Dark Men (18 page)

The real question, the only question that matters: is he a tiger?

No, I haven’t had to worry about government hitters until now, until they sought me out, forced me back in when I was content enough to ride out my days in obscurity.

We sip coffee and wait for the rain to die.

“Decker’s our key. He’s who we’re going to trade for Archie and how we’re going to get them off me.”

“What makes you think Spilatro or Spittrow, or whatever his name is, will be more willing to deal for Decker than Carla?”

“Because these cover stories people tell are mostly lies but always have moments of truth. I think Decker has been Spilatro’s friend and fellow soldier for twenty-plus years. I think they were already working jobs together when they were in the service. I think Decker went to the CIA first and rescued Spilatro from a dead-end life of middle-management and that formed a bond that is unbreakable.

“I could be wrong. He could mean nothing to Spilatro. But he helped him pull off that fake hit to fool his wife. After all that time, they were still together. My guess is the Agency isn’t too keen on fostering or facilitating friendships . . . they’d want their officers working alone and anonymous. So these guys still pulling a job together has to mean more than blood . . . it has to. At least, that’s what I’d like to believe.”

“Because it’s the best plan?”

“Because it’s all we have right now.”

The military is one thing, the CIA quite another. She couldn’t get inside Langley the way she did the Pentagon, so the only chance we have of confronting Decker has to come from his past. Spilatro certainly covered his tracks, burning down the “Aaron Spittrow” military records from both before and after his service, but Decker must’ve been comfortable no one would put the puzzle pieces together the way we did. He failed to erase the blackboard of his “Deckman” upbringing, and the military kept a record of his home address.

His brother, Lance, now lives in the same home they grew up in. He’s an alcoholic. He owes money to the bank, has sold the equity in the house, has tried unsuccessfully three times for a small business loan, and was rejected on the grounds of bad personal credit. All of this information, supposedly private, Risina pulled from the Internet during our ride west. A natural fence, like I said.

The rain abates, so we approach the house. After a minute, a man in his early forties opens the door. He holds a beer bottle in one hand, and his eyes are droopy, red-rimmed, like a basset hound’s.

“Help you?” he says as he takes a glance at me and then lets his gaze linger on Risina.

“Mr. Deckman?”

He turns back to me. “Yes?”

“Today’s your lucky day.”

He leans into the doorframe as his expression turns suspicious. I’m holding a duffel bag, and he eyes it, then looks back at me. “Hadn’t had too many of those. What’s the sale?”

“No sale. We’re here to give you money. Can we come in?”

He folds his arms but doesn’t budge.

“What’s this about, pal?”

“It’s about your brother.”

“My brother?”

“Roland Deckman’s your brother, correct?”

His eyes dart back and forth between us now, the lids pulled open. “Yes, but . . .”

“Well, he’s made a significant amount of money over the last twenty years, and he wanted you to have most of it.”

“Is he . . . has something happened to him?”

“Can we come in, sir? We’d rather not do this on the doorstep.”

“Yes, of course.” He blinks down at himself, tries to smooth out the wrinkles in his shirt, then props the door open, stepping aside. “Please, come in. Sorry . . . we get solicitors all the time here . . .”

“No problem.”

Risina moves in first, and I follow. The house is a craftsman, lots of wood and rustic furniture. The living room is cramped and messy, like it hasn’t had a wipe-down in a while. The television is on, a video game in mid-pause on the screen.

“Can I get you guys a beer? Or a . . . or some water?”

“No, we’re fine, thank you.”

We take seats on the sofa and Lance looks nervously at the screen and then presses a button on the remote so the television snaps to black.

After I let him stew for a moment, biting at the nail on his pinky finger, I lean forward. “I’ll cut right to it then, Mr. Deckman. I don’t know if your brother told you, but he was working for Central Intelligence.”

“Yeah . . . he, uh, I don’t know if I was supposed to know but he mentioned . . .”

“Good. It’s certainly not against regulations.”

I pause a moment longer, then smile sadly. “I’m sorry to say that your brother died in the line of duty.”

I watch Lance’s eyes, and they continue to move back and forth between us but don’t cloud over. It’s easy to see inside his head: he doesn’t give a damn about his brother, he just wants to know what is in it for him. I suspect his credit cards are maxed out, his bills are piling up, and the house we’re sitting inside is one of the few possessions he owns outright, paid for by his parents before they croaked.

He catches himself and coughs into his fist. “Oh . . . oh no. I . . . this is a shock, you know.”

“I understand.” I shift the duffel up to the coffee table, struggling for effect with the weight, and his eyes go to it like a prisoner looking at a key that fits his lock.

“Like I was saying, your brother socked away a significant sum during his employment, and his will states that he wants you to have it.”

“How much?” He catches himself again. “I mean, wow, this is incredible. I’m . . .” He stops, coloring.

“Well, that’s why we’re here in person, Lance. This bag holds a hundred thousand dollars in cash . . .”

He’s fun to watch. There’s obvious disappointment at that amount—like it’ll cover his debts but he isn’t completely out of the woods. He won’t be able to sit around playing video games for the rest of his life, all his bills paid. I keep playing with his emotions . . .

“. . . which represents five percent of his wealth.”

He swallows, and his lips purse and tremble like a baby with a pacifier. He’s too dumb to do the math, but he knows the number has a lot of zeroes. I hand him the handles of the bag and he takes it in his lap. He wants to play it cool but he can’t stop himself; he unzips the bag and looks over the stacks.

“Now here’s the messy part.”

His eyes dart up, searching my face. “Messy?”

“Yes, sir. See, we’re authorized to release you the rest of the inheritance, but we need something from you before we can do that.”

He nods before he even knows he’s doing it. “Sure. What do you need?”

“Well, when an asset of ours dies, for national security reasons, we have to make sure all ties to him are erased. If an enemy were able to trace steps back to where he started, where he was living, where he kept personal possessions, files and such, we’d be . . . well, it would be bad for the country.”

I have zero idea what I’m talking about, but I’ve read enough Ludlum, Clancy, and Follet to impersonate a government handler. Well, at least conjure enough of a performance to manipulate a desperate man who doesn’t know jack shit.

“Yeah, sure. I understand.” He stands up and absently wipes his hands on his shirt again. “Let me see . . .” He heads to a back hallway, leaving us alone in the living room.

Risina eyes me, a half smile on her face. I shrug, and we wait. I can hear doors open and close somewhere in the house, and then the sound of paper shuffling.

After a moment, Lance returns, holding a small yellow legal pad. In his other hand is a cell phone. He exhales loudly . . . “This is all I got. Umm . . . I haven’t heard from Ro in years, shoot, I mean, had to be 2005 or so, after mom died. He had to sign some papers so I could, um, take over this place. He told me if I ever got in serious trouble, to, um . . . get ahold of him at this number.”

He hands me the legal pad and the only thing scrawled on it is an 888 number. He hands me the phone. “He, uh, he said to use this phone so he’d know it was me. I guess it has a chip in it or something?” He hands me an old Nokia. “I haven’t, uh, charged it in a while.”

“Did you ever call him?”

“One time. I called him and some broad . . .” he looks over at Risina. “Sorry, I mean, some woman answered and said she was with some bank or something. At first, I thought I’d dialed the wrong number, then I realized it was probably a cover or something? I told her to tell Roland that his brother needed him.

“I swear it wasn’t another five minutes and the phone rang in my hand. He was all concerned, out-of-breath you know, asking if I was in trouble. I told him I was running out of funds, you know . . . maybe he could loan me some money? He told me to only call him if my life was in danger, if someone had threatened me, that was it. That’s the last I heard from him. We were never close, but I guess he . . . uh, I guess he . . .” He looks down at the duffel. “. . . wanted me to have a better life or something.”

I stand up and Risina joins me. “You sure this is everything you have that could lead back to him? No address in Washington or anything?”

He holds up his empty hands, then crosses his arms like he’s hugging himself. “No, nothing else. That’s it. If he had a home address, he never gave it to me.”

I nod, and look into his eyes, like I’m checking to see if he’s lying when I already know he’s telling the truth.

“Okay, Mr. Deckman. Thank you.”

He looks at the duffel as we head to the door. “Sure, no problem.” He follows us closely . . .

“So . . . the rest of the money?”

I stop, like I had forgotten about it. “Yes, sorry. My associate here will deliver it when we make sure there isn’t any other way to get to your brother’s identity through you.”

“There isn’t.”

“I’m sure there isn’t. It’s just a formality. You mind if we give it to you in cash? Makes it cleaner for us.”

“No, yeah, I mean, cash is great.”

“Karen here will get back to you shortly. We, uh, we know where you live,” I say with a laugh.

He laughs too, like he’s relieved. As we step back off his stoop, “How . . . how did he die if you don’t mind my asking?”

“It’s classified,” I offer, trying my best to look apologetic.

He nods again, then gives us a half wave, drops his hand like he was embarrassed about that, and then just shuts the door.

Risina and I climb in the car, and she chuckles. “Okay, not all of this job is miserable.”

“No, not all of it,” I agree as I hold up the phone. “Let’s go find a place to call Decker and see if he might want to come say hello.”

We take him at the casino.

Downtown Detroit has three of them, one in Greektown, and two in the middle of downtown. The MGM is a Vegas-style complex, with a full floor of gaming tables, restaurants, nightclubs and a show theater attached to a forty-story hotel.

I call the number from his phone and know it’s going to be recorded, so I evince my best impression of his brother’s nasally whine when the woman picks up with “National Investments.”

“It’s Lance. I’m outta money. And these guys at the MGM, they’re not messing around. Tell my bro . . . tell Ro I gotta . . . I’m going in at midnight to room 4001 to meet these guys . . . just tell him I love him.”

I hang up. The phone chirps in my hand three minutes later, but I ignore it. I don’t remove the battery so they can pinpoint the location with whatever satellites do that type of thing. Since Risina and I are already checked into the hotel, it should paint a convincing picture.

I’m certain he’ll come alone. He doesn’t want his employers to know any more about his personal business than absolutely necessary, and certainly not about his deadbeat brother who got himself in a bad way with some casino heavies. No, my guess is he’ll come in by himself, pissed off, armed but not ready to shoot, not ready to play defense. And as a man who understands the value of surprise, I’m betting he won’t try to contact the casino owners ahead of time to straighten out this matter. If he does, my plan is sunk, but what better place to play the odds than right here in a gaming joint?

At eleven-thirty, Risina spots a man heading to the elevator, and after he gives it a cursory glance, he backtracks toward the reception area. His face is similar to his brother’s, but better looking—a stronger jaw, brighter eyes—like the superior chromosomes bandied together to favor him and exclude his alcoholic brother. Still, the family resemblance is there.

The top floor requires an extra security card to trigger the elevator, so he’ll have to request the floor, another indication this is our guy. Risina ducks in behind him, hears him request a room on the fortieth floor, and then listens to the receptionist give him room 4021.

He thanks her politely and heads back to the bank of elevators. I’m sure he’s surging with grim energy, ready to confront the guys in room 4001 before his brother arrives, straighten out the situation, turn it ugly if he has to, whatever it takes to get his brother off the hook. After he presses the up button, the first doors to open are for the middle car in this deck of three, and as soon as he’s in it, Risina calls up to me.

“Middle elevator, up now.”

I’m on the twentieth floor. Above the doors are LCD readouts displaying the floor number of each car’s current position. I watch and hit my own “up” button as the middle car passes the tenth floor. We tested this a few times and ten out of eleven, the elevator heading up is the one that stops; the only exception was when one of the other cars was already on the twentieth floor. But the right and left elevators are elsewhere and the one rising should be the correct choice, come on. Except now as I look, the elevator up on twenty-eight is heading down this direction and if it gets here first, I don’t know what will happen, which door will open. The middle one continues to climb, please don’t let someone else in the teens press “up” and stop it. It’s moving up steadily, 17, 18 . . . while the one on the right continues to fall, 22, 21, and then it hits 20 and I hold my breath, but it keeps heading down, 19, 18 on the way to the lobby and then the middle elevator door dings open. No one else is inside but Decker. I have a ball cap slung low so he won’t get a good look at me. I doubt he knows my face but if he’s working closely with Spilatro, I can’t be sure.