Even Steven (26 page)

"Oh, they look tough." Pena laughed.

"Take it easy on them," Carlos warned. "They're young."

"And impressionable."

When Pena said impressionable, Carlos knew he was thinking deniable. "I don't want any scenes out here in the street." Carlos slid out of the passenger seat and waited by the front bumper till Pena joined him, then together they headed for the front door.

A kid Carlos had never seen before-all of maybe eighteen years old and sporting a head of orange hair-stepped forward to block their path. "Can I help you?" the kid challenged.

"I don't think so," Carlos said, and he elbowed past.

"Hey!" Recovering his balance, the kid reached under his jacket, but then froze as Pena clamped a claw around his windpipe.

"That's Carlos Ortega, asswipe," he said, and the recognition in the kid's bulging eyes was instantaneous. "Now stay the fuck out of the way." Pena released the kid, but didn't wait for an answer before joining his boss climbing the steps.

Carlos tried the knob, then rang the bell. The door opened ten seconds later, revealing the kid he'd seen run inside. Up close like this, Carlos recognized him as Ricky Timmons, Logan's poor imitation of Pena. The kid looked as if he was about to say something when Pena stiff-armed the door and sent him back-pedalling into the foyer.

"Where's Logan?" Pena growled.

A moment passed-an instant, really-where Timmons considered turning this confrontation into something that would have ended his life. He kept his gaze locked with Pena's for a moment more, but it was all for show, with no resolve to do anything stupid.

"I'm in here," Logan's voice called from behind a closed door to their left.

Carlos pulled open the pocket doors and entered a cheaply furnished living room. He waited while Pena followed and closed the doors behind them. The walls screamed for paint almost as loudly as the furniture screamed for slipcovers. Carlos knew a thing or two about Logan's upbringing and knew that to him, this was Buckingham Palace.

Logan sat with his feet propped up on his auction-reject desk, making a show of cutting a telephone conversation short. Despite his warning from Ricky Timmons, he feigned surprise as he stood to greet his visitors. A big man with too many freckles and a nose that labelled him a boozer, he had a single eyebrow that traversed a Neanderthal ridge over his eyes. Look up Irish thug in the dictionary and they have a picture of Logan.

"Hey, Carlos. What brings you here?"

Small talk wasn't on Carlos's agenda. "What's this shit I hear about you kidnapping some baby?"

Logan went right to the lie. He pretended to look confused, then realized that Carlos wasn't buying. "I had some business concerns I needed taken care of. Since when do you tell me how to do my business?"

The Irishman had a good five inches on him in height, yet Carlos noticed that the bigger man back-pedalled as Carlos leaned closer. "It's not your business, Patrick. How many times do I have to pound that into your thick mick head? This isn't your business. This is my business, and I just happen to let you take a piece of it."

Logan rolled his eyes. "For God's sake, Carlos-"

"Shut up. I'll say it again so I know you hear it. This is my fucking business. You think of yourself as a franchisee, okay? That means you've got corporate rules and regulations to live by. Am I going too fast for you?"

Logan's face turned red. "Who the hell-"

"Shut up!" Carlos yelled it this time, and Logan jumped. "Just shut the fuck up and listen. And sit down."

Logan sat.

"I'm hear to make a speech, and you're here to listen. I don't even want to know why you nabbed this kid. I don't care. It was a stupid fucking thing to do."

The Irishman slammed his hands on the desk and shot to his feet. "Stupid! You come into my office and you have the balls-"

"Sit down!" This time, when Carlos yelled, the whole building seemed to move.

For a long moment, Logan tried defiance, but as Carlos narrowed his gaze and his eyes bore straight through Logan's body, the big man shrank. And he sat down.

"Stupid," Carlos said, locking onto Logan's eyes. "That's what I said, and I'll say it again. It was a stupid fucking thing to do. You got a beef with somebody, make it good. That's your business, and so long as you keep the blood off my streets, I don't care."

"Then why the hell are you here? That kid's old man owed me eighteen hundred bucks."

"His father, Patrick! His father owed you money. Not his mother, who visited me after you shit all over her, and not the kid himself, but his father. What exactly have you done to this father?"

"I took his fucking kid so he'll find a way to get me my money."

Carlos lashed out in. a blur and slapped Logan across the face.

Furious, the Irishman bolted to his feet and Carlos slapped him again.

"Sit down." This time he said it so softly that Logan might not even have heard him. For a long moment, the two men just stared at each other.

"I could kill you," Logan seethed.

"Then you'd better do it on the first shot," Carlos snarled back. If it were anyone else in the world, this would look like Mutt against Jeff; it would have been comical. As it was, Logan backed down yet again.

"Here's what you're going to do," Carlos went on. "You're going to get that kid back and you're going to polish him up and deliver him to his mother without so much as a hair out of place. And you're going to do it by sundown."

Again, Logan looked at him as if he were crazy. "What about my money?"

"Forget about the fucking money. Or break that assholes legs or dump him in the river, I don't care. But get that kid back."

"I can't do it by tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because he's not here, that's why."

"Then where the hell is he?"

"What, you think I'd lift a kid by myself? I contracted it out."

"To whom?"

"To some guy I know from in the hills."

"And how much did that cost you?"

Logan shrugged. "Another thousand."

Carlos couldn't believe what he was hearing. He turned to Pena for verification and got a shrug. "Let me get this straight. A guy owes you a couple thousand dollars, but you don't want to hurt him because you want to get your money back. This makes sense to me. But then you call some other asshole friend of yours to kidnap the boy, and that costs you another thousand. What the hell were you thinking?"

Logan dared a smile; a humorless twitch, really, involving only one side of his mouth. "Call it 'interest and expenses."

Carlos wanted to splatter that smirk straight into the peeling paint job. "So, how much does this Simpson guy owe you?"

The Irishman looked to the ceiling and closed his eyes as he ran some cryptic equation through his mind. "His old lady already made a deposit, so today, he could get by with eighteen hundred. Tomorrow, it'll look more like two thousand."

Carlos saw where this was going, but he wanted to hear it directly from Logan. "So, what happens when he finally tells you that he can't pay?"

Another shrug. "Well, then he's had a really, really bad day." Logan laughed hard at that one and didn't seem bothered that he was the only one amused.

Without a word, Carlos moved around to the end of the ugly desk, and then behind it, where he could get within striking distance. Logan tried to hold his ground, but ultimately rolled his chair backward, until he ran into Pena, whom he'd never even seen move into place.

Carlos rested his hands on the arms of the big man's chair and leaned in until less than a foot separated their noses. He intentionally assumed an open, vulnerable pose, as if to demonstrate that he feared nothing from this beer-swilling son of a bitch.

"And what about the boy?" Carlos hissed. "What happens to him if his father can't pay?"

For the first time, Logan's face began to show signs of real concern; as if he finally understood that he was in peril. He held his hands out to ward off the smaller man's advance and stammered, "Well, hell, Carlos, I-I n-never expected him to."

"What happens to the boy?"

Logan looked over his shoulder to see what might be coming at him from behind. "He, uh, well, you know. He-" The Irishman couldn't bring himself to say the actual words. "Come on, Carlos, for Christ's sake, it's only a kid."

Carlos held Logan's eyes for a long time and then, without shifting his gaze, nodded once.

Logan seemed to know what was coming, but when he tried to stand, Carlos pushed him back down. Before he could try again, Pena looped a thin nylon cord around Logan's neck and drew it tight, yanking the Irishman backward onto the floor. Logan flailed like a fish, fighting for breath, and as his eyes filled with terror, his fingers clawed at the garrotte.

"Listen to me, Patrick," Carlos said, his voice much, much softer than before. "It's very important that you pay attention. Are you paying attention?"

Logan nodded as best he could as his face turned purple.

Carlos glanced once at Pena, and the cord loosened just enough to allow blood to flow and air to wheeze through Logan's bruised wind-pipe.

"You're an idiot, Logan," Carlos said evenly. "A stupid, worthless fucking idiot. Don't you understand why we've been able to achieve such quick success? It's because people fear me, and because they know that I'm good for the community. Me, I'm the United Nations and the Teamsters all rolled into one. We have rules for how we conduct business, and anyone who doesn't follow the rules gets taken care of. You know this, right? Tell me that you know this."

Logan gasped for air and nodded spasmodically. Yes, he understood.

"That's good. It's good you understand. You also understand that the cops leave us alone because we don't give them any trouble. We want to fuck somebody up, we take them someplace else. We don't shit in our own nest. You know this, too, am I right?" Another gasp, another nod.

"Good. When word gets out, then, that one of the people who works for me is a fucking kidnapper, and that he targets two-year-old children, do you think that the police will continue to look the other way? Do you think that the people in the neighbourhoods will continue to be our friends once they realize that you're willing to kill their children over a few dollars? Is that what you think?" This time, the gasp meant no.

"I agree. That's why you're going to contact your buddy who has this child, and you're going to tell him to bring the baby home. Do you think you can do that?"

Pena held the tension a little longer this time, just to make the point. Carlos didn't wait for the answer.

"As far as the money is concerned, I don't give a shit what you do about that. But the kid comes home. Tonight."

Logan shook his head vigorously, and Carlos nodded for Pena to slacken his hold. Logan gasped, "I can't. Not tonight. He's too far away. Tomorrow. I can have him home tomorrow." Carlos's eyes narrowed. "Where is he?" "Someplace out in the mountains." "In the mountains! What mountains?"

"W-West Virginia. I d-didn't want, you know, for the body to be found." Then, Logan added quickly, "If it came to that."

Carlos slapped him again, this time splitting the Irishman's lip. "You sick fuck," Carlos growled. But the slap didn't do it for him, and he followed it up with a punch that shattered the big man's nose. Blood and snot poured down the lower half of Logan's face, and Carlos took the ends of the garrotte away from Pena and cinched them tight with his own hands. "You've got eighteen hours, Logan. Eighteen hours. By ten o'clock tomorrow morning, that baby had better be home with his mama, or I swear to God you'll wish that I had killed you here today."

For a long moment, Carlos considered killing him anyway, just for the hell of it. God knew it'd be easy enough, but the rules of business applied to the boss just as they did to everyone else. You don't shit in your own nest. Besides, the real problem was getting the kid back. With Logan dead, there'd be no way to fix that one.

"Eighteen hours, Logan," Carlos breathed, "and not a mark on him. Right now, that little boy is all that's keeping you alive."

Carlos and Pena turned and saw Ricky Timmons standing in the doorway, his jaw gaping.

"Hope you're taking notes there, kid," Pena said with a laugh.

Ricky didn't say anything. He just waited till the visitors were gone, then rushed over to help his boss as he gasped for air.

THE MORE BOBBY thought about it, the hotter his anger glowed. His nerves were shot; he just flat out didn't think he could take much more of this. In a moment of grim resolve, he realized that unless he took some kind of action right this minute, this terror he was living-this gnawing, low-grade nausea that wouldn't go away-would be the rule for the rest of his life. This was as good as it was going to get. Every knock on the door would be a potential cop, every look of recognition at the grocery store an accusation.

It was absurd. How could one five-minute episode in a thirty-four-year-old life cause so many problems? Jesus, it was just so far out of control. Nothing in nineteen years of schooling, or in his captainship of the debate team, or in the succeeding years of excellence in the business world, had prepared him for a moment like this. Presented with a circumstance totally out of left field, you react instinctively. You live or you die. And precisely by living-by winning, for God's sake-he had brought countless complications to his life.