Derek Haas - Dark men

“… which represents five percent of his wealth.”

He swallows, and his lips purse and tremble like a baby with a pacifier. He’s too dumb to do the math, but he knows the number has a lot of zeroes. I hand him the handles of the bag and he takes it in his lap. He wants to play it cool but he can’t stop himself; he unzips the bag and looks over the stacks.

“Now here’s the messy part.”

His eyes dart up, searching my face. “Messy?”

“Yes, sir. See, we’re authorized to release you the rest of the inheritance, but we need something from you before we can do that.”

He nods before he even knows he’s doing it. “Sure. What do you need?”

“Well, when an asset of ours dies, for national security reasons, we have to make sure all ties to him are erased. If an enemy were able to trace steps back to where he started, where he was living, where he kept personal possessions, files and such, we’d be… well, it would be bad for the country.”

I have zero idea what I’m talking about, but I’ve read enough Ludlum, Clancy, and Follet to impersonate a government handler. Well, at least conjure enough of a performance to manipulate a desperate man who doesn’t know jack shit.

“Yeah, sure. I understand.” He stands up and absently wipes his hands on his shirt again. “Let me see…” He heads to a back hallway, leaving us alone in the living room.

Risina eyes me, a half smile on her face. I shrug, and we wait. I can hear doors open and close somewhere in the house, and then the sound of paper shuffling.

After a moment, Lance returns, holding a small yellow legal pad. In his other hand is a cell phone. He exhales loudly… “This is all I got. Umm… I haven’t heard from Ro in years, shoot, I mean, had to be 2005 or so, after mom died. He had to sign some papers so I could, um, take over this place. He told me if I ever got in serious trouble, to, um… get ahold of him at this number.”

He hands me the legal pad and the only thing scrawled on it is an 888 number. He hands me the phone. “He, uh, he said to use this phone so he’d know it was me. I guess it has a chip in it or something?” He hands me an old Nokia. “I haven’t, uh, charged it in a while.”

“Did you ever call him?”

“One time. I called him and some broad…” he looks over at Risina. “Sorry, I mean, some woman answered and said she was with some bank or something. At first, I thought I’d dialed the wrong number, then I realized it was probably a cover or something? I told her to tell Roland that his brother needed him.

“I swear it wasn’t another five minutes and the phone rang in my hand. He was all concerned, out-of-breath you know, asking if I was in trouble. I told him I was running out of funds, you know… maybe he could loan me some money? He told me to only call him if my life was in danger, if someone had threatened me, that was it. That’s the last I heard from him. We were never close, but I guess he… uh, I guess he…” He looks down at the duffel. “… wanted me to have a better life or something.”

I stand up and Risina joins me. “You sure this is everything you have that could lead back to him? No address in Washington or anything?”

He holds up his empty hands, then crosses his arms like he’s hugging himself. “No, nothing else. That’s it. If he had a home address, he never gave it to me.”

I nod, and look into his eyes, like I’m checking to see if he’s lying when I already know he’s telling the truth.

“Okay, Mr. Deckman. Thank you.”

He looks at the duffel as we head to the door. “Sure, no problem.” He follows us closely…

“So… the rest of the money?”

I stop, like I had forgotten about it. “Yes, sorry. My associate here will deliver it when we make sure there isn’t any other way to get to your brother’s identity through you.”

“There isn’t.”

“I’m sure there isn’t. It’s just a formality. You mind if we give it to you in cash? Makes it cleaner for us.”

“No, yeah, I mean, cash is great.”

“Karen here will get back to you shortly. We, uh, we know where you live,” I say with a laugh.

He laughs too, like he’s relieved. As we step back off his stoop, “How… how did he die if you don’t mind my asking?”

“It’s classified,” I offer, trying my best to look apologetic.

He nods again, then gives us a half wave, drops his hand like he was embarrassed about that, and then just shuts the door.

Risina and I climb in the car, and she chuckles. “Okay, not all of this job is miserable.”

“No, not all of it,” I agree as I hold up the phone. “Let’s go find a place to call Decker and see if he might want to come say hello.”

We take him at the casino.

Downtown Detroit has three of them, one in Greektown, and two in the middle of downtown. The MGM is a Vegas-style complex, with a full floor of gaming tables, restaurants, nightclubs and a show theater attached to a forty-story hotel.

I call the number from his phone and know it’s going to be recorded, so I evince my best impression of his brother’s nasally whine when the woman picks up with “National Investments.”

“It’s Lance. I’m outta money. And these guys at the MGM, they’re not messing around. Tell my bro… tell Ro I gotta… I’m going in at midnight to room 4001 to meet these guys… just tell him I love him.”

I hang up. The phone chirps in my hand three minutes later, but I ignore it. I don’t remove the battery so they can pinpoint the location with whatever satellites do that type of thing. Since Risina and I are already checked into the hotel, it should paint a convincing picture.

I’m certain he’ll come alone. He doesn’t want his employers to know any more about his personal business than absolutely necessary, and certainly not about his deadbeat brother who got himself in a bad way with some casino heavies. No, my guess is he’ll come in by himself, pissed off, armed but not ready to shoot, not ready to play defense. And as a man who understands the value of surprise, I’m betting he won’t try to contact the casino owners ahead of time to straighten out this matter. If he does, my plan is sunk, but what better place to play the odds than right here in a gaming joint?

At eleven-thirty, Risina spots a man heading to the elevator, and after he gives it a cursory glance, he backtracks toward the reception area. His face is similar to his brother’s, but better looking-a stronger jaw, brighter eyes-like the superior chromosomes bandied together to favor him and exclude his alcoholic brother. Still, the family resemblance is there.

The top floor requires an extra security card to trigger the elevator, so he’ll have to request the floor, another indication this is our guy. Risina ducks in behind him, hears him request a room on the fortieth floor, and then

listens to the receptionist give him room 4021.

He thanks her politely and heads back to the bank of elevators. I’m sure he’s surging with grim energy, ready to confront the guys in room 4001 before his brother arrives, straighten out the situation, turn it ugly if he has to, whatever it takes to get his brother off the hook. After he presses the up button, the first doors to open are for the middle car in this deck of three, and as soon as he’s in it, Risina calls up to me.

“Middle elevator, up now.”

I’m on the twentieth floor. Above the doors are LCD readouts displaying the floor number of each car’s current position. I watch and hit my own “up” button as the middle car passes the tenth floor. We tested this a few times and ten out of eleven, the elevator heading up is the one that stops; the only exception was when one of the other cars was already on the twentieth floor. But the right and left elevators are elsewhere and the one rising should be the correct choice, come on. Except now as I look, the elevator up on twenty-eight is heading down this direction and if it gets here first, I don’t know what will happen, which door will open. The middle one continues to climb, please don’t let someone else in the teens press “up” and stop it. It’s moving up steadily, 17, 18… while the one on the right continues to fall, 22, 21, and then it hits 20 and I hold my breath, but it keeps heading down, 19, 18 on the way to the lobby and then the middle elevator door dings open. No one else is inside but Decker. I have a ball cap slung low so he won’t get a good look at me. I doubt he knows my face but if he’s working closely with Spilatro, I can’t be sure.