The Professionals (22 page)

“Who?”

“Tiffany, who else? She can’t wear that tank top forever.”

Pender shook his head. “Christ, Sawyer.”

“What?” Sawyer stared back. “She needs clothes as much as we do.”

“She has clothes. At her hotel room.”

Sawyer glanced at the sweater once more, then draped it over his arm and kept walking. “I think she’ll like it.”

Pender sighed. “We get her one change of clothes,” he said. “Then we cut her loose.”

Pender paid for the clothing, and they made for the exits, stopping once at a drugstore for more bandages and painkillers before retreating to the Durango. They piled all the bags in the back, and Pender was about to climb behind the wheel when his burner started ringing.

“Arthur?” It was Marie. Sounding shaky. “It’s me. Where are you?”

“We’re in Florida,” he told her. “North of Miami. We had a little problem.”

“I know,” she said. “So did I.”

“How so?”

“Arthur, we screwed up,” she said. “I don’t know how, but there are people after us. There were cops at the apartment. And someone else, too. Someone bad. They were waiting for me. Somehow they figured out where we live.”

Pender leaned back against the truck. Felt dizzy all of a sudden. “But you got out all right. You’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m—yeah, I’m fine. But I gotta get out of Seattle.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m at a motel by the airport. Tell me where you’re headed, and I’ll fly out there to meet you. I’ll fly tonight.”

“You have cash? ID?”

“One credit card. One ID. Rebecca Decoursey. McAdams and Wellman are shot. Arthur, so is Marie McAllister. So is Arthur Pender.”

Jesus Christ. “That’s fine,” he said. “You’re doing great. Just let me think for a second, and I’ll tell you where to meet us.”

He closed his eyes, trying to visualize a map of Florida in his head. Sawyer knocked on the window from inside the Durango. Leaned over and opened the door. “Everything all right?”

“Give me an airport north of here,” said Pender.

“Fort Lauderdale?”

“Too close.”

“Orlando?”

“Maybe. Can we make Jacksonville?”

“Time frame?”

“Tonight. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

“Yeah,” said Sawyer. “It’s like three hundred miles.”

“Okay.” Pender picked up the phone. “Marie? Fly to Jacksonville. Orlando if you can’t make it by tomorrow morning. Text me your flight info, and we’ll meet you at the airport.”

“Jacksonville,” said Marie. “Okay.”

“Marie,” said Pender. “You did great. Everything’s going to be fine.” He hung up the phone and stood in the parking lot for a minute, staring up at the sky. Cops and somebody else, too. Somebody bad. Beneteau’s people. How the hell had they found the apartment? Nobody in the world could connect Marie McAllister and Arthur Pender to the kidnappings. Nobody. But they’d found the apartment, and they’d almost caught Marie. The thought made him sick.

Sawyer knocked on the window again. Pender swung open the door and climbed into the truck. He glanced at Sawyer. “They made us. Marie and me. I don’t know how.”

“She’s all right?”

“She’s fine. Terrified, but she got away.”

“So Jacksonville.”

“Jacksonville,” said Pender. “Tonight or tomorrow.”

He turned the key in the ignition. He was about to drive away when the phone rang again. He picked it up. “Yeah.”

“Pender?” A whisper. “It’s Tiffany.”

“Tiffany. What’s up?”

“Pender, we’re at the motel, and I’m afraid,” she said, and Pender felt his stomach flip all over again.

“What’s going on? Is Mouse okay?”

“Mouse is fine, Pender. But the cops just pulled into the parking lot,” she said. “They’re out there in a police cruiser, and I think they’re coming to get us.”

T
he superintendent jangled his keys as he climbed the steps to the second floor, and the sound echoed through the stairwell. He was an older guy, white hair and thick glasses, and he’d sounded like he was asleep when Stevens knocked on the door.

“That curly-haired girl,” he said as he reached the landing. “Unit 204. Lives with her boyfriend.”

Stevens glanced back at Windermere. “Which one’s her boyfriend?”

“Tall kid,” said the super. “Blond hair. Good-looking guy. Nice and quiet.”

Carew, thought Stevens. We’re getting the two-fer.

The super started down the hall. “They weren’t around much. Either of them. Traveled for work, they said.”

“You have names for these two?”

“Pender,” said the super. “That’s the boyfriend. Arthur Pender. His name’s on the lease. The girl’s Marie something. I can’t remember.”

They’d lost the girl in the alley when the big guy in the Lincoln had showed up. Stevens hadn’t seen her come out on his end, and Windermere hadn’t found her when she squeezed back onto the street. The patrol cars were searching the neighborhood but the girl was gone.

Ditto the driver. They’d had Seattle police put a notice to all units
to keep an eye out for busted-ass Town Cars, and the FBI’s Seattle office had detailed an agent to start looking at livery companies and car rentals as well. But Stevens knew the driver would likely be long gone even if they did manage to find the car.

Windermere hadn’t taken either loss very well. Stevens had caught up to her outside of the apartment building, found her staring into her hands, swearing under her breath. He walked up and sat down beside her. “You all right?”

She didn’t look up. “I had a shot at them both, Stevens. I didn’t get either.”

“We’ll get them,” he told her. “The whole city’s looking by now.”

“I played that like a rookie. A goddamn city cop. We had a wide-open shot and we missed it.” She looked at him and her eyes were dark. “We missed our big chance here, Kirk.”

She was right, Stevens knew. Still, it was impossible to stay disappointed when the consolation prize was so good. The Seattle office had come through with a search and seizure warrant almost immediately, and Stevens felt his insides prickling as he and Windermere waited outside the kidnappers’ door. Here it is, he thought. The inner sanctum. Even Windermere looked excited again.

The super fumbled with his keys outside unit 204 and then unlocked the door. He pushed it open. “Go ahead, Officers.”

As far as interstate crime ring headquarters went, the place was a bit spartan. It was a little one-bedroom apartment: scuffed hardwood floors, plain off-white walls with cheap posters and prints hung up for color. There was a kitchenette off to one side and a bathroom to the other, a bedroom dead ahead and a living room with a modest little couch and a beat-up old coffee table facing a medium-sized TV.

“I thought these kids were supposed to be rich,” said Windermere.

“Maybe they spend it all on candy bars.”

“They sure don’t spend it here.”

Stevens looked around. “They’re professionals,” he said. “They know they can’t explain a mansion and a yacht if the IRS figures them out. They’ve got the money stashed off somewhere.”

They searched the place. Windermere took the bed and bathroom, and Stevens took a tour of the rest of the place. The kitchenette was empty—a few dishes drying in the rack and a few more in the cupboards, but that was it. The girl’s groceries were in the fridge, and there was a romance novel on the coffee table and a handful of DVDs underneath the TV. Otherwise, the place was bare.

“Stevens,” said Windermere. “Come on in here.”

Stevens walked into the bedroom—the same modest aesthetic as the rest of the apartment—and found Windermere waiting by the bed, grinning like she’d just won the jackpot. She held a laptop computer in one hand and was gesturing down to her feet, where the girl’s duffel bag lay half open on the bedroom floor.

“This is the good stuff,” she said. “Let’s have a look in that bag.”

Stevens looked. Clothes, for starters. Plenty of warm winter clothes. He picked up a pair of jeans and felt something rustling in the pocket. Took it out and examined it—a receipt. A receipt from a White Castle restaurant in Troy, Michigan. “Bingo,” he said.

“Keep looking.”

He pushed clothing aside until he came to the bottom of the bag, where he felt out a flat paper envelope and brought it to the surface. He opened it and peered inside. Money. Well-used twenties, and lots of them. “Must be like four grand in here,” he told Windermere. “Told you they stashed it somewhere.”

“That’s nothing,” said Windermere. “Four grand must be walking-around money to these kids.”

Windermere sat down on the bed and opened the laptop. “Let’s call the Seattle office,” she said. “Get them to start looking into Pender and his girlfriend. Assuming those aren’t aliases, too.”

“They’re not aliases,” said Stevens. “They never expected to be found here. This was home.”

“Some home.”

“Probably temporary. They wouldn’t have wanted to stick around here too long.” Stevens took out his phone and called the Seattle office. Asked for a background check on Arthur Pender and Marie—

“McAllister.” Windermere looked up from the computer. “Marie McAllister.”

“Gotcha,” said the Seattle agent, a young guy named Vance. “I’m on it.”

“Thanks. Any word on the Lincoln?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Vance, “we got a lead on that. None of the big companies reported renting out a Town Car like you described. But we talked to a smaller outfit, Emerald City Cars, said they’d dropped off a black Lincoln at the Hyatt this morning. Rented to an Antonio Pistone of Royal Oak, Michigan.”

There it is, Stevens thought. “They get the car back?”

“Not yet.”

“All right,” he said. “We’re heading to the Hyatt right now. Do me a favor and run this Pistone through the computer, see what comes up.”

“Already done,” Vance told him. “Pistone’s a known alias for Alessandro D’Antonio, a made guy in the Bartholdi family. Pretty high up in their Detroit operations, I guess. Kind of a badass.”

Stevens thanked him and hung up the phone. D’Antonio, he thought. Out of Michigan. Isn’t that cute.

D
’Antonio left the car in a parking garage a couple blocks from the Hyatt and walked back to the hotel. Those goddamn cops would be looking for him by now, he knew, and he scanned for plainclothesmen as he walked through the lobby. Nobody seemed to notice his arrival. They haven’t come this far, he thought. I still have time.

He took the elevator to his room and packed quickly. Then he made a phone call to book a ticket to Detroit and fast. I would have had her, he thought as he ended the call. If those cops hadn’t fucked everything up.

So the kill was blown. Unusual for him, but it happened sometimes. It didn’t mean anything. Maybe he was gripping too hard, like a baseball hitter in a slump. Maybe he wanted it too much. Time to step back, regroup, rethink.

The girl wouldn’t dare go back to the apartment. If she was smart, she’d flee the country immediately, try to stay off the grid until the Feds forgot about her. But very few people were that smart. Very few people could walk away when the time came, especially if they still had attachments waiting for them.

The girl would go to Florida. She’d run back to her friends, he was
sure of it. That would make it easy to kill the lot of them. He could use her to lead him to the rest of the gang, and there would sure as shit be no more screwups when D’Antonio caught the ringleader.

He got back on the phone and cancelled the ticket. Paid two hundred dollars in fees, but if he was right it would be worth it. He ended the call without booking a new ticket, grabbed his overnight bag and took the elevator back down to the lobby, where he checked out of the hotel and climbed into a yellow cab.

“The airport,” he told the driver, hoping the girl wasn’t too far gone already.

S
tevens kept the Nissan close to the taxi, not wanting to risk losing D’Antonio on the drive out of town. They’d picked him up outside the Hyatt within an hour of Vance’s call, and now, Stevens hoped, they could use the bad guy to lead them to the girl. Windermere was on the phone as he drove, rapping away to Vance at headquarters with a shopping list of things she wanted done.