The Loot (Charlie McCabe Thriller)

by Craig Schaefer

  She saw something in Beckett’s eyes. The faintest, slyest hint of a smile.

  “So you’re saying . . . ,” she started, uncertain.

  “I’m saying your plan is pretty damn close to the real deal. Using the employee lot and bringing the VIPs through the Kennedy Ballroom? Nailed it.”

  “So what now?”

  “Now you get a shot at the real thing,” Beckett said. “Keep it together, you might have a job at the end of the night.” He glanced at his watch, a square of polished brass on a thick leather strap. “Makes my job a lot easier. We got some time before the festivities begin. I’m thinking about brain food. You like sushi?”

  Charlie blinked. “I . . . guess? I mean, I haven’t had a lot of it.”

  “There’s this place two blocks up; the chef’s an old buddy of mine. C’mon, I’m buying.”

  ELEVEN

  Charlie and Beckett sat side by side at the end of a sushi bar. The restaurant was the size of a shoebox, done up in warm and buttery wood. The two white-garbed chefs behind the bar raised their hands and shouted a greeting to Beckett as they walked in the door, and he responded with a burst of rapid-fire Japanese. Charlie’s eyes bounced like a ping-pong ball between him and one of the chefs, not understanding a word, as they took their stools.

  “Spent a few years overseas,” he told her by way of explanation. “Wouldn’t call myself fluent, but I know enough to get by.”

  She wasn’t sure about that. She knew the cadence when someone tried to speak a language they were only half-familiar with—like her own grasp of Pashto, picked up in bits and pieces during her time in Afghanistan—and Beckett didn’t have any of that uneasy, stumbling hesitance. Still, she didn’t press for details.

  “You going to think I’m sexist if I order for both of us?” he asked her.

  She stared at the laminated menu, a bewildering array of colorful fish slabs on rice, and shook her head.

  “I’ll think you’re saving me from making a terrible decision,” she said.

  Beckett chuckled. “Nah. You can’t go wrong with good sushi, no matter what you pick. But there’s a difference between not going wrong and going very right.”

  After another burst of back-and-forth Japanese, the chef set to work in front of them. Charlie couldn’t miss a flicker-fast glance in her direction and something that sounded like a question on his lips, then a faint smile at Beckett’s answer. Ignoring whatever they’d said about her, her attention jumped to the chef’s gleaming knife. He worked quick, with surgical precision, building ornate sculptures of rice and fish in perfectly measured proportions.

  “Jake told me you’ve been with the company since the beginning,” Charlie said.

  “Day one,” Beckett said. “First in, probably last out.”

  “Where were you before that?”

  “Elsewhere,” he said. She waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t.

  Her lunch settled before her on a squat-legged wooden tray. The colorful array nestled in rows alongside a small mound of green paste and thin-sliced strips of pink ginger. Beckett plucked a piece of ginger from his tray with his chopsticks, his big hands moving as delicately as a dancer’s, and popped it between his teeth.

  “Gari is a palate cleanser,” he told her. He pointed the tip of a chopstick at her tray toward a translucent slab bound by seaweed to a bed of rice. “Good rule of thumb is to start with the lightest-color sashimi and make your way to the darker, heartier flavors.”

  Charlie didn’t see any reason to doubt his wisdom on this. As she reached toward the first piece, her chopsticks extended in an uncertain hand, he subtly shook his head at her.

  “Use your fingers,” he murmured. “Chopsticks are for ginger and wasabi. You know about wasabi?”

  “I know I ate too much of it once. Like brain freeze from ice cream, times a million.”

  “See, I was almost going to let you find out the hard way,” he said with a grin, “but mind games are more Jake’s bag. I like to keep things simple and uncomplicated.”

  The raw fish burst between her teeth in a flood of flavor, the tangy meat buoyed by the undercurrents of starchy rice and vinegar. Charlie blinked, wide eyed.

  “This is . . . really good.”

  “Told you,” Beckett said.

  Some people used a shared meal as a vehicle for conversation. Beckett wasn’t one of them. He didn’t ask her any questions, and he didn’t seem inclined to answer hers. They fell into a comfortable silence, enjoying the food, watching the chefs move down the line and practice their art as the lunchtime crowd filtered in.

  Charlie finished the last bite, chewing thoughtfully. She felt just right: not hungry, not too full, energized for the challenge to come. Beckett took another glance at his watch.

  “And that’s sushi done right,” he told her. “So, ready to get to work?”

  “Let’s do this.”

  Back at the hotel, the rest of Jake’s operatives were filtering in. She spotted a couple of them at the check-in desk, another talking to the valet staff by the front doors. Jake himself, wearing a three-piece suit and looking like a corporate tycoon, strode across the cavernous lobby alongside a man in a red jacket and a name tag. They conversed in low voices. The lobby—a span of mahogany and marble under a vintage crystal chandelier—took on a hum of excitement. Anticipation and nervousness hovered in the air like a psychic miasma, and Charlie took slow, deep breaths to stop it from infecting her. It was just like being back in the field: the coolest heads were the most likely to come home intact at the end of watch.

  “Rules to live by,” Beckett said, leading her a few feet down a side corridor. They camped out there, right at the lobby’s edge. “Rule number one, and I cannot stress how important this is: we are private citizens.”

  “As opposed to?” she asked.

  “We aren’t soldiers; we aren’t cops. In any situation involving a violent altercation with another member of the public, that’s exactly what the law treats it as: two Joe Taxpayers going at it. Maybe you’ll be found justified in a court of law; maybe you won’t, but the bottom line is we’ve got no special powers or privileges.”

  “So don’t punch out any paparazzi,” Charlie said.

  Beckett snapped his fingers at her. “You get it. When an asset-protection specialist lands in hot water, nine times out of ten it’s because they forgot their boundaries. That said, sometimes serving the client means sidestepping those boundaries a little bit. Every situation is fluid; it’s on you to judge the problem and make the right call. On the plus side, there’s a little trick you can use. Hold on—I’ll show you.”

  He stood at the lobby’s edge, eyes narrowed as he peered across the threshold at the milling tourists and staff.

  “What am I supposed to be watching for?”

  “Wait for it,” he said.

  A weary-looking traveler trudged their way, lugging a battered rolling carry-on case. Beckett had an ID card like the one Sofia had printed up for her that morning: crisp and laminated, featuring his unsmiling mug shot, in a professional-looking vinyl sheath. As the man approached the side hall, Beckett stepped up and stood in his path. He brandished the ID like a badge.

  “Sorry, sir. Security. We’ve got this area closed off. I’m going to need you to go around.”

  The tourist’s eyes went wide. “Oh, sure. Sorry.”

  As he backed off, Beckett gave him a firm but genial nod. “Thank you, sir. Have a nice day.”

  Beckett turned to Charlie, looking content, and lowered his voice. “You see that?”

  “He even apologized.”

  “Yeah, that happens a lot.” He flicked his ID card. “Legally, this card doesn’t mean shit. He could have walked right around me if he felt like it. And if I laid hands on the man, that’s me up on assault charges. I had no power over him whatsoever.”

  “He didn’t know that,” Charlie said.

  “He did not. Which meant I had absolute power over him. That little trick I mentioned? It’s cal
led human nature. Ninety-nine percent of people out there are inherently submissive to authority. It’s how we evolved. Buncha pack animals, looking for a leader.”

  “So if you present yourself as that leader . . .”

  “Bingo. Look at the cops. A uniform and a gun help, sure, but know what they teach you at police academy? Assertiveness. You’ve gotta have the right tone of voice, the right posture, the right look in your eye, all to sell one very clear message: that you will be obeyed, and you will not be fucked with. A real pro can make an arrest in street clothes, with no badge and his hands empty.”

  Charlie tilted her head a little, listening closely. “You used to be a cop?”

  “Nope.”

  As the afternoon stretched on, they made preparations for the banquet. Charlie helped shuffle tables around in the ballroom, arranged chairs, and laid out crisp cream name cards according to a tattered list some harried-looking caterer shoved into her hands.

  She and Beckett stood at opposite sides of a table big enough to seat twelve. She lifted with her knees, heaving upward and lugging it ten feet to the right. “Didn’t think party planning was part of our job,” she grunted.

  “Our job’s whatever the client says it is. One time I was part of a security detail for this big pop star. One long month of walking her poodles, picking up her dry cleaning, and making coffee runs.”

  “Not exactly what I pictured.”

  “There’s a level of practicality,” he said. “If I’m out doing the busywork, it means the client is safe at home and not exposing herself to potential trouble. Besides, those were some damn cute dogs. You got a dog?”

  Charlie lifted an eyebrow. It was the first time Beckett had asked her anything about her personal life. Apparently she was passing muster with him. So far.

  “No. Had one, when I was a kid. He passed a few years back.”

  “You ought to get one.”

  “For security work?” she asked. “I mean, does that help?”

  “It might, might not. I just think everybody ought to have a dog.”

  Their post, once the first guests began to arrive, was right out front; they were part of the six-operative detail assigned to the non-VIP traffic. Charlie and Beckett stood beside a gap in a blue velvet cordon, just inside the lobby doors.

  “Basic as basic gets,” Beckett had told her. He’d handed her a clipboard and a pen. “You look over each arrival’s invitation and a photo ID. If everything checks out, you slash their name off the list and let ’em through.”

  “And if not?”

  He’d given her a faint, enigmatic smile and taken two steps back. Standing off to the side and out of the action. “If not, you do what you think is right. You’ll be handling this checkpoint all by yourself. Pretend I’m not here.”

  Easier said than done, Charlie had thought, but once the arrivals started pouring through the revolving doors, she didn’t have time to worry about Beckett looming over her. Each of the three gaps in the cordon sprouted a line of waiting guests, dressed to the nines and wearing their impatience on their tailored sleeves. The other two had a pair of operatives to share the work: she was all alone and struggling to keep up.

  She fought the temptation to rush. She gave each newcomer a polite smile, checked the invitation against the sample proof clipped to one corner of her clipboard, and gave their ID a quick read through. Beckett had walked her through the basics of spotting a fake driver’s license, and though he couldn’t make her a pro in one afternoon, she was now competent enough, in his estimation, “to bounce at your average dive bar.” She handed back the ID and invitation, checked off a name, and stood aside to let the guest in.

  Charlie eased into a rhythm, but she knew not to let the rhythm override her senses. She called on old skills for a new battlefield: she held one constant eye on the crowd, judged each guest by their body language and voice as much as their photo ID, and kept a steady read on the temperature of the room. Smooth as silk, for now.

  She waved another couple of party guests inside and took a quick look at the line ahead of her. Her stomach clenched.

  The situation was no longer smooth.

  TWELVE

  The guest in Charlie’s sights stood four steps back in her line. Nobody was giving him a second glance. No reason they would: He was a stocky fifty-something dressed in a black suit and tie, clutching his invitation and driver’s license in a weathered hand, clean shaven and professional. Just another Deep Country employee here to endure some executive speeches in exchange for a free dinner and an open bar.

  Charlie had spent the better part of a decade in a land where attention to detail meant the difference between life and death. Where one slip, just one, could send you home for a flag-draped closed-casket funeral. And in her eyes, trained month after month by her mentors and her enemies alike, he stood out like a burning beacon.

  He was clean shaven, but he wasn’t used to it. Tiny nicks and cuts, fresh ones, decorated his cheeks. She followed his cheekbones up to his eyes, small and darting in every direction at once. She cleared the guest in front of her, the line advanced, and he moved in an anxious shuffle step. The suit wasn’t his, or he’d bought it piecemeal and poorly; the black of his slacks was a slightly lighter shade than his jacket, and the jacket was too long, too big on his shoulders. His tie had less slack than a hangman’s noose and turned a puff of skin around his collar raspberry red. No man who had to wear a tie for a living—like all of Deep Country’s office staff—would knot it that tightly.

  She patted him down with her eyes. No suspicious bulges under his jacket, not that she could make out, but his left hand never strayed more than an inch away from his belt. He clenched at the flap of his coat, pulling it forward, like a man trying way too hard to conceal a holster. Or a bomb.

  Charlie waved the next guest through. Now he was second in line, almost close enough to touch. Time lurched into slow motion. The din of the crowd became muffled, faded, like the lobby had plunged a hundred feet underwater. Down into the black, where all Charlie could hear was the slow and steady thud of her heart.

  She glanced over her shoulder, caught Beckett’s eye, and flicked her gaze at the man. He gave the tiniest nod and took a step forward. Behind her clipboard, she held up her hand. Beckett stopped in his tracks. Giving her room to work.

  She’d manned a checkpoint before. Sometimes people tried to come through with contraband. Sometimes with weapons. Sometimes they wanted to go home to their families. Sometimes they didn’t. Charlie had five seconds to choose her next move. She thought fast as she waved the last guest through, and the man with the darting eyes and razor-nicked cheeks stood before her.

  He offered her the license and invitation. She didn’t take them. He squinted at her, equal parts confused and nervous, not sure what he was doing wrong. He pushed the papers at her, like she was a malfunctioning machine and it might work if he tried again.

  “Listen to me,” she said in a voice as smooth and even as shaved ice.

  He froze. She held his gaze, and he wavered on unsteady legs like a deer caught in the headlights.

  “Listen to me,” she said again, “very carefully.”

  “Okay,” he said. Too short a word to catch any trace of an accent, for certain, but he didn’t sound like a local.

  “My name is Charlene,” she said. “I grew up in Owensboro. You ever go out that way?”

  It was as big a lie as the hint of a Kentucky twang she carefully injected into her voice. He nodded. His throat bulged as he swallowed hard.

  “Y’know, the people who work here,” she said, “they don’t get to pick and choose what companies rent out the ballroom. The caterers, the security folks, they’re just good, hardworking people. They don’t make a lot of money, but they work their fingers to the bone.”

  He held up his invitation and his driver’s license. One corner of the license was already peeling, the telltale sign of a half-assed laminate job. His photo sat skewed at an angle in the corner.
/>   “I’ve . . . I’ve got my papers,” he told her, trying to get back on the script. She didn’t let him.

  “I’m a good judge of character.” She gave a little, self-deprecating chuckle. “Guess that’s why they hired me. I just look in someone’s eyes, and I know, you know? And when I look at you . . . I know a good man when I see one. You don’t really want to hurt anybody, do you? You’re not the kind of man who hurts people. You’re not like them.”

  His jaw clenched. He stammered, fumbling for words, as his eyes took on a wet sheen.

  “It’s not right,” he whispered. “What they did . . . it’s not right. Somebody has to pay for it.”

  “I know.”

  She reached out and gently took hold of his arm. His left arm, the one with a death grip on his coat and whatever he had stashed underneath. He didn’t pull away.

  “Just like I know that if I let you through, there’s a good chance some innocent person is gonna get hurt. Not on purpose. You wouldn’t do that on purpose, I know. But accidents happen. Mistakes get made, the kind of mistakes you can never, ever take back.”

  His right hand rubbed at his face. He mashed his knuckles against one damp eye.

  “There’s a time and a place for everything,” Charlie told him. “And this isn’t it. You don’t want any innocent people to get hurt. And you haven’t done anything wrong, not yet. So turn around, and walk away. It’s the best choice for you, best choice for everybody.”

  He stared at her. His jaw clenched, hard enough Charlie could see it trembling, as he made his choice.

  Then he turned his back on her and waded through the waiting crowd, back out through the revolving doors.

  Charlie let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. Pent-up tension gushed from her muscles like water from a sponge.

  Behind her, Beckett put his sleeve to his mouth and spoke in low tones. “Dom, Louie, you’ve got a guy coming your way out the front entrance. Five feet eleven, sandy-blond hair, big shaving cut on his left cheek. He’s armed. Follow at a distance; do not engage. If he gets into a car, pull the license plate number. Document anything you can so we can pass it on to the cops.”