Greed: A Detective John Lynch Thriller (21 page)

“What I want,” Hernandez told them, “is to spend some time with this guy. So we go up to his place, show him he got no chance. Then we call Julio, he pulls up, and we walk the fucker out.”

Seephus nodded. “What if he don’t play, though?”

Hernandez shrugged. “Time with him is what I want. What I need is the fucker dead. He don’t play, we put his ass down.”

CHAPTER 46

 

Bobby Lee’s brain was racing, trying to think of something he could give this guy that might keep him alive.

Bobby’d been taking a little break. He’d made a good chunk running a quick background check. It was a nice day out, and he’d run up to that Italian joint on Washington, one that made the good sammies. Got himself a beef-and-pepper combo he’d brought back to his place. Figured he’d sit out on the patio in back, watch the whiteys golf for a bit.

Which was when the skinny guy in the linen sport coat walked around the corner of his place, a .22 along his leg with a silencer on it, asking if they could step inside and have a word.

Now he was in his boxers, duct-taped to his office chair, blood pooling on the floor, and his left foot hurting like hell where the guy had cut off his little toe with a pair of pruning shears.

“Man, makes no difference if I tell you anything, you still gonna fucking kill me,” said Lee.

“You know that’s not true,” said Husam al Din.

“You already cut off my fucking toe. Whaddya mean I know that’s not true?”

 

Husam sighed. Americans. No experience with this sort of thing, he supposed. “Precisely because I cut off your toe. The psychological impact of a finger is far greater – and the nerves in the fingers are more sensitive. But you need your fingers to do your work. And my employer values your work. So I will leave you alive and relatively intact if you give me that option.”

Husam was actually a little surprised. He didn’t have faith in MOIS to do much besides identify his targets and wire his fee. But he knew the Mafia people who had tried to kill Hardin must have gotten intel from the same source he had. They, too, had found Hardin’s car. So he had called MOIS and asked them to find the source. They’d gone back through their middle man; someone had hacked through some complex security and tracked down the IP address. And here he was.

“Employers?” Lee blurted. “Who you working for, man? Let’s get ’em on the phone, sort this out.”

Husam shook his head. “You don’t deal with them directly.”

“OK, OK,” Lee said, thinking maybe he’d get out of this just down a toe. “Just tell me what you need.”

“I need to know everything you have given out on Nick Hardin, and everyone you have given it to.”

Lee quivered. “Jesus, buddy, you gotta know I can’t be ratting out people like that, or they’ll be by, start cutting parts off, too. I mean, whoever your guy is, you think he wants me telling anybody who shows up what he got?”

Husam al Din reached down and slid the blade of the shears around the fourth toe on Lee’s left foot.

“Fuck you doing, man?” Lee shouted. “You don’t gotta… JESUSFUCKINGCHRIST!”

Husam cut off the toe. These were fine shears. He’d bought them at the Home Depot store on Route 59 and they cut through the bone with almost no resistance at all. He would have to pack them when he left. He liked these shears.

“I’m not negotiating,” said Husam. “You can give me answers or body parts. And I have done this sort of thing before, many times. I know the people who will tell me what I need and those who won’t. You already know you are going to tell me. You are just wasting toes.”

Lee spilled – about Corsco, about Hernandez, all of it.

“But you don’t know where Hardin is now?” Husam said, leaning forward a little, opening the shears.

“NO! Man. Fuck no. I mean, I told you. My main gig is Chicago, right? Got eyeballs on everybody down there. Out here? I mean, I can hack systems and shit, been running checks on his Hardin ID, on that Fox ID he used. But I got nothing.”

“All right,” said Husam, fitting the shears around the next toe.

“FUCKFUCKFUCK! Hey, wait! One more thing. I mean probably nothing, right? But I got a call from Hernandez’s guy like an hour back, wanted me to run a check on an address. Turned out to be some chick who works for the DEA.I mean, I didn’t tell you cause I figure that’s just day-to-day stuff for him, nothing to do with Hardin that I can see, but I mean that’s something, right? I’m not holding back on you here.”

Husam pulled the shears away from Lee’s foot, sliced the tape off Lee’s wrists, and turned the chair toward the computer terminal on the desk.

“Print out that address.”

Lee clacked away at the keys for a moment. A printer to the left started spitting out a sheet.

Husam al Din shot Lee three times through the back of the head, close enough that one of the slugs punched through, coming out Lee’s eye socket, blowing some gore onto the monitor. Amazing what these Americans would believe. He pulled another of the disposable cell phones from his pocket and called a number in Tokyo.

“What do you need?” Al Din asked.

“Are you at the terminal?” answered the voice on the other end.

“Yes.”

“Good. Sit down. This will take a few minutes…”

Al Din followed the instructions from the hacker – not the MOIS middleman, but his own contact, one he had used before. After several minutes of entering commands, his contact told him he had what he needed – he could access the Chicago system remotely now. Al Din alone would have access to the surveillance system – not the Mexicans, not the Italians, and not his friends in Tehran. If knowledge was power, sometimes you became more powerful not by learning something yourself but instead by insuring the ignorance of your enemies.

“This system,” al Din asked, “you can use it to find specific people?”

“Maybe,” said the voice on the phone. “If you’ve got a good photo and you can narrow down the locations I have to search.”

“I’m texting you a picture,” said al Din. “He would be in a local hotel.”

“OK,” said the voice. “If he’s in a hotel covered by the cameras, I’ll know in a few hours.”

Al Din ended the call, pulled up the picture he needed on his phone and sent it to his contact. The Stein murder, the stolen diamond shipment, these things would not escape the notice of Western intelligence agencies. And the size of the shipment would raise alarm. Mossad, they would know about the shipment, and they would want al Din’s head for Stein. They weren’t beyond operating in the US on their own, but most likely they would work through channels. Their relationship with Washington was too important to them. But how would the US react? Officially? Or had they sent Munroe?

If this was being pursued through normal channels – the theft of the shipment noted, the intel routed to Langley for threat assessment, notices forwarded to CIA residents in the usual places, and then to the FBI for domestic processing, perhaps some coordination with local authorities regarding Stein – then it was just business as usual. The CIA was very good at what it did, but it was bureaucratic, which meant it moved slowly and, to anyone who had dodged them before, somewhat predictably.

But if they had sent Munroe, that was another thing entirely. In al Din’s twenty years playing this game, Munroe was the only man who had ever gotten close to him – and he’d done it twice. Al Din’s Japanese friend would run the picture, then al Din would know.

Al Din grabbed the sheet from Lee’s printer. The address was in Downers Grove, the next town east and on his way back to the hotel. Worth a stop.

CHAPTER 47

 

Seephus Jones would get his payday. If you want to keep the troops motivated, they have to know that you will hold up your end. But Hernandez hadn’t been to war with Jones. He didn’t want any second-string talent fucking this up. Julio, Roberto, Miko, Gomez, they’d all shed blood for Hernandez before, theirs and others.

“Jones, you take the corner here,” Hernandez said as they got to the side of the condo building. “Watch the garage, watch the side door. You see that fuck coming out, you put him down and call me. You got it?”

Jones nodded, a little relief on his face, the kid not ready for combat. Hernandez knew he’d made the right call.

The condo was on the second floor. Guns out now, Hernandez and Miko took the elevator; Gomez and Roberto took the stairs, just in case. Middle of the day, the building was quiet.

 

Husam al Din was sitting in the easy chair in the living room of the woman’s condo. He had been there for almost twenty minutes. When he arrived, he had knocked on the door, double-checked the paper he had taken from Lee.2B. He had the right door. The hallway was empty, so he stood and listened for a few minutes. He knew what an empty room sounded like. The woman was a member of the American drug police, so she would be concerned with security. It took a few minutes with the picks. He took the .22 from under his jacket and eased the door open, waiting another moment for any reaction. None. He stepped in and looked at the back of the door. There was a thumb lock she could throw when she was inside, one no one could access from the hall. That’s when he knew for sure no one was home. She would lock that if she were here. He shut the door. He searched the rooms briefly to see if there was anything to learn. Then he sat to wait for the woman to return. Perhaps more to learn that way. He had the shears and the duct tape in the messenger bag on the floor next to him.

 

Roberto and Gomez went up the stairs quickly, Gomez moving into the hall first, then motioning for Roberto. The stairs came out one door away from 2B.The elevator was at the far end of the hall. They would have to wait a moment.

 

Hardin and Wilson watched from a table in the window of the coffee shop, saw Hernandez’s group come up Warren. Hernandez left the scrawny kid in the red polo shirt at the corner – the same kid Hardin had seen hanging around the last few hours, eyeballing the condo.

“Looks like you were right,” said Wilson.

“Paranoia pays,” said Hardin. “You see the Escalade anywhere?” He’d watched the black SUV turn off of Main, the kid following it down to the alley.

Wilson shook her head.

“So there could be another guy or two we can’t see,” Hardin said.

“Yeah,” said Wilson

“Sorry,” he said.

“For what?” she asked.

“I shouldn’t have been on the balcony. Dumb move.”

“Fuck that,” she said. “Water under the bridge.”

 

Hernandez’s cell buzzed again, then the ping that told him he had a text. It had buzzed a couple times as he walked up the street, but he wasn’t taking calls right now. Only a few people would text him, though. It would be a second before the elevator got there. He checked his screen.

OWNER OF 2B IS A DEA AGENT

Shit. A trap? They bring this Hardin in to set him up? He hit the speed dial for Gomez. No answer. He was about to call Roberto when he heard the gunfire upstairs. He called Julio instead, yanked Miko out of the elevator, and headed for the door.

 

Husam al Din had waited long enough. There were very few papers in the apartment, nothing that told him anything. A few pictures, the same attractive woman in several of them, must be the drug agent. The woman would probably not be home until the end of the workday, and the building would be more crowded then. Probably not the time to have the kind of discussion he would need. He would come back later, pick up her trail, and find an opportunity. He opened the door to leave.

 

Roberto was looking down the hall toward the elevator when he heard the door to 2B open behind him. He and Gomez both brought up their 9mms.But it wasn’t Hardin, and it wasn’t the woman. It was a slight man, a bag slung across his back. They paused.

The man did not. He dove to the floor in almost a somersault, right between Roberto and Gomez.

Gomez snapped off a shot, missing the rolling man, hitting Roberto in the foot.

The man had a gun out now from inside his coat.

Roberto couldn’t stand on the damaged foot, but he knew if he went down he died. He leaned back against the wall, weight on his good foot, and fired at the rolling man. But the man never stopped to aim his weapon. He just bounced off the far wall and rolled again, back across the hall.

Roberto’s shot punched into the drywall while the man snapped a couple of rounds into Gomez’s abdomen. Gomez stopped, looking down at himself like he was surprised he wasn’t dead. Then he started to swing his gun back toward the rolling man.

The man kicked into Roberto’s bad foot, the pain fogging Roberto’s vision as he fired again. The round punched through the carpet, hit the concrete, and whined down the hallway, Roberto tottering away from the wall, between the man and Gomez. The man fired again, one, two, three shots, firing from the floor almost vertically up into Roberto – one of the rounds tearing into his groin, two into his stomach, burning upward.

Roberto went down, and the man shot Gomez twice in the forehead.

Down the hall, an old lady opened her door, stuck her head out. Al Din’s gun flashed up…

 

Hardin and Wilson looked up simultaneously. Gunfire.

“Your place?” Hardin asked.

“Has to be,” she said.

Across the street, Red Shirt was looking up at the building, then looking down the street, then pulling out a cell.

“Not gonna be any good way for you to explain this,” Hardin said.

“I know,” said Wilson. “I think I just became a person of interest.”

“Guess we should go,” he said.

Hardin had left the black Honda he bought in Aurora a couple blocks north of the tracks. They headed for that.

As they turned up the sidewalk, tires squealed behind them. The black Escalade spun off Warren and up Main, the driver looking over and seeing Hardin, veering toward them. Hardin shoved Wilson up the street, behind a parked car, and pulled one of the 9mms he’d taken from the Italians. He braced his feet, sighted carefully down the barrel, and put six shots in a cluster just above the steering wheel. The engine stopped racing as the driver’s foot left the gas, and the car straightened out a little, slowing, crunching into the corner of the parked car next to Wilson.