The Loot (Charlie McCabe Thriller)

by Craig Schaefer

  One thing at a time. One foot forward, then the other. She took out her phone and tried to call Beckett, but he wasn’t picking up. Then she tried Dom.

  “Hey,” Charlie said, “long shot, but I’m trying to get to HQ for the briefing, and my dad’s truck finally kicked the bucket. You aren’t anywhere near Spencer, are you?”

  “What’s wrong?” Dom asked her.

  “Told you, the truck—”

  “No. What’s really wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Charlie said. “I’m fine.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty.”

  Dom hung up. Charlie looked in the rearview and tried to do something with her hair. She still felt like a mess. Eventually she got out and walked up and down the driveway, keeping herself in motion, until Dom’s Lincoln Continental purred up to the house.

  Charlie got in. Dom glanced over at her, peering over the rims of her dark glasses. “Hmm.”

  “What?” Charlie asked. “What’s ‘hmm’?”

  She didn’t answer. They hit the highway, cruising in silence for a while, and then Dom flicked her turn signal and slid across three lanes to hit an exit ramp.

  “It’s faster if you stay on the road for another three exits or so,” Charlie said.

  “Briefing isn’t for a while yet. We’ve got time. I haven’t had lunch. How about you?”

  Charlie hadn’t even thought about food. Her whole plan had been to make a quick stop at home, then head out again and grab lunch before hitting the library for research. An entire afternoon’s worth of plans in the trash. Her stomach growled.

  “I could eat,” she said.

  Fifteen minutes later they were sitting across from each other in a blue vinyl booth, listening to 1950s bubblegum pop on a reproduction Wurlitzer jukebox. Dom’s haunt of choice was a retro-themed café, bright and cheerful and covered in chrome. A perfect reproduction of an era that had never existed outside TV and movies.

  “You like french fries, Charlie?”

  “Probably more than I should,” Charlie said.

  “Me too.” Dom flagged down a waitress in a poodle skirt. “We’ll have the fries.”

  Charlie lifted an eyebrow. “Just fries?”

  “You haven’t seen the way they do ’em here.”

  The fries arrived heaped in a wire basket lined with greasy paper, a mountain of them, perfectly browned and steaming and glittering with salt. They’d been cut four different ways, from slender sticks to rounded waffles, and the waitress served them alongside a platter of twelve different dipping sauces.

  “The fries,” Dom said.

  They dug in. Good old-fashioned comfort food took the edge off every heartache. Something told Charlie that Dom hadn’t brought her here by coincidence, and the veiled glances Dom was giving her just confirmed the feeling.

  “So I went to District A-7 this morning to make an ID,” Charlie said. “They nabbed that guy who tried to sneak into the banquet. He’s clear. I mean, he had a gun, but he’s not the person . . . people . . . we’re looking for.”

  “Nice to rule him out, anyway.”

  “That was my thought.” Charlie paused, not sure if she wanted to broach this subject or not. “Ran into Malloy in the parking lot.”

  Dom’s lips pursed like she’d bitten into a lemon. “Did you, now?”

  “He said he was there to visit some old cop buddies of his. That he just happened to see me and came over to say hi. Total coincidence. So he said.”

  “Malloy says a lot of things.”

  “He doesn’t like you very much,” Charlie said.

  Dom’s pursed lips curled into a bitter little smile. She plucked a fry from the basket and dipped it into a cup of hot mustard sauce. “Warned you to stay away from me, right?”

  “I’m not the first person he’s done that to, I assume.”

  “Did he tell you I’m a brown recluse spider in the shape of a woman?”

  “Actually,” Charlie said, “a rattlesnake. But yeah, same spiel otherwise.”

  “That’s a shame. I prefer spiders.”

  “Dom, do I need to worry about this guy?”

  She thought it over, munching on her french fry.

  “Normally, no, he’s just an asshole. Given our recent little crime spree . . .” She trailed off. Her gaze flicked to one side as she considered the angles. “No. Let me worry about Malloy. I’m the one he’s digging for dirt on, and he isn’t going to find any.”

  “So what is it between you two, anyway? What’d you do, run over his dog?”

  “I’ll answer your question if you answer mine,” Dom said. “Dish. You sounded wrecked on the phone, and don’t tell me you’re all broken up over your truck’s engine dying. What’s going on with you?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about. I promise, it won’t affect my work—”

  Dom reached across the table and put her hand over Charlie’s. Firm. She gave it a squeeze and locked eyes with her.

  “This isn’t a performance review. I’m asking as a friend, because I think everybody but you can see how badly you need one right now. So tell me what’s going on.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Charlie told her the whole story. Slowly at first, in fits and starts, working through her shame by proxy, her father’s debt, her visit to Lassiter—

  “Jimmy Lassiter?” Dom asked.

  “You know him?”

  “Keep going.”

  She kept going, all the way to the showdown on her father’s lawn and the stolen .38 in her dead truck’s glove compartment.

  “You should wipe that down and ditch it,” Dom advised, pointing the tip of a french fry at her. “Gun like that’s probably got weight on it.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to be nice and give it back, considering he was sticking it in my face.”

  “Also, you’re smart not to take a shot at Lassiter. You’re absolutely right; he’s connected up to the eyeballs. Killing him would make your dad’s problem go away for a little while, but a whole lineup of guys even nastier than Jimmy would come sniffing around for payback before his body hit room temperature.”

  “How do you know about Jimmy Lassiter?” Charlie asked.

  Now it was Dom’s turn to hedge. She trailed a waffle fry in a tiny pool of barbecue sauce, drawing a slow scarlet wake.

  “You don’t seem like the judgmental type, Charlie. Am I right about that?”

  “I try not to be.”

  The waitress in the poodle skirt came by, bringing a pair of fountain vanilla Cokes in big vintage glasses. Dom leaned a little closer to the table and tore the paper wrapping from a fat plastic straw.

  “Malloy isn’t the only ex-cop on the company payroll.”

  “You retired?”

  “Not as such.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Charlie said. “You and Malloy were partners.”

  Dom snorted a laugh. “Oh God, no. But we knew each other, all right. See, I was working a regular patrol shift, trying to make my neck of Boston a little safer for Joe and Jane Taxpayer, while Malloy, due to being spectacularly incompetent at everything else he’d ever tried, was relegated to the rat squad.”

  “Internal affairs?”

  “Bingo. Now, Malloy had a major hard-on for me, largely because he’d gotten blind drunk at a holiday party. He tried to pin me to the wall and give me his real hard-on in a coat closet. I not-so-politely declined and delivered the message on the end of my knee.”

  “Jesus,” Charlie breathed. “Did you report him?”

  “No, I didn’t want to make waves. I probably should have. In hindsight I wish I had, but like they say, hindsight is always twenty-twenty.” Dom stirred her straw in her glass, bumping ice around. “But I’ve always had this thing about handling my own problems. So I did my job, and he made me his job. Chasing a lot of nothing, because I’d kept my nose clean, but he was always digging into my business. Then he found the one thing he needed to tank me for good.”

  “How could he tank you if you weren’t doi
ng anything wrong?”

  Dom’s straw turned slow circles. Ice clinked against the sides of her fluted glass. She stared down at the table, then lifted her eyes to meet Charlie’s.

  “It wasn’t what I was doing; it was where I came from. I misrepresented myself on my original application forms to pass my background check. See, Da Costa is actually my mother’s maiden name. I didn’t want anybody poking into my father’s side of the family.”

  “How could your family name keep you out of the police academy?”

  “My uncle on my father’s side is Giuseppe Accardo.”

  Charlie knew that name. She weighed a question, wondering if she should ask, then gave it voice. “As in the Accardo crime family?”

  Dom chuckled and nodded. “Surprise, I’m a Mafia princess. Yay. Truth is I never got involved with that side of my family. I mean, I know all those guys; I’ve known them all my life. Don’t think I’ve ever been to a holiday dinner where half the men in the room weren’t packing heat. My dad, he did five years in Suffolk County for a cigarette-resale racket while running ten other scams he never got caught for. Stuff like that, growing up . . . it was normal.”

  “But you wanted to be a cop.”

  “With my uncle’s full blessing and support. For starters, joining the family business was out of the question. They’re very old country, you know? No women allowed.”

  “Would you have?” Charlie asked. “If you could.”

  Dom shrugged. “Like I said, growing up, that life seemed normal. Moot point. Anyway, if I’d wanted to become a fed, or a prosecutor, that would have raised some eyebrows. But even the bad guys, my family’s kind of bad guys, appreciate a good uniform on the beat. Keeps things peaceful and orderly in the neighborhood, you know? Plus they figured I might be useful later down the line.”

  “I guess,” Charlie said. “So Malloy found out who you really were?”

  “Oh boy, did he ever. Next day I’m standing on the carpet in front of my captain’s desk, and he’s standing right next to me, wearing the most punchable smirk I’ve ever seen. Well, at that point, didn’t even matter who I was related to: just the act of lying on my application was a call for immediate termination. Bye-bye, badge. Jake and Sofia gave me a second chance, and I’ve been paying them back ever since.”

  Charlie reached for the basket between them. Grains of salt rubbed against her fingertips as she scooped out a thick-cut fry and debated over the dwindling sauces.

  “Sounds like he’s a sore winner.”

  “Oh, that,” Dom said. “Well, funny story. About a month after I was terminated, an assistant DA got an anonymous package in the mail. Ironically, I wasn’t dirty, but Malloy was. Somebody caught him taking a bribe, on audio and video, plus plenty of candid snapshots.”

  “Somebody,” Charlie echoed.

  Dom stretched like a cat and flashed a preening smile.

  “Like I said, I’ve always had this thing about handling my own problems. And when someone screws with me, I tend to screw right back, twice as hard. Not that I’m admitting to setting him up or anything. That’d be entrapment, and extremely ethically dubious.”

  Charlie opted for the barbecue sauce. She dipped her fry and took a bite, savoring the sweet, salty taste.

  “Extremely,” she said in mock-solemn agreement. “So how’d he end up here?”

  “Same way I did,” Dom told her. “Floated around looking for work suited to an ex-cop’s talents, and Jake and Sofia—bless their hearts—gave him a job before I even knew he’d applied. I walk in one day, and there he is, the brand-new hire. I told ’em I’d do my part and keep the peace, out of respect for them and the company, so long as they never tried to make me partner up with him. They didn’t have an issue with that.”

  “He’s still got an issue with you, though.”

  “He’s very good at stepping right up to the line,” Dom said. “Pushing me just far enough, then backing off before Jake can call him on it.”

  “He wants to do worse,” Charlie said. “If he finds out what we’ve been up to—”

  “And I’ll make sure he doesn’t. You let me worry about that.”

  She waved the waitress over and asked for the check. Charlie dug for her wallet, and Dom waved her off, brandishing an ocean-blue Visa card.

  “On me,” Dom said. “You can buy next time. Besides, I think we both needed to unburden a little. We cool?”

  The idea that they wouldn’t be jarred her. It wouldn’t have even occurred to Charlie to judge a new friend on who her family was or where she came from. The idea that Dom had even worried about it, meaning she’d faced guilt by association more than once in the past, got her hackles up. At the same time, a question occurred to her. One she really didn’t want to ask, but it felt like an obligation.

  “Of course we’re cool. So, um . . . about Jimmy Lassiter . . .”

  Charlie fell silent. She knew what to say, just like she knew the imposition she was about to put on Dom’s shoulders. Dom sensed her meaning. She shook her head.

  “Sorry,” Dom told her. “Lassiter is Irish mob. Not the same capital-F Family, and my folks and their folks are just barely on speaking terms at the moment. I’d ask my uncle, you know, about getting him off your dad’s back, but he’s not in a position to get that done.”

  “Hey, thank you. I mean, just that you would ask if you could. That means a lot.”

  “Forget about it.”

  The waitress brought over their check. Dom eyed the slip of paper, nodded, and handed over her credit card. The poodle skirt flared as the waitress spun away from the table.

  “So,” Dom said, “what are you going to do about the cash? I mean, you’re not even going to see your first paycheck for another couple of weeks, and that’s going to be a long, long way from twenty grand.”

  Charlie slumped back against the cool, slick vinyl of the booth.

  “Don’t know,” she said. “I keep thinking I’m going to find an answer out of the blue, like there has to be something I can do . . . but some problems don’t have answers.”

  “Some problems don’t have good answers.” Dom slid to one side, rising from the booth. “Or palatable ones. But they all have answers. Speaking of problems, let’s get over to HQ. If we’re lucky, Sean Ellis finally got scared enough to wise up and come clean about the people stalking him. Either that or Jake found another client, and we can kick Ellis and his garbage to the curb where it belongs.”

  In retrospect, Charlie figured it had been foolish to hope. There was no new client, and the afternoon briefing, conducted in the drywall confines of the company’s conference room, was all about their expanded duties when it came to protecting Sean Ellis and his interests. But mostly Ellis himself. Malloy was already there, drinking instant coffee from a paper cup and hovering on the edges of a conversation. He shot Charlie a questioning glance when she walked into the room. Dom took a seat in the last row, and Charlie made a point of holding Malloy’s gaze as she sat down right beside her.

  Malloy let out a barely audible snort and turned his back on them. Good, Charlie thought. At the front of the room, while Sofia rigged up an office-surplus slide projector, Jake held his hands up.

  “If everybody could grab a seat, that’d be good. Anytime now, guys. It’s cool, keep talking over me; I’m just the boss.”

  Mismatched chairs scraped across the bare concrete floor as the company’s operatives found their seats and simmered down, forming uneven aisles. The hot, stagnant air smelled like fresh paint and sawdust.

  “Our client at Deep Country signed off on a new contract today, authorizing us to expand our security coverage. There will be overtime.” Jake held up his palms to wave down a chorus of groans. “There will be paid overtime. Also, mandatory, so keep your dance tickets open and don’t even think about putting in for vacation days. We’re going to need all hands on deck to get this done.”

  “Gonna need more than that,” Dom murmured. “Your research on Ellis turn up anything good?”<
br />
  “Didn’t get the chance yet,” Charlie replied under her breath. “Got in a fight. Ate french fries with you. That’s basically been my afternoon so far.”

  Sofia clicked the projector. A hazy map flashed on the lopsided screen, blocks of Technicolor marking streets and directions. Jake gestured to the image.

  “Starting tomorrow morning, we will have one team on call to escort the primary from his condominium to his office at Deep Country, and a second team scheduled to bring him back at the end of the workday. First up, the breakfast buddies.” Jake glanced down at a clipboard. “Beckett, you’re taking lead.”

  “I’m taking Charlie and Dom,” Beckett replied.

  Beckett was sitting in back, too, on the far side of the ragged line of chairs. Charlie blinked. She hadn’t seen the big man come in, let alone take a seat ten feet away from her.

  Jake glanced between Beckett and his clipboard. “I . . . already had people picked for teams.”

  “And I’m supposed to be training Little Duck over here.” Beckett folded his arms. “Proper escort technique is eighty percent of this job. I’m not having somebody else teach her the wrong way. Then I’ve got to take twice as long to show her how to do it right. I want Charlie, and Dom backing me up.”

  Jake tried to stare him down from across the room. He gave up fast. With a sigh, he grabbed a Sharpie and scribbled a few quick changes to the roster.

  “I think Sean Ellis might kinda hate me now,” Charlie said. “That could be a problem.”

  Beckett favored her with an inscrutable smile.

  “He’ll get over it,” he told her.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The next morning, Charlie called a Lyft and rode to work in the back seat of a stranger’s beat-up Camry. She winced at the fare on her phone as she tapped a five-star rating and added a tip. Car service wasn’t cheap, and like Dom had pointed out, she wasn’t going to see her first paycheck for another two weeks. Then again, repairing a dead truck engine wasn’t cheap, either, if it could even be repaired. She suspected the old beater had breathed its last, at the worst possible time.

  A storm of butterfly wings in her stomach battened those little anxieties down, making room for a deluge of fresh ones. Beckett waved to her from the edge of the industrial park’s lot. Time for another round of education and hours of standing right next to a client targeted by a mad bomber. One who didn’t care about collateral damage.