Terminated (6 page)

“Talk it over with your husband.”

“This has nothing to do with Paul.” She realized the harshness of her statement. “This all took place before I knew him. He’ll try to protect me like you’re doing, but both of you are outsiders. You weren’t there. I have to face him and see if the monster has changed.”

Naylor was quiet for a beat. “You could harm the hearing.”

“I don’t care.”

“There’s no guarantee he’ll want to speak to you.”

“We won’t know unless you ask.”

“Gwen, I don’t like the position you’re putting me in.”

“Blame the state, not me.”

Paul knocked at the door. “We’re ready when you are, hon.”

“I want to see him, Jerry. Make it happen.”

T
om Petersen shifted in his seat. After three hours
parked outside Stephen Tarbell’s house, his butt was going to sleep. He liked the Audi. It was responsive, classy, well made and comfortable, although forced to sit in the same spot for three hours, he got to feel every Bavarian spring. It was a breed apart from the average car on the road, which made it good for surveillance. No one expects to be followed by an Audi. Something out of Detroit, yes, but not Germany.

Did anything come out of Detroit these days
? he thought. GM and Ford had their plants everywhere except the Motor City. There seemed to be more foreign carmakers than domestic in the US. World economics. What a crock.

Tom’s cell vibrated on the passenger seat, cutting his thoughts on globalization short. He answered the phone, careful to cover the glowing display. Tarbell lived on a good street for surveillance. It was quiet and poorly lit. The Audi was just another parked car on the street, as long as no one spotted him sitting behind the wheel. The luminous display on a phone might just blow his cover. The last thing he needed was a patrol car alerting the world to his presence.

“What are you doing, Tom?” Gonzalez asked.

“Sitting in the dark watching some prick
stay in on a Friday night.”

“You can see him?”

“No, but there’s movement from inside.” He picked up his notebook. “He came home at six thirty-seven and hasn’t left the house since. Domino’s delivered an hour ago. This guy is settled in for the night.”

Gonzalez was his handler on this job. He’d worked with the ex-marine before. He was a little too “by the numbers” for Tom’s liking, but the guy didn’t fuck him around like some handlers. He always knew where he stood with Gonzalez and that was worth its weight in gold. That was what he liked about Private Security International. They were professional. They hired the best. He liked to think that was why they subcontracted him on surveillance work. He’d put in his twenty-five with the San Francisco PD, working his way up from patrol to inspector. He became a PI after he got out, working for defense lawyers. PSI came to him regularly for surveillance work, paid nice, and came with little trouble.

“Stay on top of this guy,” Gonzalez said. “He threatened to slice up a woman. Tonight’s the night he’ll make good on his threat if he’s going to. If he moves, follow him and get backup.”

“Will do. No heroics here.”

“I’ll check in with you later,” Gonzalez said and hung up.

Petersen got back to his sitting. He had another six hours of this before Reggie Glover swung by to take over the daylight shift. He preferred night work over days, even though Lynette bitched about him not being home at night. In most cases, people were less active at night, which meant less risk and less effort on his part. He was retired, for Christ’s sakes. His hero days were behind him. This work bought him a time-share in Maui.

Nothing much happened for the next hour. Some kid dropped off his girl a few houses down. They made out for twenty minutes before she ran inside with a bounce in her step. A couple of dog walkers drifted by. The nearest thing to action
came when a golden retriever detected his presence and wanted to check out him out, but the dog’s owner, totally oblivious, jerked the dog away without noticing him sitting there. It never failed to amaze him how little the public noticed, even when it was under their noses.

He checked his watch—ten fifty-seven. He’d been on the job nearly six hours and he felt himself slipping into the floaty phase where it was an effort to keep his concentration. This was where he missed having a partner to talk shit with to keep his mind sharp. That thought was hammered home when someone jerked open the back door and slipped into the backseat. Before he could make a move, a knife was pressed hard against his throat.

“Make a move and it’ll be your last,” the voice snarled in the darkness.

Petersen’s heart worked overtime. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Too late. You’ve got it. Put your hands behind your back.”

Petersen slipped his hands to either side of his seat. The knife never left his throat while a zip tie looped each of his wrists. There had to be a daisy chain of zip ties to counter for the width of the seat. The ties were jerked so tight that the seat back acted as a wedge, threatening to pop his shoulders from their sockets.

“Why are you following me?”

He’d been caught by the suspect. He couldn’t believe it. “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m just waiting for a buddy to come out.”

“I don’t think so. You followed me home yesterday and you followed me home tonight. You really should get that misaligned headlight fixed.”

Christ, he couldn’t believe he’d been picked off so easily. Retirement sounded good about now.

“You’re Stephen Tarbell?”

Tarbell forced the knife hard into his flesh. “Yes. You’ve got one more chance to tell me who you are and why you’re following me.”

“Take the knife away and
I’ll tell you.”

The knife disappeared from around his neck and Petersen took his first unhindered breath.

“Cry for help and you’ll be crying with a knife in your throat,” Tarbell said.

For confirmation, Petersen felt the tip of the blade prick the back of his neck.

“You’re being investigated.”

“By whom?”

Tarbell sounded genuinely unaware of the reason for his tail. Petersen could sell him a dummy. Child support. Alimony. Any number of bullshit lies. But he didn’t know enough about Tarbell. His brief was to follow this guy. Here was his work address and home address. Construct a picture from everything else he does. Petersen knew nothing about him beyond his name and the woman he’d threatened. Any lie he tried to sell the guy was bound to fail. He didn’t like to think what this son of a bitch would do to him if he got the lie wrong.

“Private Security International has you under surveillance. Your employer hired them.”

Tarbell jerked back on the makeshift cuffs like they were horse reins. Petersen’s shoulders burned as his muscles and tendons worked against him. He bit back a cry.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

Tarbell was silent for a beat. “Gwen Farris?”

“Yeah.”

“She told on me?” There was a childlike awe in his voice after hearing Petersen’s revelation.

“Of course she did. You threatened to kill her.”

There was more silence from the backseat. Tarbell hadn’t expected this kind of attention and it had thrown him. Petersen willed him not to panic. Panic made the guy dangerous.

“Who is Private Security International?”

“A security firm. They carry out background
checks, surveillance, and protection.”

“How many people are watching me?”

“Don’t know.”

Tarbell jabbed him the knife in the back of Petersen’s neck. “Guess.”

“There’s a tail on you 24-7 for two weeks. Two watchers. I have nights. A guy driving a blue Durango has days. If you stray from the beaten path, there are two two-man strike teams who will follow you on foot and vehicle. There’s likely to be someone working undercover at Pace should you try anything in the office.”

“Are you all working with the cops?”

“No. Just your employer.”

More silence. This guy was going to do something rash. Petersen could feel it. He hated it when jobs went sideways.

“What’s your name?”

“Tom Petersen.”

“Driver’s license?”

“I’m sitting on it.”

“Registration?”

“Glove box.”

Tarbell slipped from the backseat into the front passenger seat. He dug the registration document out of the glove box and read it before tossing it back. “You don’t lie, Tom. I like that. I feel like we’ve made a connection.”

He picked up Petersen’s cell. It represented Petersen’s only backup and it was in the hands of the enemy. Tonight had officially turned into a monumental screwup.

“You’re going to leave now and not tell anyone about tonight.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“You underestimate yourself. You can do anything.” Tarbell pressed the tip of the knife into the soft skin underneath Petersen’s right eye. The pressure of the blade forced him to lose focus in that eye. “Because, if you don’t agree, I’ll take your eyes. Not a good look for a man who makes a living from spying
on people.”

“No,” Petersen said, the word seeming to scrape his dry mouth.

Tarbell smiled, reached behind Petersen’s seat, and slit the zip ties. Petersen groaned with the sudden rush of feeling in his shoulders. Then Tarbell was gone. He slipped from the car before Petersen could make a move to stop him; not that he would have. Tarbell wasn’t a guy he was going to tangle with.

Petersen watched Tarbell walk back to his house. It wouldn’t be hard to gun the engine and mow the fucker down. It was tempting, but not that tempting. He started the Audi and pulled away.

He powered down the window. Why hadn’t he locked the doors? He’d practically invited Tarbell to get in the car and nab him. He was close to puking. Adrenaline didn’t give him courage, just chest pains. But the rush of cool night air revived him.

“You fucking amateur, Tom,” he said out loud. “Jesus Christ.”

Nothing could be done now. He was off this job. His cover had been blown, so he was no good to PSI’s investigation. He’d report into Gonzalez and they’d have to strategize about damage control.

He didn’t take long to reach his home in Martinez. He felt old and tired pulling into his garage. Tarbell had robbed him of more than his dignity tonight. Closing the garage door, he glimpsed a car with its headlights off rolling to a halt across the street. A quickening in his heart rate told him who it was. He reopened the garage door.

Tarbell slipped from the driver’s seat and leaned across the roof of his car in a neighborly fashion. He waved at Petersen like they were friends.

Petersen’s .38 was in the house. There was no chance of getting it. He walked up to Tarbell and got close enough to be heard without raising his voice, but far enough to be clear of his knife.

“What do you want?”

He held out Petersen’s cell. “I forgot to return this.”

Petersen took the phone, but Tarbell
didn’t release his grip. “If anything happens to me, I know where you live and I know where to find you. Understood?”

All too well. PSI could hand the whole thing over to the cops. They’d arrest Tarbell, but he’d get bail and there’d be nothing between him and Petersen. He couldn’t have that. Not with Lynette in the house.

Tarbell grinned. “It’s not very nice to know you’re being watched, is it?”

“No.”

“I’ve held on to your number.”

A chill ran up Petersen’s back. “Why?”

“Because we’re going to be phone buddies,” Tarbell said with a smile. “You’re going to tell your masters I’ve been a good boy doing good boy things, and you’re going to keep me informed of the investigation. Aren’t you?”

S
he deceived me
. It was the thought that carried Tarbell
to sleep and the one on his lips when he awoke. Anger accompanied the thought in the early hours of the morning. It had turned to begrudging admiration as he ate breakfast. He hadn’t seen it coming. Gwen had been so convincing, not just when he’d cornered her in the meeting room, but all of Thursday. She’d acted jumpy and a second out of step with the rest of the world, which was what he’d expected. She’d looked genuinely scared when he cornered her coming out of the bathroom. If she was acting, she deserved an Oscar. But maybe she’d been jumpy because of her deception.

His admiration didn’t make him want to go easy on her. No, Gwen would pay for her betrayal, and dearly. This was the second time she’d wronged him. What he’d promised to do to her in that rain-soaked parking lot wouldn’t compare to what he would do now. Her treachery ignited his temper. He lashed out, casting his coffee mug across the kitchen, where it smashed on the tiled floor.

“Look what you’ve made me do, Gwen,” he said. As he picked up the shattered pieces of mug, he realized his anger had gotten away from him again, as it had when he’d ended up threatening Gwen with the knife. It wasn’t his fault. People made him angry. Their behavior. Their attitudes. Their stupidity. Gwen had pushed him to his limit. Still, he had to get a hold
of himself. Throwing things in his own kitchen? This kind of behavior wasn’t acceptable, not if he wanted to keep his freedom. His anger had to be turned from indiscriminant displays of rage into precision acts of destruction that couldn’t be linked back to him.

He went to the living room window and saw the blue Dodge Durango belonging to his daytime watcher. Private Security International presented a problem. Their operatives would be all over him from dawn to dusk. It made it difficult to take his revenge on Gwen, but having Petersen provided the hole in their defenses he needed. Not only did he have an inside man feeding him intelligence, but he had someone providing a bulletproof alibi. No matter what crimes he committed at night, Petersen would vouch for him and say he’d been sitting at home on the couch.

The clock was ticking, though. PSI allowed themselves two weeks to build a case against their subject before confronting them with the results. He had to destroy Gwen in that time, but give PSI no grounds for a confrontation. It was going to be tough, but doable.

There was nothing he could do now, not directly, but he could put on a show. He scrubbed the floor clean of coffee stains before backing the car out the garage and heading toward the freeway with the Durango trailing behind him. He made no effort to lose his tail. He wanted his watcher to share his boring and uneventful weekend.

He headed north across the Carquinez Bridge into the valley on I-80 and pulled off the freeway at West Sacramento. He turned into a shitty, run-down neighborhood near the Port of Sacramento and stopped in front of the familiar ranch house he came to every Saturday. Walking up to the door, he took the place in. The structure seemed to fall into deeper decay with every passing week. The roof continued to sag. The siding looked warped by one more degree. Weeds overran the small sun-baked yard. It was duty that brought him here. Nothing
else. The door opened before he reached the stoop. Lupe Corrales smiled and held the door open. “Hello, Steve,” she said with that ever-present smile. “You’re a little late today.”

“Chores,” he replied, lightly irritated by her mild reprimand. “How’s Dad been?”

Lupe’s smiled dropped. “The same.”

Lupe was a slight woman nudging fifty. How she manhandled his dad physically as well as verbally he never knew. Training, he decided. Not being a blood relative helped too. A stranger could always dismiss his father. He couldn’t.

She’d changed out of her nurse’s uniform and looked eager to leave. She was a full-time stay-at-home nurse, six days, seven nights. Stephen stood in for her on Saturdays.

“Anything I should know?” he asked.

“No. Business as usual. He’s in the living room.”

“OK, Lupe. Enjoy your day off.”

Lupe threw a wave over her shoulder and disappeared in the Toyota financed by his monthly checks.

He closed the door, aware of the Durango parked across the street.

“Hey, Dad, it’s me,” he called out.

“In here,” he barked, then more quietly, “like I’d be anywhere else.”

Dennis Tarbell’s world extended as far as the four walls of the living room. It provided his place to sleep, his dining room, his entertainment room, his treatment room and his bathroom most of the time. The room was by no definition palatial, but it was simply the biggest available to get all the equipment in to enable Dennis to live somewhat comfortably.

Tarbell found his father hunched over in his wheelchair with a clear plastic tube running to his nose from an oxygen bottle strapped to the wheelchair’s side. Even with the oxygen’s assistance, he struggled to breathe, sucking in air like it was soup.

In his prime, Dennis Tarbell had been
a strong man. Where his son was gawky, the father had been muscled from a life spent working in the Richmond and Vallejo shipyards. Dennis didn’t look so big these days. Forty years of smoking three packs a day had caught up with him in the form of emphysema and other smoking-related complications. His lungs rattled and wheezed every time he breathed. He looked deflated, his flesh hanging loose on his bony frame. He was a far cry from the behemoth Tarbell remembered as a frightened child.

“Come to ease your conscience?” he said.

It was an old and much used greeting. Tarbell placed it in his father’s top ten slurs. It had been a couple of weeks since he’d trotted that one out.

“You want something to drink?” Tarbell said on his way to the kitchen.

“A beer.”

Booze had been another of his father’s crutches that his health denied him.

Tarbell opened the fridge door. “Coffee or juice?”

His father didn’t answer.

Tarbell made coffee and returned to the living room with two mugs. He set one on the lap tray on the wheelchair. He set his own down on the side table next to the sofa.

“You want the TV on?” he asked.

“If I wanted the fucking TV on, I’d put it on. I ain’t got much but I still got one good finger to press a button on the remote. See?” He shot Tarbell the bird to illustrate his point.

His father’s acting out was his way of compensating for his body’s failings. He could no longer throw a fist when his dinner was cold or backhand his son for losing a schoolyard brawl, but he could still hurl an insult and have it hit the mark every time. Tarbell put it down to lost pride. Once, his father had been breadwinner. He steered a family. His name meant something to the people who knew him. Now he elicited only pity. It couldn’t be a lot of fun pissing into a pan and having
your son wipe your ass when you didn’t make it to the toilet in time. So he let his dad exercise his one remaining skill, his foul mouth.

He lobbed a few more taunts Tarbell’s way. It looked like it was going to be a long Saturday with his father. Something had obviously pissed him off this week. Probably a doctor. Every time a doctor examined him, it resulted in having another of life’s pleasures excised. First it was the smokes, followed by the booze, then his favorite foods. And his invalid status prevented him from ignoring medical advice. He was at the mercy of others. Good. Some would call that karma. Tarbell called it payback.

He ignored the slurs. Gwen’s betrayal kept recurring to him like a hot spike through his thoughts. His threats should have put her in her place, but she’d gone running to her corporate mommy. He needed to up the ante and let her know what the price of disobedience was going to be.

His father’s laugh jerked him from his thoughts. “You’re broody today. Broody, broody, broody like a hen looking for its cock. Something’s happened to you, hasn’t it?”

His dad wanted a fight. Confrontations made the old man feel alive. He wouldn’t be drawn in. Not today.

“Someone screwed you over, didn’t they? I recognize that look of yours. You’ve had it since you were a kid. Some asshole knocks you down and you don’t get up and fight back. Instead, you skulk away with your tail between your legs and put that face on while inside that pea brain of yours you’re rewriting history where you do something about it.” He shook his head in disgust. “My son, the fucking pussy.”

Tarbell had the coffee mug in his hand. A faint tremor buzzed through his body as he fought to keep his temper. A bead of scalding coffee spilled over the edge and onto his hand. He ignored the pain.

But his father didn’t. His eyes lit up at the sight of the tremor and the spill.

“Christ, some son of mine you are. You embarrass
me. Do you know that? I have a reputation, and you don’t live up to it.”

Tarbell returned the coffee mug to the table.

“Look, even now, you don’t even say anything to me, a fucking invalid. You’re just like your mother. She wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Christ, it speaks.” Dennis Tarbell raised a hand to his ear. “Do I hear the sound of balls growing? Will wonders never cease? Got a news flash for you. You left it a little fucking late to act like a man.”

Rage was boiling up inside Tarbell, and he hated himself for it. His dad wanted this fight, and he was about to get it.

“So what happened? Someone call you a nasty name? Tell Papa all about it,” he said in a coochie-coo voice.

It would be so easy to tell him about Gwen. He’d even earn some points with his old man for knocking a broad about. Dennis would like knowing that the apple hadn’t fallen too far from the Tarbell tree. But, no, his father couldn’t have Gwen. She was his plaything. If he told his dad about what he’d done and what he planned to do, he’d claim it as his own. His sleep would be thick with dreams of Gwen and what he would do to her. His father had denied him so much over the years, and now Tarbell could deny him this pleasure. A smile twisted his mouth.

“You’d be proud of me, but you don’t deserve to hear the story. You haven’t behaved yourself,” he replied in the same babying voice.

Dennis’s face contorted into a snarl, and he hurled his coffee mug at Tarbell. Twenty years ago, there would have been some real heat behind the throw, but it fell well short in distance and accuracy. It struck the ground first before bouncing against the edge of the couch. Coffee slopped against Tarbell’s pant leg.

Whether the throw had been intentionally botched or not didn’t matter to Tarbell. The coffee soaking into his pants severed his last ounce of restraint. He leaped off the couch
and lunged for his father.

Something bordering on glee shone bright in Dennis’s eyes. He’d provoked a reaction he thought he controlled. He believed Tarbell would be upset and that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t like that anymore. He was different now. He grabbed the old man’s wheelchair.

“Oh, look at the big man,” Dennis said. “See him pick on someone who can’t fight back and slap a sick old man around.”

“It worked for you, didn’t it? A backhand for me. A kick in the guts for Mom.”

The glee turned to anger. “You two brought it upon yourselves. If you hadn’t pissed me off, I would have never laid a hand on either of you.”

Dennis grabbed the wheels on his wheelchair and pulled on them to steer himself away, but Tarbell held the chair firmly in place.

“Get your damn hands off my chair.”

“Make me.”

Dennis raised a hand to strike out. Tarbell blocked the weak attempt and slapped his father across the face. It wasn’t a hard slap, but it affected both of them. It changed a lifetime of abuse. The balance had shifted. Tarbell wondered if, for the first time, his father realized he was no longer the dominant male in his world. He hoped the hell so, but regardless, he felt like the dominant male at last. It failed to make up for all the years he didn’t stand up to his father or protect his mother, but it did fill him with a newfound power. Going after Gwen had opened the door, but he’d walked through it when he hit his father.

“Enjoy that, did you? Did your dick grow a couple of extra inches?”

His father was scrabbling for control. He wouldn’t give it to him.

“Would you like me to scream?” Dennis contorted his face
and let out a fake sob. “Would you like me to squirt out some tears? Do you expect me to beg you to stop the way you used to?”

“I don’t expect you to do anything.”

Dennis snorted. “You want an apology or something?”

“No. You wouldn’t mean it.”

“Damn right.”

“You’re an ungrateful son of a bitch,” said Tarbell in disgust.

Dennis snorted again. He tried to puff himself up to look bigger than he was, but his body was weak. “You expect me to be indebted to you because you keep me living in this lap of luxury?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’m not.”

It was a good front, but Tarbell could see that his father was scared. He knew his body had sold him out, but until now he had still had Tarbell to lord his power over. Now that was gone.

“You need to be taught a lesson in manners and respect,” Tarbell said.

Dennis laughed. Tarbell brought it to a swift end by grabbing the oxygen tube and bringing it in front of his father’s face. He folded the tube back on itself. The reaction was instantaneous. His father withered without the flow of oxygen. He reached for the tubing, but Tarbell slapped his hands out of the way.

“The lesson isn’t at an end yet. You need to understand your ability to continue living relies on my generosity. My money and my will keep you alive. Like oxygen, you’ll only notice when it disappears.”

The color drained from Dennis’s face. His mouth flapped open and closed like that of a hooked trout on a riverbank as he fought to suck in air.

“I can cut you off at a moment’s whim,” said Tarbell. “I’ll be honest with you, my whim isn’t in your favor right now.”

Fear burned white hot in
Dennis’s eyes. Tarbell had never seen his father scared. He drank the moment in until it left him giddy. At long last, his father knew what it was to be human. It was good he was learning it before his life ran out. Tarbell released the tubing.