The Way I Die

by Derek Haas

  I knew I was off my game, but I had no idea I was this far off.

  I am Copeland, not Columbus. I’m not even on the same planet as Columbus.

  Blake keeps talking, words peppering me like buckshot.

  “So when you showed up and exposed him, he came to me and said we couldn’t wait, we had to get Matthew to talk before you got your feet under you. He hired some of his old Blackwater buddies and drew them a map of Boone’s place and they were gonna kill you and scare him, but they didn’t know you were so serious.

  “You shot them dead and came right to Finnerich and he thought it was game over, but then you didn’t do anything. He realized you didn’t know, and he thought that while you and the hired killer from L.A. duked it out, he and Carmichael would just kidnap Boone’s kid themselves. They went out and bought black masks and they said they had, I guess, your cell . . .”

  He jerks his thumb at Peyton and her face falls.

  She pulls out an iPhone, shaking her head, in disbelief . . . “Finnerich gave me this phone.” And it hits her, “Oh, shit.” She drops the phone on the ground and crushes it under her boot but little good that does us now.

  “Yeah, well, they traced your phone to the woods and they snatched the kid and I was on the horn with their contact in London, Piotr Malek, trying to negotiate the terms, but he was playing hardball, saying he’d already contracted a killer for Matthew Boone and Finnerich said we needed time to get the code, but then we read all about our head of sales dead in a parking lot along with another guy and I told them, no way, fellas, I’m out. I am not into this anymore, do with me what you will, and I got out of there. Just bailed. I could tell Finnerich was pissed, but he’s knee deep at this point, and I said, you can negotiate with the Russians yourself, asshole, and just took off and came back here and I guess I was hoping—”

  “Where?” I say, my voice sharp.

  From my periphery, Archie looks at me funny.

  “Where what?”

  “Where are they holding the boy?”

  “That’s what I’m saying . . . I don’t know. I told those bastards I was out and they said to hole up and wait for them to call and it all might work out. I think they—”

  “They left you alone for us to bite on.”

  He twists his neck to look back at Archie, then around again to look at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Whatever they were gonna do, they’re doing it now. Without you. They left you as a big shiny lure but you’re a distraction. You’re the decoy. It’s why you don’t have protection, why they didn’t shuttle you out of town. They knew all roads led to you, so they left you alone to fend for yourself while they’re making the real deal without you.”

  Archie talks to me, ignoring the man between us. “How long you figure?”

  “Not long. They also know this detour is temporary and must’ve calculated they didn’t need much time.”

  Archie nods at the back of Blake’s head, and I catch his meaning. I stand and call out to Peyton. “Go with Archie. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  “What do we do with . . .” but then she gets it too and lets the question die.

  Donald Blake’s mind races.

  His mouth catches up to his thoughts . . . “No, don’t go. Fellas. Lady. I have information. Finnerich needs me. They can’t sell it without me. I know the . . .” Peyton files out of the door, and Archie closes it behind them. I take the dishrag out of Blake’s hand, and he flinches.

  “I can take you to them!”

  “You said you didn’t know where they are.”

  I can see on his face he doesn’t.

  He stammers, “I can get to them. They’ll listen to me. I’ll get you inside. I—”

  His eyes move to my hands.

  I’m wrapping my Glock in the dishtowel.

  11

  Finnerich, Carmichael, Josh.

  Is he alive? It’s a crapshoot, fifty-fifty odds, maybe less. They snatched him but everything has gone to hell since then, and they may have dumped him and are already on the run. Unless . . .

  Unless they didn’t need Piotr Malek anymore.

  Unless they didn’t need Donald Blake anymore.

  Unless they cut out the middleman and are dealing directly with the buyers, the Russians.

  It hits me. Matthew Boone agreed to it. He gave them the codes. It’s why he looked at peace. Why he said he could be alone. Why he took the keys to Archie’s Range Rover.

  I slam the accelerator and the sedan explodes up the ramp of Interstate 5. I blitz into traffic and start weaving around slower cars, the speedometer climbing.

  “What’re you doing?” Archie grumbles. His hands find the ceiling as he tries to hold himself in position.

  “Boone.”

  “What about him?”

  Peyton looks equally concerned in the rearview mirror.

  “He’s in contact with Finnerich.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  I barrel the Ford around a minivan, then split the white dotted line as I roar around a tow truck and cross two lanes to the outside, my foot still married to the floorboard.

  “He thinks he has a better chance of getting Josh back on his own, making a deal with them. He wanted us to go after Donald Blake, he encouraged us to go, he practically begged us to go.”

  Archie’s face slackens. “Goddamn.”

  “This exit!” Peyton yells, and I nearly tear the wheel off twisting it down to my lap. The Ford responds, rocketing at an eighty-degree angle to cut across two lanes of traffic and hit the exit without breaking speed.

  “Sorry,” I manage as the SUV bucks and shudders like a rocket during reentry, but I don’t mean it. I’m not sorry.

  “Get him,” Peyton says for encouragement, touching my shoulder.

  The car rips around the bend that leads to the cabin and all three of us see Archie’s Range Rover fly by in the opposite direction. Peyton screams “That was him, that was him!” and I react instantly, stomping the brake while keeping my foot on the gas and whipping the wheel to the left, and the SUV spins like a Frisbee. I let the wheel go to stop the tires from turning and the car skids out of its slide, a half-moon of rubber left on the road like a vapor trail, and then we are chasing down the Range Rover from behind like a jungle cat after an elephant.

  He might have size, but not much. And I know how to drive.

  I tuck in behind him and he swerves erratically to keep me from passing, but he’s an amateur and when he overcorrects, I zip up his left side so Archie is looking directing into the driver’s window.

  Archie hollers, “Pull over!” but Boone ignores him and Archie turns to me and says, “He’s got that look.”

  In the window over his shoulder, the Range Rover closes, fills up the glass like a movie close-up, and gives me a bump. I careen toward the side of the road and brake so he’ll come off me and he probably thinks he won, it was that easy, but this time I swoop around behind him and pull up on the opposite side so my window is even with his rear tire.

  Peyton gets the same idea as me, rolls down her window, and in sync, we fire, unloading half a clip into that tire; it blows and shreds like a cored apple and the Range Rover fishtails and nearly rolls but somehow keeps its feet on the asphalt before sliding to a stop in the grass that lines the road.

  I brake behind it and hurry out from behind the wheel at the same time as Boone jumps down from the wounded Range Rover, enraged, and we meet on the shoulder; he grabs my shirt and tries to yank me off my feet, a man who has probably never been in a fight where there wasn’t a seesaw nearby. I plant my feet and he screams, “I have to go! I have to! You have to let me go!”

  Archie and Peyton approach on either side of me and wrestle his hands away from where they’ve bunched up my shirt.

  “No, no, no! I have to!”

  Archie cuts him off. “Stop, stop.”

  “No!” he bellows, twisting away from them, but Archie keeps Boone’s arms pinned.

  “You w
ant your son back?”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  “Killing him! That’s what you doing. You gonna get him killed.”

  Boone turns his spotlight stare on Archie. I step in next to him. “He’s right. You think you’re doing a good thing because you’re tired of feeling helpless and I understand that. Believe me, I do. But if you give Finnerich and Carmichael what they want, then your utility goes away. They get the codes and they cut loose and you’ll never see them again.”

  “We have a deal!”

  “Donald Blake thought he had a deal.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He doesn’t have a deal.”

  “This is . . . this is . . .”

  A car, an old Buick, pulls up. A middle-aged bald man squints at us. “Everything all right?”

  Peyton flashes him a smile, holds up her phone like she’s on the horn with AAA. “Fender bender. Calling for a tow truck.”

  The Good Samaritan smiles, placated. “Need a ride?”

  “No, we’re gonna wait here, but thanks so much for asking. That is so sweet.”

  He grins at her, self-satisfied, and drives off, disappearing over the next rise.

  I get into Boone’s face so he sees how serious I am. “Can we discuss this somewhere besides the side of the road?”

  He looks lost, deserted, grave.

  “Come on, Mr. Boone. Leave the Range Rover. Come with us,” Peyton coaxes.

  “But they’re expecting me,” he whines.

  “Whatever plans you made aren’t going to be in your favor. We’re going to change that so we’re in charge, now that we know what they want.”

  Finally, Boone calms, shrinks. “You think he’s alive? You think Josh is alive?”

  “I do,” I lie.

  He believes it. Maybe it’s true.

  “Let’s go now. Let’s get out of here,” Archie commands, and this time Boone allows himself to be led to Peyton’s SUV.

  Liam opens the door to the cabin, anxious. His face drops when he sees we don’t have his brother with us.

  “Liam,” his dad says in something that sounds like an apology, but Liam turns and rushes for the stairs, then shoots up to the second floor like a barn bird heading for the rafters.

  “I told him I was going to get his brother.”

  “How did they reach out to you?”

  “The drop phone he gave me.” He nods my way. “I used it when I called in to talk to Louis Newman, remember? His secretary must’ve written down the number. I got a call from Donald Blake’s phone, only it wasn’t Donald. It was Max Finnerich. He said he knew I was with you and he needed me to ditch you and act alone. He said if I did he would give me Josh back. He said to give him the fifty-six-character encryption code today.

  “He had Josh call out but I don’t know if it was him. I don’t know. He sounded muffled, like he was talking through a door. Or maybe his mouth was gagged. I don’t know. I think it was my boy. It had to be him. Max came back on the line and told me to meet him at Tick Tock Storage while you guys were busy with Donald Blake. By now, he knows I’m not coming and he’s . . . if you . . . if you . . . kept me . . . if my boy is killed, this is on you.”

  I take a step toward him and Archie gives me his headshake again, no.

  I try to speak to him calmly but have a hard time keeping the edge out of my voice. “You were walking into an ambush, Matthew. Trust me, I’ve seen it, and the end is not pretty. Once they have the information, they can’t have Josh around, they can’t have you around. They’ll go scorched earth. They wanted you to meet at a low-rent storage facility which will be empty, with no security cameras, no witnesses, and they were going to finish it there, get what they needed, and get the hell out of town.”

  Boone’s eyes search the ceiling, seeing nothing, feeling everything. Finally, he exhales, whipped.

  “I’m gonna go check on Liam.”

  “Give me the phone.”

  He surrenders it absently, then ranges upstairs.

  Peyton moves to a small liquor cabinet.

  “Anyone else want a drink? I never bartended, but I’ve sat on a lot of bar stools.”

  Archie raises a finger.

  We stand over a map of Portland and the surrounding area I found in the glove box of Peyton’s Ford.

  “I bet the paper map business is just about done,” Archie muses, and sips a soda and whiskey.

  I grimace at him, and he raises his eyebrows.

  “What?”

  “You wanna focus?”

  “I wanna get ripped. This woman can pour a drink.”

  “There’s a pretty good stash here,” Peyton pipes up from the kitchen, and appears with some ham and cheese sandwiches. My stomach rumbles. I realize it has been a day since I ate.

  “Dig in,” she says, and we do.

  Between bites, “The detectives who caught this when it jumped off at the park have to be bringing in reinforcements right now, so we gotta be on high alert. I’m sure they’ve discovered Donald Blake at his apartment in that hotel, and they’re upping the manpower, trying to figure out how it’s all connected. People saw us at the Yamhill . . . they may not have our faces, but they’ll have our sizes, our number, our skin color.

  “Yeah, I got a lot of ways around a lot of things, but if the cops jump on us, might be hard to shake and bake. Might be doing a lot of sitting for a long time.”

  “You want me to check in with some of my old patrol? I got a friend who made detective last year. He could call up to the Portland PD and say he’s got something similar down in L.A. and ask what they have?”

  I shake my head. “Best to keep our heads down.”

  “Say no more.”

  The drop phone buzzes on the table, but I silence it. I imagine Finnerich on the other end, furious, frustrated, slamming his phone down when it gets put to voice mail. I hope it doesn’t provoke him into taking it out on Josh if he’s alive, but I need Finnerich unhinged and unhappy.

  “Wherever we agree upon, we have to get him to here.” I point to a spot on the map just south of downtown where a country lane dead-ends into the river. “No way they’re bringing him along no matter what they say, so the only important thing is we get an address where they’re holding him.”

  “How?” Peyton asks.

  “From what I’ve gathered, Finnerich thinks he’s the smart one and Carmichael’s the dummy.”

  “That’s accurate, except Carmichael’s one level below dummy. Dummy’s here and Carmichael’s here.” She indicates with her hands.

  “Then we need to deal with Carmichael. Good rule of thumb in this line of work: You always want to deal with the dumb-dumb.”

  “What if someone asks to deal with you, Columbus?” Archie smiles, flares a match, and burns the tip of his cigarette. “That mean you’re the dumb-dumb?”

  Peyton laughs and it’s a good sound. I remember how much I miss that sound, a woman’s laugh. I haven’t heard it in a long time.

  “It’s Copeland.”

  “Uh-uh. Not anymore,” he says. “You Columbus.”

  “Keep it up,” I say to Archie, but there’s no malice in it, and his grin grows wider.

  “There he is again,” he says. “Little by little.”

  I rummage through the cabinets, looking for something sweet, and find a bag of Snickers minis.

  “Can I have one?”

  I turn to find the older brother, Liam. He looks like an animal that spies a trap and senses there’s danger but still wants the bait. His eyes are sunken, brown specks at the bottom of a well.

  I crack a hole into the outer bag and hand it to him. I expect him to grab a piece and flee, but he takes a couple of minis and hands me back the bag.

  “At my school we have team projects.”

  We unwrap our candy and pop small pieces in our mouths. I know he wants to talk so I let him.

  “It’s where a teacher assigns these teams, like at random. Liam, you’re four. Mila, you’re three. Zoe, you�
��re two. Ramsey, you’re one. Like that. Then the fours get together and the threes get together, you get it.”

  Is Pooley . . . is my son out there right now getting sorted into a group? Is he in kindergarten now? First grade? Is he back in Colorado, or did Jake return to her family in New Hampshire? Does he love her now? Does he remember his mom, his dad, or is it all a dream, like it happened to someone else?

  “Our teacher, Mrs. Wagner, always says that it’s important we do our part, like if I’m good at writing and maybe Mila is good at drawing, then I do the paragraphs and Mila does the art and maybe Ramsey is a good speaker so he does the presentation, like that. But then she also says if someone’s maybe not good at anything, or like not, you know, best at something, then you should always ask, ‘Where can I help?’ I’ve been sitting here, scared, scared to death, while the adults have adult conversations and don’t include me and don’t think I know what’s going on, but I know. I’m not a baby and I’m not stupid.

  “My dad thinks Josh is alive and thinks maybe he can get him back. You think he’s dead and that doesn’t bother you because it’ll just help you kill the man who took him. The other two, Peyton and Archie, they’re somewhere in the middle. They want to believe he’s okay but they look to you as the team leader. So I don’t know if he’s alive or not, but I’m not ready to give up.”

  His lips tremble and his eyes shine but he keeps his tears in check, sucking an intake of air like he’s trying to catch his breath and then blowing up into his eyes to dry them.

  “So I’m going to ask you, Mr. Copeland. How can I help?”

  Is this how Pooley will look some day? Brave and earnest and defiant? I think he might.

  I lower myself to the floor with my back to the kitchen cabinet so I’m looking up at him. Liam has earned it.

  “Here’s what you can do. If your brother is alive, and I’m not saying he is, but if your brother is alive, then he’s going to need you to help him get over this. He’s going to need you to tell him he’s strong and he’s brave and he’s a fighter and that you never gave up. And the reason you never gave up is because you believed he would never give up. And you hold him when he wants to be held. And you sleep next to him when the nightmares are overwhelming. And you tell him he’s your hero, even though he’s your little brother, even when he cries. Can you do that?”