Liars & Thieves: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  That weekend as we played with the locks on his sample safe deposit boxes, he wanted to talk about Dorsey O’Shea. “This might be a setup, man. You ever think about that?”

  “Why would Dorsey want to set me up?”

  “Maybe somebody who don’t like you wanta burn you—how the hell would I know, man! You’re the fuckin’ spy, you tell me.”

  “I can’t think of any reason under the sun.”

  “She look like real money. That right?”

  “She’s got it, yeah.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you gettin’ into, and that’s a fact. This man got somethin’ on her besides movies of her gettin’ cock. Whoever looks at faces in those flicks, anyway? You in over your simple head, Carmellini.”

  Perhaps he was right, but Dorsey O’Shea didn’t hang with Willie the Wire’s crowd. Although being a porno star wouldn’t hurt your rep in some circles, a lot of minds weren’t quite that open. If Kincaid was a real son of a bitch he could squeeze her for serious cash.

  That’s the way I had it figured, anyhow. On the other hand, maybe I just wanted to see if I could pop Kincaid’s box at the bank. I had never done a safe deposit box before, so what the hell.

  I called Dorsey on Monday morning, right after I called the agency and said I was sick. “Today’s the day. Pick me up at my house at ten o’clock.”

  She showed up ten minutes late, which was amazingly punctual for her. I got in with her and directed her to a costume place that a friend of mine owned in a strip mall in Silver Spring. When we came out, she was wearing a maternity dress. We had a hard plastic shape strapped to her stomach to fill out the dress. I thought she looked about seven months along. I pushed on her new stomach and it felt real to me—the proper resistance and give. On the way to the bank I drove and briefed her.

  “I don’t know if I can do this, Tommy,” she said when I finished.

  “Do you want those tapes or not?”

  “I want them.”

  “You have two choices—pay up or do a deal. Killing Kincaid will leave the tapes for the cops to find. Odds are he has the tapes in his box at the bank. He thinks they’re safe there. He may have duped them—I don’t know. If we clean out that box we may get something he wants bad enough to trade for. Everything in life’s a risk.”

  “My God!” she whispered.

  “We’re about a mile from the bank. Think it over.”

  When we pulled into the bank parking lot she looked pasty and haggard, which was fine. Anyone who looked at her could see she was not her usual self.

  “All right,” she said.

  I went through it again, covering everything I could think of, including contingencies.

  “Make it good,” I said, and handed her the small bottle I had brought with me. She made a face and drank half of it.

  “All of it.”

  “Jesus, this tastes bad.”

  “All of it.”

  She tossed off the rest of the goop and threw the bottle on the back seat.

  We went into the bank and sat outside the security door until Harriet finished a telephone call and came to open it for us. I had a leather attaché case with me, but it was empty.

  A female loan officer was seated behind her desk talking on the telephone in one of the small offices off the main office area. The walls of all these spaces had large windows in them so everyone could see what was going on everywhere in the bank. The only privacy was in the vault, a series of cubicles for customers to load and unload their boxes, and the employee restrooms, which were right beside the vault. I didn’t see any other employees in this area of the bank.

  Dorsey and Harriet compared due dates after I introduced them, then Dorsey sat at a chair by Harriet’s desk. While Harriet retrieved the master safe deposit box key from her desk, I checked that none of the surveillance cameras were pointed into the vault. They weren’t.

  Inside the vault, Harriet asked, “Do you remember your box number, Mr. Carmellini?”

  “Number six, I think. It was one of the large ones.” I pointed at it.

  Harriet opened the card catalog and looked me up while I watched over her shoulder.

  She removed my card from the box. “If you’ll just sign and date this …”

  I did so and handed her my key. She inserted her master key into my box lock, then mine, and opened it.

  “Do you want to take your box to our privacy area?” she asked.

  Before I could answer, I heard Dorsey moan, then I heard a thud as she hit the floor.

  “My God!” I said, and darted out of the vault. Harriet was right behind me.

  Dorsey lay facedown on the floor, moaning softly and holding herself. The woman from the loan office rushed out and bent over her. Dorsey began retching.

  “The bathroom,” Harriet said, and grabbed one arm. The other woman took her other arm, and they assisted her to her feet. Dorsey gagged.

  As they went through the door of the ladies’, I faded into the vault. Bless Harriet, she had left the master key sticking in the keyway of my box!

  I turned sideways to the camera and removed a halogen flashlight from my trouser pocket. I snapped it on as I aimed it at the camera. The light was so bright I had to squint for several seconds. I placed the light on the cabinet beside the card file and arranged it on a flexible wire base so it was pointed at the camera. The beam would wipe out the picture.

  I knew that Carroll Kincaid also had a large box, based on the amount he had paid in rent. It took just seconds to find his name in the card catalog. He had box number twelve and hadn’t visited it since he rented it.

  Leaving the lock on my box open, I used the master key on Kincaid’s, inserted one of my picks and a torsion wrench in the second keyway, and went to work. After ten seconds, I decided I had the wrong size pick and tried another.

  I closed my eyes so that I could concentrate on the feel.

  Perspiration beaded on my forehead. That never happens to James Bond in the movies; it’s a character defect that I just have to live with.

  Time crawled.

  I concentrated on the feel of the pick.

  Bang, I got it, and felt the lock give the tiniest amount. Keeping the tension on the torsion wrench, I turned the master key … and the lock opened.

  Kincaid’s box had something in it. I didn’t open it. I merely transferred his box to my vault and put my empty box in his, then closed the lock flap. I replaced the master key in the lock on my box, closed it, retrieved my key and the halogen flashlight, and was waiting in the lobby with my attaché case when the women came out of the restroom.

  Dorsey looked as if she had been run over by something. Her face was pasty and her hair a mess.

  Harriet and the other woman helped her toward the door.

  “I’ll get her home,” I said, and slipped an arm around her. “Thank you so much.”

  Dorsey murmured something to the women, then put her hand over her mouth as if she were going to heave again. Harriet opened the door and I half carried Dorsey through it.

  I put her in the passenger seat of the car and got behind the wheel.

  “You son of a bitch,” she snarled. “I nearly vomited up my toenails.”

  “Remember this happy day,” I remarked, “the next time somebody wants you to star in a fuck movie.”

  “Did you get the tapes?”

  “I got something. I’ll go back in a couple of days and get whatever it is.”

  “I’ll go with you. I want those tapes.”

  “Those women have seen you for the last time. When I get the tapes, I’ll call you.”

  She didn’t like it, but she was in no condition to argue.

  When I went back Wednesday afternoon, Harriet gave me a strange look. “How’s your wife?”

  “Better, thank you. You gotta be tough to have a baby.”

  She obviously had something on her mind. “After you and your wife left Monday, I had the strangest call from our security officer.”

 
“Oh?”

  “Apparently the surveillance camera in the vault stopped working while we had your wife in the restroom.”

  I shrugged. “Did it break?”

  “Oh, no! Merely stopped working for a few minutes. They monitor them from our main office in Silver Spring.”

  “That is odd,” I admitted. “While you were in the bathroom I used the time to put the items I brought into my box.”

  “The master safe deposit key was still in the lock of your box after you left.”

  “You have it now, I hope.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I really appreciate the way you and the other lady helped my wife,” I said warmly. “I apologize for the inconvenience, but you know how these things are. I’ve written a letter to the president of the bank. I feel so fortunate that the bank has such wonderful employees.”

  Harriet beamed.

  We opened the locks, and I pulled my box from its shelf. I carried it to a privacy cubicle. There were a dozen videotapes, four whopping big stacks of cash with rubber bands around them, and a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, which was loaded. I put a handkerchief around my fingers as I checked the pistol. The box was the best place for it, I decided; I left it there. The money and tapes I put in the attaché case.

  Harriet and I chatted some more while I put the box away, then I left.

  I played the tapes on a VCR I had at home. Dorsey was on three of them. The same men were on all twelve. I didn’t recognize any of the other women. When I finished with the nine tapes Dorsey wasn’t on, I smashed them with a hammer and put them in the garbage, where they belonged.

  The cash amounted to twenty-seven grand in old bills. I held random bills up to the light, fingered them, and compared them to some bills I had in my wallet. It was real money, I concluded. Tough luck for Carroll Kincaid—easy come, easy go.

  I met Dorsey that Friday evening in downtown Washington at a bar jam-packed with people celebrating the start of the weekend. As the hubbub washed over us, I gave her the three remaining tapes. I put my mouth close to her ear and asked, “Is any of these men Carroll Kincaid?”

  “No.” She refused to meet my eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “For whatever it’s worth, you weren’t the only one.”

  She grunted and slugged her Scotch down as if it were Diet Coke.

  “A thank-you would be in order,” I said.

  She laid a hand on my arm, tried to smile, got up, and walked out.

  I drank a second beer while I contemplated the state of the universe. On my way home I stopped by the first church I saw—it was Catholic—and went in to see the priest.

  “Father, I have unexpectedly come into some serious money. I won’t burden you with an explanation, but I wish to donate it to the church to use in its ministry to the poor.”

  The priest didn’t look surprised. People must give him wads of cash every day. “As you probably know quite well, the need is great,” he told me. “On behalf of the church, I would be delighted to accept any amount you wish to donate.”

  I handed him the money, which I had put in a shoebox and wrapped in some Christmas gift wrap I had left over from the holidays.

  He hefted the box and inspected my wrapping job. “Do you want a receipt?” he said, eyeing me.

  “That won’t be necessary.” I shook his hand and hit the road.

  A few weeks later the agency sent me to Europe, where I spent most of the winter and spring. I didn’t hear from Dorsey O’Shea during my occasional trips back to the States, and probably would never have run into her again had I not gotten into a jam the following summer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  On the first Tuesday in July I found myself driving west from Washington on I-66 under a huge warm front that was stalled over the mid-Atlantic region. It was a gray, rainy day. The wipers squished monotonously on the windshield of my old red Mercedes coupe. A leak between the windshield and the hardtop that I had fought for years dribbled on the passenger’s seat. Apparently the weeks the car had spent this winter alternately baking and freezing outside my apartment building had been too much for the goo and do-it-yourself rubber seals that I used to plug the leak last summer.

  I had only been back in the States a week, which I had spent writing reports, cleaning up routine paperwork at the office, replacing the leaking water heater in my apartment, and putting a new battery in my car. The mindless routine and endless rain had me in a gloomy mood on Monday when my boss, Pulzelli, called me into his office.

  Pulzelli was a bureaucrat to his fingertips, a man who loved the thrust and parry of interoffice politics. He was famous in the agency for his habit of picking his teeth with a pen, which left his enamel splotched with whatever ink color happened to be his current favorite. He was also a bit prissy about saying “damn” and “hell” at the office; I could clean up my act when around quality folk, so that didn’t bother me much. The thing I liked best about Pulzelli was his willingness to do battle to protect the people who worked for him. All in all, he was a good guy to have on your side when the fan was splattering the smelly stuff all over, as happened at the agency a couple times a day. It seemed that we lurched from crisis to crisis, but perhaps that was only my perception.

  “The chief wants me to provide someone for a week at the Greenbrier River facility,” he said. “How about driving up tomorrow morning?”

  The “facility” was really a safe house deep in the heart of the Allegheny Mountains surrounded on three sides by national forest. The cover was that the estate belonged to a wealthy novelist who was rarely there and was paranoid about his privacy when he was. A grass airstrip and a hangar were visible from the highway; the rest of the structures were completely out of sight of the motoring public and could only be reached by a mile-long gravel road. Although the property was fenced and continuously patrolled, the agency beefed up the security detail when the use of the facility warranted it. Apparently this was one of those times.

  On two prior occasions I had spent a week there assigned to the security detail while Russian defectors were being interrogated. If the facility was used for anything other than defector interrogations, I didn’t know about it.

  “From the French Riviera to the Allegheny Mountains,” I said to Pulzelli. “Talk about culture shock—I don’t know if my heart can stand the strain.”

  He grinned, and I saw several stains on his teeth that could have only been blue ink.

  “Another defector?”

  “No one said anything to me.”

  We batted the breeze for a few minutes. He didn’t mention what the security detail was guarding at the safe house, nor did I ask again. He couldn’t tell me what he didn’t know, which was precisely the rationale for classifying information and restricting access to those with a need to know.

  Four people worked for me. Just now one was in the Mideast, one in Japan, and one in China. The only one currently in town was Joe Billy Dunn, the new guy who had just arrived from Delta Force. He strolled in after lunch that Monday, fresh from a training session for new recruits.

  “You’re in charge for the rest of the week,” I told him. “I’m going to be out of the office on assignment. I’ll call you from time to time, see how things are going.”

  Dunn was thirty-two, a few inches short of six feet, wedge shaped, and hard as a brick. He threw himself into his chair, plopped his feet on his desk, laced his fingers behind his head, and sighed contentedly. “Three weeks in headquarters and already I’m in charge. Cream always rises to the top, my mama used to say.”

  “Right.”

  “’Course my ol’ daddy said that shit floats.”

  “Philosophers, both of them.”

  “The rate I’m going up, about Christmas they’re gonna put me in charge of this-here outfit.”

  Dunn wasn’t a yokel, although he liked to play the role. He had a trace of southern accent in his voice, which he exaggerated from time to time. He struck me as one of those people who are best ta
ken in small doses.

  “Don’t start World War III while I’m gone,” I told him.

  Why the powers that be assigned Dunn to my section was a bureaucratic mystery. The people in my section traveled the world breaking and entering, planting bugs, tapping lines, and running wireless surveillance equipment. We didn’t do it all by ourselves, of course; we were merely the experts called in when the local station chief needed more expertise than he had available.

  Dunn’s field was counterterrorism operations. He could jump out of planes in the dead of night, handle and repair any weapon in the army arsenal, speak Arabic and French, and survive indefinitely on mice and snakes in places I wouldn’t even want to fly over. He was quite adept at unarmed combat. Armed combat, too, for that matter. He knew very little about clandestine surveillance. Maybe they expected me to train him. Oh, well.

  So here I was on Tuesday morning, watching rain fall from a slate sky and stream across the windshield, thinking about the problems at the office. I wasn’t in the mood for the radio. The monotonous sounds, endless traffic, and subdued light all had their way with me, so I stopped at a McDonald’s near Front Royal in the Shenandoah for coffee. The hot java and the pit stop helped and I soon felt better.

  I took I-81 southeast down the valley. Sandwiched between trucks, trying to avoid the spray from their tires at seventy-five miles per hour, I rolled by the towns of Strasburg, New Market, and Harrisonburg. I was relieved when I saw the exit I was looking for near Staunton and got off the interstate.

  Another stop, this time for gas as well as coffee, and a handful of paper towels to wipe off the water from the passenger seat of the car. On through the rain I went, westward along a twisty two-lane highway into the mountains. The road attacked the grain of the mountains at right angles, so soon I was downshifting and working my way through switchbacks and blind curves. Over the top and through switchbacks and blind curves down the other side. Across a small stream and up the next one.