by John L. Monk
“Yippee kay yay,” I said.
I took a turn around the block looking for a car with a long, metal, old school whip antenna, but every car had one of those sexless plastic nubs or short wobbly spikes. Affluence sometimes has its drawbacks, for a thief. Roaming wider turned up an old truck, a taxi, and a tan Cadillac. The truck had too many people nearby, the taxi was in motion, and I’d have to park too far away to get to and from the Cadillac.
That police car, on the other hand, not only had long antennas, it had three of them. One of them was huge. Best of all, it was parked in a quiet neighborhood with nobody in sight.
I parked on the other side of the street from it and grabbed the Leatherman multi-tool from my backpack.
If I waited in the car and pumped myself up to do it, the quiet street could turn into a street with a cop coming outside to get in his car, or a street with someone walking a dog, or maybe a street where a thief named Bo lost his nerve. Because it worked last time, I crossed both fingers and made my move—walking quickly, trying not to appear suspicious. I thought I’d have to bend the antenna back and forth, but it snapped off with surprising ease.
The road was still quiet as I hopped back into the Volvo—an antenna richer and a few years older.
When I got back to the house, I scrutinized my prize. Who knew antennas had hollow cores? Using the Leatherman, I gently bent the tip on the antenna back so as not to snap it. Eventually, I got it into a semblance of a hook I thought would work. Now I just needed one more thing—and found it on the floor of the back seat. An ice scraper, and a good one, too. It curved a little where the blade met the handle. It’d be great for prying back the weather stripping.
“This is it,” I said.
Suddenly, the nervousness I’d felt outside Lionel’s apartment came back. And then I realized something alarming: I didn’t know how to work the damned gun. I wouldn’t use it unless I had to, but I still needed to know how to operate it. For all I knew I’d fired the last bullet into the water down in the Keys, or maybe it was jammed or I had to do that thing and slide the top part like the guys in the movies did to show how serious they were. I’d only ever fired my dad’s revolver, when I was a kid—a way different gun.
I pulled the gun out and examined it. Stenciled on the sides were the words, “Sig Sauer P226.” I’d heard of Glocks and Winchesters and Walther PPKs, but not this. Even if it was a Glock or one of those others, I still wouldn’t know what to do with it.
There were a number of wireless connections in the area, and one of them was unsecured, with an SSIDs of “Linksys.” Rather than use it to threaten the president or communicate with my jihadi brothers, I pulled up YouTube and did a search for “Sig Sauer P226.” There were tons of videos to choose from. The one I clicked gave me a clear, easy to understand breakdown of the gun I had in my hand and how to operate it safely and effectively. As I watched, a creeping sense of horror stole over me.
“Oh shit, shit, shit,” I said, and then carefully—carefully—uncocked it with the so-called “decocking lever,” one of the numerous movable pieces of metal on the side of the gun. Part of me had thought they were just there to make the thing look scary.
From the waters of the Keys to the jet ride home to down my pants as I drove around DC, the entire time, Marco’s gun had been primed for a hair’s pull on the trigger to go off. And not, apparently, the hard pull I’d used in Florida to scare Miguel. According to the video, a baby could have pulled it after I’d fired it that first time. I’d heard the term “double action” before, but until now I’d never known what it meant. At one point, I’d pointed it at Lionel. Thinking back, I couldn’t remember if my finger had been on the trigger or not.
You pointed it at Tom, too.
I sighed.
“I totally can’t do this,” I said, and laid my head back.
I was way out of my comfort zone. Wouldn’t Fruit or someone be watching through the windows? Wouldn’t they hear the garage door opening? It was probably pretty loud. And even if I got inside, what then? Sneak through the house on my hands and knees? Unless, of course, someone was actually inside the garage when I tried to open it.
Kate may have been a pain, but I needed her here, now, before I got everyone killed. Something told me she’d know what to do.
Just as I was about to call her, the phone started vibrating. Fruit’s anonymous number. I answered on the second buzz.
“Fruity pie,” I said in my best Bruce Willis. “How the fruit are you?”
“I see you still got your sense of overconfidence,” Fruit said with exactly the proper amount of confidence.
“I’ve also got your money,” I said.
“That makes me proud. You back in town? Move some meetings around and shit? Not too much trouble for you?”
“I’m fine.”
Fruit laughed. “Just so you know, I been taking care of Anna while you away.”
“That makes me proud.”
“Last night, I got to thinking about what you did to Manny and me. Nice as that money is, I got a reputation to maintain.”
“Maintain away,” I said. “So long as you stick to the deal and don’t make me come after you, what do I care?”
Fruit snorted.
“You got lucky once,” he said. “Not gonna happen again.”
“Okay.”
“Lemme ask you something: what you think about beauty, Bo? They say it’s only skin deep. Anna a real pretty girl. How deep you think all that beauty actually goes?”
My hand hurt from squeezing the gun. I forced myself to lay it on the seat.
“Manny thinks I should let the boy watch while I put my mark on her. Show him how beauty only skin deep. What you think of that?”
“How about you stick to the deal?”
Fruit laughed, drawing it out for maximum effect.
“I understand if you don’t want her back,” he said. “You know—after. But you gotta want that little white boy. Everyone loves a good white boy. I know someone, he come around sometimes with special requests, might take him off my hands. I don’t know what the fuck he do with them, but he pays top dollar. What you think he do with little white boys, Bo?”
“I want them both,” I said. “Unharmed. We had a deal.”
“Oh, I ain’t forgotten,” Fruit said. “Don’t try to guess where we at because you can’t. I call you around eight, or nine, or ten. Or eleven. Or later. But when I do, you go where I say. And I want twice the money for both of them. You only bring a hundred, you only get the boy. You bring two, you get two. Still gonna leave my mark. She won’t be pretty no more, but maybe that’s your thing.”
His laughter was cutting and cruel.
Seconds later he said, “Where you go, man? I hear you breathing.”
I didn’t say anything—didn’t trust myself.
Fruit laughed again and hung up.
Chapter 30
Seconds later, Fruit’s white SUV backed out of the drive and turned down the other way. A quick look back showed someone’s head, and she had blond hair.
“Dammit,” I said, and moved to follow them.
The driver kept to the speed limit and made sure to stop at stop signs. Whatever it took to keep from being pulled over for a minor infraction. Twenty minutes later and we were in that rundown area between Springfield and Shirlington with all the furniture warehouses, mattress wholesalers, and ugly brick office buildings.
The SUV turned right at a discount gas station creatively called “Discount Gas,” and I let them increase their lead before following. Overgrown lots and fallen-over chain fences bracketed the crumbling asphalt. They took the first turn, which wasn’t far ahead.
I crept up and saw it was a driveway leading to a large concrete office building with no sign saying what the business was. The SUV was parked in front of the glass doors of the entrance, and not on the cracked and empty parking lot. Two people got out of the front, both black, one bigger than the other. My eye caught the shine of a gold watc
h from the one in the white shirt, and knew that was Fruit. I could have rushed them, guns a’ blazin’, but then anything could happen and I didn’t want just anything to happen.
The front doors opened and for a second I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a cop. Wait, no. Not a cop—a security guard. Fruit and the guard did a tug and bump handshake. The man stooped down and peered in the window and said something that made Manny laugh, the way he rocked up and down.
Two more cars rolled past and I nearly jumped out of my skin. The cars were older models, in no way flashy. Their stereos made deep boom-thud-boom sounds. If the drivers noticed me parked there for no reason, I couldn’t tell. They parked close to the three men and Fruit went over and talked to each of them. A man got out of the back of one and Fruit tossed him a set of keys.
Manny opened the back passenger door of the SUV and roughly dragged out Jimmy, who fell on the ground. Next, Manny reached in and dragged out Anna, who also fell down. Neither of them got up.
I grit my teeth and put up with it.
After another two minutes, both cars pulled around the building and out of sight. The man with Fruit’s keys got in the SUV, started it up, and then drove out of there—conveniently removing any ties Fruit and Manny had to the place in case they needed to bug out.
Manny pulled each prone figure to his and her feet, then marched them both into the building. Fruit and the security guard followed, and the sun caught my eyes briefly as the doors swung shut behind them.
I turned the car around and headed back to the discount gas station. Then I called Kate.
She picked up on the first ring. “Mosley, where are you?”
I told her.
“I’ll be right there,” she said, and hung up.
Fifteen minutes later, Kate pulled up in a big back Jeep. I was sitting in the car, parked near the air machine.
Kate gestured through the passenger window for me to get in.
“Where’s this building?” she said when I closed the door.
“Down that road. First turn on the right.”
Kate followed the road and crept up to the drive, then slowed down more or less where I had and looked. She didn’t say anything. She took out a phone and fired off a flurry of text messages.
I smiled. “Trying to text them into giving up?”
“Shush,” she said absently, still texting.
When she was done, she headed back to the gas station and parked near the building. She went in briefly and then came back out.
“The attendant said he won’t tow me, but I don’t trust him. So we’ll take the money car until Fruit calls.”
Kate held out a hand for the keys. I smirked and got behind the wheel. Moments later, she gave up and got in beside me.
“Take a right up here,” she said.
“Why?”
“There’s a diner I know where we can wait. And I need to make some calls.”
“I thought we’d find a nice place to pull off,” I said. “You and me, caution to the wind…”
She leveled me a flat look. “In your dreams, Mosley.”
Over coffee and pancakes, and between phone calls—one a request for another hundred thousand to meet Fruit’s new demands—Kate explained how she envisioned the exchange going down. I chewed and nodded and asked questions, which she answered. It was all basic stuff, provided Fruit wasn’t a maniac who liked cutting people’s faces. I broached the subject of bringing the cops into it and she shook her head.
“It’s too late for that,” she said. “There’s nothing they can do that we can’t do better. Trust me on this. If we’re careful, all we lose is the money. This guy’s a cockroach, and at the end of the day a cockroach choses survival over being crushed. The police only know how to crush.”
Thirty minutes later, two more private detectives showed up and joined us: a thin, older, white guy with a beard named Roy, and a young black guy named Dominick.
“What happened to your eye, Bo?” Roy said.
“Kate,” I said.
Dominick nodded sadly and Roy laughed.
“We checked that road behind the building,” Dominick told Kate.
“What road?” I said.
“Not even on the map,” Roy said. “But you can get to it if you drive down a little and detour through another parking lot. Opens up to a neighborhood. Make a good escape route if that security guard you mentioned sees a bunch of flashing lights. Narrow too. If it was me, I’d leave in one car and block the way with the other.”
“You done a lot of kidnapping before?” I said.
Roy just smiled.
Kate asked him if there was another hundred thousand on the way.
He shook his head. “Can’t get that kind of money so soon, not in cash.”
“So now what?” I said.
“Steady there, hotshot,” he said. “Dom and I printed a hundred thousand in photocopies before we left. We’ll switch them in before we leave.”
At the shocked look on my face, Dominick said, “It’ll totally work—we just need to mix the fake bills in with the good stuff, spreading it all nice and thin. Not like they’re going to count it all there anyway. And there’s a chance they won’t even see it.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “You can’t just go around … counterfeiting money. You wanna talk about hard time? You start with that.”
“Says the thief who steals identities and gold and reads people’s email,” Kate said.
Laughing, Dominick said, “She’s got you there, man.”
We went through two waitresses as the day progressed, paying our bill each time and starting new tabs. Kate was careful not to let anyone think she was relaxing and having fun. She kept texting people and doing a bunch of things with her phone. Dominick had brought a book with him and tuned everyone out as he lost himself in it.
Roy, for his part, peppered me with questions about burglary. Because I didn’t have a book or friends to text, I obliged him.
“Could you show me how to crack a safe?” he said at one point. “After today, of course.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Kate said without looking up. I couldn’t tell which of us she meant.
“Sure,” I said. “If you show me how you go about skip tracing.”
Skip tracing was a term I’d picked up watching crime shows. It’s when private eyes find people who’ve skipped town for one reason or another, though usually to avoid going to court.
“Easy peasy,” he said. “After you’re out of trouble. I don’t want Swanson getting mad at me.”
“You gonna visit him in jail, Roy?” Kate said, ruining the fun vibe of the table. Even Dominick glanced up—briefly—before shaking his head and digging back into his book.
After dark, around nine o’clock, my phone rang.
“You got a pen?” Fruit said when I answered.
“Yeah.”
“Where you at?”
“Springfield,” I said.
Fruit rattled off the building address. The detectives had done some research in the intervening hours and learned the building had been tied up in litigation for eight years. Before that, it had been owned by six different companies, adrift in the spoil system limbo of corporate mergers and acquisitions. Now it was so rundown the holding company was seeking permits to have it demolished.
“When do you wanna make the exchange?” I said after pretending to write the address down.
Fruit said, “Be there in ten minutes or they’re dead. Check first at the front door. Be alone. Feel me?”
“I’m not sure I can get there that fast.”
“Then you best speed, motherfucker.”
***
According to Kate’s colleagues, another detective named Chuck was stationed at the office building trying to determine where the hostages were being kept. Just before we got in our cars to move to our respective positions, Chuck called. He’d spotted a man looking out the second floor corner office overlooking a rusted rollaway trash bin. I knew the ex
act one—left of the entrance where the drive wrapped around the back.
When we got to the gas station so Kate could get her Jeep, she said, “Stick to the plan, Mosley, and we’ll get out of here in one piece.”
Before she drove off, she graced me with a head nod and a brief tightening of the lips. My angel face was wearing her down.
I could have gotten to the building in less than a minute, but didn’t want to make it seem like I’d been waiting nearby. In fact, despite Fruit’s threats, I tried calling him at the ten-minute mark as if seeking more time. He didn’t answer.
After I parked in front of the building, the security guard came out swinging a flashlight and swaggering. I rolled down the window.
“You better be Bo,” he said, making it sound like he wouldn’t want to be in my shoes.
“Where’s Fruit?”
“Round the back. I see any cops, I’m supposed to tell him. I don’t think you want that, know what I’m saying?”
A tall, lanky, Kate-shaped shadow slipped quickly along the wall and then through the front door the guard had exited.
To give her more time, I said, “So you gotta work in this old building, huh? Why? Insurance?”
“Makes you think I work here?” he said angrily. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” Then he stomped off muttering under his breath.
Out of bright ideas, I pulled around the building and found the two cars I’d seen earlier backed into a small loading dock. The area blazed suddenly with floodlights, the gate ratcheted up, and two men came out toting pistols. Fruit and Manny joined them, bringing their number to four. No Anna, no Jimmy.
Fruit’s hands were empty, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t armed. He motioned for me to get out.
I sat there counting, giving Kate and the other detectives more time. It had been a gamble he’d leave the hostages inside, but a safe one. If he’d brought them out, that meant he was serious about the deal. If not, then maybe we could get to them while he was distracted with me.
Angrily, Fruit motioned for one of his men to come down and drag me out. I waited until he was a car length away, then turned off the lights and engine and got out.
