Deal Gone Bad - A Thriller (Frank Morrison Thriller Series Book 1) (18 page)

Morrison drove out of the
neighborhood as fast as he could without drawing attention to himself. While he
pushed his way on, he kept scanning the three rear-view mirrors. His head was
caught in a whirlwind, buzzing with a million worries.

He needed to slow things
down. He needed to start thinking.

For one thing, he was
pretty sure nobody had seen him leave the apartment building. After all, nobody
had gone running after him on the sidewalk. Nobody had screamed at him. But then
again, someone could have been at his window at the back of the apartment
building as Morrison came rushing down the wobbly stairs. However unlikely, it
was possible. Morrison frowned. There was also that young family he had run into
on his way in. Their contact had lasted only the briefest moment. But these
people had seen him. If pressed, they could offer a description. Theoretically.
Because in practice, he knew that people were notoriously bad at providing
physical descriptions, especially when it concerned someone they had seen only once.
And very briefly at that. In these situations, Angelina Jolie could turn into
Julia Roberts just like that, depending on who you asked.

The next item worried him
a lot more.

His fingerprints. He realized
that he had left them at the dead hacker’s place. On the doorknob. On the
window frame out in the bedroom.

Shit.

He knew that in real life,
getting prints that you could actually use was a lot trickier than it appeared—not
like you saw in the movies or read in the mystery paperbacks, where the
faintest thumb print led to an identified suspect in a matter of minutes.
Reality didn’t work that way. Not at all.

But still. He shifted in
his big padded leather seat. Those items worried him big time, but not as much
as thinking that there had been a leak. Somewhere, somehow, someone had learned
about their hacking attempts. And whoever that was had acted on this
information. In a quick, decisive operation. Up until then, Morrison had been absolutely
confident that only he, Johnson and the poor dead hacker knew anything about
this. But the circle had widened. It was obvious. He just didn’t see how that
had happened. Where the breach had occurred.

Morrison joined the main
road and settled on an even cruise. By now, at least, he knew that nobody was following
him.

When he reached the
outskirts of Acton, he was forced to slow down. There was some traffic near the
Perkins Electronics compound. A steady stream of cars trickled out of the
plant’s parking lot. Looked like a shift change was taking place. Pretty soon, the
big black Navigator slowed down to a crawl as all these cars merged on the
two-lane, in both directions. Morrison even had to stop for a few moments, long
enough to look around and notice that some employees were putting the finishing
touch to the installation of a giant banner high above the main building’s entrance.
Perkins Electronics, 15 years of great success!
was written in big bold
red letters on a white background. Morrison got going again, but only to jerk forward
slowly in a stop-and-go motion as the cars ahead crisscrossed one another.

Once he got past the big
plant, he was finally able to resume his progress at a steady pace.

His phone buzzed in his
pocket. A text message had arrived. He got the mobile, flipped it open and peered
at the screen. It was Johnson. He was now holing up at a motel. He had typed
the motel name along with the room number.

And he was telling Morrison
to get his ass over there ASAP.

*

A giant metal sign in the
shape of a tree heralded the Blue Spruce Motel. Years ago, it must have looked
smart, but now it looked cheap and dated. The blue paint in the background was
flaking and the neon strip that had once delineated its contour had long since exploded,
leaving only a few broken clips behind. Inside his big black Navigator, Morrison
carefully nosed his way into the Blue Spruce parking lot.

The motel consisted of a single-story,
white, U-shaped, cinder-block structure. When it had been erected in the
fifties, it must have been located at the edge of town. Probably surrounded by
thick stands of spruce as its name implied. But since then, the town had
expanded and crept up all around. As a result, it had become a half-urban kind
of motel. Cheap but not dingy. Not yet invaded by the monthly-residents crowd, but
lying dangerously close. If the owners decided to pimp it up, it could become
another one of these vintage places where people purposely go to experience the
good old fifties. But if they just let it slide, it could soon become another
haven of crack addicts.

Morrison looked at the
room numbers inside the U and continued. Johnson had asked for a room at the
back. That was smart. Typical of him.

He found the room. There
was no car parked in front. He looked around. Johnson must have left his ride somewhere
in the shopping center’s parking lot across the street. Another smart move. Morrison
decided to ape him. He pushed his way on, left the Navigator in an empty spot
by a gray minivan and walked back to the motel. Then he knocked on the door and
Johnson ushered him in.

The hacker looked tired
and nervous. His face bore a severe expression.

“What’s happening, man?
What’s all this about?” he asked.

Morrison shook his head.
“I’m sorry, man. I’m so sorry.”

Johnson egged him on. “Sorry
for what? Morrison, you said it was a matter of life and death.”

Morrison let out a big
sigh. Remained silent for a beat. Then he said, “Your guy is dead. His kid
too.”

Johnson went pale. “How … how
did it happen?” he asked.

“It was a professional
job,” Morrison said. “The work of a hitman.”

Johnson’s eyes went wide.
He shook his head. “What kind of a jam have you put me into, Morrison?”

“I’m not sure, but you
have to help me out. We’re only going to get out of this thing together.”

Johnson began pacing the
dirty carpeting. “How long will I have to stay here?” he said. “Morrison, this
is insane.”

“Look, until we sort this
out, you can’t go back to your place. It’s too dangerous. I have no idea how
they made it to your guy, but if they got him they could get you too.”

“I covered my tracks,”
Johnson said. “Nobody can get to me.”

Morrison shrugged. “Your
guy probably did that too, and look at him now.”

He dug in his pocket for the
piece of paper he’d taken from the dead hacker’s scratch pad and unfolded it. There
were drops of blood all over it. Back at the apartment, he hadn’t really
noticed them. Compared with the rest of the table surface, it had looked clean
enough. He slipped the paper into Johnson’s hand. “He had that on his table. Does
that make any sense to you?”

Johnson looked at the
document. He grimaced as he took in the bloodstains. Then he examined the
scribblings carefully.

“He was probably very
close to getting what you’d asked for,” he said. And then he sat down on the
bedspread with his laptop and the piece of paper, and he started to hammer away
at the keyboard.

He typed feverishly. Like
he was in a trance.

Morrison knew better than
to intrude, so he just sat down in a cheap orange Solair chair and watched him
work.

After roughly a half-hour,
Johnson shook his head and said, “Man, he was almost there. With his stuff, it
was nothing to get the data.”

Morrison leaned forward in
his chair.

He couldn’t wait to know
if Cowgirl had robbed him blind or not. But at the same time, he was
apprehensive. “So what’s in there?” he asked.

“She boarded the plane,”
Johnson said. “She was on the final passenger list after boarding. At security,
she showed her passport. I’ve got all the details right here. In the plane, she
sat in seat 16A. It’s clean. A perfect match with all the details you had on
her.”

Morrison sat back in his
cheap plastic chair.

At least, amid all that
trouble, he could see a ray of light. A thin one.

That confirmation meant that
Cowgirl had not betrayed him. She had not acted on his carefully prepared plan
and robbed him blind after his arrest.

That was a relief.

He would have hated it if
Cowgirl had played him for a fool.

But for all his relief at
Cowgirl’s innocence, this meant that there remained only one logical conclusion:
Roger Harris was the culprit.

So Harris was the one. Had
to be. Because if it wasn’t Mike, Tommy or Cowgirl who had pumped the money
from the other banks after Morrison’s arrest, then it had to be Harris. A simple
deduction. Nobody but them knew anything about their skimming operation.

Harris.

Morrison pictured the old,
wily, mustachioed, tanned son of a bitch. How he must have been laughing his
head off when they had met yesterday.

Morrison was lounging in
the orange plastic chair in the motel room. He had his feet up on the chest of
drawers and was staring vacantly at the ceiling.

A few feet away, Johnson
had fallen asleep in one of the two double beds. In his clothes. Right on top
of the bedspread.

The hacker was exhausted.
After having given Morrison confirmation of Cowgirl’s boarding that plane to
LAX three years ago, he had crashed into bed and dozed off almost instantly.
Morrison was fine with that. He had told Johnson his audit work on banks number
four and five could wait a few hours. Anyway, at this point, he fully expected that
these banks had been skimmed as well for a full two million each.

So Harris had put his
hands on eight million dollars.

Morrison whistled.

Eight million dollars.
That was a lot of money for just one man. A whole pile of money.

Old Harris. Wily scumbag. And
greedy at that. Because those eight million dollars hadn’t been enough. Morrison
kept thinking about Harris’s clunky scheme that he had unwittingly crashed
into.
What a strange move
, he thought. Harris pulled that stunning eight-million-dollar
coup, then three years later, he bothered to set up a low-flying basic ATM-skimming
operation right here in town. For a net payoff of a hundred thousand dollars.
Maybe two if he was lucky. Morrison shook his head. A whole lot of trouble for
such a small payoff.

Another thing puzzled him—how
Harris had made the connection with Johnson’s hacker. That, he didn’t
understand. Didn’t see the link. But the hacker was dead, so there was a link.

Think, Morrison. Think
hard. There’s something you’re missing. There has to be.

*

Roger Harris was sweating
profusely. After a long afternoon of hard work under the blazing sun, his white
shirt with rolled-up sleeves clung to his torso like a wetsuit, and a ribbon of
salt circled his baseball cap. He stood in the shadow of a giant maple tree, one
of the dozens that lined up along the long driveway leading to his house. He’d
just finished trimming dead branches from that tree and he decided to call it a
day. He removed his cap to wipe the sweat off his face with a damp elbow. Then
he went foraging in the glove compartment of his ATV and emerged with a cigar as
thick as his thumb. He lit it up and took a few good pulls. All the while, his
weathered tan face stared at the mouth of the driveway. His guy was due back
anytime now.

Sure enough, ten minutes
later, the white van slowed down on the main road, veered in his direction and
crunched its way over the packed gravel to where he stood.

The white van must have traveled
at a good speed. Harris could hear the engine oil ticking in the pan when it
stopped.

The driver’s door opened
and Harris’s employee came out. He was six feet tall, one hundred eighty
pounds. Reasonably fit. In his mid-twenties. Head all dark hair and angry eyes.
He was coming back from Brooklyn.

Just by looking at his
face, Harris knew the news was not good. But he asked anyway. “So, how did it
go?”

Angry Eyes shook his head.
“Bad. Real bad. A complete disaster,” he said.

“How much were you able to
get?” Harris asked.

The employee joined the
tip of his thumb and index finger. “Nothing,” he said. “At our first try, the
ATM gobbled up the card. We drove to another ATM, tried a second card but got
the same result. Then we tried three other cards in three other ATMs, but they
kept swallowing the cards. After that, it was too risky. I called the whole
thing off, paid the guys and sent them away. And then I drove straight here.”

Harris nodded his approval
and added a question. “Did you destroy all the material?”

“Yeah. It’s done. I knew
you’d want to get rid of it so I dumped it before I left Brooklyn.”

Harris blew a thick cloud
of blue smoke. He was pissed. Mighty pissed. Not only had the operation not
brought him the modest profit he had expected, but they were now in the red. The
dumped equipment amounted to a couple tens of thousand dollars.

While he ruminated on this,
his employee asked, “Do you still need me?”

Angry Eyes seemed tired
and anxious to leave. Unfortunately for him, the boss’s answer was not the one
he’d hoped for.

“Yes, I do,” Harris said.
“I’ve got this fundraiser to attend in town. I’d like you to stick around.”