Dead on Arrival

by Mike Lawson

  ‘Yeah. Ugly girl with bad teeth.’

  ‘That’s right, an ugly girl with bad teeth who’s so much in debt that her landlord’s about to evict her from the shotgun shack where she lives with her two kids. Sandy, for a very modest fee, will be willing to testify that she saw you and Lincoln together.’

  ‘But why didn’t she tell the FBI she saw us together when they questioned the people that worked at the waffle house?’

  ‘Because of you, Jubal; because you told her not to. You gotta remember, back then you were the biggest badass in Frederick County, and she knew if she testified against you, your boys would kick the bad teeth right out of her head before they killed her.’

  Jubal sat there a minute, rubbing his hand over his unshaven chin. ‘I still don’t buy that you’d be willing to—’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, use your damn head! Let’s say you got caught trying to extort money out of Lincoln. You wouldn’t go to jail. All you’d have to do is point the finger at me. You’d just say that nasty little Patsy Hall, a government agent, came to you with this scheme, and you thought you were really helping the government. You didn’t know this bad DEA agent was trying to blackmail Lincoln. And it would take the FBI all of two minutes to find out that I flew out here. Do you understand now, Jubal? The best thing that happens is you get rich; the worst thing that happens is I go to jail.’

  Pugh stared at Hall, scratching at the stubble on his chin. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘I wish you hadn’t drunk my last beer.’

  Hall was embarrassed to be seen in public with Pugh, but she wanted to keep him happy. They drove to a tavern in Victor of his choosing, and it was just the sort of place that she’d expect him to pick: video slot machines and pull tabs for ambience; glassy-eyed deer heads over the bar; neon beer signs on every square inch of wall space remaining. All the male customers wore baseball hats, and all the hats were emblazoned with some kind of slogan. CATCH AND RELEASE, MY ASS was a popular one.

  They took seats at a table as far away from the jukebox and the pool table as they could get, and she ordered a pitcher of beer and poured a glass for herself and Pugh. Hall had always known Pugh wasn’t a stupid man, and in spite of the amount of beer he’d consumed he continued to prove it.

  ‘What’s to keep Lincoln from killing me when I tell him what we want?’

  ‘Good question,’ Hall said. ‘He just might try to do that. But you got two things goin’ for you, Jubal. The first is that Lincoln would have to find you. Remember, you’re in the Witness Protection Program.’

  ‘Yeah, but you found me.’

  ‘Yeah, but I work for the government. Lincoln doesn’t.’

  ‘What’s the other thing?’ Pugh said.

  ‘I’m bringing in a team, private security guys,’ Hall said, ‘and they’re not gonna let him kill you. I’ll tell the team they’ve been contracted by the Witness Protection Program to – well, protect you. I never thought I’d say this, but keeping you alive is suddenly very important to me. And that reminds me. I was gonna pay the security guys out of what we took from Lincoln, out of the four million. That’s kinda stupid now that I think about it. We’ll ask Lincoln for four and a quarter. He can afford it.’

  Hall and Pugh sat there in the bar another hour going over the details. Pugh was getting very drunk – but he was still thinking.

  ‘Why do you need me at all? Why don’t you just send Lincoln the picture and pretend it’s from me?’

  ‘Because,’ Hall said, ‘the picture isn’t enough. I need the picture and the threat of you testifying against him. So you have to talk to Lincoln. You have to tell him that while he’s living like a king in Key West, you’re stuck here in Cowflop, Montana, livin’ in a trailer, and you don’t like it one damn bit.’

  Patsy Hall told Pugh that, as Lincoln was under continuous FBI surveillance, Pugh was going to FedEx Lincoln a package containing a disposable cell phone and the photo. The FBI might be tapping Lincoln’s phones and opening his mail, but they wouldn’t be able to stop the FedEx package from getting through.

  ‘Lincoln’s a clever guy,’ Hall said. ‘He’ll find some way to call you without the FBI watching. And when he does, you’re going to convince him that you’re serious.’

  Pugh sat there awhile, drinking silently, mulling over all that Hall had told him. He seemed to come to a conclusion, because he nodded his head, lit a cigarette, and commenced staring at Patsy Hall’s breasts.

  ‘What say we get a six-pack and head back to my place,’ Pugh said, and gave Hall what she supposed was his version of a seductive look.

  ‘Get serious, Jubal,’ Hall said. ‘I’d be more likely to have sex with a cucumber. Now, are you in or out?’

  Hall didn’t feel guilty at all for what she was doing to Pugh. Maybe she should have, but she didn’t. Emma’s plan wasn’t to blackmail Lincoln, nor was it to use the phony picture to have him arrested.

  Emma’s plan was to arrest Oliver Lincoln for murdering Jubal Pugh.

  67

  A half hour ago Oliver Lincoln had spoken to Pugh. Now he was sitting on his veranda drinking champagne – he wasn’t celebrating, he just liked champagne – and looking again at the photo he’d received that morning, the one that showed him and Pugh sitting together in the restaurant in Winchester.

  One of the things Lincoln prided himself on was his ability to keep his emotions in check. No cursing, no screaming tantrums, no kicking over chairs and tables when things got sticky. No matter how complex a job might be, no matter what last-minute changes had to be engineered, no matter how much pressure the authorities were putting on him, he always kept his head – and, he liked to think, his sense of humor. But this, this demand from Pugh … well, it made him very angry.

  This redneck was ruining his life. The one poor photograph that he’d taken had been enough for the FBI to consider him a prime suspect in the terrorist attacks. The good news was that Pugh’s original photo hadn’t been enough for an arrest. The bad news was that the investigation was tearing him apart. His lovely home had been ransacked, he’d paid his lawyer three hundred thousand dollars to date, and, because he was being watched so closely, he couldn’t set up any other jobs to bring in more income. He had just turned down a very lucrative job in Nigeria, a simple thing related to ensuring the outcome of an election.

  And now he had a demand from Pugh for $4.2 million. The odd number puzzled him, but it didn’t really matter. He didn’t have anywhere near that much money, at least not in the United States. He had money in offshore accounts, but if he tried to access those accounts the FBI might catch him, and then they’d start badgering him all over again about the source of his income. At a minimum they’d notify the IRS, and the taxman would kill him with penalties on back taxes or, even worse, send him to jail for tax evasion. To pay Pugh – not that he had any intention of paying Pugh – would mean he’d have to sell his home.

  The photo. Was it real or not? It certainly looked real, but then King Kong swatting biplanes out of the sky also looked real. No, it had to be a fake. In the photo he wasn’t wearing his sunglasses and he was almost sure he hadn’t removed them the day he met with Pugh. He could get an expert to examine the photo, but ultimately that would be a waste of time and money. The photo was irrelevant. Jubal Pugh had to be eliminated.

  He couldn’t have Pugh hanging over his head for the rest of his life like some rusted sword of Damocles. Whether the photo was real or not, whether the witness existed or not, Pugh had to go. If the FBI ever managed to get any real evidence tying him to the terrorist attacks, Pugh would testify against him, and Pugh would be the last nail in Lincoln’s legal coffin.

  But he did need to confirm that the photo was fake. If it wasn’t, he needed the memory card from the camera and he needed to know if other copies existed. He also needed the name of this supposed waitress witness. And the fact that he needed to know these things was really too bad for Jubal Pugh.

  He raised the champagne flute to his lips and noticed for the f
irst time that there was a slight chip in the rim. Now that was vexing. The flutes had been made to his personal specifications by a glassblower in Venice and the man was now dead. Those FBI … apes! They must have damaged the glass the last time they searched his house.

  Take a breath. Take a deep breath.

  Pugh had said he wanted the money in two weeks. If the man had had any brains at all he never would have given Lincoln that much time. Finding Pugh wouldn’t be a problem; he could do that with a single phone call. The primary problem was convincing the Cuban to take the risk, which meant it would take a lot of money, money he would have to pay out of his own pocket, money he didn’t have on hand. He might actually have to sell a few of his possessions to raise the money for her fee. Yes, Jubal Pugh made him very angry.

  Lincoln hit the button on the house intercom. ‘Esperanza, sweetheart, can you please tell Juan to pull the Porsche up to the door. I’m going to Miami. I’m in the mood for a lovely Cuban dinner, a nice polla a la barbacoa with negros dormidos.’

  ‘Are you insane? What are you doing here?’ the Cuban hissed.

  ‘Relax. If they’d connected me to you, you’d have been arrested or questioned by now.’

  ‘You’re an idiot to come here,’ she said.

  ‘Sticks and stones. If you’d returned my phone call, we could have met somewhere else.’

  ‘I’m not talking to you. Finish your dinner and leave.’

  ‘Two hundred thousand,’ Lincoln said.

  The Cuban stared at him for a moment, then she blinked, then she blinked again – and Lincoln had the image of an old-fashioned adding machine, the lever going down, the machine going ka-jing as the Cuban added two hundred thousand dollars to her hoard.

  She sat down with Lincoln and snapped her fingers at a waiter.

  ‘Bring me and Mr Lincoln a Calvados,’ the Cuban said, and then added, ‘Put both drinks on Mr Lincoln’s bill.’

  68

  Emma assumed that when Lincoln received the blackmail demand from Jubal Pugh, he would try to kill Pugh. He wouldn’t, however, do the killing himself.

  ‘Lincoln had somebody kill Rollie Patterson,’ she’d told DeMarco. ‘And maybe that same person killed William Broderick.’

  ‘And maybe tried to kill me too,’ DeMarco said.

  ‘Yes,’ Emma said. ‘You got lucky.’

  Emma’s plan was to catch the killer that Lincoln sent to murder Pugh in the act of killing him, hopefully before he succeeded. The killer, to avoid a long jail term for attempted murder, would give up Lincoln, and Lincoln, in return for a reduced sentence, would give up whoever had paid him to organize the terrorist attacks. The other thing that Emma figured was that Lincoln’s killer wouldn’t just shoot Pugh with a rifle from three hundred yards away or blow up his mobile home. He could, but Emma didn’t think he would. Lincoln needed to know if the photo Pugh had sent him was a fake and he needed the name of the witness that could place Lincoln and Pugh in the restaurant together. To get that information the killer would have to torture Pugh, and while he was being tortured, they’d catch the killer. But they might have to let Pugh get tortured for just a little while to make the case, which didn’t bother Emma at all.

  Yes, it was a pretty simple plan: one killer after another falling over like a row of dominoes. However, neither Emma nor DeMarco thought it was going to be easy. And something that neither of them said out loud was that keeping Pugh alive wasn’t as impor tant as catching the person who tried to kill him – or succeeded in killing him.

  DeMarco had never been involved in anything resembling a military operation, but he was involved in one now. And Emma was the general.

  The same day Patsy Hall mailed the photo to Oliver Lincoln, DeMarco, Emma, and four men arrived in Victor, Montana. The four men were ex-military, men that Emma knew, and they were professional bodyguards. Usually their clients were celebrities worried about lovesick stalkers or wealthy people visiting countries where kidnapping was a cottage industry.

  Emma introduced the men to DeMarco as Bob, Stan, Harry, and Stew. They didn’t look alike, yet at the same time they did. Stan and Stew were both short and stocky and had weight lifter’s muscles. Bob was tall and rangy and bald. And Harry was just sort of average – average height, average build. The thing that made the men look alike was their eyes, eyes that said they’d been to hell and back when they’d worked for Uncle – and they weren’t afraid to make the trip again.

  And Emma’s guys came well equipped. They had binoculars and night-vision goggles and .22-caliber pistols machined for silencers. They had sniper’s rifles and radios and bulletproof vests. They were a mini-militia; they were ready for anything.

  Patsy Hall had told Pugh to tell Lincoln to send the four million to a post office box in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in two weeks. Jubal had asked why she wanted to give Lincoln so much time and she explained that Lincoln would need that long to round up the money. She didn’t tell him the real reason was so Lincoln would have time to plan Pugh’s murder. Hall would then pick up the cash, telling Jubal it would be best if she made the pickup because (a) she was a trained government agent and (b) Lincoln had never seen her. Jubal, being the trusting guy that he was, wanted to know what was to keep Hall from absconding with his half of the money and leaving him to rot in Montana. Hall explained that if she did, all Jubal had to do was place an anonymous phone call to the DEA and tell them that a certain unpopular agent had suddenly become very rich.

  Hall introduced Pugh to his security detail over the phone. She told him Stan was the man in charge as Emma figured that Jubal – being the redneck that he was – wouldn’t like it if a woman was responsible for his safety. So Pugh thought that four people were protecting him, not six; DeMarco and Emma stayed out of sight.

  After four days of watching Pugh, DeMarco was about to go out of his mind from boredom and he had grooves in his hands, arms, and neck from scratching at bug bites. He didn’t know what kind of bugs they were, but they were vicious little bastards. But if sitting around doing nothing and getting eaten alive by insects bothered Stan and his crew, DeMarco couldn’t see it. These guys, you could drop them into a swamp at night and they’d stand there in the water, never moving, while leeches vacuumed out their blood.

  DeMarco was teamed up with Stan and Harry; they had the day-shift watch, from six in the morning to six at night. Emma was on the back-shift watch with Bob and Stew, because she figured Lincoln’s assassin was more likely to come at night. When Jubal went to work at the scrap yard, they followed him then hung around all day while Jubal ripped parts off cars. DeMarco figured working in a scrap yard had to be a pretty boring job; it was definitely a boring job to watch.

  After Jubal finished work, usually about four every day, he went to his favorite bar and drank beer for three hours, then went back to his trailer and drank more beer. Stan had instructed Jubal not to change his routine in any way. Emma had told Stan to tell Jubal this. She wanted to give Lincoln’s killer every opportunity.

  Emma figured that the killer would watch Pugh for a couple of days, then break into his trailer at two or three in the morning and start ripping out his fingernails. He might try to snatch Pugh and take him someplace to talk, but it seemed more likely that the killer would take him at his home. Emma and her guys spent a lot of time looking for anybody who might be watching Pugh, but didn’t see anyone, and this Emma found disconcerting. Stan and his guys were too good to miss somebody following Pugh, and she started to wonder if Oliver Lincoln had decided he didn’t need to kill him.

  Emma said later if they hadn’t all been sexists, including her, they never would have blown it the way they did.

  On their eighth day in Montana, DeMarco sat with Stan in a clump of weeds on a small hill watching Jubal work in the junkyard. Stan, pro that he was, kept searching the surrounding area with his binocu lars, and every hour or so he’d talk to Harry on the radio to make sure nothing was happening on the side of the junkyard that Harry was watching. DeMarco mentio
ned to Stan that sitting in the weeds was maybe a good way to get bitten by a snake, which earned him a what-a-wuss look from Stan.

  Jubal was currently taking the mirrors off three cars that had just been towed into the junkyard. DeMarco figured side-view mirrors were probably a pretty hot commodity in the junk business, as people were always ripping off their mirrors when they didn’t pay attention going in and out of their garages. At least that’s the way DeMarco had ripped the mirror off his car three months ago.

  About 11:30 A.M., they saw Jubal wipe his hands off on a rag he kept in his back pocket and walk toward the main office to eat his lunch. Ten minutes later, a Ravalli County sheriff’s car drove into the junkyard. DeMarco figured the cops probably came to places like this fairly often to check on stolen cars being stripped for parts. He picked up his binoculars and looked at the cop. She was wearing a peaked hat, sunglasses, and a brown uniform. Around her waist was a wide black belt with all the usual cop stuff on it – handcuffs, radio, nightstick, Mace, and gun. DeMarco figured a skinny man, a man with no hips, would have a hell of a time keeping the belt from falling down around his ankles with all the crap there was on the belt. But this cop, she had nice hips. A nice ass too. She didn’t seem to be having any trouble keeping the belt up.

  Fifteen minutes later the cop left.

  DeMarco pulled a can of Coke out of his knapsack – he was getting pretty tired of drinking warm Coke – and checked his watch. ‘Looks like Jubal’s taking a long lunch break today,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Stan said.

  Yeah. DeMarco had tried talking to Stan but gave up after a couple of days. It was as if the guy was saving his voice for something; maybe he and his pals were some sort of lethal barbershop quartet.

  Half an hour later, Stan said, ‘Something’s wrong here.’

  ‘What?’ DeMarco said. He’d just seen something that looked like a centipede, and he’d been checking the weeds to make sure there wasn’t another one around close enough to crawl up his pant leg.