Then, when he was sure the bastard was dead, he stepped over the body and walked onto the lot.
D’Antonio watched the punk step over Dmitri’s body, and he tried to keep his composure. He still had the girl, and he still had the trump card.
The kid Pender kept his Uzi pressed tight. “Let her go,” he said. “You can’t win.”
“There’s winning and there’s winning,” said D’Antonio. “You want her to live? You’re going to play it my way.”
Haley was staring at him. “You don’t have to kill me,” she said. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”
“I’ll tell you how it ends,” he said.
She put her hand on him again. “Put the gun down. It’s over.”
D’Antonio glanced out the front windshield, the punk getting closer. “You’re crazy,” he told the girl. “Totally fucking nuts.”
The girl was moving closer to him, her breath warm against his cheek. “I am crazy,” she said. “I think I might even like you. But you’re not going to kill me. You know you can’t do it.”
He barely blinked, but she caught it and wrenched at the gun. She was quick, but he was stronger and he knew he had a shot. If he pulled the trigger now, he’d blow her head clean off. But he hesitated, just for a second, and she had the gun wrestled clear by the time he did pull the trigger. The shot shattered the passenger window and was gone.
Then the kid Pender was wrestling him out of the car, throwing him to the ground, and the girl had got hold of the gun. And he fell to the gravel, faceup in the shadows, with Pender standing over him, some punk kid with an Uzi and a big pair of balls. D’Antonio wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all, wanted to laugh at the thought that some fucked-up little girl had played him for his life, but more than wanting to laugh, he knew he wanted to see her face, wanted to understand what she was thinking, what she was feeling as she watched him die.
Instead he got the kid Pender, and when he opened his mouth to call out to the girl, the kid let him have it, a point-blank burst from the Uzi. Then he walked away, leaving D’Antonio to die in the shadows.
sixty-nine
Pender met Sawyer at the front of the Explorer, the Uzi still hot in his palm. “You all right?” he said, examining his friend’s face. The thug had done a job on him: Sawyer’s face was covered in welts, his one eye swollen shut and his mouth a jumble of blood and missing teeth.
“Fine,” said Sawyer. He looked past Pender to D’Antonio’s body, then into the Explorer where Haley sat curled in the passenger seat. “We cool?”
Pender nodded. “I think we got them all.”
Sawyer walked over to Haley’s door. He peered in through the broken window. “Hey, listen,” he said. “How many of those dangerous cats did they bring?”
Haley blinked and looked up at him like she’d just noticed he was there. “I think five,” she said. “Three from Detroit and two from Miami.”
“Five plus the boss? Or five in total?”
“Five in total,” she said. “Including D’Antonio.”
“Who the hell’s D’Antonio?”
Haley winced. She pointed out the driver’s side. “That one over there.”
“We’ve only got four bodies,” said Pender. “Where’s the last?”
Sawyer shook his head. “I took care of him.”
Pender heard footsteps behind him, and he spun, lifting the Uzi reflexively. Tiffany ducked for cover. “Jesus Christ, don’t shoot me,” she said, gasping. “You guys gotta come quick. Mouse is hurt.”
Pender swapped looks with Sawyer, and then he was running, clearing the vacant lot and huffing it down to where the minivan sat shot-up and haphazard.
Pender got there first. He put the Uzi on the roof of the van and peered into the passenger seat to see Mouse, his shirt torn up, bleeding all over. The kid had taken two or three shots to the chest and shoulder and was breathing blood, half conscious, his eyes lidded and distant. Mouse gave him a weak smile. “We winning?”
Pender turned to Tiffany. “This thing still run? We gotta find a hospital.”
“It runs.”
“Get in there and put pressure on the wounds,” he said. “I’ll drive.”
Mouse was shaking his head. “No time,” he said. “Get out of here.”
Pender climbed into the front seat. “We’re not leaving you.” He heard sirens in the distance as he fumbled with the ignition, willing the engine to turn over.
Mouse reached over and touched Pender’s arm. “You remember how to get out of here?” He coughed blood and it spattered on the windshield. “I’m going to die,” he said. “You guys should just go.” Then his ragged breathing faltered.
Pender stared at his friend, half aware of the sirens getting louder and Tiffany sobbing, his brain slowed to a crawl. Mouse’s eyes were half open, and he wasn’t moving anymore. He was gone.
Beside them, Sawyer slammed to a stop in the Explorer, Haley in the passenger seat. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”
Pender looked at him across Mouse’s body. “Mouse is done, Sawyer.”
“Oh, Jesus.” For a moment, Sawyer’s face slackened. Then he blinked. “Look, we gotta go.”
“We’re not leaving without him,” said Tiffany. “We can’t.”
“We have to,” said Sawyer. “Pender, haul ass.”
Pender sat silent for a second, hardly comprehending, and then his brain rebooted. Like someone had pressed the Reset button. He heard the sirens loud. “Tiffany,” he said. “We gotta go.”
He climbed out of the van and picked Tiffany up off Mouse. She held on to Mouse’s body and Pender thought she might drag him along, but then she let him go, crying, and Pender carried her to the Explorer and piled her in back. Then he slid in beside her, and Sawyer gunned the engine as he slammed the door shut. Only when they were at the end of the block and turning did he let himself look back at the wrecked minivan. And then they were speeding away and the minivan was gone.
seventy
They ran up the west side of the CSX yard, Sawyer taking side streets with his foot planted firmly on the accelerator. When they reached the top of the yards, they slowed and crossed over the tracks on a long, double-deck bridge. They came down the other side and turned south into the city, navigating down the east side of the tracks until they came to the train station.
Sawyer parked in a handicapped spot, and they climbed out of the car, leaving Haley in the passenger seat as they hurried into the terminal and found the baggage counter. The clerk served them all in turn, staring at Sawyer’s battered face but saying nothing as he handed them identical manila envelopes with their given names on the outside.
They tore open the packages in the concourse, ripping the envelopes into tiny pieces and disposing of them in multiple trash bins before examining the contents. Mouse had scored them all goodie bags: passports, birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and credit cards. Everything they’d need to get out of the country. Pender’s package had the same for Marie.
They walked back to the Explorer and found Haley as they’d left her, curled up and vacant in the passenger seat.
She hadn’t said a word since they’d asked her about the thugs, and she hadn’t even looked at Tiffany. But Pender had other things to worry about, and frankly he wasn’t altogether happy about trading this bleary-eyed rich girl for one of his best friends. Shut up with all that, he told himself as Sawyer drove out of the station complex. Shut up and stay focused.
Sawyer glanced back at him. “Where are we going, boss?”
Pender didn’t answer for a moment. Then he shrugged. “We drop these two off somewhere. Then we run for Detroit.”
Tiffany stared at him. “You’re still going after your girlfriend?”
“What else can I do?”
“Get out of here. You have a passport. Be happy you’re alive.”
“I can’t leave her. I won’t.”
“In the short term,” said Sawyer. “Which way are we headed?”
Pender glanced at Tiffany, then Haley. “Where do you want to go?” he said. “Airport? Police station? Where?”
“If you guys are going to Detroit, I’m coming with you,” said Tiffany.
Pender stared at her. The girl was covered in Mouse’s blood, her cheeks still tracked with tears. “We could take you to the airport,” he told her. “You could fly anywhere in the world.”
“Alone? I don’t think so. I don’t have enough cash. Now that my dad knows I’m with you, I’m as good as broke.”
“I want to go home,” said Haley.
Pender leaned forward in his seat, trying to make eye contact with the girl. She avoided his eyes. “That’s fine,” he said. “We can take you to a hospital if you want. Or a police station.”
“I just want to go home.”
“You want to go to the airport?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and then her face screwed up and she was crying. She’s here because of us, Pender thought. If we hadn’t taken Tiffany, if we hadn’t killed those hit men, if we hadn’t fled to Florida, if we hadn’t killed Donald Beneteau …
He didn’t have to continue any further to know where the list was headed. Snap out of it. Get the girl home. Get Marie back. Get out of the United States. “Okay,” Pender said. “We’re going to drop you at a hospital.”
Sawyer frowned in the rearview mirror.
“We can’t just put her on a plane, Sawyer. She’s in no shape to fly.”
“They’ll call the police,” Sawyer replied. “She knows where we’re headed. She’ll tell the cops everything.”
“We gotta take that chance,” said Pender. “We can’t take her with us.”
Sawyer sighed but kept driving, and when a hospital sign appeared on the road ahead he followed it into the city. He pulled the Explorer into the emergency entrance, and Pender climbed out and walked around to Haley’s door. He opened it and leaned in to unbuckle her seat belt. Haley watched and said nothing.
Sawyer was making eyes at him in the driver’s seat. Pender caught his gaze, and Sawyer rubbed his fingers together like a greedy bellhop. Pender shrugged and shook his head.
“Why not?” said Sawyer. “We saved her goddamn life.”
Pender glanced up at Haley again. She watched him through vacant eyes, her cheeks sunken and hollow. “We’ve taken enough from her, Sawyer.”
Sawyer glared at him, but Pender shook his head. “Fifty grand won’t do much for us now, anyway.”
He reached his arms around Haley and helped her out of the car. She let him move her without reacting, and Pender was afraid she’d crumple to the ground when he let her go. But she stood unsteadily, and Pender helped her to the sidewalk, where he let her stand on her own. “We’re going to let you off here,” he said. “Okay?”
Haley stared at him. She nodded slowly.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Believe me, I am.” He pushed her gently toward the emergency room doors, and then he walked back to the Explorer and climbed inside. He looked back at Haley as they pulled out of the lot, watched her totter into the hospital like a helpless child, and he felt guilty again and miserable for Mouse. What a rotten world we’ve created, he thought.
Sawyer gunned the engine and pointed the truck toward the highway. “On to Detroit,” he said, glancing over at Pender. “You got a plan, boss?”
Pender thought hard. They had next to nothing besides a truck and a little cash and a lot of automatic weaponry. Carter wanted a hundred grand to spring Marie, and they had no means of paying him. They had no way of getting the money short of robbing a bank.
Robbing a bank. That stopped Pender short for a minute, and he remembered Marie in the apartment in Seattle, pitching her half-cocked criminal plan. We’re not bank robbers, thought Pender, but we need a Hail Mary. We’re going to have to do something crazy.
“Boss?” Sawyer was staring at him. “You look like you’re cooking something up.”
“Yeah,” said Pender. He stared out at the miserable night. “I just had a really bad idea.”
seventy-one
So let me get this straight,” said Windermere. “Your client wants full immunity if she gives up the details to the rest of the jobs her little gang pulled off.” She stared across the table at Gloria Wallace, who glanced at Marie and then nodded.
“That’s right,” said Wallace. “Ms. McAllister will give you full access to her team’s body of work, including the names of victims, cities, methods, and aliases. Everything you need to build a case against the three ringleaders of the gang.”
Windermere laughed. “Come on, Ms. Wallace. You know you’re going to have to do better than that.”
Wallace stiffened. “My client was bullied and abused into playing a minor role with a group of sociopaths. I’m fully confident that a jury will agree Ms. McAllister is nothing but a victim of Stockholm syndrome taken to the extreme.”
“If you were really sure,” said Agent Stevens, “you wouldn’t be trying to bargain your way out of a trial.”
The assistant U.S. attorney, a tall toothpick named Obradovich, leaned forward in his chair, his eyes like black marbles fixed square on Marie. “The agents are right,” he told Wallace. “We’re going to need something more. And we’re not prepared to offer full immunity.”
“Five years’ probation,” said Wallace. “Ms. McAllister will undergo counseling.”
Windermere scoffed, and Wallace shot her a glare. Obradovich scratched his head and rubbed his eyes. “What more can you give us?”
“What more does my client have?”
Marie listened to the scene play out, her eyes on the floor. She kept picturing Pender’s face, imagining the look of disappointment he’d give her if he found out she was betraying them.
“I want to know where these guys are headed,” said Obradovich. “I want to know where they are right now. And if we can’t get that from your client, I at least want to know where they plan to go when they finally flee American soil.”
Fat chance, thought Marie, and she suddenly felt sick. They wanted her to give up the Maldives. That’s what they were asking. They wanted her to sell out Pender’s Dream.
“My client can’t be expected to know where the kidnappers are at this precise moment,” said Wallace. “She’s been in prison almost a week. However, if she did have any knowledge as to where the men might decide to run, we would happily agree to provide that information in exchange for a probationary period contingent on counseling and community service at the aid of other battered and abused women.”
Windermere snorted again. Wallace ignored her, staring hard at Obradovich. The assistant U.S. attorney leaned back in his chair. “The government would be willing to grant your client five years in a medium-security facility and five years’ probation.”
“One year, minimum security. Three years’ probation.”
“Three years, minimum security. Three years’ probation. You’re not going to get any better than that, Gloria.”
“Fine,” said Wallace. “That works for me if it works for my client.”
Marie looked up. Everyone was staring at her. She swallowed. Tried to speak but couldn’t, and she didn’t know what she would have said if she could. This was wholesale betrayal they were laying on her now. There was no justification but selfishness.
There was a knock on the door. A junior agent poked his head in the room and searched out Windermere, his eyes wide. “We’ve got news,” he said. “It’s big.”
Stevens stood, and Windermere joined him. She shot Marie a wink. “Hold that thought.” Then the agents vanished, leaving Marie alone with the lawyers, grateful for the stay of execution.
The agent, Hall, led them out into the corridor. Windermere glanced at Stevens when the door closed behind them. “You believe this shit? Full immunity. Give me a break.”
Stevens smiled. “We got her, Carla. She looked about ready to crack.”
“You’re right,” said Windermere. “She’s good as flipped.” Sh
e turned to Hall. “This better be good.”
Hall was a young kid with cornrows and impeccable white teeth. He flashed them at Windermere. “It’s better than good,” he said. “It’s off the charts.”
“So spill.”
“Big shoot-out in Cincinnati. Five dead, one wounded. That we know of.”
“Cincinnati,” said Stevens. “What the hell’s in Cincinnati?”
“Bodies. Three Detroit hoods, first off. Dmitri Georgiev. Yuri Frolov and Dario Pescatori. All tied in with Johnny Rialto.”
Windermere glanced at Stevens, who shrugged.
“Rialto’s tied in with the Bartholdi family,” said Hall, hopping like a first grader with a full bladder. “Sole survivor’s a kid named Paolo Vasquez. Miami guy. Tight with the boy Zeke, who’s tied in with the Bartholdis. Paolo’s a vegetable. Head smashed in with a pipe.”
“You said five bodies?” said Stevens. “I count three so far.”
“First let me say that everyone else on the scene caught serious lead. Multiple gunshot wounds from semiautomatic weaponry. The place looked like a war zone.”
Windermere frowned. “Anyways.”
“Anyways, found dead in the back of a vacant lot with about eight slugs in his body from a 9 mm machine gun was one Alessandro D’Antonio, also of the Bartholdi family. I think you guys know him.”
“They find the girl?” said Stevens. “Whittaker? She the fifth?”
Hall held up one finger. “Hold that thought. She’s not the body. They found her in an emergency room in downtown Cincy, totally unharmed. Yes, she was talking, and yes, I’ll fill you in in a second. But first, the final body.”
“Spill.”
“Ben Stirzaker.” Hall’s smile grew wider. “Also known as Mouse. Also known as Eugene Moy.”
“And about a hundred other aliases,” said Stevens. “Holy shit.”
“They were in Cincinnati,” said Windermere.
“D’Antonio must have met them with the girl and the goons. Tried to ambush them, but once again, those kids got the better of them.”
The Professionals Page 25
