The Loot (Charlie McCabe Thriller)

by Craig Schaefer

  “Is that what happened?”

  “Given it’s not just my butt on the line here, I hope you can understand that I’d rather call it a theory.”

  “We’ve got another problem,” he said. “Tell me about the gun.”

  Charlie’s stomach clenched. She’d had all the right reasons to carry that .38, but now it was standing between her and the door. If he charged her for it, she’d be processed. If she was processed, they’d take her civilian clothes. If they did that, they’d find the fistful of pinpoint diamonds currently gouging into the sole of her left foot.

  If they did that, she was going to prison, and her father was a dead man. She rubbed her big toe against the needle-hard stones. The pain kept her sharp.

  “If you call Spencer PD,” she said, “they’ll tell you my father was attacked in his home.”

  “Okay,” Riley said. Noncommittal but willing to hear her out.

  “I’m sure they’ve got an idea about who’s responsible. Truth is my dad’s up to his eyeballs in gambling debts. Overdue. That wasn’t the first time his bookie’s leg breakers showed up at the house. The first time, I was home.”

  “So the gun is . . .”

  “Not mine. I took it from one of them when he threatened me with it. I’ve been carrying it ever since, because . . .” She trailed off and threw her hands up. Barely acting, as the frustration welled in the pit of her stomach. “I don’t know what to do, okay? I’m trying to protect my family.”

  “You can’t just steal a man’s gun and—” He shook his head. “Why didn’t you call the police? Or tell them what happened to your father?”

  She locked eyes with him. “My father’s bookie is a man named Jimmy Lassiter. Irish mob, connected up to his eyeballs. Look, it’s just you and me in here; let’s be straight. You know what happens if you rat out a guy like that. I admit it, I screwed up, but I was doing the only thing that made sense at the time. What would you have done, if you were in my shoes?”

  He held her gaze for a long count to ten. Then he pushed his chair back.

  “I need to make a few phone calls. Sit tight.”

  He left her there alone. She sat at the table, clenched and unclenched her hands, and waited for him to decide her fate.

  FORTY-ONE

  “All I’m saying is,” Dom told Beckett, “thank God I had an LTC for my piece and left my pigsticker at home. They tossed me in a room and badgered me until my lawyer showed up, but when it was all over, they couldn’t actually find any crimes to accuse me of.”

  “Your boy Malloy jumped the gun. Got himself hot and bothered, chasing us all over town, and called in his pals on the force before he even knew what he was looking for.”

  “He’s not my boy.”

  They were camped in the private dining room at DiMaggio’s, two people sharing a table for ten. Dom had her laptop open, the black brick showing a silent chat screen. A cursor strobed on an empty line, slow, like a lighthouse beacon keeping an eye out for wayward ships.

  “Don’t know which outcome I’m more worried about,” Dom said. “Either the cops found the diamonds on Charlie when they brought her in, in which case we’re screwed, or she ditched them somewhere, in which case we’re screwed.”

  “Not the only possibilities.”

  “Well, yeah, maybe the diamonds have sprouted wings and are flying toward us as I speak, but it’s not too likely.” She stared at the blank line, the strobing cursor. Her hands clenched and unclenched. “How can you be so goddamn calm right now?”

  Beckett turned his gaze to the ceiling. “A Zen monk was walking through the wilderness when he came upon a—”

  Dom smacked the table with the flat of her palm. “No. Do not fortune cookie me right now. Do not.”

  Beckett clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. “Then I shall wait in contented silence.”

  “It’s like Juárez all over again,” Dom grumbled.

  “Thank God,” Charlie said from the doorway. She shut the rattling wooden partition behind her and swept into the room. “I wasn’t sure if I was the only one who made it out.”

  Dom held up one hand. “Two hours ago. Beckett was right after me. You got the special treatment. I shouldn’t have to ask this—”

  “You don’t have to. Answer’s no. I didn’t tell them a damn thing. I got the sense they were a little embarrassed.”

  “Sure,” Beckett said. “Rousted us on the say-so of their old buddy Malloy, he pushed them into top gear, and they came up empty handed. Fishing’s no fun if you don’t bring dinner home. And if we had anything to do with Ellis’s disappearance—which we don’t, but tell Malloy that—they just showed us every card they’re holding.”

  Charlie circled the table. She pulled out the chair next to Dom, dropped into it like she had a pile of bricks on her shoulders, and gave a tired nod to the laptop screen.

  “What do we know?”

  “Not a word since we tried to make contact,” Beckett said. “They’re making us wait.”

  “Might not have gotten back to safe harbor yet,” Dom said.

  “No. They’re making us wait.”

  It made sense to Charlie. Either the kidnappers were running scared, realizing how close they’d come to getting caught red handed and going back to prison for a long count, or they were just trying to figure out why the cops had shown up in the first place.

  Or they’d already killed Sean Ellis and dumped his body and were on their way to Mexico or Canada. There were too many ors, too many possibilities to juggle, and nothing to do for it but sit and stare at the empty screen.

  “How are Jake and Sofia doing?” Charlie asked.

  “Not good,” Beckett told her.

  Dom leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands behind her head.

  “Jake’s been asked to come down to the station and have a chat with the nice detectives,” she said. “He’s got a lot of explaining to do, mostly centered around why he never reported the client missing.”

  “I assume Malloy’s super fired now,” Charlie said.

  Dom’s lips pursed, sour. “No. Because Jake’s only defense right now is playing dumb. Malloy hasn’t done anything illegal, and technically the bastard hasn’t done anything wrong; he just saw some suspicious activity and reported it to the authorities, like any solid citizen would. Jake fires him, it looks crazy suspicious.”

  “So where’s this put us?”

  “Puts us right here, waiting.” Beckett’s eyes narrowed at the screen, like he could make it light up with sheer force of will. “But if we don’t get Ellis back pronto, safe and in one piece, we’re all going up against the wall.”

  Twelve minutes later, the laptop chimed.

  What the hell was that?

  Dom commandeered the keyboard. Some Good Samaritan saw a gun and called the cops. Wasn’t us, we weren’t carrying. You get out ok?

  You worried about our well-being?

  No, Dom typed. We’re worried about our client. We held on to the diamonds, and we still want to trade. Same terms.

  She glanced sidelong at Charlie. “Please tell me you have the diamonds.”

  Charlie pushed her chair back and unlaced her boot.

  Sally thinks you set us up.

  That meant it was Leon on the keyboard. Good. Out of the three, Sally was blood hungry, and nobody knew what was going on behind Brock’s mad, squinty eyes. Leon wanted the loot, making him the voice of reason. For now.

  We were ten seconds from handing over the diamonds, Dom typed. And WE walked out in handcuffs, not you. Pretty lousy setup.

  All the same, we’re picking the handoff site. We pick the terms. You do what we want, when we want, or Ellis gets what’s coming to him.

  Dom looked to Charlie and Beckett. Beckett nodded.

  “Play along,” he said. “We’ll improvise.”

  When and where, Dom typed.

  The cursor strobed on an empty line. Radio silence.

  “They have no idea what they�
��re doing,” Dom murmured.

  “Makes ’em twice as dangerous,” Beckett said. “Rats don’t bite if they can run. Back one into a corner, and you’re bound to lose a little blood if you’re not careful.”

  Charlie upended her boot and poured a waterfall of baby stars onto the table. They danced across the wood, glittering under the overhead lights, and she carefully scooped the diamonds into a mound.

  “You were walking on those?” Dom asked.

  By way of response, Charlie lifted her left foot and gave Dom a look at the tiny red flecks staining the heel of her sock.

  “Hardcore.” Dom looked back to the screen. “Respect.”

  On the other side, the kidnappers settled whatever argument they’d been wrestling with. They came back with their demands.

  There’s an out-of-business wrecking yard about seventeen miles south of Boston and five minutes off Interstate 93. Fitzsimmons & Sons. Bring the diamonds. We’ve got visibility for miles in every direction: if we even see a hint of a police car, Ellis dies, and we’ll be long gone before they close in. If we see a gun, same deal. You bring nothing but the diamonds.

  Charlie played back her visit to the kidnappers’ home turf. They’d put a burlap sack over her head and driven her around in circles until she was dizzy, but a wrecker’s yard would fit the details she remembered: industrial smells, a metal-walled shack, out-of-date motor oil, a calendar on the wall.

  “It’s their hideout,” she said. “That’s where they took me.”

  Beckett held her in his steady gaze. “Pop quiz, Little Duck: What does that tell you?”

  “That they’re not planning on sticking around. A safe house isn’t a safe house once people know where it is. They’re leaving.”

  When? Dom typed.

  The answer came back in seconds: Sunset’s in less than two hours. Be here.

  “They’re leaving tonight,” Charlie said. “They might be reluctant to meet us in public again, after what happened last time, but . . .”

  “But they might not be looking to play fair,” Dom said. “If they’re spooked, they might be thinking about killing us, killing the client, and taking the diamonds. Be a long time before anybody found our bodies out there. Plenty long enough for the three of them to get away clean. What’s the play, gang? Do we risk it?”

  Charlie searched for another option. All she found was a hallway lined with locked doors and ending in a brick wall.

  “I think we have to,” she said.

  “So we go in, but we go in smart,” Beckett said. “We assume it’s an ambush. And we plan accordingly.”

  He pulled back the sleeve of his dress shirt and checked his watch.

  “Just enough time. Let’s head over to HQ first. Get geared up proper for this gig.”

  Fitzsimmons and Sons was a boondocks fortress. Twelve-foot walls ringed the circular compound like a coliseum made of scrap-metal sheeting. Beyond the open gates lay a maze of rust, with wrecked cars stacked in piles three bodies high. Beckett’s shark car took a long, slow lap around the outer ring, kicking up loose dirt. Beckett and Charlie sat up in front. The back seat was empty. The sun was simmering down now, orange and cold and stretching out the shadows, turning every silhouette into a gunslinger.

  The light was west. Beckett parked on the east side. He nuzzled the dusty Skylark up against the compound wall, killing the engine in a patch of shadow. The gates weren’t far.

  “Last chance to back out,” he said.

  “Do I look like I’m backing out?”

  He studied her. Then he shook his head.

  “We tried playing it your way,” he told her. “The way that wouldn’t leave any bodies behind. It was a good plan. Would have worked, if Malloy hadn’t poked his nose in.”

  “Sure.”

  “We are past the point of not leaving bodies behind. If it was just Leon we were dealing with, we could still end this with everybody shaking hands and walking away with various degrees of satisfaction. Sally and her attack dog, though . . . some people, you just can’t reason with. So if you’ve got any hopes of resolving this situation with words alone, you need to leave ’em in the car. Those are the kind of hopes that get the wrong people killed.”

  Charlie leaned forward. She stared up at the compound wall.

  “Sally can make her choices,” she said. “I already made mine.”

  She clicked her seat belt, swung open the door, and got out of the sedan.

  They walked side by side through the open scrapyard gates, eyes open and hunting for any signs of life. A cold wind rustled through the maze of dead metal and sent a couple of crows winging from their perches. One wheeled around, ruffled, flapping its way to the top of a powerless crane.

  Sean Ellis’s cell phone lay abandoned in the middle of a boulevard of junk. The screen lit up. It rumbled, dancing on loose dirt. Beckett scooped it up and set it on speaker mode.

  “There were three of you at Haymarket Station,” Leon said.

  “And three of us got arrested,” Charlie replied. “Me and my friend here, we got out. She didn’t. She had some outstanding warrants to take care of.”

  “How do I know that?” Leon said.

  Beckett stared at the phone, cupped in the bowl of his hand. “What difference does it make?”

  He shared a glance with Charlie. They both knew the answer. It made a difference if Leon and his gang wanted to bury every last loose end.

  “It doesn’t,” Leon lied. His voice was tight now. “Here’s how this is going to work. Put the diamonds down, right where you’re standing. Then you’re going to get back in your car, get back on the interstate, and drive south. Keep the phone. In ten minutes, we’ll give you directions where you can find Sean.”

  “Uh-uh.” Beckett’s brow furrowed. “Ten minutes away, ten minutes back, that gives you twenty to snatch the diamonds and run. That’s not the deal.”

  “The deal is what we say it is. You aren’t calling the shots here.”

  While they argued back and forth, Charlie scanned the battleground. The piled wrecks formed walls, barricades, avenues of fire. She couldn’t see Leon anywhere, but he had to have eyes on them—which meant he probably had at least one gun pointed their way. They needed to tilt the odds before he lost his patience and used it.

  “Give us one of your people,” Charlie said.

  “What?” Leon said.

  “As a show of good faith,” she said. “I don’t think you’ll run without Sally. I don’t think Sally will run without Brock. Give us one, to ride along with us, so we know you’ll hold up your end. We’ll let them go once we’ve got our client back.”

  The gesture was futile. She already knew he wasn’t going to hold up his end. The only question was how and when the double-cross hammer would come slamming down. The more she could keep him off balance, the better the chances he’d make a mistake.

  Something was happening. She heard muffled sounds over the speaker, like he’d cupped his hand over the phone and was halfway into a heated argument with someone on the other end.

  Beckett leaned close, pitching his voice low. “Right about now, Sally’s arguing he ought to just kill us both.”

  “Leon’s the smart one,” Charlie murmured back. “He won’t pull a trigger until he knows we’ve got the diamonds on us.”

  She hoped those same smarts had kept Sean Ellis alive for now, holding on to him just in case. Maybe they could use that.

  Leon came back on the line. “Maybe we can work something out,” he told them, in a tone that said not a chance. “First, let’s see the diamonds.”

  “First, let’s see our client,” Charlie replied. “Send him out here.”

  Leon’s response was a subsonic crack as a rifle slug plowed into the dirt three feet in front of them. The bullet spat dust and broken stone across Charlie’s boots. She heard the bolt action working over the phone as he chambered a fresh round.

  “Figure you both know where the diamonds are,” Leon said, “so I only need one of
you alive. Next time I pull this trigger, only one of you will be alive. Diamonds. Show me. Now.”

  Beckett curled his hand under the phone, tilting it Charlie’s way. He flashed three fingers. She nodded.

  Three. Two. One. Beckett broke left, Charlie broke right, and two more shots rang out with peals of bitter thunder.

  FORTY-TWO

  They’d stopped at headquarters on the way to the scrapyard so that Dom could pick up her gear. It rode in the trunk, in a black nylon duffel bag. So did she. She curled, fetal in the stifling darkness, and listened to the doors slam as Beckett and Charlie got out. Then she counted to fifty.

  By then, all eyes would be on her partners. She popped the inside trunk release and squinted in the dusky light. Her back groaned as she clambered out of the trunk, sneakers touching down on asphalt, and shouldered her bag. It rattled, heavy. Beckett had picked his parking spot just for her: close to the gates but out of sight, and right next to a pyramid of burned-out cars that stretched almost to the top of the compound wall. She scampered up the pile, light on her feet, her leather-gloved hands careful on the jagged, rusty edges. She found a perch on the wall. She lay flat on her belly and unzipped the duffel.

  Less than a minute later, Dom was staring down the scope of her storm-gray Remington 700. She caressed the rifle like a lover’s body, holding it steady while she went on the hunt.

  Spotting Beckett and Charlie was easy. She saw them talking on the phone. Too far away to hear their voices, but she got the gist with tone and body language. Leon and his buddies wanted them to drop the loot and walk. Meant they’d probably already killed Ellis and scattered his body parts across a lonely junkyard acre, which would suck, but at least they still had the diamonds.

  “C’mon, you little bitch,” Dom murmured as she swung her scope across the rust barrens. “I know you’re watching them from somewhere. Not too close, not too far. Give me a clue.”

  Her request was delivered in the form of a bullet. She watched the round plow into the dirt near Charlie’s feet. The woman barely flinched, and Dom felt a surge of admiration as she tracked the echoing sound.