The Professionals

by Owen Laukkanen

  Pender dialed. Beneteau put the phone to his ear. After a few seconds, he spoke. “Honey,” he said. “I’ve been kidnapped. Some chumps. I’m all right. They want a ransom. No, listen. Hundred grand. That’s the price. Twenty-four hours. You know what to do … All right. All right.”

  Beneteau hung up the phone. He turned his face in Sawyer’s direction and flashed a bloody grin. “You motherfuckers just made the biggest mistake of your lives.”

  twelve

  Yeah, I remember her. How could I forget?”

  Agent Stevens found himself at the Avis counter at the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport, listening to the clerk nearly blow his wad as he tried to describe the girl who’d rented the brown Hyundai last Tuesday.

  It hadn’t taken much for Stevens to follow the McDonald’s security footage to the rental car agency. Just a couple frames forward on the tape to where the car waited to pull into traffic and Stevens could almost read the full license plate straight off the screen. A few keystrokes later and he’d traced the car back to Avis. If only all police work was that easy.

  “She was hot, man,” said the guy, Brian, a fat twentysomething. He leered at Stevens as he spoke. “Big brown eyes, pretty smile. Nice rack. She was something.”

  “Curly hair?”

  “Curly hair.” Brian nodded. “A lot of it, too.”

  “She came alone?”

  “Nah, she had this big guy with her. Kind of lurking in the background.”

  Stevens took out his notepad. “Could you describe him?”

  “Probably six-two, six-three, I guess? Mid- to late twenties. Short brown hair. Chinstrap beard. Maybe two hundred pounds.” He shrugged. “I was looking at the girl, you know?”

  “They come off a plane?”

  Brian shrugged. “Hard to say. Didn’t think they had any bags, though.” He glanced up at Stevens. “What’d they do with the car, anyway?”

  “Took it to McDonald’s,” said Stevens. “You got the paperwork?”

  Brian nodded and knelt below the counter. He stood up with a sheaf of documents and passed them across. Stevens took a look.

  According to the file, the renter was an Ashley McAdams. Gave an address in Atlanta, Georgia, a 404 area code. Twenty-six years old. Paid with a Visa card.

  Stevens put down the folder. “You were here when she brought back the car?”

  “Nah. Wish I was, though.”

  “Yeah,” said Stevens. “Can you come down to the BCA tomorrow, talk to a composite artist about these two?”

  “Guess so.” Brian shrugged. “We could do it tonight if you want. I’m off in a half hour.”

  “No, thanks,” said Stevens, already walking away. “I gotta pick up my daughter from volleyball practice.”

  A couple hours later, with Andrea home from practice, dinner consumed, and the dishes done, the kids having vanished to their rooms, Stevens left his wife snoring into her files and crept to the front door. His hand was on the doorknob when she spoke up behind him. “You know, a lesser wife might accuse you of sneaking around,” she said, a clutch of papers in her hand and her face set to a frown everywhere but her eyes.

  “I am sneaking around,” Stevens told her.

  “You got a new girlfriend?”

  Stevens took his hand off the doorknob and placed it, instead, on his wife’s hip. “I do,” he said. “Name’s Lesley.”

  Nancy moved closer, moving his hand up to her sweater. “Sounds sexy.”

  “Very,” said Stevens. “His first name’s Tim.”

  “Tim Lesley. You dog.”

  “I think I have a problem.” He was cupping her breast now, watching her eyes half close as he touched her.

  “You have more than one problem,” she said. “You passing me up for Tim Lesley is your biggest.” She slid her hand slow down the front of his pants.

  He forced himself to pull away. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “I’ll be asleep.”

  “That never stopped me before.”

  She smacked his arm. “Get out of here. But come back quick, understand?”

  He left her at the doorway and stepped out into the cold, wondering what kind of fool passed up good sex and a warm home on a night like tonight. A fool cop with a dead-end case, apparently, but at least the case was getting better. T-Mobile’s snarky lawyer had run off with his tail between his legs when Stevens came back with a warrant, and the company had promised to fax over the call locations that afternoon. And this Ashley McAdams lead was the most promising development yet.

  Stevens pulled into the bureau lot, nearly empty so late at night. Still a couple lights on upstairs: the keeners. The guys with no wives and no lives.

  Upstairs, he found the T-Mobile information waiting on his desk. Three sheets of paper: one cover letter and two lists, one for each phone. Each list contained a breakdown of calls made and received with a corresponding cell phone tower for each call. The first phone hung mainly around a cell tower in Brooklyn Center, northwest of Minneapolis along the 694.

  The second phone moved around a bit more, calling in on a cell tower out near the airport a couple times and then, six or seven times, from a tower near Harper’s place the night he was nabbed and then again for a couple hours after he’d been given back. Ballsy.

  The last phone call on each list was a head-scratcher. Both phones used a tower way to the northwest of the city off I-94. Out near the Crow-Hassan Reserve. Interesting.

  Stevens looked over the T-Mobile sheets once more, searching in vain for something else he could use. Then he turned to his computer and brought up the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database. He typed in “Ashley McAdams” and pressed the search key, sending the FBI’s digital bloodhounds on a search for Ms. McAdams’s criminal record.

  A minute or so later, the Fed computers called off the search. Ashley McAdams was clean.

  Fifteen minutes later, Stevens was driving west on the 694 across the Mississippi River. His little extracurricular field trip would mean taking a rain check on Nancy’s quality time, but Stevens was onto something and he knew if he went home he would spend most of the night awake in his bed, wishing he’d followed up on his instinct.

  As he drove, he made a list of tasks. He would need to look deeper into the McAdams situation, find out all he could about the curly-haired girl from Georgia. And he would need to look into the phone calls out by the Crow-Hassan Reserve.

  But for now, he was going to check out the locale around the kidnappers’ first cell tower. It was a little ambitious, searching for an apartment in a sea of apartment buildings, but Stevens had never lost a case because of too much legwork. He drove north, humming along to an old Springsteen song on the radio, and when the 694 merged with I-94 and he drove into Brooklyn Center, Stevens saw exactly what he was looking for.

  On the side of the highway stood a collection of cheap motels, some privately owned and some national brands, some plain and some plain sleazy. Harper thought he’d been held in an apartment. Could he have been wrong?

  Stevens pulled off the highway and aimed for the motels. He pulled into the first lot, a sleepy little two-story shoe box called the Stay Inn. He got out of the Crown Vic and started up toward the office, staring down the strip at a sky full of neon signs and identical fishbowl lobbies.

  thirteen

  It took three motels and some serious bullshit before Stevens came up with the catch.

  The Stay Inn produced nothing, and the Motel 6 was no better. Neither desk clerk gave up anything more than a baleful stare and a half-assed search of the records. Nobody remembered; nobody wanted to talk.

  Things went better at the Super 8, though the clerk took some convincing at first. She was a young girl, early twenties. Her name tag said “Sheena,” and she looked up from her romance novel long enough to give Stevens’s badge a cursory glance before returning to the book. “Nah,” she said, snapping her gum. “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “You were working here Friday?”<
br />
  “Yeah,” she said. “Haven’t had a day off in about a month.”

  “Always the night shift?”

  The girl sighed and dog-eared her novel. “Yeah,” she said. “Me and Jimmy handle nights. He’s the maintenance guy. They make him stick around so nobody tries to rape me.”

  “Where’s Jimmy now?”

  “Having a nap in back,” she said. “He’s usually sleeping.”

  “Some guard dog,” said Stevens. “You sure you don’t remember anybody? Pretty girl in her mid-twenties, long curly hair? Big guy with brown hair and a chinstrap beard? Probably driving a blue van, probably rolling with a third person?”

  The girl blinked. “Wait a sec,” she said. “We had a big guy like you said roll in here Saturday before last, real late. Wasn’t with no curly-haired girl, though. He had with him a little runty fella. Young, maybe my age. They got two rooms.”

  “What did they drive?”

  “Didn’t see,” she said. “I can check the registry.”

  “Please.”

  She put her novel aside and punched a few keys on her desktop computer. “Good stuff,” she said. “Here we go.”

  She spun the monitor around to face Stevens, pointed out the entry in question. Adam Tarver and Eugene Moy. An address in Maryland. “Paid cash?”

  “Yup,” said Sheena. “Far as I can remember.”

  Stevens examined the entry. Under the vehicle heading, they’d listed a blue GMC Savana. No plates. “You didn’t get the plates on this van?”

  “It’s not in there?”

  Stevens shook his head.

  “Guess not, then. We’re not real sticklers for that. Long as you put the make and model.”

  “You don’t remember anything else about these two? No curly-haired girl come along for the ride?”

  “One sec,” she said. She leaned back behind the counter. “Jimmy!” Then she turned back to Stevens. Shrugged. “I don’t really remember.”

  A middle-aged man came shambling out of the back room, rubbing his eyes and blinking in the light. “Jimmy,” said Sheena. “This is Officer Stevens. He’s got a few questions.”

  Jimmy raised his hands. “Not guilty.”

  “Sure you are. You remember those kids came through in the blue van last week? One tall, one small. Came in real late, stayed a few days?”

  Jimmy scratched his head. “Met up with those other two, right?”

  Two, thought Stevens. Interesting. “Which two, Jimmy?”

  “A woman and a man. Pretty girl. Curly hair. They came later. Stayed in the one room, and the other two took the first one. Drove a little brown Japanese car.”

  “Maybe a Hyundai?”

  Jimmy shrugged. “You tell me.”

  “What did the third man look like?”

  “Well, tall. Maybe six feet. Thinner. Light-colored hair. It was dark when I seen them.”

  “Sure. You remember anything else about them? Maybe about the van?”

  “Nah.” He shook his head. “Except the van had Illinois plates. Figured they were passing through, but they stuck around a few days.” He scratched his head, yawning. “That’s about all I got, Officer.”

  “All right,” said Stevens. “Go back to sleep.”

  Jimmy disappeared, and Stevens turned back to Sheena. “You guys had anyone stay in those rooms since our gang disappeared?”

  “Yeah,” said Sheena. “Couple nights ago in the one, and yesterday and today in the other. They been cleaned and put back to normal already.”

  “I figured,” said Stevens. He straightened up. “Probably going to need you and Jimmy to come downtown and talk to a sketch artist at some point.”

  Sheena nodded absently, reaching for her novel. Stevens watched her a moment. Then he turned and left the lobby.

  Once outside, he took out his phone and punched in a number. The phone rang a couple times, and then the sleepy voice of Tim Lesley, Special Agent in Charge, came on the line. “Yes?”

  “Sir, it’s Agent Stevens.”

  “Stevens. What time is it?”

  “It’s late, sir. Sorry to wake you.”

  “You didn’t wake me, Stevens. What’s the matter?”

  “Sir, I’ve made some progress on this kidnapping case,” said Stevens. “I’m going to need some help chasing down leads.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Well, sir, we might want to give the FBI a heads-up. These guys are from out of state. Could be a professional job.”

  Lesley was quiet for a moment. “What happened to the university angle?”

  “Gone,” said Stevens. “These guys have Maryland and Georgia addresses and Illinois plates on their car. They stayed in a Super 8 to work the job.”

  “You can have Singer and Rotundi,” said Lesley. “Leave the Feds out of it for now. We can work our own case. And I’m not convinced the student angle’s so wrong. Those kids could be out-of-state students who knew what they were doing.”

  “That’s true, sir.”

  “Don’t discount the university possibility yet, Stevens. Keep me posted.”

  “Will do, sir,” said Stevens. “Good night.”

  Maybe Lesley was right, Stevens thought, climbing back into the Crown Vic. Maybe the motel didn’t mean anything but that the kidnappers wanted to do business somewhere transient and anonymous.

  Maybe they’re students, he thought. Maybe these guys have been right in front of us all along.

  Somehow, though, he knew otherwise. Some basic cop instinct told him Lesley was wrong.

  fourteen

  Patricia Beneteau hung up the phone, her eyes diamond-hard and just as sharp. She inhaled slowly, looking around the study, trying to keep her heart rate steady. She heard footsteps outside the door, and Matthew, the eldest, came running into the room.

  “Mom,” he said, panting. “Ian found a bird on the deck. I think its wing’s broken.”

  Beneteau turned to her son. Forced a smile. “I’m a little busy now, honey,” she said. “I’ll come see your bird later, okay?”

  The fourteen-year-old stared at her a moment, then shrugged and disappeared down the hall. Beneteau listened to his footsteps. Heard the back door slam and then she was alone again.

  Kidnapping, she thought. Those maniacs. Stealing my husband for a hundred thousand dollars. My husband. Must have been crackheads. Crackheads or maniacs. Either way, they’re in for a surprise.

  She walked back to the phone and dialed Rialto. “This is Mrs. B,” she said. “We have a situation.”

  Pender could feel the bile welling up in his stomach as he stared at Mouse’s computer screen. My God, he thought. We’ve kidnapped John Gotti.

  A few minutes earlier, Mouse had pulled him out of the hostage room where Beneteau lay bound and blindfolded. He dragged Pender down the hall to the next room, his face ashen.

  “We might have a little problem,” Mouse told him. “This guy Beneteau? We were right. He owns those tool-and-die shops or whatever. He’s just your everyday rube, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said Pender. “So? The hell’s going on?”

  “It’s his wife, boss.” Mouse’s eyes were oh-shit wide. “His wife’s not quite so everyday.”

  Now Pender peered over Mouse’s shoulder and wanted to throw up. In less than twenty minutes, Mouse had come up with an encyclopedia of news reports, all concerning Patricia Beneteau and her alleged organized crime connections at the city’s Motown Casino. The reports suggested the casino was run by a low-profile offshoot of a prominent New York crime family and that the majority of the company’s executives possessed strong ties back to the Manhattan home office. Beneteau—née Liakos—was mentioned repeatedly by name.

  “Holy shit,” said Pender. “This is straight out of a mob movie.”

  Mouse looked up at him. “What do we do, boss?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” he said. “We don’t get killed, that’s the main thing.”

  His phone rang. Marie, standing guard at the Beneteau house
. Pender felt his heart start to pump even faster. She might as well be wearing a target, he thought. “Arthur?”

  “Yeah,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “How’s it going out there?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Marie. She sounded shaky. “No cops yet, anyway.”

  “No cops,” said Pender. Probably the last thing we have to worry about now. “Okay. What else?”

  “Arthur—these cars just started showing up. Fifteen minutes ago, maybe. People just started rolling into the house.”

  “What cars? What people?”

  “Big black cars,” she said. “Cadillacs. And a big truck. People everywhere, Arthur. Scary-looking people.”

  “All right,” said Pender. “Get the hell out of there. Come on back to the motel.”

  “What if they call the police?”

  “They’re not calling the police, Marie,” he said. “These aren’t the calling-the-police kind of people. Get out of there. Now.”

  Twenty minutes later, Marie was at the Super 8, and Pender called a team meeting. They left Beneteau bound in the first room, and the four of them crowded into the second, everyone jumpy and confused and scared.

  “So here’s the deal,” Pender said. He cleared his throat. Tried to sound confident. “Beneteau’s wife is connected.”

  “Connected?” said Marie. “What does that even mean?”

  “Means she’s in the mob,” said Mouse. “She knows people who know people. Sopranos shit.”

  “Those people you saw at her place were thugs,” said Pender. “Goons? Henchmen? I don’t even know what they call them.” He surveyed the room. “The point is, what are we going to do?”

  “We let him go,” said Marie. “Right, Pender? We cut our losses and leave him by the side of the road. Get the hell out of Detroit and forget all of this.”

  “Yeah,” said Mouse. “We don’t need this headache. Those guys will kill us.”

  “Bullshit.” Suddenly Sawyer had a gun in his hands, a big black pistol that freeze-framed the room. “Nobody’s going to kill us.”

  Marie gasped. The room went silent. Pender stared at the gun like it was a lit stick of dynamite, the whole room moving faster and faster around him. He glanced at Mouse. The kid stared back, one eyebrow raised. “Jesus, Sawyer,” Marie said at last. “Where the hell did you get that?”