AHMM, March 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The man's nom de guerre was Paul Koestler. He was sharing a table with a pretty young woman with short black hair. Neither of them was checking watches, neither staking out the door. Marley wouldn't have noticed except that he had known Paul Koestler for twenty years. Here, in his hotel, the coincidence was too much.

  "Has the money been transferred?” Koestler asked when Marley sat down. He had a dense black beard that gave him a benign look, like a country priest.

  "You're working for Rash now,” Marley said. Not a question.

  "This is Vikki.” He spelled it. “Charles and I took a couple of shots at each other once. I wasn't trying to hit him. I wanted him to keep his head down. It kept popping up over that balustrade, so I kept shooting."

  From the girl's expression, she had heard stories like that before. She was drinking fizzy water with several wedges of lime stuffed into the glass. It had taken Marley a moment to realize she wasn't French. Her eyes were almost as dark as her hair, which she had bleached pale on her upper lip and arms. Her English hadn't an accent. “I'll bet Charles was trying to hit you,” she told her companion.

  "He always took his job seriously."

  "What are they buying?” Marley demanded.

  "What do you care?” The man pushed a fat envelope across the table. “Your commission."

  Marley didn't touch it.

  "We'll just leave this here,” Rash's man said.

  * * * *

  Under his arm the envelope was as thick as a Sunday newspaper. He counted the money in his room. When he converted the packets of Swiss francs and euros into dollars, there was slightly more than a hundred thousand. He was supposed to take note of that, that he was dealing with people who didn't cheat friends on the exchange rate. In the morning, he visited two banks where he was known. He called the phone numbers Helen Turner had left. No one answered. He took a taxi to the single-star hotel in the Marais where the Taziks had stayed. A clerk said the two young men had demanded a taxicab to Orly Airport the previous evening. Marley understood. They had wanted to be in Brussels when the banks opened.

  He asked himself what they were buying. Five million, less commission, would enlist a couple of colonels who weren't sophisticated enough to know how much their disloyalty was worth. It might buy a minor cabinet minister who had been passed over too often when bank accounts were being stuffed. There might even be enough money left for office equipment. But since the vendor was Rash, the bank deposit would pay for hardware, not people. You couldn't equip an insurrection on that kind of money, but you could blow up the Sunday market every week and shell a few police stations.

  Or, you could cut right to the heart of things. With a long-range rifle, the old despot could be retired without bothering with faxes and street protests.

  Marley left the Taziks’ hotel, watching doorways and automobiles, then calmed himself with a drink and realized he was being as paranoid as a trainee. Go-betweens were meant to be deceived. He had no need to know. He had done his job, and nobody would care what he did next. He read the newspapers that afternoon and was napping badly when an acquaintance from the French internal security office phoned.

  "Alex Gresov and Juma Balzin are friends of yours, Charles?"

  "What are the names?"

  "Don't bother pretending,” the intelligence officer said. “It would be good if you left France this evening."

  * * * *

  "I don't get it,” said Chick Donaldson. “What went wrong?"

  "I don't know."

  "You were there. Who did Rash send?"

  "An Englishman who calls himself Paul Koestler sometimes.” Marley didn't mention the girl. She hadn't mattered.

  "So the Tazik boys were buying guns after all,” Donaldson said, almost whistling to prove his astonishment, but that would have overdone it.

  "If you say so."

  "Where were they killed?"

  "They were found in the back of a taxicab a kilometer from Orly."

  "They got careless. Tazik state security must have been onto them."

  "Yes, that must have been it."

  "You didn't spot anyone?"

  "No."

  "Damned embarrassing."

  "Yes."

  "Well, it wasn't your fault, Charles. I'll make sure the director understands that."

  "That's good of you."

  "The DCI's grateful you lent your experience."

  Marley nodded.

  * * * *

  It was a passable fall day, and after he got rid of Donaldson he continued downhill to visit the zoo's aviary. His troublesome leg was taking his weight. He called Collins, whose secretary said he was busy. He called a banker friend in Paris, who promised to ask the question of people he knew in Brussels. Marley couldn't think of anyone else to call.

  The next morning, the Paris banker reported that the Washington, D.C., bank's five million dollars had never arrived in Brussels.

  "I don't suppose your contacts extend to Switzerland?” Marley asked.

  "Sorry, Charles."

  It didn't have to be Switzerland. Liechtenstein, Austria, even France were good places to ferret away cash. Where the money had gone didn't matter. The question was who? Whose laundry had he fetched?

  Confronting Collins would be dramatically satisfying, but Marley understood he would be revealing himself as twice the fool Collins assumed he was. Instead of showing his anger, he was cheerful when they had lunch several days later. He talked as if the Paris job were almost forgotten. Finally, he let a note of complaint creep into his voice. “Donaldson debriefed me. He says he doesn't blame me, but I think he does."

  Collins sighed. “Well, it was a ballsup, wasn't it, Charlie?"

  Marley set down his fork. “Not altogether. Two boys who were a nuisance got lured into the open."

  "You think that was the operation?"

  "No, you can hire a hit for a lot less. I think it was a package deal. A bribe for someone in Tazikstan, maybe the oil minister, with the reformers taken off as a bonus. What I wonder is who put the package together? Rash? Helen? You?"

  "Charlie, Charlie.” The banker leaned back from the table. He'd eaten only salad. His tie and shirt were spotless.

  "Do you expect your client will get his pipeline concession?” Marley asked.

  Collins's face was made for smugness. “I'm certain of it. Wouldn't have bothered otherwise."

  "Did Popper know?"

  "What do you suppose?"

  He was my protege, Marley thought.

  Collins's smile faded into a smirk of annoyance. “What do you care? You got your cut. You should buy this lunch, damn it, and be grateful people still think of you."

  Copyright (c) 2006 John C. Boland

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  DAVE STEVENS, I PRESUME? by DAVE ZELTSERMAN

  I was yelled at, bitten, kicked, spat on, and punched by some very attractive women I'd never seen before.

  The bar seemed pricey for Wichita, but they had the brand of gin I liked and they allowed smoking, and after a long day on the road I figured I deserved to indulge myself a little. I was on my third martini when I noticed her, and she was certainly worth noticing—brunette, mid twenties, slender, very nice figure, which the miniskirt she was wearing didn't do much to hide.

  I don't think I was so much staring at her as gazing in her direction, but the look she gave me turned me straight around. If I wasn't a little high from the martinis, I would've put two and two together faster, when I caught her out of the corner of my eye, making a beeline toward me. Before I knew it, she was next to me, tossing her drink in my face. I made the mistake of letting go of my glass to reach for a napkin, and my seven dollar Bombay Blue Sapphire martini was left dripping down my neck also.

  "You dirty rotten bastard,” she forced out in a breathless tone, her small hands clenched into fists. “I hope you rot in hell."

  She then turned on her heels. I sat silently and watched as a hundred and five pounds of pure fury stormed out of the b
ar. Then I mopped up my face as best I could, silently cursed Dave Stevens, and signaled to the bartender for another drink.

  "That was quite a show,” the bartender said as he raised an eyebrow. He was a big man, mostly bald, with way too much flesh on his face—like a couple of extra layers of stucco had been slapped on. He tried giving me a smile, but there wasn't much life to it.

  "I never saw her before,” I told him.

  "I would've bet otherwise."

  I didn't bother responding. What would've been the point? Somewhat reluctantly, he poured me a fresh martini. I could tell he'd rather have me leave his establishment than sit there at his bar, but hell, it wasn't my fault that gal threw her drink in my face and then mine. I just had the bad fortune of looking exactly like Dave Stevens.

  If this had been the first time something like that had happened to me it probably would've left me stunned, but it wasn't the first time. Far from it. So I sat glumly drinking my freshly made martini, and over the din of voices and ice clinking in glasses and other bar noises, I could make out the faint rumbling sound of the universe laughing over the cosmic joke that it had on me.

  And it was a good one.

  Given how poorly I always did with women, it surprised me how often something like this did happen to me. But this Stevens guy has something I don't—charisma, extreme confidence, animal magnetism, I don't know exactly what—but he has no trouble breaking hearts and inspiring violent passion in the girls he dumps. In contrast, the few girlfriends I've broken up with over the years couldn't have cared less.

  I finished the martini and asked the bartender for another. As I sat there waiting for it, I thought of Dave Stevens, something I hadn't done in almost two years. While he might look exactly like me, there's something special about him that women gravitate toward. There's no denying that. One of these days I'll meet up with him and see if I can find out what it is. Maybe also knock out a few of his teeth in the process.

  My own name is Andy Lenscher. For seven years I sold copier machines in the Mid-Atlantic, and during that time somehow ended up shadowing Stevens. I'd be sitting in a bar in Reston, Virginia, or Scranton, Pennsylvania, wherever, and invariably run into one of Stevens's pissed-off and furious ex-flings. As best I could figure out, he sold women's undergarments in the same cities that I sold copiers. I know some of you are probably thinking that this is going to turn out to be one of those split personality stories where in the end I realize I am in fact Dave Stevens. Nope, no such luck. This is just one of those odd coincidences where the two of us kept traveling in the same cities, and I always had the misfortune of being several months behind him and paying the price for his bad behavior.

  During those years, I was yelled at, bitten, kicked, spat on, and punched by some very attractive women I'd never seen before. At first I tried to explain myself to these women, but of course it turned out that I also sound exactly like Dave Stevens. I learned the best thing to do was to keep quiet, try my best to protect my vital organs, and hope their rage would blow over quickly. After one of them tried to run me over in a downtown Bethesda crosswalk, I put in a transfer to another sales district. The problem was my company didn't want to move me—I was too valuable where I was and had too good a rapport with my customers. They dragged their heels and five months later I was shot at outside a motel in Pittsburgh. Whoever it was missed, but that was the final straw. I quit my job and joined up with a competitor who was able to offer me their Midwest district.

  That was two years ago. The Midwest was far less lucrative than my old territory, and I made about half the money that I used to, but at least I didn't have Dave Stevens to worry about.

  At least until those two drinks were tossed in my face.

  With a sick feeling in my gut, I realized Stevens must have switched territories also, probably for his own safety. Once again I was shadowing the sonofabitch. And once again the cosmos was having a good long laugh at my expense.

  I didn't sleep much that night. After Wichita, I was going to be driving north to Topeka, then on to Lawrence and Kansas City, and all I could think of was running into more of Stevens's ex-flings. As it was, I was wide awake at six thirty, when the alarm went off. I showered and dressed quickly, and after checking out of my motel, found a roadside diner where I ordered corned-beef hash and poached eggs. I didn't have much of an appetite, mostly pushed my food around the plate, but the three cups of coffee helped. The waitress, a motherly type who looked like she could be anywhere from sixty to eighty, gave me a concerned look.

  "What's wrong, hon?” she asked. “You hardly touched your food. Anything wrong with it?"

  "Everything's fine. I guess I'm just not as hungry as I thought I was."

  She gave me a sympathetic smile. “Hon, you should try to eat. And if you want to tell me what's troubling you, I'm all ears."

  There was nothing but genuine concern in the smile she gave me. That's the thing with Midwesterners, they're the most decent salt o’ the earth types you'll ever run into. But how in the world could I tell her, or anyone else for that matter, about Dave Stevens?

  "Nothing more than I got a long day ahead of me,” I told her. “But I'll make more of an effort.” I took several bites of the hash while she stood and watched approvingly. The bill for my food came to five dollars and seventy-four cents. When she turned to take another customer's order, I dropped twenty dollars next to my plate and left the diner.

  I had several sales calls to make before leaving Wichita. It was at the first one, The People's Credit Union of Wichita, where I had an appointment to talk with the operations manager about switching their business to us, when I spotted her. I stopped dead in my tracks. According to the plaque on her desk she was Lena Hanson, and she worked as a loan officer. She was sitting down so I could only see her from the waist up, but that was enough to know she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen or was ever going to see. For a long moment I stood there lost in her golden hair and green eyes and perfect soft lips, watching as she absent-mindedly chewed on the end of a pen.

  She sensed that I was staring at her. As her eyes caught mine, at first there was nothing but a slight frown, then I could see the recognition hit her.

  She knew Dave Stevens, dammit!

  I wanted to bolt, pretend I never saw her, anything, as long as I wouldn't have to stand there and watch her hate me. But I couldn't move. It was like my legs had turned into bags of wet sand, and I had no strength to move them. So I stood frozen, dreading what was coming, but unable to look away. The hatred never came, though. Her face showed something more like surprise, maybe even fear. She seemed to freeze up too, her color dropping several shades. Then, looking around to see if anyone was watching us, she stood up and came out from behind her desk. As I looked at her I realized she was even more beautiful than I had at first imagined. Her body was damned near perfect. Thin, athletic, but with all the right curves. And those legs, Jesus, I felt my mouth grow dry as I looked at those legs.

  Moving cautiously, she walked over to me, stopping about two feet away. “How ... what are you doing here?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  There was a faint smell from her, something like magnolia blossoms, at least that's what I would've imagined magnolia blossoms to smell like. I wouldn't have been able to move away from her if my life depended on it. Not if you'd put a knife to my throat. Over the pounding in my head, I heard myself telling her that I had to see her, that I couldn't leave things the way we had left them before.

  Fear flickered for a moment in those heart-stopping green eyes. “Meet me tonight at Maloney's. Seven o'clock. We'll talk then."

  She glanced around to check whether anyone had noticed us, and then walked back to her desk. She seemed like some fragile, beautiful porcelain statue as she sat staring intently at her hands folded in front of her, her face tense, unmoving. I watched her for a long moment and then turned and left the office. I didn't stop until I got into my car.

  I sat there feeling shaky inside
. After taking a few deep breaths, I called the manager at the credit union whom I was supposed to meet and told him I had to cancel our appointment. He didn't much care. There was only a small chance he would've switched his business anyway. After hanging up, I closed my eyes and thought about Lena Hanson.

  I had never pretended to be Dave Stevens before. I didn't intend to with Lena either, but the words just came out of me. Of course I could've gone back in there and told her who I really was, but I didn't. I had to meet with her. I had to have a chance with her somehow. The thought of doing anything else was suffocating. Later I'd figure out a way to set things straight between us, but until that time I would be Dave Stevens. I had no choice.

  With the way I was feeling, I knew there was no point in going through with any sales calls, so I canceled the rest of the ones I had that day. I couldn't keep from thinking about Lena, about the fear I saw in her eyes. I got the sense that she wasn't so much afraid of Stevens as she was of being seen with him. Then it hit me. It was only a hunch, but in my gut I knew it was more than that.

  I drove to the public library. While they only kept a week's worth of Wichita Tribunes on the shelves, I was able to access all the old copies I needed online. After an hour and a half of searching, I found what I was looking for. Five months earlier two hundred thousand dollars was reported missing from the credit union where Lena worked. I found more stories about the missing money over the next few weeks’ worth of papers, but what it came down to was that they had no leads or suspects.

  I sat for a while thinking it over. Then I found a yellow pages, copied down the numbers of the motels in the area, and went back to my car so I could have some privacy. I went through the list of phone numbers, calling each motel and telling the clerk that I was Dave Stevens and thought I might have left my Rolex in my room the last time I was there. The first eight motels had no record of a Stevens ever staying there, the ninth confirmed that I'd been there five months earlier. The desk clerk I spoke with gave me the date Stevens checked out—the day before Lena's credit union had reported the missing money. He insisted that no Rolex had been left in the room. I told him I'd probably misplaced it somewhere else and thanked him for his time.