Double Down

by Gabra Zackman

  He stirred, and heard the sound of one of his captors approaching him. He flinched and started to tighten, but the man masquerading as an agent said, “Relax, Carter. You’re about to have a visitor. Take a sip of water.” He put a straw to Buzz’s mouth and Buzz swallowed, grateful for even a brief reprieve.

  “So he won’t admit to anything?” a familiar voice asked.

  “Nothing,” the first agent replied. “We’ve tried it all.”

  “And what’s your next step?”

  “Whatever you say, boss,” said the second agent. “If you want us to take him out, just say the word. We can get him out of here and end him. Easy. Clean. They think he left the country anyway.”

  “Yes,” said the voice Buzz thought he knew. “It might be fine to just get rid of him. But it would be so much better to have him confess.”

  Then, out of one eye, he saw a laptop being placed in front of him. He could barely see the screen, as he was still lying horizontally, attached to the chair. Even so, he knew the face that appeared there . . . It was the face he’d been hoping to see for years.

  “Hello, Buzz,” the man said. “It’s been a long time. You don’t look very well. You’d be in much better shape if you’d been a good little boy and followed orders. Instead you’ve been fucking things up for me for quite a while.”

  “Wait,” Buzz said, his voice hoarse, his one good eye disbelieving. “You don’t mean that—”

  “That’s right,” said the figure on the screen. “I am Baba Samka. Congratulations on never figuring it out. What a fantastic operative you are. Er . . . were. Good-bye, Buzz.”

  9

  Tyka had gone back to Gabriella’s place to do a more thorough search. She realized she’d been a bit hasty before; she’d been thrown off her game. Tonight she was back on track. Since the last time she’d been in the apartment, the place had been well and truly tossed . . . it had the mark of the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mob. Now that the place had been destroyed, she had an easy job looking through it; she figured at this point she’d be the last until the authorities emptied it out. Thankfully the Italian police were known for being slow; it’d be weeks until it was officially taken care of.

  Tyka thought about Gabriella. . . . Where would she hide something she’d want no one to find? Probably outside the apartment, in a lockbox. . . . She gritted her teeth in frustration, wondering how they’d find what the key led to, or if they ever would.

  Tyka pondered the best places to stash one’s secrets. In the walls, perhaps. Or in the pipes. The last place anyone would think to look. But before she started a new search, she took a cursory second look around, through Gabriella’s clothes, her jewelry, her bureaus; in her refrigerator; through files she’d kept and letters she’d written. Nothing. Finding a small toolbox, she decided to do some more thorough work. Starting in the kitchen, she unscrewed the pipes, but still came up empty-handed. Using a small hammer to search for hollows in the walls, she found they were made of the thickest concrete.

  She went next to the bathroom, and tried to unscrew the pipes there, with varying degrees of success—all was as it should be. Then her eye caught upon the toilet. Now, that would be a place to hide something. Underneath all the shit, sometimes there is a pearl, Gabriella used to say. Tyka smiled at the irony and felt around the base of the toilet. Nothing. Then she put her arm all the way in the toilet, reaching as far down as she could. But all was in vain. The water tank was mounted high up on the wall; a chain pull was used for the flush. She had to stand on the sink to access the tank, but in it she found what she sought. Encased in plastic was a bag full of letters, wrapped in ribbon. Tyka thought they looked like love letters, and wondered if this was the key to unlock all the other doors. Tucking her find into her waistband, she put everything back as it was and made her way out.

  ‡‡‡

  When she returned to her hotel she did a quick survey of the room, ensuring that no one had searched her stuff and that no one was waiting for her. She realized Spliff’s favorite saying was true now more than ever: There is nothing more deadly to an assassin than visibility. She was relieved to find herself alone and safe. Relieved . . . and a bit disappointed. She’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that she’d hoped Mahmoud would have tracked her and been waiting in her room. In her bed.

  She drew the shades and lit a few candles, illuminating the small one-bedroom apartment. It was sparsely but tastefully decorated with dark green furnishings and pictures of olive groves. She laid out the letters on the dark wooden worktable, organizing them by date, then grabbed the first few and curled up in the one comfy chair in the living room. It looked like they went back a few years, and she started with the first one.

  G,

  The night I spent with you far exceeded my imagination. Might you join me again sometime soon? Pls burn this after reading . . . I really shouldn’t be writing to you, but when we text it feels too much like I’m still at the office.

  Buona notte, dolcezza mia,

  The Perfect Man

  Tyka went through each letter, scavenging for information. She found some fascinating details, but nothing that told her anything other than the fact that Gabriella had been having an affair, a long-term love affair, with one of her instructors. From the CIA? she wondered. If so, perhaps he was the link she sought, the connector who could explain what Gabriella had been hiding. Maybe he could offer some help that would lead her in the right direction.

  There were a few details in the letters she’d like to look over further, but one thing stuck out. In a letter dated April 6, 2012, there was this fragment:

  . . . kissing you under the Unisphere took me back to my youth, and to all the times I spent in that park, alone, wishing I had a friend. I used to write myself notes and hide them underneath the globe, pretending they were from someone else. Now I can believe they were from you . . .

  Tyka looked up “Unisphere” on the encrypted Agence Nationale network to find images and information relating to a steel replica of the earth, located in Flushing Meadows Corona Park in, of all places, Queens! She frequently had work in New Jersey and Manhattan, and suddenly remembered seeing the globe, a relic from the 1965 World’s Fair. This might just be the lead she’d been looking for. She lit a cigarette and pondered. She’d have to call Mahmoud, she’d simply have to; he was the only one who could help her with this. But was that really true? Or did she just want him, more deeply and more desperately than she’d ever wanted anyone before? She smoked her cigarette and thought. “Fuck it,” she said aloud. “At least he can help me figure all this out.” Then she sent him a text:

  M. Found something I think will help us. Want to come over and talk? Sorry I left so quickly. Ukrainian girls don’t like to be held too tight. Casa Giuditta Apts. Via Savona 10. Bring the wine. T

  Then she sat back to wait for his response.

  ‡‡‡

  Mahmoud had just come to when he was punched in the face. Again. His hands were bound behind him, he’d clearly been drugged, and he felt woozy and beaten up. He opened his eyes slowly to find that he was in the back room of the trattoria he and Cécile had been at earlier, and as his eyes adjusted he recognized the beefy face of Rocco “the Beast” Bellini. Shit. Not his best day.

  “Hello, Hunter,” Rocco said with a smile. “You didn’t think we’d forget to thank you for scaring us earlier, now, did you? And by the way, your girlfriend just sent us an address . . . Casa Giuditta . . . signed T. Is this from the pretty dark-haired lady who took care of us so nicely before? Should we take care of her nicely, too?”

  “Please,” Mahmoud said, beginning to realize with horror that he’d completely compromised Tyka, “that’s someone else. Leave her alone.”

  At this the men laughed. Rocco spoke to them in Italian, and Mahmoud understood the vile things he said. “Shall we leave her alone, like you left us alone, Hunter?”

 
; “I’m sorry, Rocco. I just needed some information. I didn’t harm you.”

  “Right. But wasn’t it you who harmed some of my family?” Mahmoud paused and swallowed, and Rocco went on. “Yes, thank you for being honest. So tell me, why should I spare you, or your girlfriend?”

  He started to reply but was punched several times in the face. Just before he passed out he had one final thought . . . that he was cursed. That every woman he loved would be taken from him. He couldn’t save any of them. And the one who was about to be wiped out didn’t even know that he loved her. Praying to God and imploring the spirits of his ancestors for help, he closed his eyes and let the blackness take him.

  10

  By three a.m., the Bod Squad was in the surveillance van, on their way to Queens, New York. “Really, Bossman,” Jackson said. “We needed to take off at three in the morning?”

  “I wanted to beat the morning traffic.”

  “Yeah, well, we’d beat the morning traffic up in Canada if you’d like to go a little farther.”

  “Buck up and drive, Jackson. I told you coffee is on the house.”

  “Too bad sleep isn’t. And only coffee? I think I’ve earned steak and eggs for this one.”

  “Steak and eggs it is. Queens is famous for its diners, so we’ll find our way to one where you can get anything your heart desires.”

  “Well, Boss, I’ve already got that sleeping in the back.”

  The Boss laughed, then turned serious. “I’m happy for you, Jackson. I don’t think I’ve had a chance to tell you that.”

  “Thanks,” Jackson said, a smile forming at the corner of his mouth. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure you’d approve. Not that I would have cared, of course.”

  “Understood. And I know I’ve misjudged you. I’m sorry for that. I never realized that being an immature dickhead was such a good cover.”

  At that, both men had a good laugh. Jackson had indeed convinced them all that he was a bit different than he really was: In Morocco he went by another name as well as a different persona; he was harder there, fiercer. Within the last week, in the midst of their manhunt for Baba Samka and Buzz Carter in Tangier, he’d revealed a whole different side of himself to them, and it was a big part of the reason that Lisa Bee had finally fallen in love with him.

  “You know, of course,” the Boss said, “that while I’m happy for you, I’ll be watching you like a hawk. I’m very protective of the Bee. You mess with the best and you’ll pay for it.”

  “And how you gonna make me pay, Bossman? Surely not with your atrocious poker skills.”

  “Very funny. I have my methods. Consider this fair warning.”

  “Consider me warned.” Then Jackson turned to look him in the eye. “But let me make it clear . . . I’d rather die than compromise that rock star of a chick. So if she’s ever hurt, it’ll be over my dead body.”

  The Boss’s smile spread from ear to ear. “Now that’s what I like to hear, Jackson. Mind keeping your eyes on the road? No need to kill all of us to prove a point.”

  “Roger that, Bossman.”

  ‡‡‡

  Susannah had contacted AJ in Denver to get them additional intel on where they were headed. AJ seldom slept, and it was a couple of hours earlier there anyway. She was only angry because Susannah had interrupted her in the middle of an all-night game of Fuckball—strip billiards—with one of the higher-ups in the Denver Police Department. Upon getting the call from Susannah, AJ summarily kicked Chief Effler off her pool table and powered up mission control. Not that it was ever powered down, of course.

  Mission control was located in the basement of an abandoned-mortuary-turned-highly-successful-restaurant in the Highlands area of Denver. It was a great cover, and no one knew there was a basement, let alone that someone lived there and operated a surveillance system that rivaled the State Department’s. AJ had gone to Stanford for computer science but left before completing her degree; she was head and shoulders above the rest of her class, she was fucking the professor who taught her to write code, and other than that she was bored to tears. Within five years of leaving school she’d found her way to a wealthy life lived entirely on her own terms: She was employed for a variety of skills, from hacking to surveillance to data recovery, and mostly worked with high-end corporations, or whoever had the money to pay for her time. And she had three different lives set up in three different cities, with different identities known to her clients in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.

  She had chosen to base herself in Denver because it was between all of them, and it was a place where she could be totally anonymous. The only problem she encountered was that it was too dry and she had to keep her humidifiers running all day and an endless supply of fine lotions on hand. But in Denver, she could be herself . . . AJ “Fingers” Jones, daughter to a Guyanese mother and an American father who’d left her in foster care in Baltimore from the time she was a baby. She’d been passed around to various households for years; her final foster family lived in Alexandria, and she’d been taken in by them when she was ten. She’d met Susannah on her first day of school, when Susannah asked if AJ wanted to sit with her at lunch. AJ would never tell her friend, but she’d never forgotten that moment: how isolated she had felt, how scared, how alone, and how Susannah’s friendship had saved her. Because of that one moment, she knew she’d do anything for Susannah for the rest of her life.

  Now she’d done a bunch of research on Queens, and on Woodside, the neighborhood the Bod Squad was headed to. She turned up the music, poured a glass of red wine, lit a cigarillo, and listened for a moment to Ray Charles singing “Georgia on My Mind.” It was a recording that always brought her back to her youth, to growing up in Virginia and then leaving it as fast as she possibly could. She’d never fit in there—she’d never really fit in anywhere—but at least she’d made a career of not fitting in, so she’d made peace with it. She picked up the phone to call Susannah with the intel.

  ‡‡‡

  Susannah was dead to the world when her phone rang a jazz riff. She and Lisa Bee had crashed out in the back of the van; now she quickly woke and picked up. “Fingers?”

  “Legs. You sound like you’ve been either fucked or punched.”

  “Neither.” Susannah chuckled. “But it feels oddly like both.”

  “Sorry,” AJ said. “I know it’s been a tough time. What’s up with Chas? What does he think is going on?”

  “He’s on his way back. He doesn’t know anything. I texted him about the fucked-up Carnivale case and made it sound like we were following a lead related to it. At the moment it looks like we can’t tell each other anything.”

  “Well, welcome to love between undercover agents. Great sex. Terrible communication.”

  “Exactly. But very good role playing.”

  AJ let out a laugh that sounded like a foghorn. “Right? Sounds fun to me. Okay, you want some things to go on?”

  “Sure. Lisa Bee’s still asleep, but let me get the boys to listen in.” She put AJ on speakerphone and knocked on the sliding window that divided the front of the van from the back. The Boss opened it and ducked his head through.

  “You get some shut-eye, Legs?”

  “A bit. AJ’s on speakerphone with some info for us.”

  “Hey, Lady Fingers,” Jackson shouted from the front. “Let me hear that sexy rumble.”

  “Hello, Jackson,” AJ said with a smile in her voice. “You keeping your eyes on the road?”

  “As long as you’re not here to distract us.”

  “Very funny,” Lisa Bee said, sitting up and joining the conversation, her curly red hair matted on one side and sticking straight up on the other. She removed the earphone from her left ear and music could be heard faintly from the earbud. “Sorry, Fingers. Jackson thinks he can get away with anything when I’m listening to Madonna. Sadly, he’s right.”

  At thi
s, they all laughed. “Sounds like you’re off to a rollicking start,” AJ said, amused. “Anyhoo, here’s what we’ve got, gang. Listen up.” They heard the clack of keys, the faint sounds of jazz, and an audible swallow. “Queens, New York. Home to Rockaway Park, the old World’s Fair globe, the U.S. Open’s tennis center, and Citi Field, home of the Mets (blech, but then I’ve always been a Cubs fan, so I can’t cast aspersions). Woodside is on the 7 train, known to be a total black hole in the New York City subway system. Don’t take the train while you’re there, kids . . . you’ll never make it to your destination. Queens sits on top of Brooklyn and is between Manhattan and Long Island. Awesome beaches there, by the way, if you have the time . . . I once fucked a guy who lived in Montauk and I kept the affair going because of his beach house—”

  “Right, Fingers,” the Boss interrupted. “Let’s keep it moving.”

  “Yes,” Lisa Bee said enthusiastically, “but rain check on this story. I get the feeling there are more where that came from.”

  Susannah chuckled. “Believe me, you have no idea.”

  “Thanks, broads. More on that anon. Okay. What else? It’s pretty diverse as a borough, which means yours truly digs it . . . lots of races, lots of religions, lots of economic diversity. High-rises, apartment buildings, but mostly known for a lot of single-family homes, like on the block you’re going to be checking out. The airports are there, some cool film studios and a racetrack. Oh, and fantastic diners. Truly the best.”