The Professionals

by Owen Laukkanen

  Sawyer kept his eyes on Pender. “Thought we might need it.”

  “Need it for what, exactly?”

  “We never needed guns before,” said Pender.

  “My God, Sawyer. What are you thinking? We’re not killers.”

  Marie was this close to hysterical. Pender put his arm around her. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll figure this out.”

  “He has a goddamn gun, Pender.”

  “I know. I don’t know where the hell it came from.” He glared at Sawyer. “But it’s not our biggest problem right now. We gotta figure out this Beneteau thing first. Put the gun away, Matt.”

  Sawyer shrugged. The gun disappeared.

  Pender looked around the room, the dim light, the claustrophobic walls. Fought the rising tide of panic. “Let’s work through this. We ditch Beneteau tonight and skip town.”

  “You guys watch too many mob movies,” said Sawyer. “These guys are businessmen. They’ll pay up.”

  “You don’t watch enough mob movies,” said Mouse. “They’ll come looking for us.”

  “Big deal. We ditch the van and catch a plane somewhere they won’t find us.”

  “It doesn’t matter where we go, Sawyer. They’ll find us.”

  “How?”

  “Look,” said Pender. “Maybe they pay. Maybe they don’t find us. But why risk it? We don’t need the money that bad. We ditch this guy and we run another score next week. We do better research and we get back on the grind. It doesn’t make sense to start pissing off mobsters. Not if we want to stay clean.”

  Sawyer stared at him. Said nothing. “Please, Matt,” said Marie. “Let’s just let this one go.”

  Sawyer sighed. “Whatever,” he said. “I guess I’m outvoted.”

  Patricia Beneteau stared out into the street as the last of the day’s light slipped away. Behind her, Rialto’s three goons sat waiting, looking oversized and uncomfortable on her sofas and easy chairs. She turned and examined them: two Italian, one Greek. Muscle from top to bottom. Shaved heads, dead eyes, long scars. Might as well have been clones.

  A car door slammed outside. Beneteau turned back to the window to see another mammoth of a man step out of his Escalade and start up toward the house. A minute later he was inside, rubbing his hands together, his cheeks rosy and his eyes bright. He looks like an overgrown child, she thought. A teddy bear. He peeled off his coat and fixed his eyes on hers. “You’re Mrs. B?”

  “That’s right,” she said. She watched him walk into the room. He surveyed the muscle, nodded slightly, and then examined her in the same way.

  “You would be Mr. D’Antonio,” she said. He didn’t look like a teddy bear now. Not when his eyes got so hard, anyway. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Just D’Antonio. And no coffee.” He waved at an empty chair. “May I?”

  “Please.”

  “You had a girl parked down the street in a Chevy Impala watching the house, talking into a cell phone.”

  Patricia spun. “She’s not ours. Go back out there and get her.”

  D’Antonio shook his head. “She bolted. Either something spooked her or she got called back to home base.”

  She stared at him. “So you lost her.”

  He shrugged. “I took down her plates. We’ll find her again.”

  Patricia walked away from the window and sat down opposite. The muscle watched her with uniform disinterest. She ignored them and kept her eyes on D’Antonio. “So what do we do?” she said. “How do we punish these people?”

  fifteen

  Ashley McAdams was no student. Neither was Adam Tarver or Eugene Moy. Stevens had Singer double-check with every university in the state. No luck. Not students.

  Neither were they criminals, though. The NCIC database spit out no results for either Tarver or Moy. No criminal records, no warrants, no nothing.

  Either they were rookies or they just never got caught. Or they had aliases. Could be they were keeping their real names to themselves.

  Rotundi brought in Sheena and Jimmy, and after a couple hours with a composite artist they had a couple pretty good sketches making Tarver and Moy. Then Brian came in from Avis and gave them the girl, McAdams, leaving only the fourth suspect, the nameless man who’d come in with McAdams. Jimmy begged off working the last sketch. It was dark, he said. He could barely trust his eyes in the daytime.

  Stevens examined the sketches, searching the faces of his suspects. Who are you, he wondered. Where are you?

  He had Rotundi put the sketches on the wire. Every cop shop in the region would get a copy. Lesley was still pushing the university angle, so every post-secondary institution in the state would get a nice poster to tack up in campus security. As for Georgia and Maryland and Illinois, don’t ask. “I don’t want those Fed bastards thinking we can’t compete,” Lesley told him. “We solve this in-house, understand?”

  Stevens spent a couple hours paging through the FBI’s Most Wanted lists, comparing the pictures and looking for matches, but the closest he came was making Tarver as James Walter Lawson, a fugitive from Alaska in his late thirties who was suspected to have died somewhere in the wilderness, fleeing from an armed robbery gone wrong. No dice.

  Stevens clicked off the FBI database and turned to where Nick Singer sat at his computer, going hard at a roast beef sandwich. “Hey, Nick,” he said. “Maybe call Avis, some of the other rental companies. See if McAdams, Tarver, or Moy ever rented cars from them elsewhere.”

  Singer chewed slowly. “Probably need a warrant for that stuff.”

  “Fine,” said Stevens, silently cursing Tim Lesley. Singer and Rotundi weren’t exactly the BCA’s ringers. “Maybe get a warrant, then.”

  Singer nodded and kept chewing. Stevens was about to say something else when his phone rang. He answered.

  “Is this Agent Stevens?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Stu Courtney with the highway patrol. Understand you’re looking for blue vans.”

  “Sure,” said Stevens. “GMCs in particular. Savanas.”

  “Perfect,” said Courtney. “I’ve got just the car for you.”

  Ten minutes later, Stevens was on I-94 in his Crown Vic headed northwest and out of the city. He glanced at Courtney’s directions. Town called Rogers, the trooper had said. Out by the Crow-Hassan Reserve.

  The suspects had made one phone call to each other at the Crow-Hassan Reserve the day after the kidnapping. This had to be connected. Someone’s looking out for us, he thought.

  He turned off the I-94 at Rogers and took the back roads west toward the park border. Fifteen minutes and a couple of three-point turns later, he found himself squinting down an unmarked dirt road, trying to make out if there was a black-and-white at the end.

  As he drove closer he could make out the trooper’s sedan and Courtney inside it, the windows starting to fog up and the exhaust a white cloud billowing around the rear of the car. Stevens parked behind and got out, shivering in the bracing air as Courtney turned off his ignition. Stevens looked around at his surroundings: forest in all directions, dark and tangled and dense.

  “Couple of hunters found it,” said Courtney. “Thought it was a little weird, this van sitting out there in the middle of nowhere. Mentioned it to a state trooper friend who remembered you guys were looking for vans. Figured we’d let you take a look.”

  Stevens pulled his coat tighter. “Where is it?”

  Courtney gestured ahead of his patrol car, and Stevens could see the van now, parked off the road and half hidden in the underbrush. The General Motors logo was just barely visible through the camouflage.

  “Guess they did a decent job of hiding it,” said the trooper. “Didn’t figure anyone was coming down this road anytime soon.”

  “Didn’t plan on hunting season. That car got plates?”

  Courtney shook his head. “No plates. No personal effects inside, either, far as I can tell. You gonna wipe it for prints?”

  “Sure,” said Stevens. “Doubt
they left any, but maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Well, all right.” Courtney shivered. “You need me to stick around?”

  Stevens shook his head. “I’ll call in my team. Thanks.”

  The trooper tipped his hat and climbed back into his patrol car. Stevens watched him drive off, momentarily jealous of the man’s warm vehicle. Then he turned back to the van and all jealousy was forgotten. He was too damn excited to be cold.

  sixteen

  Stevens watched the tow truck yank the van out of the trees, lurching and jostling as it pulled out onto the dirt road. Things are finally picking up, he thought. Good things to those who wait.

  An hour earlier, Nick Singer had called with a tidbit of good news. According to the girl at Hertz, Eugene Moy had rented a Ford Taurus from the airport in Memphis about a month and a half ago. Used it for a couple days, Friday through Monday, then ditched. Paid with a Visa. “That’s all I got,” he said. “Nobody else’d even heard of these guys.”

  “That’s good enough,” Stevens told him, thinking, Memphis. How the hell did they get all the way up here?

  Then Rotundi came in with his own bit of news.

  After Courtney left Stevens alone with his little bit of buried treasure, the agent had called in a team of forensic technicians to analyze the scene. As expected, the van had been mostly clean. No latent fingerprints, no blood. No long strands of curly brown hair.

  What they did come up with, though, was the van’s Vehicle Identification Number. Rotundi ran the VIN through the Driver and Vehicle Services database and called back with the good stuff: the van had been sold a couple weeks back from a dealership in Lake Forest, Illinois. Bought by one Ryan Carew.

  Ryan Carew, thought Stevens. Hot damn. The fourth man.

  The tow truck driver gave the van one last tug and then rolled to a stop beside him. The driver leaned out the window. “We all set here?”

  “Sure,” said Stevens. “Go ahead and bring her back to town.”

  Forty-five minutes later, he was back in the bureau building, staring at his phone and wondering if he had time for a couple more calls before dinner. I’m on a roll, he decided. Gotta keep up the momentum. He picked up the phone.

  First thing he did was call up the used-car dealer in Lake Forest. Millennium Auto, it was called. He dialed the number and was greeted by a gravel-patch voice. “Millennium.”

  Stevens introduced himself. “Got a couple questions about a van you sold a couple weeks ago. Was used to commit a crime up here in Minneapolis.”

  “You got a warrant?”

  “Not yet,” said Stevens. Can’t get a warrant without jurisdiction, he thought.

  “So what makes you think I’ll answer your questions?” the guy said. “I don’t have to tell you a thing.”

  “Guess I’m thinking you’re just a caring citizen, right?”

  “Caring citizen.” The guy laughed. “You got the wrong number, fella.”

  “Sure,” said Stevens. “Maybe I’m thinking something else, then. Maybe I’m thinking you don’t want the Lake Forest boys to come through with a warrant and a fine-toothed comb.”

  “I didn’t do nothing.”

  “I just have a couple questions,” said Stevens. “It was a blue GMC Savana, came off lease return. Guy paid cash.”

  The dealer sighed. “All right.”

  “Guy named Ryan Carew bought it. You remember?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Medium height. Maybe six foot? Blond hair. Sunglasses. What do you want me to say?”

  “That’s fine. How’d he get to the dealership?”

  “Brought a friend with him. Drove a Camry, I think. Real big guy. Brown hair. Kind of a beard. I would have said he was there to intimidate, except your boy didn’t want to negotiate.”

  “Paid sticker?”

  “Like that. In and out. We insured on the spot.”

  “He give an address?”

  “Let me check.” The line went silent for a minute or two. “Yeah, we got an address. Joliet. Got a pen?”

  Stevens copied down the address and thanked the man.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong, right?”

  “You’re clean enough for me, anyway.”

  “All right,” the man said, and hung up.

  Stevens replaced the phone and leaned back in his chair. The kid’s home base is Joliet, he thought. But he buys his van in Lake Forest. That’s on the other side of Chicago. Doesn’t make much sense unless he’s got a thing for blue GMC Savanas.

  He picked up the phone again. Called the Illinois State Police in Des Plaines. Got himself routed to Crimes Against Persons, where a hard-ass named Taylor picked up the phone. “Who’d you say you were again?”

  “Stevens, Minnesota BCA,” he said. “I’m looking for any unsolved kidnappings you guys may have had in the last month or so. Specifically north of Chicago, but maybe around Joliet as well.”

  “Kidnappings?” said Taylor. “You want to be more specific.”

  Stevens laid out the Harper case. “I trace these guys to Lake Forest about two weeks ago. They may have tried the same play down there as well.”

  “Don’t think so,” said Taylor. “Most of our kidnappings are drug-related. Anyway, we haven’t seen any reported in over a month.”

  “What was the last case you got?”

  “Drug-related. Unpaid debt in the southeast. Victim wound up dead a week or so later.”

  “Sure,” said Stevens. “That doesn’t sound like my guys.”

  “Nah, it wasn’t your guys. Good luck, though.”

  Stevens thanked him and hung up. He stared at his computer screen, trying to figure out his next move. We’ve got to check out Carew’s residence in Joliet, he thought. And McAdams’s in Georgia and Tarver’s in Maryland. That’s not something I can handle on my own.

  Stevens stood up and walked down the row of cubicles to the row of private offices at the edge of the room. He knocked on Tim Lesley’s door and stuck his head inside the room. His boss looked up from his desk. “Stevens,” he said. “Come on in. What can I do for you?”

  Stevens walked in and sat down. “We’ve made progress on the Harper case,” he said. He laid out the van development and Carew’s home address in Joliet, Illinois.

  Lesley tented his fingers. “So much for the university angle.”

  Stevens shook his head. “They’re too organized to be students, sir. This is big-time. You don’t come all the way to Minneapolis and run a kidnapping job like this just to walk with sixty grand and be done with it.”

  “You think these guys are some kind of crew.”

  “I do.”

  Lesley leaned back in his chair. He fixed Stevens with a stare. “And you want me to hand this over to the FBI, do you? Make the BCA look like we can’t solve a goddamn case on our own.”

  Stevens held Lesley’s stare. “I don’t think we have a choice, sir. We’ve got this kid in Illinois, the girl in Georgia, and his friends in Maryland. If we want to move forward, someone’s got to start breaking down doors.”

  Lesley stared at Stevens for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll hand it off. But Stevens?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  The Special Agent in Charge stood. “You’d damn well better be right.”

  seventeen

  Birmingham, Michigan, after dark. The streets were lifeless and black, the only lights visible a few dim reading lamps in upstairs windows. Quiet, too: nothing moving on the sidewalks, the lawns, inside the long shadowy rows of cars on either side of the street.

  Pender brought the van to a stop at the head of the block. He looked over at Marie in the passenger seat. Her eyes met his, expressionless. He glanced back into the rearview mirror, where Mouse and Sawyer sat silent, their mouths drawn tight, one hand each gripping Donald Beneteau’s arms.

  Only Beneteau seemed satisfied. He had been talkative when they left the motel, outlining in painstaking detail the ways his family would take their revenge. Then Sawyer fed
him a backhand slap and told him shut up. Now Beneteau sat smirking into his blindfold, humming softly to himself.

  Pender released the brake and the van crept forward, the engine sounding like a nuclear explosion in the silence of the night. He let the van roll down the block, fully expecting Patricia Beneteau and her henchmen to jump out from a parked car, packing heavy artillery and hell-bent on revenge.

  But the street stayed quiet, even as Pender brought the van to an easy stop a few houses down from the Beneteau place. “All right,” he said. “We drop him here.”

  Mouse slid open the rear door, and it sounded like an Amtrak train. Pender flinched, staring out into the darkness, searching out the ambush. Sawyer kicked Beneteau to his feet. “End of the line.”

  Beneteau stood and let Sawyer untie his hands. “You pukes fucked up,” he said. “You fucked up real good.” Then he turned toward the front of the van. “Which one of you is Pender, anyway?”

  All of the air seemed to rush out of the van. Pender felt like he’d swallowed a brick. Marie was staring at him, shocked. Mouse stood frozen in the back.

  “Which one of you little fucks is Pender?”

  Sawyer was already reaching for his gun. “I gotta shoot him, right?”

  Beneteau smiled wide. He cackled, triumphant and incessant. Sawyer rammed the gun into the back of his head. Beneteau kept laughing.

  Pender’s brain went to overdrive. He knows my name, he thought. How? Who cares? What now? If we kill him, we set the whole goddamn mob against us. Jesus—shut that guy up. If we let him go, he knows who I am. Somehow. How? Calm down. He knows Pender. How many Penders in the world? In Detroit alone? We’re good. We’re fine. They’ll never find me.

  He looked up, relieved. “It’s all right,” he told Sawyer. “He doesn’t—”

  BAM. The gun roared, and Beneteau’s head exploded. Blood everywhere. His body pitched forward, out of the van and onto the pavement below. Car alarms sounded outside. Marie screamed. Sawyer yelled at him. “Go, go, go!”