When the Devil Comes to Call (A Lars and Shaine Novel Book 2) (7 page)

“Well, when? I don’t want to lose this.” Special Agent Qualls knew he shouldn’t take such a tone with his supervisor, but the red tape was holding up his deal with Nikki Pagani, and getting Pagani to go Witsec would be the thing Qualls needed to get a call from D.C.

“Soon, Qualls,” Burke said. He hated the bureaucracy as much as anyone, but he knew the futility of complaining about it. “Next day or two.”

“Two?” Qualls said, then caught himself and lowered his volume. “What if he changes his mind?”

“Then we keep doing what we’ve been doing, arrest him in time and he’ll spill it all to get the judge to go easy on him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Qualls left the room before he said something he’d regret. In time. A fucking joke. There had been a case file on Nikki Pagani at the FBI since 1988.

If Burke would retire, or maybe have a heart attack, Qualls could move up and stay in the New York office. If that didn’t happen, he wanted the hell out. He wanted the big leagues. He wanted D.C.

A memo had been placed on his desk. As he sat down he picked up the single sheet of paper and read. The names sounded familiar. Qualls got up from his desk again and walked to the far end of the bullpen to the one man whose job he could have in a few months – and the one man whose job he did not want.

“Ford, take a look at this, will ya?”

***

Earl Walker Ford sighed. He’d been enjoying a great hand in an online Texas Hold ‘Em game, but had to quickly close the window on his computer when Qualls approached.

“Look at what?”

“Isn’t this one of your guys?” Qualls handed the memo to Ford who read it the way he did everything—slowly.

Qualls grew impatient with the pace of Ford’s reading. “That Lars guy, I thought I recognized his name from one of your cases.”

“Why are you reading my cases?”

“I like to stay on top of everything, see if I can help.”

One thing Ford hated was a helpful guy who volunteered for more work. He tried to remember if he’d ever acted the same way. Not now, that’s for sure. Not with retirement so close he could smell it like a thick steak on the grill.

“Yeah, he was a suspect in one of my guys being taken out.”

“You mean killed?”

“I don’t mean taken out dancing.”

Qualls ignored him. “Well, someone spotted him in town.”

“Yeah, I read that.” Ford handed him back the memo.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d gotten that far.”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Just thought you’d want to know.”

“Well, now I know.”

Ford gave Qualls a look letting him know he would make no further effort to prolong the conversation.

“He used to work for Nikki Pagani, didn’t he?”

“Apparently you’ve read all the files.”

Qualls had been asking a rhetorical question. He knew the names of every one of Nikki’s known associates. “Maybe there’s a connection. I’m bringing Pagani in, y’know.”

“I may have heard a thing or two.” Everyone had because Qualls couldn’t stop talking about his big game for the past month. Ford wanted to remind Qualls it was Nikki who called him, not any great effort on Qualls’s part to break Nikki’s will. But to lecture the kid would be too much work.

“Well, if I learn anything more about it, I’ll let you know.”

“You do that.”

Qualls left and Ford opened his browser again. His session had timed out due to inactivity. His hand automatically folded and another player, AssCat47, had won on a hand Ford would have beaten easily.

He closed the browser and opened his calendar program, scrolled ahead three months and stared at the bright blue highlight over his retirement date. The blue looked to Ford like the sparkling seas of Tahiti, but he’d take the Long Island Sound.

At the end of Nikki’s street, Lars pulled over. He let the car idle, the much-needed heat still pumping in. He kept his eyes on the steering wheel.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked.

“Not really,” Shaine said.

“You should,” Lars said. “Talk about it, I mean.”

“What’s there to say?”

Lars didn’t know, so he stayed quiet. The steady fan noise of the heater filled the gap. Shaine put her finger to the window beside her and began to draw shapes in the condensation. A palm tree, then a surfboard.

“The first one is always messy,” Lars said. Shaine continued to draw. “But you need to acknowledge what happened. Look, I know I’ve kinda screwed up here. I taught you to shoot but not to kill. They are two very different things. I guess I never wanted you to know how to kill. But, you saved my life back there. I’m damn fortunate you’re a fast learner.”

Shaine turned to Lars. “You’ve saved my life before. I owed you.”

“Well, that’s no way to think. Now we’re even, okay? But if you start measuring out who you owe, it gets messy. We may be even, but I sure hope you’d do it again not just because of some debt.” Lars finally looked at her. “I’d do it for you. As many times as I have to.”

Shaine looked down into her lap, started picking at her fingers. Lars could see her emotions brimming over the top. He got a little bit worried over what he may have unleashed.

“I killed two people,” she said quietly. Her whisper barely made it over the wind tunnel noise of the heater, but now it was out. The words, moving in moist air from her lungs and joining the air around them, collecting in droplets of water on the inside of the windows. In the lines she had drawn on her window, new drops ran free down the clean glass. Shaine took her finger and wiped a drop away. Her island scene vanished, obliterated by her index finger the same way two lives were in a mid-range hotel.

Shaine began to cry.

“So, do you want to talk about it or . . .?” Lars never knew what to do with tears.

Shaine grabbed for the door handle, spoke a rushed excuse, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

She leaned out and began spewing onto the sidewalk. Thick clouds of steam rose around her. Lars was spared the view of her vomit with her back to him, but the sounds made it all vivid enough. Vomit he could deal with. Unlike tears, vomit he knew. Hurling after the first kill, in a way, better than talking about it. He knew she was going to be all right.

Lars patted her back and let her get on about her business. All he needed to say was, “I know, I know.”

Lars noted the lack of security as he walked from the front door to Nikki’s office without seeing a soul.

He entered the room with Shaine behind. The room was dark, the shades drawn like the office of a shut-in or an eccentric recluse. Or a man hiding from demons of his own making.

“What the hell was that?” Lars asked. He didn’t need to specify the incident at the hotel. Wasn’t much else between he and Nikki these days except this trip and the fucked up job he was trying to be done with.

“You tell me,” Nikki said. “I got some crazy guy up in here asking about what happened to his parents, telling me he’s got you on security cameras and calling you out by name.”

Lars finished the unspoken rest of the thought to himself:
this wasn’t like you, Lars. This isn’t the professional I hired. You’ve lost your edge and now it’s put us all in danger.

No shit.

“I told you to get someone local.”

“Bullshit. I wanted you.”

“Well, you got me. And the job is done. Sloppy or not. You sent Bruno right to my door.”

“I was gonna call you sooner. How was I supposed to know the bastard would knock my block off?”

Nikki leaned into the pool of light from his desk lamp. Lars could see the full extent of his pistol whipping. The thin skin stretched tight over his balding head, mottled with spots for years, now had a dark purple bruise at his temple. Crusty reservoirs of dried blood pooled in the wrinkles around Nikki’s eye. Streaks of hair had been dyed a dark rust color.

“Jesus. Are you okay?”

“It hurts like a bitch, but I’m alive. And so are you.” Nikki nodded to Shaine. She gave him a steel gaze. “I’m glad to see it.”

Part of Lars wanted to show Nikki his own bruising. And to explain the permanent scars on Shaine. The bridge she’d crossed she could never come back from. He knew Nikki wouldn’t understand.

Speaking of owing people
, Lars thought,
we’re even and I’m done.

“Still, Bruno showed up at my door with six guys.”

“And yet you’re here and he’s not. Can’t say I’m surprised though.”

“Two seconds ago you were telling me all the ways I screwed up.”

“Come on, don’t be dramatic. I wanted the best, I got the best.”

By sheer Pavlovian instinct Lars could only think of the start to the
KISS: ALIVE
album. Lars and about ten million teenage boys all wanted someone to announce them into a room the same way: “You wanted the best, you got the best. The hottest hitman in the world—Lars!”

Nikki didn’t have the voice for it.

“Yeah, well, I’m glad I had backup for the clusterfuck you sent my way.” Lars turned to Shaine and gave her a small smile. She shyly looked down at the floor.

“I told you, I had a plan. I send him to you, call ahead so you’re waiting for him, and I get exactly the outcome that we got.”

“You ever see
Blade Runner
?” Lars asked.

“Seen what?”

“
Blade Runner
. It’s a science fiction movie. Takes place in the future. Well, not far from now actually.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“There’s a line in the movie Harrison Ford gives when they’re trying to get him back on the force. He says, ‘I was quit when I come in here, I’m twice as quit now.’”

“That your long winded way of saying you’re out of here?”

“I can’t think of better words to say it.”

Nikki sighed, leaned back in his chair. The hose feeding oxygen up his nose clanged against the side of his metal cylinder making a thin bell sound.

“In case you didn’t notice when you walked in,” Nikki said. “I’m a bit short-staffed right now.”

“Bruno’s guys?”

Nikki nodded. “Sent two of my best to the hospital. I guess I should be glad they didn’t kill them. He sure as shit had a hard on for only you.”

“He got away, Nikki.” Lars waited for the judgmental comment, the scolding stare. 

“What do you mean? If you’re here that means you got away, which means—”

“I got most of them. I thought I had him. There was this pool, though . . .”

“So he’s out there now with a hard on for both of us.”

“You didn’t lie to him. He can’t be pissed at you for telling the truth. It’s his fault for trying to kill me.” Lars threw a look over his shoulder. “Us.”

“He’ll know it was a set up. Goddamn it. Lars, you gotta stay with me. Here. Be my bodyguard. Only for a day or two. Until the Feds come to take me away.”

“Call them now.”

“I already did. You know those guys. It’s all paperwork and approvals from Washington. My guy said a day or two, tops.” Nikki leaned forward on his elbows, showing his injuries to Lars again, working it for sympathy. “You can’t run out on me. Not this close.”

Lars didn’t say anything. He appeared to be unmoved.

“If I get killed, I can’t make the payment for this Leo job, y’know?”

“Then do it tonight. Now. A few clicks on the computer. And don’t tell me anything about the FBI seizing your assets. Use the other account. The one you haven’t told them about.”

Lars had zero proof, but he knew Nikki well enough to know there would be another account. Maybe several. They had reached a standoff and Lars remained unconvinced.

Shaine listened with interest as the old friends bickered. Nikki was vulnerable. He was being hunted by a vengeful son who lost his father. Lars seemed to be turning on the old man. And now Nikki had invited them into his home.

She didn’t think it had anything to do with being emboldened by her first kills, but plans started forming in her mind. In the house she could get close to Nikki. With someone else clearly out to get him, she might be able to take out Nikki herself and see this Bruno guy get the blame. Who would suspect her? Not Lars.

And now she knew she could do it. She knew she could kill. In many ways she wanted pulling the trigger on Nikki to be the one to pop her cherry, but you didn’t go after the big game until you’d shot a few rabbits first.

“I think we should stay,” she said.

Lars turned, confusion tilting his head like a dog. “You do?”

“Yeah,” she said. She could see Lars needed a reason. “He’s right. What if we don’t get our money?”

Lars put out a placating hand, in a rare move he talked to her like she was still a kid. “No, he’s got the money well hidden from the feds.”

“Times have been tough, Lars,” Nikki said. “They’re all over my finances.”

“Yeah, and two million is a lot. We can stay a few more days to earn it,” Shaine said. This time she watched Nikki face. The color drained from his already pale skin. It made the dark bruise stand out more, like his face had a missing puzzle piece.

“Two million?” Nikki said to the room.

Shaine let a sly grin worm across her face.

Lars smiled at Shaine, comforted in the fact she was not the kid he’d thought for a second. He turned back to Nikki. “That is the agreement, right?”

“One million is the agreement,” Nikki said.

“Each,” Shaine said. The feeling in her gut worked better than mouthwash for making her forget about the vomiting spell earlier.

Nikki nodded his head. First time he’d ever been railroaded by a teenage girl.

“What the hell,” he said. “You can’t take it with you, right?”

Lars stepped over to his desk. “Let’s fire up the computer then, shall we. See if we can’t find that other account.”