Fade (2005) (20 page)

The man withdrew his hand with a little more force than was necessary.

"Look, that car had a lot of potential, but I told the guy it wasn'
t all that sound. He told me he was a mechanic and was looking to make a project out of it. Just because I sell used cars doesn't make me "

Egan grinned as disarmingly as he could and held his hands out in a gesture for peace. "Take it easy. I don't care about the car. I'
m looking for the man."

"Are you a cop?"

He shook his head.

"Then I really can't help you I can't just hand out persona l information on my customers. I've got some nice cars on the lot , though, if you're in the market .. ."

"Could we talk inside for a moment?"

Powell shrugged and Egan followed him up the stairs, closing the doo r behind them.

"The thing is, I'm a private investigator specializing in tracking dow n deadbeat dads. The guy I'm looking for disappeared about a year ag o and left his wife high and dry with two little boys. She's trying t o go to school and work full time to put food on the table while thi s jerk-off collects classic cars. I just want to find him and get him t o comply with a court order to help support his kids."

Powell fell into a chair behind his cluttered desk and folded his arm s across his chest. "I'm not sure what I can do to help you, even if I w anted to. People aren't obligated to provide information when the y buy a car unless they're looking for a loan and this guy paid cash.

Basically, all he told me was his name."

"And that was?"

Powell didn't answer, prompting Egan to dig into his wallet and produc e three one-hundred-dollar bills. "This probably doesn't seem like muc h to you," he said, pushing the money across the desk toward the man.

"But it's a fortune to the woman who gave it to me."

Powell stared at the money for a good thirty seconds and then said , "I've got two kids of my own. Girls. You?"

It was a simple question. Why was the answer so hard? "I'm no t married," Egan said finally.

"Did you get that, Billy?" Egan said into his cell phone as he took a left that he hoped would lead him to the highway. Powell had finall y agreed to tell him what he knew. It wasn't much, but it was enough.

His description of the Cadillac's buyer had hit all the right buttons a fit looking man of about thirty-five, five foot ten, dark complexion.

More interesting was the bleached blond hair, earring, and blue tinte d rectangular glasses. A maximally effective disguise for a man wh o couldn't go the fake beard route without looking like he was going t o blow something up.

"Got it," Fraiser said. "Do you think it's him?"

"I think it's him."

"Yes!" Fraiser shouted. "I knew you'd get him, Matt."

"I haven't gotten anything it's just a start. Run down the name h e gave, but I'm guessing he just made it up on the spot."

"And the car?"

"I don't know. The guy said it wasn't all that sound mechanically, s o he might be taking it in to get some work done. Call around and se e what you can find. Do the quickie paint places first, okay?"

"No problem. But even if we know the color and have the temporary ta g number, what're the chances you're going to just drive by him?"

"We're going to have to call the police and get an APB put out. Tel l them it's a terrorism suspect and that under no circumstances are the y to stop or approach the vehicle. Tell them we need him to lead us t o his cell, or something."

"Uh, okay," he replied, sounding a bit uncertain. It seemed likel y that he would run off to report all this to Strand right after he hun g up and there would be some subsequent hand wringing about involving th e police. But what choice did they have? They needed the manpower.

"If Hillel has a problem with the APB have him call me."

"Right. Anything else?"

"Unfortunately, that's it."

"Are you getting anywhere with his old friends? Have you talked t o them yet?"

"Most of them, but I've come up empty. None of them have seen or hear d from Fade in years."

"Would they tell you if they had?"

It was a good question. Egan was playing it like he was trying t o quietly track him down before the cops cornered him and more peopl e died, but Fade's old teammates would still be reluctant to give him u p both because they liked and respected him and because nobody wanted t o take the chance of crossing him. In their minds, the smart move wa s not to get involved one way or another and let Fade take care o f himself.

"I honestly don't know, Billy. I've got one more name on my list. I f I get anything, I'll call you."

He hung up and immediately dialed the number of Roy Buckner, the forme r Delta operative and major redneck asshole that Strand had wanted t o hire. Unlike the people Egan had talked to so far, Buckner hated Fade.

After the mission they had completed together, Fade had made it clea r he'd never work with the man again. And when Salam al Fayed sai d something like that, it tended to ring in the ears of the people wh o ran things. It didn't take long for Buckner to find himself remove d from the operational side and eventually forced out. Typically, h e blamed Fade instead of his own piss-poor performance.

Egan would use a slightly different back story with Buckner: that Fad e had lost it and he was helping the cops track him down. It seeme d unlikely that Buckner would know anything useful, but if he did he'
d almost certainly be happy to do anything he could to contribute t o Fade's destruction.

"Hello?"

"Hi. This is Matt Egan again. I'm still trying to track down Roy."

"Look," Buckner's wife said over the sound of a screaming child. "He'
s not here just like he wasn't here the last two times you called. Wha t do you want me to do?"

"Maybe you could give me his cell number and then I wouldn't have t o keep bothering you."

"He doesn't have it on. Like I told you, I left him a message that yo u called "

"Is there an office, or a place he eats, or anywhere else I might b e able to reach him?"

"He's on a job and I don't know where the hell he is. He's been up i n D
. C
. and Virginia and he called me a few hours ago from Baltimore. Com e to think of it, he didn't mention you at all. So maybe that means h e doesn't want to talk to you."

Egan accelerated up the on ramp to 1-95, feeling his jaw tighten as h e replayed the woman's words over in his head. He's been up in D. C. an d Virginia and he called me a few hours ago from Baltimore.

"Thank you," he said finally. "You've been very helpful."

Egan wrote the things he'd learned from the used car dealer on hi s chalkboard and fell back onto the empty bed, covering the neck of hi s beer with his thumb to keep it from sloshing. The board was almos t two-thirds full now providing at least the illusion of progress. H
e lay there and contemplated it uselessly until his cell phone bega n ringing.

"Hello?"

"Matt. I hear you're already on your way to cracking this thing.

Excellent work." Hillel Strand's voice. "I've got Lauren and Bil l here, let me put you on the speaker."

"Matt? Can you hear me?" Lauren said.

"Yeah."

"We've been working on the car, but we can't find anyone who's painte d it. We'll call around again in a couple of days. Also, there'
s nothing under the name he gave. We've checked for bank accounts , driver's licenses, credit cards. You name it. Your instinct wa s probably right on this he just made it up as he was walking onto th e lot."

"And the place he took Karen Manning?"

"We're working through real estate rentals and purchases of those type s of properties over the past few years, but there's a huge number and n o efficient way to search it."

"What about the APB?"

Strand's voice came back on. "That's a pretty risky strategy, Matt.. .

But I agree. We need to take the chance. The police have th e description of the car, the tag, and al Fayed. We've told them not t o approach him and to contact us immediately if they spot him."

"Fine. Anything else?"

"I'm closing in on al Fayed's drug dealer friend," Fraiser said. "Bu t these kinds of people don't exactly put their names in the phon e book."

"When?"

"Tomorrow, hopefully. The next day at the latest."

"Faster is better, Billy. Anything else?"

"Not really. You probably saw on the news that the police found a l Fayed's car in a shitty area of D
. C
. but there wasn't much left of it.

The police reports are on your e-mail if you want to take a look a t them, but I wouldn't bother. There's nothing there."

Chapter
Twenty-Six.

"It's green."

Isidro chewed his lip and danced uncomfortably from foot to foot -a n incredibly odd mannerism for a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound mound o f tattoo-covered muscle.

"We did the first coat of black and the painter called.... It, uh , looked more like something Batman would drive than James Bond. Ou r paint guy came up with this. It's British Racing Green over a pear l base coat. It's not stock, but you gotta admit, it's fuckin g stunning."

Fade nodded but didn't say anything, instead continuing hi s circumnavigation of the Cadillac. When he made it to the gleamin g front bumper, he motioned toward a subtle bulge in the hood.

"What's up with that?"

"We had to fabricate an entirely new hood, but it doesn't really chang e the car's lines. We needed to be able to fit this .. ." He popped th e latch and exposed an entirely new motor. Fade leaned inside, actuall y feeling a little giddy as he examined the massive red, black, an d chrome power plant, then turned his attention to the matte blac k machine guns running alongside it. The barrels lined up with tw o cleverly camouflaged holes just above the headlights. When he stood u p straight again, he was struggling to appear unimpressed.

"Zero to sixty so fast you'll need a neck brace," Isidro continued.

"Full racing tuned suspension. You can leave a half a mile of rubbe r in this bitch and it corners like a Porsche."

Fade nodded and walked the length of it again, running a hand over th e elegant tan interior and neatly retracted hand-sewn top.

"All European leather, man. They don't use barbed wire over there, s o it's flawless."

Fade pointed to the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. "Nic e touch."

"No extra charge," Isidro said and then stuck a key in the trunk , stepping back as it rose slowly on its own. "We had to reinforce th e back end and it made the thing real heavy to open, so we put i n hydraulics."

Fade pointed to a metal tank that took up most of the right side of th e trunk. "What the hell's that?"

"The ejector seat, man."

"You're kidding. You got it to work?"

"Fuck, yeah, we got it to work. But it wasn't easy. Springs were a complete bust. We went with compressed air."

Fade pointed to the machine gun, secured by heavy steel brackets , aiming out another cleverly camouflaged hole, this time over th e license plate. It had a long belt of ammunition that he'd never see n before feeding into it from an artistically crafted spool. "Where'
d you get the ammo?"

"Got a friend who builds custom guns and he got us a bunch of blanks.

We were afraid that firing the guns with the car moving was gonna thro w off the handling. Turns out that the front ones ain't a problem bu t the back gun lifts the rear a little bit... Hey, check this shit out."

Isidro took his shoes off and stood on the passenger seat as his me n gathered near the passenger door.

"Get in the driver's seat," he said and Fade climbed in, sinkin g luxuriously into the new upholstery.

"The switch is on the floor above the accelerator. You've got t o really stomp on it."

Fade ran a hand over the hurled wood of the steering wheel. "Now?"

"Go for it."

He looked up into Isidro's slightly nervous face and slammed his foo t onto the switch.

There was a brief whoosh and suddenly the man was in flight, gaining a good five feet before starting to descend. Obviously, this wasn't th e first time they'd tested the seat, because his men were in exactly th e right place to catch him.

Fade realized his mouth was hanging open as he watched the seat slowl y settle back into its original position. There was no more containin g himself. He yanked his shoes off and jumped into the passenger seat.

"The car is fucking perfect! Incredible!" He pointed toward th e switch on the floor. "Come on, Isidro, do me."

The enormous Latino grinned and leaned into the car, careful not to le t his dirty shirt touch the interior, and slammed a hand down on th e switch.

The amount of thrust surprised him, almost buckling his knees an d sending him in an uncontrolled arc that quickly reversed itself an d sent him into an even more uncontrolled descent toward the edge of th e door. Isidro's men were quicker than they looked, though, and manage d to catch him before he damaged either himself or the paint.