Dirty Deeds (8 page)

I had serious doubts the kid had built a meth lab. I’m sure he smoked pot and maybe did some hard stuff but cooking his own? No way. Frank was making excuses and trying to paint himself as the victim.

“What else can you tell me about him? If it wasn’t Will on the beach, where could he be?”

Frank shrugged. “Check Port Authority or the sewers. You can’t miss the dirty bum. He looked like a rat with his gray skin and missing all his teeth from the drugs.”

Missing all his teeth.

The toothless guy in the upstairs window of the jazz club was Will Black.

Alive and well. For now.

The white van smelled like bleach and I had to roll the windows down so I didn’t choke on the fumes. Whoever Marisa got the van from was new at this, because a clean vehicle just meant no fingerprints or receipts to McDonalds under the seat. Not a new clean and polish. I needed this to look old and grungy, like a real work van. The cops needed to be out looking at the million plumbers, carpenters, flooring guys and whoever else drove these things so I could get away.

Instead, I was in the shiniest white van in Las Vegas. I was sparkling down the road, an eyesore for drivers around me. If I hadn’t already set everything into motion and needed to drive out and to Texas as soon as possible I would’ve called Marisa and had her find a new van and fire whoever she was working with on this bright thing.

I usually drove past the location three or four times when I wanted to be seen, but with the van so obviously new, most of the work vans in the city would be eliminated by the cops. As soon as I dumped it and switched cars I knew it would be a race to get as many miles away from Vegas before it was found.

Yeah, I know. I keep talking about it but lately things were bugging me more than usual. I really didn’t need this job. Definitely not for the money, but for the sheer fact I was too busy to really get behind it. You needed to commit both mentally and physically, and I was still thinking about Will Black in the window.

I took a leisurely drive past the school, already let out and only a few cars in the parking lot. With any luck, the school cameras would pick up on the van and get the tag number, which was yanked from another car.

Damn, I hoped it was. Didn’t everyone know that was how you did it? Based on the van I now had my doubts.

I called Marisa and complained about the situation.

“Stop whining and get it done,” Marisa said. She had a way with words. Just for the record: when my voice swells a couple of octaves it isn’t whining. It’s getting excited. Big difference. “They stole a new van since they had short notice. The plates are jacked from another van, which will throw the cops for a second. Enough to get you out of Dodge.”

“I’m in Vegas, not Dodge.”

She didn’t even bother to tell me how lame my joke was.

“How’s the surveillance in New York going?” I asked.

She groaned loudly on the phone.

I was supposed to be working and when you were in the midst of a job you never worried about the previous one or the next one. But in all fairness, Will Black wasn’t an upcoming job. He was a problem I needed to sort out before Keane or Chenzo figured out where he was hiding.

“I have a guy on it. Don’t worry. The club was open last night and two of them went inside and listened to boringly smooth jazz for hours,” Marisa said.

“What came of it?”

“They both hate jazz even more, I imagine. Will Black never made an appearance and they couldn’t get up the stairs to the apartments. Too many eyes watching. There is definitely something going on in the building, but it could just be drug trafficking. According to what they heard, the joint is only open Friday night through Sunday afternoon,” Marisa said.

“Did you call it a joint?”

Marisa laughed. “Just hip to the jazz lingo, mulligan.”

“I think mulligan means cop, or something to do with golf?” I had no idea but I knew she had used it wrong. She needed to work on her jazz slang.

“Anyway. . . it’s being looked at. Not any of your concern right now. You need to focus on the task at hand, see?” She said this in a really bad 1950’s mobster movie voice, which made me laugh.

I hadn’t laughed in awhile and it felt good.

“Are you wearing a disguise?” Marisa asked.

“Yes,” I answered reluctantly. I never showed her what I had done to change my appearance but it never stopped her from asking.

“Take a selfie and send it to me.”

“I don’t know what a selfie is but I’m not sending one to you,” I said. Part of the fun was her going out of her mind trying to guess what I was dressed like or what I’d done to my face for the job.

Five years ago I’d taken a newborn from a stripper in Kansas City. My disguise was an overweight blind woman who was in the neighborhood wandering around all day. When the stripper – I’ll call her a woman so no one gets offended for whatever reason – walked by and into her apartment I followed. I was like a ghost. Just a poor blind soul out in the big, bad world.

I held the stripper, uh, woman up with a knife and took the kid.

The worst part of it? She barely put up a fight.  I think she knew what the real deal was. Her small-time crook boyfriend was the baby daddy, and he paid a pretty penny to get rid of the kid before his wife found out.

Marisa, smiling, had told me three months later he was found dead in the back of the strip club he frequented. It seems he’d knocked up another stripper. . . ugh. . . woman, and this time her big-time crook husband took care of the guy.

Payback was a bitch, as they say.

The best part for me was the surveillance footage from the convenience store across the street. It clearly showed the blind woman entering the building behind the stripper and a few minutes later she didn’t look all that blind, carrying a baby in her arms and walking quickly around the corner and out of sight.

Marisa loved it. Now, she asked a million questions after each job.

“I’m in position,” I said as I parked the van down the street.

In case you were wondering, I was wearing my old man disguise I’d used before, mostly for California and the Pacific Northwest jobs over the years: a graying hair wig with matching moustache, thick Coke bottle glasses and a small red rose in my faded jacket pocket.

The rose was a nice touch and could tie this serial kidnapper into a few crimes and keep the FBI and local cops busy. You’d think putting them together would be bad for business, but I learned from my predecessor the best thing to do would be to give your fake evildoer some personality. Let the media run with it, and it would only hinder the investigations.

I was the Red Rose Kidnapper. Wanted in three States and I was about to add Nevada to the list. As long as I kept doing these jobs in this area of the country, no one would tie any of it into any of my other jobs.

The bogus tips would come pouring into the tip lines tonight, most of which would be whack jobs looking for their fifteen minutes of fame or the ones who believed an alien had taken over the children. The flood of bad tips would bury the one or two real ones until it was too late. I figured the FBI and local cops were still wading through the rivers of calls from years ago. I didn’t have an ego so a letter mailed to the newspaper calling out law enforcement wasn’t going to happen. All I wanted was to get this done and over with and move on so I could get back to the jazz club.

I saw the first cheerleader exiting the side gym door but it wasn’t the target. She got into a waiting Hummer and drove off just as another two came out.

This wasn’t like the high school I went to. It was clean and bright. The rich kids went here and these were the kids I despised growing up because I wanted to be them. I guess I am one of the rich kids now, just twice their age. Or more.

I glanced again at her picture on my phone. Heck, I could glance at four hundred of her pictures if I wanted to. Her Facebook page was wide open and her entire life, down to the fact she had sushi with her friend Dee two nights ago, she really thought one of the football players was hot, and she’d smoked more than a few joints since high school started.

I smiled, thinking of the word joint. I knew Marisa didn’t have this experience in school. I’d watched her from a distance until she dropped out in ninth grade and started doing the wrong thing. Someday I was going to convince her to get her GED, but she didn’t think it meant anything. Maybe she was right. She had enough street smarts for both of us combined, and I grew up in a rough neighborhood.

There she was. When I was doing a job I never used the target’s name in my head. Too personal, even though I wasn’t going to kill them. If I treated them like a human being I might hesitate, especially with an older kid. I’d clubbed a couple over the head in the past because they didn’t cooperate and fought back. Which is the norm, but when you get a wired kid on drugs or someone who’s been lifting weights since they were ten, it gets rough.

She was standing at the edge of the parking lot with two of her fellow cheerleaders, backpacks over their shoulders like a scene from
Beverly Hills: 90210
.

It was a show when I was this kid’s age and it rocked. Look it up, it might be on Netflix.

The waiting was the hardest part. Any number of random occurrences could happen before I got to her: a nosy parent or teacher wondering what a pristine white van was doing in the school parking lot, a police cruiser on patrol because the extracurricular stuff was getting out at this time every day, or just bad luck. The only time I almost didn’t finish a job was when the stolen car didn’t start and I had to get a jump from what turned out to be a very friendly off-duty cop.

A car pulled up to the curb and her two friends got in, leaving her alone. She looked around, maybe trying to find someone else to talk to, but when she saw the rest of the cheerleaders were already gone she began the walk home.

I wondered why a kid this rich and high profile was hoofing it a few blocks. Didn’t mom or dad want to protect her? Yeah, I know one of them was paying me an indecent amount of money to kill her, but you still needed the premise you loved your kid enough to get a car to pick her up.

I let her get almost out of sight before I started the van. No use trying to take her with a few cars still in the parking lot. Just ahead, around the first bend in the road, stood a vacant lot and the houses on either side were shielded with trees. The other side of the road had big houses set back. The perfect spot to do the job. I didn’t need to be seen while doing it. I was sure the white van cruising the parking lot a couple of times and then leaving right after she did and heading in her direction would be enough to give the cops something to go on.

By the time they collected the camera tapes and talked to eyewitnesses I’d be long gone.

A woman sitting in her car, reading a book and waiting for her son or daughter, looked up and gave a half-smile. I waved and beamed with joy. She’d remember the old man with white hair and thick glasses, and by tomorrow night a police sketch would be on the local news channels.

The back of the van was ready to go, too. I had rope and a pile of moving rugs to cover her, as well as two pairs of handcuffs I had no intention of using unless she fought back. I’d be able to get the rag over her mouth before she knew what hit her, though, so I wasn’t too worried about her resisting.

The first time I’d used a similar plan was a long time ago. I was taught by my predecessor. Who had been taught by his, I supposed. You never really talked about too much further back. Maybe the last generation of child abductors was enough. Maybe we all hoped the phone would stop ringing or the e-mails would never come, and the world would right itself and bad people would stop wanting their children dead.

I needed to hurry up and get back to New York.

She was just ahead now as I drove at about ten miles an hour, foot lightly tapping the gas to keep momentum. I’d get ahead of her and stop, acting like I was at the house for a reason. I was in a work van, and I was a heavy old man. No harm.

As I drove past I could see she was oblivious, wearing ear buds and listening to music I’m sure I didn’t get or understand, deep in her high school thoughts.

She’s a mark, I told myself. You never got too close and I needed to stop worrying about whom she was or what she was thinking about. I knew it was all the running around from city to city that was getting to me, and the change from east to west coast time always hit me hard. Especially as I got older.

I put the van in park but kept it running. With her music blasting she wouldn’t know the difference anyway until it was too late.

Just as I opened the door I heard the gunshot.

The gun I was carrying was empty, here for effect in the event I needed it. Unconsciously I reached for it in my jacket pocket as if it would do me any good.

Who was shooting at me? Could it be one of Chenzo’s boys? Payback for the guy in the trunk?

I looked around but didn’t see anyone. I’d need to abort this job until I could figure out what had happened.

And then I figured it out with the second shot, which caught my target in the stomach. She was already on the ground, the first shot having ripped through her neck.

Someone had killed her.

I stomped on the gas and drove away, expecting a black sedan or a gunman to block my way out of the area.

Someone had really killed her.

“Calm down. Where are you?” Marisa was trying to get me to breathe and stop yelling but I couldn’t. My heart was racing and I felt nauseous.

“They shot her. They shot her,” I said. The reverse image of her in the side mirror as the second shot hit her lifeless body would be etched in my psyche forever.

“Pull yourself together. Where are you right now?”

“I’m in the van on the side of the road,” I said.

“Are you crazy? Stick to the plan. Drive. Now.”

I punched the steering wheel. “What plan? I don’t have her because she’s been shot. She was assassinated twenty feet from me.”

“You need to get to the stashed car and drive towards Dallas. I’ll figure it out on my end. If you stay in town you’re going to get arrested for her murder. You set it up so the van and you were seen, remember? Whoever did this isn’t going to be on any surveillance tapes,” Marisa said.