The Job

by Janet Evanovich

  “Bob, I’d like you to meet my daughter Kate and her associate Nick,” Jake yelled over the singing and clanging. “They’re running this operation.”

  Bob looked dubious.

  “It looks like you’ve dismantled the engine,” Kate said. “That’s what I did, guv.”

  “But I thought that it was recently rebuilt.”

  “Not by me. An engine is like a woman. I have to get to know her. Only way to do that is to get under her skirt.”

  “Have you tried talking?” Kate said.

  “To an engine?” Bob asked.

  “To a woman.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “I’m a woman. You’re talking to me.”

  “You’re Jake’s daughter. I’m not going to shag you.”

  “That’s for sure,” Kate said.

  “Glad we got that out of the way,” Jake said. “Is she in good shape?”

  “If you want it slow and steady, she’ll do fine. If you want it fast and hard, she’ll pass out in the middle and leave you hanging.”

  “Just to clarify,” Kate said, “we’re talking about his opinion of the boat now, right?”

  “Will she be ready to go this week?” Nick asked.

  “Dressed up pretty with lipstick on.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Nick said. “Carry on.”

  Bob went back to work and to singing. “Give him a dose of salt and water, give him a dose of salt and water …”

  Nick, Kate, and Jake headed back on deck.

  “Where’s Boyd?” Nick asked.

  Jake gestured to the bridge. “He’s been holed up in there since he arrived a few days ago.”

  “There are no lights on,” Kate said.

  “It’s part of his method,” Jake said.

  “He’s a nut,” Kate said.

  Nick slid his arm around her shoulders and hugged her into him. “True enough, Pumpkin, but he’s our nut.”

  The moon cast enough light through the bridge’s wraparound windows that Nick and Kate could see Boyd standing at the captain’s station at the control panel. His back was to them as he looked out over the bow.

  “Hey, Boyd,” Kate said. “What are you doing up here?”

  “Becoming at home with the set. As captain of the Seaquest, I need to be completely and naturally at ease on my bridge. I need to be able to express that comfort, and command of my environment, unconsciously in my body language.”

  “Why don’t you turn on the lights?”

  “So I can learn to find my way blind. Knowing my way around the bridge has to become instinctive. That’s how intimately the captain knows this ship.”

  “Well, I don’t know the ship at all, and I don’t want to crash into something.”

  Kate searched the wall until she found a light switch and flicked it on. The bridge was clean and modern, the control panel packed with all the latest equipment. But Kate was familiar enough with a ship’s bridge that she could see that Tom had augmented the standard engine, sonar, communications, and navigation controls, screens, and gauges with lots of extra buttons and lights.

  Boyd still had his back to them. He wore a white captain’s cap, a white short-sleeved shirt with striped epaulets, pressed white slacks, and black deck shoes buffed to a glossy sheen.

  “Nice uniform,” Nick said. “But why are you wearing it now? We’re a week away from showtime.”

  “Captain Bridger always wears his uniform, and I need to be comfortable in the man’s skin.”

  “I see,” Nick said. “I admire your preparation for a job.”

  “Acting is not a job, Nick. It’s an art.” Boyd turned around, and now they could see he wore a black eye patch over his left eye and a full, but well trimmed, gray-flecked beard that had to be a fake, since he hadn’t had time to grow it.

  “What’s with the eye patch?” Kate asked.

  “The captain lost his eye in the horrible tragedy that drove him to the sea, where he wanders endlessly in self-imposed exile, alone in his personal sorrow.” Boyd got choked up. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, I get emotional every time I think about it.”

  Nick nodded and spoke softly. “Take your time.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Kate said. “The captain is not real. He’s a figment of your imagination.”

  “Not anymore.” Boyd waved a hand over his body. “He lives through me.”

  “Vividly,” Nick said. “It’s a complete and utterly convincing transformation.”

  Not to Kate. She crossed her arms under her chest, standing her ground. “You don’t think the eye patch is a cliché?”

  Nick shook his head. “A great actor can turn cliché into revelation. And Boyd has done that.”

  Kate almost coughed up her prosciutto potato chips. “Why the beard?”

  “It’s the mask the captain wears to hide his pain from others,” Boyd said, limping toward them.

  Kate groaned. “Please don’t tell me he’s got a peg leg, too.”

  “Of course not. I keep banging my knee. It’s not easy moving around in the dark with only one good eye. But I know that pain is part of the process.”

  The sweep of headlights from a car turning off the boulevard into the empty lot below caught their attention. Kate found binoculars on the navigation desk and looked out the window. A bright red Ferrari was streaking toward the wharf at high speed.

  Nick closed his eyes as he listened to the car’s throaty roar. “I know that sound. It’s a 4.5-liter naturally aspirated V8 with a distinct Italian accent, definitely a Ferrari 458.” He opened his eyes and smiled at Kate. “A red one.”

  Boyd glanced out the window, and then looked back at Nick incredulously. “You can tell all that from the sound of the engine?”

  “Could you tell the difference between Frank Sinatra and Justin Bieber singing ‘My Way’?”

  “Of course,” Boyd said.

  “Well, there you go.”

  The three of them went down to the deck to greet the new arrival, with Boyd stumbling a few times, the eye patch throwing off his vision.

  “I got here as fast as I could,” Willie said. “I hit a hundred and forty miles per hour on a couple stretches.” Willie tossed Nick the keys. He caught them with one hand. “I broke the car in for you, so don’t be gentle.”

  Kate turned to him. “Where are you going?”

  “To my hotel, of course. It’s getting late and I’m bushed.”

  “I thought we were all bunking on the boat.”

  “I’ve booked a suite at the Vincenzo Palace.”

  “Does it have to be a palace? Why not a Sheraton?”

  “I’ve got to establish my cover. I’m Nick Hartley, a very successful treasure hunter looking for a deep-pocketed and unscrupulous investor to fund the salvage of my latest find, a shipwreck laden with five hundred million dollars in gold. If I’m as good as I say I am, then I’ve got money, and I’d be flaunting it by staying at one of the very best hotels in Lisbon. I don’t search for treasure to live frugally.”

  “You’re an actor at heart. No wonder you understand me so well,” Boyd said. “And like a true professional, you fully embody the roles that you play.”

  “He does if the role involves wearing the best clothes, driving the fanciest cars, and staying in the most luxurious hotels,” Kate said. “You won’t see him pretending to be a homeless guy.”

  “Unfortunately, I’ve been typecast by my good looks and my innate sense of style,” Nick said. “It’s a burden I try to live with.” He crooked a finger at Kate. “Could I speak to you privately a moment?”

  Kate followed him out to the deck. “Is there a problem?”

  He tucked a wisp of hair that had come loose from Kate’s ponytail behind her ear. “No problem. I just thought you might need a private moment to get used to being married.”

  “Say what?”

  “From this moment on, we’re Nick and Kate Hartley, greedy archaeologists. And of course we cohabit, since we’re
married.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Your choice, but if we aren’t husband and wife, I’ll have to go alone into the lion’s den. And you’ll miss all the fun.”

  “Why do we have to be husband and wife?”

  “It’s a believable cover.”

  Kate narrowed her eyes. “How far does this husband-and-wife thing go?”

  “As far as you want it to go.”

  Oh crap, Kate thought. That wasn’t good. She had occasional thoughts about him. Thoughts that didn’t sit well with her job or her dedication to law and order. Thoughts that got her all warm and mushy inside.

  “Will I have my own bedroom?” she asked him.

  “If that’s what you prefer. It’s a two-bedroom suite.”

  “I suppose it will be okay then.”

  Nick took a simple platinum band out of his pocket and slipped it on Kate’s ring finger. “Now it’s official.”

  Kate stared at the band with equal parts horror and terrifying happiness. The happiness was sitting like a tennis ball in her throat and sending flashes of fire across her chest. No one had put a ring on her finger before. Actually, someone had tried several years ago, but she’d broken his hand. Not intentionally. It had been one of those reflex reactions.

  This is pretend, she told herself. Get a grip. This is the job, for crying out loud. And if you ever do get married for real, it’s not going to be to a man on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list!

  “This sort of caught me by surprise,” she said to Nick.

  “I’ve never been a fan of long engagements.”

  “I get that,” Kate said, “but you realize you’re going to have to explain this to my dad.”

  Kate sat on her comfy bed in her comfy bedroom in her luxurious suite and called Carl Jessup on her cellphone. She wanted to get him at the office before he went home. It was almost 6 P.M. the previous day in Los Angeles. Kate filled him in on her progress in the broadest possible terms and without mentioning any names.

  “My work in Spain is complete,” she said. “My investigation has taken me to Lisbon.”

  She wasn’t about to admit to any heists, or aiding a wanted fugitive, or any other illegal activity on a phone line routed through the federal building. The National Security Agency had offices in the building, too.

  “It sounds like you are on the hunt,” Jessup said. “What can we do to help?”

  “I need someone to do some research for me.”

  “I’ll put Ryerson on it,” Jessup said.

  “He’s not going to like running investigative errands for me.”

  “It’s not for you, it’s for the Bureau. Besides, you want our best man on this.”

  “I’m your best man,” Kate said.

  “Second best, then. Hold on a sec. I’ll bring him in here and put you on the speaker.” She waited for a moment, and then heard Ryerson come in. Jessup spoke again. “Okay, Kate, I’ve got Seth here with me. Bring us up to speed.”

  “Greetings from Lisbon.”

  “Really? She’s in Lisbon?” Ryerson said. “The most exotic place I’ve been sent on assignment is Duluth.”

  “Kate is over there on Nick Fox’s trail,” Jessup said.

  “I thought the thief turned out to be a Nick Fox copycat.”

  “She was,” Kate said. “Her name is Serena Blake and she used to work with Fox. That’s why she thought she could commit a string of crimes and pin them on him.”

  “So case closed,” Ryerson said.

  “Not quite,” Kate said. “Serena is facing prison stretches now in four countries, so she was desperate to cut a deal with us. I told her unless she had something on Fox, I wasn’t interested. Turns out she had a tidbit. She says he’s in business with Lester Menendez on some kind of plot. If we can find Menendez, we’ll find Fox.”

  “Menendez is a ghost,” Ryerson said. “He’s even more elusive than Fox. With all due respect, there’s no place to start.”

  “There’s the chocolate,” Kate said.

  “Oh, no, not that again,” Ryerson said. “Just because I disagree with you on this, that’s no excuse to throw accusations at me. How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t take your precious half-pound bag of M&M’s. I wouldn’t go near your cubicle unless a HazMat team cleared it first.”

  “I know you took them. I’m a crack FBI investigator, but that’s not the chocolate I’m talking about. Menendez loves fine chocolate. He goes for the rarest, purest, and most expensive chocolate there is. I don’t think he’s lost his taste for it just because he has a new face and body. I need you to find the people who make that chocolate and get me a list of their European customers.”

  “There will be hundreds of names, maybe thousands. How will you know which one of them is Menendez?” Ryerson asked.

  “I won’t, but I’m working on it. That’s why I am in Lisbon. My sources tell me Fox is here. If he is, Menendez may be nearby, too. If I can find out who Fox contacts, I can compare the names to the list.”

  “I think she might be on to something,” Jessup said to Ryerson. “I think it’s worth a few hours of your time. Get her those names as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ryerson said, not sounding all that happy.

  Modern downtown Lisbon, the Baixa, lies in a valley that runs south to the Tejo riverfront, where it ends at the Praça do Comércio, once a scenic spot for public executions. The royal palace also stood there before the earthquake, tsunami, and fire of 1755 wiped it away in what many at the time believed was a heavy-handed message from God.

  The hill on the east edge of the city is topped by the restored ruins of the Castelo de São Jorge. Sloping away from the castle, the Alfama district is a tightly packed medieval maze of crooked buildings. The buildings lean against one another like staggering drunks trying to keep their balance on the steep cobbled streets. Laundry lines hang across the streets, and the air is thick with the smell of cooking fat.

  On the hill to the west is the Bairro Alto, the “upper district,” which is no less densely packed, but is substantially wealthier. Its narrow streets are laid out in an orderly grid with expensive houses, restaurants, art galleries, and shops for the rich. The Bairro Alto is the bohemian and artistic heart of Lisbon, where crowds pack the tiny streets and steps at night drinking, carousing, and relieving themselves outside the countless tiny taverns and fado houses. Performers, waiters, and the hungry homeless sing loudly and mournfully in the fado houses, expressing their bluesy unending longing for what was and what can never be. The songs merge together into a sorrowful, chilly breeze of cigarette smoke and salty fish aroma that drift up to the top of Bairro Alto.

  Kate took it all in while she waited for Nick outside the ornate yellow Vincenzo Palace hotel, once the opulent home of Count Vincenzo, the sardine king of Lisbon.

  “Hard to believe, but you almost look happy to see me,” Nick said, greeting Kate with a friendly kiss on the cheek.

  “I read about fado in my guidebook, but now that I’m hearing it I don’t get it.”

  “It’s like mariachi, only the singers who come to your table are wearing black and they’re joyless.”

  Nick led her around the corner and down the slender Rua das Flores, which ran alongside the steep Rua do Alecrim, the Bairro Alto’s major north-south boulevard, all the way to the waterfront.

  “The man we’re seeing to help get the word out in the underworld about our treasure is a fado singer,” Nick said.

  “His name?”

  “Diogo Alves.”

  “You say that like his name is supposed to mean something to me.”

  Nick sighed. “Don’t they teach you anything at Quantico? Northwest of here, there is the Aqueduto das Águas Livres, a 213-foot-tall eighteenth-century aqueduct that spans the Alcântara valley. It used to bring fresh water to the city and served as a bridge for traveling vegetable merchants. In the late 1830s, over the course of several years, over seventy people plunged to their deaths from the aqueduct i
n a wave of baffling suicides.”

  “There must have been a fado singer on the aqueduct. What does that ancient history have to do with Diogo Alves?”

  “It wasn’t until four members of the same family killed themselves that authorities began to suspect something was amiss. Turns out those seventy people were robbed and thrown off the aqueduct by Diogo Alves, Portugal’s first recorded serial killer and still the worst. Alves was hanged in 1841 and was considered so supremely evil that his head was chopped off and put in a jar of formaldehyde for scientific study. The aqueduct has been closed to foot traffic ever since.”

  As they walked closer to the waterfront, the crowds thinned, and the brightly painted buildings with elaborate ironwork and colorful flowerpots gave way to peeling paint, boarded-up windows, rusted wrought-iron bars, and graffiti-covered walls. The shadows thickened, the night became darker, and they were alone. Nick seemed cheerfully oblivious to the danger in the air. Kate wasn’t. All her senses were heightened. The story Nick told as they descended into the darkness hadn’t helped.

  “I hope the Diogo Alves that we’re meeting tonight isn’t a headless reanimated corpse,” Kate said.

  “Diogo is a distant relative of the serial killer. He owns a sleazy bar at the waterfront, sings fado to the customers, and works as a talent agent for crooks. He makes introductions and organizes crimes for a small cut of the action. He’s also known as the law among the lawless, resolving disagreements and passing judgment on offenders.”

  “They’re all offenders.”

  “There are always rules,” Nick said. “If there’s a killing among crooks, Diogo is the one who decides if it was justified. If he decides it wasn’t, he carries out the punishment himself.”

  “What kind of punishment?”

  “He likes to toss people from very high places.”

  “Lovely,” Kate said.

  “We’ll be fine. We haven’t killed anyone. We’re just here to do business. If we want to get word to Menendez, Diogo is the person in Lisbon who can do it.”

  A few blocks from the waterfront they hit Rua Nova do Carvalho. A half block to the east, Rua do Alecrim began its ascent to Bairro Alto by bridging over a warren of seedy and dangerous-looking streets. The area once teemed with sailors looking to satisfy their desires in dive bars with names that evoked their faraway homes. The Oslo. The Copenhagen. The Texas. The Jamaican.