David Ellis - In the Company of Liars

“I’m taking the radio with me, Jackson. But all the same, keep those hands on those cute cheeks of yours. Don’t make a move now, okay? My partner has a short fuse.”

“I ain’t movin’, lady,” he answers in his disappointed voice.

McCoy pats Jackson’s shoulder and moves up the stairs. She uses a key that was copied from an upstairs neighbor, last week. Harrick followed the woman to the store, showed her his credentials, and persuaded her to let him make a copy.

McCoy speaks into her collar. “Am I clean?”

“Clean,” Harrick’s voice crackles back in her earpiece. What he means is that Jimmy, upstairs, has not looked out his window, down at McCoy talking to the boy, nor has Jackson made any attempt to signal his boss from the stoop.

Once inside, McCoy removes her heels, takes one of the two flights of stairs and stops on the landing. She tosses her leather jacket, leaving a pajama top-nothing frilly, just a light-blue top. She takes off her cap and musses her hair.

“I’m going black,” she says, removing the earpiece.

She takes the next flight of stairs and walks up to the door. There is loud music coming from the apartment, as they had been told. But it’s not as loud as she had been led to believe, and she realizes she should have considered the source, an eighty-one-year-old woman.

Still, it’s her excuse, so she’ll use it.

She bangs on the door and shouts. “Hey!” She gets no response so she tries again, slamming the door hard, getting a good feel for its sturdiness. It’s thin, cheap wood, which is no surprise, but there’s at least a chain lock, also predictable. She hopes like hell she will not have to break down a closed door.

“You wanna turn that music down?” she shouts.

The voice comes from inside the apartment. “What’s your problem?”

“My problem is you, jerk-off!”

She hears him moving inside, toward the door, possibly approaching the peephole.

She takes a step back before he gets too close.

“Take a pill, sweetheart,” the voice says through the door.

“It’s eight-thirty in the morning!” she hollers, watching the door.

“Christ, lady-”

McCoy lets her weight transfer to her toes. She sees the door crack open and comes forward with full force, before the keychain has even stretched taut against the space, while the man is still in the midst of positioning his weight backward to open the door. That’s the key. It would probably take her several attempts to get through this door if it were shut, assuming she could do it at all. It’s all about surprise and balance.

She leads with her shoulder. She wants to keep her feet but it’s been a while, and anyway, this guy will be on his back, too. She hits the door and feels a pop in her shoulder, nothing permanent, but something she’ll remember for a while. Something this guy, Jimmy, will remember for a while, too.

The chain lock pops from the force. McCoy manages her balance as she stumbles on the hardwood floor of the apartment. Jimmy is on the floor behind the door.

“I’m a federal agent,” she says quickly, lest Jimmy get any ideas. Under these circumstances, this might be good news for Jimmy. But she will take no chances. She removes her weapon, tucked in the back of her jeans, her credentials quickly following, a badge on a leather base. She kicks the door shut and keeps the weapon trained on Jimmy, before he even knows what has happened.

Jimmy is mid-thirties, with stringy blond hair and darker facial hair. Why do these idiots think goatees look good?

“FBI,” she says. She motions with her weapon. “Get up. Sit down on that disgusting couch.” McCoy backs up and kicks at the stereo until it shuts up. “Sit, Jimmy. Sit. This might work out okay for you.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jimmy answers, making his way to the couch and falling on it.

McCoy gives him a crosswise look, lets her eyes move about the room. There are betting slips in piles on a desk, next to a ledger with numbers in three vertical columns-one for the bettor, one for the game, one for the amount, all in code. Four-no, five different cell phones-ghost phones, stealing signals from legitimate phones, making them untraceable. A bowl of Cheerios, half-finished, sits on the desk as well. “This wouldn’t be your first offense,” she says, deliberate in her choice of the conditional tense. “You probably know the sentencing guidelines better than I do.”

“This ain’t right.”

“That’s what you get for chincing on your sentries, Jimmy. A ten-year-old kid?”

Jimmy’s jaw clenches. He’s probably got some ideas about that kid in his head.

“Wasn’t his fault,” she says. “We’ve been watching you. It wouldn’t have mattered.”

“What the hell is this?” Jimmy asks.

A fair enough question. A federal agent, dressed in a pajama top and jeans, comes in solo and doesn’t seem all that interested in busting his chops. McCoy felt she had no choice. She wants to involve as few people as possible in this operation. And okay, maybe she wanted a little physical exercise.

“I have a couple of questions for you, Jimmy. If you answer them, I’m gone in thirty seconds. If you lie, we’re not friends anymore.”

Her new amigo squirms in his seat, folds his arms. “So ask me,” he says.

“Doctor Neil Lomas,” she says. “And if you tell me you don’t know him, I’m cleaning up this apartment.”

Jimmy ponders this, and that confirms her suspicion. Giving up the name of one of the people who places bets with him is not asking too much, considering the alternative. But this one is giving him pause.

She wonders what he knows about Doctor Neil Lomas. Does he know why he started gambling? Probably not. Does he have any idea that Doctor Lomas is in the process of producing a deadly drug that will be indistinguishable from baby aspirin?

Definitely not. No, Jimmy’s hesitation has nothing to do with Agent McCoy’s interest in the doctor.

“I got no business with that guy,” Jimmy says.

Actually, as phrased, Jimmy is probably telling the truth.

“Doctor Lomas was into you for fifteen grand,” she tells him. “You were getting impatient. Stomp your foot twice if I’m wrong.”

“What the fuck.”

“Now, just like that,” McCoy adds, “you’re leaving him alone. You haven’t sent anyone after him for months. That’s because he’s all paid up now. Right, Jimmy?”

Jimmy shakes his head.

“Just give me a name,” she says, sensing his obvious reluctance. “I know Doctor Lomas didn’t pay you himself.”

Jimmy’s mouth parts. He is probably weighing jail time versus incurring the wrath of the person who purchased Doctor Neil Lomas’s debt.

Besides, he probably couldn’t give McCoy a name.

This guy is scared. She could brace him a lot harder, but she’s not particularly interested in spending the entire morning with Jimmy, and she most certainly does not want to haul him in.

She pulls a photograph, folded in half, from her back jeans pocket and shows it to him. She watches his eyes.

Jimmy’s eyes go cold as winter, mesmerized, seemingly, by the photograph. He loses what little color he had in his face.

No question. She never really had any doubt.

“Lady,” says Jimmy, “youdefinitely didn’t hear me say yes.”

“No, I didn’t,” she agrees. He didn’t need to say the words. “I was never here, Jimmy, right?” she asks, but she knows that the last thing that Jimmy wants to do is discuss this conversation.

“Fuckyeah, you were never here. Keep me outta this shit.”

“You’re out of it.” She considers telling him to fold up shop, but that would be another unnecessary request. This place is burned now. Jimmy will be out of here in a matter of hours.