The Professionals

by Owen Laukkanen

  They chatted on the way to the bag claim, and the doctor offered her a ride home. But she begged off, making up a story about a friend waiting outside, and then she fled the terminal and jumped into a taxi before Tavares’s suitcase could emerge on the carousel.

  The taxi wound its way toward the city and through the downtown core, and Marie watched the skyline pass as she’d watched Detroit the night before and Minneapolis before that. Seattle had been home, once, but tonight through rain-streaked windows the city looked as bleak as any other. Though Pender and Marie still kept an apartment in Queen Anne for appearance’s sake, she’d been back only three or four times since they started the kidnappings.

  At first, her parents had been hurt and confused by their daughter’s sudden absence. She’d created her marketing job, invented little stories about long hours at the office and no free time for anything but sleep, but that only made her parents worry more. Her dad warned her not to burn herself out and her mother worried that she wasn’t eating right, and in the end it was easier to just shut them out entirely. Even now, she’d lied to Dr. Tavares because she couldn’t bear the thought of facing her father’s earnest curiosity and her mother’s concern and her med-school sister’s smug satisfaction.

  Pender tried to encourage her to see her family. He hated to think he was taking her away from the people she loved. He just thought they should remember to be cautious. To be professional—God, he loved that word. Anyway, Pender had it easy. His parents barely sent Christmas cards anymore.

  And Mouse was like Pender, familywise. He’d told his dad he’d taken a tech support job with Microsoft and that’s why he was gone so much and his dad had grunted his approval over the top of his beer and that had been that. Sawyer’s parents were too busy with their own lives to pay much attention, though the big guy had a younger sister he adored and to whom he sent vague, cheerful—for Sawyer—e-mails every week or so. He told his sister he was an online poker player and he could work whenever and wherever he wanted.

  The boys had it easier. They still had each other. She had dropped what few friends she had as soon as they’d decided to hit scores full time. She knew the guys had done the same, sort of, but it was different; they were each other’s best friends. Marie’s best friends were getting master’s degrees or working at Starbucks, struggling to make lives for themselves in the real world. Marie hadn’t seen most of them in years.

  She had given up everything, her friends and her family, and for what? Well, for the promise of a decent life, somewhere down the road. For a life outside retail sales, a low hourly wage, the constant threat of unemployment. And for Pender. She did love him, and she did love his coconut-oil dreams. But Marie often felt that she’d given up her own life, a decent life with decent, caring people, in exchange for an endless succession of motel rooms and fast-food joints and a whole lot of lies.

  And now they were murderers, too.

  The cab dropped her off outside her apartment, the old building looking black and empty in the naked trees and the rain. She dug out her key and hurried upstairs to her door. The place was cold and damp and musty, but Marie hardly noticed. She left her shoes by the door and threw her coat on a chair and crawled into bed fully dressed, listening to the rain beat against the windows as she drifted into an unhappy, uneasy sleep.

  twenty-six

  Agent Stevens leaned forward and stared through the window of the Yukon, looking down the highway at a calamitous knot of angry, slow-moving traffic. “So this is what I’m missing,” he said, sighing. “The glamorous life of an FBI agent.”

  Windermere laughed. Davis didn’t. Windermere turned to face Stevens from the front seat. “What do we do now?”

  The Avenue Tool Company was a dead end. Bob McNulty had led them into his office, where he dug into a filing cabinet and returned with a manila folder bulging with junk mail, credit card solicitations, grocery store flyers, and the like, all addressed to Ryan Carew.

  “These things started coming maybe a year and a half ago,” said McNulty. “We couldn’t figure it out. Nobody named Carew works in this place. Nobody named Carew ever worked in this place.”

  “Maybe he moved,” said Windermere. “Forgot to change his address.”

  McNulty shook his head. “Avenue Tool Company’s been on this spot since 1946. He’s been gone a long time if that’s the case.”

  Davis chuckled to himself. Windermere and Stevens traded glances.

  “Who is this Carew, anyway?” said McNulty. “What does the FBI want with him?”

  “He’s a suspect in an ongoing investigation. He listed this place as his home address.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s not here.” McNulty paged idly through the stack of mail. “If you happen to find him, tell him go ahead and change his address.”

  So Ryan Carew was a dud. The name was never anything but an alias. And if these kids were going to the trouble to make up phony names and addresses, they weren’t wasting their talents on one puny sixty-grand score. These were serial kidnappers. A professional crew.

  “I’ll get in touch with someone from the Georgia and Maryland offices,” said Windermere. “Save us the trip. Save you a couple of barf bags.”

  “We’re not finding anything in those places, either,” said Stevens. “They’re all of them fake.”

  Windermere nodded. “You think?”

  “These kids are serious,” Stevens told her. “We’re not getting them easy.”

  Davis pounded on the steering wheel and leaned on the horn, cursing. “What time is your flight?”

  Windermere checked her watch. “An hour or so.”

  “You ain’t making it.”

  “Come on, Larry.”

  “What, come on?” He gestured through the windshield. “It’s like trying to fit a hundred-gauge rail inside a Japanese condom out there.”

  Stevens glanced up at Windermere. “Guess we’re catching the late flight.”

  “Bad news,” said Windermere. “This is the late flight.”

  Goddamn it, thought Stevens. Nancy’s going to kill me. “Maybe there’s something at Midway?”

  Davis shrugged. “In this mess? You ain’t getting to Midway, pal.” He grinned at Windermere. “Now’s your chance to see some of the sights.”

  Windermere shook her head. “I’ve seen all I need to see,” she said. “Scenic Joliet was enough for one day.”

  “Then, how about dinner?” Davis said. “You and me. I know a place—”

  “Davis.” Windermere looked across the truck at him. “I get it, okay? And I’m flattered. But it’s been a long day and I’m tired, you know?”

  Davis looked at her a moment. Then he shrugged and turned back to the road. “Best I can do is drop you at a hotel by the airport,” he said. “You guys can stay the night.”

  It was nearly nine in the evening by the time Davis picked his way through the traffic to O’Hare. The Fed dropped them off in front of the airport Sheraton and looked ready to bolt before Windermere closed her door. “So long,” Stevens told him. “Thanks for the company.”

  Davis grunted something and stared straight ahead. Windermere climbed out of the truck and peered back in at him. “You’ll book us on a morning flight, Larry?”

  Davis grunted again. “Sure thing,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Have a good night.” Then he stepped on the gas and peeled out of the lot, the big Yukon howling as he made for the highway.

  Stevens and Windermere watched him go. “I think I pissed him off,” Windermere said.

  Stevens nodded. “I’d say so. He really wanted to show you Chicago.”

  “I know what he wanted to show me, Stevens. It wasn’t anywhere as big as Chicago.” She turned and started toward the lobby doors. “I’m starving. You hungry? How about a steak dinner on the Federal dime?”

  Stevens begged off dinner for ten minutes to call home. “Just to check in,” he said.

  “Good idea,” said Windermere. “I’ll probably need about twenty. Sometimes Mark ne
eds a little sweet talk.”

  They checked in together, and then parted at the elevators. Stevens called Nancy from his room. She was angry, though Stevens could tell she was trying not to show it. “I thought you were going to be around this week,” she said.

  “I know,” he replied. “I’m really sorry, honey. This just came up.”

  “How the hell did you end up in Chicago, anyway?”

  “We had to check out a place in Joliet. They told me I’d be back this evening, and then traffic just screwed us over.”

  “You’re with that FBI agent? Windsor?”

  “Windermere, yeah. We’re holed up by the airport. The Sheraton.”

  “Oh, how nice for you both,” said Nancy. “Use protection.”

  “Ha-ha. We got separate rooms.”

  “I know. Come back soon.”

  Stevens promised he would and hung up the phone. He surveyed the room, a bland business traveler’s vacuum, and his stomach growled. The phone rang and he picked it up. Windermere. “You watching the news?”

  “Not yet,” said Stevens. “Everything all right back home?”

  “Mark was in a mood,” said Windermere. “Sweet talk wasn’t cutting it. Turn on Channel 5.”

  Stevens turned on the television. Switched over to Windermere’s channel. The reporter was in some grimy corner of Detroit, of all places, standing out in the rain. She was explaining how the van used in the murder of Birmingham’s Donald Beneteau had been found, gutted by fire, in an industrial neighborhood in River Rouge.

  Beneteau, the reporter said, was the husband of the infamous and controversial Patricia Beneteau, a Motown Casino exec with alleged ties to the Bartholdi crime family in New York City. He’d been shot once and then dumped from a red Ford van outside his tony Birmingham mansion late Wednesday evening. The family refused to comment, and the suspects remained at large.

  Stevens spoke into the phone. “What are you saying, Windermere?”

  “You watching? Some mob guy got clipped out of a red Ford van. Van was found burned up a few days later, no plates. Could have been our kids, no?”

  Stevens ran the math in his head. They dumped the body on Saturday, he thought. They could easily have been in Minneapolis the week before.

  “Could just be a coincidence,” said Windermere. “But it sounds like their MO, you know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” said Stevens. “Anyway, what else have we got right now?”

  “We can at least call up Detroit and see if they know anything.”

  “Let’s get the Michigan office involved.”

  “Already done,” Windermere told him. “Now, are you ready for dinner or what?”

  twenty-seven

  He found them on the beach.

  They’d commandeered board shorts and a couple beach towels, and they were stretched out on the sand about thirty feet from the surf, their pale bodies incongruous amid acres of tanned flesh. Sawyer was laid out flat on his back, staring up through a brand-new pair of Oakleys at some girl in a yellow bikini. Mouse was pretending to read a mystery novel while sneaking glances at Sawyer’s new friend.

  Pender thought about sneaking up on them and maybe pretending to be the cops, but quickly thought better of it. Too soon, he decided. Besides, Sawyer had probably found himself another gun already. So he played it straight: walked up, cast a shadow over Mouse, and kicked sand on Sawyer’s chest.

  The big guy sprang up. “Yo, what the fuck?” He was ready to brawl, showing off for the girl. She had long blond hair and a tight, toned body, a gorgeous face that probably put plenty of miles on her fake ID. Beautiful, definitely, and knowing Sawyer, probably dangerous. He wondered how much they’d told her.

  Mouse looked up from his novel, laughed. “Penderrrr.”

  “Oh, shit.” Sawyer relaxed. “I almost decked you, bro.”

  Pender stuck out his hand, and they shook. “See you guys are settling in nicely.”

  “Yeah.” Sawyer grinned. He gestured to the girl. “This is Tiffany. She’s from Pennsylvania.”

  Tiffany gave a little wave and a world-melting smile. “Bryn Mawr,” she said. “Taking a little impromptu winter break from school. So you’re the famous Pender.”

  Pender glanced at Sawyer. “I don’t know if I’m famous.”

  “The way these guys talk about you, you might as well be,” she said. “I kept telling them we should go for food, and they kept insisting we had to wait for Pender. And now here you are. So can we eat or what?”

  “All right.” Sawyer grabbed the girl and lifted her up off the ground, spinning and bouncing her in his arms as she screamed, laughing, for mercy. “You’re gonna give him a big head.”

  Pender watched Sawyer and Tiffany flirt, shuffling his feet in the sand and feeling more than a little overdressed in his Michigan street clothes. “Where’d she come from?” he asked Mouse.

  Mouse looked up, shrugged, gestured around the beach.

  “Sawyer gonna fall in love with her?”

  “For tonight, probably.”

  “Yeah,” said Pender. “What did you guys tell her?”

  “The truth.” Mouse sat up, grinning. “Told her we’re energy drink representatives from Manhattan come down to pitch the new product line.”

  “The truth.” Pender smiled, relieved. “So where’s your girl?”

  Mouse frowned. His eyes swept the horizon, paused hungrily at Tiffany, and then continued, surveying the bronzed skin and bikini-clad bodies that littered the beach. “Somewhere out there,” he said, shaking his head.

  “You’re a funny guy, Mouse. And you’re rich. What are you waiting for?”

  “I’m not rich enough for South Beach,” he said. “And I’m just funny looking.”

  Sawyer and Tiffany returned, laughing and jostling each other. “We’re starving,” said Tiffany. “Let’s eat, please?”

  “I gotta pick up some clothes first. I’ll meet you?”

  “Back at the hotel,” said Sawyer. “We gotta get changed, anyway.”

  They walked back up the road, Sawyer mugging for Tiffany, goofing off, the girl giggling, sticking close. Mouse walked a couple steps behind, his eyes on permanent roll. When they got off the sand, they split up, Pender bearing right, heading for the shops, and the others bearing left toward the Dauphin.

  “Catch you later, bro,” said Sawyer, lifting Tiffany into a piggyback. Mouse shot Pender a look.

  “Just once, I want to be that lucky,” he said. Then he shook Pender’s hand. “See you in a bit. Don’t get caught.”

  The man sat in the passenger seat of the Trans Am, watching the crowds ebb and flow along Ocean Drive. Beside him, Carlos sat snoring in the driver’s seat, a small puddle of drool forming on the comics section of The Miami Herald. The blond kid had left the hotel an hour or so beforehand and headed for the beach, his jeans and collared shirt giving him away amid the throngs of passersby in shorts and tees and halter tops.

  Now the man waited in the waning light, antsy now, ready. He watched as a trio of gringos passed them on the sidewalk, walking up to the front door of the Dauphin, the men pale as albinos and the girl tanned a buttery brown. The bigger guy eyed the Trans Am as he passed, and his eyes briefly met the man’s before he turned toward the hotel. They were hard eyes, even as the kid was smiling, and the man looked away, unsettled.

  He watched the kids disappear into the hotel, and then he nudged Carlos awake, told him bring the car around the back of the building and wait by the rear door for his signal. Then he got out of the car and stood on the sidewalk, enjoying the breeze off the ocean and the sound of the surf in the background. He pulled the sports section from his back pocket, unrolled it, and leaned up against a palm tree, pretending to read as he surveyed the landscape, the Glock in his waistband pressing up against his back, begging to be used.

  twenty-eight

  The kid returned with shopping bags at a quarter past six. The man was reading the sports pages for the third time when he strolled past, walking
quick and swinging the shopping bags from his arms, in a hurry, but not urgently. He passed the man at the palm tree, didn’t even slow down, and turned up the walk toward the front door of the Dauphin. The man forced himself to read a sentence or two more and then came up the walk just as the kid was disappearing inside.

  The man entered the hotel and walked through the lobby, ignoring the front desk clerk who sat reading his own newspaper, oblivious. The kid was on the elevator, and the man watched the lights above the door until the elevator stopped on the fourth floor. Then he walked quickly through the first-floor hallway to the back of the building, where Carlos sat on the rear steps, the Trans Am parked in the alley behind.

  “Fourth floor,” he told Carlos, holding the door open and letting him inside. Carlos cradled his Uzi beneath a Miami Heat warm-up jacket, the extra clip bulging in his pants pocket. They made for the rear stairwell and climbed up into the building, listening close for any noises from above as each footstep echoed around them.

  They reached the fourth floor, Carlos panting from the climb, and the man let him catch his breath as he peered out the stairwell window into the hall. Deserted. He looked back and gestured to Carlos, who nodded, and he pushed open the door and crept out into the hallway, listening at each door for the sounds of habitation. The man lifted the Glock from his waistband, enjoying the feel of it in his hands as he crept along the wall, pressing his ear close to the doors as he passed them.

  Sawyer was in the shower when Pender arrived at the room, and Mouse and Tiffany shared an uneasy silence in the bedroom. The place was dark; nobody had bothered to turn on the lamp, and the dusty windowpane filtered out what little sunlight remained.

  Mouse lay sprawled on the bed like a kid on Saturday morning, staring blank-faced at the television as a couple of overweight moms battled over one bucktoothed groom. Tiffany sat in an easy chair by the window, barely watching the TV. She’d found herself a denim miniskirt and a white tank top. Mouse was still in his bathing suit.