The Partnership

by Dustin Stevens

  “Okay, I think we’ve seen enough, don’t you?” Reed said, removing his hand from Billie’s head and placing it on the keyboard.

  Minimizing the file in front of him and the facial recognition program, he moved into the Department of Motor Vehicles database and fed in Slade’s name and Date of Birth, watching as a similar progress bar to the one he’d just been staring at popped up before him.

  Glancing to the clock in the corner of the screen, he again considered calling home to give his parents a progress report, seeing that evening was fast slipping on toward nighttime, not wanting his father to feel the need to again stay up waiting for him.

  Much like a few minutes before though, the thought was ripped away by an update on the screen, a single beep snapping his attention toward it, the information he’d been hoping to find staring back at him.

  Chapter Fifty

  The hit came back on Draymont Slade as the owner of a 1978 Chevy Caprice, registered in Maryland, with license plates to match. Knowing that the accompanying address was of little help – if it really even existed at all – Reed didn’t bother running it through the system, knowing that neither Slade nor Tek-Yen were hiding out somewhere along the coast.

  Instead he jotted the information down on his notepad and spun out from his desk, jogging across the empty expanse, Billie by his side. Barely flipping a wave to Jackie as he passed, knowing that the anticipation of seeing him moving so fast without stopping to share his findings would kill her, he went straight down the stairwell.

  Coming out on the main floor a few moments later, he kept his pace at a jog, moving across the bullpen to find Greene and Gilchrist both bent over their shared computer, the glow from the screen illuminating both their faces.

  “Draymont Slade,” Reed announced, reciting the name from memory, drawing both their stares his direction, “owner of a 1978 Chevy Caprice, brown in color.”

  To his surprise, neither man reacted, both simply staring at the screen, their faces pulled up into even stares.

  Already suspecting what they were seeing, Reed slowed his pace. “What?”

  The same feeling grew stronger in Reed’s core as he moved closer, neither man bothering to respond as he fell in behind them, leaning forward to see through the gap between their shoulders.

  Sensing his presence, Greene reached forward and rewound the footage they had been watching, numbers scrolling backward more than three minutes before beginning anew.

  Framed in a dozen shades of gray, the scene was enlarged to fill the entire screen. Taken from a high angle on the end of a bridge, the camera was pointed the length of it, aimed right down the center stripe of the street.

  For several seconds there was no movement, not a single breathing thing on the screen. As time ticked by, a shadow began to stir on the far end of the structure, slowly emerging and taking shape, a car moving out of the darkness, rolling slow, without any headlights to announce its presence.

  Feeling his pulse begin to rise, his breathing seizing in his chest, Reed watched as a wide-set car idled closer, stopping more than fifty feet from the camera. A steady coil of exhaust rose from the back of it as it pulled to a stop and parked, the driver’s side door opening wide.

  For a moment there was nothing, Reed’s chest growing tighter as he stood and stared, waiting as a man finally emerged, standing at full height behind the door and looking back the way he had just come from before turning and glancing toward the camera.

  Clicking the mouse once, Greene paused the image long enough for them all to get a clear look at him.

  Even in the shrouded darkness of the bridge, there was no doubt who it was.

  “Draymont Slade,” Reed whispered, neither man before him saying a word as Greene started the footage anew.

  Feeling sweat begin to line his forehead, dotting his upper lip, Reed watched as Slade left the door open and sauntered toward the back, his enormous size moving with arms exposed to the cold, free of a coat or even long sleeves.

  For a moment he disappeared from view as he popped the trunk hatch open and rummaged around inside, the body of the car shaking slightly as he moved about.

  “Here it comes,” Gilchrist whispered, Reed pulling in tighter, every bit of his focus aimed on the trunk hood extended upward behind the car.

  The first thing to appear from behind it was Slade’s head, his profile visible as his attention was aimed toward the side of the bridge. Moving quickly, he passed away from the cover of the car to reveal his arms were full, the item too small to make out at a distance, the pale color of it a harsh contrast to his own skin.

  “Bethanee Ing,” Reed whispered, watching as Slade walked as far as he could, pressing his legs against the side of the bridge.

  There he waited a moment, hefting the girl in his arms a time or two, before tossing her aside, nothing more than a flash of white offset by her black hair unfurling behind her.

  With his heart thudding in his chest, Reed felt his back teeth clamp down tight, every bit of ire, of animosity, he could muster aimed at Slade as the man stood for a moment before turning back to the car, no more concerned than if he had tossed a sack of fast food garbage off the bridge.

  Without breaking stride, he walked back around the rear of the car and slammed the trunk shut before climbing in.

  A moment later the car began to move again, idling toward the camera before disappearing beneath it, not once so much as glancing up.

  If he knew it was there, he did nothing to intimate that he cared in the slightest.

  “Tell me that didn’t just happen,” Gilchrist said, his voice low, edged with pain.

  Every part of Reed wanted to do just that.

  Not one part of him actually could.

  “What did you find?” a voice called, the decibel loud, jerking the attention of all three men and Billie upward.

  Standing before them was Grimes, his arms folded, his chin pulled back toward his chest. Without waiting for a response, he asked, “How bad is it?”

  Shoving a sigh out through his nose, Reed rose to full height, running a hand back over his scalp. For the better part of a week he had known the ending, how everything went for Bethanee Ing, but that didn’t make witnessing what he’d just seen any easier.

  “Very,” he said.

  “Meaning?” Grimes responded.

  Pushing his hands into the front pockets of his hoodie, Reed looked to Billie by his side, her unblinking eyes seeming to relay the exact same sentiment that was roiling within him.

  “Meaning I don’t care how many agencies we piss off, there’s no way were letting that guy keep Tek-Yen one second longer than necessary.”

  In front of him, both officers turned in their chairs to stare up at him, their faces drawn tight, the corners of their mouths turned slightly downward.

  Feeling the weight of the stares on his skin, Reed looked past them to Grimes standing on the opposite side of the room. Sucking in one side of his cheek, he gnawed at it for a moment, considering what Reed had said, before nodding slightly.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Shifting his gaze down just slightly, Reed focused on the screen a few feet away, the footage stopped, nothing but a desolate bridge standing frozen in place, like an old black-and-white photo plastered to the monitor.

  The truth was he had only one option, something that could ultimately nab them Slade and help them get to Tek-Yen before she too ended up in a silent movie much like the one they’d just witnessed.

  At the same time, it also presented the risk of alerting Slade – and whoever else – that they were on to them, sending them underground, or even worse, into doing something desperate.

  Again focusing on the screen, Reed’s replayed the images of a few moments before again in his mind, seeing the callous handling of Ing, the way she was tossed aside as if she didn’t even matter.

  Not again.

  “The only thing we can do,” he said, shifting his attention one last time to Grimes, the offic
ers before him listening intently to every word.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The discussion with Linc Austin had taken the first part of the edge off for The Businessman. Knowing that he had a seasoned operator looking over things and not someone like The Muscle, used to putting his head down and barreling his way toward whatever goal he had in mind, managed to mitigate some of the trepidation he’d been feeling.

  It didn’t take away the concerns entirely though, those thoughts too deep-seated to evaporate so easily.

  For that he turned instead to Johnnie Walker Blue, having an entire bottle sent up from the bar below, the top of it now unscrewed and sitting on the desk before him. Beside it was a glass tumbler with a dimpled bottom, two fingers of the smooth brown liquid filling it a third of the way full, the smell of rye in the air.

  Lifting the glass from his desk, The Businessman rotated the base of his chair to the side and reclined back, lifting the soles of his dress shoes to the corner of the desk and crossing his legs at the ankles.

  For more than a day now The Businessman had been wrestling with something, and with each passing drop of the alcohol, the solution became more obvious.

  It was time to cut The Muscle loose.

  There was no doubt that in the fledgling days of the business, the man was a vital asset. Brought on strictly as a heavy, he had quickly asserted himself into a position where it became obvious that he was a partner, offering a very specific skillset that was far outside The Businessman’s purview.

  Every one of the cities they had gone into – no doubt, each one they would ever target – already had at least some modicum of the product they were offering. There was a common phrase that was often bandied about that sex, and all the trappings that went with it, was in fact the oldest profession in the world.

  Having complete belief in the veracity of the statement, The Businessman, just like those that had gone before him, had tapped into such thinking, taking it a step further, and allowing the model to evolve. No longer were they simply offering pleasures of the flesh, they were holding out something new and exotic, something the locals had never encountered before.

  It was a plan of such beautiful simplicity that it only took a small measure of proficiency on their part to see it blossom into an enterprise that was now spread across a large swath of the world.

  The two keys that had emerged to ensuring their success were the tight handling of the girls and never fighting for too large a market share. Messing up the first part meant they would not be able to meet customer demand. Problems with the second would be even larger, bringing down unwanted ire and attention from everybody in the city.

  For their first couple of endeavors, The Muscle had been attuned to those two findings. He had asserted himself where necessary, tamping down any challenges from small local affairs, quickly establishing their rightful place in the pecking order.

  Over time, though, he had gotten greedy, had started to believe a bit too much in his own mystique, in the role he played and how large the organization could grow.

  The handling of the Bethanee Ing situation was a major faux pas, but in truth, The Businessman wasn’t entirely surprised by it. Just another in a series of small escalations, if it hadn’t happened in Columbus, it would have happened in their next stop, or the one after that.

  It was only a matter of time.

  The man had outlasted his usefulness, was fast becoming a liability.

  A thin smile appeared on The Businessman’s face as he thought on things, again lifting the whiskey to his mouth and taking a sip.

  The increased attention from law enforcement would be a problem for sure, would mean that he needed to lay low for a while, to keep the business operating at less-than-capacity, but in many ways, that was a small price to pay for the freedom he had so long been craving.

  When he was sent over and placed at the head of the operation, it was his first time helming such an undertaking. Because of that, it was deemed necessary to bring in someone like The Muscle, somebody that had prior experience with the less savory side of such affairs.

  Bristling even then at the notion, The Businessman had held his tongue, knowing that he was still young, that a certain amount of dues must be paid before he could be trusted on his own.

  Now, the requisite amount of time had passed and The Muscle had finally done something foolish enough to prompt his dismissal, allowing The Businessman to forego the messiness of trying to stage a coup.

  All he had to do was call back home, outline what had happened, and allow them to come to the same inevitable conclusion he already had.

  The thought caused the smile on his face to grow a bit more pronounced, the glass held just a few inches from his chin as his phone began to vibrate on the desk by his side. Barely penetrating his psyche, it buzzed a handful of times before fighting through the slight haze of the whiskey, the grin disappearing as The Businessman glanced down to the glowing screen beside him.

  HARRIS.

  Whatever mirth, any joy, The Businessman felt vanished at seeing the name. Slowly lowering his feet to the floor, he placed the glass down and rotated forward, his gaze still focused on the screen.

  The name was a fake, a rotating moniker The Businessman employed in whichever city he happened to be working in at the moment. Nabbed from the movie Training Day, it was a spin on Denzel Washington’s character, the famous traitorous detective Alonzo Harris.

  In Columbus, Alonzo Harris just happened to be Carter Pyle.

  Feeling the whiskey threaten to pass back up his gullet, The Businessman snatched up the phone, not wanting the ensuing conversation to be heard over speakerphone.

  “Yes?”

  “Yo,” Pyle replied, his voice low to the point of almost being muffled.

  “I thought we agreed not to speak on the phone unless absolutely necessary?” The Businessman said, making no effort to hide the agitation in his voice.

  “And I thought you were smart enough to figure out that when I said law enforcement was starting to poke into the girl, that meant I couldn’t very well be making house calls anymore,” Pyle snapped back, his own aggravation even higher.

  Reaching out, The Businessman took up the cap to the Johnnie Walker and twisted it back into place, knowing that any further indulgence for the night was over.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, silently seething at the previous remark but forcing his voice not to betray the slightest hint of it.

  For a moment there was no response, simply the exaggerated breathing of someone that wanted to make sure it was known that they held the upper hand.

  Counting seconds off in his head, The Businessman stood, rubbing at his brow, fast growing tired of the pettiness of so many of the men he was forced to interact with.

  After the better part of a minute, Pyle said, “Just thought you should know, an APB just went out over the air for your partner. Shit’s getting real, fast.”

  Feeling his eyes slide shut, The Businessman opened his mouth to respond before pulling up just as fast.

  There was no pointing in saying anything.

  Pyle was already gone.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  An all-points bulletin was posted by Grimes himself, sent from his desk, Reed, the officers, and Billie all grouped up in the same posts they had used earlier in the day. Once it was complete, the group sat in silence, the moment feeling a bit anti-climactic, every man in the room sitting and hoping that a hit would come back.

  Of course, they all also knew it was unlikely to be that easy.

  The footage from the video didn’t give a clear shot of the license plate on the Caprice, meaning they couldn’t be certain Slade was even still driving with the same ones attached.

  Beyond that, there were dozens of places that a car could be to keep it from being seen, ranging from a garage to parked on a side street somewhere. It was also possible that Slade had a second vehicle he used for basic transportation, the Caprice being what was reserved for less sa
vory errands, such as what they’d seen on film.

  For as much hope as the posting of the APB had presented, it also brought with it the harrowing reality that if it didn’t pan out, there was still precious little they had to work with. A convicted felon was still out there somewhere with at least one young girl, potentially many more, with no known address or means of apprehension.

  Making matters worse were the thoughts of what he had already done to one of her colleagues, certainly looking capable of doing it again.

  “Something’s missing,” Reed said, leaning against the side table, his hands back on either side of him.

  In his periphery he could see Gilchrist raise his head to look his way, Billie doing the same by his side, the two senior men in the room continuing to stare at the cluttered desk, ruminating on what they knew.

  “We’re overlooking something,” he added, lowering his voice to just north of a whisper.

  In the preceding days, he had been moving at a breakneck pace, the information from Basel, the meeting with Tek-Yen, the subsequent conference with the FBI and others, all coming in a rapid-fire sequence. Moving from one to the next, Reed had followed where the progression had led him, now for the first time having the chance to pause a moment, to think about what he knew and what he needed.

  “Which is?” Grimes asked, his graveled voice thick with phlegm that had collected in the time since he’d last spoken.

  Lifting his gaze to the window, Reed stared out, the evening now gone, having ceded completely into night. Overhead, there was no moon or stars, not a single bit of stray light illuminating anything.

  In their stead were only the security lights in the parking lot, the fixtures casting down even spheres of glow, leaving wide pockets of darkness between them.

  From where he stood Reed could see just a single car belonging to Grimes parked outside, his sedan and the officer’s cruiser both in the visitor stalls out front.

  Squinting his eyes slightly, he focused on nothing in particular, playing the last two days back in his mind over and over again.