“Not really. I’m sure you’ll tell me. A thousand buys you me listening.”
“I have a file here and you’re in it.”
I put my coffee cup down on the glass table and held out a hand for the file. Devanter hesitated and then shook his head. “I think not.”
“Okay.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“No. I’m an open book. An empty vessel.”
The silence started to build again. Reynolds took a spot right behind me where he could be menacing but I ignored him and kept my eyes on Devanter. Finally he laughed very hard in a sharp bark. “Mr. Haaviko. I want you to accept that offer made by my good friend Aubrey Goodson. Then I want you to throw the race my way.”
I filed the name of Goodson away; it meant nothing. Maybe he was the one who had sent the pair last night. That seemed reasonable. I asked, “Your way?”
Devanter got up and started to pace. “My way. To my good friend Rumer Illyanovitch. He’s a good man, although I’m sure you wouldn’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“He’s an ex-cop and former soldier and a hell of a believer in law and order.”
He sneered and I turned my head from side to side following his movements. “You want me to betray my employer?”
“Yes.” He stood in front of me and put his hands on his hips. “Although he’s not your employer yet. I want to hire you to betray him before you’re actually hired by him.”
“You want me to throw the race. And you’ll give me lots of money if I do so?”
“Yes.”
I walked to the window and looked down at the centre of the oldest part of the city, old roofs covered in pipes and pigeons. On the streets cars crept along, avoiding movie trailers hosting crews shooting the city doubling for Chicago or Dodge or Kansas City or wherever else anyone could imagine. I raised my eyes and saw a beautiful girl about 200 metres away working at a computer with one hand supporting her black-haired head. She was on the sixth floor of a battered building sitting in the middle of an intersection, and between us was a park that had trees around the edges and was mostly dug up.
I raised the coffee in cheers but she didn’t see me and so the gesture was wasted.
Then I turned back to Devanter. “How much is lots of money?”
“Quite a lot.”
I changed the subject. “Why do you have a gun?”
He looked startled and glanced down at himself. “You can see it?”
“Sure. Fire your tailor. Why do you have a gun?”
His smile was grim and tight. “I have enemies.”
I walked back to the thermos and refilled my cup. Then I went back to the window and leaned against it, looking back into the room. “Am I one?”
“No.”
“Then lose the piece.”
He didn’t argue, just stripped it out from under his arm and put it carefully on his desk before holding his hands out all open. “So, I am unarmed.”
“Completely?”
“Completely. Now, can we do business?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a quick smile cross Reynolds’s face and then it was gone. He did not reach for his gun, no, not him. Maybe he thought I didn’t know it was there. I wondered if they both thought guns were fashion accessories.
“Of course. What are you offering?”
“Ten thousand dollars to throw the election. Twenty five hundred now, twenty five hundred at the halfway point, five thousand when Rumer is elected. Fair?”
“Not really.” I put the coffee down on the desk beside the gun and, without stopping, walked towards the doorway and in the general direction of out. Reynolds crossed quickly to block me and I turned back to Devanter and said, “First off, even if I throw the election there’s no way I can guarantee your boy will win. So take that right off the table. I’ll think about the rest of your offer though. Can you have Reynolds let me leave? He’s really scaring me.”
I said it mildly.
Devanter’s voice boomed, “If this is your way to raise the price it won’t work.” He was being aggressive and loud and I wondered if he was trying to overwhelm me. “I will drop the condition that Rumer wins though. You dropping out of the race at an inopportune time for Goodson would be sufficient.”
A deal is only a deal if both people agree and agreement cannot be forced. I learned those lessons when I was just a little thug out bruising knees for lunch money.
And if you intend to deal honestly with someone you do not bring artillery. That’s a basic rule of life everyone should understand.
When I was close to Reynolds he reached out with his left hand to put it on my shoulder and stop me.
When his hand touched my shirt it became assault.
And then the shit really hit the fan.
And it felt good.
#9
I like to fight. I try to argue with that truth every day of my life, but I like to fight. I like to challenge myself. I enjoy how it feels to take a shot and to deliver one. I try to pretend I regret the violence but there’s a certain unholy glee every time.
It’s an awful truth to admit, but I like hurting people. If they deserve it.
These two men resorted to violence too quickly. As though they didn’t really understand what it was and what it was for. Their tactics were probably effective enough against businessmen though.
My open right hand came up as quick as could be and hit Reynolds’s hand off my shoulder and up. His eyes locked on mine as I rocked back on my left foot while his right hand reached under his jacket. I lashed out with the tip of my steel-toed shoe and tagged the outside of his left ankle right through the side of his blood-red oxford.
Behind me I heard something break. A china coffee cup maybe?
I think something shattered in Reynolds’s ankle and suddenly his face went slack and he started to wobble a little. That gave me time to drive my open left hand (slightly cupped) into his ear. That drove a packet of air into his ear and probably blew his eardrum out; if you do it with both hands you can permanently deafen someone. Doing it to one ear only really wrecks someone’s balance. Theoretically you can kill someone by doing it but I’ve never succeeded yet.
The blow made Reynolds scream and propelled him to the floor and, as he went, I reached into his jacket and helped him pull his piece. It was a nice little stainless steel semi-auto that looked and felt like a Walther PP. I thumbed the safety and kicked off Reynolds, tucking into a roll as I went tumbling across the floor.
On the other side of the room Devanter had reached the desk and was raising his pistol, holding it in both hands like they teach you in gun school. He was in the Weaver stance, legs wide and braced. He looked thoroughly competent.
I wasn’t worried. He had one eye closed to squint down the barrel and his tongue was sticking out of the corner of his mouth.
They don’t teach you that in any gun school I’ve ever heard about.
I landed on my left shoulder and kept rolling. Thank God the furniture was scattered far and wide. Else it would have been messy and loud and painful; as it was, it was just loud and painful. Those tiles were hard; give me a carpet any day.
As I rolled I worked the slide on my borrowed gun and a bright shell jumped into the air, which meant that Reynolds had been carrying it cocked and locked.
Interesting; he had been anticipating trouble. Or he was an idiot. Either/or or maybe both.
A second later I hit the wall. A model of a plane smashed to the floor beside me as I aimed down the barrel and centred Devanter’s chest in the three white points that made up the gun site.
Neither of us did anything.
About twelve feet away Reynolds tried to get to his knees and puked something fierce as his weight shifted on his ankle.
“Put …” Devanter’s voice broke and he tried again. “Put the gun down!”
A cop technique. A direct order designed to promote an immediate and instinctive reaction. An absolute demand with no discussion or op
tions offered, refusal was not even an option. Results of failure would be left to the imagination of the threatened.
But Devanter hadn’t had any practice doing it.
“Nice piece.” I looked it over while keeping it pointed. The gun was a Sig-Sauer P230, an expensive small-frame pistol from a German/Swiss combine. On the street I could get five bills for it easy, probably less than I’d get on the legitimate market—thugs and thieves never knew quality.
The gun was a little longer than six inches, five inches high and weighed maybe a pound. From the markings on the side it was chambered in .32, not the biggest calibre in the world but a pretty fast round and good enough to kill someone with.
Devanter’s nostrils were flared and his hands trembled. I marked that away for future use. Maybe he was more used to boardroom violence than this kind. Maybe he didn’t like hurting people. Who knew? Maybe he had never actually had to shoot a real, live, human being before.
I got to my feet by bracing myself against the wall. “Call the cops. Reynolds attacked me, Cornelius. I was trying to leave and he grabbed me and pulled a gun on me.”
“What?” It was not what Devanter expected. Reynolds must have heard it because he muttered something with a question mark and then puked some more as his eyes rolled up into his head.
“Call the cops.”
Devanter remembered his training and barked out, “Put the gun down. Now!”
Nice technique, still very familiar. Order and imperative. But the bad guy response is ingrained in me, and that’s to escalate, so I switched targets and centred the white dots on Devanter’s crotch. I tried to imagine what a nice little .32 would do at this range as it dumped maybe 110 pounds of energy over a third of an inch into his family jewels.
I imagined it wouldn’t be pretty.
He flinched when his eyes followed the trajectory.
“Cornelius …” I used his name to personalize the experience. “Cornelius. Call the cops or I will shoot you in the penis. It won’t kill you. Then I’ll call the cops.”
He flinched again and then got bold. “You don’t want the cops. You’ll be arrested.”
That amused the shit out of me. “Been arrested before.”
He absorbed that and went on, “It’ll be my word—our word—against yours. Who will they believe?”
He was getting confident and he squared his stance, although he turned a little to try to take his penis out of the line of fire.
“You. They’ll believe you. Then they’ll find the holster on Reynolds and probably his fingerprints on the magazine and on the bullets. And then they’ll find the piece on you. Then they’ll find the nine $100 bills on me and the $100 bill on my neighbour. And then they’ll check the parking records and find when the Lexus was parked. And then they’ll canvas the neighbourhood and find someone who saw Reynolds park the car. Then they’ll check your security tapes and find me coming in. Then they’ll check the O’Connell in the hallway and find my fingerprints there. Then they’ll find my fingerprints on the coffee cup.”
Devanter’s face went slack and I went on, “Then who knows what they’ll believe. They’ll come up with something that makes them happy. They always do and they’ll polish the shit out of their idea until it shines. Sometimes, just sometimes, cops decide to not like rich people. Just saying. Sometimes rich people just piss them off. It’s a class thing, poor vs. wealthy.”
His eyes squinted and, at twenty feet, I could see his pulse throbbing on his neck. I gave him a three count, slow, and then gave him another option. “Or I can walk out. And think about your offer—which is now twenty grand, by the way, as a penalty for the violence of your employee—and then call you. And you can get Reynolds to a doctor and get him stitched up; I blew his eardrum and probably broke his ankle.”
Outside a cloud passed by and the room got dark and then light again and I went on, “To do that, Cornelius, you have to put your gun down on the ground. Not the table, the ground. And you have to do it slowly. And back up. Then I take both guns and walk out … I’ll leave them with your secretary outside. What’s her name, by the way?”
“Gwen. I think I’d rather call the cops.” He was getting aggressive again.
“Go ahead. Like I said, I’ve been arrested before and know what to expect but, trust me on this; it’ll cause you a hell of a lot more pain. The fingerprinting, the photographs, the media, it’ll be unpleasant for you. And if you call the cops I’ll never work with you. Right now I probably will. I just don’t negotiate under the threat of a gun. It’s a rule of mine.”
He thought about it and put the gun down and backed away.
#10
In the foyer Gwen was reading off the computer screen and making notes on a pad of legal paper. She turned to face me when I came in and she tried very hard not to react when she saw the two guns in my hands.
“Do you have a sink or bathroom here?”
“Yes.” Her finger moved towards a small panel of buttons inset into her desk and I said, “No.” Loudly. Then I smiled brightly, “Don’t press anything. It makes me nervous.”
“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” She was trying to be as calm as possible and her voice carried it off. However, I was up close and could see the flush down her sweater and on her cheeks and I could smell a sharp whiff of sweat. I also couldn’t help noticing that her nipples were as hard as diamonds.
She swallowed noisily. “The top left button on my desk opens a panel in the wall. There’s a sink in that space along with a fridge and coffee maker.”
“Excellent. A little showy and strange but excellent. You may press it now.”
She did and the panel slid aside. While the sink was filling I kept an eye on her. “Your boss is fine but Reynolds is a little battered. He tried to shoot me. In any case neither of them wants you to call the cops. But check with them after I’ve left.”
Gwen nodded and I saw the sink was taking a ridiculously long time to fill. “So, have you worked here long?”
She was perplexed. “Three years … What are you doing?”
“Filling a sink and making small talk. Never mind, I’m lousy at small talk.” The sink was full and I tipped both guns in after putting their safeties on.
“Have a great day!”
And I left. I wasn’t an idiot though. I took the stairs. Just in case Devanter had the elevator under remote control, which is easy to do. And just in case he changed his mind about how to deal with me.
Two blocks from the building I made a series of random turns and found myself in a pawn shop owned and operated by a young, nervous man with glasses and bad skin. Everything was locked away in racks and on glassed-in shelves. I was examining a display of telescopes and binoculars when the clerk came down to me. “Find everything you’re looking for?”
There was a pretty nice-looking Simmons 1209 telescope, with tripod. Maybe nine inches long and about three pounds. I tapped the glass above it and asked its cost.
“$75.”
I looked at him, astonished. “Uh, no. It’s what, twenty years old? How much?”
“Really? That old? Look at its shape; it’s in great shape, isn’t it?”
“I’ll give you $30.”
He haggled me up to $40. and I paid it with one of Reynolds’s hundreds. The owner ran the bill under an ultraviolet light and pronounced it real. He gave me change made up of some of the dirtiest money I’ve ever seen. Then I left, carrying the scope in a plastic bag from Safeway.
I soon found myself at the strange triangular-shaped building I’d seen from Devanter’s office. It was called Artspace and was full of strange organizations and a few ad firms along with magazine and book publishers. No one said a word to me or tried to stop me and the elevator worked (badly) and took me to the sixth floor, where I got off and faced a hallway going left and right. I went right and passed by studios and organizations and ended up back at the elevator.
In my head I had a map of the building, so I figured the office I was interested in was i
n front of me and to the left, as close to the corner of the building as possible. There was a door there in roughly the proper position. I knocked on it and heard a woman’s voice say, “Come in!”
Inside I found a large office space broken up with bookshelves and partitions. In the centre of the room near the far wall and the windows was a pretty young woman with short black hair and piercing green eyes. I recognized her from looking out of Devanter’s window.
“May I help you?”
There was a trace of both an accent and attitude. I gave her my best smile. “Yes. Actually I just want to look out your window with a telescope. Do you mind?”
“Why?”
I had lots of options. I could lie or I could lie even harder. I chose that one. “I’m a spy.”
“Oh. Then go right ahead.”
To get to the window I had to pass behind her desk. On it was a picture of a young boy and piles of invoices.
The woman pushed her chair back from the desk as I knelt down and took the scope out of the bag.
“What’s that?”
“A telescope. Twenty-five power. So it makes things look twenty-five times closer than they actually are. Which is handy if you’re a spy.”
I set it up on the windowsill and focussed it at Devanter’s building and then started counting floors. At six I stopped and found I had a pretty good view of the whole glassed-in monstrosity that was the office. The view wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but I could certainly identify Devanter and Gwen, both standing, and Reynolds, sitting in a chair with a towel pressed to his ear with one hand. With the other one he clutched his ankle.
Someone came into the office behind me and gave a large package to the green-eyed woman. She signed for it and started to make happy noises. I turned to find her admiring brightly printed catalogues.
Back through the telescope I could see Devanter on the phone and I looked down and checked the ground floor for ambulances or police cars but could see neither.
The phone beside me rang and the woman took complicated notes about percentages and dates.
A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) Page 5
