Ghostman

by Roger Hobbs

  “You been waiting long?” I said.

  “Over two hours,” he said. “Where have you been?”

  “I got caught up in something.”

  He glanced quizzically at my shirt. “What happened to your suit?”

  “Ruined it.”

  I slid into the booth opposite him. He put his right hand on his coffee cup and dropped the other into his lap. His eyes were bright.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “I was worried you might try to kill me over that burned room.”

  “Is that why you’re pointing a gun at me under the table?”

  Lakes looked like he didn’t know what to say. The kid mopping the floors came around to us. The bass rhythm on his headphones sounded like somebody scratching on a linoleum floor. Under the fluorescent lights every small imperfection on his uniform was as clear as day.

  Lakes waited for the kid to pass. Once he did, I heard the hammer of his pistol shifting forward and the safety engaging. Lakes discreetly pulled a small automatic up from under the table and put it back under his jacket.

  “How did you know?” Lakes said.

  “As soon as I sat down, you slid your left hand under the table and started drinking coffee with your right. I saw you write at the airport—you’re left-handed. So if you were just sitting there drinking coffee, you’d be holding the cup with your left hand. Most people use their dominant hand to drink, if they’re not eating. Instead, your left hand’s under the table and there’s no bulge under your armpit. You noticed me come in, but tried to look like you hadn’t. You also looked nervous, so I assumed you’d have a gun.”

  “It was just a precaution,” Lakes said.

  “Are you still on my side?”

  “Depends,” he said. “Are you still going to pay me?”

  “I was planning to,” I said. “But the gun’s a real surprise.”

  “I had to, when you consider my position. I’ve heard things, you know. Marcus Hayes doesn’t have a reputation for forgiving or forgetting. I was worried you might make me chase this coffee with a whole jar of nutmeg, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.”

  “That’s Marcus’s thing,” I said. “Not mine.”

  “How should I know? I don’t know you, or your reputation. I don’t even know your name.”

  “Then now you know one thing about me. I don’t kill people unless I have a very good reason to. Your slipup at the hotel doesn’t make that cut.”

  “In ten years,” he said, “nothing like that has ever happened before.”

  “What?”

  “In ten years, I’ve never had anybody bust one of my safe houses.

  We’ve had an impeccable record.”

  “What happened this time?”

  “My guy at the hotel desk lost his nerve,” he said. “Told me the FBI came around with a description of a white guy, six feet, hundred and eighty pounds, mid-fifties. They made it sound like they’d deport him if he didn’t roll. He was worried they’d take his kids.”

  “That description could’ve fit anybody. He had deniability.”

  “As I said,” Alex continued. “Nerves.”

  I took out the two thousand dollars and put it on the table next to the box of napkins and the bottle of ketchup. The hundred-dollar bills were still a little dirty from the pine barrens.

  Lakes glanced at the money, then back at me. “You’re not really as old as you look, are you?”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “It’s hard to tell. You look younger now then you did before.”

  I pointed up. “It’s the fluorescent lights.”

  Lakes didn’t say anything.

  “This is how it’s going to be,” I told him. “You’ll take this money and you’ll get me some police records. Then you’ll take the Suburban I parked out front and get rid of it. You’ll rent me a new car—something low-profile, like before. You’ll buy me some new clothes—suit, shirts, shoes, you name it—and you’ll get me a small, reliable handgun with clean numbers. Or no numbers at all. Nothing that can get traced back to you, okay? I’ll call you in a few hours and by then I want all of these things done. Do you understand?”

  “What do you need records for?”

  “You don’t need to know. Just get me the police reports from the last week or so. Reported robberies, thefts, murders, all that. Any dirty cop or lawyer could get me what I need in thirty seconds. I want to know everything they know.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I’m not telling you. I don’t trust you.”

  Lakes nodded slightly and looked at the money again. Ben Franklin’s face was staring back at him. No currency printed in the United States features a smiling face. They’re all staring out with dead seriousness. Only Franklin seems to stare right out at you, though. His eyes follow you at every angle like the Mona Lisa’s.

  “This isn’t nearly enough,” Lakes said.

  “The money’s for the records, not you. You should be able to get any cop you like for two grand.”

  “I understand that, but you’ve got to realize how much I’ve spent on you already. After this hotel problem, which I’m not going to charge you for, I’m running this operation at a sizable net loss. Four hundred here, six hundred there. Adds up. And to be honest, I’m not sure I believe you’re going to pay me at the end. You might just disappear.”

  “My credit’s good,” I said. “You’ll get paid.”

  Lakes shook his head. “You don’t have any credit. You don’t even have a name.”

  “So if I disappear, just bill Marcus. You might not trust him, either, but you know him. That should be good enough.”

  Lakes nodded, staring at the stack of money on the table.

  “I need your keys,” I said.

  “I’m not giving you my car. You still haven’t given me my phone back.”

  “I destroyed your phone,” I said, holding out my hand, palm up.

  “You asked for a car,” Lakes said. “I’ll get you a car. Give me two hours. Any model you like. Options too. But I’m not giving you my wheels.”

  “I don’t have two hours. I need a new car, right here, right now. Either you let me take your car or I’ll go out and steal it.”

  “No. No way.”

  “This isn’t a choice, Lakes. The keys. Now.”

  “You won’t steal it. You can’t.”

  “Then let’s call Marcus about it.”

  Lakes thought about it for a second, then took a set of keys out of his pocket, laid them on the table, worked one off the ring and slid it over to me. On the base of the key was a winged, stylized B symbol. Bentley.

  “You were in a Mercedes earlier,” I said.

  “One’s for business, the other’s for pleasure.”

  “Which is this?”

  “Take a fucking guess.”

  “I’ll bring it back in one piece.” I started to get up.

  Lakes touched my arm. “You know,” he said, “they found one of the getaway cars from the heist this morning.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “On the news. It was burning. A Dodge, they think. Took two fire trucks to put it out. They say somebody got to it before the cops did. Not the robbers, somebody else. They found fresh footprints that don’t match any from the casino.”

  “Is that so?”

  “If I were you,” Lakes said, “I’d lay low for a while. Check into a motel out of town. Get some sleep. Wait for this heat to blow over. I don’t know what you’re up to, but that’s what I’d do.”

  I took the key to the Suburban out of my pocket and put it on the table next to Lakes’s coffee. He shot it a sideways glance and then looked back up at me.

  “I’ll call you in a few hours,” I said. “Get me those records. And get rid of the Suburban. I never want to see it again.”

  Lakes didn’t say a word more. He kept his eyes on me until I was all the way out the door. I checked my watch. Five a.m.


  Twenty-five hours to go.

  32

  GENTING HIGHLANDS, MALAYSIA

  So, let me explain how I got into this mess in the first place. Let me tell you about the mistake I made that ended Marcus’s career as a jugmarker, put me in his debt for almost five years and nearly got me killed.

  We should start with the shotguns.

  Our buttonmen, Vincent and Mancini, wouldn’t work without them. There was no talking them out of it, either. If they were going to go into a bank, they said, they wanted 12-bore pumps full of double-aught buckshot under their coats. Marcus tried to tell them that in Malaysia it was much easier to find a pair of old Russian assault rifles than it was to get 12-gauge shotguns, but there was no reasoning with them. So we needed a gunrunner.

  Liam Harrison was our guy.

  He was a fat man of Australian extraction with a shaved head but heavy stubble everywhere else. He had a middling reputation; he’d come through a couple of times before, but he was known on the circuit as more trouble than he was worth. His only recommendations came from friends of friends and hearsay going a couple of years back.

  We met out in the Genting Highlands, maybe fifty kilometers out of Kuala Lumpur, a few minutes after dawn. Three of us were handling this part of the job. Hsiu Mei was translating, I was there to check the guns and make the exchange, and Mancini would guard the paper bag with our money in case anything went wrong. Holding a paper bag may not sound like an important job, but believe me, it is. More than one robber has died because somebody wasn’t holding the money during a tense deal.

  I first caught sight of Harrison when we came around a corner on the mountain road. He slumped against an old white MG Montego behind a clump of trees like he’d been waiting there for hours. He was leaking sweat out of every pore. He had on shorts that came down to his knees, sandals that were caked with mud and an AC/DC T-shirt that hadn’t been washed in days. He was holding an open bag of green soy crisps. I could make out the outline of a big handgun tucked into the elastic strap of his waistband.

  We pulled up and got out of the car slowly. I left my door open and looked left and right in case Liam had brought anybody with him. We stood a few feet back for a while, careful not to approach too close in case it looked like we were going to try to jump him. Meanwhile, Harrison didn’t move an inch.

  “You guys lost or something?” he said.

  “All the roads look the same around here,” Hsiu said.

  “You’re ten minutes late.”

  “Clearly you had breakfast plans,” Hsiu said. “I hate those little crisps.”

  “An acquired taste. Do you want to get down to business?”

  “Is this a good place?”

  “Don’t worry about it. The police rarely come out this far on these rural roads. The only people who do are the locals and a handful of tourists taking day trips. There isn’t a petrol station or restaurant for ten kilometers. If somebody drives by and sees something, they won’t talk. Or if they do, by the time the police arrive we’ll be long gone.”

  “All right,” Hsiu said. “How do you want to do this?”

  “I’m going to open my trunk and you’re going to look inside. Nothing’s loaded and the ammunition’s hidden. Once you’ve picked out what you want, we can talk price. Are any of you packing heat right now?”

  Hsiu looked at me, and I looked at Mancini. I shook my head. No guns.

  “I figured you for bad guys,” Harrison said. “Do you mind that I’m carrying?”

  “Just no sudden movements,” Hsiu said. “And keep it in your pants.”

  Harrison gave Hsiu a sleazy grin, then went around to the back of his old Montego and put a key in the trunk. He threw the thing open and stood back, so we could get a look.

  Harrison’s selection wasn’t the best I’d ever seen, but it wasn’t the worst, either. He had a pile of old plastic pump-action shotguns with white scratches on the gunmetal around the foresight and the magazine-loading port.

  “Today’s special,” Harrison said, “is a pump-action Benelli Supernova, black tactical pistol grip. It’s mostly plastic, but it’s got this steel skeleton inside, right? Makes it super-lightweight and durable as hell. You can drop this thing and kick it around and rub sand all over everything and it will still fire.”

  I raised my hand to shut him up, then pulled out a shotgun that weighed about eight pounds and was the length of my outstretched arm, shoulder to fingertips. I opened the action and took a look inside. The gun had a magazine tube for four shots, which was good but not great. Some shotguns can hold up to eight. It was a bulky black thing made of synthetic plastic that felt almost like rubber. I remember thinking how big it felt. It was so big that Harrison had to keep the guns lying sideways in the trunk. Of course, it wouldn’t remain this big for long. Mancini was going to take a jewelry saw to the butt and barrel above the forearm grip. By the time we were done, these guns would fit in a briefcase. I listened to the chunk-chunk of the action.

  Hsiu looked at me, then at Mancini. He nodded his approval, and so did I. Then she said, “How much?”

  “Thirty-five hundred each.”

  Mancini opened the paper bag of money he’d brought and took out a wad of ringgit notes. He started peeling bills off. Once he had 10,500 counted out, he handed the bills to Hsiu, and Hsiu passed them to Harrison. It was all orchestrated so Harrison would never get within five feet of our bankroll.

  “Ammo?” Hsiu said.

  “I’ve got two-and-a-half-inch Magnum double-aught buckshot, high wad, factory-pressed. Box of twenty-five for five hundred.”

  “We’ll want two boxes.”

  “I want to see you guys lock the guns in your trunk first. After that I’ll give you the ammo. Understand?”

  Hsiu shot me a look. I nodded, and slipped past Harrison and picked out the three best-looking shotguns from the pile and carried them like a load of lumber back to our car. I laid them sideways in the trunk, then closed it. I felt everyone’s eyes on me the whole time.

  Something was wrong.

  I don’t get premonitions, but I can sense danger. Every good ghostman has that instinct, because a big part of the job is knowing when to get out. I’ve walked away from jobs before because something felt sideways, and I had the same feeling now. I knew, right then and there, that Harrison was pulling something over on us. I just didn’t know what yet, and I didn’t have the confidence to tell Hsiu and Mancini to walk away when everything looked like it was going so well. So instead I leaned against the trunk and waited and watched and tried to calm myself down. I flexed my hand into a fist.

  Mancini peeled off more money for the ammunition. He passed it off to Hsiu as before. Harrison snatched the cash from her hands and shoved it in his pants pocket without counting it, then opened the passenger door on his Montego and came back with two big brown boxes of shotgun shells. He tossed me one box, then the other. I caught them and put them in the backseat. I opened one up to verify that he’d sold us the right sort of ammunition and then gave him the thumbs-up.

  Harrison wagged a finger at me. “You’re the ghostman, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m just the bagman.”

  “You sure? The bagmen I know don’t do heists much.”

  “What makes you think we’re planning one?”

  “I hear you’re the man to talk to about passports.”

  “You heard wrong,” I said.

  “Is that so? I’m told you’ve got some of the best work available. Real holograms and everything. I heard you people carry passports that could fool a real passport agency.”

  “No,” I said. “Not that good.”

  “Come on,” Harrison said. “Let me at least see.”

  I just wanted to shut him up. I didn’t like talking to him any more than I liked working with him. Everything about him disgusted me—his line of work, his appearance, his breath, his bloody accent. I just wanted to go back to the city and get on with it. In short, I wasn’t think
ing. I’d been distracted by the strange feeling at the bottom of my stomach.

  I took the passport with the name Jack Delton on it out of my jacket pocket and handed it to him. He rubbed the laminate with his fingers to check the texture, then flipped through to the page with my picture on it. He scanned it closely, looked up at me to check the photo and then back at the passport.

  “Beautiful work,” he said. “Is it pronounced Dalton or Delton?”

  “Delton. Jack Delton.”

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “From a jugmarker,” I said. “You done?”

  Harrison handed the passport back to me, then winked and grinned like we’d just become best friends. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re done. You want to sell me one of those, give me a call, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I kept an eye on Harrison as I got back in the car. Mancini got in next, and Hsiu last. Before she closed the door, Hsiu gave Harrison a little half-baked salute, as if to say, It was a pleasure doing business with you. He returned it, then made an L shape with his fingers and thumb and pointed it at us like he was aiming a gun. He dropped his thumb and muttered, “Pow.”

  I couldn’t shake the odd feeling that we’d done something terribly wrong. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. We started the engine. Hsiu let out a long sigh, like she was glad the deal was over. Mancini clenched and unclenched his fists until he could sit still. I took a long breath and held it. I was also glad it was over. Maybe a little too glad.

  Because then it hit me.

  It was a sinking feeling. Right then I knew exactly what was wrong with this picture. The realization was like a fifty-caliber bullet ripping through my head and blasting out the other side of my skull. I cursed to myself. If I were a smarter man, I would have figured out what was wrong much sooner. Goddamn it. It was so obvious now. I tried to keep calm.

  “Hold on a bit,” I said, tapping Hsiu on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

  I got out of the car and held up one hand to shield my eyes from the sun. When he saw me coming back, Harrison got out of his car and gave me a look. He shouted from across the way. “Problem?”

  “No,” I shouted back. “I just want to ask you something.”