Jeffery Deaver - The Deliveryman

The crew lost a smooth thirty thousand from what would have been an easy payroll check cashing service heist.

Miguel Ángel had personally tied a weight to Santos’s waist and pushed him into the East River, near the sewage treatment facility in Queens.

His hand close to the Smith and Wesson in his back pocket, Ortiz now slipped out of hiding and walked up the street to the intersection, turned left and into the alley behind the townhouse complex. Staying close to the back walls, he moved slowly forward, over cobblestones, the alley cleaner than most in the city. He was counting back doors. The Abbotts’ was the sixth building on the left.

Ortiz had just reached the third when a shadow appeared fast from the right and behind him.

Shit...

He gasped as a massive set of fingers closed on his own hand — the one reaching instinctively toward his pistol. An arm gripped his shoulders and tugged him roughly backward and closer to the wall. He struggled to break free but the assailant was far stronger.

He smelled a whiff of some sour aftershave and a head was next to his ear, so close that he felt beard stubble against his lobe.

“Quiet,” came the command, a guttural voice.

Ortiz nodded.

The pressure relaxed completely and he turned. His lids lowered briefly in relief. He’d thought, for a moment, that there’d been a second cop, one in the alleyway, who’d nailed him. But no, it wasn’t a cop. Though technically he was a law enforcer. Stan Coelho, officially working for the ATF but making most of his money as an informant and all around badass for Miguel Ángel Morales.

“Jesus. Almost shit my pants.”

Coelho whispered, “The SUV in front?”

“Yeah?” Ortiz took to whispering too.

“It’s empty.” The ATF agent pointed up the alley. Ortiz could make out, just barely, faint motion from the back service doorway of the Abbotts’ apartment. Ah, it was the cop from the stakeout, Ortiz understood. Ah, not a bad idea. You leave an SUV running in front of the place you’re guarding — and an SUV with darkened windows, hard to see inside. Then the driver slips behind the building. Anyone wanting to break in would avoid the front door and its General Motors bouncer... and then get busted by the asshole hiding in the back.

Coelho whispering: “Come on. Here.”

The big man slipped into the back doorway of the apartment building they were closest to, a recessed area, on the same side of the alley as the foster parents’. He had, apparently, already snapped the lock and deadbolt here and gestured Ortiz inside. Then, with a glance toward the cop, followed, pulling the door shut.

The ATF agent said, “We gotta go up.” Lifting his eyes toward the ceiling. “Onto the roof. We go over the building—”

“We have to jump?” Ortiz was not a fan of heights.

“From one building to the other?” The massive man seemed amused. “I look like I do that? No, they’re all connected. We get to their place, then down. They have the whole building.”

Ortiz nodded toward the Abbott’s building. “And the kid’s in there?”

The man didn’t answer but his look said, why you think Morales called us both here if he wasn’t.

“Let’s get going.”

In five minutes they’d made their way down the ladder and then the stairs into the Abbotts’ townhouse. The top floor, where the two men stood, guns in hands, consisted of three bedrooms, all of them — Coelho checked and reported — empty.

From below were the sounds of a television and muted conversation. The agent nodded in that direction. They started down the stairs. Normally he’d be uneasy at times like this. But he felt more or less comfortable, pleased that Coelho was here. There was going to be, Miguel Ángel had suggested, some killing and, while Ortiz shied from such work, the ATF agent — you might say — lived for it.

He forced himself not to cry out in shock.

Javier Rinaldo had come back from the bathroom and as he walked out of the john, he’d seen shadows from upstairs. He ducked into a spare bedroom and leaned out. He saw two figures coming down the stairs.

Holding guns.

No, no, no!

One of them was the guy had killed his father, he bet! Coming here to kill him too. And those nice people, the Abbotts!

Javier didn’t have any idea how they’d found him but here they were. One Latino and skinny. One white and big.

What was he going to do?

They were between him and his bedroom — he couldn’t get to it without being seen. He glanced at the window in this room. Then outside. He couldn’t jump; it was concrete below. He couldn’t fight them, either. No weapon.

But he could warn the Abbotts. There was no phone in this room but there had to be one in the big bedroom up the hall, the Abbotts’. The men with the guns moved slowly down the stairs and turned away, looking toward his room, where music from his computer game played. When they were focused on it, Javier slipped out and made his way on the carpeted floor of the hallway to the bedroom. His hands and heart shook, tears dotted his eyes.

He stepped inside fast.

And stopped. Blinking in shock. He wasn’t alone. Mrs. Abbott was sitting on the bed, making a phone call.

She frowned. Filled with relief, Javier locked the door and then ran to her. “There’re these men!” he whispered. “They’re up the hall. They mustta come in through the roof! Call the police, you know nine one one!”

Rising, Mrs. Abbott touched her lips. “Shhh,” she said. “Silencio! No se mueven.”

Crying more tears, Javier nodded and stopped speaking. He gestured to the phone. She said nothing but walked to the door.

He gasped as she unlocked it. “No! They’re out there.”

Only then did he register that she’d been speaking to him in Spanish. Which she hadn’t done before.

Something was wrong here. Real wrong.

The door swung open and he cried out, seeing the two men look their way. They turned and walked inside, putting their guns away. And behind them was Mr. Abbott.

Only it turned out he wasn’t really Mr. Abbott. The skinny Latino man in a checkered jacket said to him. “What do we do now, Mr. Morales?”

“Bring him downstairs. We’ve wasted too much time.”

The plan was working out.

Miguel Ángel Morales himself had come up with the idea of having his lieutenant, Raphael Ortiz, conduct surveillance and infiltrate Child and Family Services and learn which foster family Echi Rinaldo’s son was going to be temporarily placed with. If they’d had more time, he would have found a couple to pretend to be the Abbotts, the foster family for Javier. But the matter had moved too quickly and the only two people available for masquerade were Morales and his wife, Connie.

They’d gotten this address and hurried here. Morales himself had murdered the Abbotts and managed to clean the place of any pictures of the real couple just before that redheaded cop brought the boy here.

Morales at first intended to use the child as bait, in hopes that whoever had killed Rinaldo had possession of the shipment and would come for the child to eliminate him as a witness. But as his triggerman, Stan Coelho, had learned — and as Morales himself had guessed — it looked like Rinaldo’s killing was random and had nothing to do with the guns.

But then he came up with another idea: using the boy to track down where the deliveryman might have hidden the shipment. He’d been amused when Connie had told him that the redheaded cop, Sachs, had actually suggested the kid do the same — drawing pictures of where he and his father had been.

Now, on the main floor, Connie said, “Javier, you don’t have to be afraid. These men, they didn’t kill your father. They were friends with him. We’re all friends.”