The Interloper

by Dave Zeltserman

  “I just want the money,” Luce said. “There’s no reason for you to take a nine millimeter slug to the stomach, is there?”

  “I suppose not,” Howlitz admitted grimly, still smiling as if this were only a bad joke.

  “You’re going to close the refrigerator slowly and then you’re going to take me to where the money is.”

  “Okay, whatever.” Howlitz hesitated, then added, “Look, I’m starving. I’ve been on the road nine hours straight. Seeing as how I’m going to be tied up for a while, how about being decent about this and letting me make a sandwich first before ripping me off? If you want, I’ll make you one also.”

  “Uh uh. Close the door now while you still have teeth in your mouth. And don’t say another word to me.”

  Howlitz made a shrugging gesture with his hands, then after putting the mustard, salami, and bread that he had taken out for his sandwich back into the refrigerator, he pushed the door closed and led Luce out of his kitchen and to his den. Luce saw the briefcase in the foyer that led to the garage before Howlitz bothered pointing it out, and he waved the gun at Howlitz, indicating for him to take a seat on a beaten up cloth recliner. Luce then took a cord from his coat pocket and ordered Howlitz to hold both arms straight back. Howlitz made a face thinking he was going to have his hands tied behind the chair, probably realizing that twisting his arms back like that for hours would do a number on his shoulders. He looked like he was going to complain about it, but Luce stopped him.

  “You want to keep your teeth, don’t you?” Luce said.

  Reluctantly, Howlitz reached back with both hands as he was ordered. Luce pinned one of Howlitz’s arms against the side of the chair with his hip, then jerked the other arm back. Howlitz screamed with pain as if Luce had dislocated his shoulder. Luce ignored it. Even if he had, it wouldn’t change the medical examiner’s finding of death by heart failure. The examiner would simply assume the dislocation happened somehow while Howlitz was suffering from his heart attack.

  Before Luce had done that, he had slipped from his coat pocket the hypodermic needle filled with a fatal dose of digoxin, and while Howlitz screamed and tried to pull free, Luce stuck him behind the left ear with the hypodermic needle and injected its full contents into Howlitz’s bloodstream. Seconds later, Howlitz’s body jerked violently, and if Luce hadn’t been pinning his arms, Howlitz would’ve fallen face first onto the floor. It continued for another few seconds before the spasms lessened, and after a few more seconds it was over. Luce let go of him, and Howlitz’s body started to slump forward. Luce pushed him back and lifted the footrest so the body would be left in a reclined position and wouldn’t tumble to the floor. He positioned Howlitz’s arms so they would look more natural in death than in the more awkward way they had been pulled behind his body.

  Luce then went to the briefcase, his palms itching like crazy as he opened it. It was filled with bundles of hundred dollar bills rubber banded together. He took out one of the bundles and his mouth went dry as he counted twenty bills, all hundreds. A quick estimate had somewhere between two hundred and fifty and three hundred bundles giving him at least half a million dollars, which would be more than enough to allow him to pull his disappearing act. His heart skipped several beats as he closed up the briefcase. He forced his eyes closed and took deep breaths until his heart slowed. Soon he felt himself calming down. He opened his eyes, picked up the briefcase, and walked through the house so he could go out the back way. He had found an inconspicuous spot several blocks from the neighborhood to park his car, and he had taken the precaution of replacing his license plates with ones he had stolen earlier from long-term airport parking.

  Luce cut through his victim’s backyard, then the next yard before remembering the gym bag and garbage that he had earlier left outside the neighboring home. His mind had been racing so much with thoughts of everything he needed to do before he could disappear into Southeast Asia that he had forgotten about it. He hesitated for only a moment before heading back for it. Now that he had a way out of The Factory, he couldn’t afford any mistakes. Once he retrieved his gym bag and the other bag filled with not only garage, but plenty of DNA that could lead back to him, he moved quickly again to disappear into the night.

  *

  Luce had a forty-five minute drive back to the condo that he rented in Needham, an upper middleclass town west of Boston which turned out to be a perfect place for him to have moved to given that his neighbors kept a wide berth of him, with not one person approaching him in the four years that he had lived there. It was as if they smelled that he was different from them, and they kept their distance, allowing him to come and go as if he were invisible.

  He had a hard time keeping himself from racing home, but he managed to maintain a speed within a few miles of the limit so as not to attract any late night police. As he approached Route 93, he took a small detour to Quincy, which was a large enough city for what he needed. Once in the center of town, he found an isolated spot behind a shopping center where he’d have some privacy, and after parking he opened the briefcase and flipped through all the bundles of money. He needed to make sure there weren’t any tracking chips hidden within them. When he finished doing that, he filled up his gym bag with the money, then tossed the briefcase into a dumpster in case a tracking chip had been planted inside of the lining. Other than making sure the money was safe, he also knew exactly how much he had. Five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. For the rest of the ride home, he couldn’t keep from grinning every time he thought about the money.

  After he got home and found a safe place to store the money, he considered heading out to a nearby strip club with a few thousand dollars on him and flashing enough hundreds so he could bring home a nice piece of tail. It had been months since he’d been laid, or even wanted to get laid, and he was on such an exhilaration high that he wanted to celebrate properly. He quickly realized that would be a stupid thing to do. It was going to take him weeks before he’d be ready to do his disappearing act, and if he started throwing hundred dollar bills around now it could draw The Factory’s attention, or even the police’s. They could very well be looking for someone dropping hundreds at a strip club as a way to get a lead on the warehouse robbery. It wasn’t like him to act stupid like that. He needed to settle down and get his thoughts under control.

  Luce went to his refrigerator, grabbed a six-pack of Miller Lights, and cracked open one of them. As he sat on his sofa, he found himself staring at nothing in particular, an uneasiness settling into his gut. At first he couldn’t quite figure out why, but after he had his second beer and his mind started functioning more normally, he understood all the mistakes he made.

  The thought of all that money had made him temporarily stupid.

  Even if they weren’t insurgents he killed, The Factory could still have them under surveillance, and they could very well know about Howlitz’s plans to rob that warehouse. Hell, that had to be why they marked him as a target. Luce needed to do a sweep of Howlitz’s house and grounds and know whether there were any surveillance cameras or bugs that The Factory might’ve planted there. If there were, he was going to have to make a run for it soon, which would be close to suicide since it would only give him a small chance of escaping without The Factory being able to track him down. An even stupider mistake was not getting the names and addresses of the rest of the robbery team. It would’ve been tricky because of how Howlitz’s death had to look, but there were still ways Luce could’ve extracted the information he needed. The others involved in the robbery wouldn’t be able to find Luce, but that didn’t matter. They still all needed to be eliminated. He couldn’t allow any of them to get picked up by either the police or The Factory. If that happened, The Factory might find out about the five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and if they did, they’d know that Luce took it.

  Luce checked the time and saw it was twenty minutes past two. It would be hours, maybe even days, before the police found the body. He had time to do what he needed,
which was to go back there and sweep the inside of the house for any surveillance equipment that The Factory might’ve planted, and also try to find out who else was involved in the robbery. If he couldn’t find names and addresses in Howlitz’s house, he’d have to set up surveillance again. It wouldn’t be too long before the other crew members for the robbery would be checking up on their dead accomplice.

  Luce gathered up what he needed and headed out again. As he drove, all giddiness from before over stumbling onto over half a million dollars was gone, his mind instead focused solely on what he needed to do. It was twenty past three by the time he had parked in a safe location and had made it back to Howlitz’s address. As he crept toward the back of the house, he saw a flash of light through a window and understood that someone was inside with a flashlight. So one or more of the robbery crew were already there. It was too soon for him.

  He crept over to a side window where the shades were only partially drawn. The room was dark, and from what he could make out he was looking into a small dining room. Whoever was in the house must’ve been in the den where the body was left. Luce moved to the front door and strained as he listened for voices within the house, and after a couple of minutes, he heard what he thought were two different voices, maybe three. He wished he could’ve opened the garage door, but he wouldn’t be able to do that without alerting them. It was too bad. If he could’ve gotten into the garage, he’d be able to hear them better and know whether they were still in the den. He’d also know if they had brought a car into the garage, and if they did, he’d be able to plant a tracking chip on the undercarriage. What he really wished was that he could break in and kill all of them, but that would be as good as slicing his own throat with the way The Factory would react. Damn it! Once they got over the shock of finding Howlitz’s body and the money gone, they’d be cleaning out any evidence of the robbery, as well as any ties to them, and then they’d be gone for good. Luce only had one way of playing it out and he edged away from the front door and then took off running, moving as fast as he could to get back to his car.

  Perspiring badly and out of breath, he tossed the bag he’d been carrying onto the backseat, then got behind the wheel. Keeping his headlights off, he drove until he was five blocks from the entrance to the cul-de-sac and then parked under a heavily leafed oak tree that would shield his car from the moon and any overhead street lights. He caught a break with Howlitz’s house being on a cul-de-sac. If the crew members he had overheard had brought their car into Howlitz’s garage instead of doing what he had done, they’d be driving out of the cul-de-sac and giving him a chance to follow them. He sat back and waited and tried to stay calm, and twelve minutes later he was rewarded for his patience when a sedan pulled out of the cul-de-sac heading the opposite way with its lights off. If the car had driven towards him, it wouldn’t have mattered. There were a few other cars parked on the street, and Luce would’ve lowered himself in the seat so he wouldn’t be seen.

  While still keeping his lights off, Luce followed the car, making sure he kept enough distance between the two of them so he wouldn’t be spotted or heard. After half a mile, the other car turned on its headlights, and as it passed under working streetlights, Luce was able to make out that there were two people in the backseat, which meant there was most likely another passenger up front. After a few more miles, the car stopped in front of a small cottage, the neighborhood similar to where Howlitz had lived. A heavyset man got out of the back and ambled his way to the front door. Luce watched as the car drove away and then as the man entered the cottage. He didn’t need to follow the car anymore. All he needed was one to get the rest of them.

  Once the man was inside the cottage, Luce turned his car around. He still needed to sweep Howlitz’s home and property. If The Factory had set up any bugs or surveillance cameras, he wouldn’t need to worry about these men. Eliminating them in that case would be pointless. What he’d have to worry about instead would be getting as far away as he could without leaving a trail. His face stiffened as he thought about that. He had to hope he’d be killing the men later, because with the resources The Factory had he didn’t see how the other option would be possible, at least not without weeks of planning and having enough fake passports thrown around to make sure he was leaving only dead ends for any Factory operative to find.

  Chapter 6

  Hendrick dropped Willis off after McCoy, and when Willis switched the lights on inside his rental cabin, he found Bowser lying on the bed, the dog’s thick head resting on the pillow, one eye open, his tail cautiously thumping the mattress. Bowser showed a guilty look as he expected to be admonished for his transgression, but Willis decided the dog had earned a break after what he’d done earlier, so instead he sat on the edge of the bed and scratched Bowser behind his ear for half a minute, which made the dog’s tail thump harder.

  Willis got up and moved to the kitchen area where he sat by a small butcher block table, with Bowser, who after first stretching and yawning in an exaggerated manner, followed him. Once seated, Willis took a set of screwdrivers from his bag, found the right-sized one to use, and opened up the disposable cell phone that Hendrick gave him earlier. After he removed the GPS tracking chip planted inside and had the phone put back together, he walked back to the bedroom so he could pack up what he had into a duffel bag. He needed to find a new place to stay, somewhere that Hendrick and the other crew members didn’t know about. Even if they weren’t going to try anymore funny business, now that a Factory assassin was in the picture, he couldn’t take the risk of one of them leading the assassin back to him. He had warned the others during the ride back that they should all find safe places to stay until it was over, but none of them appeared to take him seriously.

  Once he had his duffel bag packed up, he wiped down all the doorknobs and the surfaces of the kitchen and bathroom with a cloth to remove any fingerprints, then moved to the front door where he whistled for Bowser. The bull terrier had stubbornly stayed in the kitchen. After letting out several angry pig grunts over not being fed the breakfast he had been expecting, the dog scampered over to him and followed him out of the cabin and into Willis’s car, jumping onto the front passenger seat. Willis, before entering the car, used a bug detector to make sure the vehicle was clean. Once he was satisfied, he got in and headed to the same twenty-four hour diner in Quincy where Kate worked. It was ten minutes past four, which meant it was ten past three in Akron, Ohio where Big Ed Hanley lived. Willis knew Hanley wouldn’t be happy if he called him then, but he did so anyways. After seven rings, Hanley answered, grunting out in a raspy smoker’s voice made groggy from sleep, “Yeah?”

  “We got problems,” Willis said. “An uninvited guest showed up and ran off with the presents. I need your help if we’re going to recover what was taken.”

  In a voice that had quickly become alert, Hanley told him he’d call right back. Three minutes later, Willis’s cell phone rang. Hanley was on the other end using his latest disposable phone. Every three days, Hanley changed the disposable cell phone he used. It was probably an unnecessary precaution to call back using it, but it wasn’t worth taking a chance, no matter how remote, that the police or a government agency could be monitoring Hanley’s cell phone communications. Even if they were, they’d have no idea who he was talking to, and Willis would’ve continued talking in code so they’d have nothing concrete from the conversation. Still, it made things easier.

  Willis gave Hanley a quick overview as to what had happened without going into any detail regarding who he thought was responsible. He gave Hanley the names of the two Factory handlers he had gotten when he very loudly resigned months earlier from The Factory by killing his own handler after first interrogating him.

  “Are those two guys the ones who ripped you off and killed Hendrick’s man?”

  “No, but they might lead us to who did.”

  “What do you mean might?” Hanley asked, brusquely.

  “Just what I said. They might. There are no guarantee
s. But it’s the only chance we have of getting our money back.”

  “You need to tell me more than this. Who’s the guy you’re looking for and why might these two lead you to him? And how’d the guy get tipped off about the money and where it was going to be?”

  Willis had pulled into the diner’s parking lot while talking to Hanley, and Bowser let out a few excited grunts on recognizing that they were in a place that cooked up bacon since he had grown to associate diners with bacon. There were only two other cars parked in the lot, both by the side of the building and neither were Kate’s. The only person Willis could see through the front plate-glass window was a plump and bored-looking blonde waitress who sat in a booth reading a magazine. Willis parked his car and continued his conversation with Hanley.

  “It’s too long a story,” he said. “There were no mistakes by any of us. No one tipped the killer off about the money. It was just dumb luck on his part that he stumbled on it. The two guys I’m asking about have no idea about the money, but they give us the only chance we have of finding the guy who has it.”

  “Yeah? Tell me why this is.”

  “Again, too long a story. What I need from you are addresses for those two names and a quiet place I can bring them to. We’ll be doing all the heavy lifting here once you give me that.”

  Hanley didn’t like what he was being told. His voice took on a more blunt edge as he told Willis that he wanted to know the odds of recovering the money if he got him those addresses. Willis thought about it, then told him it was probably fifty percent. He might’ve been somewhat optimistic with that number since he was told months earlier that there were eight handlers working in The Factory’s Boston office, although there could now be only seven depending on whether or not they had replaced Barron. Even though he might only be grabbing twenty-five percent of the handlers, he still felt his fifty percent answer was reasonable as he was confident that if those two weren’t responsible for handling Howlitz’s killer, he’d be able to get from them the names of other supervisors in their office.