The Professionals

by Owen Laukkanen

  He and Windermere had cleared out the motel as soon as the desk clerk confirmed it was Pender and his gang holed up on the property. Now the displaced guests crowded outside the yellow police barriers, littering the sidewalk with fast-food wrappers and getting in the way of the police moving in and out of the lot.

  Grosse Pointe PD had mustered a handful of uniformed cops and cruisers to work crowd control and contain the danger zone around the outside of Pender’s unit 23. Officer Stent from St. Clair Shores was posted up somewhere with Angel Cardinal and her children, trying to keep the woman calm. Meanwhile, Detective Landry waited with his partner in his unmarked sedan, both of them riding out the storm with a fresh closure on their minds. Those kids inside had killed Donald Beneteau, and as soon as they were cuffed and booked, Landry would get credit for a high-profile case solved, good for at least a month’s worth of goodwill from the duty lieutenant in homicide.

  And then there were the tactical officers, the superheroes in body armor and assault rifles, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. They’d flown in from Quantico as soon as Stevens and Windermere notified the Detroit office of the situation, and they were commanded by a burly special agent named Wellwood who’d spent the last half hour trying to wrest control of the scene away from Windermere.

  “These kids aren’t trained for this,” Wellwood was saying. He had the motel blueprints spread out in the back of the FBI’s tactical van and was examining them as he spoke. “We can get in there with a flash-bang grenade and take them out inside of a minute. Problem solved, we all go home.”

  Stevens shook his head. “As soon as they see you coming, they’ll grab that hostage and put a bullet in his head.”

  Wellwood looked up from the blueprints. “All due respect, Agent Stevens, but my guys are professionals. We’ll take them down before they get a shot off.”

  We’re professionals, too, Stevens thought, and I want those kids alive. I don’t want to see them shot down. I want to talk them away from the ledge, get them out of that motel room, and walk them into FBI headquarters in cuffs. I’ve worked this case too damn long to see those kids shot up by a bunch of cowboys with M16s.

  Windermere stepped up into the van, flipping her cell phone closed. “Gilbert says we have the ball for now,” she said. “If things start to look ugly, Agent Wellwood, you and your guys take over. For now, we try to talk them down peacefully. Clear?”

  Wellwood frowned. “You want my negotiators to play the point?”

  Windermere shook her head. “We know these guys. They’re only talking to us.” She turned to Stevens. “So let’s do it, big guy. How do we get them out of there?”

  Stevens stared back at the motel, listening to the ambient chatter of radio calls and the drone of the helicopters overhead. “Where do we stand on their demands?” he said.

  “Angel Cardinal’s willing to pay the ransom. She can wire the money anywhere in the world. Confirmation in seconds. That’s the easy part.”

  “The jet?”

  “Hall talked to Cardinal’s aviation company. They’re fueling the plane as we speak. Pilot’s being briefed on the situation.”

  “So it all comes down to Marie.”

  “Yeah.” Windermere turned back to the motel. “I’ll get on that plane my damn self before I let that girl anywhere near it. Cardinal can give them his money and he can give them his plane, but those kids aren’t getting our girl.”

  “Agreed.” Stevens stared across the parking lot at the row of police cars and the dark motel room beyond. He pictured Arthur Pender holed up behind that door, and he wondered what the kid was thinking. Was he scared? Was he angry? Did he think he was in control?

  He turned to Windermere. “Those kids want to see McAllister,” he said. “Let’s show them McAllister.”

  eighty-two

  Marie was asleep when the FBI agent arrived. She’d been dreaming, and she woke up with the sickening feeling that Arthur was in danger. It had been days, maybe weeks, since they’d locked her away. She slept when she was tired, and the rest of the time she stared at the wall of her cell and listened to the other prisoners and tried to imagine she was somewhere else. Sometimes when she woke up there was a plate of bland food sitting in front of her door, and sometimes a blank-faced guard took her outside for an hour of exercise in the barren yard. But mostly she was alone with her thoughts, and she would sleep, or try to sleep, and think of Pender and Sawyer and always of Mouse.

  She woke to the sound of a key in the door and looked up to see the FBI agent, Stevens, standing in the hall. “Get up,” he said. “We’re gonna take a ride.”

  She thought at first he was taking her to another court hearing, but when he led her out of the holding area, she saw the way the guards looked at her, the way the police openly stared, and she knew this was something different. Something was wrong.

  Stevens signed a couple of forms and led her out to the parking lot, where his unmarked sedan waited. He stopped beside the back door. “Hold out your wrists.”

  She looked at him, saw the handcuffs. “I’m not going to run,” she said.

  He shook his head, cuffing her wrists in front of her. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m going to get in enough shit for this as it is.”

  He opened the door and ushered her into the car. Marie sat down in the backseat, still half asleep and confused.

  The agent got in the driver’s seat and pulled out of the parking lot and onto a grimy Detroit street. Marie watched him drive for a minute. Then she leaned forward. “Where are we going?”

  Stevens glanced at her in the rearview mirror. His eyes caught hers, and she watched him examine her. He looked back at the road and drove a few blocks. Then he spoke. “You know,” he said, “I’m not even an FBI agent.”

  What the hell does that mean, Marie thought, but she said nothing.

  “I’m an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the state police. I don’t usually work kidnappings.”

  Marie watched him in the rearview mirror. He kept his eyes on hers.

  “That’s mainly because we don’t get too many up in that part of the country. I guess you probably knew that, being a professional kidnapper.”

  He swung a right turn and headed down another long street, his eyes flicking back between Marie and the road. “I have a wife and two kids up in St. Paul,” he said. “Haven’t seen them in a week. I haven’t been home, really home, in about a month. Never figured a state policeman would have to spend so much time on the road.”

  He made a quick left across traffic, and then they were descending onto a freeway, the car’s engine roaring as it picked up speed.

  “I miss them,” said Stevens. “I miss them like hell. But it’s funny. If you told me I could see them tonight but I’d have to give up your case, just let it go, I wouldn’t even consider it. There’s some part of me that doesn’t even want to catch your boyfriend and his pals. There’s a part of me that loves working this case so much I’d be happy if it never ended.”

  He stared forward, watching the freeway rise and fall as the car sped on. Marie sat back in her seat. “Where are you taking me?”

  They turned onto an off-ramp and drove back to street level, Stevens’s eyes on the road again. He said nothing. Marie stared out the window and sighed. “You gonna tell me or what?”

  Stevens didn’t answer, but he gestured out the front of the car. In the distance, Marie could see what must be their destination. It was a mass of lights, flashing and blinking and sweeping the ground, a great confusion of people and cars, and rising above it, the faded marquee of the Motor City Motel.

  They pulled up to the swarm of onlookers, and a uniformed cop waved them on, lifting a yellow cordon as Stevens drove through. Marie could feel the faces of the crowd all turn toward her, could sense every eye looking in her direction, and she sunk low in her seat to avoid them.

  Inside the lot, the confusion was more organized but no less urgent. A collection of police cars lined up like children�
��s toys, uniformed officers running this way and that, and the roar of the helicopters overhead. And everyone’s attention focused toward a spotlit motel door, unit 23, surrounded by a half circle of police and their cruisers and nobody moving in or out.

  “What is this?” Marie asked, a sick feeling in her stomach. “Why are we here?”

  Stevens stopped the car. “Your boyfriend’s in there,” he said, gesturing to the door. “Arthur and Matt Sawyer and their new girlfriend, Tiffany Prentice. They’ve got a hostage, a man named Jason Cardinal. He has a wife and two children. They’re somewhere around here, too. Terrified, obviously.”

  “Oh my God,” said Marie.

  “Your boyfriend is asking for five million dollars’ ransom and a private jet to Africa. The family’s willing to pay the ransom. The hostage is lending them his jet. But that’s not enough for your boyfriend. He wants you, too.”

  Stevens spun in his seat and stared at her. “He’s not getting you, Marie. There’s no way in hell. Now, there’s a tactical team here itching to just storm in there with machine guns and grenades, but we don’t want that. We want everyone out peacefully. But we’re running out of time.”

  Marie stared at the man and then out to the chaos beyond. Pender was in that motel room, and Sawyer was with him.

  “We need you to talk to Arthur, Marie,” said Stevens. “You could save his life.”

  Marie felt her insides go numb. The flashing lights seemed to bore into her brain, the voices and engines and radio static all echoing inside her skull until it was too much and she knew she was going to black out. She fought it for as long as she could, a few desperate seconds, and then she gave in, fainting flat in the back of the FBI cruiser.

  eighty-three

  Marie woke inside her nightmare, the FBI agent and a paramedic standing over her outside the unmarked police car, the handcuffs biting into her wrists. “Get up,” said Stevens. “We don’t have time for games.”

  It’s not a game, she wanted to tell him, but she thought if she opened her mouth she would probably throw up. So she kept quiet as he lifted her to her feet and led her from the car, the whole world watching her in her orange prison clothes, the cuffs, her limp scraggly hair and her bleary eyes.

  He hadn’t abandoned her, after all. Even after Mouse died. Pender hadn’t abandoned her, hadn’t flown away to Thailand or the Maldives. He hadn’t escaped. He was here, in this mob scene. Pender had done this for her.

  Marie looked around, at the police and the reporters and the bystanders in the shadows, and she felt more afraid than she ever had in her life. Why didn’t he just go, she wondered. What the hell made him think this was a workable plan?

  She realized, cold and guilty, she hadn’t wanted to be abandoned. She’d wanted Pender to come back for her and now he had. This was what she’d wanted all along, wasn’t it?

  Stevens led her through the mob to a big blue FBI van. He helped her up into the back, where a couple of FBI techs sat staring at a mass of computers and electronics equipment. Agent Windermere was sitting in front of a monitor, and she looked up when Marie came in. “Ms. McAllister,” she said. “The cause of all the confusion. Agent Stevens has briefed you on the situation?”

  “I gave her the general idea,” said Stevens.

  “We need you to talk Arthur down before he gets hurt, understand?”

  Marie wished she could sit down. She nodded.

  “Now, listen,” said Windermere. “We told Pender you flipped. This whole mess gets a lot cleaner if he forgets about you. You want him to live, you’ll play along, because otherwise, babe”—she glanced up at Marie—“he’s going nowhere without you.”

  Stevens wheeled over a chair and patted the seat. Marie let him guide her down, and Windermere reached for a phone unit. She handed Marie the receiver. “We’re patched in to Arthur’s room,” she said. “I’m going to connect you now.”

  They ate the last scraps of food as the sun set and the room got dark and gloomy, the only light coming from the television and the spotlights sneaking in around the edges of the curtains. Pender turned on a lamp, and they sat in the shadows, listening to the commotion outside and watching the news coverage.

  There were hundreds of cops outside. The news station switched to a live shot from a helicopter, and Pender noticed the Feds had put a sniper team on an adjacent rooftop. He wondered where else the police could be hiding. The motel room was self-contained; there was no exit but the front door. The bathroom was in the back, and there was a heating duct along the rear that looked too small to fit a human being. All the same, Pender knew the cops would be searching for an angle.

  He caught Sawyer’s eye. “Keep an ear out for noises,” he said. “They might not come in through the front door when they come.”

  Sawyer nodded. “They brought SWAT guys.”

  “And snipers,” said Pender. “We stay clear of the windows.”

  The phone rang on the bedside table, and Pender jumped. He glanced at Sawyer and saw his friend had his hand on the Uzi. Sawyer raised an eyebrow, and Pender forced a smile. Then he picked up the phone. “This is Arthur Pender.”

  “Arthur?” Her voice sucked the breath right out of his lungs. Marie. He tried to answer but couldn’t, his mouth moving but no sound coming out. “Are you there?”

  “Marie,” he said finally. “Where are you?”

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m in a van outside the motel. They brought me here.”

  “I couldn’t leave without you,” he said. “I missed you so much.”

  “Arthur, this is crazy. Do you know how many cops are out here? They have guns, baby. They all want to kill you.”

  “I know,” said Pender. “It won’t be much longer. Then we’ll be free.”

  “Arthur, please. If you take the money now, you have a good chance of making it out of here. Forget about me.”

  “Marie—”

  “Just listen, Arthur. It’s my fault the police caught us. I used the Ashley McAdams credit card in Seattle. Everything’s my fault. Don’t let them hang you for my mistakes.”

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  Marie paused. When she came back, her voice was stronger. “Arthur, I snitched. I told them everything. I sold you out.” Her voice cracked, and he could tell she was crying. “I’m not worth it, Arthur. I’m not worth risking your life for.”

  “You’re worth it,” he told her. “Whether you snitched or not. I’m not leaving without you.”

  “Arthur,” she said, her voice pleading. “Think it over. Be professional. Walk away.”

  He stood there a moment longer, and then he hung up the phone. He had to. Any longer and he might have believed her. Any longer and he might have given up just to see her.

  eighty-four

  Pender sank back against the bedside table. Be professional, she said. Walk away. He knew she was right. A professional would be on Cardinal’s jet right now, sipping champagne and toasting to a life of leisure. A professional would have cut his losses and run when there was still room to run.

  They could still be professional. If he took Marie’s advice and said to hell with her, they could be on a beach within twenty-four hours, drunk as sailors and rich and free. All it would take was a truckload of balls and a whole lot of selfishness. Maybe that’s what it meant to be a professional.

  Sawyer caught his eye. “You all right, boss?”

  “Yeah,” said Pender. “Marie wants us to give up on her. Told me be a professional and walk away.”

  “Be professional,” said Sawyer. “Nice touch.”

  “She told me we should take the money and get on the plane and forget about her. She told me—she said it was her fault she got caught in the first place. I guess the FBI caught her when she used the wrong credit card in Seattle. She told me this all is on her.”

  “Bullshit,” said Sawyer. “It’s my fault we got caught.”

  “No.”

  Sawyer looked right through Pender, avoiding his eyes. �
��I shot Beneteau. Dumbest thing in the world. If I don’t kill that guy, we get away clean. Nobody connects us to anything. This is my fault.”

  Pender looked hard at Sawyer. “It’s nobody’s fault,” he said. “We won as a team, and we lost as a team. We all could have been better.”

  Sawyer said nothing.

  “Marie told me she snitched, Sawyer. I know we should ditch, but I can’t.”

  Sawyer still didn’t respond, and the words hung there in the room until Sawyer finally looked up and caught his eye. “I can’t do it, either,” he said. “We’re the guys who’re supposed to take the fall for her.”

  Tiffany sighed, loud, from the corner where she lay curled up on the floor. Pender looked over, and she averted her eyes, her face set in a scowl. If she’d left a few minutes earlier, she might have made it, he thought. Instead she’s locked in with us in what might be the last days of her life.

  “You knew what you were getting into,” he told her. “If you wanted something different, you could have gone back to Princeton. I gave you plenty of chances to run.”

  Tiffany glared at him. “I’m sick of this,” she said, standing. “We’ve got a chance to walk out of here, alive, holding real money, and you guys keep talking like there’s any other choice. I can’t do this anymore.”

  She walked to the door and started hauling away at the bed. Pender followed her and grabbed her from behind, wrapping his arms around hers. She struggled against him, flailing and cursing. “Let me go,” she said. “I’m not going to give up my life just because you guys are too stupid to see what’s in front of you.”

  “You walk out that door and they’ll throw you in jail,” Pender told her. “We’re beyond the point where you can just walk away.”

  “Maybe for you,” she said. “My dad’s almost a billionaire. He’s got famous lawyers. I’ll tell them it was Stockholm syndrome and you guys forced me into it. Let me go!”