Bird Dogs: A John Crane Novella

by Mark Parragh

  But this was larger than any Crane had ever seen, and appeared to be hand-tooled. He guessed most of the interior space was taken up by the battery. It would be useless once the battery died. There was no point in making the battery replaceable. Once it stopped, the clock would lose synchronization. And this one had apparently kept running quietly in a Buenos Aires slum for the six years Tamarind spent in prison.

  A theory was beginning to form in Crane’s mind. One that involved Tamarind realizing he was going to be arrested for blackmail and extortion, and hiding the money…somewhere. Someplace that would use its own handmade security tokens to protect his identity. Then Tamarind left the key with people he must have known from his past.

  It was an interesting theory, but there wasn’t much Crane could do to test it at the moment. He took out his phone and snapped a few pictures of the unit for Josh, then put it back in the safe and closed it again.

  The iPhone was still missing.

  If it wasn’t in the safe with the security token, then where the hell was it? There was a charging dock on the room’s desk, but no sign of the phone. Crane checked the room again, careful not to disturb the positions of items while still being thorough. He even checked in the rumpled sheets. It simply wasn’t there.

  He was considering his next move when the door beeped and the lock clicked open.

  Crane felt a rush of adrenaline, and his hand went for the gun he wasn’t carrying. There was nowhere to hide where he wouldn’t be spotted. He went into a combat stance and prepared to strike out as Tamarind came into the room.

  It was the chambermaid. She looked at him in surprise as Crane forced himself into a more casual position.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “I can come back.”

  “No,” he said, “that’s okay. I was just heading down to the bar. I’ll get out of your way.”

  He smiled at her as he squeezed past her cart in the doorway and then walked calmly down the hall. He felt his heartbeat start returning to normal as he let himself back into his own room.

  He put Josh’s devices back in their bag and paced to the window. Fortune was still refusing to smile on him. He had a guess about the nature of the security token, but he still didn’t know any more than he knew before taking the risk of breaking into Tamarind’s room.

  Crane assumed a deep search of Tamarind’s phone would answer all kinds of questions, but before he could search the phone, he had to find it.

  CHAPTER 6

  By midday, Crane was back in the lobby reading the local papers and waiting for Tamarind to make an appearance. It was a little after noon when he came down. This was definitely the tense and angry Tamarind rather than the handsome charmer. He stormed the concierge desk and snapped at the attractive woman there that his cell phone had been stolen. The concierge was all apologies and understanding. She offered to try calling it from the desk, but that didn’t satisfy him.

  “Good God, do you think I didn’t try that?” he snapped.

  He insisted the cleaning staff must have taken it, which the concierge quietly but firmly denied. Crane watched them argue, wondering what had actually happened to the phone. It was possible a pickpocket had taken it off him, though Crane probably would have spotted that. And Tamarind would have noticed before now.

  Eventually, Tamarind shook his head and sighed. “Forget it.” Then he stalked out the front doors. A moment later the brunette Crane had noticed twice yesterday appeared around a corner and followed him out. That was three times. So, enemy action it was. He wasn’t the only one following the gigolo.

  The brunette was a complication. Tamarind could wait until he’d figured out who she was and how she was involved. Crane set down his copy of Apertura and strolled out onto the Avenida Alvear. It was a fine spring afternoon with only a hint of cloud in the sky and a comfortable breeze rippling through the trees. The sun gleamed off white stone and warmed black iron gates. He saw the brunette turning the corner onto Montevideo. She followed Tamarind, and Crane followed her.

  Tamarind led them a few blocks, past exclusive shops, boutique hotels, and cafes. Eventually, Tamarind crossed the street and went into an upscale shopping mall called the Patio Bullrich. The brunette followed him in. Crane waited for the light and then trailed after them.

  The Bullrich was a temple to luxury, spattered with brands like Gucci, Tiffany, and Akiabara. The mall was crowded, and Crane realized he couldn’t keep track of both of them. He assumed the brunette would keep an eye on Tamarind, so Crane focused on following her. He kept about a hundred feet behind her as she headed up the escalator, and then window shopped his way past the Christian Lacroix store, then a stationery shop.

  Suddenly, the brunette turned and slipped into a side passage. Crane stopped short and checked his surroundings. Something had happened. Had Tamarind spotted her? Had one of them spotted him? He didn’t like having to hang back this far, losing eyes on one of his targets. Tamarind could be anywhere.

  Crane advanced to where the side passage entered the main concourse and quickly looked around the corner. The hallway was empty. It passed restrooms and a water fountain, then turned a corner. It probably led to the access corridor that ran along the rear of the stores. He walked slowly down the hallway, checking over his shoulder frequently. The dull roar of the mall faded. As he approached the corner, Crane drifted to the inside wall and leaned carefully around.

  He caught motion at the edge of his vision and instinctively snapped his head back. Two metal darts hissed past his face, trailing glittering wires. They clattered against the far wall and Crane heard the distinctive crackle of a Taser.

  The brunette was there, her back pressed against the wall, holding the Taser in an outstretched hand. As the wires fell to the floor, Crane came around fast. She turned to face him, and the set of her lips and her caramel eyes said she was angry, not afraid. Crane smashed her wrist against the wall. Then he pivoted to take her kick on the muscles in his thigh instead of his crotch.

  The darts were spent, but the Taser’s electrodes were still arcing current. Crane smashed her wrist against the wall again. This time she dropped it. Her left hand went for her bag, but Crane spun her off-balance and twisted her arm behind her back. The bag fell from her shoulder, and Crane ripped it away and tossed it down the hall.

  She tried to stomp his instep, but Crane shifted his leg away. Then she slammed her skull back into his face. Crane turned enough to take the impact on his cheekbone, but it still unsettled him. He fought through the pain and forced her against the wall, pressing his body tight against hers.

  “You tell him,” she grunted. “Tell him she’ll send someone else. She’ll never leave him alone!”

  What the hell was she talking about? “Tell him yourself,” Crane snapped. “The gigolo and I aren’t acquainted.”

  “Then why are you following me?”

  “I’m following him, damn it!”

  They stood there for a long moment, Crane breathing hard against the back of her neck. Her body felt taut against his, trembling with energy. He could smell her skin, feel her short, dark hair brushing against his cheek.

  “I think maybe neither of us wants to be discovered like this,” she said at last.

  She had a point there. It would look rather compromising. Crane patted her down and found no more weapons.

  “Your ID’s in the bag?”

  She turned her head around as far as she could, trying to get a better look at him, her expression still angry. This was a woman who didn’t accept losing well. Finally, she nodded.

  “I’m going to check it. Don’t try anything.”

  Crane took a deep breath and backed away. She turned and watched him silently as he retrieved her bag and quickly searched it.

  Crane nodded toward the Taser on the floor and its untidy mess of wires. “Get rid of that before someone sees it.”

  He found a wallet and flipped through it. “Alexa Ibarra,” he read off her Mexican driver’s license. Behind it he foun
d a Private Investigator’s license and business cards for an agency in Mexico City.

  She bundled the Taser cartridge and wires into a ball and stuffed them into a trash can. “That’s right. And you are?”

  “John Crane.” He tossed her the handbag. “You lost your target leading me here. Bad tradecraft.”

  Suddenly, her mood shifted. She had lost the fight, and she didn’t like that, but it was over now. She struck him as someone who didn’t waste time worrying about what she could no longer help.

  “I know where he’ll be,” she said. “He’s meeting someone in the hotel bar at five. A woman, I expect.” She gave him a coy smile. “Are you coming, John? The least you can do after all this is buy me a drink while we wait.”

  And the game was back on. Crane smiled back at her. “And you can tell me why you’re interested in our mutual friend.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Crane and Alexa sat in a back corner of the hotel’s Oak Bar, wrapped in soft leather chairs beneath carved wood panels. They were waiting for Tamarind to appear as Alexa had promised. Crane sipped a glass of Malbec and watched her eyes as she spoke.

  “He treated her very badly,” she was saying. “He went to jail, but not for what he did to her. For that there was no justice.”

  Crane had asked Alexa why she was following Tamarind, and she’d claimed to be working for a client. She’d refused to name this client on principle, but Crane had a good idea who she was talking about.

  “Sabina Mora, yes?”

  Alexa paused with her wine glass halfway to her lips. She appraised Crane with a look that suggested he had raised her already strong curiosity about his purpose here another notch.

  “So you know that too. What else do you know about her?”

  “Only that they had an affair. He tried to blackmail her father. She was the one who went to the police, right?”

  Alexa finished taking a sip of her wine and put the glass gently down on the table.

  “Her father is one of the richest men in Mexico. She grew up with the best of everything. But it was a lonely life. Walled compounds, bodyguards, Swiss boarding schools. Eventually, her father married her off to secure a political alliance, just like a princess from the Middle Ages. She was thirty years old and living in Miami with a husband who didn’t love her and didn’t want children. She could feel her life slipping away.”

  Crane smiled. He spoke gently. “Let me guess. And then she met a man.”

  “At a charity function,” said Alexa, “and everything changed for her. He was charming and kind. He listened to her. For the first time, she felt loved. She said it was like suddenly discovering color. She fell hard for him. Then the stories began. The first one was about a business deal that had gone wrong and mobsters who had to be paid off or they would kill him. She was happy to give him the money. But the stories continued, and eventually she had to admit to herself what he was.”

  “And when she wouldn’t give him any more money, that’s when he went to her father.”

  Alexa nodded. “He made threats. Showed him video of the two of them together. She couldn’t believe he would treat her so badly after what they had shared. She was the one who went to the police. Her father forbade it, but she had had enough of being used.”

  Crane knew what had happened to Tamarind—he’d gone to prison under his fake Rafael Bruno Campos identity—but he didn’t know how things had turned out for the heartbroken heiress.

  “What happened to her?” he asked.

  “In the end she lost everything. Her marriage, her social position. Her father took her back to Mexico and hid her away again in an estate in the country. Eventually, the press moved on and the world forgot. But she didn’t forget. Four months ago, he got out of prison, and she came to me. She wanted a woman detective. Someone who would understand. She put me on retainer and sent me to find him.”

  She glanced around the bar, then spoke softly, as if it were important that no one but Crane should know her secret. “‘Avenge me,’ she said. ‘Torment him. Make his life a misery. Make all his schemes come to nothing.’”

  That was…dramatic, Crane thought, but it was one reason to put a private detective on Tamarind’s trail. Of course, the rumored large amount of missing money was another. He decided Alexa was telling him the truth. She was seeking revenge for the jilted heiress. Of course, if Tamarind happened to lead her to the money as well…

  “To vengeance,” he said, and raised his glass to her.

  She smiled, and he could see in her expression that part of her realized how operatic the whole idea was. Still, Crane understood what must be driving Alexa’s client, and he realized he wanted to do something kind for her.

  “Tell your client it wasn’t just about the money.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “I think he chose her because he was working for someone. Someone who wanted to set a hook into her father. It would have gotten back to him no matter what she did.”

  She held his gaze for a long moment. “Thank you, John,” she said at last. “I think that will help ease her mind.”

  Crane realized it had been the right thing to do. A corner had been turned. Perhaps it wasn’t the same as trusting each other, but it was something.

  “But what about you, John?” Alexa asked. “What drives you if not vengeance for his sins?”

  “I don’t care about his sins,” said Crane. “He’s got you for that. I don’t care about him at all. From what you tell me, he isn’t worth it. But he knows people that I need to find. I’m here so he can lead me to them.”

  She nodded to the door, a triumphant smile on her lips. “Well, there he is if you want to ask him about it.”

  Crane turned toward the door, and indeed, there he was. He wore a sleek blue Zegna suit over a cream-colored cashmere t-shirt. The cuffs of his pants were rolled up to expose his ankles and show off the Gucci loafers he wore without socks. He carried a small shopping bag in Tiffany’s signature blue, with woven white straps. Crane thought he looked like a model out of a GQ ad. Too much so, actually. He reminded Crane of a store mannequin, more lifelike than alive.

  Still, the overall effect was amazing. This was hardly the first time Crane had seen Tamarind. He’d been watching him for days. And yet here was still another persona from his bag of tricks, one that seemed entirely new. Apparently, this was the one he used for his work. Even if he didn’t know what this man was capable of, Crane felt sure he’d be repelled by him.

  But Alexa had been right. Tamarind had indeed shown up. Crane raised his glass to her in salute, and she clinked hers against it. He checked his watch; it was 4:30. If Alexa was right again, someone would meet him here in another thirty minutes.

  CHAPTER 8

  Tamarind sat at the bar and nursed a gin and tonic. Across the room, Crane and Alexa made small talk. They traded stories of places they’d been; Crane left out the incriminating parts and assumed Alexa was doing the same. He found his eyes drawn to the place where her neck curved into her shoulder.

  Crane was facing away from the door, so he didn’t see the woman enter the bar, but he knew just the same. A sudden silence fell, and the attention of everyone else in the bar drifted in one direction. Tamarind stood with a beaming smile. Crane turned to look at her.

  She was young, blonde, curvaceous. Crane registered an air of unquestioned privilege even before he identified the white designer dress and Ferragamo slingbacks. She paused as if she took for granted that all eyes would be on her.

  Crane checked his watch. It was two minutes before 5:00. “Your streak continues,” he murmured to Alexa.

  Tamarind met the blonde, kissed her cheek, and led her to a table with one hand at the small of her back. They reminded Crane of two peacocks in full display.

  “Back to his old ways,” Alexa said. Her voice was suddenly cold.

  “Do you know her?”

  “Not yet,” she said with a scowl. She took out her phone and placed a call. She spoke quietly. �
��Yes, in the bar now,” Crane heard her murmur.

  A moment later, a bellboy walked slowly past the door, phone in his hand.

  Soon after that, Alexa ended her call. “Elisabeth Gallo Calvo,” she said quietly. “Checked in early this afternoon, suite in the main building. Staying five nights. She has a red Bentley convertible in the hotel garage.”

  “That’s a handy trick,” said Crane. So she’d paid off the bell staff. He wondered what they’d told her about him.

  They ordered more wine and watched the gigolo shine his charisma on Ms. Calvo like a searchlight.

  Time passed. A waiter made a show of opening a bottle of champagne. Tamarind said something that made the blonde laugh. Crane didn’t believe either of them. He found the whole performance vulgar. Worse, they were wasting his time. This wasn’t what he needed from the gigolo.

  As his irritation with them grew, he found his attention increasingly drawn to Alexa. Eventually, a tipping point was reached.

  “You’ve been following this guy for four months?” Crane asked suddenly. “How has he not spotted you? You do tend to draw the eye.”

  She arched an eyebrow and feigned surprise. “Why, John, are you flirting with me?”

  Be bold, he thought. Direct. “There they are, and here we are with nothing to do. Of course I’m flirting.”

  For a moment she smiled at him over the rim of her wineglass, then she was suddenly serious again. “I’m not sure he really likes women,” she said. “He says the right things, pours on the charm, but I think it’s just work. A trick for getting money.” She set down her glass. “Are you using your charm to get something from me, John?”

  “That’s how the game’s played, isn’t it?” he asked. “Men write poems, build empires, all to get something from women.”

  Then the blonde gasped. She opened a slender blue Tiffany box and took out a bracelet. Diamonds glittered in the artificial light.