The Deceived (6 page)

Why Markoff had decided to save him, Quinn never knew for sure. Markoff said his job was done anyway, so giving Quinn a hand on the way out was no big deal. Quinn didn’t believe him. By all reports, Kranz had gotten away. If Markoff had finished the job, Kranz would have been dead.

But whatever the reason, Quinn knew then what he still knew now—he would forever owe Markoff for his life.

“I got two addresses,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. It was one of Quinn’s contacts, a guy named Steiner who worked out of a mailbox and shipping store on the Venice Beach boardwalk. Quinn had called him a couple of hours ago to see if he could find out where Jenny lived.

Steiner’s main gig wasn’t information. He was a documents man who could assemble a set of IDs that would stand up to almost any inspection. Because of his talents, he also had a lot of contacts. Which made him a good person to know if you needed to find out something quick.

“Give them to me,” Quinn said.

“The D.C. one’s the most recent.” Steiner read off an address in Georgetown. It had a unit number, so it wasn’t a single-family residence.

“And the other?”

“In Houston. The information is a little old, but as far as I can tell, still valid.” He gave Quinn the Texas address.

“Thanks,” Quinn said, then hung up.

The back wall of his living room was all window, floor-to-ceiling. He stood in front of it and stared out into the distance. The day was one of those hazy, hot, early September ones Quinn hated. He could barely make anything out beyond Beverly Hills.

He wished it was fall, and the air had cooled, and the winds had blown away the haze. Or even winter just after a rainstorm, when the sky was crisp and clean, and the city shone at night like a bundle of white Christmas lights. But he’d gladly take the hazy day if someone could have granted the wish that he had been out of the country working a job when Albina called about the body at the port.

He should have just said no when Albina called him the previous day.

But he hadn’t.

He took a deep breath, then walked across the living room into the foyer and opened the front door. Nate was lying on the hood of his ten-year-old Accord, reading his flight instruction manual and soaking up a little sun.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Quinn said.

Nate looked over. “We get a job?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s the kind we don’t get paid for, isn’t it?”

“Just get my car out of the garage and be ready to go in ten minutes.”

“Where are we going?” Nate said as he swung his legs off the hood and stood up.

“You’re driving me to the airport,” Quinn said.

CHAPTER

STEPPING OUT OF THE TERMINAL AT BUSH INTERCON
tinental Airport in Houston was like walking into a wall of gelatin. The air was so thick with humidity it felt like it was pushing Quinn back, daring him to take another step forward.

He glanced at his watch: 3:15 p.m. But that was L.A. time. Here in Texas, it was already two hours later, 5:15. End of the workday, for some anyway.

Houston seemed as good a place as any to start looking for Jenny. It wasn’t just Congressman Guerrero’s hometown, it was hers, too. If she was on personal leave, then perhaps she had gone home.

Quinn picked up a Lexus sedan from the rental agency, then headed toward the city. When he reached Loop 610, he took it west for a while, then south as the big looping freeway circumnavigated the metropolitan area. He got off near Memorial Park and headed west again, this time along Woodway Drive.

He’d done a MapQuest search before he’d left Los Angeles, and had printed out directions to the address Steiner had given him.

Not far from the freeway, he turned right and found himself in an upscale neighborhood. Quinn guessed a mix of middle class and upper middle class. No question the homes were more expensive than your typical government employee could afford. Of course, this was Texas, not L.A. Everything was cheaper here. And, as many were fond of saying, bigger. Few of the houses looked like they were less than two thousand square feet, while many looked to be more than three. Many were multilevel, with BMWs, Mercedeses, and large SUVs in the driveways.

These were people on the rise. Future company presidents and board members who would one day be trading up to even bigger homes with larger lots and more square footage and maybe even a guesthouse in back. Some would suffer heart attacks before they reached sixty, while others would become strangers to their own families as they spent more and more time at the office, if they hadn’t fallen into that trap already.

Quinn found the address he was looking for tucked back in an area where all the roads sounded like names of old blues songs: Lazy River Lane, Old Bayou Drive, Sweet Jasmine Street. The house was a sprawling one-story on White Magnolia Lane. Like many of the homes in the neighborhood, it was made of brick, with white wooden doors and window frames.

An asphalt driveway curved up to the house, then back to the street again seventy feet farther up the road. There were no sidewalks, so Quinn pulled the Lexus onto the grass shoulder and parked. As he got out he heard the buzz of what sounded like an army of insects. He expected to be attacked at any second, but for the moment the bugs seemed content to keep their distance.

As he started walking up the driveway, he realized that if this had been Jenny’s place, she wasn’t here any longer. There were bikes on the grass. Kids’ bikes, preteen size. A portable basketball hoop and backboard were set up in a wide spot of the drive near the garage. Though he hadn’t seen Jenny in at least eight months, she had been childless then. And if the toys weren’t enough to convince him a family now lived here, there was the car that was parked in the driveway. A minivan, dark green and well maintained. A soccer mom car. It had the look of a vehicle that got a lot of use.

He continued walking toward the front door. As he did he saw a young girl standing at the living room window, looking out at him. He put her age at around eight. She had blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and was dressed in jeans and a lavender T-shirt with a cartoon squirrel on the front. She stared at him for a moment, then turned and ran away.

By the time Quinn reached the doorstep, the front door was already open. A woman stood just inside beyond the threshold, a utilitarian smile on her face. She couldn’t have been more than forty, and had the same blond hair as the girl in the window. No ponytail for Mom, though. Her hair was down, stopping an inch above her shoulders.

“Can I help you?” she said, a trace of suspicion in her voice.

“Probably not,” Quinn said. He smiled as if embarrassed, in an attempt to set her at ease. “I was actually looking for the woman I thought lived here. Apparently either I got my addresses mixed up or she moved.”

The woman looked at him for a second, impassive, then her face relaxed. “Must be a mix-up. We’ve been here over ten years.”

Wrong answer
.

Steiner had said the address might be old, but not that old.

Quinn nodded. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said.

“What’s her name?” she asked. “Maybe she’s one of my neighbors.”

“Tracy,” he said, heeding the warning that flashed in his mind, and making up a name on the spot. “Tracy Jennings. Do you know her?”

The woman’s eyes widened just enough for Quinn to notice. The name was not the one she’d been expecting. But she recovered quickly. “Sorry. I don’t know who that is.”

“It’s all right. I shouldn’t have bothered you. Thanks for your time.”

“No problem,” the woman said.

Quinn turned and headed back to his car. As he walked down the driveway, he glanced at the house one final time. The girl was in the window again, waving at him, and in the shadows behind her, he could see the mother watching him leave. He waved at the girl, then turned away.

Once he reached his car, he got in, started the engine, and shifted into drive. He had only gone half a block when he noticed a sedan pull away from the curb in his rearview mirror. A newer model Volvo. Silver. Two men in front. One in back.

It hadn’t been there when Quinn had arrived. He was sure of it. He had also not seen anyone walking up to it while he was getting back into his rental. The men had already been inside the car, like they were waiting.

Quinn kept an eye on his rearview mirror as he made his way back to the main road. The Volvo continued to follow. That in itself wasn’t unusual. Quinn was taking the main route out of the neighborhood. But he wasn’t buying the coincidence.

He turned east onto Woodway Drive, heading toward downtown. Behind him the Volvo turned in the same direction, then slowed a bit, putting a few cars between them.

Three men in a car going a couple miles an hour
under
the speed limit?

No coincidence at all.

For fifteen minutes, Quinn kept an even pace, turning every once in a while in what seemed like unhurried, planned moves. Each time, the Volvo followed. Whatever minute percentage of doubt Quinn might have had disappeared. They were trailing him.

Ahead, the light was turning yellow. Instead of stopping, Quinn went through. Not rushing, but just fast enough to make the light. The Volvo was stuck a couple cars back and had no chance. Even with the advantage, Quinn didn’t speed away. He drove on like he had no idea they were there.

Two streets down, he took a right. As soon as the Volvo was out of sight, he jammed down on the accelerator. At the next big street, he took a left, then another right, then left, stair-stepping his way away from the Volvo.

Five minutes later, he saw a Mobile gas station and pulled in, stopping at the pumps. Though the rental’s tank was still almost full, he removed his gas cap and slipped the gas nozzle into the opening. What he didn’t do was start the pump. Instead, he moved around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He unzipped the side compartment on his travel bag and pulled out a small plastic device that to anyone else would look like a battery charger. But it wasn’t a charger at all. It was a less powerful version of the detector he’d used on the truck the day before.

Only this time when he circled his vehicle, the detector emitted a soft beep. It was on the passenger side, near the back fender. He knelt down, pretending to check his tire, then reached up under the fender. When he removed his hand, he was holding a small metal disk.

“Smooth,” he said under his breath, admiring the stealth that had been employed to plant the device. He’d only been out of sight of his car for the minute or two he’d talked to the woman up at the house.

Quinn set the transponder on top of the gas pump, then did a second pass. No more beeps.

He returned to the pump and leaned back against the Lexus, pretending to wait for his tank to fill. A minute and a half later, the Volvo drove by.

Quinn paid it no attention, watching it only in his peripheral vision. The car turned right at the corner, then continued down the block until it was out of sight.

The moment it disappeared, Quinn removed the nozzle and recapped the gas tank. He grabbed the transponder off the top of the pump and attached it next to the nozzle mount where it would be hard to find.

Not wasting any time, he climbed back into his car and started the engine. Instead of pulling forward, he backed out so that there was no chance the Volvo would see him. When he exited the gas station, he raced across the oncoming lanes and turned left.

But he didn’t go far.

A block away, he found a busy strip mall and pulled into the lot, parking in front of a nail salon away from the street. It was starting to get dark as Quinn got out of the rental and stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the shops. From there he had a clear view back down the street. At the Mobile station, it seemed like business as usual. Someone else had already pulled up to the pump where Quinn had been.

He glanced at his watch. Five minutes passed since the Volvo had spotted him at the station. By now they would be thinking he should be almost done, if they weren’t already wondering why he was still there. Soon they would feel compelled to check again. Quinn guessed it would be seven minutes total.

It was eight by the time the Volvo returned.

The distance was too great for Quinn to see the men inside, but he knew they had to be surprised not to find the Lexus still sitting there. After all, their tracker was telling them the car should not have moved.

They made a quick turn into the station and pulled up on the other side of the pump Quinn had been at. The driver stayed at the wheel while the other two men got out. They tried to look natural, one man even removing the nozzle from the pump, but their movements were forced.

It took them a little over a minute to find the transponder, and when they did, they didn’t look happy. One of the men pulled out a phone, hit a couple buttons, then put it to his ear. The other quickly replaced the gas hose and climbed back into the car.

Quinn took that as his cue to get back in the Lexus. He pulled out of his spot, but didn’t exit the lot immediately. Several moments later, the man on the phone got back into the Volvo, and the car pulled out, heading in the opposite direction of the strip mall.