Stay

by Victor Gischler

  Calvin Pope had been weak and corruptible but not stupid.

  As an insurance policy, Pope had put the entire record of all his transactions with Dante, including the names and addresses of all foreign nationals improperly relocated, onto a password-protected flash drive.

  That Pope thought himself beyond Dante’s reach infuriated the crime lord. The audacity!

  The absolute, unmitigated audacity!

  Dante struck fast, hoping to take Pope and also lay hands on the flash drive, but he hadn’t moved fast enough. Pope had eluded him and sent the flash drive to the DA who had ambitions to put a case together against him.

  The problem had become a mess, and the mess had become a disaster.

  Pope would have to be found and killed. The flash drive recovered and destroyed. The Sparrow woman eliminated also on the chance she’d seen the information on the drive. The burn everything to the ground strategy was far from subtle, but in this case it was called for. This was a case in which nothing less than bold, decisive action would do. Find the Sparrow woman. Find Pope. Make sure no trace of them was left upon the Earth.

  But to accomplish these things, Dante would need a better class of bloodhound.

  He checked his list of likely candidates, all men he’d instructed Pope to relocate from overseas. Capable, hard men with very specific skills. He narrowed the list of a dozen men to six and then again to four.

  He opened his laptop and composed an e-mail, using code language, but his intent clear. His e-mail address was also a code name, and his tech people assured him that what he was doing was untraceable. He cut and pasted the message into three other e-mails. All four men would get the same message. He attached a picture of Pope and also one of Amy Sparrow.

  By some instinct or perhaps on a whim, he attached the picture of the husband. If it turned out to be important, he could find out the man’s name later, but he’d been at the courthouse for the shooting, and one of Dante’s men had snapped the photograph with a camera phone.

  Dante didn’t know which of the men would be available or if they would even reply, but they were all hunters. Money was no object. They knew Dante would pay top dollar, and they would only take the job if reasonably confident they could complete it.

  Dante hit Send and felt better. It was good to do something besides sit and wait.

  * * *

  He lived in the fashionable section of Buckhead in Atlanta. He’d done well since coming to America, had spent an appropriate amount of time in Manhattan in service to his sponsor before striking out on his own.

  Atlanta suited him. Not too big or too small. Not too cold. An airport to take him wherever business demanded.

  He enjoyed, without reservation, the life of the infidel. Allah would most definitely not approve of the tumbler of twenty-year-old Scotch or the fifty-dollar cigar, but he’d never been religious, not really, and America had to be the most godless place on the face of the Earth. His Armani suits and his Mercedes coupe were more a religion to him than anything that had ever happened in a mosque.

  He sat at his computer, pulled his tie loose, and sipped Scotch as he scanned his in-box. The message from Dante, even coded, caught his eye immediately. He opened it and read carefully.

  If Dante had one fault it was that his temper often resulted in rash decisions. He’d made a bad situation worse and would pay handsomely for a remedy.

  Providing remedies had paid for many Armani suits.

  He was available for the job certainly, but he would need to mull this offer before responding to Dante. He was just coming off a job and was due for some downtime. It was a perk of his success that he could pick and choose his assignments. He clicked open the first picture.

  The woman was one of those well-put-together professionals, attractive without trying, just short of glamorous. She was the sort that demanded to be taken seriously by her male counterparts, a tedious type all too common in America.

  He clicked open the other picture. It was a shot snapped quickly, a photo of a man in profile, turning away, but the image was good enough to make out—

  He blinked. Looked at the photograph again.

  He enlarged it and sent it to the wireless printer, producing a glossy five-by-seven print. He studied it carefully, took in the face.

  He filled the tumbler with three more fingers of expensive Scotch. He emptied the tumbler in two gulps and filled it again.

  He grabbed the phone and dialed. Someone picked up on the other end, and when he heard no voice he knew who it was.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  A pause.

  “I didn’t expect to hear from you so quickly,” Dante said. “I appreciate your swift attention. Do you feel you can handle this matter for me?”

  “Yes. But I’ll need more money. I don’t think you understand who you’re dealing with.”

  Another pause. “Explain.”

  “I know the man in the photograph,” said Yousef Haddad. “And I can kill him for you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “The penthouse suite takes up almost a third of the floor.” Larry Meadows ushered them in, gesturing at the plush surroundings. “Sitting room here, game room through there with a bar and a foosball table and pinball machines. Three bedrooms and a full kitchen. Two bathrooms. It’s the owner’s place, but he’s in Monaco, so you’re all clear.”

  “Is there anyone else on this floor?” David asked.

  Larry shook his head. “The rest of the floor is machinery, air-conditioning units, and stuff like that. And storage. This floor even has its own emergency backup generator if the power goes out during a storm or whatever. Nobody’s going to bother you up here. The phone goes through the front desk, but I’ll tell them to patch anything through to me if you need something.”

  “Perfect.”

  Larry handed David a copper key. “The elevator and the room use this. No key card. Nothing in the computer. Unless you order room service, not even the staff will know you’re up here. You might as well be on Mars.”

  Amy came forward, shook Larry’s hand, her other hand coming up to give his shoulder a warm squeeze. “Thank you so much for this, Mr. Meadows. You’re helping us out more than you know.”

  Larry shrugged, sheepish. “Hey, you know, anything for the Major, right? We go back.”

  “Can I ask if this floor gets Wi-Fi?”

  “All over the building, ma’am, but this floor, as you might guess, has its own separate Wi-Fi, too,” Larry said. “Should be perfect reception.”

  “Thanks again,” she said. “I’ll set up my laptop on the desk. If I’m away for a minute, I get fifty e-mails.”

  “I know how it is, ma’am.”

  David walked Larry back to the elevator.

  “Listen, Major,” Larry said in a low voice, expression serious. “You want a place to lie low. I’m just glad I’m in a position to help. But you’re obviously in some kind of fix. What else can I do for you?”

  “You’ve already done enough. Seriously.”

  “Come on, Major.”

  “Maybe look in on her later,” David said. “I might have to go out, and I don’t want her to feel … well … abandoned.”

  “You got it.”

  The elevator arrived and Larry stepped aboard. David reached out suddenly and grabbed the door before it closed.

  “Larry, you’ve got cameras all over the place, right? What’s the setup like?”

  “The security room is right next to my office,” Larry said. “Three banks of monitors. Why? You want me to be on the lookout for something?”

  “I’ll let you know,” David said.

  Larry tossed him a two-finger salute, and the elevator door closed.

  David returned to the suite.

  Amy sat hunched over her laptop, pointing at the screen. “Is this the e-mail you were talking about?”

  “Yes.” He pulled up a chair next to hers. “Play it.”

  She clicked on the attachment and the computer’s media
player opened the file. Video footage. David instantly recognized the person with the microphone in her hand, an Asian woman named Patricia Choi, a field reporter for a local station David usually watched in the evening.

  Amy gasped, her thin fingers going to her mouth. “David, that’s our house.”

  Squad cars with flashing blue lights parked behind Choi, and there behind the police vehicles was David’s house, an officer stretching yellow police tape across the open front door. Police swarmed the crime scene.

  “Shit,” Amy muttered.

  “I’m surprised your office hasn’t called,” David said.

  “They have. About fifty times.” Amy’s voice sounded strained. “I’ve been letting it go to voice mail.”

  The video switched to a two-shot of Choi interviewing a neighbor, and David rolled his eyes.

  “Shit, that’s Mark. Turn it up.”

  Amy thumbed the volume on the side of the laptop.

  “… a neighbor who witnessed the whole thing. Sir, can you tell us what you saw?”

  “Man, I was just putting feed and seed on the side lawn and all hell broke loose,” Mark said. “They were shooting all over the place, thought I was going to wet my pants, and then David comes crashing right through the damn garage door. Sounded like the world ending, let me tell you.”

  “And has he been your neighbor very long?” Choi asked. “Was there anything that might lead you to believe something like this could happen in your quiet neighborhood?”

  Mark shook his head. “No way. I’ve known the guy for years. This is all straight out of the blue.” Mark scratched his chin, thoughtful. “But he has been out of work for a while. Maybe the guy just snapped or something.”

  David groaned. Damn it, Mark.

  The video switched to some shaky handheld footage with Choi’s voice over the top of it. “This footage was taken by the eyewitness’s camera phone and is a Channel Seven exclusive.”

  “Great,” David said. “The exclusive Channel Seven Mark-Cam.”

  The video was jerky, probably as Mark tried to hide and tape the spectacle at the same time, but the Escalade was clearly visible as it backed into the black sedan, pulled forward, and smashed back into it again. Then David’s arm emerged from the driver’s side window, the pistol blasting back toward his lawn. Even in the laptop’s tiny speakers the pop of the gunshots made Amy flinch.

  “That doesn’t look good, does it?” he said.

  “No. It does not.” She sounded pissed.

  The video shifted back to a stand-up of Choi. “Again, that’s New York City Chief Deputy District Attorney Amy Sparrow and her husband wanted for questioning for this startling eruption of violence in a quiet residential neighborhood. For Channel Seven News, I’m Patricia Choi.”

  Amy slammed the laptop closed. “Fuck!”

  “Easy,” David said. “We’ll get it sorted out. We’ll explain to them.”

  “Of course we will,” Amy said. “I just don’t want to be in handcuffs when that happens.”

  “Being in trouble with the police isn’t the problem,” David told her. “The man I shot probably has priors. The authorities will make the connection and put two and two together. The trick is staying alive until that happens. Dante Payne wants you dead.”

  “That’s what I don’t get,” Amy said. “The witness was killed, and without the witness we’ve got zilch. There’s no case. For crying out loud, killing me is just rubbing it in.”

  David scratched his chin, thinking. He went to his duffel, took out the flash drive. He turned it over in his hands, looking at it, considering. He felt Amy’s eyes on him. This was going to sting.

  He showed it to her. “Does this look familiar?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. A flash drive is a flash drive.”

  “The night of the break-in,” David said. “He was after this. It was with a big stack of evidence.”

  Amy gaped. “You withheld that?”

  “That man who broke in was no ordinary burglar,” he said. “I needed to follow up on it. I was worried about our safety. You and the kids.”

  “David, this is serious. That’s evidence. You can’t just put it in your pocket and walk off with it on a hunch. You know this.”

  “I know. And I’m sorry. But we’re beyond proper procedure now. This is life and death.”

  “What’s on the drive?”

  “I don’t know,” David said. “It’s coded. I know somebody who can break it. I need you to stay here while I take the drive to him and he can tell me what’s on it.”

  “No.” Amy stood, hand out, palm up. “Give it to me.”

  “Amy—”

  “Give. It. To. Me.”

  David recognized that tone of voice. She was furious, right on the edge of losing it. He’d faced machine guns up close and sniper fire from afar, but he knew this was when he needed to tread most lightly.

  “We have people who can look at the disk,” Amy said. “For God’s sake, I’m second in command for the DA’s office of one of the biggest cities in the world, and I’m about to break the world record for making a complete mess of my first case. That flash drive is evidence. You should never have taken it. And you damn sure should have told me about it before now. Either I know my job and you respect what I do, or you don’t.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  Her eyes flared and for a split second, David thought he’d stepped over the line. She calmed herself.

  “Bert,” she said. “He’s the only one I trust. I take it to him and we get it sorted out.”

  “I thought he was in the hospital.”

  “He is,” Amy said. “But last I heard he was sitting up, talking. He’ll know who to call, what to do.”

  “I have one condition.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “If it’s such important evidence, he’ll want it,” David said. “But I take it in. I’ll hand deliver it. You’re out of harm’s way. That’s nonnegotiable. I respect you. I know you can do your job. But this is husband’s prerogative. This happens in a way that I know you’re safe or forget it.”

  Amy stared at him flat and hard.

  “You wanted to know what I did in the Army. You were right. I wasn’t a pencil pusher,” David admitted. “My job was to … to handle tough situations, missions where I was all on my own. No help. Nobody to trust. My life was in danger every single time. I guess you could say we’re in one of those situations now.”

  She thought about it. David could see the wheels turning. This wasn’t just about her job now. It was about who he was, about their marriage and if she trusted him or not.

  “Okay,” she said finally.

  He gave her the flash drive.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m calling the hospital. If Bert’s awake, they’ll patch me through.”

  “I want to listen in.”

  “Okay. Stand over here.”

  He stood next to her. She dialed and got the hospital switchboard. They connected her to the nurse’s station on Bert’s floor, and after checking to make sure he was awake and available for phone calls, patched her through to Bert’s room. Amy tilted the phone so David could listen too.

  “Hello?”

  “Bert, it’s me, Amy.”

  “My God, everyone’s been looking for you. Are you okay?”

  “You’re the one who’s been shot, Bert.”

  “You’re all over the news,” he said. “What the hell happened? Where are you?”

  David shook his head.

  “Somewhere safe,” Amy said. “Bert, I need you to listen.”

  She briefly explained about Dante Payne and the break-in and the flash drive.

  “I want to bring the flash drive into the office,” Amy said. “But I need you to tell me which one of the other DAs would be best to approach. Who can I trust?”

  “Don’t bring it into the office,” Bert said. “If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have sworn every one of my people was sol
id. That’s before I was shot by a bailiff. I just don’t know. Can you bring the drive to me at the hospital?”

  David shook his head again, tapped his chest again with a finger.

  Amy frowned but said, “I can have somebody bring it.”

  “Okay, then here’s what we do,” Bert said. “Give me a couple of hours. I’m going to hit up some people I trust at NYPD and arrange some security. We’ll make this tight, okay. Come in the parking garage and take the elevator up from there in case somebody is watching the lobby.”

  “Okay.”

  “This is going to be okay, Amy,” Bert said. “We’re not going to let anything happen to you. Can you send somebody tonight?”

  Amy grinned at her husband. “I’m sending my best man.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The subway stop was only half a block from the hospital, but David circled the block to enter through the parking garage.

  He walked inside, eyes scanning the shadows, taking in his surroundings. Habit. So many old instincts had taken over since he’d retrieved his duffel bag from the basement. The weight of the guns felt right. Skills he’d worried had atrophied had all snapped razor sharp again as if he hadn’t been sidelined these past several months.

  It hadn’t been his idea, being sidelined. His bosses told him he was close to burning out. Too close. And when he’d asked how long it would be before he could return to duty, he had been given a perfunctory wait-and-see speech. How far his requests might be getting up the chain of command he could only guess. David had waited and waited. Still, the military hadn’t called him back to duty.

  But fate had.

  And David realized he was pleased with himself. He’d stepped up. His skills hadn’t rusted, and he’d calmly and coolly gone about the business of taking matters in hand. The military had been wrong. David was solid. Ready.

  A stab of guilt blunted his satisfaction. This wasn’t an assignment. This was his family. His wife and children. And David suddenly wished the lie he’d told his wife for years could be the truth, that he was a simple pencil pusher for the Army, supplying military bases. So much simpler. It was what Amy deserved. And the kids.

  David could make it the truth. When this was over, he’d forget waiting to be called back to active duty. He’d get a résumé together, send his suit to the cleaners. Other men did it; he could, too. He’d try it on his own at first, going to job interviews, pounding the pavement. If it didn’t work out, his wife would pull strings. She had good contacts in the city, and it would make her feel good to help him. It would all be wonderfully, blissfully ordinary.