Cold City (Repairman Jack - the Early Years Trilogy) (41 page)

Where was the truck?  Where was Lonnie?

Kris seemed mesmerized and the cop repeated the move-on signal.

“Do what he says, Kris.  We don’t wanna get stopped and have to explain what we’re doing out at this hour.”

Kris gave it some gas and picked up the car phone.  This time he got an answer and started babbling in foreignese. 

Looked like it was Lonnie two, the Order zero.  How the fuck had that happened?  He’d been alone in that truck.  How’d he flip the Jeep?

Who cared?  The fact was he was running free and Reggie had two broke knees and was stuck with these sinister weirdos.  Not fair.  Not fucking fair at all.

Then again, on the plus side, this guy Lonnie had just earned himself a lot more enemies.  And that could work for Reggie in a big way. 

4

Jack made it to the Jersey City drop spot before dawn.  He figured he’d have to wait for the Arabs to show, but they were ready and waiting.  Bertel hadn’t been kidding: These guys were hungry for ciggies.

As soon as the door rolled down and the unloading began, Jack retreated to a corner, the Ruger in his belt, his hand close to it.  He didn’t know if the Arabs had anything to do with the incident this morning, and none of them seemed to have the slightest interest in him, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He kept an eye out for the Mummy who’d been running the operation in the past.  When Jack didn’t see him, he motioned one of the unloaders over.

“Where’s the man with the money?”

“Not here,” the guy said, shaking his head. “Other man come soon.”

“What’s wrong?  Is he sick?”

The guy shrugged.  “Not here.”

Not here
…yeah, Jack could see that.  But was his
not-here
-ness temporary or permanent?  Bertel said he’d talked to him since the shoot-out, but had he?  Had the Mummy been the guy in the limo the Mikulskis had blown away?

If so, that hinted at a possible link between Bertel and the sex-slave trade.  It didn’t mean Bertel was involved, or even knew about it, but it opened the unpleasant possibility.

Then the man himself appeared.

Bertel strolled in through the side door and stopped next to Jack. 

“You made it on time,” he said, nodding approval.  “Good job.”

“Also the last job.”

Bertel’s expression slackened with surprise.  “What?  Hey, now, you promised me three.”

Jack crooked a finger and led him around to the driver’s side.  He pointed to the scraped and dented fender.  Bertel stiffened, then stepped closer and ran a hand over the dents until he found a bullet hole.  He jerked upright and faced Jack.

“What the–?”

Jack decided to play dumb about the real purpose behind the incident.

“Somebody tried to hijack me.”

“Come on!”

“I’m not imagining those bullet holes.  They tried to shoot out my tires outside Salisbury.”

“What happened?”

“I ran them off the road.”

“No idea who they were?”

Jack shook his head.  “And even less idea how they knew my route.  Or that I was making a run.  You and I knew it.  So did Vern.”

“Vern doesn’t know the route.”

“Who else then?”

“No one.” 

“Well, I sure as hell didn’t set myself up.”

Bertel stiffened when he caught Jack’s stare. “Now wait a minute.  You can’t think–”

Jack didn’t.  Bertel was all about profit, and if he was going to set Jack up, it would not be while he was ferrying his precious cigarettes to a payday. But no reason not to let him feel a little heat.

“Just saying.”

“Well, you can goddamn stop ‘just saying’ anything like that.”  His eyes narrowed.  “When you brought that other cargo north… what route did you take?”

Hard to slip one past this buzzard.

“The same.  And yeah, someone followed me then in another truck.”

Reggie.

“And where is this someone now?” 

“I don’t know.  But I saw the two guys in the car at a rest stop before they made their move and he wasn’t one of them.”

“But he could have been on watch along the route.  He knows the type of truck you drive, and what you look like.”

That seemed the only reasonable explanation.

A skinny guy in a skullcap emerged from the office and handed Bertel an envelope.  No words were exchanged.

“Where’s the Mummy?” Jack said.

Bertel shrugged as he thumbed through the bills in the envelope.  “Told me he’d had a death in the family.”

“A death, huh?”

Bertel looked at him.  “Why’re you suddenly so interested in our fat friend?”

Jack wondered who had died and if it might have been due to multiple lead projectiles acquired on Staten Island, but left the question unasked.

“Maybe I wanted to bid him au revoir.”

“Yeah, right.  The important thing is, the money’s right.”  Instead of waiting until they were outside, Bertel paid Jack his cut now.  “Sure this is your last trip?” he said as he pressed the bills into Jack’s hand.

Probably thought the feel of the cash against his palm would be a potent persuader. 

Not.  At least not anymore.

Jack shook his head.  “Sorry.  You’re a good boss but even without hijackers, the job’s got far more exposure than I want.”

“You got something better lined up?”

“No.”

“You got
anything
lined up?”

“No.”

“Then why not–?”

“I’ll be keeping busy.”

“Doing what?”

He opened the truck door and pointed out the Krispy Kreme box.  “Delivering donuts to needy people.”

“Cut the bullshit.”

“I’m not kidding.  You don’t think Abe is needy?”

“Not in need of donuts.”  He sighed.  “Ah, well.  Take the truck back to where you got it.”  He stuck out his hand.  “Hey, good luck.  But if you ever change your mind, or you ever need anything…”

“Thanks.  Hey, maybe you could help me with something I’m looking into.”

“Shoot.”

Jack had to smile at the unintentional irony of the expression.

“You know any hit men or enforcer types?”

He burst out laughing at Bertel’s expression.

5

Ernst arrived early at Roman Trejador’s suite.  He knew what he was going to hear and wanted to get the bad news over with.  Al-Thani let him in, then excused himself.  The remains of lunch cluttered a table back by the floor-to-ceiling windows.  The Spaniard sat on the couch in the front room, watching CNN.

“The swords are rattling louder and louder in the desert.  War in the Middle East soon.”

“That will be good for the One.”

The One thrived on chaos.

“But over too quickly, I fear.”  He clicked off the TV and looked at Ernst.  “Your men are dead.”

Men
?  That meant both.  Ernst already knew about one.  Young Kristof had called with news of the crash, certain that one of the operatives was dead, and the other was either a prisoner, comatose, or dead. 

These had been experienced men.  But he maintained a placid exterior.

“By what means?”

“Massive trauma due to an automobile accident.  The police say their vehicle shows evidence of a recent collision which they believe caused them to lose control.  The passenger wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and was thrown free.  The driver suffered a broken neck.”

“No gun play?”

“Weapons were found at the scene, and one had been fired, but no wounds on your men.”

“This is tragic.  They were good men.”

The Spaniard’s eyebrows lifted.  “Not good enough to stop a boy in a rental truck, apparently.”

Very troubling, that.  Kristof had reported that the driver was alone when the operatives gave chase.  The slaver had identified him as the mysterious Lonnie.

Mysterious indeed.  Ernst could not comprehend how a youth – assuming the description from their slave-running informant had been accurate – could have run two seasoned operatives off the road.  Then again, no one knew for how long he had been a courier.

“He was probably just lucky.”

“Well,” said Trejador, “at least
someone
is having luck.  Certainly not you.”

Ernst stiffened at the tone.  “As fellow actuators, striving to achieve the Order’s goals, I would consider this a joint venture.”

Trejador smiled.  “So now it’s a joint venture?  Last I heard you were going to ‘settle this affair.’  Now two of your people are dead.”

He’s enjoying this, Ernst thought.

Well, were positions reversed, Ernst would be reveling in his discomfiture.

“We need to cooperate.”

“Well, of course we do.  But I’m of the school – perhaps you’d call it the ‘old school’ – that believes in
making
luck.  And one accomplishes that by
being
there.  But we’ve had this conversation before.”

Yes, they had.

Ernst said, “How, pray tell, would my presence in the car have prevented it from running off the road, most likely killing me as well?”

The Spaniard allowed a brief smile that Ernst attributed to pleasant contemplation of such a possibility.

“Putting yourself in the same car?  Absolutely not.  An unthinkable redundancy.  No, I would have been following behind in a second car, just in case something catastrophic – like being run off the road – or some mundane mishap – say, a flat tire – befell the first.”

“And once the first car had stopped the truck, then what?”

“Stop the truck?  Did I say anything about stopping the truck?  That is cowboy stuff.  I simply would follow at a discrete distance and find out where he made his delivery, and then follow him home from there.”

Follow him home
… what a simple solution.  Why hadn’t Ernst thought of that? 

But Ernst knew his mind didn’t work that way.  He had a confrontational nature.  He believed in facing problems head on – gripping them by the throat and bending them to his will.  But from a distance.

He’d approached the driver with that in mind: Capture him on a lonely road, take him to a secure location, and extract whatever he knew about the missing millions.  Father had often warned Ernst about the use of force.

Father… ever the manipulator of men and circumstances.  A whispered word, a planted suggestion… he hadn’t needed to bend people and circumstances to his will… he merely paved a certain path, and people followed it of their own accord, thinking the choice of direction was theirs, when it was anything but.  

Another question: If that would have been Trejador’s course of action, why hadn’t he suggested it?  The obvious answer: He’d wanted Ernst to fail.  No… too paranoid.  Ernst sensed that Trejador perceived him – quite accurately – as a threat to his position.  But despite his excesses, Trejador’s loyalty to the Order was unquestioned.

“My dear Ernst,” he said, waving a hand.  “That is all water under the bridge, as they say.  My latest interview with the slaver – conducted by phone only an hour ago – has convinced me that the driver you seek is clueless.  He was there by happenstance, unwillingly recruited due to a mishap, and, according to the slaver, seemed genuinely afraid of whoever killed the Arabs.  He is a dead end.”

Ernst wasn’t so sure about that.  “The slaver says this Lonnie saw the killers.  And he has a recollection of someone with Lonnie when he broke his knees.  Where did he get help?”

“Certainly not from the gunmen who were out to kill him and his fellow driver.  I think we should concentrate our efforts on finding those abducted girls.  There are twenty-eight of them.  Can someone move that many children around and leave no trace?  Find the girls and we find the men who stole the money.”

The logic was unassailable, but Ernst could not get past the feeling that this Lonnie was the weak link.  The attack on the Arabs smacked of a certain level of professionalism.  Stumble upon the perpetrators and one might fall into a snake pit.  However, the driver was, by the slaver’s account, a callow bumpkin.  Ernst saw no downside to learning if he had indeed seen the killers.  Should that turn out not to be the case, then only a little time and effort were at risk.  However, if he possessed a single scrap of useful information…

He saw no point in arguing, however. 

“Then we agree to concentrate our efforts on finding the girls?”

Ernst nodded but wasn’t giving up on the driver.  Not yet.  He should have known Trejador would not give Ernst free rein in finding the money.  This had become a contest between the Spaniard and himself, one he was determined to win. 

SUNDAY

1

They lay gasping, tangled in each other’s arms, until Cristin slid off and rolled onto her back beside him.

“You’ve improved since last week,” she said.

She’d somehow managed to be even more voracious tonight than last Sunday.  After all the excitement of Tuesday morning, the rest of the week had seemed empty and endless.  He’d survived near-terminal boredom only through fantasies about tonight.

“I have an excellent coach.”

“Who hardly had to do a bit of coaching this time.”

“I’m a quick study.”

She pulled up the covers and snuggled beside him and they lay in silence for a while.

“What are you thinking?” she said.

“About what an almost perfect night it’s been.”

She lifted her head.  “Almost?”

“Well, dinner…”

“I loved it.”

He shook his head.  “I’m glad.”

“You didn’t?”

“Not my kind of food.”

“You chose it.”

“I know.  I consider it a learning experience.”

He’d heard Le Cirque mentioned on the radio and so he’d wrangled a reservation for two. He knew it would be expensive but that wasn’t an issue. He’d wanted to treat Cristin to something really special – take her someplace she wouldn’t take herself. 

Maybe it was their young age, but when they arrived at the Mayfair Hotel, home of the restaurant, they were treated like second-class citizens. Despite their reservation, they were kept waiting for forty-five minutes.  Cristin didn’t seem to mind, but it rankled Jack.  When they finally were seated the service was perfunctory and the food… well, Cristin enjoyed all the sauces and such, and the pinot noir was delicious, but Jack would have much preferred a cheesesteak and a good lager.