John Sandford - Wicked Prey

Cohn looked at McCall and Lane and said, "Sooner or later, he'd have given us up. He didn't have a job, like you boys. He was on the street. Sooner or later, he was going to get caught, and then he was gonna cut a deal. We were nothing but money in the bank, to him."

They all looked at the body for a minute, then Cruz said, "You should have told me what you were going to do."

"Didn't know how you'd react," Cohn said, in apology. "I'm sorry if this offends you."

"That's not what I meant," Cruz said. "What I mean was, if you'd told me, I'd have figured out a better place to do it. He's bleeding, ah, for Christ's sakes, if they find blood in the carpet'"

She took three long steps to the closet niche, snatched a HomTel plastic laundry bag off a hanger, and as the men watched, bent over Spitzer's body, lifted his head by the hair on the back of his skull, and pulled the bag over his head. Then she tugged the head to one side and said, "The carpet's okay. Goddamnit, Brute, try thinking about consequences once in a while."

Cohn was embarrassed and shrugged, and said, "Sorry, babe."

"Go wash that wrench. We'll throw it out the car window somewhere," she said. "And don't call me babe."

McCall looked at Lane, who shrugged. "Be good if nobody found out about this for a while."

"We'll take him out in the woods and bury his ass," Cohn said. "When I was buying the wrench, I bought some garbage bags at Home Depot. We can pick up a shovel on the way out."

They looked down at the body, and Cruz said, finally, "Four guys would have been better."

Cohn grinned at her: "You'll just have to carry a gun yourself, darling."

She shook her head. "I need to be outside. If I'm not outside, I can't manage the radios and all the other stuff. Three is okay, four would be better. I don't know how many people we'll be handling."

Cohn looked at Lane. "How about your brother?"

Lane shook his head. "We can't go on the same job. You know, so there'll be somebody to take care of the families, if something happens."

McCall asked, "You remember Bob Mortenson from Fresno?" Cohn nodded.

"He had a wheelman named Steve Sargent, he was in Chino until last year. He got caught on a jewelry deal that broke down in LA after Mortenson quit. I know him, some, he's careful, he can keep his mouth shut. If we needed him…"

"We'll talk about it," Cohn said. "But I'd rather not work with someone new. Look what happened when we brought in this piece of shit." He prodded Spitzer's body with a toe of his shoe. "We'll work it with Rosie, see if we can do it with three. What happened with Mortenson? I haven't heard about him in years."

"He retired. He's in Hawaii," McCall said. "Got a place there. Goes fishing a lot. Plays golf."

"That's what we're talking about," Cohn said, the enthusiasm lighting his eyes. "That's what this job'll do for us. Rosie says this should be large: we pull this off, we're all done."

Lane levered himself to his feet. "In the meantime, we gotta get rid of Jack," he said.

"You're the farm boy," McCall said. "You know about the woods. I'm city, man. I'm scared of them bears and shit. Wolves."

A bad smell was coming from the body-flatulence, emptying lungs, or maybe death itself. Cruz said, "We need to get some air freshener. Some pine scent, that's what the motel uses."

Lane said to Cohn, "You know, even if we weren't here for a job, Jack would have been worth doing. I feel a hundred percent safer already."

McCall said to Cohn, "If you got that garbage bag…" But then Lane asked Cruz, "What're we gonna hit, anyway? You never said."

"Not one hit," she said. "Maybe six or eight."

Lane and McCall stared at her for a second, and Cohn said, "She'll tell you all about it-but let's get rid of Jack and she can lay it all out."

"Just give me one minute of it, right now," Lane said. "Not the details, just the outline."

Cruz said, "There are two parts to the deal, but they're not really connected. The Republican convention is starting, and the people who run the party down at the street level are here, as delegates and spectators. So these big lobby guys come in with suitcases full of cash, and pass it out, expense money. They call it street money, hire guys to put up signs and all that, off the books. Everybody knows about it, nobody tells. Can't tell, because it's illegal. I've got the names and hotel rooms for seven of them. They could have anywhere from a quarter-million to a million dollars, each. We hit them until we feel nervous. We'll have to feel it out as we go, but three or four guys anyway. Five, maybe? We'll see. Look for reaction on TV, watch the targets, see if they get bodyguards, whatever."

"Who watches them?" Lane asked.

"I do, basically. I've got a file on each of them," Cruz said. "They're schmoozers, they want to make sure they get the credit for the cash they're handing out, they'll be hooking up with people all the time."

"You're going into the convention?" McCall asked.

"No. Neither will these guys. The security is super-tight and they don't want to get caught with a hundred thousand in small bills," Cruz said. "So they do the business at the hotels. Two of the guys are thirty seconds apart in the same hotel; we can do them both at the same time-and they're two of the biggest money guys. The third guy and the fourth guy we'll have to check. If we see any reaction from the cops, we quit and go on to the second part."

"Which is?" Lane asked.

"A hotel job. The night McCain gets nominated there's a big ball at the St. Andrews Hotel downtown. We hit the strong room afterwards. Three in the morning. I'm thinking twenty million in jewelry, maybe a million or two in cash."

"You got a guy inside?" McCall asked.

"Had one. A guy in Washington. Worked for the committee that sets up room assignments."

"What about at the hotel?"

"I couldn't find anybody there that I could risk recruiting," Cruz said. "The Secret Service is all over the place. I stayed there a couple of times, a week at a time, did a lot of scouting ' put my stuff in a safe-deposit box, I've been in and out of the strong room a half-dozen times. I know the hotel, top to bottom."

" Lot of people coming and going in a hotel," Lane said.

"That can be handled," Cruz said. "There's no more risk than an armored car or a bank. And I'm working a little thing that'll keep the cops occupied while we're inside."

Nobody said anything for a moment, and she added, "Guys, this is it: this is one where we all get out. If we get two million from the political guys and a million from the hotel and twenty million in diamonds, that'd be another seven or eight in cash-and we'll get at least that, I swear to God-we can quit. Shake hands and walk."

They'd worked with her on a dozen jobs and she'd never been wrong. And they'd talked about quitting. Lane had a family, McCall had a longtime lover, Cohn was getting old, Cruz was getting nervous. Past time to quit. Lane and McCall glanced at each other again, McCall tipped his head and said, "All right; we can get the details later. Right now, we need those white-trash bags."

Randy Whitcomb, strapped into the back of the van, with Juliet Briar at the wheel, Ranch sitting in a fog layer in the passenger seat, rolled past Lucas Davenport's house every few minutes, until they saw the girl getting out of a private car. She waved at the driver and headed up the driveway to Davenport 's house. She was a rangy blond teenager, dressed conservatively in dark slacks, a white blouse, and sandals.

"Maybe a babysitter," Ranch said.

"She's got a key," Briar pointed out. "They don't give keys to babysitters."

"Then it's gotta be his daughter," Whitcomb said. "Too young for him to be fuckin'. Daughter'd be good."

"Never done anything to us," Juliet said, doubtfully.