Vanished (21 page)

58.

T
he Anchor Tavern was a dive bar’s dive bar a few blocks from Capitol Hill. There were dead animals on the wall. Wednesday was dollar-beer night, they had the best burgers in town, and they didn’t serve appletinis.

I sat for ten minutes in a red Naugahyde booth that was sticky and smelled sourly of spilled beer, waiting for a man named Neil Burris, a security officer with Paladin Worldwide.

I expected that in the time since I’d called him from the Albany airport, pretending to be Marty Masur, he’d done his due diligence. Which in his case probably meant not much more than asking around to find out what kind of money Stoddard Associates paid, then drooling when he found out.

Just when I was about to leave the bar, a compact, muscle-bound guy with ridiculously broad shoulders and a scruffy goatee approached my booth. He had the look of a tough guy gone soft. He wore a black nylon body-hugging muscle shirt that zipped up at the top. The point was probably to show off his shredded biceps and pecs, but it had the unfortunate side effect of displaying his muffin top.

“
Hola,
” he said. He didn’t even try to make it sound like Spanish. He reached his hand across the table and gave me a bone-crushing shake. “Neil Burris.”

“Marty Masur,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

“Real sorry I’m late. Couldn’t find parking.”

“It’s bad around here,” I said.

He slid into the booth across from me. Looked at me for a long moment. “Funny,” he said. “You don’t look like your picture.”

“I’ve been working out.”

He stared a little longer, then smiled slowly. His teeth were small and pointed and discolored. The brown was probably from chewing tobacco. “Listen, man,” he said. “This is, like, between us, right? I don’t want—”

“You don’t want anyone at Paladin to know we’re talking. Gotcha. We don’t either.”

“Good.”

I signaled for the waitress. “Koblenz won’t let you go without a fight, what I hear.”

“Well . . .” Neil said with a shrug and a slow, embarrassed smile.

“I mean, it
is
Koblenz who’s the real power there, right? Not Allen Granger?”

“Never met Granger, you wanna know the truth. He kinda keeps to himself down there in Georgia. Like a hermit or something. No one ever sees him.”

“Why, do you figure?”

His eyes slid from side to side, and he leaned closer. “What I hear, there’s guys who want to kill him.”

“I don’t get it. He runs the world’s largest private army. He’s got all the guards he needs, right?”

“Doesn’t help if the guys who wanna wax you work for you.”

“What do you mean?”

He nodded. “Oh yeah. For real. Remember a couple years back when there was that big mess over in Baghdad, eight or ten towel heads got shot, right? Civilians? Coupla Paladin guys got some serious heat for that.”

I vaguely remembered. Some Paladin security guards had fired at Iraqi civilians and killed them. “The victims’ families filed a lawsuit in U.S. courts, wasn’t that it?”

“Yeah. Screwed up big-time, man. Pentagon was threatening not to renew our contract, so Granger handed over the guys.”

“Handed over?”

“He coulda fought it if he wanted. But he made some deal with the government. Like, he said these guys are just bad apples, you know? Take ’em and do whatever, and that kinda crap won’t happen again. Well, a lotta Paladin guys just went whacko. We figured they’d always protect us, something bad happens. Like always.” He shook his head. “Way I heard it, some buddies of those guys, working Paladin security down in Georgia, tried to off Granger.”

“Off him? Like, kill him?”

“I don’t know, man. Just what I hear. Screwed up, huh?”

The waitress, a pretty young girl with spiky blond hair and multiple piercings in her earlobes, took our order. Burris introduced himself and attempted to flirt with her, but without success. Maybe it was the name. “Neil” is a perfectly good name, but not for a tough guy. He probably wished his name were Bruno or Butch or at least Jack.

“So here’s the deal, Neil,” I said. “Old Man Stoddard wants to expand. Build the brand. He wants to get into the Paladin business, and he’s looking for someone to spearhead that effort.”

“Spearhead it,” Burris said.

“Set it up for us. Means we need someone who knows the lay of the land.”

“The lay of the land,” Burris repeated. He was looking ner vous. I could almost see the thought balloon floating above his head, as if he were a cartoon character:
You got the wrong guy. I’m just muscle. I don’t know that stuff.

But he didn’t want to miss out on a chance like this. So maybe he wasn’t qualified. Let the buyer beware.

I went on, “Business like this, you got one main customer, right? The U.S. government.”

“Right.”

“You gotta know who the players are. How to approach them. Know what I’m saying?”

He nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Gotta know the right palms to grease, you know? The old baksheesh.” I rubbed my fingers together to underscore the point.

“Speaking of which, you know, Paladin pays me in cash.”

“Cash? You serious? All you guys?”

“My guess, they don’t want records all over the place. Cash doesn’t leave a trail.”

“Cash? For real?”

“Not all of us. I don’t know, I think it has to do with, like, the fact that we’re independent contractors, not employees. I always figured it was some kinda scam, some way for them to avoid paying taxes, but I don’t ask too many questions. I like cash.”

“Can’t blame you.”

“That a problem for you?”

“I’m sure anything can be arranged,” I said.

A couple of minutes later, the spiky-haired waitress set two draft beers on the table in front of us. Budweisers. Thin and watery and almost flavorless, just the way I liked them.

We toasted each other, and I said, in a confiding tone, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but Jay Stoddard’s real desperate to get into this business, and soon. That means, if you can show me a sample of the wares, I can probably hold him up for a lot more than I told you on the phone. I mean, we might not be able to pay you in cash. Maybe, maybe not. But we’re talking three-quarters of a mil to start. Plus stock options.”

He was in midswallow, and some of the beer must have gone down the wrong way, because he started coughing, and his face turned red. He held up his palm to let me know he was okay, or maybe to tell me to hold on a minute. When he finally stopped coughing, he said, “I’m at your service, uh, Marty.”

59.

S
o what kind of sample you guys looking for?” Burris said.

“Names, mostly. Something I can take back to Stoddard so he can feel confident you know who the real players are.” I smiled. “See, you don’t need to do a résumé. All you need is a name or two.”

“I could probably find out,” he said.

“You don’t know?”

Hastily, he said, “I’m kinda like—I like to leave that kinda stuff to others, you know? But I can ask around.”

“Sounds like you’re out of the loop.”

“Nah, nah, it’s not like that. I just focus on other stuff, mostly.” He was making it up and not doing a particularly convincing job of it. He didn’t know.

I sidled out of the booth and made to stand up. I threw down a twenty. “Beer’s on me, Neil. Sorry I wasted your time.”

He reached out, grabbed me by the elbow. “Slow down, there. I can find out anything for you.” He waved me close. “Like, there’s all kinds of dirt.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Seriously. I can ask around,” he said.

“Ask around?” I said. “Come on, man. Anyone can ask around.”

Burris shook his head emphatically. “Not if you want the good stuff. The serious, secret stuff—that’s real protected, like.”

“Protected,” I scoffed.

“For real.” He lowered his voice still more. “Koblenz keeps this, like, smart card in his office safe. He uses it to get onto the secure part of the network, so he can make payments and transfers and so on.”

I was intrigued, but I looked both bored and skeptical. “Yeah, every major corporation gives those out. It’s a key fob—a secure hardware card that generates random one-time passwords you type in. Big deal.”

“No. No. I’m not talking about those. This is a smart card with a cryptochip-thingy embedded in it. It’s like a whole new generation. Like superduper high-tech. I heard about it. Developed by the NSA. No one else in the private sector has it yet.”

“So, Neil,” I said, “can you get this for me? As a sample?”

“I think so. I might be able to. His secretary has the combination to his safe—I think I know where she keeps it.”

I looked away. I couldn’t have looked less interested. “Uh-huh.”

“I’m pretty sure I can,” Burris said, handing me back my twenty. “Oh, and hey—beer’s on me. Really.”

He slapped down a crisp new one-hundred-dollar bill.

I looked at it, couldn’t help glancing at the serial number on the front. It began with DB. Just like the ones in the shipment I’d recovered outside Los Angeles.

Burris probably figured I’d be impressed he had hundred-dollar bills to throw around. “Like I told you,” he said. “I get paid in cash.”

His cell phone rang, and he glanced down at it. “Gotta get it,” he told me. “The boss.” He picked it up, and said, “Yes, Carl.”

I stood up, gave him an abrupt wave. Pantomimed
we’ll talk
by making a little phone symbol out of my left hand and holding it to my cheek.

He gave me a thumbs-up.

I fought my way through the bar, twisting and turning and squeezing between pods of very different types of patrons: neighborhood customers in HVAC uniforms with name patches sewn on, and Hill rats in charcoal suits from the Men’s Wearhouse, letting off steam after a long day of making photocopies and kissing butt in some minor congressman’s office.

As I stepped out of the bar and into the refreshing cool air, I noticed a commotion behind me. Neil Burris was bulldozing a path through the crowd, elbowing people aside.

“Hey,” he said, following me out onto the street. “You’re not Marty Masur.”

“No?” A couple of motorcycles roared by.

Burris drew so close to me I could smell his foul breath. “You’re that guy’s brother,” he said. “You’re Nick Heller.”

60.

C
ars whooshed by. Somewhere nearby a dog was barking. A couple of girls in halter tops were smoking, which they couldn’t do inside the Anchor. A gang of overgrown frat boys were jeering, and one of them was pissing in the alley next to the bar. The restrooms there were so malodorous that no one ever used them more than once.

Somehow Carl Koblenz had learned that I was meeting with Burris. I had no idea how, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.

“And I thought we looked nothing alike,” I said.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Where is he, Neil?” A shot in the dark. Maybe he knew; maybe he didn’t.

Burris answered with an obscenity, and suddenly he lunged at me. I saw him move a split second too late. He slammed me against the side of a building, cracking my head hard against the brick. With his right hand, he clamped my throat just below the Adam’s apple and pincered hard. He was strong, even stronger than I expected, and he put his whole overdeveloped body into it. At the same time, he pinioned my left arm with his right shoulder and grabbed my right hand, just above the wrist, and jammed his right knee into the inside of my leg.

Now I knew for sure he’d really been a Navy SEAL. He was doing everything by the book.

Which was good, actually.

His face was so close to mine that I could feel the bristles of his goatee. “Your brother . . .” he said, breathing hard, “wasn’t as smart as he thought.” His face was red with exertion, and he sounded short of breath. “He thought he could rip us off and get away with it. Not gonna happen.” Flecks of saliva sprayed my eyes.

Then I relaxed my shoulders and contracted my neck to make it hard for him. I stared back into his adrenaline-crazed eyes. Blinked slowly. Said nothing.

He expected me to fight back. He didn’t expect me to do nothing, so that’s what I did. Nothing.

For a few seconds, anyway.

“Your brother ticked off some very powerful people. He got too greedy. Went too far. So get this straight, Heller. Anything your brother left behind—like files or documents or
anything
—you’re gonna want to share it with us. You hold back, and there’s going to be collateral damage. I’m talking family members. You decide if it’s worth it. Believe me, you don’t want to make an enemy out of us.”

He had that triumphant look of someone who knew he’d overpowered his opponent. He was intoxicated with confidence.

I shot my left hand out and jammed it against his right shoulder, which momentarily eased his hold on my throat, while I grabbed his right hand with my left and twisted his wrist clockwise. He let out a roar, scrambled his feet around to try to gain some purchase, but I levered his arm down and around, sending him sprawling to the gravel-strewn pavement.

I had his right hand in both of mine, the fingers pulled back so far that he only had to move too suddenly and his wrist would snap. He was helpless, and he knew it. But he was too stupid, and too truculent. He tried to swing his legs around, so I kneed him in the face—harder than I intended to, actually. He roared, and I heard something snap, and I knew that I’d broken his nose, perhaps even a cheekbone as well. Blood gushed down the lower part of his face.

“Was that a threat?” I said. “Because I really hate threats.”

He bellowed, and I torqued his wrist around some more just to remind him of the price of any further struggle. He let loose with a string of obscenities, but his heart wasn’t in it, I didn’t think. He didn’t seem to have much energy anymore.

Breathing thickly through the blood in his mouth, he said something about what he planned to do to Lauren.

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Not with only one hand.”

I grasped his right hand by the fingers and pulled them all the way back. His wrist made a muted
snick
noise when it broke, not the loud snap I expected. He let out a loud, agonized scream. His right hand—his gun hand, I assumed—dangled uselessly, like a marionette off its strings.

Burris summoned a final burst of strength, tried to rear up, but I kneed him in the chest, heard a few ribs crack. His head snapped backwards, reflexively, slamming into the pavement.

He went
uhhh,
looked dazed. All the wind went out of him.

I stood up, brushed the dirt and debris from my pants, surveyed the damage.

His eyes were going in and out of focus. He was hovering somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness. His head had collided with the asphalt pretty hard.

“Hey, Neil,” I said.

His eyes shifted slightly in my direction. I doubted he could see me very clearly, but I was sure he could hear me.

He said nothing.

I leaned over him, jamming my knee into his solar plexus, and said softly, “What do you know about my brother?”

He blinked, once. He grunted, barely audibly, the faintest indication that he was listening to me, though he couldn’t form words. A small bubble of blood formed at the corner of his lips.

I knew I wasn’t going to get an answer out of him even if he knew anything.

I’m not one of those guys who get a perverse plea sure from beating people up. Often it makes me feel guilty. But inflicting pain on Neil Burris, I have to admit, was not entirely unpleasurable.

My satisfaction faded somewhat a few minutes later, when I crossed the street and found the Defender with a deep white gouge running across the driver’s side door all the way to the rear quarter panel. It looked like someone had keyed it, but with a screwdriver. Maybe some drunken frat kid.

It was annoying, but I had larger concerns. I took out my phone and dialed the number that Woody the cargo guy had given me in L.A. The number that belonged to Carl Koblenz.

I got a generic phone-company female voice telling me the number I’d just called, and after the tone I left a message for Carl Koblenz.

As I was finishing my message, another call was coming in. The caller ID showed “private,” but I picked it up anyway.

It was Frank Montello. My information broker. “That phone number your father called from prison?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“It’s a prepaid disposable cell phone. Bought with cash, I bet.”

Very good, Roger,
I thought. I’d expect nothing less. “Does the cell provider have billing records?”

“What do they need billing records for? It’s prepaid, right? Ten bucks, twenty, fifty—whatever. They don’t need to keep track of the calls.”

“They do sometimes. All I want to know is where Roger was when he received a collect call from my father.”

“No go. These cheapo phones don’t have GPS locator chips in them. Most don’t. Anyway, this one didn’t.”

“What about the location of the cell tower where the phone was when the call came in.”

“They don’t record that data, not on these disposable phones. I get a feeling your brother’s going to a lot of trouble to conceal his location.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “So how about one more job?”