Hard Bitten

by M. K. York

  “You make it sound so sordid.”

  “And dangerous! Let’s not forget dangerous. This is why the cops are specially trained and get pensions and benefits, neither of which you have, so let them do the stupidly dangerous thing.”

  “I’m not talking, like, white van across the street or anything. I don’t have to be anywhere near them to get some video footage, and that’s all I need. I can just get something a little wonky and then take it to the cops.”

  Mark fidgeted with a paper clip. “I don’t think what you’re proposing is even legal.”

  “Is private investigation your field?” Lukas was exasperated, but he didn’t sound angry.

  “No, but come on.”

  “Fine, what do you want to do?”

  “Talk to Lena!”

  “That...” Lukas sighed. “Sounds pretty reasonable, actually.”

  “A hell of a lot more reasonable than your shitty idea. You’re going to end up in the Sound if you pull shit like that.”

  “It’s not that much worse than the surveillance I already do. Drunk cheaters with guns are not rare.”

  “Jesus! Don’t tell me this!”

  “Hey, it’s my neck.”

  “Yeah, well—” Mark came to a dead stop as he realized he couldn’t say much to that.

  They let the silence hang for a minute before Lukas said, “Tell me what Lena says?”

  “Will do.”

  They hung up, and Mark stared into space for a couple of minutes before getting up to go talk to Lena.

  *

  Lena was highly skeptical. “Travis?” she said, into the phone, giving Mark a gimlet eye where he sat on the other side of her desk. “Yeah, Mark was telling me about your conversation.”

  There were a few minutes of silence, and Lena agitated for more details: What drugs? How much? How did they catch him? (Neighbor tip, she mouthed to Mark.) What did he say about why he had the drugs? Admitting to any hint of intent to sell?

  When they finished, she steepled her fingers unconsciously, frowning at Mark. “If you’re right, this is a big fucking deal.”

  “We already knew it was a big deal.”

  “Yeah, but bigger than that. If there’s some organized drug activity revolving around this shipping company, where are they getting it from?”

  “International. Has to be. Probably China, looks like most of what they ship is cheap merchandise from manufacturing districts.”

  “Great. Lovely.”

  “You want to go to the police about this? Talk to Dauer, maybe?”

  Lena folded her hands together in her lap and stared up at the ceiling. “Do I? Maybe. Let me think about this.”

  “Okay. Just wanted to run it by you.”

  “It feels a little thin.”

  He thought, briefly, about asking Lena what she thought of Lukas’s proposition to do surveillance, but decided against it on the grounds that she might have a stroke.

  She sighed, shaking her head, still staring at the ceiling. “I don’t know if I like where this is going. It’s cleaner if we say the widow did it. She’s just got her friend for her alibi, no proof she was shopping, Valium prescription, motive, I’m sure she could have gotten the grain alcohol. Plus there’s that fight Gina overheard.”

  “Claims she overheard, with no proof, putting her back at the scene. I don’t want to tell the cops that unless we have to.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but we know, and we can factor that into our decision about whether to try to pursue this somehow. We have to keep in mind, we’re not the cops, we’re not the DA. Our job here is reasonable doubt. Our client is her.”

  “Oh shit,” said Mark suddenly.

  Lena rolled her eyes at him. “You just realize our girl might be in on it too?”

  “It—come on, she doesn’t seem like a criminal mastermind!”

  “Nobody does. She could easily be doing some of the low-level work. For Kupfer? A guy she was banging? And we know she doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with the idea of drugs.”

  “Fuuuuuuuuuck,” he groaned, leaning forward to rest his head on the sharp edge of Lena’s desk. “Are you fucking kidding me? Now we have to worry she was helping smuggle drugs?”

  “Only if we make it an issue. I’m telling you, I think this is one we leave alone.”

  “We’ve already got the forensic accountant—”

  “Yeah, because if he finds something, it’s more likely to suggest a reason for the owner to go after Kupfer, not that our client is actually also guilty of more crimes. Williams had to sign off on all the accounting, it makes him look bad if we find something in there.”

  Mark sighed, straightening back up. “Okay. Fine. I’ll sit on this for now.”

  “Maybe go back and talk to our client again, but don’t rush. We’ve got plenty of time before the trial.”

  “Okay.”

  He wasn’t looking forward to calling Lukas back. Saying yeah, thanks, but no, we’re not going to go there, didn’t seem like it was going to go over well.

  So when he picked up the phone, he was surprised that Lukas started talking over him immediately.

  “Mark,” said Lukas. “Look. I was thinking about this. The Valium and alcohol, we figure that was—he was forced to take that, right? As part of the murder?”

  “Yes? Probably?”

  “How would you force somebody to take a handful of pills?”

  There was a moment of silence. Mark said, slowly, “Probably not with a matchbook.”

  “That’s what I’m fucking saying. Gun, right? Whoever did this has to have a gun.”

  “Client’s never owned one. Not registered. But the cops could claim that she bought one under the table. Doesn’t help much.”

  Lukas huffed in irritation. “I don’t think the cops would have missed this. You honestly think they’re just going to say ‘oh she got one’ like it’s magic or something?”

  “Maybe. Look, I called to tell you Lena doesn’t want to chase the drugs.”

  There was a much longer, uncomfortable silence. “Why not?” asked Lukas.

  “Because right now we have a pretty good alternative candidate to field—the widow—and if we start digging into the drugs, there’s a decent chance we find out our client was part of that.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Right now she’s up for enough shit without tacking on conspiracy, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Fuck,” said Lukas. “I guess that means you don’t want to go after whether there’s drug activity at the warehouse?”

  Mark cleared his throat. He felt defensive. “Yeah. I’m sorry. But Lena made a point, a good point. We’re not the cops. So we don’t go looking for things, we don’t try to bust it open, we do our jobs and we give our clients the fairest trial we think we can get. That’s—that’s it.”

  “What if they end up with proof of the widow’s alibi before the trial?”

  “They’d tell us.” Mark paused. “Technically they’re not required to, legally, but they would. They wouldn’t fucking sandbag us like that.”

  “Do you know if they’re even looking for more proof? You said there wasn’t credit card activity to verify but what if they find security footage?”

  Mark was silent.

  “Yeah. Then your case is up shit creek without a paddle, and God knows with how much time left to trial. Wouldn’t it be helpful to have another iron in the fire?”

  “I’m not kidding, Lena’s not going to pay for surveillance.”

  “I can make a free night sometime.”

  “You have no idea when they’d do something.”

  “I can make a couple of free nights. Maybe not back to back, but I can do it.”

  “Listen to yourself, why the fuck are you doing this? Why are you even offering?”

  Lukas blew out a sigh. It whistled a little, through the phone. “Because this is interesting.”

  Mark waited for him to say something else, and when he didn’t, Mark said, “Fine. Fucking
fine. Just—be careful, okay? Don’t get anywhere near that warehouse, don’t piss anybody off, don’t tip anybody off.”

  “I’ve done this before.”

  “Not for this. Not for murder.” Mark was getting progressively more agitated; he had to stand up, had to pace in the extremely limited confines of the office. “Jesus, you’re just going to go sit and wait for a murderer!”

  “Could just be a drug runner,” said Lukas with infuriating calm.

  “Christ! You know what, you are a real pain in the ass.”

  “Not likely,” Lukas bit out in a singsong voice.

  There was a moment of stunned silence on both sides of the line.

  “Uh,” said Mark, “anyway, tell me when you’re going to, okay? Just—just so I know.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” Lukas hung up without saying anything else. Mark was left staring at the phone in his hand like he’d never seen it before.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lukas spent the rest of the afternoon seething. Christ, who was Mark to talk to him like that, about safety, like he hadn’t had a gun pulled on him before, like he hadn’t had to talk his way out of bad situations. The key was that he was good at seeming calm. And that he was tall. When he unfolded himself out of the car, most of the time the people hassling him had the good sense to think of something else they needed to go do.

  The annoyance had basically faded by the time he’d ascertained that Gina Carville had never owned a gun—always worth double-checking any facts you were given—and that Ron Williams owned several, as did Greg Kupfer. He could easily have been menaced with his own gun, especially if it was the widow. And since there were no bullets found, no shots fired, there was no reason whatever gun had been used couldn’t be back where it was normally stored. No proof it was ever used.

  When he was getting ready for the surveillance, on Friday afternoon, he finally texted Mark. tonight for surveillance.

  Can I talk you out of it? Mark replied instantly.

  no.

  We’re still not paying you

  didn’t think you would

  You are so stubborn

  takes one to know one

  Oh that’s the level we’re going for! That’s great!

  He just shrugged it off and went back to the satellite images of the area. He thought he had a pretty good place picked out. It should have a clear line of sight across a couple of parking lots, so he could use the telephoto lens on the camcorder and get hopefully pretty crisp visuals.

  It was close to six when he finally left. Night surveillance had upsides and downsides relative to daytime—it was harder for people to spot his silhouette in the car, especially with the tinted windows, but it also made him more conspicuous no matter where he was.

  He got a text on the road, but didn’t check it until he’d pulled into the spot. It had the benefit of letting him be backed in, so he could pull out in a hurry if he needed to. It was also, technically, not trespassing, so Mark could take his attitude and shove it.

  Where are you at?

  few blocks away, he said.

  He set up the beanbag he used to keep the camcorder steady on the dashboard, and then came the hard part: settling in.

  The first couple of hours weren’t bad. Trucks pulled in—eighteen-wheelers, unfortunately, big and tall, blocking his view pretty effectively. It was hard to see how he could work around them. He made a mental note to think about it more before the next time. (He already had a feeling there was going to be a next time.) After the first few hours, the jobs tended to settle into a meditative stillness for a while. He sat, shifting occasionally, but mostly trying to make himself invisible in the dusk.

  One of the problems with this kind of work was that it left way too much time to think. And lately, when his mind had free space, it liked to backtrack to the obvious and unfortunate target of Mark.

  Mark got on his nerves. Mark had bad habits—shouting over him when he was trying to talk, getting too worked up about anything at all. And Mark had those fucking eyes. It was bad, it was definitely bad. He’d known Mark for a couple of months, had barely seen anything of him over that time, should have been able to ease up. Let go. And instead— His phone buzzed. He grabbed for it; the screen lighting up was a problem, casting a faint blue glow over the interior of the car. He kept a black mesh draped over the camcorder’s viewfinder, for that exact reason.

  He held it under the edge of his jacket and read the message. How’s it going?

  not much activity. trucks so far look legit.

  Ok just keep me posted

  trust me nothing exciting is going to happen

  SO WHY ARE YOU THERE?

  just in case it does

  He could almost hear Mark throwing up his hands in frustration. It was worth the irritation of having to constantly glance back and forth from the screen to the camcorder.

  It was around one in the morning when something finally did happen. He froze as a black van pulled in—it looked different than anything else he’d seen that evening, and not unlike the van Gina had told Mark about that the drug dealers used. Except why would drug dealers be here, at this hour? It was practically deserted.

  He twitched the camera infinitesimally to the side as someone exited the building. It wasn’t someone he recognized, and he tried to get a clear shot of the face. The man leaned up to the van window, and then the back doors of the van opened, and several boxes went from the shadowy recesses of a propped-open door at the warehouse into the van.

  Jesus fucking Christ, thought Lukas. He hadn’t expected to hit the jackpot his first night out.

  Of course, that made it vastly more dangerous for him to be sitting there. He watched in silence as the van’s back doors eventually closed, and the van pulled out. He struggled with whether to leave—whether he’d be spotted, been spotted—but there weren’t any warning signs.

  He waited until four in the morning, but nothing else happened. He was bone-weary by the time he started the car and pulled out, onto a road that wouldn’t take him in front of the warehouse, before he put his headlights on.

  It was just starting to get light when he finally got back to his apartment.

  *

  Mark woke up to a text from Lukas at the absolutely fucking ungodly hour of five a.m.

  got something interesting, it said, if you’re awake.

  He called back. “’M not awake. Tell me anyway.”

  Lukas’s description of the van pulling in was frankly chilling. “What the fuck,” Mark said, when Lukas finished talking. “You just...watched them load up a van with drugs?”

  “What could be drugs. I don’t know for sure.”

  “Oh, come on. What are the odds that it’s anything else?”

  “I don’t think it’s anything else. But I can’t prove it.”

  “Well, you’re not going to do anything stupid like try, right?” Mark glowered into space as the phone remained obstinately silent. “Right?”

  “Sure,” said Lukas casually.

  “Jesus Christ. Tell me what your stupid plan is.”

  “I don’t have a stupid plan.”

  “I find that exceptionally difficult to believe.” Mark gritted his teeth, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He hit the switch on the lamp, frowning down at the legal pad and pen in the pool of soft light on the nightstand.

  “You don’t seem like a morning person.”

  “Got it in one, Sherlock.”

  “I wouldn’t say I have a stupid plan. I do plan to go back tonight.”

  “What? What are you hoping you’ll find?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe more drug traffic.”

  “More? Okay, no, you know what, no.”

  “I’m acting as a private citizen.” Lukas sounded pissy. “You’re not paying me, you can’t tell me stop.”

  “I can tell you not to do this alone. Christ on a crutch, I can’t believe I’m saying this, take me along.”

  “What? No
! Are you crazy?”

  “You are!”

  “It’s hard enough to keep people from seeing one guy sitting in a car, much less two.”

  “Yeah, well, the cops do! They work in pairs. You can too. Suck it up, you’ll manage.”

  “You really think I can’t do my job?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Mark stopped, inhaled forcefully. “Look. I’m just saying, there might be drug dealers with guns and it freaks me out and we’re not even paying you, and it’s obvious you have a raging hard-on for the idea of being the guy who solves this, and I’m not down with your face turning up on the news tomorrow as an unexplained casualty! So! Either you take me with you or I fucking show up and start hunting for you all around the area and blow your cover to hell.”

  Lukas said nothing, probably speechless with rage.

  “That’s the deal. Either you take me tonight or you don’t go. Or, I mean, you can go and I’ll just ruin everything.”

  “Just like a lawyer,” said Lukas eventually. “Fine. I just won’t go.”

  “Okay, but just in case you were thinking about going anyway, I’ll take a quick drive through and look for your car.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “So you were planning on going. Nice. Real nice.”

  Lukas made a noise like a kettle coming to a boil. “You—!”

  “So, how do you want to meet up, you want to come pick me up or you want me to go up to your place?”

  “I’m going to murder you.”

  “That joke’s in bad taste given our client’s situation.” Mark kept his voice crisp, scribbling something random on the top sheet of the legal pad to maintain the illusion that he wasn’t mad as hell.

  “Fine! I’ll—fuck. Look, I’m not going downtown at rush hour to pick you up, you can fucking meet me at my place.”

  “Great. Text me the address.”

  Lukas hung up. Mark set the phone down and then wadded up the sheet of paper he’d been writing on, and threw it with entirely unnecessary force at the trash can.

  He dropped back down onto his bed and flung an arm over his face. This was some fucking bullshit, was what it was, and he was in no condition to deal with it, nor did he feel like going back to sleep.