One Got Away

by S. A. Lelchuk

  Looking at his partner, he figured they must have used baseball bats or maybe pipes. Fists didn’t do that kind of damage. He hoped, for the man’s sake, that he’d die soon. Being alive didn’t look worth it. He pushed the thought away. What he thought didn’t matter. What he wanted didn’t matter. It was the men at the table that mattered. While they wanted his partner to be alive, he would be alive. If they wanted him to be dead, that, too, would happen.

  “It was good of you to come.”

  His eyes moved to the speaker. The middle of the three men. It was a face he recognized, even though they had never been in the same room before. He felt the dull, heroin-coated fear in his body kick up a sharp level. He wasn’t supposed to be in a room with this man. They were on very different levels. Career-wise, he shouldn’t have met the man speaking to him for another five years, at least.

  He nodded but said nothing. He could feel the big guy who had opened the door standing close behind him, as though he might be foolish enough to try to run.

  As if reading his mind, the speaker said, “Your partner did not come voluntarily. He tried to run. You made an intelligent decision. They told me that of the two of you, you were the more intelligent. Today’s choices seem to bear that out, would you agree?”

  He nodded again, aware that he was very thirsty. He wished he had stopped to buy a soda. Not doing so seemed stupid. Such a small thing, so easy to do, and now he had to stand here, so thirsty he would have happily lapped dirty bathwater off the concrete floor.

  “How long have you worked for us?”

  He tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat. He tried again, frightened of the impatient look that spread across his questioner’s face. “Eight years. Since I was seventeen.”

  “You did a good job. Until this.”

  He remained silent.

  “Some mistakes we could call bad luck, a learning curve. But not this. You both were incompetent, you made an error that cost me a great deal. Not just the loss of income, the bellyaches. That would have been excusable. You managed to attract the attention of American media, federal law enforcement. You created a big story. People are talking about us, asking questions.”

  “I’m sorry.” He meant it. He was sorrier than he’d ever been about anything. “We tried to do everything right.”

  “Tell me what went wrong. Tell me in detail.”

  He spoke for a few minutes, explaining what had happened: the white car they had noticed, north of the border, driver plus a passenger with some kind of telephoto camera, his partner becoming agitated (here he omitted that both of them had been on methamphetamines and hadn’t slept in two days), convinced the white car was photographing them, more agitation, arguments, finally a course of action carried out—and then realizing, too late for the occupants, that the white car had held only a couple of college kids and a bunch of movie-making equipment.

  Then more arguing about whether they had been seen (he said yes, his partner insisted no), paranoia becoming panic as they heard his partner’s rough description read over their police scanner—and finally the decision to ditch the truck by the Walmart and get away.

  He still dreamed about the white car. Without the white car, everything would have been fine. They would have made their delivery, and he’d be on vacation with his girlfriend, down in some beachside resort, eating, drinking, screwing, getting high. The tiniest difference, and he’d be there instead of here.

  A different trajectory. Such a small difference.

  Unpleasant odors filled his nose. They were coming from his partner. He was making sounds. A hand twitched, grasping at something invisible. His moaning grew louder. Something sounded broken in his throat. A crushed windpipe, probably. He’d heard the sound before.

  The man who had been asking him questions glanced at his partner with irritation. “Please,” he said. “Tell him to be quiet. He is interrupting.”

  The man sitting on the speaker’s right reached over and picked up the hunting rifle. It looked like a .30-30, what someone would use for deer. Without standing, the right-hand man worked the bolt, aimed, and fired a single shot into the twitching body. The sound was very loud in the enclosed space. He put the rifle back on the table. The smell grew worse but the noises stopped.

  The man asking him questions seemed oblivious. “Do you know why we called you here?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you think about running?”

  He shrugged. Glanced down at the still body. Blood was pooling, sluicing down a drain set into the floor. “What’s the point?”

  “Good boy. You understand.”

  The right-hand man leaned over and whispered something. The man in the center considered, then nodded. “He points out that you worked hard for us and did a good job for many years. He says you deserve an easy landing.”

  “Thank you.” He spoke the words with genuine gratitude.

  The man who had shot his partner stood up. He recognized this face, too, seeing the distinctive white scar against the grizzled forehead, the hatchet strapped to his thigh. Before transitioning into management, the man had been legendary in the Organization. The younger men were in awe of him; they whispered guesses at his body count. Despite everything, he could not help but feel a measure of pride that this person had spoken highly of his work. Now, the man poured a drink from the tequila bottle, walked over, and handed the small glass to him. He drank gratefully, feeling the alcohol burn his throat. It was getting hard to stand. He needed to use the bathroom. Everything seemed to move slower.

  The man who had poured him the drink walked back to the table and picked up the rifle for a second time. He watched the rifle move up to him. It wasn’t the first time he had looked down a gun barrel. In his work, not unheard of. But this time felt different.

  The bolt clicked back with a sharp, precise clarity.

  He could see the finger begin to tense against the trigger.

  The man in the center was speaking again, sounding angrier. “The goddamn U.S. State Department even mentioned us. So much trouble, because you can’t do your job.” A fleshy hand suddenly pushed the rifle barrel down. “Why should you enjoy an easy landing? After the bellyache you’ve caused?”

  The man in the center clenched his hand into a fist.

  For the first time, he felt real panic, an electric fear that made the pleasant muddiness in his head crystalize into hard, sharp edges. It was impossible to just stand there. He started to spin around. He had counted steps as he habitually did. The door was eighteen walking paces behind him. Running, it would be half that. If he could make it through the door and outside, he could evade them. Get back over the border, into the mountains, find some small town to live in. He knew plenty of freelancers who did fake papers. A few owed him favors. He could live somewhere else, have a quiet life. A man with his talents could always find work.

  His mind was working very quickly now. Not more than a half second had passed since he began to spin. He still held the empty tequila glass, which he intended to smash into the big man’s eye. Violence came naturally to him. He wouldn’t hesitate, least of all at this moment. The bolt action rifle would only get the chance to fire a single time before he reached the door. That gave him a chance.

  As he turned there was the briefest glint, a kind of sparkle, a metallic thread that darted over his vision and was gone again. Briefer than blinking. He could have imagined it. As the sight connected to his brain and was analyzed for meaning, he realized what the glimmering line meant and tried to lurch down and away.

  Too late.

  The wire was around his neck. He jerked an elbow backward with desperate force, but the big man was expecting that and stepped with him neatly as a dance partner, staying directly behind him.

  Time slowed even more. He heard a sound and realized it was his glass, shattering on the floor. He felt the wire jerk into his throat, sharp as a razor, and became aware of blood spilling down his neck as the garotte dug into his flesh. The room began to
darken as the pain kicked in and he tried to scream through a throat that no longer worked. The big man was controlling him, now, holding him up as his legs gave way, and he slumped down, the weight from his body working treacherously against him. He felt the wire sawing through his neck even as it strangled him, and had the bizarre hope that he’d die before his whole head came off. He wanted to be buried in one piece.

  As strength left his body and his knees gave way, his last, dispiriting thought was that if there was indeed a hell as he had been raised so strictly to believe, he would without a doubt go to the devil and burn eternally for the terrible things he had done in the brief handful of years that God had allotted him.

  22

  I’d never been in a Bentley before, much less a chauffeured one. Now, sitting behind the driver on soft, hand-stitched leather, the experience seemed almost anachronistic. As though I was in a Jane Austen novel, a world of rank and class, servants to carry up eggs and buttered toast in the morning and help you change out of your pajamas. A soundproof glass window divided the front from the back, and a wide, burled walnut center console separated the two rear bucket seats. Whatever Bentley used for their suspensions worked, and then some. As we cruised San Francisco’s chipped and potholed streets, I felt like we were on a sleigh gliding over packed snow.

  “Fancy hotel suites, fancy cars,” I observed. “Careful—I’m starting to feel spoiled.”

  Martin Johannessen gave me a look that contained neither humor nor any of its distant cousins. “I can always pick you up on the bus next time.” His narrow, greyhound face was pinched, and his hand tapped absently against his knee. We were driving south on Van Ness, without any obvious destination. I noticed that traffic seemed to give the Bentley a little extra room. Deference, or maybe prudence. No one wanted to get in a fender bender with a $300,000 vehicle.

  “Have you heard from Susan recently?” I asked him.

  He looked at me, surprised. “What does my sister have to do with any of this?”

  “She wanted to talk to me. It sounded important. Did you talk to her yesterday or today?”

  “No,” Martin said, “which is far from abnormal. If I don’t hear from her in a month or two, maybe I’ll worry.”

  “Any idea where she’d be?”

  Martin uncapped a green glass bottle of Perrier. “Probably one of the yoga or wellness retreats she always checks into after she gets into a huff. Maui, Malibu… they seem to always put them in such comfortable locations.”

  “What’s she get into these huffs about?”

  “My sister has always harbored resentment toward the family, even in the best of times.” His annoyance was becoming suspicion. “Why these questions?”

  “Just asking.”

  “I thought that’s what the client is supposed to do. Asking questions.”

  “Ask away,” I invited. “You’re the one who wanted to see me.”

  “True enough.” He stared out the window at the passing buildings. “Things have changed since we last spoke.”

  “Changed how?”

  “Changed with regard to Coombs.”

  “How so?”

  Martin said, “The man left town. I’ve realized that I’m throwing good money after bad. He’s a mosquito—a tick, a bloodsucker. So now that he’s buzzed away, let him go feed on someone else for a change.” Martin’s long, thin fingers turned the bottle cap in endless circles. “Life is too short—I have more important things to do than chasing after a cheap swindler in a nice suit.”

  “What about the blackmail? Aren’t you still worried about that?”

  “No,” Martin said, “I’m not, actually. I believe I was wrong about that—misinformed. Coombs is no longer Mother’s problem, and therefore he’s not mine.”

  “You never asked me what I found out,” I said.

  “And what was that?”

  “Apparently, you weren’t the only one who had a problem with Coombs. Some men grabbed him out of his hotel. Down in Monterey.”

  “Men? Who? Which men?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d never seen them before. They didn’t seem nice.”

  “What did they want from him?”

  “Money. How much, or why, I don’t know.”

  Martin was openly curious as he said, “Grabbed him? What do you mean grabbed? Is that supposed to be a metaphor?”

  I said, “They threw him into a suitcase and drove away. Not sure if that counts as metaphorical?”

  “What?” Martin’s surprise sounded real. “A suitcase? You can’t just throw someone in a suitcase.”

  “Turns out you can. Turns out all you really need is a big enough suitcase.”

  “What are they going to do to him?”

  “Nothing good.” I will watch while these two chain a fifty-pound cement block around each one of your ankles and toss you into Monterey Bay.

  “You’re saying they’ll hurt him?” Martin didn’t sound particularly upset at the prospect.

  “They will unless I can find him first. Which is what I was trying to do. When you dragged me back up here.”

  Martin sipped from his Perrier and fell silent, thinking. The big car had done a U-turn and was heading back up Van Ness. Aimless, as best as I could tell. Cruising and burning gas. Probably a lot of gas. I didn’t think people who bought Bentleys worried about the price of unleaded. The car’s sound insulation was as supreme as the shocks. Outside, the world was muted as a television set.

  “This doesn’t change anything,” Martin finally said.

  It was my turn to be surprised. “Doesn’t it change everything?”

  His voice sounded more assured by the second. As though he was sliding pieces into a puzzle frame and seeing the picture form. “If he upset those people—thugs, criminals, whoever they are—that’s for him to work out. Certainly not my problem. What’s that saying—the enemy of my enemy is my friend? I don’t see the point of spending money or time trying to save a man who caused my family nothing but grief.”

  “Hurt,” I explained, “sort of understates their plan for him. If you get my point.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t care to know the details, frankly. If the man’s greed and conniving and criminality led him into the lion’s den, well, he’ll have to find his way out.”

  “I got the sense that he hadn’t wandered into the lion’s den on his own.”

  Martin gave me a sharp look. “Meaning what, exactly? Did they mention anyone else?”

  “Nothing like that.” I asked the obvious question. “But why would Coombs be doing deals with a bunch of gangsters? He’s a con man who goes after the upper crust. That doesn’t seem his style.”

  Martin’s face showed nothing except lingering peevishness. “Like I said… not really my problem. The man has spent his career cheating and deceiving people. If he finally flew too close to the sun, that’s for him to work out on his own.”

  “What are you saying, Martin?”

  “I’m saying that I no longer need your services.”

  “You’re firing me?”

  “Yes.” The bottle cap rotated in his spindly fingers. “I’ll pay any expenses you incurred, naturally, and the retainer is yours to keep. But I no longer need you—effective immediately.”

  “You called me up here just to fire me? You couldn’t have done that by phone?”

  “Your time did not go uncompensated.” Martin looked me square in the face. “I no longer want or need you running around chasing this fellow. Are we clear?”

  “Give me one more day. Just one more. To see what I can find.”

  “Impossible.” Martin shook his head. “This meeting concludes our business. I suggest you move on to things worthier of your attention and forget all about Coombs.”

  “I’ve never liked giving up.”

  “You’re not giving up. You’re moving on. There’s a difference.”

  “Not to me there isn’t.”

  Martin blew out his breath in annoyance. “We aren’t going to sit h
ere quibbling over semantics. I’ll be an excellent reference, in case that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Even better,” he snapped. “But either way, you’re no longer needed.”

  The conversation seemed over. “You can let me out here.” Thinking of my poor credit card I added, “I’ll send you my receipts.”

  “By all means.” He tapped on the glass separating us from the front, and the big car slowed to the curb. I got out, ignoring two idlers who wolf-whistled as they saw me emerge from the majestic car.

  “See you around, Martin,” I said as the car pulled away.

  Not having the support of a client was crippling. It wasn’t just about the expense account. Law enforcement took a very dim view of anything that smelled of vigilantism. Brushing against police after having been fired from a case could mean losing the California PI license that had taken me all kinds of effort to get, and once stripped, the licenses were notoriously hard to gain back. Maybe worse consequences, if Martin got wind of my continued involvement and decided to throw his considerable influence around.

  If I wanted to keep hunting for Coombs, I needed a new client. And if I wanted to find him, I had barely a day and a half to do so.

  Susan Johannessen would have been perfect—but she had disappeared. And neither of her brothers seemed at all inclined to be helpful. I thought of William’s blank, uncomprehending eyes, and Ron’s hostile glare.

  No, I wouldn’t be working for any of the Johannessen siblings.

  A client.

  I realized who I needed to talk to.

  23

  The elder Mrs. Johannessen lived in a duplex apartment in a grand, prewar building in Russian Hill. A different doorman from my unsuccessful first visit watched me walk in.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Nikki Griffin, for Mrs. Johannessen.”

  His eyes stirred a bit at the name. The Johannessen name seemed to open doors—or close them. He walked back around the desk and clicked on his computer. “She’s unavailable.”