“Driving?”
“They didn’t have a car.” The woman had a thought. “Maybe that’s what they were really after. You’re lucky—they could have been trying to steal yours!”
“How do you know?”
“After they left, I had to close the door. The mat had gotten wedged again—you saw the problem when you came in. But when I straightened it out, I happened to look up the street, and they were walking off.” She pointed. “Down that way.”
“Perhaps they parked over there.”
“On this block? I don’
t know why—there are plenty of spaces much closer to us all day. Even at the busiest, on Saturday, you wouldn’t have to go far. No.” She shook her head. “The more I think on it, the more I think they were on foot.”
“We should go back to the police,” I suggested, feeling I ought to put in at least a few words. “Maybe a different car was stolen near ours.”
“Yes!” But her excitement faded. “Not that it would matter. They’ve got too much else to do than worry about a couple of joyriders. And that’s what they’ll call it, you know—just kids.”
Outside I started to cross toward the truck, a little surprised to find Harmony right beside me.
“You should go get your car,” I said. “She’s probably watching us. We shouldn’t hang around.”
“All the more reason.” Harmony checked the street in both directions. “What would she think if we split up?”
“Ah, right.”
“We’ll go around the block. You can drop me at mine.”
But once I started up and pulled into the street, we decided to drive around a little. Dusk was falling, streetlights flickering on—every other one, I noticed—leaving the streets more shadowy than lit. Budget cuts, probably.
“How far would they walk?” Harmony said, eyes scanning every building we passed. “A hundred yards? A quarter mile? Unless they have good reason, even Russians would probably drive. Like the woman said, parking is certainly not a problem.”
“And in this direction. You want to check a map online?”
“There’s no guarantee every hotel would be listed. Or they might be in a regular house, or maybe they’re not staying here at all—just happened to be in the neighborhood.” Harmony shook her head. “Makes more sense to look and see. All the internet ever does is put your imagination in a box.”
“A big box.” But I agreed.
The district was older, with some run-down apartments and houses on the smaller streets, businesses and commercial property on the avenue. We passed a muffler shop and I thought of Brendt. Some kids—real kids, like twelve-year-olds—were standing in front of a taqueria. Next door was a freestanding hair salon in an ancient bungalow, with a huge window hacked into the front wall and the lawn paved into a parking lot.
“Over there.” Harmony pointed to the right, as we came up on the Sleep Tite Motel. A few cars in the lot, none that I recognized.
“Maybe,” I said. “Who knows?”
We slowed. No Russians loitering outside, cleaning their rifles and practicing Systema. Like all of Pittsburgh, the scene felt empty of people, almost postapocalyptic, but that was probably just me missing Manhattan.
“Keep going,” Harmony said.
She seemed fully engaged in the mission. Her hands were nowhere near her weapons and her head was turned away from me. I could easily have seized physical advantage, especially because I’d shifted the Sig around to the front of my belt, at most a two-second draw. But she didn’t seem to care.
It felt like we’d crossed a threshold, however modest.
Around the corner we passed a used-car lot, then a blocky two-story building with a faded, barely readable sign: BLANKENSHIP AUTO BODY.
“There!” Harmony pointed again. “The panel van.”
She was right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A 1960s motor inn—two stories in one long building, yellow-painted concrete and dark red railings on the balcony. Each unit had an identical door to the left of one square window. It was set back thirty feet from the avenue, just enough for a row of parking spaces and some turnaround pavement.
And at one end a white contractor’s van was parked nose out. Its roof rack held a battered aluminum ladder and two PVC pipes, six inches wide and maybe eight feet long, bolted down. This close I could finally read the logo on the door—EZ-FLOW PLUMBING SERVICE.
I drove past, not changing speed. Harmony stared intently.
We circled the block, and I stopped well away, up a slight rise. We could look down the street and see the motel’s sign, illuminated by one dim floodlight at the edge of the lot. The van and the building itself were concealed by the body shop between us.
“It wouldn’t be good enough for any kind of warrant,” said Harmony, “but I’m convinced.”
“I agree.” I switched off the pickup’s headlights but let the engine run, thumpy and erratic in neutral. “Now what?”
Harmony pulled out her pistol, a Glock 19 compact. The same one she’d pointed at me three nights earlier. “What do you think? We go in.”
I made no move toward my own weapons. “Why?”
“Why?” She glared. “Because they tried to kill me. Because they’re private assassins involved in a secret takeover of an American manufacturer. Because they shot the hell out of a rural hospital and killed at least one policeman. Because they’re fucking bad guys and they deserve it.”
O-k-a-a-y. Always nice to see some honest enthusiasm in the troops.
“I get it,” I said. “Totally with you, one hundred percent. But is this the best way of going about it?”
“What do you mean?” Harmony held the handgun casually, below the edge of the window, pointed at her door.
I crossed my arms and leaned back against the bench seat.
“Assume it’s them. Assume they’re all inside, playing cards and drinking vodka, as opposed to some of them out doing errands and buying more vodka. Assume that we could walk in and surprise them and achieve tactical superiority—without drawing any attention, like with a full-scale firefight, because we’re going to want to talk with them for a while, and having SWAT surround the place with bullhorns and snipers would be a problem.” I paused. “Assume all that, for the sake of argument . . . why in the world do you think they’d tell us anything?”
Harmony set her jaw. The block was poorly lit here—we were under one of the nonworking street lamps—but a globe light over a doorway twenty feet away illuminated her profile. She gestured slightly with the Glock.
“Because we’ll make them talk,” she said.
“Uh-huh. Look, it was me?—I’d tell you everything. Stare into your eyes, see the madness, I’d give it up straight away. But these are Russians. They probably got counterinterrogation instruction from ex-KGB torturers. They train by fighting bare-knuckled in the snow in Siberia. They’re fucking inhuman killing machines, and they’re just not going to be persuaded by you.” I shook my head slowly. “Or even by you and me together.”
Harmony actually ground her teeth. “I’ll do this myself if you’re backing out.”
Where was this insane determination coming from? “I have a better idea,” I said. “Let’s at least sit and watch for an hour or two. See if anyone comes or goes. Maybe they’ve got another vehicle in the lot. Maybe they’ve been reinforced—to start with, I don’t know that we’ve seen all of the team. They lost three guys on Leechburg Road, but who knows how many others there are? That’d be good to ascertain, right? Before breaking in the door?”
Another minute, but I finally wore her down.
“All right. That kind of makes sense.” A grudging concession but good enough. “We’ll surveil.”
I let out a long breath. “Good decision.”
Cars had been driving past, a few every minute. I hadn’t noticed any pedestrians so far, but that didn’t mean none would show up. Not to mention we couldn’t even see the motel.
“Where do you want to set up?” I said.
Harmony moved her arm and the Glock disappeared. I blinked. That was a nice trick.
“Not here,” she said. “Not in the Escalade, either. I’m not going to piss in a coffee can with you in the car.”
I had to agree with her on that point. “A vehicle post doesn’t make sense anyway. Too visible.” The Russians could do it with their van—probably one reason they were driving it—but endless PI procedurals to the contrary, sitting in a parked car draws all kinds of attention. “One of these buildings might make sense. Maybe the garage.”
“Yes,” Harmony said. “The second floor.”
I was looking there too. The body shop was dark, shuttered for the night. “I don’t see any light in the windows up there. Could be an apartment—”
“Doesn’t have that feel.”
“No.”
We drove back to Harmony’s SUV and returned in caravan to park near the motel. After a small amount of argument we put hers on the street, and the truck right behind the body shop. In theory, if we needed to run down and follow someone leaving, our vehicles were situated to go either way.
In reality, we’d go for Harmony’s no matter what, because in the pickup, every single mile was an adventure.
Harmony had returned from the Escalade with a dark nylon bag over one shoulder. “Tools,” she said when I raised an eyebrow. “Plus some feminine hygiene products.”
I let that go.
“Bring your phone,” she added. “I had to leave mine to charge.”
“Yes sir.”
The back of the building had a small iron balcony with a metal door, fifteen feet from the ground. Probably a fire escape—no stairs or ladder to make it harder for burglars.
“Up there,” Harmony said.
“Yup.” I got back in the truck and advanced it to a stop just beneath the balcony. The engine sounded about to die. As I switched it off, there was a loud thump in the bed, then a bang on the metal cab roof above my head. When I got out, Harmony had already pulled herself onto the balcony. In a moment she was back down.
“Medeco deadbolt and a bar keyhole below it,” she said. “How good are you with locks?”
“Excellent, if I can use C-4. Got any?”
We studied the building. The body shop had a row of opaque windows, their frames bricked in. The second floor had the same tall windows, most with original glass, some protected with iron grilles, some open.
“Must have been an old factory or something,” I said. “Back when they needed lots of natural light.”
“Spiderman could get in easy enough.”
“That’s not me. Let’s check the roof.”
We climbed up. At the landing I knelt, let Harmony clamber to my shoulders and stood up, raising her enough that she could pull herself over the roofline parapet. She disappeared for a moment, then came back and leaned over.