The Professionals (28 page)

D
’Antonio stared out along Ocean Drive, watching the women parade back and forth while he drank his mojito. Across the table, Johnston looked around nervously. The cop hadn’t touched his beer, but D’Antonio wasn’t going to let the kid’s discomfort ruin the moment. He sat back in his chair and let the sun wash over him, trying to forget those goddamn kids and the problems they caused.

Across the street, Zeke sat in his Cadillac, reading the newspaper and occasionally looking over at D’Antonio or out toward the ocean, where a cruise ship was slowly making its way out into the Atlantic. The paper said it was thirty degrees in Detroit, and for that reason alone, D’Antonio was determined to enjoy Miami.

Earlier in the day, he’d called Patricia Beneteau from the hotel room. Or rather, he’d returned the call; according to Zeke the woman was going batshit crazy trying to get hold of him and he should call her immediately before she sent goons down to kill them all.

“D’Antonio,” she’d said, when she picked up the phone. “I assumed you were dead.”

“I’m fine,” he told her. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m anything but worried,” she said. “Did you find the kids yet?”

He coughed. “Funny story.”

“I don’t like funny stories, D’Antonio.”

“I hooked up with the girl out west before the government stepped in. She flew down here to Florida. I followed. The rest of the gang is down here, too.”

“So you found them.”

D’Antonio paused. “No. But they’ve got heat all over them. Shouldn’t be hard to catch up.”

“So you’ve accomplished nothing,” she said.

He stared at the phone. “I’ll have them in a week, tops.”

“You’ve got three days,” she said. “If the heat’s as strong as you say, those kids don’t have much longer than that, anyway. Three days, understand?”

“I understand.” D’Antonio ended the call, cursing the moody bitch. Catching those punk kids in three days would be a real fucking task. It wasn’t going to happen just by following cops around. He needed something better.

Now, D’Antonio put down the mojito and stared across the table at Johnston. The kid avoided his eyes. “You wanted to talk,” said D’Antonio, “so talk.”

The cop took a halfhearted sip of his beer. “I got some news.”

“News. I hope it’s good this time.”

“It’s good.” Johnston looked up at him. “First, the Feds caught the girl. In Jacksonville.”

D’Antonio swore. “That’s not good news, you idiot. How am I going to get her if she’s in federal custody?”

“I got more.” The cop leaned forward. “We found out the name of the blonde.”

“Who?”

“Girl who joined the entourage after your boys got put down at the Dauphin. Her name’s Tiffany Prentice. Lives with her dad outside Philly, goes to school at Princeton. Rich family. Only child.”

“How’d you figure this out?”

“Her friend phoned in a missing person complaint,” said Johnston. “
I guess they skipped school for a little fun in the sun and the girl didn’t show up for the private jet home.”

“Her friend phoned it in.”

“Girl named Haley Whittaker. They came down for a week, stayed at Loews. Were supposed to head back today.”

“This friend,” said D’Antonio. “She fly home already?”

Johnston shook his head. “They’re keeping her around for questioning. Another day or so, they said.”

“No shit.”

“They got her at some shitbox out by the airport. The Everglades Resort.”

“Armed guards?”

“Nah.” The cop shook his head. “Probably just a uniform by the door. She’s not in any danger or anything.”

That’s what you think, D’Antonio thought. He stood up, threw a twenty on the table. “Let me know if you hear anything else.”

Johnston stared up at him. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll be seeing you,” he said. “Say hello to your bookie for me.” Then he turned and left the patio, dodging traffic as he jogged across the street to the Cadillac.

Zeke put down the newspaper as he approached. “Everything all right, boss?”

“I need two goons and a clean car,” said D’Antonio. He climbed into the passenger seat. “And we’re going to need guns.”

Zeke glanced at him, started the car. “Not a problem,” he said. “Not a problem at all.”

T
hey pulled into a roadside roach motel on the outskirts of Macon to spend the night and think over Tiffany’s proposal.

Pender lay down on the lumpy bed and stared up at the stains on the ceiling. Another crappy motel room, he thought. He was tired of these rooms. He was tired of the rooms and the piles of greasy food and the miles on the odometer, and he was tired of the aliases and the secrecy and always having to cover his six. He was just tired, period. It was time to get out of this racket.

He lay back on the dirty flowered bedspread and closed his eyes, imagining the Maldives and a beach and a hammock and Marie in a bikini. He fantasized about sleeping soundly, about surfing and fishing and not seeing another person for days.

We’ll need a boat to buy food from a nearby village, he thought, or maybe a truck. A Jeep. Or we can fish for food. Farm for ourselves. We’ll keep our money in some private account and use the last of our fake names, and we’ll never be bothered by anyone.

Pender knew it was foolish to daydream like this. It was important to stay focused on the present, to center on the details and avoid making mistakes. Today, though, he let himself indulge, knowing the days ahead would be more challenging than anything they’d faced so far. It
was important to keep a goal in mind. It was important to know why the risks you were taking were ultimately worth the price.

After a couple more minutes of fantasy, Pender blinked away the Maldives and forced himself back to the question at hand.

Tiffany had made her pitch somewhere around the Georgia border, though Pender was sure she’d been saving it for days. “You guys need money, right?” she’d said. “A lot of money? My dad is loaded. Why don’t you kidnap me?”

Pender had nearly crashed the car, twisting back to search her face for the joke, but she’d only stared at him, serious, until he gave up and turned back to the wheel.

“I have a better idea,” Sawyer said. “Why don’t you just get your dad to give us the cash?”

Tiffany shook her head. “My dad doesn’t just
give
money. He’s a banker. He’s gotta know there’s a return on his investment. If you guys hold me for ransom, he’ll pay without a fight because he’ll know he’s getting a great return.”

“Hell, yes, he is,” said Mouse, pulling her down to kiss him. Tiffany giggled like a new bride.

Sawyer sighed in the front seat, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “No offense, but that’s the worst idea I ever heard,” he said.

Pender found Tiffany in the rearview mirror. “You’re sure your dad won’t just ship you some money?”

“Not if I just call him straight up and ask,” she said. “He’s a stingy bastard for such a rich guy.”

“I thought he had a private jet,” said Mouse.

“The divorce lawyer made him sell it. Anyway, he needed that for work.”

“How much could your dad get us?” said Pender.

“I don’t know.” Tiffany shrugged. “Maybe a million. How does that sound?”

A million dollars. Pender sat awake in the Macon hotel room, listening to trucks growl past outside and trying to work out a strategy.

Every instinct told him not to trust the girl’s scheme. So far, Tiffany
had given no indication that her father even knew she was alive. Could be he’d just hang up the phone. Worse, he could be one of those people who took a kidnapping personally. Parents could be dangerous and irrational.

They had pulled their most successful scores after days of hard-core preparation and intelligence work. Now they were considering taking a monster gamble on a guy nobody knew, based on the testimony of some superrich girl who’d given up all her toys to be a professional kidnapper. Pender didn’t like it at all.

Still, they needed the money. A million bucks would go a long way toward fixing Mouse and springing Marie.

Someone knocked on the door. Pender stood, stretched, and peered through the peephole. Sawyer. Pender opened the door. “What’s up?”

Sawyer walked past him and into the room. “You should turn on the news,” he said. He picked up the remote and switched on the TV to the local news station. Pender looked up and saw his own face on the screen.

It was a picture of him and Marie, taken in the San Juan Islands north of Seattle the summer before they graduated. If he closed his eyes, Pender could see the picture where he’d stuck it on their fridge in Queen Anne, and he reeled, wanting to be sick.

This is not a surprise, he told himself. You knew the FBI was in your apartment, and you knew they would search the place. This is all part of being a criminal. Suck it up and deal with it.

The news anchor was talking, and Pender turned up the volume as the pictures changed to a shot of Sawyer and another of Ben “Mouse” Stirzaker, both pictures Marie had taken and stored on her laptop.

“While FBI agents have captured one of the alleged kidnappers,” the anchor was saying, “three others, including ringleader Arthur Pender, twenty-eight, of Port Angeles, Washington, remain at large. Federal agents say the suspects were last seen in the Jacksonville area but are highly nomadic by nature, and are advising anyone along the I-95, I-10, and I-75 corridors to keep a lookout for these dangerous men. The suspects are believed to be driving a dark blue, late-model Dodge Durango
and may be in the company of Tiffany Prentice, twenty, who vanished from a South Beach resort earlier in the week. The suspects are considered armed and dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.”

The anchor switched stories, and Pender turned down the volume. He took a deep breath and glanced at Sawyer, who was staring at the floor between his feet. “We gotta ditch that truck,” he said.

“Armed and dangerous,” said Sawyer. “What a crock.”

Pender stared at the TV. “You think we can get a million for her?”

“I don’t know,” said Sawyer. “How much money do we have right now?”

“Enough for a piece-of-shit car, not much more.”

Sawyer scratched his head. “We could do a lot with a million bucks.”

“We’d have to move fast. Get out of here
tonight
.” Pender tried to think fast. Fuck it, he thought. A million bucks and we’re golden.

“We’re doing it,” he said. “Tell Tiffany to get in touch with her father. A million cash, unmarked bills, forty-eight hours. You know the drill. Then get those guys ready to travel. We leave tonight. Drive as far as we can and swap the Durango in the morning. We can make Philadelphia tomorrow, and with any luck we get the money tomorrow night.”

“Done,” said Sawyer. He was on his way to the door when a couple of harsh knocks outside made them both go cold. Sawyer glanced back at Pender, who put his finger to his lips. He gestured one minute, and watched as Sawyer took out the Glock he’d stolen from the dead assassin in Miami.

Sawyer stood beside the door, holding the gun pointed to the ceiling, and Pender peered through the peephole. He let out a sigh, gestured to Sawyer to relax, and opened the door. Tiffany walked in, glanced at Sawyer and the Glock and then back at Pender. “You’re famous,” she said. She was smiling.

“We’re all famous,” he said. “Bona fide household names.”

“What are we going to do?”

“You’re going to phone your dad,” he told her. “You’ve just been officially kidnapped.”

D
’Antonio sat in the parking lot of the Everglades Resort, watching jets make their final approach into Miami International. Zeke had hooked him up with his girlfriend’s Ford Explorer and a couple of big, dumb bundles of muscle who sat in the backseats, staring out the window and breathing through their mouths. They were quiet, though, and they were armed; both men carried TEC-9 machine pistols in their waistbands. For D’Antonio, Zeke had found a clean .45 caliber Glock and a couple magazines of hollow-point bullets, more than enough firepower to scare a teenaged girl into submission.

The Everglades was a single-story block of drive-up units with a lobby on one end and a dumpster on the other. All of the units faced the road, and behind the motel was a chain-link fence and a railroad siding behind. Out front of the fourth door from the lobby stood a lazy-looking uniform, posted up against the wall with his eyes half closed and his mouth wrapped around a cigarette. A pile of butts lay at his feet. The parking lot was deserted except for the uniform’s radio car.