Jeffery Deaver - Double Cross

See? Funny.

So we looked around and Marco saw a temporary road for highway construction nearby. Sunday and there were no workers at the jobsite and Marco turned down the road and damn he got stuck. This puddle he drove through was a lot deeper than it seemed and we went in to the axle.

“Shit.”

The Altima’s clean so we could just walk away. Not the best idea but no option. Couldn’t hardly call a tow truck, could we? Marco called Dave and told him what happened and he said he’d come get us.

In twenty minutes Dave got there and pulled up to the curb. But just then this guy walked up and I thought, shit, he’s a cop or security because he was looking like that. Athletic and he had that calmness cops and soldiers have. I can’t really describe it. He was in jeans and a tan jacket but he could’ve been off duty.

“You need a hand?” He was looking at the sunk Nissan.

“Naw, that’s okay,” Marco said.

“Nice car,” the tan jacket guy said because Dave drives a yellow Porsche 911 Turbo. The guy walked off and got in his Ford and drove off.

And we went to Papa’s to talk about the problem.

Which was that the guy in the tan jacket was a witness.

Marco said what we all knew: “He can put the perped Nissan together with Dave’s nine eleven. In three months the bonds go missing and Trunk Man’s dead and the police see the tape of the Nissan. They see a record of it being abandoned in the jobsite today and canvass for witnesses. They find this guy in the tan jacket and he remembers us three and a yellow Porsche. Which because it’s a yellow Porsche there aren’t that many of them and it can be traced to you.”

Looking at Dave.

We were sitting at Papa’s house, which was like a house in old-time England in Ann Arbor. Now that’s a nice place with a lot of girls in the college who are mostly tall and blond and even if they ignore you when you smile they’re still good to look at.

Papa’s wife came in and set out coffee in a real silver thing like a pot and the cups were small and had handles on the side your fingers don’t fit through. Lucille’s real sweet. She smiled at us all and left.

When she was gone Papa said in a soft voice: “That guy in the tan jacket? He’s got to go away.”

Marco was nodding and he said, “But how do we even find him? We don’t know anything about him, other than a description.”

“Yeah, we do,” I said, “he’s driving a Ford Taurus with Michigan tags and the number is five eight one six six one two.”

I was saying I excel. At some things.

Being there was no big hurry I spent the next month tracking down the guy in the tan jacket and finding out what I could about him. From DMV I found out his name was Jonathan Larkin and he lived in Bloomfield Hills, which is a very nice place. I dated a girl from there once. Larkin was single and worked freelance as a computer programmer so he wasn’t police, which made us relax because that’s a problem when you go killing one of them. He also was a veteran and had been overseas fighting with special forces. Which was something that we had to keep in mind of course.

I sent the information to Papa who thought the thing over for a few days and then called me over to his place. Lucille brought coffee out again and this time I used the handle of the little coffee cup because I bought a set at Macy’s and practiced.

Papa and me drank coffee and talked about the job and I was proud that he wanted me to be the triggerman to body the tan jacket guy, which I’d never done before. And he’d put me in charge of bodying Trunk Man too, figuring out the best roof to throw him off of. It was going to be a step up in the organization for me in a big way so things were looking good. Pretty soon I’d have a hundred K from the bonds and here I was going to earn my first blood. I was going places.

Imagine.

Yeah, I was in Heaven.

Dave and me were the ones on the tan jacket guy job. We had another two months until the bonds matured so there wasn’t any big hurry but now that we knew who he was and where he lived why not just get it over with?

Dave was a different sort of guy than Marco. He was more muscle than thinking and he was flashier. No sense of humor. But he was a pretty solid guy. Him and me had a beer and talked about the job. One thing I found was that Larkin was a former special forces soldier, which didn’t affect Dave one way or the other because he’d been a soldier too. But I said we’d have to be careful because Larkin would probably know hand-to-hand combat or karate and might have guns in his place. We talked about it some more and then left and the next morning we drove to Bloomfield Hills.

“I dated a girl from here,” I told Dave.

“Yeah? She hot?”

“Yeah. Totally.”

Okay the fact is I asked her out and we had coffee after community college once. It was after I’d dropped out and it didn’t go so well at Starbucks because we didn’t have anything to talk about. So we didn’t really date so much as have a date but even if she hadn’t just walked out I wouldn’t’ve been interested anyway because who wants to date somebody snooty? But she was hot.

Larkin lived in a nice complex, which was all yellow and beige and Dave and me could park behind it and see his balcony and windows but the lights never came on and we didn’t see the gray Ford. Hours we waited. So maybe he was away. We decided to break in and see what we could see. Dave wasn’t as good with locks as Marco but he was okay with doors and windows and simple stuff. Larkin didn’t have an alarm, which might’ve screwed things up because they aren’t easy to crack if it’s central station.

We had gloves on but as soon as we were in we put on booties and bonnets like the doctor who came out to tell me about my father at the prison hospital, which is what I always think about when we put them on. We did a fast search and made sure it was deserted put the Glocks away and searched more.

One wrinkle that happened was that Larkin had a girlfriend. But it looked like she just stayed here sometimes because there wasn’t a lot of clothes or cosmetic stuff. If we were lucky Larkin would come back alone but if not she’d have to be handled too.

Dave said, “Maybe a rape/murder thing. Some immigrants did it, you know. We could plant evidence.”

I’d have to think about that. Wasn’t a bad idea.

Dave pointed to some pictures of Larkin with some of his buddies. They were in combat gear in the desert. They looked fucking scary if you ask me. Other pictures of him with friends or family or alone showed a serious guy who didn’t smile a lot. He just stared at the camera. Yeah, Dave and I agreed he’d be dangerous and we’d have to be careful.

I was ready. Dave was ready.

But Larkin never showed.

We stayed there the entire night and didn’t eat or drink anything or pee or crap because of that DNA stuff.

At dawn we left and I called the condo office from a burner phone. I said I was a friend of Larkin and he wasn’t answering his phone. Did the manager know if he was all right?

“Oh, you didn’t hear?”

“No. What?”

“He’s at a hospital in Indianapolis, getting treatments. He didn’t say but cancer, I’m guessing. He’ll be down there for a month.”

“Hey, sorry to hear,” I said.

My mom had radiation and chemo and that kept her going for another couple years. But if Larkin’s was bad maybe he’d just die and I wouldn’t have to body him. Which was kind of disappointing.

“Poor guy. I want to send him something. Is he in the VA down there?”

“I don’t know the hospital. But I don’t think inpatient. I got an address to send mail.” He read it to me. It was the Welcome Residence Inn in Hartfield outside of Indianapolis.