The Professionals

by Owen Laukkanen

  To his surprise, though, the cops let him walk right out of the terminal and into Zeke’s waiting Coupe de Ville without so much as a word. D’Antonio glanced back at the exit once and saw the security guard looking straight at him. They locked eyes for a second, and then D’Antonio climbed into the car. “Drive fast,” he told Zeke. “We’re going to have tails.”

  Zeke swore and stepped on the gas. “You bring a fucking tail on me?”

  “Relax,” said D’Antonio. “What are you, a rookie?”

  Zeke swore again and glanced in the rearview mirror as they swung out into traffic. Behind them an unmarked Crown Victoria pulled out a few cars back. “Got him,” he said.

  “Good. Give him some time and then lose him.”

  They cruised for a couple miles, putting space between them and the airport. Traffic was light, and Zeke kept the Caddy rolling at a clip. D’Antonio lowered the window and enjoyed the sunshine on his face. Today’s going to be a good day, he thought. Just as soon as we lose these cops.

  He dug out his BlackBerry and called his contact at Miami PD. The guy answered late, his voice far off and alien. “Time is it?”

  “Time to get up,” said D’Antonio. “What do you have for me?”

  “Aw, fuck. Where are you?”

  “I’m here.”

  “All right, I got bad news and worse news. You wanna hear it?”

  D’Antonio frowned. “What’s up?”

  “First thing is that damn computer nearly blew up when we tried to hack it. It’s toast. Totally erased itself right in front of us.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “I’m sorry, D,” said the cop. He paused. “The other thing is they found the kids holed up in a motel in Hollywood.”

  “And that’s bad why?”

  “Motel owner called the police. First car on the scene was a patrolman from Hollywood PD. Cope, his name was. Real straight man. Always by the rules, this guy. He gets stood up at the door by some chick demands to see a warrant.”

  “Motherfuck. The guy never heard of probable cause?”

  “She was some rich girl, said Daddy would sue the force if he played it wrong. He took her serious and bailed out, spent the rest of the day trying to wrangle a warrant from a judge on a golf course.”

  “And the kids?”

  “Got away clean. Motel owner called back in the evening, said the room was empty. Nothing but a pile of bloody towels and some empty bottles of aspirin. He didn’t see them leave.”

  “Great,” said D’Antonio. “You just let a bunch of kids make a fool out of your whole department. Do you clowns have any leads whatsoever?”

  “Not so much.” The guy paused. “Maybe your Feds will come up with something.”

  D’Antonio ended the call. He felt like chucking his phone out the window, but took a deep breath, drawing it in slow and then letting the air out.

  Zeke looked over at him. “You all right, boss?”

  “Those kids were in Hollywood,” said D’Antonio. “Cops found them, let them go. Couldn’t get a warrant in time, and they vanished.”

  “No shit,” said Zeke. “They still got Carlos’s Trans Am?”

  Good point, thought D’Antonio. He picked up his cell phone and called back his contact. The guy picked up quick this time. “Johnston.”

  “It’s D. Make damn sure Hollywood PD is looking for an orange Trans Am. Those kids probably dumped the car somewhere before they blew. Tell the state patrol, too.”

  D’Antonio pocketed the phone again. He swiveled in his seat and made the unmarked Crown Vic a couple cars behind, hanging back. Those Feds wanted to use him as a tour guide, fuck them. He turned to Zeke. “All right, enough,” he said. “Lose the goddamn tail.”

  Zeke nodded, signaled left, and pulled into the left-hand turn lane. Then at the last possible moment, he swerved right, cutting across three lanes of traffic and standing on the accelerator as horns blared and tires squealed behind him. The Caddy rocketed down the side street, and Zeke made another quick right and then a left before he finally let off the gas. He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Tail’s gone,” he said.

  “Good,” said D’Antonio. “Now take me to the beach.”

  forty-seven

  Marie sat up, gasping, as the plane banked and turned into its final approach above Jacksonville. She’d spent the night dozing, drifting between her seat in the plane and a nightmare of Pender and the boys and the bad things they’d stirred up. Now she blinked, rubbing her eyes, and stared out the window and down toward the Jacksonville airport. Arthur was right, she thought. We should have stayed together after Detroit. At least if something happens now, it will happen to both of us.

  The plane touched down on the runway, bounced and shuddered and finally found solid ground. Within five minutes they had taxied to the gate, and Marie shouldered her bag and made her way up into the terminal, following the flow of passengers toward the baggage claim area, her senses deadened by the sleepless night.

  She walked through the baggage claim, searching the room for Arthur’s sandy hair and not finding it. She kept walking, found an exit, and walked out into the sunlight and the diesel-exhaust air of the loading area.

  Marie looked up and down the sidewalk. Parked cars, buses, a line of taxis, and a crowd of passengers. And twenty feet away, leaning up against a big blue SUV, Arthur Pender stood waiting for her, watching the steady stream of arrivals. He seemed to see her at the same time she saw him, and they smiled at each other as she tried to push her way through the riptide crowd.

  But as she came closer, she could see his smile disappear. He was staring at her now, shaking his head almost imperceptibly, and she stopped, confused, in midstream. Arthur was pale now. Marie shrugged at him, feeling panic start to well.

  Then she felt a hand on her shoulder, sudden and firm. Someone spoke her name in her ear. “Marie McAllister? Could you come with me, please?”

  Pender watched as the plainclothes cop double-checked the photocopy in his hand and then started toward Marie. The man caught up with her, and Pender saw the look of panic on his girlfriend’s face as he touched her shoulder and turned her toward him. The cop was flanked by two uniformed security guards, and they stood by, warily, as the crowds started to thin out around them.

  Pender watched Marie answer the cop, feeling his stomach churn as she stared across the sidewalk at him, plaintive. He shook his head at her, tried to blend in to the background while his brain screamed at him to act. Save her. Do something.

  The cop kept his arm on Marie’s shoulder and turned her back toward the terminal building. One security guard was scanning the sidewalk, and Pender turned away, watching the scene from the corner of his eye. The other security guard produced a pair of handcuffs. If there was a time to move, it was now.

  Pender pushed off from the Durango and started toward Marie, trying to figure out a plan. Easiest way might be to get physical, try to jar Marie away from the cops and then run with her. Marie was struggling now, fighting off the police, and a crowd was gathering around her. Pender shoved bystanders aside, trying to get to his girlfriend before the cops put the handcuffs on her, dimly aware that more security guards were appearing from the exits now. A siren whooped, and an airport police car pulled up to the curb. The whole goddamn place was a trap.

  Pender kept pushing, getting closer now, people starting to complain as he jostled past them. He felt a hand on his own shoulder, and he swung around, fists balled, ready to fight, but when he turned it was Sawyer holding him back. “We gotta go,” Sawyer told him. “We stay here they catch us all.”

  “They got Marie,” said Pender. “We have to get her back.”

  “Impossible. There’s cops everywhere.” Sawyer leaned close, hissed in Pender’s ear. “We got about a minute and a half before we’re in cuffs, too, bro. We gotta move.”

  He grabbed Pender’s other shoulder and spun him around. Pender struggled but Sawyer held tight, pushing him back to the Durango while he twisted to wa
tch the cop turn Marie back to the terminal. Sawyer threw him into the passenger seat and dashed around to the driver’s side as Pender stared back at Marie. She was fighting, but she was losing, and just before the police pushed her into the airport, she swung her head around and caught Pender’s eye, her face a mask of desperation.

  Then she was gone, disappeared inside the building, and Sawyer was speeding out into traffic. Pender doubled over in the passenger seat, gasping for breath and replaying the last moments in his head, seeing over and over the look of resignation in Marie’s eyes when she realized he wasn’t coming to save her.

  forty-eight

  Stevens and Windermere touched down in Miami just after nine in the morning, and they were on a plane to Jacksonville by a quarter to ten. Agent Vance had paged them as soon as they touched down in Dade County, passing along the good news about Marie McAllister and hooking them up with two new tickets north. It was six in the morning in Seattle. If the kid had slept at all, it was a miracle.

  “Pender’s people live out in Port Angeles,” he told Windermere, “but I made a little midnight visit to the McAllister family home. Couple of sleepy doctors. Surprised as anyone to hear their daughter was a fugitive.”

  “Not the kind of thing you tell your parents,” said Windermere.

  “True enough. I showed them a couple pictures from Marie’s laptop. The parents didn’t have a clue, but the girl’s sister recognized the other two suspects. The big guy’s Matt Sawyer. Seattle kid, father’s in advertising. He went to school here as well. The little one’s Ben Stirzaker—she kept calling him Mouse, whatever that means. Kid’s supposed to be some kind of computer genius.”

  “Can you e-mail this stuff?” said Windermere. “We’ll review it when we touch down in Jacksonville.”

  “On it,” said Vance. He paused. “One more thing. This guy D’Antonio slipped our tail. Miami guys lost him about a half hour after he left airport property.”

  D’Antonio’s driver, a Hispanic cat in a boat of a Cadillac, had managed to duck the Feds without much of a problem, Vance explained. The agents made the driver as one Eddy “Zeke” Sevillano, a middleman in the Miami drug and prostitution racket, but so far, nobody could pin down where the man slept at night—or how he tied in with Alessandro D’Antonio. “Either way,” said Vance, “this guy D’Antonio’s clearly a pro.”

  “The bastard nearly killed me,” said Windermere. “We catch up with him again, and I’ll show him who’s pro. Keep looking for him. In the meantime, we still have the girl.”

  “She’ll have to do,” said Vance.

  “She’ll more than do, Vance. She’ll get us the rest of her gang. You running out of things to do yet?”

  Vance laughed. “Pile it on, lady.”

  “First things first, let’s freeze their bank accounts,” said Windermere. “We know they’ve got money somewhere, so let’s find it and take it from them. And get McAllister transferred to the Jacksonville regional office. We’ll interview her when we’re on the ground.”

  Then they were on another plane, Windermere bouncing in her seat as the tiny commuter jet roared down the runway. She looks pumped, thought Stevens, watching his partner humming to herself, her eyes darting to look out the window and then back around to the cabin. She couldn’t wait for the plane to land.

  Stevens couldn’t wait, either. He had a splitting headache, and the little commuter plane scared him worse than any big jetliner. But he was pumped up as well. The hunch had paid off. Somehow, somebody in the Jacksonville airport had recognized Marie McAllister and had managed to corral her before she disappeared again. It was a goddamn Hail Mary and it had worked, and now Stevens was eager to get into an interrogation room with McAllister and see what she had to say.

  The flight touched down in Jacksonville at a quarter past eleven, and Windermere and Stevens were first in the terminal. They were met by a big plainclothes cop named French and an FBI agent in a pantsuit with a briefcase in one hand and a tray of Starbucks in the other. Windermere smiled wide when she saw her. “Wendy Gallant,” she said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Gallant smiled identically. “Jacksonville, baby. Moving up in the world. You still drinking lattes?”

  “As long as you’re buying.” Windermere reached for a cup. She turned to Stevens. “Agent Gallant was my mentor in Miami. Taught me everything I know about police work.”

  “Bullshit,” said Gallant. “You taught yourself.” She smiled at Stevens. “I swear Windermere here didn’t sleep the first year and a half out of Quantico. Spent her life in the field, on the street. Any assignment you had, she was there.”

  Windermere shrugged. “The street’s a hell of a lot more exciting than classrooms and theory. I wanted to get out and do something.”

  “Do something.” Gallant winked at Stevens. “This girl took down four Miami PD undercover drug runners before the AD could finally corral her.”

  “Goddamn city cops,” said Windermere. “A bunch of pylons.”

  “Anyway, it sounds like the teacher’s become the student. Got a phone call from an Agent Vance this morning telling me to get my ass to the airport to help out with your little kidnapping situation. So I brought you coffee, boss.”

  “Don’t call me boss,” said Windermere. “Stevens runs the show around here.”

  “If you can stand taking orders from a state policeman,” said Stevens. He shook Gallant’s hand.

  “You’re FBI now, big guy,” Windermere said, punching his arm. She turned back to Gallant. “Where’s the prisoner?”

  French cleared his throat. “We got a holding cell in the security zone. I’ll take you to her.”

  The plainclothesman led them through the airport, and Stevens walked beside him. “You spotted the girl getting off the plane?” he said.

  French nodded without breaking stride. “She was on the fifth or sixth flight in this morning. You guys sent a pretty good picture.”

  “She go quietly?”

  “Hell, no,” said French. “Had to cuff her on the sidewalk. Took three guys to get her inside. Kept screaming about there’d been a mistake. Called herself Rebecca something.”

  “You get a look at any of the other suspects?”

  The plainclothesman shook his head. “Had our hands full with the girl. Whole damn sidewalk was a zoo.” He glanced at Stevens. “Guess we should have let her lead us to the rest of them, but we didn’t want to lose her. Your man Vance said you’ve had a bit of trouble keeping her contained.”

  Stevens nodded. “She’s been slippery. Glad you guys were on the ball.”

  French led them along a back hallway, keyed a code into a heavy door, and swung it open, gesturing Stevens inside. He held it until Windermere and Gallant were inside as well and then closed it firm behind.

  The airport’s security office was all linoleum and fluorescent light, generic plastic office furniture, and a sound track of electronic chirps and whirls. Beside the door was a bulletin board hung with security notices and Wanted posters. Marie McAllister’s face was tacked dead center.

  “This way,” said French. He took out a key ring and fit it into a locked door at the rear of the room, swinging the door out and open. He gestured inside and Stevens peered in, finding himself on the threshold of a miserable green box, empty save a bench and a stainless-steel toilet and one solitary occupant: in the corner of the room, curled up on the unforgiving bench, the girl who called herself Rebecca Decoursey sat swollen-eyed and hunched, her knees to her chest, her curly hair flat and lifeless.

  forty-nine

  Goddamn.” Pender punched the wall. “Motherfucker.”

  He punched the wall again and pulled back, his hand already starting to throb. He looked around for something to throw and then he stopped and closed his eyes and forced himself to steady his breathing.

  They were holed up in the Jacksonville Fly-Inn, about a mile and a half from the airport. Sawyer, Mouse, and Tiffany sat arrayed around the room, watching him, Sawyer in
a chair in the corner and Tiffany and Mouse curled up on the bed. Pender paced the room. He’d been pacing for over an hour, and he couldn’t make himself stop. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Marie’s face and he felt sick all over again.

  Sawyer caught his eye. “We had to let her go.”

  “We could have done something,” said Pender. “We could have snatched her and thrown her in the truck and ran. We didn’t need to leave her.”

  Sawyer stood. “Pender, man. Did you see that place? Cops everywhere. If we hung around, we would have gone down with her. We had to get out.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “We can’t do her any good if we’re on the inside with her, bro.” Sawyer put his arm around him. “If you and I get picked up, then we’re all screwed. Mouse needs us, and Tiffany doesn’t know the score yet. We gotta be cool, all right?”

  Pender looked at Sawyer. Finally, he nodded. “You’re right,” he said. He ran his fingers through his hair. “I just cannot believe this is happening.”

  Mouse cleared his throat. “Um, guys.”

  Sawyer turned around. “What?”

  “You said you were like twenty feet away from her when it happened, right?” Mouse glanced at Pender. “Are you sure you didn’t get made?”

  Sawyer looked at Pender. Neither man replied.

  “There could be cops on our asses right now,” said Mouse. “If they got our plates, we’re screwed. We need to ditch the ride fast and get out of the city.”

  Pender shook his head. “No way. We’re not leaving until we spring Marie.”

  “Pender—”

  Tiffany spoke up from the bed. “You’ve known this girl a long time, right? You’ve been with her for a while?”