The Loot (Charlie McCabe Thriller)

by Craig Schaefer

  “You turned a nineties Buick into a street machine,” Charlie breathed. “It’s kind of beautiful.”

  “Turned it into a street shark,” Beckett replied. “She’s got a six-speed manual transmission, run-flat tires, bullet-resistant glass, and Flex-Pro armor paneling behind the doors, sidewalls, and front and rear hoods. The engine isn’t just for speed; I needed the extra power to pull the added weight. Oh, and the rust spots are all fake, painted on by a guy who does special effects for horror flicks. He owed me a favor.”

  “I take it back,” she said. “This is exactly the kind of ride I’d see you in.”

  He flashed a grin and let the hood drop.

  “I’m not done tweaking the build yet. My weekend hobby. So . . . you really want to go downtown?”

  “The C-4 is the best lead we’ve got. The only lead we’ve got, really. I figure it’s either that or we throw a bag over Sean Ellis’s head and expose him to the wonders of enhanced interrogation. Which would get us fired and arrested, so . . .”

  Beckett walked past her and opened the trunk. “You ever do that kind of work, in your old job?”

  “Interrogation?” Charlie shook her head. “Not the hard way. Got a lot more mileage out of buying my sources a Coke and giving ’em a shoulder to lean on. A little understanding and empathy does wonders to get intel. Game of kickball saved my life once.”

  He rummaged in the trunk. “Yeah? How’s that?”

  “Off duty, ended up playing with these Pashtun kids. Ragged little things, but they could play some mean ball. After, I passed out some gum from the base commissary, and they taught me a few new phrases in Pashto, few of which I can say in mixed company. Anyway, next day, one of those kids runs out and flags down my convoy. He spotted an insurgent wiring an IED on the very next corner and hiding it under a trash pile. I wouldn’t have spotted it. He remembered the nice lady with the gum, so he didn’t want me to get hurt.”

  Beckett slammed the trunk lid. “Going to need more than gum tonight.”

  “I’ve got my winning smile,” she told him.

  “In other words, you’re not carrying.”

  “Thing about the army is,” she said, “you’re not allowed to take your guns home with you. Government property. They’re oddly touchy about that stuff. I’ve reapplied for my LTC, but I can’t legally carry until the paperwork goes through.”

  “Because what we’re doing tonight is legal. Anyway, I brought you a present. It was supposed to be your welcome-to-the-company present once this Deep Country mess was over with, but under the circumstances I figure it shouldn’t wait.”

  He pressed a long, thin cardboard box into her hands. She pried up the lid. Inside, on a bed of white, rumpled paper, was a key chain of sorts. It was a thin black steel tube, about six inches long with a textured grip, topped by a big round brass loop. Beside it, resting in the paper, were a pair of smaller tubes, one with a blue plastic tip, the other red. Charlie picked up the black tube, feeling its weight in her hand. The textured grip felt sandpaper rough against her palm.

  “ASP Key Defender,” Beckett said. “Meet your new partner. When I’m not around, anyway. A compact, multitactical personal defense solution.”

  She eyed him. “Multitactical?”

  He held out his big hand, and she passed him the tube.

  “You grip it by the baton, like so,” he said, demonstrating. “Right at the base of the key ring, there’s your safety. Flip it with your thumb, turn, and depress the switch.”

  The Defender twirled in his fingers. He paused for a heartbeat, judging the wind, and pointed the baton away from their faces. A thin mist hissed from the base, spraying out and settling on the glistening grass.

  “OC spray, with an effective range of five feet,” Beckett explained. “You know what a Scoville heat unit is?”

  “That’s how they judge how spicy a hot sauce is, right?”

  “Right. A jalapeño pepper is about five thousand SHU. Ghost pepper, one of the hottest peppers in the world, is rated at one million SHU. This spray is two million SHU. Much like your average angry wasp, this baby has a hell of a sting, and its only purpose in life is to ruin somebody’s day.”

  He spun his fist, tailored sleeve rustling as he threw a precision punch at the air.

  “If quarters are too close or the wind’s against you—because you do not want this blowing back in your face, I promise—you can use the baton to augment your strikes. Alternately”—he lashed the empty key ring toward her, keeping a safe distance but close enough that she could feel the warm air buffet her face—“get medieval. You can use your keys as a flail. Go for the eyes, and you’ll do some serious damage, maybe permanent.”

  He passed the Defender back to her. She turned it in her hand, staring down at the tool with newfound appreciation. “I think I like it.”

  “I think you will too. Those inserts in the box are extras. The one with the red cap is a replacement capsule of CS spray, and the blue is inert, just plain water under pressure. That’s a training insert so you won’t hurt yourself if you manage to eat a blast in the face while you’re practicing. For hopefully obvious reasons, I strongly recommend you take advantage of it.”

  “Duly noted,” Charlie said. “Don’t really have time to train tonight, though.”

  “I’m armed up for both of us, if it comes to it. And if things go that sideways, we’re probably good as dead anyhow. You’ve got an in with this Saint guy?”

  “Only a name of a mutual associate, and I’ve been asked not to drop it if I don’t have to.”

  “Even better.” Beckett let out a deep-voiced sigh and bobbed his head at the car. “C’mon, let’s do this before I smarten up and change my mind.”

  “Can I drive?”

  He blurted out a laugh and opened the driver’s side door.

  “Little Duck, I like you. But I don’t like anybody that much. Let’s go.”

  “He lives in Murderpan,” Beckett muttered. “Even better.”

  They cruised through the streets of Mattapan, just south of Dorchester, pale headlights strobing off shuttered storefronts and graffiti-strewn walls. The neighborhood had a heavy Caribbean vibe, faded green-and-gold signs shouting ads for Jamaican cuisine and jerk chicken. Now Charlie understood why Beckett had called his ride a shark car; the Skylark didn’t roll so much as prowl, muffled engine hiding its secret power under the hood, the rust-spotted body forgettable and anonymous. The console glowed soft in the dark, and Marvin Gaye crooned on the radio.

  “Left up here,” Charlie said.

  Left was a street lined with grand old Victorians. They would have been something to see back in their heyday. Now they’d gone to seed, sporting sagging eaves and windows with spiderweb cracks and tacked-up bedsheet curtains. They made Charlie think of old silent-film stars, aging, forgotten, still desperately clinging to the last remnants of their glory days.

  The address on Dutch’s scrap of paper was halfway up the block. Beckett pulled to the curb and killed the engine.

  “Last chance to get some sense and turn around,” he told her.

  “So, what, we go back to work tomorrow and wait for the next bomb to show up?” She clicked her seat belt and sent it sliding off her shoulder. “I’m not good at playing defense. I want to go on the attack before we get attacked.”

  Beckett’s lips curled in a thin smile.

  “‘Playing defense’ is literally our job description,” he said, “but you aren’t wrong.”

  A local welcoming committee—three men with knit caps and prison-yard eyes—hung out on the front steps. They were passing around a bottle in a brown paper bag and trying to look casual, like they hadn’t been keeping watch over the street from corner to corner. And keeping watch over Charlie and Beckett, nudging each other as the new arrivals got out of the Skylark.

  “You lost?” one called over.

  Charlie stepped up, keeping her hands open and easy at her sides. “Looking for Saint,” she said.

  “Don
’t know who it is that you’re referring to, Officer.”

  That got the man in charge a backslap and a snicker from his buddies. Charlie took a deep breath and let it out slow.

  “We look like cops to you?” she asked.

  The man with the paper bag took a pull from his bottle, then looked her up and down before checking out Beckett.

  “Yep.”

  “Huh,” Charlie said. She took an exaggerated look at her partner and nodded. “Guess we do. Then again, that’d make us pretty stupid cops, wouldn’t it? Coming down here looking like undercover rookies, asking to see a man with a houseful of weapons?”

  The man with the bottle narrowed his eyes, not following. “So?”

  Charlie jerked her head to the left. “Street we just turned on, Saint’s got a kid watching the intersection. Should tell him to be less obvious about it. Means he must have another one a block to the west. He’s got both approaches locked down, so if a raid is coming, he’ll have time to book it.”

  “So?” he echoed.

  “So,” Charlie said, “call ’em and ask if they see five-oh. They don’t and they won’t. My man here and me are all alone, no backup. That’d make us dumb and dead cops. If we were cops, and if we were here looking for trouble. No way we could march Saint out of here in cuffs and live to talk about it. You know it and we know it.”

  He took that in, along with another swig of whatever he had in the paper bag. Something behind his eyes seemed to spark, following her logic.

  “Whatchu want, then?”

  “Told you. Saint. We want to talk some business.”

  He looked convinced. One of the other men on the stoop folded his arms. “Still think you might be cops.”

  “Maybe we’re dirty cops,” Beckett rumbled.

  “In which case,” Charlie added, “we’re still here to talk business.”

  The man with the paper bag shoved himself to his feet. He passed the bottle to one of his buddies and dusted off his jeans.

  “Be right back. Watch ’em until I do.”

  A minute passed. The two on the stoop wanted a stare-down contest. Charlie didn’t oblige. She felt the heat of their gaze on her cheek as she studied the block. A quiet night in Mattapan. Every once in a while, a curtain would shiver, and she’d catch a flash of a face at the edge, someone checking the temperature of the street.

  The door to the Victorian opened. The sentry poked his head out.

  “He says you got five minutes. Make ’em count.”

  NINETEEN

  The summer heat had cooled a little with the sunset, but sealed-up windows and no air-conditioning turned the Victorian into a pressure cooker. Charlie felt a cold bead of sweat trickle down her spine as she stood in the foyer on a dusty rug, arms out in a T pose. Saint’s minder patted her down. Somebody was cooking dinner; the stifling air was thick with the mingled scents of coriander, garlic, and some kind of blistering-hot seasoning, strong enough to taste it in the back of her throat.

  The guy patting her down was an amateur. He wasn’t comfortable searching a woman, and it showed: his hesitant palm missed Beckett’s gift entirely, the Defender’s tube snug in her cargo pants pocket, and he didn’t even check her inner thighs. He did better with Beckett, tugging a matte black .45 revolver from a shoulder holster under his jacket.

  “You got anything else?” he asked Beckett.

  “Your job to find out,” Beckett answered him.

  The sentry ended up plucking a .22 from a holster on Beckett’s ankle, concealed under the tailored leg of his slacks, before waving them toward a rickety staircase with a floral-print runner. Just out of earshot, Charlie murmured, “Did he find it all?”

  “Got one last holdout piece,” Beckett said, “and it’s just about big enough to scare a chihuahua. Between that and your CS spray, we’re not holding a winning hand at the moment. You do know you put the idea of killing us into their heads, right? If Saint gives the word, we’re not walking out of here.”

  “You really think they wouldn’t have come up with it on their own? Doubt these people need encouragement to shoot somebody.”

  “Doesn’t mean you need to give it to ’em either.”

  She couldn’t argue that. She knocked on the door at the top of the stairs.

  “Enter,” called a muffled voice.

  Saint’s lair was an attic room, white paint flaking on the low-slung rafters, windows draped tight in black and the floor coated under mismatched rugs with swirling, vaguely Persian designs. Bohemian chic by way of a garage sale. The man they were looking for sat back on a fat black leather beanbag chair, knees and arms spread wide, utterly at ease. The odor of a freshly snuffed joint drifted from an ashtray on the table at his left, stronger than the food smells from the kitchen below, and a scattering of empty Red Stripe bottles clustered around a lava lamp. The lamp sent shifting orange and yellow shadows across the angular room, painting it in Halloween shades.

  Saint’s hands flexed. He had prison tats on his hands, jet-black ink on rich brown skin, a pair of blocky crosses that ran along the inner curves of his index fingers. He gazed between Charlie and Beckett with heavy-lidded eyes and shook his head, tossing his dreadlocks.

  “You aren’t cops,” he said. He tossed the verbal ball in their court and fell silent.

  Charlie’s nerves faded as her training kicked in. She sliced the room into cross-sections, her mind like a computer sifting through data. She measured angles and distances, checked for threats, and took the measure of the man before her. She felt at home. She’d stood before village chieftains and local strongmen, sometimes with guns in her face, and this was just a different fiefdom in a different land.

  Saint was laying his bona fides on the table. Letting them know that he had sharper eyes, more experience and street smarts, than his buddies downstairs. His body language, open and relaxed, was a message, too; it read, If you’re here to do me harm, I’m not worried about it, because you won’t succeed.

  He’d given his credentials. Time for Charlie to present hers. She held up one open hand.

  “I’m going to reach into my pocket,” she said.

  She held still like that until he gave her a subtle nod. A gesture of respect for his position. She dipped her fingers into her hip pocket and tugged out her laminated ID card from Boston Asset Protection. He reached out, took it from her, and gave it a sleepy-eyed once-over. There was a musical lilt in his voice as he spoke, a hint of the Caribbean.

  “Charlie McCabe. Rent-a-cop. I was only half-right.” He passed the card back to her. “Shouldn’t give strangers your civilian name, Charlie McCabe. Didn’t anybody ever teach you that names have power?”

  “Is that why you go by Saint?”

  The beanbag chair rustled under him as he shifted his weight. He reached for a cigarette—a straight cigarette from a tattered pack of Camels, not a blunt—and lit up with a red plastic Bic.

  “Back in the day, men believed that if you knew a demon’s true name, you could conjure and bind him.” He exhaled a plume of gray smoke. “Best not to take chances.”

  “You don’t look like a demon,” Charlie told him.

  “You haven’t given me any reason to.” His gaze swung to Beckett. “What do you go by?”

  Beckett didn’t respond. He stood at Charlie’s shoulder, stone faced and motionless. Saint nodded his head, accepting that as his answer, and looked back at Charlie.

  “So you work private security. Pay good?”

  “Pays all right.”

  “Ain’t what you’ve always done, though.” Saint bobbed his cigarette at them. “Nah. You and your brick here, you’ve got combat moves. Battle tested. Saw it on you the second you came in. ’S why I’m not worried.”

  “No?”

  He put the cigarette to his lips, tasting it like a fine wine.

  “Nah,” he said. “Moves like yours, if you were here to rip me off or kill me, you would’ve done it already. Only amateurs talk first.”

  “Truth,” Becke
tt said, breaking his silence.

  “Which makes me all kinds of curious,” Saint said.

  “Last year,” Charlie told him, “a stash of plastic explosives went missing from a site owned by McCullen Construction. C-4, arranged in M112 detonation blocks. My best guess is they were stolen to sell. Word is you’re a man who knows how to move weapons.”

  She caught it. That telltale flare of his nostrils as she named McCullen Construction. Even before she got to the C-4, she knew he had the answers they needed.

  “You’re looking to buy some explosives?” Saint asked her.

  “No. I think they’ve already been sold. We want the person who bought them.”

  A smile lingered at the edge of his voice. “And you’re asking me, why?”

  “Like I said, word is firepower is your business. I hoped that if you didn’t know about the McCullen heist, you might be able to point us in the right direction.” She paused. “But you do.”

  Saint contemplated his cigarette.

  “I don’t normally do that kind of business,” he said. “Explosives. I’m more of a small-arms aficionado. Glocks, Hi-Points, the ever-popular and evergreen MAC-10. The boys around here, that suits ’em just fine, and they don’t have the cash for anything with a bigger punch anyway. Every once in a while I get a customer asking for a Desert Eagle. Comes from playing too many video games, y’know? They want that big kaplow, makes ’em feel like they’ve got elephant balls.”

  “But,” Charlie said.

  “But come last winter, I get a call from a Southie crew I’ve got a hookup with. They’ve got C-4. Do I want C-4? No. That’s a level of trouble I don’t need. ATF is interested in guns, but they come down like God’s thunder on bombs.”

  “So you turned ’em down,” Beckett said.

  “At first. Thing is this crew had eyes bigger than their stomachs. They took the score before they had a buyer lined up—never a smart move—and word on the grapevine said they were desperate to unload before Homeland Security kicked their doors in. According to people that knew things, they were casting a line in troubled waters. Talking to men of . . . let’s say, Middle Eastern descent?”