by David Gordon
“Keep your voice down,” she said.
He smiled. “Good morning to you, too,” he whispered.
“What do you want?”
“I’ll start with coffee if you don’t mind.” Still smiling.
“If you wanted coffee you should have stopped at the place downstairs. And if you wanted me to say good morning you should have brought me one. Now what do you want?”
“Fair enough.” He dropped the smile. “Why are you investigating Joe Brody?”
Donna stepped back from the door. “Come in. I’ll make coffee.”
She crossed to the sink, started filling the pot. He shut the door gently behind him, then took a seat at the kitchen table while she spooned in the coffee and set it to brew. She got two cups out and the milk and sugar, giving herself time to gather her thoughts, as he, being a trained CIA interrogator and general sneak, could probably tell.
“Still take milk and sugar?” she asked.
“Please.”
She poured milk into both cups, then spooned sugar just into his. The coffee was brewing now, steaming and sighing and smelling good, but it would take a few minutes more, so she turned around and leaned against the counter.
“So what did you want to know?”
“Joe Brody,” he repeated. “What do you know about him?”
She shrugged. “Nothing. He’s a bouncer in a titty bar.”
“What else?”
“Well, my sources indicate that they give hand jobs in the back room. Why? Have you finally been transferred to the jerk-off unit where you belong?”
He laughed, and she had to grin, too. Then she turned to pour the coffee, and he took off his jacket and leaned back. She put the mugs on the table and sat. They both took a sip.
“It was nothing,” she told him. “A routine follow-up after a sweep. He works at a club with OC ties but seems—or seemed—like a nobody till his file turned out to be booby-trapped. So now you tell me. What’s so special? Why does the CIA care?”
At first, most of what Powell told her was just what she knew: the rough childhood, the early promise, Harvard, more drama, expulsion, the military. But what she didn’t know was that in the army he again showed some talent, of a more particular kind, and was quickly tapped for Special Forces training. Over the next decade he carried out classified missions all over the world. Then it seems trouble caught up to him again. He got a little too fond of those high-quality Afghani opiates and was quietly dumped back in the States.
“So what were the missions?” Donna asked.
Powell shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Donna rolled her eyes. “Please. If you wanted to play secret agent, you didn’t have to drive up here at six in the morning.”
He laughed again. “No. I mean I really don’t know. Because when I opened his top secret file, there was nothing in there. All of Joe Brody’s missions have been deleted. As far as we’re concerned, they never happened.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Exactly. That’s not a good sign.” He finished his coffee. “So you were right in the first place. He is a nobody, but he’s a nobody of interest. Which is why I drove up here at six in the morning, to see what Joe Nobody is up to these days. It could be big trouble if he were to join up with the bad guys.”
“Which bad guys exactly?” Donna wondered aloud, but before Powell could answer, Larissa walked in, rubbing her eyes, looking angelic, too-long hair in a crazy cloud, barefoot under her nightgown.
“Daddy!” she shouted in glee, and ran over to jump into his lap. “Did you come to drive me to school?”
“That’s right, princess,” he said, giving her a squeeze and a kiss. “That’s exactly why I’m here. Now why don’t I help you get ready while Mommy gets dressed for work?”
17
It was while they were driving to the safe house that Clarence started on Joe about the next job.
“I’m just saying,” he said. “You’re going to be there anyway. You might as well listen.”
Joe was driving. Clarence had given himself another shot of Dilaudid, less than what Joe had given him, but still he was feeling no pain. They’d swapped out the license plates with another car in the lot before they left, in case the cops had a BOLO on their vehicle by now. Better to swap vehicles, but it wasn’t practical with the back full of gear and one man wounded. Plus, their destination was close and their route all secondary roads. Initially, the plan had been to steal the weapons, drive their own truck here to unload, then disperse and head back to the city in a less conspicuous fashion. But the plan had changed, and now Clarence was talking about changing it again.
“Look,” Clarence said. “I didn’t mention it before because I’m using a different crew, but this heist was just to get the gear we need for a bigger job—much bigger.”
“Why not the same people?”
“Security. To keep everything disconnected and everyone on a need-to-know basis.”
“Then I guess I don’t need to know.”
“That’s what I’m saying. You proved yourself. Shit, you saved my ass. And we need one more man for this, so I’m saying, if you want in, you’re in. When we get there, check out the plan.”
“No offense, but this last plan didn’t really turn out so well.”
Clarence shrugged. “Shit happens. And I know what went wrong yesterday.”
“You’ve got a rat in your house.”
“Yeah. A little redneck rat. The same two-bit shitkicker that tipped us off about the shipment in the first place.” Clarence smiled. “But don’t worry. I told my people about that, too. He won’t be kicking any more shit. There it is.” He pointed. “Make that turn down this little road. It’s on the right.”
It was an ordinary two-story house, yellow siding and a screened porch, set far back on a good-sized piece of land. Overgrown yard, apple trees, and a big, decrepit barn with open doors that Joe pulled right into. Already inside were a black van and a late-model Volvo sedan.
Joe parked. He took off his seat belt, grabbed his jacket, and when he felt the phone zipped in the pocket he remembered that he hadn’t checked it since he turned it off before the job. He switched it on. It buzzed angrily and showed a bunch of missed calls and texts, all from Gio, who had given him the phone when he started at the club and was one of only a couple of people who had the number.
“Anyway,” Clarence was saying, “before we go inside and meet the others, I just wanted to say it’s your choice. You can have twenty grand now, your cut, and walk away, or you can join up for this next job and have ten times that.”
Joe glanced over Gio’s texts:
Your friend from Flushing’s family are very upset. Had to cancel wedding.
They are all looking for you now.
Uncle C is pissed. Don’t go home.
And so on. Joe turned the phone back off. He turned to Clarence. “You’re right. It doesn’t hurt to listen.”
18
Mike Powell loved his daughter. Donna had to admit that. He was a decent enough dad: Paid his child support. Showed up for his weekends. Took an interest in Larissa’s drawings and dance class. Never lost his temper or raised his voice. Or that’s what you thought at first, until you got to know him.
Because that was his MO all over. The clean-cut straight arrow. The right guy who showed up on time, got the job done, had maybe one beer he didn’t even finish; the designated driver at the party with good credit, who broke up the fights. What a relief he’d been after her usual suspects, the drinkers and gamblers and players like her dad, who disappeared and reappeared throughout her childhood and then died drunk driving when she was nine. With them it was all fun and games, romance and adventure at the beginning, then high drama and bad comedy at the end. Mike was different, she thought. And she was right. He was. She just didn’t understand how.
It started with the jealousy. Whom she talked to, what she wore, why she laughed at so-and-so’s jokes at dinner—her cousin’s husband, for Christ’s sake,
gross—or what her male coworker wanted when he called late at night. (Duh. She was an FBI agent, and so was he. He wanted her to investigate a federal crime.) Then came the control, or the attempt to, since she wasn’t about to be broken. He wanted to handle the checking account and put her on an allowance, from her own paycheck. He wanted to schedule her time, decide when they should exercise, eat, even fuck, not that that went on much after she got pregnant. He never hit her, but the rage when he lost his temper, the yelling and shouting, made her think that he could, or maybe would, except that he knew deep down she would shoot him if he tried. And she was a better shot than he was, which he hated.
The final straw was when she found out he was spying on her. Checking her phone. Following up on her work schedule, using his CIA clearance or contacts to make sure she really was where she said. Actually following her, tailing her like a suspect, except she was a trained agent herself and she caught his ass, sitting in a car outside the brunch place her girlfriend had taken her to.
He fought dirty during the divorce, too, hinting that she’d had an affair, trying to take custody of Larissa, but when the judge ruled and the papers were signed, he fell in line. That was him, too. In the end he respected authority. He followed orders. He would have made a great Nazi, she thought, as she got to her desk, turned on her computer and, mentally consulting the next name on her shit list, picked up the phone and tried again to reach her treacherous dirtbag of an informer, Norris.
19
Joe listened. After they parked the car, Clarence had led him into the main house through the kitchen door, where they saw a middle-aged Indian man in a tracksuit sitting at a round wooden table and a young black kid making pancakes at the stove. The Indian man turned out to be Dr. Virk, who immediately took Clarence upstairs. The kid was on the job.
“I’m Juno,” he said. “You hungry?”
“I’m Joe. And yes, I’m starved.”
Juno nodded and dished out pancakes, bacon, fried eggs. He poured coffee and set a container of OJ out. Then he called in the others while Joe sat down and started to eat. Two more came in, a man and a woman, both white and probably in their late twenties. The man, Don, was British, with sandy hair and a red face, and from his demeanor—the way he spoke and the weight lifter physique—Joe made him right away for a mercenary. The woman was Yelena, with a Russian accent, white-blond hair, and dark eyes. She was quiet, lithe, and watchful, and Joe wasn’t sure what to make of her. Juno was a teenager from Bed-Stuy, which Joe understood fine.
Breakfast conversation was minimal, mostly “Please pass this” and “Do you want more of that,” and they were all too professional to talk about the job until it was time to. Joe and Juno went back and forth a little about places they both knew. Who made great pancakes. Which club had a badass sound system. Yelena lit a cigarette. Juno coughed and made a face. She rolled her eyes and muttered, “Americans,” and went outside.
Joe was doing the dishes, Juno was helping, and Don wasn’t, when Clarence came back and called them all into the living room, which was furnished in a homey style. He was wearing loose-fitting sweatpants now and a zip-up hoodie, and walking with a cane, but he seemed fine, holding a rolled-up sheet of paper in his other hand. “Thanks, Doc,” he said as Dr. Virk left, and then sat down in a wing chair. Juno and Yelena sat on the couch; Juno was slouched back with his feet on the coffee table; Yelena was relaxed but on the edge of her seat, spine straight, as though ready to leap up, into either a ballet or a fight. Joe and Don took wooden chairs across from each other, as though instinctively on opposing sides.
“Okay,” Clarence said, “here’s the deal.” He rolled the paper out across the coffee table. It was a map, fairly detailed, showing a building and the surrounding grounds. “This is the location. It’s in Westchester. Basically there are three levels of security we need to get by. First, an outer fence and gate, with security guards, cameras, plus a constant field of radio waves alerting them to any motion on the grounds.”
“What’s that mean?” Don asked.
“It’s like a small-scale radar setup. They have transmitters signaling each other all over the joint. If you break the wave, you show up on the screen.”
“What about the building?” Yelena asked.
“The building itself is the easy part, or anyway the simple part. Windows sealed and alarmed. A front door with guards and elevators. A service door on the side. Nothing that would give you any trouble.” She smiled just slightly as he went on. “But the next part is trickier. The room we are trying to break into. It’s on the fifth floor but it has no windows. One entrance, magnetically controlled. Access restricted to handprints and iris checks.”
Juno whistled, impressed. “No other door?”
“Not really. There’s an alarmed fire exit to the roof, but that is solid steel, and if it opens it not only calls the cops, it autolocks everything, even disables the iris and print access and seals that door. That way the whole thing’s fireproof, too. And that’s hardwired direct, so no way to cut it from outside.”
“That’s pretty slick, I must say,” Juno told him.
“It sure is. And part three is the walk-in vault. State of the art, temperature controlled.” He turned to Yelena. “That’s why you’re here.” Now she smiled for real. “I have specs to show you later.”
“With all this security, what the hell are we stealing?” Don asked. “Diamonds? Gold?”
Yelena said, “Climate-controlled vault. It must be art. Paintings or antiques.”
Clarence shook his head and grinned. “Nope. Even better,” he said. “Perfume.”
“Fuck off,” Don said.
“Damn,” Juno said. “I knew that stuff was pricey, but …”
Clarence explained: “Turns out there is this shit that sperm whales puke up.”
“What?” Juno said. “Puke? Sperm? Shit? I can take you to some subway stations you want to smell that. For free with my MetroCard.”
“Fuck off,” Don blurted. “Now I know you’re taking the piss.”
“Ambergris,” Yelena said.
“Who?” Juno asked.
“Ambergris is the thing you are speaking of.”
“On the nose,” Clarence said. “It’s worth a ton. They use it in perfume and other things, too. Like ylang-ylang, some kind of thing from Madagascar. Anyway, some of this stuff is worth a fortune, like thousands of dollars an ounce.”
“Fuck me,” Don said.
“So we’re stealing, what, like a barrel of it or something?” Juno asked.
“No,” Clarence said. “We’re stealing the sample, like the prototype for the new batch. Then some other lab somewhere can copy it and beat them to the market. They’d make millions.”
“So it’s like getting a disc of the new Star Wars movie or something,” Juno said.
“Right. Except not a copy. We steal the movie.”
“All right, I’m down,” he said. “I mean, what the fuck, selling perfume’s got to be easier than selling dope.”
“It sounds completely cracked,” Don said. “But I’m in.”
“We sell this one vial for a million dollars,” Clarence said, “split it five ways. Yelena, you in?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I didn’t come here just for breakfast.”
“Joe?” Clarence asked.
Joe shrugged. “Let’s hear the plan.”
“Okay,” Clarence said, leaning on the cane to stand. He grunted softly. “Let’s go look at the toys.”
In the barn they started unloading the Jeep. Don opened one crate with a crowbar and pulled out an AK-47. “Good,” he said, and handed it to Yelena, who checked it expertly. Next he found a grenade launcher. “Better,” he added. Then he opened a large crate and frowned. “Think this is for you, mate,” he said to Juno.
“Oh yeah, baby,” Juno said, lifting out what looked like a toy plane or a Star Wars collectible. “This is all for me.”
“Drone?” Joe asked him.
“Yup, but
this is like the Jedi starfighter of drones.”
“And that’s good.”
“Hell yeah. You’ve heard about stealth fighter jets?”
“Some.”
“Okay, so this baby is like a stealth drone. I can send it in right over the fence and it won’t show up on their radar. Then I can use the onboard technology to jam it so they don’t see you all, either. I can hack into their system, too, fuck with the alarm, the cameras, even open the door so you can walk right in like you’re home for Christmas dinner.”
“Nice,” Joe said.
“Yes, this is good, Juno,” Yelena said. “And I can crack the safe. But what about the hand and iris printing? Who has access?”
“Three people,” Clarence said. “One, the CEO. I forget his name but it doesn’t matter, because he’s at a conference in Tokyo and then traveling in Asia all next week. Two, the designer. They call her the ‘Nose,’ and she has a very long Italian name that I know but can’t pronounce. But that doesn’t matter, either, because she’s traveling with the CEO.”
“And three?” Don asked.
“The chief chemist. His name I know, Bob Shatz, and he’s our man. He’s there like clockwork, five days a week.”
“No worries,” Don said. “I got two ways to solve that. One …” He racked his rifle. “I put this to his head and he opens the fucking door.”
“Except,” Clarence said, “there’s a guard standing right by him as he does it, and one at a desk outside the door at all times. There’re guards, people everywhere. And he has assistants who are waiting there every morning for him to let them in. Nope.” He shook his head. “Too messy. We have to go in at night.”
“Okay then, option two,” Don said, and this time he drew a knife, a big bowie he had in a sheath under his arm. “We cut off his hands, pop out his eye, and we’re in.”
“That’s pretty cold,” Juno said.