by Chuck Dixon
“You need to show more trust, friend,” the lean one said with a crooked smile.
“Is that why you showed up early?” Levon said, his hands on the table either side of his cup.
“Mr. Safar wants you to know he has cash for you if you have more of that product,” the lean one said.
“I made my deal. One time only. If Safar is happy then give me my stuff.”
The lean one shrugged and opened his coat. Eyes locked on Levon, he slid a manila envelope onto the table.
Levon covered it with the newspaper and nodded to them.
“You’re not going to look at it?” beard scoffed.
“I know where to find you if I’m not satisfied,” Levon said, hands resting either side of the cup again.
“That burner we gave you. You got rid of that like Mr. Safar told you?” the lean one said, the smile faded now.
“Right before I came here,” Levon lied.
“Then our business is done, right?” The lean one stood.
“Have a nice day, asshole,” beard said in Arabic.
Levon watched them return to the car and drive off the lot onto the parkway before picking up the envelope folded inside the newspaper. He watched the lot a few minutes longer before leaving the table.
29
“Not so close. Hang back,” Jerry said to Taz who was driving.
"You said not to lose him," Taz growled.
“He’s walking, okay? Like he’s not going to see this tank creeping along behind him,” Jerry said.
They were in Taz's Yukon. A third guy, Jamil, was sprawled in the back seat with a pump shotgun in his lap. Jamil was not the bruiser Jerry imagined Taz would recruit. He had the look of a junkie, drawn face cratered with old acne scars. He was nicknamed Jamil, "handsome" because he wasn't. To Jerry, he looked like a hadji Keith Richards.
“Fuck it. I’ll park and you watch him,” Taz said and pulled to a stop on the shoulder in front of a Burger King.
They sat watching the white guy who called himself Dresher cross Parallel Parkway, trotting to beat the light turning yellow. The traffic closed behind him but Jerry could still see him. He was walking up the drive toward a Marriott Guest Quarters.
“Go, go!” Jerry said as the guy moved out of sight behind some pines along the driveway.
They caught up to him just as he climbed into the back of a taxi from the queue lined up before the hotel entrance. Taz parked the Yukon along the curb.
“We’ll hang back. Give him some room,” Jerry said.
“You want to drive?” Taz said. A dry chuckle from the back seat.
“He’s not carrying anything,” Jerry said.
“Like what? Luggage?” Taz said.
“A bag. Something. Maybe he’s going to get it.”
“Maybe there is no bag. Maybe there’s no diamonds, Jerry.”
“Has to be. He’s on the run, like I told you. You don’t give up all your swag for eye-dee. And he bought the best. He’s planning on vanishing for good. No one does that without holding back some goods.”
The taxi swung out onto the parkway heading east toward the city. The Yukon followed, keeping two cars between them, pacing the taxi as just another car in the serpent of traffic hissing along the road wet with snowmelt.
In the rear of the taxi, Levon looked at the contents of the envelope. Everything he asked for was there and looked solid. To his practiced eye the licenses appeared flawless. The holograms were in register and the type perfect. Whoever did the work used Photoshop to vary his chin and the shape of his ears. Nothing noticeable to the casual observer but enough to avoid a match in any facial recog program should someone run it.
He paid more attention to the passport. The watermarks were in place. They even changed the colors of his shirt and the background in the photo. There were visa stamps showing that he’d visited the Dominican Republic. The paper was official. They’d either bleached a real passport using a laser process or found a source for blanks. These were fakes as good as any he’d seen from any intelligence agency. Better than some.
The cards and documents would need to be distressed a bit. The only weakness in them was that they looked too new. He could manage that when he got where he was going. He took one of the licenses and slid it into the window of his wallet along with the insurance card. The rest went back into the envelope and into the inside pocket of his coat.
He was Wayne Karl Lipscomb of Waco, Texas now. Merry’s new name was Brittany Ann Lipscomb. Levon wasn’t sure how she’d feel about that.
“This it?” the taxi driver said.
Levon looked through the salt-streaked window to see a neon sign for Dun-Deal Auto Sales coming up on the right.
“This is it,” he said.
He got the salesman down to twelve thousand even on a ’07 Toyota Tacoma. That was the amount he had set aside from his travel stash for the vehicle.
"You sure knew what you wanted," the salesman said, counting out the rumpled fifties and hundreds on his desktop.
“I drove around the lot when you were closed Sunday,” Levon lied.
“Well, you got a deal. We reconditioned her from bumper to bumper, Mr. Lipscomb,” the salesmen said, stacking the bills in a tidy pile.
“Call me Wayne,” Levon said with an open smile.
He was forty-five minutes from being dropped off to keys in hand. A new name for him and for Merry. He’d circle west through a few states before heading back toward Mississippi. Give it five days and he’d be able to pick up his little girl, sure he’d left a cold trail behind him.
“There he goes,” Jerry Safar said, eyes gleaming red.
“I see him,” Taz said allowing the bronze POS pickup and a couple more cars to pass them going west.
“He’s going for the highway,” Jerry said, eyes on the signs for the 70 on-ramps ahead.
“I see that too,” Taz said.
“Change of plans. When he gets to some empty spot we can run him off the road,” Jerry said.
“Fuck you. You want to do that cowboy shit you use your ride,” Taz said in irritation as he swung them off the lot of Pep Boys in pursuit of the Toyota.
“So, you have a plan?” Jerry said, sullen.
“A plan.” Jamil snickered in the back seat.
“Yeah. We see where he’s going. If he goes too far, we take him when I say we take him,” Taz said.
“When is that?”
“When I say. That’s when.”
“How long till then?” Jerry said.
“Jesus. You paying by the hour?” Taz said and pounded the wheel once with his fist.
Jamil giggled at that until it turned into a gurgling wheeze. Jerry slumped back in his seat and dug in his pocket for his smokes.
They fell in behind a black Camaro, all eyes on the Toyota with temp plates two cars ahead.
30
“Who doesn’t have prints? I mean who has prints that don’t show up anywhere?” Bill Marquez bitched to the dash mike as he drove. Rather, as he sat in beep and creep traffic on the beltway road around St. Louis. An icy drizzle was coming down. Just enough to bring the evening rush to a maddening crawl.
"Lots of people haven't been printed," Nancy Valdez said. Her voice came from the speakers on either side of him.
“Not guys like this. Not guys who act like this. Not guys who move this way. Did you see the surveillance?”
“I haven’t seen anything but columns of numbers. They have us working the currency. We don’t get to see the whole pyramid.”
“The whole pyramid?” Bill asked.
“The pharaohs never let one crew build the whole pyramid. At least, not the interiors where the tombs were. Each crew worked separately so that no one crew knew the design of the whole thing,” Nancy said. He heard her end her sentence with the distinct sound of parting lips and an exhalation.
“You’re smoking again?”
“Caught me. This is boring work. They’ll at least let me have twenty minutes for a ciggie break.”
“Cold there?” he said with a smile she could hear.
“As a bitch.”
“So, someone had to see the big picture, right? Some architect had to know how the whole pyramid came together.”
“Sure. And when the work was done they cut out his tongue and blinded him. He knew but he couldn’t tell anyone what he knew or even show them.”
“Is that what they’d do to me?”
“Can you see the whole pyramid?”
“No. I’m either too close or too far away.” Bill sighed. A school bus cut him off and a half dozen kids were at the back windows giving him the finger and laughing.
“The last hit on currency we got is what you had sent in from Carbondale. He paid for that train ticket with dirty money.”
“Four days ago. He stopped using Blanco cash then.”
“Or he wised up to which cash is on file. Or he’s only spending in the underground economy. Those bills would take longer to get back to us. If they ever do.”
"That's what I mean, Nance. This guy is on the run but he's not running. He's making very deliberate moves. First he divided us to chase him and the girl down dead ends. Then he vanishes like he was taken up to heaven. We have no known associates, no background and even our physical evidence lead to shit."
“Are we back to him being a member of the Maine crew?” Nancy said.
“That still makes no sense. Crews turn on each other all the time but not in the middle of the score.” Bill’s hands left the wheel to give the kids a double finger. They rolled away from the window laughing. Jesus, he thought, what are they? Eight? Nine?
“What do they have you doing then?”
“I’m running down stolen cars like a fresh-out-of-Quantico rookie. Do you know how many cars are boosted in St. Louis every day? I’m wondering if anyone here is driving their own car.”
“Hey, I’m freezing. I have to get back inside,” she said.
“Yeah. Good luck. You get anything I can use you’ll ring, right?”
"Sure will. I want you back in DC," she said and broke the connection.
He finally crept up to his exit and eased down the ramp only to find the surface road he was trying to access backed up with a sea of flashing red lights.
The pyramid felt like it was getting farther and farther away, a distant mirage on the desert horizon.
31
He left the frozen white serpentine of the Missouri River behind him. The sky was a slate gray dome over the highway. The oncoming headlights, shining gem-like in the chill mist, grew fewer and farther between as he drove north.
Levon watched the Yukon in the rearview. He’d noticed it before turning north off 70 onto 435. It was hanging back, trying hard to look like it belonged. The thinning traffic of mostly long-haul trucks gave it scant few hiding places. The pursuer, if that’s what it was, had no choice but to drop back, staying just ahead of the horizon line with twenty more miles to the next exit.
He dropped his speed to ten miles below the seventy-mile limit. The Yukon grew larger in the mirror before dropping its speed to match Levon's. An eighteen-wheeler blasted its horn as it swerved around the slowing vehicle. The big semi roared past Levon in the Tacoma leaving a storm of filthy spray in its wake.
Levon dropped his speed another ten miles, moving now at a pokey fifty in the far right lane. The little pickup juddered like a ship at sea with the passing of each long-hauler. Most let him have a fanfare from their air horns loud enough to shimmy the glass in the doors. In the rearview he watched the Yukon close fast on him. Then it dropped back, left turn lights blinking yellow. He wasn’t giving them a choice. They’d either have to ride his bumper or pass.
The Yukon leapt into the middle lane at the first gap that opened for it. In the side view now he watched the SUV cut off a big stack semi. It glided into the lane before the truck. The headlights of the semi-silhouetted the Yukon in its brights. Levon could see the shapes of two heads, a driver and a passenger.
He confirmed the headcount when the SUV rolled up to pass him on the left. He punched the gas to match the speed and allow the pursuing car to come even with him. Two men in the front seats. The back windows were almost black with road grime. He couldn't be sure there wasn't another passenger. The driver was a bald man, hunched over with fists on the wheel, fighting for position in the hammock position between the trucks rolling ahead and behind him. The passenger was sitting with his head fixed forward and unmoving as a crash test dummy.
Levon recognized him in any case. The go-fer from back at the Safar warehouse. Barry? Larry?
Jerry.
The Yukon rolled past followed close by a truck riding on its back bumper. Levon let up on the gas to allow them to get out of sight over the rising road. He removed the automatic from his waistband and laid it on the seat beside him.
“He made us,” Jerry said.
“Made us?” Taz growled, head down over the wheel, eyes swiveling.
“He saw us.”
“Then say that. You trying to sound like a cop on TV?”
Rhythmic snoring from the back seat. Jamil was asleep or nodding.
“We’re going to need to take him alive,” Jerry said, rummaging in his coat pockets.
“You making plans again?” Taz risked an angry glance at him.
“He’s left town. He’s got nothing on him. That means he hid his stash, right?”
“Back in K.C.?”
“Or maybe up ahead. Platte City or maybe up in Missouri.”
“And after we take him alive?”
“We make him take us to his stash. Make him give it up,” Jerry said, tipping powder from a tiny glass vial onto the web of his right hand.
“None of that shit in my car!” Taz shouted, leaning from the wheel to slap Jerry’s hand from under his nose. A fine mist scattered, dusting the dash white.
“Damn, Taz! What the fuck?” Jerry wiped at the crystalline frost trapped in his mustache. He began to lick his fingers only to stop when Taz raised his open hand again.
“We need to be straight. Minds clear,” Taz said, giving Jerry a murderous look.
“Like him?” Jerry snorted, head bobbing to Jamil snoring behind them.
Taz grinned, revealing a row of gold molars. “He’s okay. Heroin levels him out. That coke only makes you stupid. In your case, stupider.”
“Yeah, okay,” Jerry said with a sullen expression, wiping his hands on the leg of his jeans.
“We’ll go with your plan. Take him alive. Happy now?” Taz said.
“Happy as shit,” Jerry said, slumping down low in the seat, knees against the dash. He was watching in the side view at the lights of the Tacoma keeping a steady distance behind them.
He tried to light a cigarette only to have Taz reach over and pluck it from his mouth.
“No coke, no smoke in my ride,” Taz said.
“Shit,” Jerry groused and went back to his vigil in the mirror.
The Tacoma’s lights were looming closer. The pickup was racing up on them, brights and hazards flashing.
“I see him,” Taz said and punched the gas.
Jerry turned to look out the rear window. In the back seat, Jamil was still six fathoms under a heroin nod. The pickup rode their bumper close enough that Jerry could see the face of the guy at the wheel. The guy’s face looked like it was carved from stone.
“What’s he doing?” Jerry said.
“Fucking with us,” Taz said, goosing them forward, building some distance.
The lights of the Toyota swerved away sharp to the right. Jerry watched in disgust as the little pickup roared up an off-ramp as the Yukon entered the shadow of an overpass.
Taz roared and hammered the wheel. Jamil woke up.
“It’s fifteen miles to the next exit!” Jerry shouted.
“You want to go right out that door at seventy? Keep talking,” Taz said, stabbing a finger at Jerry.
32
Levon had the Tacoma pulled up close to the pumps at a Qui
kTrip off 29 in Platte City. He saw the silvery dome of the canopy covering surveillance cameras mounted on the ceiling of the canopy over the pump island.
The Sig was on his seat pinned under his thigh. He leaned out the open window to press the call button on the stanchion below a symbol of a wheelchair.
A tinny female voice came from the speaker above the button. “Yeah. Help you?”
“Hey, I’m handicapped. Can I get a little help pumping gas?” Levon said.
“Sure. Hold on.” The voice was kinder now.
A man hobbled out to the pump island, shrugging into a raincoat as he came.
"You need help, sir?" A kid. Twenty or twenty-one maybe, with the eyes of an older man.
“Could you fill it up? Regular.”
The kid undid the cap and started the nozzle. He stepped back to Levon as the numbers whirred by on the pump.
“Iraq or Afghanistan?” the kid said.
“Excuse me?” Levon said.
“Where’d you get fucked up? You have the look. I apologize if I’m wrong,” the kid said.
“Iraq. Anbar. Hurts like hell when it’s cold like this.”
"Tell me about it," the kid said, smiling easily as he lifted his pant leg to show the gleaming steel of a prosthetic above the top of his work boot.
“Still hurts sometimes even though it’s not there anymore,” the kid added with a crooked grin.
“An IED for me. What about you?” Levon said.
The kid shrugged. “Land mine. Or so they tell me. I don’t remember anything about that day.”
The nozzle clunked as the tank reached capacity. The kid replaced the nozzle on the pump face.
“Thirty-two fifty,” the kid said.
Levon pressed a wad of bills into his hand. He could see the corners of two twenties.
“We’re good. All right?”
“Sure. Take care, brother,” the kid said as the Tacoma pulled out from under the canopy into the rain-snow mix coming down steady from a dark sky.