The Swan and the Jackal (8 page)

Dorian turns his head to look as the target leaves the running car and heads to his own car parked three spaces over.

I glance at my Rolex. “Same time. Just like last week.”

“He’s consistent,” Dorian says.

“Yeah, fortunately for us, that’s his first mistake,” I reply.

I stand up and remove my black coat from the back of the wooden chair and slip my arms into it. I zip it up to my throat. Dorian follows suit. We wait until the drop-off car is completely out of the parking lot before we head outside into the winter air. James Woodard glances at us once as we approach my car on the other end of the lot, but neither of us make eye contact. Woodard passes us off as any other customer leaving the coffee shop. He’s not a smart man and it’s a wonder why he was ever employed by any organization like mine to do even the simplest of tasks.

His stupidity is one reason we have to get rid of him. That, along with his selling information of our new Order to another black market organization. It isn’t much and none of it’s true. Victor has been suspicious of Woodard since he took over Woodard’s Order last month. He has been feeding Woodard false information on us ever since. Just to see if he’d sell it. And he did. Twice. It just so happens that the man in the black sedan who just dropped him off was the buyer
and
one of our guys.

But where
I
come in, is interrogating him to find out if he’s been selling that information to anyone else. And to find out if anyone else is involved. It’s a perfect night to torture a man. And I have two hours left to make it back to my house with Woodard.

I told Cassia four hours, and I always keep my promises.

Dorian and I hop inside my car and the engine purrs to life. Woodard pulls out of the parking lot first, and already knowing which direction he’ll be going, I wait about thirty seconds before I put my car into reverse and set out to follow him.

“What a fucking idiot,” Dorian says with laughter. “How long did Victor say Woodard was employed under Norton?”

“Two years,” I answer while pulling out of the parking lot and heading east.

“Shit,” Dorian laughs again, “I’m surprised he lasted two
days
.”

“Yeah, I have to agree with you on that one.” I keep my eyes trained on the dark road, retaining the speed limit and trying to keep Woodard’s car in my sights.

“You don’t agree with me on much, do you?” Dorian asks, glancing over at me briefly. Not that he cares, really, but he’s not so arrogant that he doesn’t at least
try
to get along with others.

“No, I do agree with you on a lot,” I admit. “It’s just taking me some time to adjust to your guns-blazing methods.”

This time his laughter fills the car.

“Are you
serious
?” he asks with humor and disbelief. “You’re fucking scary, man. All I do is shoot people. You’re one step away from a full-fledged serial killer. Talk about adjusting.”

He says I’m scary, but I doubt he’s at all afraid of me, or much of anything for that matter. He’s too cocky and reckless to be afraid.

“I take it you’ll be sitting this one out then?” I ask as my head falls to the right and I grin over at him.

Dorian smiles and nods. “Yeah, man, he’s all yours. No arguments here.”

That’s good, because there’s much more to tonight’s interrogation than what a typical one entails.

And my audience will be limited to one.

We follow Woodard to a house he’s been staying in since Victor killed his employer and took over their operations. Woodard also has a house over in Roland Park, the one he thinks he’s led us to believe he spends most of his time at. Further proof this man is a lowlife piece of shit because he has a wife and two daughters he leaves in that Roland Park house, unprotected and oblivious to what he’s involved in and how much danger they’re in, while he hides out in the rental.

I think of killing him tonight as my good deed for the month, because his wife and daughters will probably live longer if he’s dead.

After Woodard pulls into the driveway and kills the engine he locks himself inside the house. Dorian and I park on the street in the cover of shadows cast by a thick of trees. One light glows from the window on the downstairs floor. I make my way to the front door while Dorian heads around back. I hear his boots crunching in the snow as he rounds the corner. After a few minutes, giving Dorian time to position himself at the back door and scope out the house through the windows, I raise my knuckles to the red-painted door and knock three times.

The curtain covering a tall, slim glass window running down the side along the length of the door frame, moves as Woodard tries to get a glimpse of me. The porch light flips on and I smile looking right at the peephole in the door, knowing that he’s looking back at me through it.

Still with a smile on my face, I raise two fingers and wave.

“Who the hell are you?” he asks nervously, his voice muffled by the thick block of wood between us.

He knows who I am, or rather, he knows why I’m here. There’s no way he’s opening that door freely.

“Open the door, James,” I call out in a singsong voice. “We have something to discuss.”

“G-Go away!” His voice is trembling. “I don’t know you and—I-I’ll call the cops if you don’t get off my property!” He says this with a sudden burst of confidence as if he actually believes the police are going to be able to help him.

But too soon the confidence fades when I don’t move from my spot in front of the door and the smile on my face doesn’t lose its potency. I stand with my hands clasped together in front of me.

Suddenly, I hear a rhythmic beeping noise, as though Woodard is punching in numbers on an alarm keypad next to the front door.

BACK DOOR OPEN
, I hear a robotic voice say when he tries to set the alarm.

Then I hear a scuffle inside, a loud
bang
against the door and something similar to glass shattering against the floor inside.

“No! Please! I-I…please!” Woodard calls out with a straining voice as if something, Dorian’s arm perhaps, is pressed around his throat.

“Sit down and shut the fuck up,” I hear Dorian say, and I picture him waving that gun of his in front of Woodard’s face.

Everything goes quiet and then the porch light flips off, bathing me in darkness again. A second later, I hear the locks on the front door clicking and then it opens.

Woodard has been shoved into an oversized lounge chair in the front room.

“I-I don’t know who you are or—”

“Sure you know who we are,” I say, stepping around a broken vase and toward him.

I pull the ottoman away from his legs and take a seat on it directly in front of him, resting my arms on my thighs at the elbows, my hands dangling between my legs.

Woodard is shaking, the extra chin jiggling in the dim light cast by the lamp on the table next to him. He’s wearing a navy and tan checkered long-sleeve with the top three buttons left undone and a white flannel shirt underneath. He reeks of cheap cologne and permanent markers.

Reaching up one pudgy hand, Woodard presses the tip of his finger in the center of his glasses and pushes them back over the bridge of his nose.

“Look, seriously, I really don’t know why you’re here,” he says rather pathetically, his dark, beady eyes jerking between me and Dorian. “I don’t work for Norton anymore. Someone else took over. I just do what I’m told.”

I smirk and glance behind him at nothing in particular. Already I can’t seem to get the image of him in my chair, out of my head.

“So you
do
know why we’re here,” I mock him, cocking my head to one side. “Trust me, my friend, you’d do better to be honest up front.”

I hope he’s not honest up front. I want him to deny everything so I can get to work on him.

Woodard glances at Dorian.

“Tell me who you are,” he says, more pleading than a demand, and then he looks back at me. There appears to be realization in his eyes. “I-I remember you. Both of you. Y-You were at the coffee shop. You followed me from there, didn’t you?”

“Does that really matter?” I ask and cock my head to the other side.

I stand from the ottoman and straighten my coat.

“Search the house,” I tell Dorian. “I’ll send a cleaner to dispose of everything after you’re done.”

“Wait…what are you doing?” Woodard asks nervously from the chair.

I remove a syringe from my coat pocket and pull the protective cap off the tip of the needle.

“No…w-wait a goddamn minute! Y-You haven’t even asked me anything! You haven’t given me a chance to talk!”

I don’t
want
you to talk.

Dorian’s eyebrows crease as he looks at me questioningly.

“Let’s see what he has to say first,” Dorian speaks up, waving his gun at Woodard who keeps looking at the barrel apprehensively, worried it’s going to go off. “There’s a lot of shit to go through, Gustavsson. If the guy is willing to talk, I’m all for listening.”

“Yeah…,” Woodard agrees, hoping I’ll do the same, his eyes jerking back and forth between us.

Suddenly, he looks as though he was slapped in the face. His beady eyes grow wider and his breathing begins to elevate.

He points a shaky, pudgy finger at me.

“Gustavsson? Y-You’re Fredrik Gustavsson…t-the one they call the Specialist?” His big head begins to shake side to side, over and over. “No…I-I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But I don’t have anything to hide. If I’d known who you worked for—shit, if I’d known who
you
were—I’d have let you in at the door. No questions asked. I’d have made you fucking soup!”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I say, though I’m pulling straws here. “We already know what you’ve been selling and to whom. There’s no coming back from that.” I just need him to shut the fuck up. I need to interrogate and kill him. I need Cassia to see it. “Stand up.”

Woodard looks to Dorian for help, seeing as how he was the one of us willing to give him more time. Lucky for Woodard, Dorian doesn’t like paperwork and this big house full of files he’ll have to sift through when I leave is the only thing keeping Woodard alive right now. In any other case, Dorian would’ve blown his brains against that hideous tapestry curtain behind him already.

“Five minutes,” Dorian suggests. “Come on, man, you know I’m all about taking them out quick, but he’s ready to talk.”

Woodard nods furiously, his hands gripping the edges of the chair arms, his double-chin moving like Jell-O.

I sigh heavily and drop my hands at my sides, the syringe filled with a cocktail that would’ve put Woodard to sleep long enough to get him back to my house quietly, dangles from my fingertips.

“Three minutes,” I say.

“O-OK…three minutes,” Woodard stutters. “I’m not a traitor.”

“So, you’re a liar,” Dorian says from beside me.

“No.” Woodard shakes his head. “I
did
sell information to Marion Callahan, the guy who dropped me off in the parking lot. But—”

“Sounds like a traitor to me,” Dorian adds and then raises his gun, pointed right at Woodard.

I reach out and place my hand on the cold steel, lowering it. The last thing I need is for Dorian to kill my victim and leave me with no one to put in my chair. Or, the gun to go off that close to my ear and make me go deaf.

“Clock’s ticking,” I say to Woodard.

He puts up his hands momentarily and then drops them on the tops of his legs covered by khaki pants.

“I wanted to prove to the new bossman that I’m worth keeping,” Woodard says. “Because I knew I was on my way out the first day Norton was killed and you guys took over. Look at me. I’m not necessarily considered an asset at first glance. And I couldn’t get a face-to-face meeting with the new boss.” He sighs. Already, I’m feeling a wave of disappointment beginning to wash over me. “Marion Callahan approached me outside my house, where my wife and daughters sleep for Christ’s sake, and told me that if I could get him information on the new boss and his operations, they’d secure me a top level position in their outfit. N-Not as a killer, of course,”—he smiles squeamishly—“I’m useless in the field. Never killed anyone in my life—w-well, once, but it was an accident.”

“Two minutes,” I remind him.

He nods and goes on:

“I met with Callahan twice and gave him two flash drives. Bogus information. Nothing on those drives is real. False names. False locations. Hell, I even made up details of a mission that never happened.”

“Why would you do that?” I ask.

As much as I need to deal with Cassia, I equally need to deal with this. It is my job, after all, and I could never bring myself to give Victor Faust less than one hundred percent of my effort.

“Because I looked into Callahan,” Woodard says. “I know my way around computers and information. I have backdoor access to FBI, CIA, Interpol—shit, I can get information on anyone from
any
database. But Callahan, he wasn’t in any databases. None. I took his fingerprints from the business card he gave me. I ran him against everything for two weeks. Nothing.”

“Well, that’s not entirely unusual,” I point out. “Given his profession.”

Woodard stands from the chair, so deep in thought that he probably doesn’t even notice. I let him. Dorian does, too, but keeps his gun at the ready down at his side. Woodard begins to pace, stopping every few seconds to look back at us, gesturing his hands intensely as he explains.

“Come on,” he says as if we should know better, “there’s always
some
kind of record, even if it’s hidden on a Girl Scouts application.
No one
is a ghost. Not like this guy.”

“So then he’s using a fake name and his prints have never been recorded,” Dorian says, getting as impatient as I was moments ago. “So fucking what. That doesn’t prove anything other than he’s good if there’s no record of him.”

Woodard smiles chillingly. “Not if he’s a Boss.”

That gets our attention.

Dorian and I look at each other briefly.

“Do you have any proof?” I ask.

“No,” Woodard says. “But think about it, the ones at the top of the food chain, they’re the most protected. They have no ties to anyone other than their right-hand men and their gatekeepers. They trust no one and they kill at the first sign of betrayal or suspicion. It’s why the bosses are harder to find.” Woodard points at me, still smiling darkly. “Have you ever
seen
Vonnegut?” he asks and it surprises me that he knows anything about my former employer, or that he was my employer at all.