The Loot (Charlie McCabe Thriller)

by Craig Schaefer

  “You do that a lot?” she asked him.

  “To everybody I meet. See, everybody’s guilty about something. You got no idea how many confessions I’ve gotten just by hinting around the edges. This one time, I used that very line on a guy we were sweating . . . Did you really think you’d get away with it? . . . and he led us straight to his stash of kiddie porn. Thing is we only liked him for a minor hit-and-run; we had no idea he was a closet pedo. He talked himself straight from a fender bender to the state pen. Shoulda seen the look on his face when I told him so.”

  “You were a cop?”

  “Used to be,” he said. He kept his eyes fixed on hers, studying her like he could read her life’s history on her face. “So I’ve got this theory. Everybody’s guilty, and they carry that guilt around all day, every day. Dragging it like chains. And in their heart of hearts, people want nothing more than to drop that weight. Give ’em an opportunity, and they’ll do it, even if it means looking at hard time. Lot of people would rather rot behind bars than drag those chains around one second longer.”

  Charlie rested a hand on her hip. “So what are you guilty about?”

  “Me?” His smirk went lopsided. “Nothing. I sleep like a baby. I’m the one honest man in this godforsaken city.”

  “Sounds unlikely.”

  “But it’s true. On that note, are you the kind of girl who listens to good advice?”

  “No,” Charlie said, “but I’m the kind of woman who keeps an open mind.”

  “Touché. Saw you’ve been palling around with Da Costa.”

  She didn’t like where this was going, especially after Malloy had called Dom out at the briefing, but she kept her breath steady and her face guarded.

  “I’ve been assigned to train with her, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Maybe,” he said. Playing the cop again, hinting he knew more than he did. He was so good Charlie almost fell for it, but he’d already blown his ace card.

  “You don’t like her very much, do you?”

  Malloy’s smug smile faded, and his eyes went hard.

  “There’s not a whole lot to like. Oh, she seems nice at first. Solid, reliable. That’s how she reels you in.”

  “I’m training with her,” Charlie said, “not dating her. Is this what this is, Malloy? Is she your ex? Because I’m not looking for any office drama. Just leave me out of it.”

  “I’m trying to help you,” he told her. “And no, she’s not my damn ex. Dominica Da Costa is a rattlesnake in a woman’s body. And if you think she’s your friend, just wait: there’s nobody she loves stabbing in the back more than her so-called friends.”

  Charlie wrenched open the pickup’s door. Rust flakes scattered onto the pavement at her feet.

  “Yeah,” she said, “we’re done here. Whatever your damage is, leave me out of it.”

  She slammed the door shut, penning herself in the sweltering heat of the cab. He said something, raising his voice on the other side of the glass, but she cranked the ignition and drowned him out. She didn’t look his way, and she didn’t roll the window down until she was out of the parking lot, heading for the open road and leaving that bit of unpleasant weirdness behind.

  Malloy might have been an ex-cop, and he might have had buddies in the station house, but she didn’t believe for one second that he “just happened” to arrive at the same moment she was leaving and had spotted her by random chance. Simple logic told her the odds were astronomical.

  The odds that he was following her, stalking her, were a lot closer to reality.

  He clearly had an ax to grind with Dom, and that grudge extended to anyone in her orbit. And just because he didn’t know anything about their off-the-record activities didn’t mean he wasn’t sniffing. So how good of a bloodhound was he? Charlie needed to find out, fast, before Malloy escalated from a nuisance to a genuine threat.

  Thinking about Riley Glass made for a nice distraction. She wondered if he’d ask her out. She wondered if she’d say yes. She hadn’t seriously dated anyone since college; military life and romance didn’t go hand in hand, especially once you earned a sergeant’s stripes. She knew folks who had made it work, somehow, but she’d never learned that trick.

  She liked the detective’s style, and he seemed nice enough, but she found herself hoping he wasn’t one of the old buddies Malloy was stopping in to chat with. That was a complication she didn’t need.

  Charlie didn’t agree with Riley’s take on criminals, that simple divide between bad and stupid. Too easy, she thought. You can be both at the same time. Or bad and smart, or, like our wayward miner with a gun, basically good at heart but worked up into making bad choices.

  She hoped the people coming for Sean Ellis were in that category . . . basically decent, the kind of criminals you could reason with. It fit her general philosophy. Charlie had been a lot of places, and her biggest takeaway was that wherever you went, people were pretty much good at heart.

  Naturally, it wasn’t long before someone came around to play the exception to that rule.

  Charlie figured she’d stop off at her dad’s house before going to the library for research. The kitchen was low on everything but beer, and asking her father what he wanted from the grocery store was the closest thing she could find to a conversational icebreaker. Not that she’d found a way to break that ice. It coated everything in his house, from the pictures of her mother on the mantel to the dusty decor that never changed, a life frozen in time.

  She wasn’t alone. She approached the house from the west, and a black Mercedes E-Class was coming east. She rumbled onto the gravel driveway, and the car followed her in, blocking the only escape route.

  She knew the car. She reached over, opened the glove compartment, and grabbed the ASP Key Defender. She’d stowed the slim steel weapon away before her visit to the police station—she wasn’t sure if they were legal for civilian ownership in Massachusetts, and she didn’t want to find out the hard way—but right now, she was thankful for Beckett’s welcome-aboard gift.

  She hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. She palmed the Defender and jumped down from the pickup, sneakers crunching on gravel. The front doors of the Mercedes swung wide. Grillo and Reyburn, Jimmy Lassiter’s professional leg breakers, clambered out and headed her way. Reyburn, towering over his barrel-chested partner, sported a blotchy shiner from when she’d coldcocked him at Jimmy’s bar.

  Charlie stopped dead, standing between them and the front door. Her stance drew an invisible line, and her body language dared them to try and cross it.

  “You’re on private property,” she said, “and you’re not welcome here. Leave.”

  They stopped in front of her, side by side. Grillo pulled his jacket back just far enough to show her the holster on his hip. She recognized the janky .38 revolver; it was the same one he’d pressed to the back of her head. Only Jimmy Lassiter’s command had stopped him from pulling the trigger, that time. Jimmy wasn’t here now.

  “Your old man needs to pay up,” Reyburn said.

  “In ten days,” Charlie said. “Your boss gave us ten days.”

  “Clock’s ticking,” Grillo said. “We just dropped by to deliver a friendly reminder.”

  “I’ll pass on the message,” Charlie said.

  “All the same,” Grillo told her, “we’d rather deliver it in person. Want to make sure he understands how firm this deadline is.”

  Charlie held his gaze, locking eyes with the shorter man, while her brain raced through all the variables. The Defender sat nestled against her palm, fingers slightly cupped, hand turned to keep it out of sight. The last thing she wanted right now was an escalation. Her best bet was to try and simmer things down, get them to leave peacefully.

  The odds of that happening weren’t looking so hot. She had to try anyway.

  “C’mon, guys.” She spread her empty hand, keeping the Defender close to her hip. “You know that money isn’t going to be coming from him. It’s coming from me. You don’t need to talk t
o him about anything.”

  The bruised skin around Reyburn’s eye glistened as he squinted at her.

  “So maybe we need to talk to you,” he said.

  “We are talking.”

  “Maybe we need to do more than talk,” he said.

  “To make sure you get the message,” Grillo added.

  One of his hands curled into a fist. A shock of adrenaline hit Charlie’s veins, coursing in like white-water rapids, urging her to fight or run. She declined both options—for now—but braced herself and squared her footing.

  “So you’re going to, what, beat me up for no good reason?”

  “I got a reason,” Reyburn told her.

  “You got a reason to piss your boss off?” she asked. “Like I said, I’m out getting the money my dad owes. You tune me up, maybe put me in the hospital, then I can’t get the money, meaning Jimmy doesn’t get the money.”

  Reyburn moved a little closer. One of his dusty, chunky-toed shoes dug a divot in the gravel.

  “Maybe you didn’t give us a choice. Maybe we just came around, all peaceful, and you jumped us like a crazy bitch. We were just defending ourselves.”

  She wanted to tell him he was taking this too personally. Then again, she’d given him that black eye he was sporting in the first place because she’d taken this mess personally. His motivation was easy to read: he wanted payback.

  Grillo was a little harder to figure. He didn’t come across quite as bloodthirsty, but he was clearly down to roll along with whatever his partner wanted.

  Drop Reyburn first, then go for his partner, she told herself. Her grip tightened on the cool steel tube of the Defender.

  “Jimmy thinks you might actually come through with the twenty grand,” Grillo said. “Me, I don’t see it.”

  Neither did Charlie, but she wasn’t going to tell them that.

  “I’ve got my ways,” she said.

  Grillo flicked a casual hand at the house behind her. “How? Don’t see a ‘for sale’ sign on the lawn here, and no chance you can turn this shit hole into ready cash in ten days. That pickup’s worth maybe a few hundred if you sold it for scrap metal. Maybe. You’ve got nothing to sell but your tits and your ass, and frankly, I don’t see you coming up with twenty g’s that way either.”

  “Gee,” Charlie said, her voice flat, “not sure if I should take that as an insult or not.”

  “Take it how you want. All I know is you’re supposed to be out finding that dough, and here you are, not doing a damn thing.”

  “Get off my dad’s property and let me get to work, then.”

  “Oh, we tried,” Reyburn told her. “Then we turned to go, and you jumped my poor buddy here from behind. That’s the story we’re going to tell, anyway.”

  “Don’t do this,” Charlie said.

  Both of his hands became eager fists. The adrenaline roller coaster in Charlie’s veins pushed her to the top of a hill. She felt herself teetering at the summit, leaning forward, about to take a one-way plunge at terminal velocity.

  “You shouldn’t have taken a swing at me,” Reyburn seethed. “Not at all, and not in front of my boss. You made me look like a punk.”

  Charlie was long past hoping to resolve this without a fight. That door was closed, locked, and welded shut. She slid her left foot half an inch to one side and turned her shoulders in.

  “Last chance,” she said. “Walk away.”

  For a heartbeat, one flicker-fast heartbeat of hope, she thought he was going to listen. Reyburn turned, relenting . . . and then he dropped the feint and lunged at her.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Reyburn threw everything he had into a killer right hook, the weight of his entire body dragged in the wake of his fist. Charlie leaned back, dipping under the swing, and squeezed the Defender’s trigger. A blast of concentrated CS spray hit Reyburn in the face. He shrieked, staggering, and Grillo went for his gun. The .38 cleared his holster, but Charlie was already on him. She’d anticipated the move, and she’d planned her response: her left hand chopped down on his wrist, breaking his aim, and her right lashed out with the Defender. The edge of the steel tube slashed across his forehead, cutting a vicious gash.

  The Defender fell from her grip as Reyburn got behind her and swept her up in a bear hug. His face was beet red, eyes screwed shut and leaking tears, but the pain didn’t blunt his brute strength. His arms squeezed the breath out of her and lifted her off the ground. A misty cloud of pepper spray still hung in the air, dissipating fast, and it hit her in the face as he whipped her around like a rag doll. She felt like she’d been chopping onions and had leaned in to take a long, deep breath; her eyes stung, sharp, blurring her vision, and her breath turned to fire in her throat.

  Her training kicked in, and she moved on instinct. She lifted one leg and brought her heel down hard on Reyburn’s kneecap, hearing it connect with a satisfying snap. He let go, howling, dropping her. She landed in a crouch just in time to see Grillo’s revolver swinging toward her face. Charlie darted left, lunged in, and grabbed the barrel of the gun. Her other hand lashed out with a precision strike to Grillo’s elbow. She’d been aiming to break bone, but all she managed to draw was a yelp of pain as his arm twisted out of joint. It was good enough to loosen his fingers. She snatched the revolver and spun it in her grip.

  She pressed the barrel to his forehead. Grillo and Reyburn froze like statues. Her eyes stung like hornets and a hot wind blew the burning pepper spray mist around, sending tears streaming down her cheeks. Charlie thumbed back the hammer on the gun. It was a purely TV cop-show move. She knew the revolver would fire just fine with a simple pull of the trigger, but the gesture got her point across. Her voice came out in a raspy whisper.

  “I’m an honorably discharged army veteran with a pristine record,” she said. “You’re a couple of leg breakers for a shitty little Boston bookie, and I’m betting you’ve been in and out of the system since you were teenagers. You’re trespassing, you outnumber me, and you came armed. You know what that means?”

  Grillo gave a tiny shake of his head. As much as he dared, with the muzzle pressed to his skull.

  “It means I could kill you both, right here and now, and I won’t spend one hour behind bars. Textbook self-defense.”

  Charlie took a deep breath and wished she hadn’t. The pepper spray scorched her lungs.

  “Get off my father’s property. Leave. And don’t come back. Next time, I will pull the trigger.”

  Grillo staggered backward. His shoulders flexed like he might suddenly run up on her, but they both knew he wouldn’t. He just had to show some kind of defiance on his way out. Reyburn, blind and limping, put an arm around his partner’s shoulder and leaned on him. Somehow, they managed to get back in their Mercedes. Charlie stood her ground, watching them go through her blurry, stinging vision, and then crouched down to scoop up the fallen Defender. With the tube in one hand and Grillo’s revolver in the other, she stumbled to the front door of her father’s house.

  Her father was on the recliner, watching television. He grunted hello in her general direction, not even turning his head. That was fine, she figured. She didn’t need to explain why her face was tomato red or her hair was a disheveled mess, nor why she was clutching a stolen handgun. She patted her way along the wall, making her way into the kitchen, and yanked open the refrigerator. Charlie had undergone a couple of days of chemical weapons instruction back in Basic, and she remembered just enough to know her first instinct—wash her eyes out with water—would only make the spray’s effects worse.

  What she needed was on the top shelf. Milk. She grabbed the plastic jug and gave it a shake, listening to a cupful slosh around inside—her father hadn’t put it back empty for once, thank God—and leaned over the sink. The cold liquid hit her face and her open eyes, washing her tear-stained cheeks under a torrent of milky white.

  The burning faded. The deeper, poisonous ache, like a wasp had plunged its stinger into her heart and snapped it off inside of her, lingered. Char
lie washed her face off and stood there for a while, frozen, lost. Grillo’s words resonated with her. He was right. She didn’t have the money, and she didn’t have any way to get it. The grace period she’d bought for her father was halfway up, and she hadn’t come one inch closer to finding a solution.

  Jake had left a message on her phone, sometime during the fight, asking her to drop by the company HQ in a couple of hours. Briefing for a new assignment. She found herself out in the cab of the pickup truck, heat battering down through the dusty, cracked windshield, just sitting perfectly still. She couldn’t will her limbs to move. Didn’t seem to be any point.

  Forcing herself, fighting through the inertia, she took a better look at Grillo’s revolver. It was a cheap little gun, but someone had kitted it out with custom walnut grips and a monogrammed RT under the barrel in faded gold leaf. She tossed it in the glove compartment. Then she unscrewed the cap on the Defender, tugged out the red-capped canister of pepper spray, and replaced it with the blue-capped training insert. Until she learned how to use the thing without getting a face full of her own weapon, it seemed like a smarter choice.

  It was busywork. Giving her hands something mechanical to do. The job done, she was back to staring at the ramshackle house, the drawn curtains, the sagging eaves. She squeezed her eyes shut. Fresh tears threatened to fall, nothing to do with the pepper spray this time, and she fought them off with everything she had inside of her.

  She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and turned the key in the ignition. The pickup wheezed, rattled, and died.

  “No,” she said, “come on—”

  The engine kicked and rattled again. Then it fell silent, not even a spark as Charlie cranked the ignition. Her fear and her rage boiled over all at once, and she exploded, slamming her fist against the plastic dashboard, stomping the useless pedals, shouting and cursing at the dead truck until her breath ran out.

  Spent, she sagged back on the vinyl seat.