Deal Gone Bad - A Thriller (Frank Morrison Thriller Series Book 1) (3 page)

Morrison kept staring at
him. The man was the same. Only different. With the kinds of subtle changes you
never notice when you see a person regularly, but that do stand out when you
haven’t seen them for more than three years. Shoulders a bit broader, squarer. Hair
slightly thinner. Deeper lines on the face. And more of them.

Morrison addressed him by his
nickname. “Long time no see, Junior.”

Junior bit his lip and
tilted his head slightly to his right. A move Morrison had often seen
characters do both in Western and mafia movies, oddly enough.

“The world has changed,
Morrison,” Junior said. “It’s Mike now.”

“OK, then. Long time no
see, Mike.”

“You don’t look too bad,”
Mike said.

“You know what they say.
It’s all in the head.” Morrison nodded to the other guys and said, “You’ve got
your own crew now?”

“Like I said, the world
has changed.”

Mike stayed there,
blocking the doorway. He wasn’t aggressive with him, but he certainly kept his
distance. He seemed eager to establish his position, show who was in command.
Yeah,
right
, thought Morrison. Like having him abducted at gunpoint and keeping him
locked up for hours was not enough.

Mike glanced sideways at the
slicked-back hair guy and said, “Did you search him?”

The guy shrugged. “What
for?” he said. “He just got out of prison.”

“Do it,” Mike said. “I
know this guy. He could get things in and out prison that you wouldn’t even manage
to find in a hardware store.”

The slicked-back hair guy breathed
out and motioned for the blond guy to go inside the shed. The hierarchy was
clear enough.

Morrison tensed up a bit, thinking
about the key. But he made a conscious effort to relax. He spread his arms and
legs. Breathed evenly.

The guy bent over and patted
through his pants, starting at the ankles and going all the way up to his back
pocket. He paused briefly to throw Morrison’s wallet at his partner, then
continued his search, patting through the shirt.

At the end of it, he said,
“He’s clean.”

“Same here,” said the slicked-back
hair guy, who threw Morrison back his wallet.

Mike kept his gaze focused
on him. Very neutral, but with a hint of contentment. Not much. All very
subtle.

Morrison let him have his
moment. He had no problem with that. He liked to play the long game. In his
book, strategy mattered a whole lot more than tactics.

Then Morrison broke the
stalemate and said, “You mind telling me what this is all about?”

Mike didn’t answer his
question. He just nodded and said, “Come on, we’re going for a ride.”

There were still guns
around and not in his hands, so Morrison knew better than to do something
foolish. He managed to be as predictable as he could be and followed Mike to an
open Jeep parked behind the garage. They all climbed in with Mike at the wheel,
Morrison at his side and the two guys behind. The Jeep got going in a cloud of
dust.

A dirt track meandered through
the open rolling hills, leading them to a dense hardwood forest where they
continued their way in the cool shade. It was a huge property.

Morrison felt good to be
out in the open after the hours of confinement in the hot shed. His shirt even started
to dry. “This is all yours?” he said, raising his voice to cover the noise.

Mike nodded.

“Bought it two years ago,”
he said. “A thousand acres. Very quiet place once I got rid of the cattle and
the help. No neighbors for miles.”

Morrison couldn’t help
noticing the satisfaction on his face. He knew how important it was for someone
who had grown up poor to own some land. And Mike had grown up real poor. Dirt
poor as a matter of fact. Just like himself. Real estate was concrete, physical
proof that you were no longer destitute. Contrary to stocks or government
bonds, it was there, in your face. Tangible. You could walk on it. You were the
master of something real. Morrison himself had started to think about buying
some property. But then he was arrested, and he moved to a different world.

“Bought anything else
around?” he asked.

Mike heard him but did not
reply. Morrison realized that Mike wouldn’t say anything substantial until he
had shown him what he wanted to show him. Whatever the hell that was. So he
kept silent and took in the scenery.

After a few minutes, they
got to a clearing. There was a yellow tractor lying still in the sun, a rusty
old one fitted with a backhoe. Its bucket was resting on a mound of freshly dug-up
earth.

The sight troubled Morrison.
He stiffened up in his seat.

Mike skirted to the left
of the mound and screeched to a stop so that Morrison would have the best view of
what lay behind.

It was a hole in the
ground.

No surprise there.

What struck him was its
size.

Eight feet long. Three
feet wide. Six feet deep.

Pretty self-explanatory.

“Get out,” Mike said. “Get
out.”

Morrison figured he had
badly misjudged the whole situation, and he cursed himself for it. It looked
like Mike didn’t want to talk after all. Or show him anything. He seemed to have
planned just the opposite. To watch. To stare at him while he went down in that
hole and took a bullet to the head. Just then, Morrison damned his passivity.
He had let them lead him quietly from the outskirts of prison to this place. But
then again, what could he have done? They had outnumbered him from the start, and
they were armed.

Whatever his
circumstances, Morrison thought it was now time to do something quick. He
couldn’t afford to let things slide anymore. He had to put his spin on.

He stayed put in his seat
and said, “What’s the matter, Mike? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Mike himself stepped out.
“Just get out, Morrison,” he said.

The tone was neutral.
Almost bored. Behind, the two guys jumped out of the Jeep and rejoined at one
corner of the grave where they could easily cover the open angle. They motioned
with their guns.
Get moving
.

Morrison lifted himself
from the seat and stepped onto the soft, long grass. He only had to take two
steps to stand at the very edge of the hole, but he refrained from doing so. Whoever
had dug it was skilled. The perimeter was as sharp as if a giant cookie cutter
had been stamped in the fresh earth.

“What’s all this for?” he
said. “Who just did three years of prison? If someone should be mad, it’s me! I
kept my mouth shut! I didn’t rat on anyone!”

“We don’t think you’re all
that innocent,” Mike said.

Wait a minute. He had said
we,
not
I
. And Morrison was pretty sure this
we
didn’t
include the two thugs with their guns. These guys were just hired hands who
were paid to obey and do things, not to think.

“Who’s
we
?” he
said. “Who doesn’t think I’m straight?”

“You’re not the only one who’s
done some time.”

“Have you?”

“No.”

“And Harris?”

“No.”

“And Cowgirl?”

“No,” Mike said. “But what
about Tommy? He’s still inside. I’m sure you were gonna mention him, right?”

So that’s what this was
all about. Mike and Tommy had sided together.
Surprising
, thought
Morrison. In their loosely associated group, those two had never been the
closest. They didn’t call Mike “Junior” for no reason. Early on, Tommy was the
one who had put the emphasis on his more junior status.

“Tommy was arrested more than
six months after me,” Morrison said. “On a charge that had nothing to do with
mine.”

“You knew he was working
on that deal too,” Mike said.

“I was not the only one.”

“But you did know.”

“So did you.”

Mike scoffed. “I didn’t
have anything to do with his arrest.”

“Me neither,” Morrison
said.

“That’s not what Tommy thinks.”

Morrison lost it. He went
back at him with a passion.

“How on earth can he think
that? What rational arguments can he invoke to back this up? It’s ridiculous. Remember,
I had to serve all my time. A full sentence. Not a day less. Not even an hour. One
hundred percent full sentence. Don’t you think I would’ve gotten something in
return if I had sold Tommy out? You think I’m an idiot, Mike?”

“Some of the charges against
you were dropped.”

“That’s what you pay
lawyers for! Some parts of the state attorney’s case were not rock solid. My
guy managed to pry them away. Not because I gave Tommy away, because I did not.”

“So you say.”

“Damn right I say!”

Morrison’s resolve seemed
to impress his opponent. For a man literally peering into his grave, he was
steadfast and resolute, not edgy and hesitant as one could have expected.

Mike went back at him from
another angle. “You were careless, Morrison,” he said. “You cost us a lot of
money.”

“I lost a lot of money
too. And I lost three years on top of that. You didn’t.”

Mike shook his head.

“It was such a sweet deal.
How could you get caught?”

“Sheriff Sanford was
lucky. What can I tell you? That was pure dumb luck. If I hadn’t hit trouble
with that car, we would’ve been laughing. Instead, she got to peer into the
back of it, and here we are.”

“Bottom line, you were in
charge of that car. So it’s your fault.”

“Sure, whatever. I’ll take
it. But it’s crazy to mull over this. That was the past, this is now. We have
to look forward.”

“That was a ten million
dollars deal, Morrison. Only two were found in the car. You’re pretty relaxed about
it. Tommy says there’s something funny about this.”

At that precise moment,
Morrison thought about the key hidden in his shoe. Thank God they hadn’t found
it.

“Maybe our inside
information wasn’t so good after all,” he said. “Maybe there only ever would be
two million dollars. Who knows?”

“Don’t you want to know?” Mike
said.

“Water under the bridge. I
prefer to focus on what lies ahead.”

“Seems easy for you to look
forward.”

“Prison tends to do that to
you.”

There was a pause in their
exchange.

Then Morrison got it.

Inside, he half-sighed
with relief. He finally understood what this was all about.

This was a pre-emptive
strike.

They
were worried about what
he
would do once he got out of prison, so they had decided to undercut him.
Don’t
you want to know?
Now that he was thinking about it, Mike’s question seemed
genuine. Not just rhetoric.

And to be honest, it was a
question he had asked himself. He had pondered over it in his prison cell far more
than he let on.

In retrospect, the whole
deal that had led to his arrest seemed patchy and frayed. No operation ever went
one hundred percent according to plan. It’s impossible. But few went as bad as
this one. Morrison was thirty-three. He had dropped out at sixteen. Always made
a living outside of conventional society. Yet that was the first time he was
ever arrested. Before, he had always managed to lay low. No doubt, that whole
operation had been one unmitigated disaster.

In the meantime, the
realization didn’t change anything about his situation. He was outnumbered
three to one. Two guys were still pointing their guns at him. He was alone with
only his bare hands against them, staring at a deep hole ready to swallow him
for all eternity.

Mike still had the upper
hand. He still called the shots. But now, at least, Morrison knew he was about
to ask him for something.

“Take a hard long look at
this hole,” Mike said. “This is where you’ll end up if we don’t get good answers
to our questions.”

So that was it
. Morrison had been ready
to move on from that deal gone bad. But obviously not Mike and Tommy.

“Why didn’t you try to
find out by yourselves?” Morrison said.

“We did. But we went
nowhere. Tommy thinks you can have a shot at it.”

Fight or flight? It’s a
conditioned response, deeply embedded into the sympathetic nervous system. The
result of thousands and thousands of years of hard and brutal trial and error. Without
it, the human race would’ve become extinct long ago. Morrison’s own ability to
make the right choice was stellar. Honed into a sharpened and polished skill by
years of his own personal Darwinian experiences. Right then, he knew he would
have to fight this out. No question. If Mike, and especially Tommy, had set
their sight on this, no way could he avoid it. They were serious. If he fled,
they would find him. And where would he go anyway? Thailand? Belize? Mauritius?
Morrison had absolutely no intention of leaving the United States. That’s where
his future lay.

So he simply said, “What’s
in it for me?”

“One-third of what we can
recover in the process, if any.”

“You’re not gonna let this
go, are you?”

“No way,” Mike said.

“OK,” Morrison said, “done
deal.”

Mike nodded to his guys
and said, “OK, you can relax now.”

Morrison shook his head
and said, “Christ, Mike, you didn’t have to dig that hole …”

At the corner of the
grave, the slicked-back hair guy put the safety catch back on his gun and slid
it into his holster. At his side, the blond guy didn’t drop his. Instead, he
just swiveled on his feet a quarter of a turn, toward his left. Where the slicked-back
hair guy was standing. In a swift move, he raised the gun to his partner’s head
and shot him twice.

The move caught Morrison
completely by surprise.

He just stared with a grimace
as the dead body fell forward in the grave in a spray of blood and brain matter.
Goddamn guns
. He really hated them.

The echo of the shots rang
out high above while the body landed with a muted thump at the bottom of the
dirt pit. A pool of blood quickly formed around the mangled head. Arms and legs
rested at an impossible angle that only the dead can withstand.

“Turns out I did need that
hole,” Mike said. “That’s lesson number one. Don’t mess with me. Don’t do
anything behind my back. That guy did. Look at him now.”

Morrison shook his head, and
then he looked away from the lifeless body.

“That’s not how we did
business,” he said.

“Guess what?” Mike said. “The
world has changed.”