The Professionals (37 page)

Windermere glanced at Stevens, who shrugged.

“Rialto’s tied in with the Bartholdi family,” said Hall, hopping like a first grader with a full bladder. “Sole survivor’s a kid named Paolo Vasquez. Miami guy. Tight with the boy Zeke, who’s tied in with the Bartholdis. Paolo’s a vegetable. Head smashed in with a pipe.”

“You said five bodies?” said Stevens. “I count three so far.”

“First let me say that everyone else on the scene caught serious lead. Multiple gunshot wounds from semiautomatic weaponry. The place looked like a war zone.”

Windermere frowned. “Anyways.”

“
Anyways
, found dead in the back of a vacant lot with about eight slugs in his body from a 9 mm machine gun was one Alessandro D’Antonio, also of the Bartholdi family. I think you guys know him.”

“They find the girl?” said Stevens. “Whittaker? She the fifth?”

Hall held up one finger. “Hold that thought. She’s not the body. They found her in an emergency room in downtown Cincy, totally unharmed. Yes, she was talking, and yes, I’ll fill you in in a second. But first, the final body.”

“Spill.”

“Ben Stirzaker.” Hall’s smile grew wider. “Also known as Mouse. Also known as Eugene Moy.”

“And about a hundred other aliases,” said Stevens. “Holy shit.”

“They were in Cincinnati,” said Windermere.

“D’Antonio must have met them with the girl and the goons. Tried to ambush them, but once again, those kids got the better of them.”

“Just barely. They lost Stirzaker. What the hell happened out there?”

“According to Whittaker, D’Antonio wanted to trade her life for the gang’s,” said Hall. “Said he’d let her go if they gave themselves up. Somehow the kids got their hands on some guns and blew the roof off the joint.”

Windermere and Stevens shared a look. “What else did she say?”

“Oh, here’s the kicker,” said Hall. “She said the survivors, Sawyer and Pender and the girl? Yeah. They’re coming to Detroit.”

C
hrist on a cracker,” said Windermere. “They’re going to try a jailbreak.”

Stevens watched the smile grow wide on his partner’s face. She looked like she wanted to hug him. Stevens wasn’t sure he shared her enthusiasm.

Pender and his gang were coming to Detroit. And they had guns. These kids were audacious. It could mean a bloodbath.

Windermere spun on her heels and started away from the interrogation room, headed for the elevators. “Let’s go, Stevens,” she said. “We’ve got plans to make.”

Hall watched her go. “What about the girl?”

“What about the girl?” said Windermere. “What do we need with her now?”

“She’ll make damn good bait,” said Stevens. “Those kids could have run for the border at any time. They could be home free. But they’re coming to Detroit to chase this girl instead.” He started after Windermere.

Hall took a step to follow. “What about the plea bargain?”

“Let the lawyers worry about it. We’re doing fine without her.”

Stevens caught up to Windermere at the elevators. She grinned at him. “You think we should tell her?” he asked her.

“About Stirzaker?”

Stevens nodded. “Might shock her into submission.”

“Pitch it like we’ve got to end the violence,” said Windermere. “Save them from themselves. Hall!”

Agent Hall appeared from around the corner. “Go tell the girl about Stirzaker,” she told him. “Tell her she could save her boyfriend from ending up the same way.”

“Will do,” said Hall. He turned to go.

“And Hall—” Windermere looked around. Grabbed a wastebasket and handed it to him. “Bring this along. It’s liable to get messy in there.”

The agents got off the elevator a couple floors up, Windermere still giddy, and made their way over to the makeshift office that was serving as de facto case headquarters for the duration of their stay. It was a tiny third-floor room, one hazy window looking out onto Michigan Avenue, barely enough space for one double-wide communal desk and two ancient computers. They’d plastered every available surface with case information; the place looked like the offices of a couple of sad-sack associate professors at some second-rate university. Home sweet home.

“So, what?” said Stevens when they’d reached their flimsy chairs. “You really think those kids are going to try and storm the jail?”

Windermere laughed. “Let them storm it. I
hope
that’s what they do. Then we just mop up the mess, nice and easy.”

“You sure?” said Stevens. “From the sounds of it, those kids can make one hell of a mess.”

“This is the FBI, Stevens,” said Windermere. “We specialize in big messes.”

Stevens thought about it. “Yeah, but if it comes down to a shoot-out, chances are they all die. And don’t you at least want to meet these guys?”

Windermere had picked up a pencil and was doodling, idly, on a photocopied Wanted poster. She shrugged. “What for?”

“We’ve been chasing them for weeks,” said Stevens. “They’ve pulled a shit ton of kidnapping jobs, and we might have never known it if they hadn’t killed Donald Beneteau.”

“You had them before Beneteau. You had them with Harper.”

“Yeah, maybe. But the trail would have gone pretty cold if they hadn’t shot up that mobster.”

“True,” said Windermere. “Okay. But I still don’t care if I meet them.”

Stevens peered into an old cup of coffee and frowned at its contents. “I want to know them,” he said. “I want to see how they compare in real life to the images in my head. I want to look at Arthur Pender just once and try and figure him out. I want to know
why
.”

Windermere drew a mustache on Arthur Pender’s Wanted photo. “The way this case has gone, Stevens, I’m going to guess you’ll get your chance to hear the why. Personally, I’d rather just see these kids locked up.”

“You finally getting sick of this?”

“Hell, no,” she said. “I’m having fun. I just think motive’s overrated. You get caught up in stuff like that you start forgetting about the crimes. You start rationalizing. We know who did it, and we know how. The fun’s not in the why. The fun’s in getting ahead of these kids, outsmarting them. Bringing them down and laughing as we lock them up.”

Stevens poured out the remains of his coffee. “Well,” he said. “Let’s hope we both get what we’re looking for.”

“We will,” she said. “Hall!”

A moment later, Agent Hall showed up in the doorway. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m here. What’s up?”

“You tell the girl?”

“I told her.”

“She puke?”

Hall shook his head. “No puke. She cried. Then she told her lawyer she was done talking.”

Windermere waved her hand. “We don’t need her. Tell us more about the Cincinnati angle. Give us all you got.”

“Okay,” said Hall. “I’ll give you the easy stuff first. They’re driving a late-model Ford Explorer with Florida license plates and a shot-out passenger window. I don’t have the tag number.”

“Hospital might.”

“Hospital don’t. The emergency room camera is from like 1988. Picture’s too fuzzy. But the truck’s dark green, if that helps.”

“Can’t hurt,” said Stevens. “What else?”

“Whittaker said they were coming up to Detroit to get Marie. Didn’t say how. But she said they had guns. Machine guns, lots of them.”

“So they’re coming in hot,” said Windermere. “Anything else?”

Hall nodded. “She said they stopped off at Amtrak before they dropped her off. They all came out with manila envelopes. I have no idea what that’s about.”

“Someone’s shipping them something,” said Windermere. “Money?”

“Passports,” said Stevens. “They’re getting ready to leave the country.” He turned to Hall. “There should be a fourth envelope at Cincinnati station with Ben Stirzaker’s name on it. See if you can get a hold of it and find out where it came from.”

“And let us know if this Whittaker girl gives up anything else,” said Windermere. “She’s probably got plenty of intel on this guy Zeke in Miami, so give racketeering a heads-up as well.”

“I’m on it.” Hall gave a mock salute and then disappeared. Windermere and Stevens watched him go.

“Kids,” said Windermere. “These FBI brats get younger every year.”

Stevens glanced at her. “I thought you were supposed to be the youth movement around here.”

Windermere punched him on the arm. “Thanks,” she said. “Guess I’m getting old before my time.”

She glanced down at Pender’s Wanted poster and shuffled it away. “Okay,” she said. “We need to put an APB out on that green Ford Explorer. Anything with Florida tags gets stopped. We need to double security around here, and we’ve got to get Pender’s and Sawyer’s pictures up on every street corner.” She stared across the desk at him. “If
those kids aren’t in Detroit already, they’re just about here. We’ve got to figure them out, and we’ve got to be ready for them.”

“Roger,” Stevens said, and he leaned back in his chair and stared out at the city. This is it, Pender, he thought. What are you going to do?

H
ey, Tessa? It’s me. It’s Matt.”

From across the room, Pender watched Sawyer cradle the phone. His friend’s laconic baritone was gone, replaced by the gentle tenor the big guy reserved for his sister and his grandmother. Or some semblance of it, anyway; the big guy was still speaking through broken teeth and split lips from the beating he’d taken in Cincinnati, and frustration showed on his face as he struggled to connect with the woman he loved most.

It was funny, Pender thought. Sawyer had never wanted a real girlfriend: he took women to bed with ease, but come morning they were invariably gone and forgotten. The guy loved his sister, was fiercely protective of her, and Pender had sometimes wondered if his friend was only looking for Tessa in the women he seduced and rejected.

“I know,” said Sawyer. “Tessa, I’m sorry I lied.”

Mouse used to mock Sawyer for the way his voice rose an octave or two on these long-distance phone calls, and Pender usually laughed along with him. Now, though, listening to Sawyer try to keep his voice steady, Pender didn’t find it funny anymore.

“No, I’m fine,” Sawyer said. “I just didn’t want you getting hurt.”

Sawyer glanced over at Pender, who raised an eyebrow in commiseration,
but Sawyer just frowned and turned away. Pender felt guilty for eavesdropping, and he turned on the television and muted the sound. He lay back on his bed and wondered who he would call when it was time to say good-bye.

He wondered what his parents would say if he tried to call them. Wondered what they’d thought when the FBI showed up at their door. Had they been surprised? Had they cared, even?

Marie was his real family. He’d been so consumed with planning and logistics that he hadn’t had time to think about her. Now, with the planning almost done, he yearned for her. He kind of liked missing her, he realized: it made him feel human, made him feel like they were doing the right thing.

Earlier in the evening Tiffany had gone out for food. She’d returned with a bag of cheap tacos and a copy of the
Free Press
, a big smile on her face. “I got us our target,” she said, pointing to an article below the fold and a picture of a balding white man in his mid-forties, a movie producer with a young family and a home in a tony Detroit suburb. His name was Jason Cardinal.

“Says here he banked fifteen million last year alone,” Sawyer read. “This cat is loaded.”

“His wife is twenty-three, and they already have two kids,” said Tiffany. “We could write our own check if we snatched his wife.”

Pender saw Haley Whittaker’s face again and he shook his head. “No women, no children.” From the start, he’d tried to rationalize the kidnappings, told himself the victims weren’t seriously affected, but one look at Haley’s face had shamed him into seeing the truth. One more job, he thought. I’ll be damned if we’re going to take a woman.

So Jason Cardinal became the final target. And now, holed up in another cheap dive, this one off I-94 just north of Detroit, Pender tried to put a plan together. It would be their most ambitious job yet, their most visible. The fame of the target and the demands they would make would mean exactly the kind of publicity Pender had tried to dodge from the outset.