Dirty Deeds (14 page)

“You don’t have any feelings,” Marisa said. “What are you going to do with Keane? You can’t tag along with him, and he’ll only draw heat to you.”

“Where’s Will Black?” I asked. I needed to figure out one move at a time.

“He is currently in a crack house having a party with a needle.”

“Seriously?” This was not getting any easier. I supposed Will Black currently sitting in the room with Marisa playing Go Fish wasn’t a likely scenario, although it would help.

“It’s actually a good thing. If he doesn’t overdose and die in the filth he’ll be incapacitated for a few hours, maybe even a day. I’ll keep paying for eyes on the crack house. It’ll give you time to get back and regroup. As soon as you get rid of your Keane baggage, of course,” Marisa said.

“Anything on the cheerleader?” I asked.

“Why?”

She sounded confused, as if it wasn’t still my problem.

“I need to figure out who really killed her and what it has to do with me. I need a plane ticket to Las Vegas for tonight. I’m going to have a chat with the person or persons who ordered and paid for the hit,” I said.

“No way. You’ve done stupid things in your life but this might be the biggest yet,” Marisa said.

“Again. . . not asking for your opinion. I need to move and do it fast, before Will Black comes off his high and wanders around with the munchies,” I said.

“He’s not smoking pot.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I hope you have an idea about Keane,” Marisa said.

“I do. Get this rolling for me, please and thank you. I need to get moving and get on a plane. Give me a two hour lead to get to the airport and check in. I’ll need clothes and a hotel room to take a shower when I land, too.” I paused. “Marisa, I appreciate everything you do for me. Let me handle this my way so I can sleep at night. I need to get as much done as possible, and sitting around waiting for Will Black to sober up could take hours I’ll never get back.”

“I accept your almost apology. But I’m not going to stop trying to talk you out of going to Vegas,” she said.

I went into the kitchen and looked in the cabinets while I was talking to her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Looking for something. . . ah, here we go,” I said and pulled a heavy frying pan from a cabinet.

Keane walked into the kitchen.

“I think we’re good. I’ve found out who is on Chenzo’s payroll and it isn’t nearly as bad as I thought. In fact, this actually helps to shake out the cockroaches,” Keane said and was smiling until I smashed him in the face with the frying pan.

“Did you. . .” Marisa said with a chuckle in her voice.

“I told you I’m in a hurry. Call me back when everything’s set.” I hung up the phone, apologized to Keane and was glad I hadn’t broken his nose.

When he came to in a couple of hours and realized I was gone he was going to be really pissed.

Against Marisa’s vehement protests I flew back to Las Vegas to confront the person or persons who’d contracted me to kill their daughter. I knew I had too much going on right now, including The Family and FBI gunmen aiming at my head, but I needed to keep working. Something about the way the cheerleader had been killed was bugging me, and I thought a face to face with mom or dad would answer a few questions.

Of course, Marisa thought it was taking a huge chance, especially if the dust hadn’t yet settled and the police were watching the home or parents. I had to take a chance I’d get some answers and not put myself into the middle of the investigation, although with the way my luck had been the past few days. . . if I ended up in a jail cell I can’t say I’d be surprised.

These jobs are very anonymous for a reason. It makes the person hiring me know I will do my job and not bother them again for a shakedown of future money. It legitimizes an illegal transaction. As bad as it sounds, word of mouth is a major contributor to how the next job comes in.

I know I can’t save every child out there. I get it. Sometimes horrible people do horrible things themselves, and there’s no way to stop it. Some people hire a friend of a friend with a shady past to do the job, and a child ends up in a ditch or in a shallow grave in a field somewhere. I get it. I can only do what I do and hope I can save as many as possible.

I did a pass in my rental car around the block before deciding the house wasn’t being watched. Marisa had pulled all the information she could find from the transaction. The site we use makes the client feel like they’ve given us no information, but they’ve given us everything just by using an e-mail address.

Marisa had once taken a month and worked with Marco, who I’ve mentioned before. He’s the premier hacker for The Family. I paid him a lot of money to teach her the basics so her job would be easier. We did it all without Chenzo or anyone else knowing, too. You can never be too safe.

It came into play with this case, as Marisa went back through and figured out who had initially set up the job.

Kelly Osgood. I had no idea if it was a man or woman at first, but Marisa assured me it was the wife. I tried to keep my own feelings at bay and work this like anything else: calm and detached from reality. It wouldn’t help me at all to confront a mother and ask why she would want her daughter killed.

I had the paperwork for a bogus insurance claim in hand, one that would get me through the door unless someone wanted to stare at the mumbo jumbo for awhile. Talk of a million dollar policy with scumbags like this would easily get me in.

I knocked on the door and waited, casually looking around for the police, FBI and/or thugs in the bushes. I knew I was getting paranoid again. I needed to lay off the coffee for a few days as my hands were shaking.

The door opened a crack and a small Spanish woman answered with a frown.

I smiled. “I’m here to see Mrs. Osgood.” I held up the papers. “I have insurance papers she needs to sign.”

“She no here,” the woman said and waved a hand, her fingers moving back and forth. “Nails.”

“She’s getting her nails done? Excellent. Any idea where she went?” I shook the papers again. “This is a lot of money and she’ll need to sign this before noon today or she’ll have complications.”

The woman nodded and disappeared. I was praying she didn’t call Kelly, because if Kelly called her lawyer they might see through this charade.

When she returned with a smile and handed me a business card for a nail salon I thanked her. The woman closed the door and I got a fleeting glimpse of her expression, as if she were suddenly very happy.

I’m definitely the guy who sees the glass half empty. Human nature is a horrible thing to see in all its bottom of the barrel modes, and I wanted to kick open the door and smack the maid in the face. She was in on it. I just knew it. She’d helped Kelly in some way to set up the assassination and I was sure this woman would get a few extra dollars in her paycheck once the dust settled.

“Talk to me,” I said after programming the GPS on the rental car and calling Marisa.

“Boss, we’ve got a bigger problem now.”

“So, just another day for me?” I sighed and drove wherever the GPS told me to drive. I was getting hungry but needed to wrap this up with Kelly and hopefully do it without a scene.

“I’ve been hacked,” Marisa said.

I held my breath. I had nothing to say. My mind was a jumble of thoughts. Hacked? Is that how the person knew about the cheerleader? Damn. Now I wondered what else they knew.

“Are you still there?” Marisa asked.

I let out the hot air and refrained from punching the steering wheel.

“Whoever did it is good. Really good. Like, Marco good,” she said.

“Get in touch with Marco and see what he can find out. Tell him I’ll pay him double if he keeps it quiet and works fast,” I said.

“Marco is in the wind, remember? Chenzo and his crew are out looking for the guy.”

This can’t be happening. “Did Marco do this?”

“No. Not his style. He’d have nothing to gain by it, either. If Marco needed something he’d ask me. We have nothing important for whatever he does, which is why he helps us. And the money,” Marisa said.

“What did they get?”

“All of it,” she said quietly.

“I’m not following you.” A knot in my stomach was forming. I wondered if I had ulcers or if I’d soon experience the pain of ulcers.

“Boss. . . are you sitting?”

“No. I stand when I drive,” I said.

“I put everything – everything – into a data base about a year ago. Every job you’ve done, every contact, every single thing since you started,” Marisa said.

“Why would you do that?” I glanced at the steering wheel, which needed a beating right now.

“It was so deeply encrypted I have no idea how anyone knew it existed.”

“Anyone online with skills like yours can hack it,” I said.

“No. This isn’t regular online. This is Deep Web and Tor stuff.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I admitted.

“Exactly. Only hackers and the government would even know where to begin to look. I tucked our stuff away in such a remote corner it was hard for me to find it some days, and I created it,” Marisa said.

“Keane did this.”

“The FBI can’t even get into where I was. I’m telling you, someone far more methodical and sinister than the government or The Family is behind this. They have all of your information, including who you really are and every child you’ve moved, and where,” Marisa said.

“Wait. . . you know all of this, too?”

There was a pause on the phone as I pulled into the strip mall for the nail salon.

“Yes,” Marisa said quietly. “I know who you really are and who your parents are. I know everything.”

“Including who you really are,” I said.

“Yes. I really should’ve told you sooner. I meant to, but I know how mad you get whenever it’s brought up. I thought by having all of it in one secure spot I could keep a record for when someone else took over. I was hoping someday it would be me,” Marisa said. “I wanted to know what I was working with.”

“I’m mad at you. Beyond mad at you,” I said.

“Boss, I’m really sorry. If I had any idea this could happen I would’ve just destroyed everything.”

I hung up the phone and punched the steering wheel a few times before I composed myself.

I still had to talk to Kelly, a woman who paid me to kill her teenage daughter.

I find when I’m hungry and feeling lost, the best approach is the straightforward direct route. I entered the hair salon and looked around.

Kelly was seated in the back getting her feet soaked. I recognized her from the picture Marisa had texted to me, or whatever you call it on the phone.

I sat down next to her and smiled.

Kelly did her best to ignore me, closing her eyes and putting her head back as if she suddenly had to take a nap before they got to her toenails.

“Shame what happened to your daughter,” I whispered.

She opened her eyes and the anger was replaced by a fake sorrowful look. She nodded her head, sizing me up. I imagine she was wondering what paper or news channel I worked for and wanted to see if I was worth the time giving a blurb to.

“I really don’t want to talk about it. Such a tragedy,” she said, mimicking my whisper. I imagined she’d done the newscasts all week as well as been on Nancy Grace and anywhere else she could be seen. All for the wrong reasons.

“The real tragedy, of course, is the fact the man you paid to kill her never got a chance to do the job,” I said and leaned closer with a smile. “Someone else did the job for me.”

Her lips were moving but no words came out. I could see the fear and confusion mixing with her stunned silence.

I patted her arm, making sure it was as condescending as possible. Marisa had already told me what I needed to know and I really should’ve turned around and gotten onto the next plane out of Vegas, but I needed to do this for my own self-worth.

Kelly Osgood needed to think she hadn’t gotten away with this atrocity.

“You see, ma’am, you paid me a large sum of money to kill a teenager in her formative years. A girl you gave birth to? Or was she from an extramarital affair of your husband, or perhaps from yourself?”

She went to leave, her feet splashing in the water. I gripped her arm tightly and squeezed.

“If you move your plastic surgery disaster body another inch I will go public with this. Do you understand? Nod if you do and sit back. Now,” I said.

Kelly didn’t relax but she pressed back into the chair. When one of the workers came over she waved them off without a word.

“Does your husband know?” I asked.

She turned her head slightly and I couldn’t tell if she was grinning or not, but her eyes were sparkling. “Who do you think gave me the cash, huh?”

I thought she’d go through the bogus denial and try to buy me off, but now I could see she wasn’t the complete monster I was hoping for. She put her head down and sighed.

“I loved our daughter like she was our own. . . like she was our flesh and blood,” Kelly said quietly. “She was our baby, but we couldn’t have her going public with what she knew we’d done.”

I wanted to shake her and make her spill her guts but I calmed down and let her formulate the words in her head.

Kelly turned and looked me in the eyes. She was starting to genuinely tear up.

“She was adopted. She figured it out when she was ten. We tried to give her everything she needed. Anything she wanted. We have money and we bought her everything. Maybe it was too much. Who knows? In the end. . . she knew the family secrets and told a teacher.”

“What happened?”

“The man came to our house to confront my husband.” Kelly closed her eyes. “He’d been stupid and hadn’t told anyone. Yet. My husband took care of the problem. Put the teacher where they’ll never find him. Buried in the woods behind the house on our private property. No one suspected a thing. Except our daughter. She knew what we were capable of. What we’d done in the past. What we’d do to keep our secrets in the closet. At any cost.”

I wanted to smack the woman in the face. I was beginning to meet more and more people who deserved a beating and I didn’t like it. I needed to change my friends if possible. Be around less horrible people, too.