The Payback Assignment

by Camacho, Austin S.

  The apartment door was ajar. He pushed it just enough to slip through and pushed it almost closed behind himself. Once inside he drew a penlight from his jacket pocket and quickly checked the room. To his seasoned eyes, scattered shell casings and bullet holes in and around the tattered couch told a story. Not far away he found a splotch of blood on the floor behind the easy chair. It was too red to be the result of a bullet wound. Blood from a shallow cut, he thought, or from someone’s mouth or nose after a blow. Further in he found the fat man Stone had saddled him with. No need to touch him to know what had happened. The left side of his neck was torn, and a hole above his left eye was crusted over with dried blood.

  “Amateurs,” Paul muttered. His contempt for them was so often justified. Pocketing his light, he slipped out of the flat and down the stairs into daylight. Across the street he got into his brown, two door mid sized Chevrolet and pulled away. He would let the police discover the mess upstairs on their own.

  A block away, he was still shaking his head at the incompetents who turned up in his profession. He had offered the fat man and his Mexican friend a chance to step up, to play in the big leagues. An error, certainly, but perhaps not a waste. Natural selection had cleared the field of two men who did not belong there.

  And he learned that he had certainly underestimated this Morgan Stark.

  -25-

  What a wild nightmare, Morgan thought. He had been trapped in a circuit of sensory overload. He had experienced the sex act both as a man and as a woman does, simultaneously. For a man who had not known fear in years, it was as close to terror as he could come. Thank God it was over.

  But when his eyes popped open he realized his dream had been reality. His cheek was pressed into a soft stomach. His right hand rested on a creamy thigh. The rest of the visible world was varying shades of blue. The sheet he was on, the comforter he was under, the walls, the ceiling, the carpet, all blue. Images of the rest of the previous evening returned, and he remembered where he was.

  “Finally awake, sleepy head? About time. Must be a couple of minutes after six.” Felicity was sitting up, propped against two pillows. His head was in her lap and the fingers of her right hand were in his hair. With her left she scanned the Sunday New York Times. A pot of coffee sat on her nightstand, next to a plate of Danish pastries.

  “Morning,” Morgan smiled up at her. “Do you ever look at a watch?”

  “Never,” Felicity said, holding a Danish to his face. “I just have this weird time sense. Now bite this.”

  The smell of fresh baked pastry awakened his hunger. He filled his mouth with the Danish, which was warm and just short of too sweet. He sat up and Felicity handed him coffee. It was hot, black and strong. Perfect. How did she know?

  He could not remember the last time he had just sat in bed with a woman. She looked so comfortable and relaxed - comfortable with her nakedness, comfortable with him. He had to admit that he was pretty relaxed too.

  “So you have a clock in your head and can see in the dark?” Morgan said, playing with her hair.

  “Yep. I think the time thing’s a side effect of my photographic memory.”

  “Jesus, you really are some kind of freak.” He meant it as a joke, but regretted the words as they came out.

  “This from a man who tells me he can find north without a compass and judge distances down to the centimeter. And let’s not forget that danger sense. You must have been designed to be a soldier.”

  “And you to be a cat burglar,” Morgan said, reaching over to snare a chunk of newspaper.

  “Looking for the sports section?” Felicity asked.

  “Actually, I always start with the international news. Got to keep up, you know. That’s how I know where my next job opportunity’s likely to be.” He looked up, noticing Felicity was deep in the fashion news and the society section. The significance of their choices was not lost on him and, he guessed, not on her either.

  After being shot at and shot, ambushed, lured and captured, set up and pursued over the last three days, exhaustion had kept him asleep through nearly fifteen hours. Morgan had slept for the first time in years without a gun within easy reach. Now, fully rested and relaxed, his mind started wandering around the present situation, peeking at it from all different angles.

  “Morgan?” Felicity’s voice shook him out of his reverie.

  “Yeah, Red?”

  “You know, I didn’t think a person in your line of work would be so literate. What made you become a mercenary?” she asked, not looking up. He thought for a moment, sipping his coffee. He could never remember anyone asking him that question before.

  “Well, you know, when I was in the Army, crawling through tunnels, killing commies, I guess I felt like I’d come home. After Vietnam ended, I was discharged, but the idea of coming back to New York after that, it just didn’t feel right. So, I wandered for a few years, trying to see everything, do everything I could think of. After a while I just started picking up merc work because it seemed like a way to go back to doing what I figured I did best. It hasn’t been a bad life, really. Got to admit, I still envy you, though.”

  “Me?” Felicity’s emerald eyes glinted with surprise. “Why on earth?”

  “You might not guess it, but I’ve done a lot more than fight in my time,” Morgan said, ticking off the list on his fingers. “I’ve conducted safaris in the Congo, dived for sunken treasure off the coast of Mexico, climbed mountains in Switzerland, hustled pool in Philly, raced motorcycles in France, even flown photo surveys for prospectors in Canada. Been around a lot, but I still can’t do what you do.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “You’ve got the moves to be a great thief.”

  “Not that stuff,” he said. “What I mean is, I can get by in a couple different languages, but I can’t order properly in a French restaurant, you know? I can choose gear for combat, but I can’t dress myself for a night out at a fancy ballroom. What you got, lady, is class. Maybe I just need to hang around somebody who could teach me that stuff.”

  “What I’ve got,” mused Felicity, “is a lifetime of shoehorning my way into upper crust society. You know, I’ve never told anyone about those times. I was seventeen when I made my first big heist. One rich lady’s jewels can go a long way.” Her eyes drifted off into the past, and Morgan stretched his arms behind his head. He was drifting off with her.

  “Before that I was ragged, living hand to mouth, travelling with some friends all over the Irish countryside. I could have stayed there and probably lived off that one score for months. Instead I sold that jewelry to a fence and bought some decent clothes and a ticket to Monte Carlo. Lord, I wanted to meet the beautiful people, the people who had real money. I figured I’d just look around and go home when I ran out of cash. But the rich turned out to be the easiest pickings. It was like walking up on money lying in the street. I couldn’t just leave it there. Anyhow, now I’m one of the people who’s got real money, but sometimes I wish I’d never left my old friends behind. I’ve built a great life for myself, but I must admit I miss having people to share it all with. It’s hard in my business to have people who are really close. I’m not talking about a lover, mind you, but a real mate. Someone special.”

  “Well, we ought to talk about doing some travelling together or something,” Morgan said. “I mean, after we get our money. And that means we need to get moving on finding your precious brooch.”

  “Well, that’s no problem, my lad,” Felicity said. “I reasoned that no one would hunt out a piece of jewelry so unusual just to sell it. And no man would want to keep it. On the other hand, no woman would want to hide it. So, I looked in the most obvious place.”

  “And just where was that, Sherlock?” Morgan asked.

  Felicity raised an eyebrow. “Was that skepticism I heard in your voice? For shame, lad. That place would be right here, in the society page.” He followed Felicity’s long index finger down to a grainy black and white photograph in the newspaper. It was a party sce
ne as far as he could tell. The kind of thing that passes for fun among the cocktails and hors d’oeuvres set. One member of the tuxedo-draped crowd was a short, portly man with pockmarked cheeks. A slightly taller, heavyset woman in a dark evening gown hung on his arm. Morgan could see that at one time the woman must have had fabulous legs. An oval piece of jewelry sat at her throat. He figured it to be less than two inches long, and a little more than an inch wide. A large teardrop diamond dominated the center of the piece. Pearls surrounded the gem, ranging from the smallest at the top to the largest at the bottom. The pearls were perfectly symmetrical.

  “The woman’s a little past it,” Morgan said.

  “Never mind her,” Felicity said, playfully slapping his head. “That’s the brooch.”

  “Pretty,” Morgan said.

  “Pretty? Why it’s one of the most beautiful pieces I’ve seen in an entire life of crime.”

  “Well anyway, at least we know we’re in the right city,” Morgan said.

  “Yes, and this party was big news,” Felicity said. “I’ll know that brooch’s address by tonight. And then, I’m going to go claim it.”

  “I thought you wanted your money?”

  “After this guy tried to have us killed, don’t you think we ought to be getting both?” Felicity asked.

  “I guess that’s reasonable, Red. But we don’t need to rush out and get it today, do we?”

  “You’re right, I suppose,” Felicity said. “No point pursuing it on a Sunday. So I guess we have a whole day. What say we see the city?”

  An hour later, Morgan and Felicity were walking slowly down Fifth Avenue, with only a steady stream of traffic separating them from Central Park. They had decided to dress casually and show each other New York. The oaks were shedding their summer covering, and Morgan realized he missed the swirling eddies of multicolored confetti that whipped through the gutters. Felicity turned her face away as a bus pulled past, belching carbon monoxide.

  “You know, I can’t remember the last time I used public transportation,” Felicity said when she could face him again. “This could be an adventure.”

  “Yeah, well I think driving would have been a lot more exciting,” Morgan said, “considering that whoever’s looking for us knows your car. I don’t think there’s much danger of anybody coming after us on foot.”

  They had only to walk a couple of blocks to leave the area Felicity was familiar with, and this wasn’t an area of the city Morgan knew well either. But with traffic adding a white noise background they meandered at a gentle pace, enjoying the sun on their faces on a cool, cloudless day. A few blocks south of Felicity’s apartment, Morgan stopped to stare up at a group of tiny hooded cherubs carved into a column beside an ornate wrought iron gate.

  “What the hell’s behind there?”

  “Actually, it’s a French Gothic chateau, believe it or not, right in the middle of New York City,” Felicity said. “Used to be some wealthy fellow’s house. Now it’s the Ukrainian Institute of America.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Who could make something like that up?” she asked with a smile. “And, by the way, your prediction was a little off. We’ve picked up some company. A lot smoother than the idiots who followed me yesterday. About a half a block back.”

  “Damn. Must have been watching the door, waiting for us to come out,” Morgan replied. He casually looked back and zeroed in on a short black man in jacket and tie who worked at not looking back at him. “I’ve got him. Doesn’t look like a shooter. Probably bird dogging for somebody else. That his back up across the street, a block back, in the leather coat?”

  “Uh huh,” Felicity said, leading him to the curb. “There’s a third man a block behind number one on our side. Let’s screw them up and cross the street.”

  As they stepped into the street Felicity looked back, appearing to check traffic. On the other side she stopped, pretending to examine the route map at a bus stop. She nodded her appreciation, speaking to Morgan without looking at him.

  “Very good. Number two moved up. Number three crossed the street back there. You know, the FBI uses a three man team just like this.”

  “If they’re tracking us for somebody else, they’ll do anything not to be made, even if it means losing us,” Morgan said as they resumed their walk. “Did you say you run?”

  “For exercise, yes. Why?”

  Without warning, he turned and started jogging into Central Park. Felicity tucked her purse under her arm and followed. They trotted cross-country where anyone following them would be very obvious. When their aimless run again brought them to a street, he stopped and they both burst out laughing. They were still chuckling a little when a bus stopped in front of them. They boarded without being sure where this bus would take them, not that it mattered. Having shaken their shadows, their tour of New York could now begin.

  Felicity pulled Morgan off the bus before he had time to get comfortable, and walked him down to Seventy-ninth Street and the Museum of Natural History. They wandered the dinosaur halls for a while, followed by a visit to the Rose Center, which looks like a gigantic blue marble encased in a Lucite cube. They got comfortable inside the darkened sphere and sat through the show in the Planetarium. After a short bus ride from Central Park West to Central Park South she lunched him at Trader Vic’s in the Plaza. Morgan glanced around at the Pacific island decor while he sipped from a syrupy, colorful, rum-based drink whose name he had already forgotten. Paper lanterns hung from the bamboo and woven rush ceiling.

  “So, it’s not too much?” Felicity asked, picking up her club sandwich, prodding a bacon strip back under the bread.

  “No, it’s kind of cool,” Morgan said. “Even though that totem pole in the corner is Polynesian, not Japanese. You picked a good one. And I’ve got to admit I dug the museum too.”

  Felicity nodded. “Yes. At first I thought I might overawe you with the planetarium, but you sure showed me. Do you know all the constellations?”

  “I’ve spent a lot of nights under the stars. Hey, here’s a nice surprise,” he added as a slice of cheesecake arrived. It was the dense, golden-topped kind only found in New York, despite what restaurants in other cities advertise. “You’re just full of good surprises.”

  “I’m thinking maybe I can pop another one,” Felicity said. “A museum uptown you’re sure to be liking.”

  Preferring trains to buses, Morgan insisted they take the subway to their next destination. They walked down the steps into the tunnel on Eighth Avenue and took the fabled A train as far as 190th Street. That still left them a short bus ride up to Fort Tyron Park and The Cloisters. Just approaching the building cast Morgan back into medieval times. He gazed at the square tower ahead, taking in the four quadrangles, the nearest topped by a vaulted passageway. A few seconds passed before he noticed Felicity’s stare.

  “I knew you’d love it,” she said. “Takes the mind back to more romantic times, doesn’t it?”

  Morgan turned to take in the view of the gray Hudson below, and the sheer Palisades across the river. “Romantic? I don’t know. A time when warriors were for real, I can tell you that.”

  “Myself, I love the gardens here,” Felicity said, taking Morgan’s arm, “but the really cool stuff is inside.”

  After basking in the beauty of the great treasures of the Middle Ages, Felicity agreed to turn the reins over to Morgan. They were at the very northern edge of Manhattan, but Morgan insisted they board the train again and travel almost to the other end of the island. Their destination was just south of Little Italy.

  Through the market-choked streets of Chinatown, Morgan led her to an obscure little second floor restaurant on Mott Street that he had discovered years ago. Felicity grinned at the more garish nods to tourism in front of the restaurant, like the telephone booths, each wearing a red pagoda roof. The restaurant’s neon sign, hanging over the sidewalk, was partially covered with Chinese characters. In English, it advertised “Real Chinese Food,” and that it was ai
r-conditioned. The roast duckling was superb, and it delighted Felicity to learn that Morgan could converse with the employees, albeit a little roughly, in Chinese.

  After their meal, Morgan walked her a few blocks north to a dark, smoky jazz club in Greenwich Village. This was one of the few places left where cigarettes were accepted, and a wispy haze hung a few feet off the floor, highlighted around the performers by stage lights. Felicity loved the music and spent the entire evening analyzing it riff by riff, even making comparisons to classical works. Morgan just sat back and mellowed out.

  Felicity knew it was after four in the morning when they ended their leisurely stroll in the dark across the street from her apartment building. It was hard for her to classify her own mood. She was tired but energized. Perhaps dreamy was the word she was looking for.

  “I don’t know when I’ve been so comfortable in a man’s company,” she told Morgan, scuffing a toe along the line between two of the hexagonal cement tiles that made up the path out of the park. “Even walking through Central Park in the wee hours, I’ve never felt safer.”