The Amateurs (25 page)

Which was why it felt important, justified, to sit calmly on her couch and paint her toes. A way of holding back panic. When the phone rang, she finished the nail she was on before setting the brush in the bottle and reaching for the cordless.

“Ms. Lacie?”

“Yes,” she said, fanning her toes with a magazine and readying herself to hang up on the salesman.

“You’re a friend of Mitch McDonnell?”

Something in the tone made her wary. She uncurled herself, put her feet on the floor. “Yes. Who is—”

“He’s been hurt.”

“I’m sorry, my name is Paul, I work at the Continental with Mitch. He’s been hurt and he’s asking for you.”

“What do you mean, hurt?”

“My manager just gave me your number and asked me to call.”

“But . . . hurt how? Like he fell or something?”

“I really don’t know. I just know that he’s asking you to come down here right away.”

“OK.” She stood, looked at the clock on the cable box. A few minutes after one. Saturday traffic wouldn’t help any. “I’m leaving now. I should be there by about one thirty.”

“I’ll tell him. He’s in a conference room on the second floor. The Atlantic.”

“Is there a doctor—”

“I really don’t know, ma’am.”

“All right. Thanks.” She hung up the phone and threw it on the couch. In her bedroom she shucked off cotton pajama bottoms and hopped into jeans, jammed her feet into flip-flops, grabbed her purse off the dresser, and bolted for the door.

Outside, it was a perfect summer day, the kind where nothing could go wrong. She tagged a passing cab, gave him the address, and asked him to step on it. To her surprise, he did, running yellows and weaving through traffic.

What could that mean, Mitch was hurt? It couldn’t be too bad, or they would have taken him to a hospital. It was kind of odd, him asking for her. They’d only just started, and it seemed like already she was getting the girlfriend treatment.

Unless . . . Did it have something to do with the robbery? Or with the call from last night?

The thought hit cold, and she bit her lip. If Johnny had found out, he might have come after Mitch. God, he might have—

It was a long ride.

Finally, the cab pulled up in front of the hotel. A man wearing the uniform she’d come to associate with Mitch hurried over to get her door. She paid the cabbie, tipping him an extra ten bucks, and hurried out of the car. “The Atlantic conference room?”

“On the second floor, ma’am. The elevator is—”

She didn’t hear the rest. The hotel was gorgeous, the kind of place people had honeymoons and affairs in. She saw a staircase and hurried up it. There was a sign with room names etched in it and arrows in either direction. Atlantic was to the left. Something about the place made the idea of running seem impossible, so she settled for a sort of awkward power-walk. Two heavy wooden doors led into the conference room, and she threw one open and shouldered through—

To see Mitch and Ian beside a long mahogany table, Ian with his hands up like he was describing the size of a fish he’d once caught. They both turned. Ian’s mouth fell open, and Mitch’s eyebrows scrunched in.

“Jenn?”

“Are you OK?”

“What are you doing here?”

They had all spoken at the same time, and froze, then started again in unison, and stopped again. She jumped into the silence.

“Are you OK?”

Mitch looked at her, then at Ian. “What? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I.” She stopped. “I got a call from your friend. He said you’d been hurt.”

“Hurt? What? Who said?”

“Someone named . . . Paul?”

Mitch shook his head. “I don’t know any Pauls.”

“So—what . . .” The adrenaline was fading, leaving Jenn’s shoulders tense. She looked at Ian. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m meeting someone.”

“Who?”

“A guy I know.” Ian looked at them, saw that they weren’t going to let it go. Sighed. “Katz. The man I got the you-know-whats from. He called and told me to get over here right away.”

There was a knock on the door, and then it pushed open enough for Alex to stick his head in. “Detective Bradley—” He froze when he saw them. His eyes darted from one to the other, and his face underwent a weird series of emotions, finally settling on a stony mask. “What are you all doing here?”

“We’re trying to figure that out,” she said. “I got a call saying Mitch was hurt. Ian was supposed to meet some guy named Katz. What about you, Mitch?”

“One of the bellmen told me a manager wanted to see me.” He looked at Alex, jerked his chin. The tension crackled between them like electric current. “You?”

Alex stepped into the room, let the door whisper closed behind him. “What the fuck is going on?”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“What does it matter? The point is that someone brought us all here.”

“It matters,
Alex
, because we need to figure out who.”

“Guys.” Jenn put all her exhaustion into it.

Alex said, “A cop called and asked me to meet that detective here.”

“The one from the other night.”

“No, the one who was gonna mow my lawn. What do you think?”

“I
think
you’re an asshole.” Mitch paused. “No, I’m pretty sure of it.”

She shook her head. “Enough. We did this the other night.”

“Gentlemen.” The voice came from behind, and she spun to look. A stranger stood in the doorway. He wore a charcoal suit and an open-collared shirt of subtly textured white cotton, and had the breezy good looks of a cologne model. He nodded to Jenn. “And of course Ms. Lacie.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Alex said in his best bouncer voice.

The man smiled, strolled into the room. Behind him, face hard and red, walked Johnny Love. Two men in suits followed, taking up positions on either side of the door.

Spiders crawled through her chest. Nobody spoke, and she could hear the faint honking of a car horn outside, the hum of the air conditioner. The smiling man strode to the head of the table. Johnny hit Alex with a baleful look.

“My name is Victor. And I believe you all know Mr. Loverin?”

“Motherfucking right they do.” The fat man glared from one to the other. “Kern, you ungrateful prick. After all I’ve done for you, you pull this on me? And you,” his eyes narrowing at Ian. “Still got the shiner, huh? Wait till I get done with you. That’s going to seem like a day at Wrigley.”

“Be quiet, Johnny.” Victor’s voice was calm, but Loverin immediately shut up. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, the tough-guy demeanor not gone, but certainly throttled back.

Which made her throat go dry. Who
was
this guy?

“Alex, Ian, Mitch, Jenn,” Victor said, looking at each of them in turn. “Let’s not waste time, OK? I know what you did.” He paused, raised an eyebrow. “Can you guess who I am?”

Mitch said, “You’re the guy Johnny was buying for the night we robbed him.”

Victor practically beamed. “Got it in one. Good. I’m glad that you aren’t going to play around. That will make this easier.”

Ian said, “How did you—”

“How did I find you?” Victor stood behind a leather conference chair, his hands resting lightly on the back. “A piece of advice. When you rob someone, you should be careful who you tell about it in advance.”

Ian’s jaw fell, and his face went pale.

“Wait.” Alex turned to him. “What is he—who did you tell?”

Mitch said, “He told his bookie. The man who got him the guns in the first place.”

“Oh, you stupid—”

“Also, showing up to pay your thirty-thousand-dollar debt the day after you steal a quarter-million is something of a dead giveaway.”

“Katz.” Ian had a hand to his forehead. He turned to look at them. “I had to, you understand? I didn’t have a choice.”

“So,” Victor continued. “Mitch, you seem to be on a roll. Why don’t you guess what I want?”

“The money back?”

“As a matter of fact,” Victor said, “no. The money you stole from Johnny. Not from me. Part of it was mine, it’s true. But it was money that was already earmarked for a purchase. Do you understand? I spent my money. But I didn’t get what I paid for.”

“What”—Alex paused, looked around—“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. What do you want us to do about that?”

“I want you to get it for me.”

“How? I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

“How old is your daughter, Alex?”

Alex’s shoulders clenched into iron ripples under his T-shirt. “My daughter is none of your business.”

“Cassandra? Sure she is.” He jerked his head toward Mitch. “As is Mitch’s brother, Michael, and Ian’s dad in Tennessee. I haven’t had the chance to check in on Ms. Lacie’s parents yet. But I will.”

This couldn’t be happening. None of it. Her
parents
? This total stranger, a guy she’d never seen before, was threatening her parents?

She looked at the others, saw them thinking the same thing. Her leg started to shake, and she leaned on it.

Alex stepped forward. “I don’t know who you think you are—”

Moving with uncanny speed, both the men by the door brushed back suit jackets and drew pistols. One lined up on Alex. The other moved from target to target.

Jenn felt the floor shift beneath her, reached for the chair, barely got it.

“Be careful, Mr. Kern.” Victor’s voice was level. “You should all be very careful. Last week you may have been normal people, but now you’re in my day planner. Believe me when I say that’s worth your attention. Right, Mr. Loverin?”

Leaning against the wall, Johnny had the pinched expression of a child facing a bully he knew would make good. He cleared his throat, then nodded.

Alex took a deep breath. Paused. “Listen, I’m sorry about my language,” he said. “I didn’t mean any disrespect. It’s just that this is none of my affair.”

Something in his tone caught Jenn’s attention. His shoulders were down, his hands up and open in a placating gesture. She knew what he was about to say before he opened his lips. It hit her with a sick shame and disappointment.

“I was in on robbing Johnny,” Alex said. “But I was tied up inside the office when your friend came. I didn’t shoot him. I didn’t have anything to do with that part.”

“Are you kidding me?” Mitch looked back and forth. “You’re seriously putting this on us?”

“It is on you. I
wasn’t there.
”

Mitch shook his head. “You coward.”

“Gentlemen.” Victor’s voice was cold. “A couple of things you need to understand. The man you shot wasn’t my friend. And I don’t care which of you pulled the trigger. All I want is what’s mine. Now. Where is it?”

Jenn’s pulse was pounding. She looked at Mitch, could read his thoughts. He was going to tell Victor that they had found what he was after, that it was in the back of a purple Eldorado parked down the block from her apartment. And maybe that was best. Give it up to him and get on with their lives.

It was all happening too fast, event piling on event. She needed time to think, to figure this out. It was like being back in the alley, that sense that everything hung by a thread, but that she had a chance, a slim, delicate ribbon of a chance, to make things work out. Even just to buy them time to talk and make a plan. Only how? What could she possibly say?

Mitch said, “Victor, sir—”

Suddenly she knew. Jenn cut in. “Before we dumped the car, we went through it. And we found a bag in the trunk.”

Ian and Alex both whirled to look at her. Mitch was staring, and she could see him thinking, God bless him, see him trying to figure out what she was doing. She hesitated a moment, then said, “It had four one-quart bottles in it.”

Victor said nothing, gave no outward sign of menace. Nonetheless, the air seemed to coalesce around him, a subtle hardening and cooling.

“We didn’t know what they were. But we figured that if someone was willing to pay that much for them”—she shrugged her shoulders—“we kept them.”

“Where are they?”

Her palms were moist, her armpits soaked. An old line flitted through her head, something to the effect of women didn’t sweat, they dewed. She almost laughed, fought off the hysteria. She looked at Mitch, tried to beam the thoughts over to him, praying that he would somehow telepathically understand.

“Ms. Lacie?”

“They’re in a safe-deposit box. At my bank.” She managed to say it without her voice cracking.

“A safe-deposit box? Why?”

Mitch said, “We didn’t know what they were. And they were worth so much.”

The urge to smile rose like champagne bubbles, but she fought it away.

“I see. Let’s go get them.”

This was the risky part. She opened her mouth, closed it. Tried to think coolly, to let the panic show but not the calculation. “It’s Saturday.”

“So?”

“The bank is closed.”

“Convenient.”

She shrugged helplessly. “Not to us.”

“Funny, though, isn’t it? What I want is somewhere you can’t get it?”

“Hey,” she said, “you picked the time to bring us here. Not me.”

Victor made a sound that was a cross between a laugh and a
hmm.

“Listen, cunt.” Johnny came off the wall. “Stop fucking lying and get the man what he wants, and you do it right fucking now. Or so help me—”

“I have the key,” she said.

“What?”

“The key. It’s in my purse. Can I get it?”

Victor made a
why-not
gesture. Hands shaking, she dug into the change compartment of her bag. The key was a simple brass thing, unmarked, about the size of the one she used to get her mail. She held it up. “See?”