Victor Gischler - Suicide Squeeze

Conner took the picture, looked at it apparently without interest. “Right.”

“I need some information, okay?”

“Am I under arrest? Last time I checked, repossessing boats wasn’t a crime.”

“I’m not the police, Samson.”

Conner’s brow furrowed. He reappraised the woman. She sure as hell acted like a cop. And the slight bulge under her jacket was probably a pistol. “Let’s start over. Who are you, and what’s this about?”

“I’m an insurance investigator,” she said. “I talked to Derrick James, and he said he’d put you on to the boat repo.”

“I couldn’t find her,” Conner said too quickly. “Sorry. Wish I could help.”

“I’m looking for Folger, not necessarily the boat.”

“Haven’t seen him.” Conner had seen him. Tied to a chair, eyes swollen, lips bleeding, a couple of Asian guys working him over. The memory made him wince. He couldn’t look Becker in the eye, so he pretended to look harder at the picture of the boat. “I checked all the marinas. No sign of her or Teddy Folger.” Conner looked at the paper to which the photograph of the boat was clipped. It was the insurance information from Allied Nautical, a fuzzy photocopy, the same exact page Samson had looked at, the same scribbling in Derrick James’s handwriting up in the corner.

James was dead, the file missing from his office. And here was a woman who said she’d talked to James. Conner’s stomach flip-flopped. He glanced again at the bulge under her jacket, licked his lips nervously. Maybe Joellen Becker had been the last person to see James alive.

“You okay?” she asked. “You look pale.”

Conner cleared his throat. “Hungover.”

She offered Conner a business card. “I can make it worth your while if you happen to remember something.”

Conner stared at the card, didn’t take it. “Uh-huh.”

She said, “Best to try my cell phone. I always have it with me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Any time, day or night.” She wiggled the business card like it was a crust of bread she was offering to a petting-zoo goat.

“Sure.”

“Are you going to take this fucking card or not?”

“Excuse me just a moment, will you?” Conner said.

He left her standing there, went back to his bedroom, and slid open his closet door. He rummaged past old baseball cleats and his winter coat, found the Webley, the old British service revolver Fat Otis referred to as the antique. He held it tightly, his heart thumping madly. Easy does it, Samson. If she killed James, then she won’t hesitate to kill again. Don’t get cute. He didn’t like guns, but he wanted to do this quickly and decisively. He took one more deep breath. Now go citizen’s arrest her sorry ass.

Conner walked into the living room, the Webley leading the way. Becker saw him, raised an eyebrow.

She said, “Does Indiana Jones know you have his gun?”

“Don’t move,” Conner said.

“Or what?”

“What do you mean, or what? Or the usual. I’m pointing a big fucking gun at you.”

“What’s this about, Samson? We were getting along so well.”

“You killed James,” Conner said. “I saw his body. And the Folger file was missing, and now here you are with a page from that file.”

“You’re adding two plus two and getting five. Put the gun down.”

“Lie on the floor and… uh… put your hands behind your head.”

Becker laughed. “You watch too much NYPD Blue.”

“You’re not supposed to laugh at me. I’m holding a gun.”

“What reaction did you want?”

“Fear and compliance,” Conner said.

“Fat chance. Your revolver’s not even loaded.”

“What?” He brought the gun up to his face, looked down into the empty chambers. When was the last time he’d cleaned this thing?

When he was no longer pointing the gun at her, Becker spun, her leg flying out and knocking the gun from his hand. No time for him to react. She kicked again, clocked him on the jaw. His last thought before everything went black was Does everyone fucking know karate but me?

Conner’s eyes opened. He tried to focus, blinked up at the Amazon blur standing over him. Becker. Beyond her was the cracked and stained ceiling. He said, “Had enough?”

“I didn’t kill James,” she said. “Just out of curiosity, what did you think you were going to do?”

Good question. “Take you to the police?”

“You really want the cops involved?”

He didn’t say anything, rubbed his jaw.

“Let’s put our cards on the table,” suggested Becker.

She helped him up. They sat across from each other at Conner’s kitchen table, and Becker explained how James had been alive and well when she’d been there.

“You were probably the last person to see him alive.”

“Except for whoever murdered him,” Becker said flatly.

“Sure. Right.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

Conner threw up his hands. “Fine. I believe you.” And he did. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t figure a reason for Becker to do it. Somebody else had whacked James. Somebody with a motive. It was all guesswork and gut instinct. On the other hand, his gut instincts had put him in the hole with Rocky Big. His gut instincts were shit.

“Why did you go see James if you hadn’t found the sailboat?” she asked.

He thought about coming clean but lied instead. “To tell him I was dropping the case. Folger and the boat are long gone. Probably Mexico or Jamaica.”

She looked at him hard, didn’t speak for long seconds. She put her business card on the table between them, tapped it with an index finger. “I think you know more than you’re letting on, Samson. Shit happens. Things got dicey or maybe more complicated than you thought, so now you want to wash your hands of the whole deal. Am I close?”

“It’s not like that.” Yes it is!

She shook her head. “I don’t want any explanations. James meant nothing to me. Too bad he’s dead, but I have my own concerns. So chill. I’m not going to rat you. I meant what I said. I can make it worth your while.”

“Why are you looking for Folger?”

She thought for a second, then said, “He made off with something valuable. The rightful owners want it back.”

“What is it?”

She said, “None of your business.”

Conner scratched his chin, bit his lip. “How much are we talking?”

She shrugged. All casual now. “You give me something good, a name, an address, something to put me back on Folger’s trail, I could go five hundred. Cash.”

That wouldn’t even get Rocky Big off my back. “I’ll call you if I remember anything.”

“I’d prefer you remember now.”

“And I’d prefer two thousand.”

She looked around Conner’s dank kitchen, stood, wiped dust off the counter. “Take what you can get, Samson. The cell phone is always on.”

She showed herself out.

Samson knew something. Becker was sure of it. It might even be something worth two thousand dollars, but the thought of some two-bit repo man putting the bite on her irritated Becker more than anything. In the old days, she’d gotten a little impatient with some of the rat-fink informants she used on a regular basis. A black eye here, a broken wrist there. There had been complaints, warnings. That special ops stuff didn’t rub with routine fieldwork. She had refused her superiors’ suggestion to think about anger management therapy. They had trained her to kick ass and now wanted a kinder, gentler intelligence community. She’d been caught in the shift, set adrift between administrations. Her file was a checkerboard of iffy judgment calls and reprimands.

All of this had been used against Becker at her final performance evaluation. She’d been given two choices. Resign from the NSA or staff the company’s office in Blue Elk, Alaska.