The Loot (Charlie McCabe Thriller)

by Craig Schaefer

  He had time for only one breath. Brock was already lumbering to his feet with his brow furrowed in confusion and rage. Still crouched low, Beckett’s fists fired like pistons, and he used the giant’s left kneecap for a punching bag. Something snapped, a wet, crackling sound. Brock grunted and reeled a step backward. Beckett rose, pivoted on one foot, and lashed out with a brutal kick. A rib broke under his heel, and Brock fell, arms flailing as he lost his balance.

  His shoulders hit the wall of debris. The rusted spear of metal punched through the back of his neck and ruptured his throat. Brock dangled there, eyes wide, and a raspy, clicking sound echoed from his punctured neck. The twisted steel drooled rivulets of syrupy red. The man wasn’t dead, but he was dying, and Beckett didn’t waste a word or another glance on him. Rule number two: only amateurs talked. He headed deeper into the scrapyard, hunting for his partners.

  At least with the chair bomb, Charlie had known exactly how much time she had. Searching the shack, stepping around Sally’s unconscious body, she was flying blind. There might be an hour left on the clock, or seconds. Sean was frozen in his chair, watching her, wearing a sheen of sweat on his pale, puffy face.

  The stunt with the wires was a cruel joke. They weren’t connected to anything but a railroad spike out behind the shack, and Sean could have squirmed himself loose anytime he wanted. Why?

  You wanted to make sure he’d stay put for a while, she thought, putting herself in Sally’s shoes. Long enough to get some distance between you when the bomb went off. But that meant he’d have a chance to get away. No. You hate him too much for that.

  She knelt next to Sean’s chair again and pressed her fingertips to the warped, dirt-stained floorboards. Wood creaked as she pushed down, feeling a little give. The screwheads at the end of one board caught her eye.

  They were new. The wood was filthy, but the screws were brand new and clean.

  “It’s under you,” she told Sean. “It’s the same kind of bomb she rigged in your office, same kind of pressure switch, but she mounted it under the floorboards. You eventually would have gotten those wires off, thought you were home free, then blown yourself to hell the second you tried to leave.”

  He held on to the seat like he was trapped on a roller coaster. “What do we do?”

  “You stay put. How much do you weigh?”

  “A hundred and . . . forty, maybe?”

  Charlie arched an eyebrow at him.

  “A hundred and sixty,” he said.

  On her way out the door, she almost bumped into Dom on the threshold.

  “C’mon,” Charlie said, “I need a hand. Have you seen Beckett? Is he okay?”

  Dom followed her into the yard. “No, but I’m sure he’s fine. Leon’s not a problem anymore. What are we doing?”

  “Looking for something compact and heavy. Remember the opening of Indiana Jones, where Indy switches the gold idol with a sack of sand? We’ve got to do that with Sean Ellis. We want about a hundred and sixty pounds of junk. Heavier is fine, if we can manage it.”

  Dom jerked her thumb toward the open door of the shack. “You had at least a hundred and ten on the floor back there.”

  “Sally’s not dead; she’s just out cold.”

  “My point stands.”

  Charlie had already thought about that. Leaving the bomber in her own trap felt like poetic justice. It also felt like murder. She wouldn’t have shed any tears if she’d killed Sally when they’d been grappling, earlier, and a guilty part of her wished she had. It would have made things a lot easier, cleaning up that homicidal loose end. There was still a thin line in her mind between a righteous battle and a cold-blooded kill, and she didn’t want to cross it if she didn’t have to.

  She knew, by the end of this job, she still might.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Dom and Charlie worked fast, wrenching open hoods and rummaging in the guts of dead cars for whatever they could pry loose. A couple of carburetor blocks and a broken chunk of axle formed a slowly growing mound next to Sean’s chair, piled up on a shredded tire. Beckett rounded the bend of a junk pile, his suit rumpled and torn at one shoulder but his skin intact.

  “Grab anything you can lift,” Charlie said. “We need a hundred and sixty pounds, and we need it fast. Just bring it close to the door and set it down; I’ll carry it in from there.”

  Beckett poked his head into the shack, then looked over his shoulder at Charlie and Dom. “You’ve got at least a hundred and ten right there on the floor.”

  “See,” Dom said, “that’s what I told her.”

  “Why aren’t we bringing the stuff all the way in?” he asked.

  Charlie found the mother lode: a loose, cracked engine block under the hood of an old four-cylinder Honda. Her back strained as she tried to haul the block up, barely budging it.

  “Because,” she said, leaning against the wreck to catch her breath, “Sally’s a two-trick pony when it comes to bombs. She likes pressure switches, and she likes backup timers. No idea how much more time we’ve got, and I’m not letting either of you risk being inside when that clock hits zero.”

  Beckett walked up alongside her. He shook his head and gave the cracked block an experimental tug.

  “Not a choice you get to make, Little Duck. Hmm. Feels like about two hundred, right here. Dom, c’mere, the three of us should be able to lug it inside.”

  They wrangled the block together, easing through the doorway, and wedged it next to Sean’s chair. Charlie took a step back. She studied the floorboards and the position of the debris. Without being able to see the bomb, and the exact position of the pressure switch, all their effort still came down to an educated guess.

  “That’s all you can do,” she told Beckett and Dom. “The rest of the job is on me. Clear out, and get some distance just in case. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “What about me?” Sean said.

  She fought the urge to slap him. Instead, she got into his personal space, easing up against his hip. “You’re next. Stand up and move over to your left, nice and slow. I’m taking your place.”

  “Why? I thought that’s what all this junk was for.”

  “Theoretically,” Charlie said. “Theoretically the weight distribution is perfect, and theoretically the pressure switch won’t budge. Only problem is those are very real explosives under the floor, and they don’t care about my theories. Scoot over.”

  As they traded places, he looked at Charlie as if he were seeing her for the first time. His eyes went as doe soft as his voice.

  “Hey,” he said, “thank you. I mean that. For every—”

  Charlie pointed to the door. “We are not having a moment here. Out.”

  She gave him five seconds to get clear. Then she shot a look at Sally, still passed out on the floor with a puddle of dried blood under her nose. The plan was simple: step away from the chair, and if she’d spread the weight out right and if the bomb didn’t go off under her feet, she’d scoop Sally up in a dead lift and haul her out. Charlie took a deep breath, bracing herself, and—

  Something under her feet let out a shrill electronic bleep.

  A second later, a second bleep.

  Time lurched into slow motion, her thoughts outracing the world.

  It was probably a fail-safe, designed to scare Sean Ellis into moving. It would force him to jump out of his chair and set the bomb off if he hadn’t done it already.

  Or it was a fail-safe Sally had built for herself, to warn her if she was in the blast range when the backup timer ran out. In a split second, Charlie had to decide: hope there was enough time left to drag the unconscious woman clear, or save herself. She made her choice on instinct and launched herself toward the door of the shack. Her running shoe hit the threshold on the third bleep. On the fourth, she was five feet away.

  On the fifth, the shack exploded.

  A fist of superheated air slammed into her back and knocked her sprawling to the dirt. The sound of the blast echoed in her eardrums, ringing and rever
berating, a chorus of twisted metal and flame. Tongues of fire licked at the darkened sky from the ruptured roof, spitting gouts of black smoke. Charlie lay flat, dazed, tasting ashes on her tongue and listening to the blood drumbeat of her pulse.

  Firm hands pulled her up. They gave her a shoulder to lean on as she stumbled, walking away from the scene of the crime. Her eyes refused to focus, washing out the world in shifting blurs. “You’re okay,” somebody said, sounding a million miles away. Or maybe it was a question. She wasn’t sure what the answer was. Later, when her senses returned one by one and left her with a splitting headache and a brain full of bad memories, she still wouldn’t be.

  But they had the client, alive and intact.

  And they had the diamonds.

  They reconvened the next morning. Charlie carried the night’s worries with her.

  “We need to do something about the bodies. Sooner or later, they’re going to get found, and we had to have left fingerprints all over the scene—”

  “It’s taken care of,” Beckett told her.

  “How? What did you do last night?”

  “Little Duck.” Beckett took off his sunglasses and looked her in the eye. “It is taken care of. C’mon, let’s get to work.”

  It was time to deal with Sean Ellis. The word blackmail was never spoken.

  That would have been unprofessional, after all, and Boston Asset Protection believed in discreet, confidential, and polite service. Charlie met with Jake and Sofia. She told them what they needed to know—maybe half the story, a little less—and then they had a sit-down with the client. By the end, everybody understood the score. Sean had never been abducted; he had gotten stir crazy and gone off on a short vacation without telling anyone, and that was the story he’d bring to the cops. Also, he would have nothing but glowing things to say about his favorite security firm. If he could manage that, Charlie and company could manage to forget that he was a former jewel thief who’d started his corporate career with blood money.

  Everybody would keep smiling, with their lips squeezed tightly shut, and everybody got to come out a winner.

  “They’re not all like this,” Jake told Charlie, in the hall outside his office.

  “What, you mean, bombs, gunfights, kidnappings—”

  He shook his head, giving her a tired smile, and his greased-back hair glistened under the overheads.

  “Believe it or not, most of these assignments are pretty boring. We started you off with a tough one. Still . . . you did okay. We’re glad to have you on board, Charlie.”

  “Glad to be here,” she told him. She meant it. Some people might have walked away, after a ride like that one. Some would have taken off running. For the first time since coming back stateside, though, Charlie knew she was right where she needed to be.

  For now, at least, this felt like home.

  Jake cast a glance up the empty hallway. “So the loot these chuckleheads were all fighting over . . . nobody ever found it, huh?”

  “No, sir. It was lost in the Blizzard of ’69. No idea where those diamonds all ended up.”

  He met her eyes. His smile grew, just by a hair.

  “Well,” he said, “if anyone did find the loot and manage to turn it into cash, I’m sure they were smart about it. For instance, they would have sat on the money. No big purchases, nothing flashy that could draw the attention of the police. They wouldn’t put it in the bank, either; banks report to the IRS. I imagine they’d just sock it away somewhere secure for a rainy day.”

  “That sounds like excellent advice, sir, and I imagine that if anyone did find the diamonds, they’d take that to heart.”

  Jake’s smile became a lopsided grin, flashing a wedge of pearly teeth as Sofia shouted his name. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the office door.

  “Sounds like she just read my expense report. Excuse me, I gotta go get yelled at a little.”

  Charlie’s phone buzzed. She glanced down at the screen. Shooting range, it read, five minutes.

  On the other side of the building, Malloy passed Charlie without saying a word. He didn’t even make eye contact. She didn’t either. She just moved to let him by, then turned on the ball of her foot and followed him. He walked into the company firing range, and she trailed in his wake.

  Beckett and Dom were already inside, waiting for him. Charlie shut the door and flipped the lock.

  Malloy turned, slow, as they closed in on him. He was a lone gazelle in the middle of a pride of lions. He still dug deep and managed a defiant sneer, focusing like a laser on Dom. “You ain’t gonna do shit,” he told her.

  “If you mean I’m not going to give you the curb stomping you so righteously deserve,” she said, “you are correct. But that doesn’t mean it’s off the table for later.”

  “This little feud you’ve got going with Dom,” Beckett said, “it’s over. As of now. You can either hand in your resignation, or you can learn to act like a professional. Those are the only two choices we’re offering today.”

  Malloy spread his hands. “What are you going to do about it, big guy? I know the three of you are dirty. I blew my shot at proving it this time, but nobody stays lucky forever.”

  Beckett loomed over him. He leaned in and eclipsed the overhead lights like a cold and angry moon. “This company is more than a business. It’s a family. My family. And we only come home at the end of the day, safe and sound, if we can trust each other. Keep breaking that trust, bad things are going to happen.”

  Malloy’s wall of insolence sprouted cracks. He wavered on his feet, holding his ground but obviously aching to back away.

  “Such as?” he said.

  “Such as,” Dom said, “one day, shit’s going to go bad out in the field, and you’re going to need backup in the worst way. And you might just find out that in your darkest hour, after you’ve burned every bridge you ever crossed . . . nobody is coming to save you.”

  “Think it over,” Beckett told him.

  As the next day faded into night, Charlie got a call from Saint. He was more than cooperative, once Charlie reminded him how he’d sold her out to Kinzman and his gang. He pointed the way to a pawnshop in Mattapan. No name above the door, just Pawn and three balls etched in dirty yellow neon.

  Inside, the woman behind the wire cage had a smoker’s cough and an eagle’s eyes. She looked from Charlie to Beckett to Dom and back again and snuffed out her cigarette.

  “Saint seems to think you’re good people to know,” she said. “Which means jack squat, coming from him, but at least it tells me you’re not Johnny Law. So how about you flip that ‘closed’ sign around and show me what you’ve got?”

  The fence’s name was Carmen—she didn’t offer a last name, and nobody asked—and five minutes later she was studying a scatter of diamonds on a bed of black velvet. Her left eye bulged, magnified behind the circular lens of a jeweler’s loupe.

  “Damn,” was all she said after that. Time dangled like a sword as she silently moved from stone to stone, sorting them into tiny piles, an order Charlie couldn’t begin to decipher. Carmen’s chipped fingernail tapped one pile, then another. Her lips moved as she did the math under her breath.

  “You understand,” she finally said, “this isn’t the kind of business where you get the official going rate. It’s a buyer’s market, and the reality of our little situation here—”

  “Is that you’re going to offer us pennies on the dollar and tell us to like it,” Dom replied.

  “If you want to be crass about it, sure.” Carmen plucked the loupe from her eye and squinted, reaching for a bottle of Visine. “But to be fair, I’m taking all the liability here. It’s going to take me two, maybe three years to get these off my hands, spreading ’em out through different buyers, and every transaction is a risk. You three get to take the money and run.”

  “How much money are we talking about?” Beckett asked.

  She took one last look at the piled stones. Her hands wavered in front of her, palms flat, like she
was piling cash on an invisible scale.

  “Let’s call it ninety thousand,” she said. “You get a third of that right here and now. That’s all I keep in the shop. Come back for the rest tomorrow night. Before anybody says one more word, this isn’t an invitation to haggle: you can take the ninety, or you can take your rocks and walk. You won’t get a better offer in Boston; I can promise you that.”

  Charlie’s heart pounded. Thirty thousand dollars, free and clear, for each of them. Twenty would pay off her father’s debt. The rest was a down payment on a car, a place to live, a new start. Beckett looked at her, then to Dom, taking a silent poll. He turned back to Carmen.

  “It’s a deal,” he said.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Charlie strode into Deano’s, right past the bar, and over to Jimmy Lassiter’s booth in the back. Grillo and Reyburn pushed away from their stools and followed her like a pair of sharks who smelled blood in the water. She didn’t even look at them. She dropped the brown paper sack in her hands onto the table, right next to Jimmy’s half-eaten porterhouse. The bag thumped hard enough to make his steak knife jangle on the plate.

  The bookie squinted at her, then the bag. He unrolled it and peeked inside.

  “Remind me,” he said, his Irish brogue light on his tongue, “is it Christmas or my birthday?”

  “It’s everything my father owes you,” Charlie said. “Tear up his marker and forget his name.”

  He rolled the paper bag shut again. Then he picked up his napkin and dabbed a spot of grease from the corner of his mouth. When he looked back at Charlie, he had a new appreciation in his eyes.

  “Don’t know how you got the money, lass, but there’s better ways to spend it than on bailing out your old man. Take yourself out on the town. Get yourself a manicure and a new dress, you know, one of those designer numbers with the frills and sequins and shite. Your dad, he’s just going to break your heart again one way or another. Men like him always do. Remember what I told you, about the frog and the scorpion?”