Bad Turn

by Zoe Sharp

  I took a deep breath and let it out. I could now do so with discomfort rather than pain. No lasting after-effects. “Well, it’s not the first time I’ve been thumped and it probably won’t be the last. Don’t let it worry you.”

  It suddenly seemed stupid and petty to keep her hanging around outside my door. I stood back and jerked my head. She stepped past me into the living area of the suite and turned around, arms folded.

  “It’s reckoned that a punch to the stomach was what killed Harry Houdini,” she said.

  “I thought he died of appendicitis?”

  “He died of peritonitis caused by a ruptured appendix,” she corrected. “The blow to the stomach was what ruptured it in the first place.”

  “Allegedly.”

  She nodded as if acknowledging my point. “Still, I’m sorry you had to go through that. He always was a mean bastard.”

  “Yeah, well, fortunately he punches like a girl.”

  That almost raised a smile. “Think yourself lucky he went for the personal touch instead of delegating it to Mr Schade.”

  “Was that a possibility?”

  “Mr Schade was Mr Orosco’s man—probably still is, for that matter. Mr K may be the boss day-to-day, but Mr Orosco has what you might call a controlling interest.”

  “Well, that little nugget wasn’t included in the job description,” I muttered. Or in the intel I’d been given, either. Epps hadn’t mentioned anything about Mafia involvement, past or present.

  “When you hide ownership behind enough shell corporations and finance houses, you’d need to be a forensic accountant to know for sure.”

  I shrugged, leaned against the corner of the wall next to the hallway. “Then why are you telling me this?”

  “Like I said, you took a hit for something that wasn’t your fault. As I understand it, Mr Schade instructed you to go after the waiter instead of sticking with Mrs K.”

  Something in her tone tipped me off. I regarded her, head on one side. “Yesterday, you—and Schade, for that matter—were acting as though I was in league with the bad guys. What changed?”

  She reached into her bag and pulled out a smartphone, thumbing the screen into life.

  “I managed to obtain this,” she said and tilted the phone so I could watch the video clip that began to play. It was a little on the fuzzy side, and it took me a moment to work out that the closed-circuit camera had been sited high in a corner between two walls and a ceiling, distorted by the width of the lens.

  As soon as a man dressed like a waiter burst through a door directly beneath the camera, I knew what I was going to see. He dodged to one side. A moment or so later, I watched myself push open the same door and he launched his attack. There was no mistaking the weight of his intent. He’d missed taking my head off by a fraction.

  I hardly needed to see the fight that followed—I’d been there, after all. But what interested me was what happened after I’d reacted to something unseen on the footage—the sound of gunshots outside—and abandoned the man on the floor.

  He certainly hadn’t been capable of moving under his own steam, I noted with minor satisfaction. Instead, he’d been scooped up by two guys who entered from the rear of the building. They wore baseball caps, pulled low, and were careful to keep their faces averted from the camera.

  When the clip finished, she blanked the screen again and dropped the phone back into her bag.

  “It would seem I owe you an apology, dear, and I hate it when that happens.”

  “What else?”

  For a moment she looked taken aback. “Well, you’re not having it in writing, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What I mean is that you don’t actually owe me anything. You could have got away with saying nothing at all and I wouldn’t have thought more about it. So, what else is going on?”

  She sighed. “OK, I’m guessing that Mrs K has told you about her father—what he was like when she was growing up?”

  “Yeah, she’s said some things,” I agreed carefully. “Where was her mother while all this was going on, by the way?”

  “At home, being the perfect little homemaker in a ten-thousand-square-foot mausoleum in Bergen County. For years she floated around the place on a cloud of gin and prescription pain meds. She passed while Helena was in college.”

  She sounded scathing, but I remembered Helena telling me about the cot death of her sister and couldn’t bring myself to pass judgement.

  “If that pained expression on your face is any kind of sympathy, then save it,” Mo said. She sniffed. “She treated her daughter as nothing more than a fashion accessory, like one of those little yippy dogs some ladies like to carry around in their purses, dyed to match the furniture.”

  “I’m guessing you’re not a fan.”

  “I’m more of a cat person,” she said. “No, but we’ll be leaving in a few days and I wanted you to understand—”

  “Leaving? Leaving for where?”

  “Europe. Mrs K was going to stay behind for this trip, but after everything that’s happened, well, she’s decided she wants to go along with her husband.”

  Epps had not mentioned anything about going overseas. “How long is this trip?”

  “A few weeks, maybe a month,” Mo said. “The point is, I wanted you to understand that you’re not just protecting her from outside dangers, like last night, but potentially from the people close to her as well.”

  “Including Kincaid?”

  “No! I’m talking about her father.” She shook her head, emphatic. “Mr K is one of the few people who ever stood up to the old man. Why do you think she married him?”

  25

  I stood in the frozen vegetable aisle, thoroughly nonplussed. Over the supermarket’s low-grade PA system they were playing mangled muzak. I tried not to grind my teeth as I wondered if the intended effect was to drive customers to the checkouts as quickly as possible. Just when I was debating running amok to make it stop, I was approached by a middle-aged woman wearing an apron bearing the store logo.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” she said with a cheeriness that had no basis in the reality of her job. “Could I possibly take a few moments of your time to answer some questions about your shopping experience with us today?”

  Her name badge read ‘Tammy’ but I doubted that her driver’s licence read the same. I gave her a big smile. “I’d be absolutely delighted to.”

  Her eyes widened fractionally for a moment.

  “Well, that is so nice of you,” she said, as if I’d just agreed to let her firstborn have one of my kidneys. “First of all, if we could start with your name? Oh, would you look at that—my pen don’t work. Would you mind stepping on back to the office with me while I grab myself another?”

  “Of course. Lead the way.”

  I abandoned my shopping cart where it sat and trailed the woman’s busy footsteps through home baking and past the deli counter. A pair of scratched plastic swing-doors led into the warehouse area at the rear of the store. We passed through without anybody giving us a second glance.

  In the far corner, a small office had been knocked together out of stud partitions that nobody had bothered to box in on the outside. The woman was already divesting herself of the apron as she trotted to the door and rapped on it with her knuckles. A muffled voice from the other side called, “Come!”

  She stuck her head round it just far enough to say, “Ms Fox, sir.”

  Then she winked at me and turned away. I watched her toss the clipboard onto a pallet of breakfast cereal and keep walking.

  I pushed the door wider. Inside the office, behind the untidy desk, sat Conrad Epps. He was surrounded by paperwork—piles of what appeared to be shipping notes and staff rotas and promotional items. He looked about as happy as I would have expected him to in such a setting.

  “Close the door and sit down,” he said, not exactly welcoming. I obeyed the first part and ignored the second, leaning on the desk instead.

  “You,” I said, “have som
e explaining to do.”

  “Oh?” Epps managed to inject so much doubt into a single word.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Helena Kincaid is the daughter of Darius Orosco?”

  He sat back in the tatty swivel chair. If he was embarrassed to have been caught out, it didn’t show. “Would it have made any difference, had you known?”

  “It might have made me think twice about getting involved in your half-arsed scheme, yes.” I straightened in realisation. “Ah, so that was the reason.”

  “Perhaps it was to stop you thinking too much about what you were doing,” Epps allowed. “You are not an actor, nor are you a trained undercover operative. The less you had to pretend not to know, the better.”

  “Better for whom?” I demanded. “It didn’t help me much when he turned up yesterday and belted me for failing to keep his daughter safe.”

  That got his attention. Just for a second, I thought I saw the flare of concern in his features. I never knew he cared.

  “Were you compromised?”

  Ah, so he doesn’t care.

  I ran through the events of the last few days, up to and including Helena’s abduction and return, apparently unhurt.

  “So, was it…taken as a warning?” he asked slowly.

  “I don’t know—you tell me.”

  He bridled. “I’m not sure I like your tone, Ms Fox.”

  “Tough. It’s the only one I’ve got,” I said recklessly. I leaned forwards, getting into his personal space. “Did you arrange Helena’s kidnapping?”

  “What possible reason might I have for doing that?”

  I shook my head. “Uh-uh. Answering a question with another question is not an answer. There could be any number of reasons. To stir things up with Kincaid and Orosco? What better way to unsettle them both? After all, one’s her husband and the other’s her father. Not to mention that it puts pressure on your inside man—or woman. Reminds them that you have a long reach and they shouldn’t forget who’s pulling their strings. So, I’ll ask you again. Did. You. Arrange. It?”

  “No.” He let his breath out in an annoyed spurt through his nose, flaring his nostrils in a way that reminded me of the highly strung Anglo-Arab horse, Zoot. “And perhaps you should not forget who is pulling your strings.”

  I ignored that crack. “You must have an idea who did grab her?”

  “Logic would suggest it might be the same people who were trying to take her when you…intervened,” Epps said carefully. “Too much of a coincidence for there to be more than one group behind the data breach and the initial kidnap attempt.”

  “No more of a coincidence than for you to be spying on Kincaid and then discovering somebody else was trying to do the same,” I pointed out. “He must have more than one set of enemies? Present company excepted, of course.”

  “That he does,” Epps agreed. Two could play at ignoring digs.

  “If he’s re-established trade with the Syrians, it’s unlikely to be them.”

  “There are plenty of people in the Middle East who might be…alarmed by the prospect of Kincaid supplying them with chemical weapons.”

  “So, why is he doing it?”

  “At a guess? Money.” Epps came close to sneering. “A great deal of money. Most people find their principles take a back seat to greed.”

  I recalled Eric Kincaid’s comments in the garage, looking at all those expensive examples of automotive art. “He’s already a rich man,” I said. “How much more wealth does he really need?”

  “Since when did need have anything to do with it?”

  “If it’s so profitable, why did he stop dealing with the Syrians in the first place?”

  “Let’s just say there were some…shifts in policy.”

  I eyed him. “At whose behest? Yours?”

  But he shook his head. “There’s a limit to how much I can tell you, as you are well aware,” he said. “For your own safety as much as operational security.”

  “You’re hamstringing me here, Epps.” I took a breath, looked him straight in those stone cold eyes and tried not to shiver. “Is Helena Kincaid your inside man? And I use the term in its loosest sense, obviously. Clearly she has daddy issues. It’s just a question of how far she might be prepared to go with them.”

  But even before I finished speaking, Epps was shaking his head again. “That’s not how this works,” he said, showing me his teeth in a way that was more reminiscent of a guard dog than a smile. “You don’t get to keep guessing until you happen upon the correct name. So, I can neither confirm nor deny that information.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, “that’s very helpful.”

  “All you are required to do is keep a watching brief on the Kincaids and their household, and report back to me.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s about to become a tad more complicated,” I said. Not that it wasn’t complicated enough already. I had a number of different routes I could take when I ran around the Kincaids’ property each morning, knowing that Epps was monitoring the fitness tracker I wore. If I took one route in particular, he knew I needed to have a face-to-face meeting. Hence my unnecessary visit to the local supermarket.

  “Complicated, how?”

  “Mo Heedles told me yesterday that Kincaid has a trip to Europe planned, and after this scare, Helena’s going with him, so that means I go, too.”

  “Europe?” he said sharply. “Have you been informed as to the location?”

  “Not yet. But as soon as I know, I’ll do my best to get it to you. Is this a major problem? I mean, Kincaid’s business is all over the world. Surely you were prepared for something like this?” And when he didn’t respond, I prompted, “Weren’t you?”

  “With enough of a heads-up, and depending on which country or countries you’re visiting, I may be able to have some kind of back-up in place,” he said at last, sounding uncharacteristically vague.

  “When you put it like that, ‘may’ doesn’t exactly sound very reassuring.”

  “Well, it’s the best I got,” Epps snapped.

  I stared at him, realisation unfurling slowly inside my head. “You’re off the reservation with this, aren’t you?” I murmured. “Either the people further up the food chain don’t know about this operation, or they don’t know it might have gone sideways. And you don’t want them to find out.”

  Eventually, he sighed. “On US soil I can…obscure whatever resources I channel into providing you with adequate support—lose them in other operations. In a foreign country, it’s a whole different ball game.”

  “So, what do you suggest I do? Resign? Because, as I recall, you told me in no uncertain terms that if I wasn’t spying on Kincaid for you, you’d ship me back to the UK on the next available flight.”

  “You could explain to Kincaid that you aren’t able to leave the US and return to it until your resident status is reconfirmed,” he suggested.

  I stared. “And what’s Helena supposed to do for protection in the meantime?” I shook my head. “That’s not going to wash with Kincaid. Besides, if I can’t do the whole job, why would he keep me on at all?”

  He let his breath out down his nose, again like a horse. It was the only outward sign of his annoyance. “And you’ve picked up nothing so far?”

  “No. But you expect me to work out if anybody has turned when you won’t tell me who that ‘anybody’ might be. They’re all playing their cards close to their chest. It’s just about bloody impossible, Epps.”

  “I know,” he said quietly.

  I’d been so expecting him to argue that his admission took the fight out of me utterly.

  I sat down abruptly, rubbed my face with my hands. For a moment or two we sat in silence except for the muted tweedling filtering through from the store. It was interrupted by an announcement over the PA trying to tempt customers with reduced items in the bakery department.

  “I have to go, don’t I,” I said at last, more statement than question, and more to myself than to him.

  “I c
an’t offer you any kind of protection if you do.”

  “And I can’t offer Helena Kincaid any kind of protection if I don’t.”

  “She is not the primary focus of this operation and should not be your main concern.” Epps rubbed a finger against the side of his temple as if dealing with me was giving him a headache. “This is why I dislike working with…” His voice trailed off.

  “Women?” I finished for him.

  “Amateurs.” He scowled. “You just can’t help yourself becoming too emotionally involved.”

  “Well, for the moment you’re stuck with me so we both have to make the best of it,” I said, more cheerfully than I felt. “If I can’t work on who’s on the inside, I’ll have to work on who’s on the outside instead.”

  “Meaning?”

  “This trip to Europe may well provide the opportunity to flush out the people who went after Helena,” I said, meeting his gaze as I spoke. He stared right back at me. No clues there, then.

  “That course of action may have a negative effect on the integrity of my agent.”

  “And doing nothing may have a negative effect on the continued life of my principal,” I said. I got to my feet. “Right at this moment, I know which bothers me more.”

  26

  Mrs Heedles was waiting for me when I got back to the house.

  “You do know that anything you need, dear, you can ask the housekeepers to pick up for you when they go to the market?” she said mildly, nodding to the brown paper sack of odds and ends I’d bought, almost at random, to justify my trip out.

  “OK, um, thanks. I’ll remember that next time.”

  “Oh, and he wants to see you,” she said as I started to turn away. I glanced back, wondering if I’d undone all the good work towards earning her trust. She was frowning, but it looked more like worry than suspicion.

  “Is everything OK?”

  A quick smile came and went. “We traced the guns. The ones the men were using who attacked Mrs Kincaid on the road.”

  “Ah… Isn’t that a good thing?”