The Professionals (32 page)

Stevens rubbed his eyes and took a sip, watching the procession of travelers stream past the baggage carousels at Detroit Metro Airport. “One more time?” he said.

Windermere led him out of the terminal and across to the parking garage, talking quickly as she walked. “Prentice called her dad in Pennsylvania a couple days ago. Said she was a hostage with a million-dollar ransom. Forty-eight hours. No cops.”

“A million bucks,” said Stevens. “Those kids are getting desperate.”

They walked up a flight of stairs and deep into the garage, where Windermere pressed a button on her key chain and a forest-green Crown Victoria chirped in response. “Get this,” she said. “Daddy Prentice didn’t have any idea his daughter was in Florida, much less that she’d gone missing.”

“He thought she was in school.”

“You got it. Anyway, he got the money together and he was going
to pay it, the whole drop-it-off-at-McDonald’s deal, when he gets this phone call.”

They reached the Crown Vic and climbed inside. Windermere turned the key, and the car rumbled to life.

“You know how Prentice’s friend reported her missing, right?” she said. “Haley Whittaker. She went and got herself kidnapped a few days later. Someone snatched her from a Miami motel room.”

“Get out of here,” said Stevens. “Our gang?”

“No, sir,” said Windermere. She drove the sedan out of the garage. “Somebody else. Somebody who made Whittaker call Daddy Prentice and beg him to make Tiffany give up her friends.”

“Beneteau’s people. D’Antonio. He’s using Whittaker as bait.”

“So Prentice hears Whittaker’s message and decides he’s not going to pay. He drops off a phony bag and calls the cops, but they get there too late to pick up our boys.”

“Too late?” said Stevens. “Come on.”

“City cops, right? But he also put the message from Whittaker in the bag, so I guess he’s hoping Tiffany will give up on her boys and come on home.”

They were driving up I-94 now, cruising past the miles of low factories and railroad yards toward the city. “What are we hoping?” said Stevens.

Windermere shrugged. “We’re hoping they think Marie’s more important. We don’t know where D’Antonio is or how he managed to snatch the Whittaker girl. Frankly, nobody’s too happy with the idea of these kids getting caught up in a personal vendetta against Beneteau’s crew.”

“So let’s keep pressing McAllister,” said Stevens. “Maybe we leak something to the press, something that will get the boys interested again. Do they know she’s in Detroit?”

“Not sure,” said Windermere. “We can get that on the news. Try to angle the boys up in this direction.”

“Sure. In the meantime we can press Beneteau’s people for information on D’Antonio.
Talk to your people in racketeering. Maybe they’ve got something on the mob scene in Miami, huh? What about this guy Zeke?”

Windermere changed lanes, pulling out to pass as the highway curved alongside a giant Ford complex. “Still nothing on Zeke,” she said. “No known address or aliases. Miami PD is supposed to be on it, but they’re corrupt as shit. Probably it comes back blank.”

“This guy’s a professional, anyway,” said Stevens. “He’s not risking a kidnapping unless he knows he can beat the rap.”

“Maybe,” said Windermere. “Maybe we get lucky, though.” She glanced across at him. “You owe me for that prisoner move.”

“Why’s that?” said Stevens. “No fun?”

“The girl said not a word for fifteen hours straight. All the way up from Jacksonville, she just sat there staring at her feet. Every time I asked her something, she told me she wanted her lawyer. It’s not like I was interrogating her. I just wanted some company.”

“What about the marshal?”

“Clayton?” Windermere laughed. “We talked football for a minute. Then I asked him if he’d read a good book lately, and he clammed up real tight.”

“Aw,” said Stevens. “You missed me.”

“Hell, no. I know you can’t read, either.”

Stevens laughed, smiling out the window as the bleak Detroit landscape appeared on the horizon.

“Good visit home?” said Windermere.

“Sure,” said Stevens. “It was good. Uneventful.”

“Tough to leave?”

He shook his head. “I’m happy to be back. This case is gonna fall.”

“Give it up,” said Windermere. “You missed me, too.”

Stevens glanced at her. “Maybe just a little,” he said.

Windermere stared at the road ahead, the hint of a smile at her lips. “Get your fix while you still can, Stevens. We’re taking this thing down in a week on the outside.”

Stevens laughed again and turned back to the window, letting his smile slip away as he focused once more on their labyrinthine case. As Windermere drove, he watched the skyline approach, searching for the big FBI building on Michigan Avenue where Marie McAllister sat alone, the cheese in their better mousetrap, waiting for Pender and Co. to get hungry enough to bite.

D
’Antonio sat in Zeke’s living room, choking down a noxious tuna casserole, drinking beer to mask the taste, and watching the news for any sign that the cops were making progress on the Whittaker case.

There was nothing about the girl, but as the news switched to regional and D’Antonio closed out his dinner, he heard something on the TV that made him forget about Zeke’s girlfriend’s cooking and sit forward in his seat.

“A startling new development in the South Beach shooting that left two men dead at Miami’s historic Dauphin Hotel,” the anchor was saying. “Federal investigators now name twenty-year-old Tiffany Prentice a suspect following a bizarre kidnapping attempt in suburban Philadelphia.”

D’Antonio listened as the anchor outlined the new developments. The kidnapping had been foiled, according to official reports, thanks to the timely arrival of Bryn Mawr law enforcement officials on scene. But the cops hadn’t captured the kids, and the girl was still at large.

D’Antonio listened, trying to make sense of the twist. They’d tried to stage a kidnapping. The kids were desperate, and the girl was in on the game. Interesting.

He turned off the television and carried the dirty dishes into the kitchen. Then he grabbed Whittaker’s laptop and walked down the hall to the girl’s room.

She’d at least poked around at the tuna casserole this time, D’Antonio noticed. The girl had had maybe a forkload or two before she opted out, and now she lay paging through her novel on the bed, her meal cold and forgotten.

D’Antonio closed the door behind and walked into the room. “So you’re a carnivore now.”

The girl made a face. “That was supposed to be meat?”

“It was tuna.”

“I decided you must be trying to poison me, so I didn’t eat it.” The girl sighed. “I feel so dirty. Can’t you bring me a change of clothes?”

“Where would I get a change of clothes?”

“At least a shower. This is cruel and unusual.”

D’Antonio walked to the bed and sat down beside the girl, watching the way her hair splayed out on the comforter, reading over her shoulder as he opened the laptop. “Good book?”

She shrugged. “It’s okay.”

He peered down at the page. “Who’s Alexis?”

The girl frowned at him. Then she glanced down at the book. “I guess she’s supposed to be some kind of advertising executive in Manhattan.” She shrugged. “I don’t really read this kind of stuff. I just borrowed it from Tiffany.”

D’Antonio turned back to the laptop and opened the girl’s Internet browser.

“Do you read?” she asked. “
Can
you read?”

“Of course I can fucking read,” he said.

“So?” She looked up at him. “What do you read?”

He stared at her a second. “I read a lot of those books they sell in airports. Paperback thrillers. Self-help books sometimes. My brother-in-law buys them for me every year for Christmas. I don’t know if they do any good.”

“They make self-help books for killers?”

“For businessmen,” he said. “He doesn’t really know what I do.” He cleared his throat. “Time to check your e-mail.”

The girl stared down at her book for a moment or two. Then she twisted her body so she was facing the computer, her face nearly touching D’Antonio’s leg. “You think she wrote back?”

“There was a dustup in Pennsylvania,” D’Antonio told her. “Your friend tried to hold herself for ransom.”

The girl looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“She tried to fake her own kidnapping. Something went wrong. I think your little phone call made an impact.”

The girl typed in her password, and they waited as the screen loaded up. She twisted on the bed so she was lying on her back, staring up at him, her long hair fanned out and her eyes fixed on his. “I was thinking,” she said. “Maybe we could work something out.”

Here it comes, D’Antonio thought. “You tried this one already,” he said.

“I’m serious this time. You kind of like me. I can tell.” She sat up and pressed against his arm, her body close and her lips brushing his ear. “You could have me if you wanted. You could do whatever you liked.”

She put her hand on his leg, high. This is fake, D’Antonio told himself. You have a job to do. He shook her off. Pointed to the computer screen. “There. One new message.”

She barely glanced at the screen. “I’ve got fifty thousand dollars,” she said, “I could pay you. Like a ransom. I’d give them false information. I could tell them you were, like, a black guy from Jamaica or something. Nobody would have to know.”

Christ. The girl was staring at him with such hope in her eyes that he found it hard to look at her. Never again, he thought. Never again with this hostage shit. “I don’t want you,” he said. “I don’t want your money, either.”

She stared at him for a long moment. D’Antonio refused to meet her gaze. She turned back to the computer screen. “She wrote back,” she said. “A couple hours ago.”

“Read it.”

She opened the message and read it aloud. Tiffany had heard the phone message. They were in Pennsylvania. They were coming back to get Haley.

The girl looked up at him, waiting for his answer. The kids were in Pennsylvania, he thought. We’re safe in Florida, but those kids are at the top of the Most Wanted list. I don’t want them caught before I get my chance with them.

D’Antonio turned back to the girl. “Write her back,” he said. “Tell them forget coming to Florida. Go to Cincinnati instead.”

“Cincinnati?”

“Yeah,” he said, standing. “We’re going to take a little road trip.”

C
incinnati,” said Pender. “What the hell is in Cincinnati?”

Tiffany looked up from her computer and shrugged. “I guess it’s better than Florida. You guys are wanted as hell down there.”

“You’re wanted, too,” said Sawyer. “Remember?”

They’d turned on the TV as soon as they booked a room, hungry for cheap intel and wondering how the cops were going to spin the kidnapping. Tiffany went pale when her face came on screen, but she kept her composure, and after a couple White Castle hamburgers and a cherry Pepsi she seemed to be enjoying her newfound notoriety. “This is kind of cool,” she told Pender. “I’m a legit outlaw now. Like Thelma and Louise.”

Now she sat on Mouse’s bed with his computer on her lap, reading out Haley’s kidnapper’s instructions.

“Cincinnati’s better for us, anyway,” said Pender. “Now that they moved Marie. We get Haley back, and then we swing up to Detroit to get Marie. What time are we supposed to show?”

“Day after tomorrow,” said Tiffany. “That’s plenty of time.”

Day after tomorrow, thought Pender, staring at Mouse. We drive tomorrow. We deal with this Whittaker situation the day after—though
how they were going to handle it, he had no idea—and then we get Mouse to a hospital that evening. That’s assuming he can make it that far.

Pender stood and walked over to Mouse’s bed. His friend looked almost childlike, as though he’d shrunk in the wash. What the hell have we done, Pender thought, listening to his friend’s ragged breathing. Nobody was supposed to get hurt. “Mouse,” he said, touching his friend’s shoulder. “You there, buddy?”

Mouse opened his eyes halfway. He smiled slowly. “Pender.”

“Listen,” said Pender. “We have to drive to Cincinnati tomorrow. Means you won’t see a doctor until the next evening at the earliest. You think you can hold out?”