by Stephen Frey
David fell slowly back onto the mattress. They could nail him on fraud and embezzlement charges—three million dollars’ worth. Because undoubtedly that three million was sitting in another account somewhere in the world. Another account they had set up with his name on it, but that he wouldn’t be able to find. At the appropriate time they could present documentation showing that David had spirited the money away and that it was still sitting in an account waiting for him.
They were guilty too—of many things. But there was no way David could approach the authorities. He couldn’t prove anything. They could, or at least the courts would believe them even though it was a frame. He was the only person who would lose by bringing the law into the equation now. It was perfect. Finnerty was right. They were very smart people who played to win.
David put his hands behind his head and gazed up at the ceiling fan rotating slowly above him in the predawn light. And then it blurred before him as he made the connection. He rose quickly from the bed and ran for the door.
Chapter 26
“This way,” Todd whispered as he turned left down the darkened alley.
Jesse followed him closely as he moved cautiously along the eight-foot chain-link fence topped by razor-sharp barbed wire. Ten minutes before, they had left Jesse’s rental car on a lonely side street—so as not to attract the attention of private security personnel—and now they were moving covertly through the shadows of the city’s warehouse district. “How much farther?” she whispered back.
“It’s not far now.”
“Good.” It was almost one in the morning and she was exhausted after a full day of work and class until ten.
Suddenly Todd grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward a building on the other side of the alley. “Come on!”
“What’s wrong?” Then she saw the security vehicle coming toward them, spotlight flashing.
“Just come on!”
Broken glass crackled under their feet as they sprinted across the pavement to a large doorway recessed several feet into the structure.
“Press yourself against the wall,” Todd ordered. “And look away from the alley.”
Jesse obeyed instantly, forcing herself against the rough brick as though she were trying to squeeze into one of the cracks in the mortar.
The private security car rolled slowly up the alley, spotlight flickering from side to side. Jesse heard radio static and the purr of the engine as the vehicle moved slowly over the broken glass. She squeezed herself more tightly against the brick. This was insane. They were going to be stopped before even getting to the LFA building. And how were they going to explain themselves? Two people hiding in a warehouse doorway at one in the morning, dressed in black.
She held her breath and closed her eyes as the car moved around the corner of the doorway. This was it. In the next instant she was going to sense the brilliant spotlight bathing the doorway and hear a terse voice coming through a speaker in the security vehicle’s grille instructing her to kneel down with her hands behind her back.
But the car didn’t stop. It glided past their hiding place, reached the small side street from which she and Todd had turned into the alley only moments before, turned left and roared away into the night.
Todd let out a long breath. “That was close.”
“I’ll say.” Jesse brushed crumbled mortar from her cheek as she relaxed.
“They were a little early tonight.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I’ve been down here checking the place out. They had a pretty set schedule for their rounds. They were ahead of their normal time this evening.”
“Earning your fee, huh?” She tried to laugh, but her voice cracked as she spoke. She took several quick breaths to calm her racing heart.
“You bet,” Todd replied, scanning the alley for any further trouble. “Come on. Time’s wasting.” He began jogging down the alley.
She took a deep breath and ran after him.
They followed a twisting course through the maze of side streets and alleys crisscrossing Baltimore’s warehouse district. Most of the huge buildings they passed were in reasonable condition—obviously in current use. However, some stood like lonely ghost ships, their windows smashed out and their walls crumbling. During the day, when there was commercial activity, this area was as safe as any in the city. But in the gloom of early morning it seemed eerie and foreboding as they pressed on toward their target.
Finally, Todd slowed to a walk. “There.” He pointed at a building across the street as he bent over to catch his breath.
At one time the building had been a warehouse. LFA had converted the wide-open two-story space into offices by erecting partitions. There was a small door in the middle of the wall facing the street, but otherwise the building’s front was an uninterrupted wall of bricks.
“I wouldn’t have a clue this was LFA.” Jesse passed a hand over her forehead to wipe away the perspiration. “There are no signs in front, nothing to tell anyone this is it.”
“And for good reason,” Todd said. “If you were running a militant outfit I doubt you’d want to advertise your headquarters either.”
“It’s not a militant outfit,” Jesse said forcefully.
“I know.” Todd laughed, holding up his hands. “I just like razzing you.”
“So how are we going to get in, Einstein?” Jesse asked. LFA’s headquarters looked impenetrable.
“Follow me.”
They jogged around the side of the building to the unused loading bays at the rear of the structure. It was pitch black here and they had to feel their way along the wall. Finally Todd stopped, pulled a small flashlight from his pocket, and pointed it ahead and up until he located the fire escape. Then they moved forward again until they were directly beneath the ladder. Todd stretched high up in the air to reach the bottom rung. He pulled hard and with a loud screech brought the ladder down. With Jesse close behind, Todd scaled the ladder to the first landing.
“Now comes the hard part,” he said over his shoulder.
“Why do you say that?” she asked, pulling herself up onto the landing next to him.
He flicked on the light again and flashed it out over the railing along the brick wall. “We have to go out there.” Stretching out below was a huge empty Dumpster. “We need to walk along the rim of the Dumpster to get to that window.” He flashed the light up to a small window five feet above the top of the Dumpster. “It’s a bathroom window. I came down here this afternoon to volunteer my services to LFA. After I finished filling out the application, I asked to use the bathroom. I opened the lock while I was in there.”
“You volunteered for LFA?” Jesse almost laughed aloud.
“They seemed a little surprised too.” Todd smiled. “I’m probably the only white guy ever to apply for work here, but as the receptionist said, LFA is an equal opportunity employer. So she gave me an application.”
“What about this window here?” Jesse nodded at the window next to the landing.
“I tried it this afternoon. It’s nailed shut. I guess the fire inspector hasn’t bothered to visit LFA lately.”
“Okay, let’s go.” She stepped carefully over the railing onto the upper rim of the Dumpster, which ran parallel to the building.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Going to the window,” she said as she balanced herself precariously on the thin edge of the huge trash container.
“I’ll go first, Jess.”
But she was already several feet out onto the Dumpster, sliding her feet carefully along the inch-wide metal frame toward the window, balancing herself by holding her hands flat against the side of the building two feet away. “Just keep the light on the frame in front of me.” It was like walking the train tracks near her house in Glyndon as a little girl, she thought to herself as she kept inching forward. Except that a train rail was at most six inches off the ground. Here the drop would be ten feet.
Finally she reached the window. She
placed her palms beneath the wooden frame of the lower panes and pushed. Instantly the window rose up. In one deft motion she grasped the bottom of the window frame, pushed off the Dumpster, and pulled herself into the building. She picked herself up quickly from the floor and leaned back out the window. “Come on,” she beckoned. “It’s not hard at all.”
“Uh huh.” Todd stepped gingerly over the fire escape railing onto the Dumpster. He had never liked heights. Not even ten feet.
“Hurry!” Jesse was growing impatient.
“Easy!” He had thought she would be the hesitant one.
Slowly Todd made his way out onto the Dumpster rim until he reached the window. He handed Jesse the flashlight, then grabbed the bottom of the window frame and pulled. But as he pushed off, his foot slipped and for a moment he hung by his fingers, unable to regain his balance on the Dumpster’s rim. Jesse grabbed him roughly by the shirt as he slowly pulled himself up. Seconds later they fell in a heap together on the tile floor.
“That was graceful, Mr. Private Investigator,” Jesse groaned.
“Yeah, well, I missed Dumpster-climbing class in PI school, all right?” He was annoyed. “I assume we need to go to the executive offices,” he said, rising to one knee.
“I think that’s the best place to start.”
They moved out of the bathroom and into a narrow hallway paneled with cheap veneer. The carpet was worn and the air was dusty and heavy with the scent of furniture polish. They came to a locked wooden door, but Todd negotiated it easily with a pick set. It popped open and they were in.
“Not a very secure building,” Jesse observed.
“It’s a goddamn renovated warehouse, Jess. What do you expect, laser beams and heat sensors? They’ve probably put this whole organization together on a wing and a prayer. They aren’t going to spend very much on security because there isn’t anything to protect.”
She could tell by his sharp tone that he was still embarrassed by his clumsy entry into the building. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” he grumbled, rubbing a knee. “Unfortunately.”
She ignored his complaint and moved to the file cabinets against the wall. They too were locked. “Can that pick set handle file cabinets as well?”
“Sure.” Todd moved to the first one and popped it quickly, then moved on to the next.
Jesse pulled a tiny flashlight from her jeans pocket, opened the cabinet’s top drawer, and began her search. To avoid leaving fingerprints, she and Todd wore clear latex gloves he had purchased at a local hardware store that afternoon. As she pulled out the first file with her gloved hand, she was reminded of the leather glove she had lost at Neil’s river house the night she’d been chased. She had borrowed the gloves from Sara’s desk drawer that night after everyone had left the branch. She didn’t have any at the office—after all, it was the end of summer—and didn’t want to waste time going to the store. But Sara was a pack rat and seemed to keep one of everything at the office no matter the season.
“What now?” Todd had opened all five cabinets.
“Start looking for personnel files. When you find them, let me know.”
“Right.”
For several minutes Jesse combed the files, culling through invoices, copies of correspondence, and internal memoranda. And then her eyes caught something—a file marked “Funding/Doub Steel.”
“Hey, here we go,” Todd murmured. “Employee records.”
“Good.” Jesse held up her hand. “Hold on a second, I’ll be right there.” Her pulse jumped as she looked at the name on the file again. Doub Steel. It sounded so familiar. Where had she heard the name before?
She opened the thin file and held the flashlight over the pages. Suddenly she brought a hand to her mouth. The page was a copy of both sides of a million-dollar check—a check signed by David J. Mitchell. She would recognize that distinctive M anywhere. She had seen it as he signed the check at Café Royal and at the marina when he had signed for the sailboat. “Oh my God.” Doub Steel. Now she remembered. David had mentioned the company as one of his primary investments when they had been out in the sailboat that night on the Corsica River. She leaned against the cabinets for support.
“What’s the matter, Jess?”
“I’ll tell you later.” She closed the file quickly and placed it on a small table next to the cabinet. “Where are the employee records?” Her voice was shaking.
“Right here. Come on, Jess, what’s the—”
“Nothing!” She cut him off as she moved to the next set of files.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
Jesse pulled a small piece of paper from her shirt pocket. Scrawled on it was the Social Security number she had matched to the list of LFA employees and the list of Elbridge Coleman campaign workers. “Just make certain no one surprises us.”
“Okay.”
Carefully she read through each file, checking the Social Security number of each. Finally she came to a file without a number, a file on which the number had been whited out. She touched the dried fluid gently, then glanced to the upper left and the employee picture. For a moment she gazed at it. The face was so familiar. Then it hit her, and another icy chill raced up her back. It was the man who had been coming out of her office at the branch last week looking for Sara. This man had short hair and no beard or mustache, but as Todd had pointed out, disguises were easy to manufacture. She glanced at the name. Gordon Smith.
This was what she had come for. And she had stumbled onto the check from Doub Steel. It was time to get out. “Let’s go, Todd.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Jesse put the Smith file under her arm, closed and locked the file cabinets, picked up the Doub file from the table, and headed back toward the hallway. In seconds she was hanging from the bathroom window, feeling for the rim of the Dumpster with her tennis shoes. Her nerves were on fire. As on the night she entered Robinson’s river home, something was telling her to get the hell out of here. That danger was close. Finally her feet touched the metal of the trash container.
Through the window Todd handed Jesse the two thin files, and she began to move quickly toward the fire escape. But in her haste to get back to the landing her foot slipped, and a short scream escaped her lips. For a moment she hung in the air, arms reaching for anything to grab. But as she began to fall backward into the metal Dumpster, she felt Todd’s strong hand wrap around her wrist like a vise, and she regained her balance. Carefully she made her way back to the fire escape.
In a moment Todd was there too. She placed a hand on his shoulder as he stepped onto the landing. “Thanks,” she murmured.
“No problem,” he whispered. “Maybe we should have just tried to find a door on the first floor.”
“No,” she whispered back. “There would be alarms on the doors.”
“So what? We would have been gone before anyone could have gotten here.”
“I don’t want anyone to know there was a break-in.” Jesse handed the two files to Todd as she began to climb down the ladder. “Drop them to me when I get to the ground.”
“Right.”
She descended the ladder agilely, jumping the last several feet to the pavement.
“Hold it right there!” a voice barked as a brilliant light suddenly illuminated the entire area beneath the fire escape.
Instinctively she put her hands before her face. She had been caught. Fear surged through her as she pictured the headlines: REVENUE AGENT NABBED IN LFA BURGLARY. That could not happen.
She turned to run, but the private security officers anticipated her move and were on her instantly, wrestling her to the ground, pulling her hands behind her back.
“Look what we got here.” One of the men pointed the brilliant light directly into her eyes as he rested with his knee in the small of her back.
“Not your typical warehouse district thief,” the other laughed, pulling handcuffs from his belt. “You’re awfully pretty, ma’am, but we treat everybody th
e same down here. Cuff ’em and turn ’em in.”
Jesse closed her eyes and turned her face from the light. This was the nightmare scenario. The one she had so worried about.
“Yup, we—” But as the second man began to cuff Jesse, two gunshots tore through the still of the night, stifling his words.
The two men tumbled away, scrambling for cover behind the Dumpster. Almost immediately two more gunshots exploded into the darkness, followed instantly by the sound of shattering glass as the slugs hit the security vehicle’s windshield.
Jesse jumped to her feet and began to sprint. She knew exactly what had happened. The security officers hadn’t seen Todd, and now he was creating a diversion—and she was going to take advantage of it.
Two more shots rang out. She heard the men yelling at each other, and then she was around the corner of the building and their screams faded. But she kept running.
Finally, as she neared the rental car, Jesse slowed to a trot, then stopped and bent over, gasping for air. She knew it was not a good idea to stay with a vehicle that looked so out of place in this area of town at this time of night. The car was an obvious inspection target for the police, who would be crawling all over this neighborhood in a matter of minutes—police carrying a detailed description of her. She began to move unsteadily back into the shadows, uncertain what to do. She couldn’t leave Todd here, but she couldn’t stay either. Then she heard the sirens.
“Come on!”
