The Loot (Charlie McCabe Thriller)

by Craig Schaefer

  “What?” Charlie asked. “Like, Al-Qaeda? ISIS?”

  Saint shrugged. “Never found out the specifics. Point is I’m nobody’s idea of a model citizen, but Boston’s my home. I live here. Didn’t like the idea that every time I went to Fenway Park, I was gonna spend the whole game worried about getting my ass blown off by the explosives I could have bought. So I bought ’em. Not to resell so much as to keep them out of the wrong hands.”

  “You’re being generous with intel,” Beckett said.

  “Words. Words are free. I know you didn’t come here to rip me off, and you’re not dumb enough to try to muscle me. Only leaves one reasonable possibility: You’re here to do business. This chitchat is just the prelude to a deal. You’re looking for explosives? I might have some.”

  “Some,” Charlie said. “But you already sold the rest.”

  Saint snuffed his cigarette. The crosses on his fingers flexed as he steepled his fingers.

  “And how do you know that?”

  “Because someone used them last night, trying to blow up our client and anyone standing within twenty feet of him.”

  Saint lifted an eyebrow. “How many bricks did they use?”

  “How many bricks did your customer buy?” Charlie replied.

  “And so we dance,” Saint told her with a faint and tired smile. “Indulge me. Why is it you on my doorstep and not the authorities?”

  “Client asked us to keep it under wraps,” Beckett said.

  “So you find this person, my customer . . . and you’re going to do what, exactly?”

  Beckett held his silence while Charlie fumbled for an answer. Hand them over to the police was an obvious retort, but Ellis didn’t want the cops involved in the first place, and nothing in this conversation would hold up in court. Take them out permanently? No. Charlie had fought in self-defense . . . she’d killed in self-defense . . . but she wasn’t a murderer.

  The truth was she had no idea what they were going to do when they caught Sean Ellis’s attacker or what her options were beyond giving them a stern talking-to.

  The truth was she just wanted to know why they were after him.

  And about the treasure they were hunting for, the one they were willing to kill to get their hands on. Ellis had said on the phone that it didn’t exist. But Charlie wasn’t entirely sure he was right. Or maybe she just needed it to be real.

  “We’re hoping to settle this quietly and peacefully,” she said. It was the best she could come up with.

  Saint favored her with an almost pitying look, looking right through her. “You a woman of peace, Charlie McCabe?”

  “I try to be.”

  “I bet you almost believe that.” Saint wagged a finger at her. “You know, I’m not in the habit of ratting out my clientele. Makes for a bad reputation in my line of work, and a short life expectancy.”

  “We’d keep your name out of it,” she said.

  “We can make it worth your time,” Beckett added. His voice was level, calculatedly uneager, like he didn’t care if Saint helped them or not.

  “Sure you can. But I’m not looking for a payoff. I can help you out. Hell, I can give you a face, tell you the way they paid me, and you do want to know how they paid me, trust me. That information is officially on sale, here and now. It’s just too valuable to let it go as a cash transaction.”

  Charlie put her hands on her hips. “What do you want, then?”

  “Just like the stories of old,” Saint replied with a smile. “You can’t buy wisdom with money, but you can pay for it with blood.”

  TWENTY

  “Blood,” Charlie echoed.

  Saint leaned back. The black leather beanbag chair rustled and curled around him, conforming to his body.

  “I’m having a little . . . market issue. Fresh competition, goes by Renaudin. This mamaguevo setting up shop on my patch, undercutting me, saying he’s got the blessing of the Patriarca family.” Saint’s lips curled in a sneer. “Imagine that. A pissant Haitian, getting the nod.”

  “Aren’t you Haitian?” Charlie asked.

  It was the wrong question. Saint’s anger hit her like the heat from a thousand-watt bulb.

  “I’m Dominican.”

  “Sorry.” She held her open hands up. “Forget I said anything.”

  “Not the same thing. Learn the difference.” Saint inhaled and waved it off with an irritated puff of breath. “Anyway. Anyway, I think he’s lying; no way the Providence crew does business with anyone darker than a well-tanned white boy, but he’s good at spreading rumors and making smoke. Bottom line is I want him gone. But just in case he really is connected, I can’t use my own people. Need somebody discreet. Somebody deniable, with no connection to me or mine.”

  Charlie flicked her gaze to Beckett. The big man stood silent, his expression unreadable. She looked back at Saint.

  “You want us to . . . what, kill him?”

  “You tell me you ain’t done it before,” Saint replied, “I’m gonna forget my manners and call you a dirty liar.”

  Charlie didn’t know about Beckett, but the gun dealer had her pegged. She’d gotten her hands wet in Afghanistan, more than once. She’d always been told that the act of killing changed a person; she wasn’t sure about that. It was war. You did what you had to do. Sometimes she thought about it. Every once in a while she woke up in the still of the night, suddenly lost in the confusion, the muzzle flash, the sharp, shrill scream of a man catching a bullet—more a cry of surprise than of pain—smelling the gunfire like the battle was raging right next to her bunk.

  Usually, she didn’t.

  She’d done her job. Then she’d come home.

  Now she was being offered another job, and if she said yes, Saint would give her the keys to the kingdom. Everything she needed to know to track down Sean Ellis’s would-be killer. And maybe the way to find this “treasure” they were looking for.

  With her father’s clock running down and his bookie circling, smelling blood in the water, she needed a treasure more than anything in the world.

  Would it be that bad? she asked herself. A gunrunner, a mobster . . . I’ve killed better men than that.

  She looked at Beckett again. He met her gaze but answered the question in her eyes with stony, poker-faced silence. She’d have to look elsewhere for a moral compass.

  “No,” she said.

  Saint squinted at her. “No, you haven’t, or no, you won’t?”

  “This isn’t my battlefield. We’ll pay you for the information we need. In cash, not bullets.”

  He looked past her. “How about you, tall, dark, and silent?”

  Beckett bobbed his head at Charlie. “She’s my partner.”

  He let that hang in the air, not bothering to elaborate. Saint leaned back on the beanbag chair and shrugged.

  “Suit yourself. If and when you change your mind, come on back. Until then, that’s all we’ve got to talk about.”

  Charlie and Beckett turned their backs and made for the door.

  “Hey,” Saint said. “Charlie McCabe.”

  She stopped and glanced back at him, over her shoulder.

  “Know what they call a soldier without a nation to fight for?”

  She shook her head.

  “A mercenary,” Saint said.

  “What’s your point?” she asked him.

  “Point is you are one. Denying it, that’s just a waste of time.”

  “Maybe I’m just picky,” she said.

  He broke into a smile and lit another cigarette. “Maybe you are. And maybe I’ll see you again soon. I’ll be waiting.”

  She wanted to say, Don’t count on it. She wanted to slam the door on his offer and nail it shut, banish any hope of temptation.

  She didn’t say a word. She left in dead silence, Beckett at her back. The watchers on the stoop stared at them as they got into the Skylark and the engine purred. The stereo flickered to life and filled the air with soft Motown.

  “What?” she asked him.
<
br />   Beckett turned the wheel. The Skylark rumbled away from the curb, leaving the row of faded Victorians to fade in the rearview mirror.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “No,” Charlie said, “you didn’t.”

  “So what’s the question?”

  “Feels like you’re judging me,” she said.

  He kept his eyes on the road. “I judge everything and nothing at all.”

  “Very Zen.”

  “Spent a year at a monastery in Tibet,” he said. “Didn’t suit my temperament, in the end, but I learned a thing or two.”

  Anyone else, she would have assumed they were joking.

  “Question,” Charlie said.

  “Shoot.”

  “What would you have done if I said yes? If I took the offer?”

  Beckett stayed casual, like they were talking about the weather. “I suppose we’d be on our way to kill a man.”

  “Just like that?”

  “If you were looking for a debate on the subject, my first question would be ‘Why did you say yes?’ But you didn’t. So we’re not. You know, Saint was right about two things.”

  “Which two things?”

  The Skylark glided to a stop at a traffic light. A mild summer rain pattered down, misting the windshield, turning the light into a bloody neon smear against the black night sky. Beckett flipped the wipers on. The blades slapped back and forth in a slow metronome dance. He held up one finger.

  “One, we are soldiers with no nation. Private security is mercenary work. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t pick and choose. Doesn’t mean you can’t weigh your morals against a paycheck and decide which one is heavier on the scales. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Life is nothing but one long string of decisions and consequences. You make your choices; you take your ride.”

  Charlie frowned, dubious. “And the other thing he was right about?”

  “That only amateurs talk before they pull the trigger.”

  The blurry light strobed from red to wintergreen. Beckett eased his foot down on the gas pedal.

  They rode without talking for a while, just listening to the brassy strains of a Shirley Bassey song on the stereo. Charlie was back in the Victorian’s attic, walking through the conversation with Saint forward and backward. Hunting for clues in every word he’d chosen.

  “They’re not locals.”

  “Hmm?” Beckett flicked a glance at her.

  “They’re not locals, and they’re not regular customers of his. To be honest, I figured he’d turn us down flat when we offered to buy information from him. It was kind of a Hail Mary pass. Code of the streets and all that.”

  “Snitches get stitches.”

  “Exactly,” Charlie said. “Except when there’s no blowback to worry about. Saint wouldn’t rat on one of his regular customers. We know he’s afraid of the Boston mob. He’s looking for secondhand killers to take care of someone he thinks possibly might be but probably isn’t connected, just on the chance it might come back on him. If he’s that worried about crossing the Patriarcas and their pals, we can also conclude that whoever bought the C-4 doesn’t have any organized crime connections.”

  “A lone wolf from out of town.” Beckett drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Sounds like we’re back to the original theory. That it’s someone related to those dead Deep Country miners, up from Kentucky and looking for payback.”

  “It doesn’t jibe with the phone call I overheard, though. They want something from him. Some kind of treasure.” Charlie frowned. “Which has been bothering me since square one.”

  “Extortion? Not an uncommon crime. Not with the kind of people we protect.”

  She shook her head. “No. It was their opening move. If I hadn’t been there, if everything hadn’t worked out just right, the bomb in Sean Ellis’s chair would have killed him that night. Period, end of discussion. It even had a backup timer. The person who rigged that bomb fully intended to see him dead.”

  Beckett’s eyes narrowed, just a bit, as he followed her train of thought. He flicked the turn signal and pulled a slow, easy left turn as the cold summer rain pattered down. “Why try to murder a man, then ask him for money?”

  “Either we’re looking at some spectacular incompetence,” Charlie said, “or we’ve got more than one perp. One trying to kill him, one trying to squeeze him.”

  “I’d say again we have to get out of this contract,” he replied, “but saying it the last ten times didn’t do us any good.”

  Charlie didn’t like repeating rumors, but she had a feeling she wasn’t about to say anything Beckett didn’t already know. “Friend of a friend says the company is having cash flow problems.”

  “Your friend of a friend speaks true,” he said, “but keep that on the down low. This ship hasn’t sunk yet, and we’ve already had three rats jump off in the last month. Rival firm made offers to some of our best veteran assets; they had to choose between loyalty and steady cash, and they took the cash. On the bright side, that freed up the resources to bring you on board.”

  “I did wonder why the company was hiring new people, if they’re having income problems.”

  “Person,” Beckett said. “Just you. You didn’t hear this from me, but that was mostly a favor from Jake to the guy who suggested you for the job. Owed him for something, from way back, and giving you a tryout was part of the repayment plan. Anyway, you’re not wrong. Jake and Sofia need this contract. Meaning we need Mr. Sean Ellis happy, in one piece, and breathing for the duration. He dies on our watch, we might as well lock up the shop for good.”

  Something about the way Beckett worded it, how he took it from the impersonal to the personal—talking about Jake and Sofia, not Boston Asset Protection—sparked an insight. Charlie tilted her head, contemplating him. “You would have done it for them, wouldn’t you?”

  “Done what?”

  “Killed that dealer Saint wants dead, to get the intel we need.”

  “Didn’t say I would do it at all,” Beckett replied.

  “You didn’t say you wouldn’t.”

  He didn’t answer right away.

  “Material things come and go. You can be fat on Tuesday, thin on Wednesday. When it comes right down to it, there’s only one form of currency in the whole wide world that matters.”

  “Information?”

  “Loyalty,” he said. “Information is the second most important. And we’re not wealthy at the moment.”

  “I might have an idea.” Charlie hesitated. “It’s not exactly legal.”

  He gave her the side-eye. “As compared to dropping in for a chat with a black market arms dealer?”

  “I’m just saying. We know Ellis has been getting calls from the . . . well, from a viable threat. They’ll probably call back. If we could get ears on that conversation, it might give us a clue as to who we’re after.”

  “You want to tap the man’s phone,” Beckett said. His voice was flat. She wasn’t sure if he was on board or chastising her.

  “I do,” Charlie said. “Unless you’ve got a better plan.”

  He thought that over as he drove. The rain kept coming down, running down the windshield in long rivulets and smearing the streetlights.

  “I do not,” he replied. “But this is a three-person job. Any objections to turning this partnership into a conspiracy?”

  “Who did you have in mind?”

  “Only other person I trust around here. Also, only person who has the tech know-how to get it done.” He nodded to himself, setting a course. “We need Dom for this.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Oh, hell no,” Dom said. Her breath puffed a plume of steam from the cardboard cup of coffee in her hand. “Screw you both.”

  The rains had cleared overnight, leaving wet sidewalks, a muddy sky, and hot, muggy air in between. The three of them camped in a far booth at the Dunkin’ Donuts down the street from Deep Country’s corporate tower. A glazed cruller sat in front of Charlie on a paper napkin, untouched. She
had been hungry when she’d ordered it, but she’d lost her appetite fast.

  “Just floating the idea, that’s all,” Beckett told her. His voice carried a soothing rumble, like a zookeeper trying to calm an agitated lion before it took someone’s head off.

  “Last time you ‘just floated an idea,’ we ended up in Juárez.”

  “That wasn’t my fault.”

  “Wait,” Charlie said, her gaze darting between them like a ping-pong ball. “What happened in Juárez?”

  “We don’t talk about Juárez,” Beckett told her.

  Dom jabbed a finger at his chest. “You should know better. Charlie’s more green than the bananas on my kitchen counter, but you should know better.”

  “Don’t be mad at Beckett,” Charlie said. “It was my idea.”

  “And he should have told you to keep it to yourself.”

  “Look, I understand if it’s impossible—”

  Dom glared at her. She slapped her coffee down hard enough to slosh a few droplets onto the plastic table between them. “It’s not impossible. It’s dirt simple. I’m in charge of the security assessments, including electronic security. I can get my hands on Sean Ellis’s phone as easy as asking him for it. It’s not a question of ‘can you,’ it’s a question of ‘should you.’”

  “It’s not ethical; I know that.” Charlie shot a quick look over her shoulder, making sure none of the other customers were in earshot. She dropped her voice to a near whisper. “But it’s our only lead right now. Somebody, maybe two somebodies are coming for Ellis. He knows who they are, but he’s refusing to tell us, and he’s sticking his head in the sand like this’ll all go away by itself. And you know as well as we do that it won’t.”

  “Ethical,” Dom repeated. She looked to Beckett. “Seriously? She thinks my issue with this plan is ethics?”

  “Then what is it?” Charlie asked her.

  Dom’s gaze dropped to the table. She picked up her coffee, took a sip, set it down again. Her anger wilted like the air leaking from a pinpricked balloon.