Jeffery Deaver: The Deliveryman

“Miguel Ángel?” His wife of eighteen years stepped into the doorway of his study.

The room, dark and quiet, was Morales’s and his only. He ran his crew from a social club a block north. This was his private place. And although she was helpful in running his crew and a powerful, and dangerous, woman in her own right, she waited until he gestured her in. Which he now did.

Connie was more Anglo than he, by blood, and had a light complexion and brown hair (his was jet black, though some of the shade came from a bottle). She had a voluptuous figure, which never failed to appeal even after all these years of marriage. Now, though, he merely took in her concerned face and turned back to the window.

“Still nothing?” she asked.

She knew of the problem.

“No word.” A nod, indicating the whole of the New York City area. “It’s out there somewhere. But it might as well be on Mars.”

“You need something?”

He shook his head. She returned to the kitchen. She was baking — a process that was a mystery to Miguel Ángel Morales. He’d never cooked a single thing in his life. Oh, he appreciated the processes involved: chemistry and heat. But he employed them in a slightly different way: an acid attack on a rival last year and burning to death an interloper from the Bronx (he could still summon the unpleasant scent of burnt skin and hair).

This morning his wife was baking coffee cakes. The smells were orange and cinnamon.

Morales sipped coffee, then set down the tiny cup, painted with pictures of blank-faced birds. Chickens, he supposed. They were yellow, their beaks blood red.

He was regarding the street before him — brownstones similar to his, women going to stores, returning from stores, boys playing soccer, even though this was a school day.

His phone hummed. Today’s burner, good for another ten or twelve hours.

The caller was Morales’s main lieutenant.

“Yes?” Please let there be good news.

Four hundred eighty-seven thousand dollars...

“I just found out why our deliveryman didn’t show. He’s dead. Got knifed in Midtown.”

“ What ? Who did it?”

“No idea. Never heard Rinaldo was at risk.”

“I didn’t either. Wouldn’t have used him if he had been.”

Echi Rinaldo worked freelance for a lot of crews. He had no territory of his own and no allegiance, except to ply his trade of getting “difficult shipments” (the term the wiry man used with some humor) into the hands of purchasers or borrowers. He never cheated anyone and kept his mouth shut.

“We know,” the man continued, “that he hid the delivery without any problem.”

“You think this man, this killer, followed him and tortured him to find out where it was?”

“Unlikely. From what I’ve heard it was a street fight. He died in a few minutes. And more or less in public. You want me to find who did it and—”

“I’m not interested, at this point,” Morales said calmly, “in that. Finding the delivery: That’s our only mission.”

A pause on the other end of the line. “The seller has the money.”

“That’s not an issue either.” The seller would not take Morales’s money and steal back the delivery. Morales knew the man’s operation well. That double-dipping would serve little purpose. Besides, the relationship between them was a partnership, and it was far too early in the game for one partner to screw the other. “What else do you know?”

“We’re monitoring scanners. Nobody has much info. Wasn’t a hijacking and there were no contracts out on anybody fitting his description.”

“Use who you need to — but only our men, or people deep in our pocket — and find out what you can, retrace Rinaldo’s steps, get surveillance in place on anyone who knows anything. Police too if you need to.”

“Yessir. Oh, one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Rinaldo wasn’t alone when it happened. He had his son with him.”

Ah, yes. That’s right. Morales recalled this. It was decided that he’d take the boy with him on his rounds yesterday to give an air of innocence if he were stopped for a traffic violation. He’d never met the boy but believed him to be about eight or nine.

“What did he see?”

“Nothing, from what we’re picking up on the chatter. But who knows?”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Now, get started.”

“Yessir.”

He disconnected and, his jaw tight, looked over the soccer players. They should be in school. Where were their parents?

He reflected on his lieutenant’s call and decided this was not the time to save fifty-nine dollars. He slipped the battery out of his phone — these he kept — and broke the unit in half, then dropped the carcass into a bag for disposal. From a drawer he withdrew another phone and, with a sharp, bone-handled knife, his father’s, he began to slice through the encasing plastic carefully, one centimeter at a time.

After disconnecting the call, the stocky man put his Samsung into the pocket of his olive drab combat jacket and, sipping excellent diner coffee, wondered where the name Echi came from.

Wasn’t that some kind of foreign word? No. Ecco . Was that it? From an old language? Like Greek or Roman? Ecco, therefore I am. In his job Stan Coelho didn’t have much connection with old-time writing or foreign languages, other than Spanish. And occasionally Russian, if he had to go up against the Brighton Beach crew in Brooklyn.

He should read more. He should learn more.

Another bite of sloppy eggs.

So, Ecco Rinaldo was dead and a very important delivery had gone missing.

Well, this was a mess.

Perched on a creaky stool, he was finishing breakfast at a diner on the Upper East Side, eggs over easy, toast to mop, and turkey sausage, which because it was turkey was supposed to have less calories and fat than the other kind, the real kind. Probably didn’t, though. Turkey fat, pig fat, both pretty much the same.

He felt his girth press against his belt, as if the meal was already expanding his forty-four-inch waist. It wasn’t, Coelho was sure, but the imagined bloating felt real. He’d get the weight under control soon.

“Hey, honey, refill.” He tapped the coffee cup. “And that Danish. The cheese one. And the bill.”

“Sure thing.”

He reached for his wallet but he reached carefully. He was carrying a Glock inside that taut waistband, pretty concealed but not absolutely concealed, and the diner was crowded. Not the place for somebody to scream, “That asshole’s got a gun!”

Reflecting on the phone call a moment ago: his mission was to find the delivery, maybe find who did Rinaldo, but at this point doing that was optional. The delivery was all that mattered.

He left a bit of sausage, in caloric compensation, and chewed down half the Danish, which tasted mostly of sugar. Not that that was a negative. He poured back two slugs of coffee and ate the rest of the pastry. He wiped his mouth and his impressive moustache, as salt-and-pepper as his thick hair. Digging for bills, he left a ten and five under the plate, a generous tip. Then replaced the wallet — replacing carefully — and left the diner, walking out onto Third Avenue, congested with people headed to work, mostly going south, to Midtown. He lived in Queens, where the commute was different, mostly you took buses or walked to the subway or elevateds. It was still crowded, but not like this.

Manhattan.

Good diners here. Not much of anything else for him.

Coelho stood close to the diner and lit a cigarette. A woman passing by, dragging her overbundled kid to an overpriced school, glared at him. His return glare said, Fuck you, it’s still America. He wanted to exhale smoke her way but she was gone fast, plodding along in her massive and ugly boots.