The Professionals (2 page)

“How much do you want?”

“Then you’re going to tell her she can have you back tomorrow. Good as new. All we want is a small finder’s fee.”

“How much, damn it?” said Warner.

“Sixty grand, Marty,” said the man. “Unmarked twenties. We need it within twenty-four hours. Tell your wife she’ll get the drop details once she’s secured the money.”

“Sixty thousand dollars?” said Warner. “That’s absurd. I expensed more than sixty grand last year alone.”

“We know that,” said the man. “And we know you made a million dollars last year speculating on oil futures, yeah? Sixty grand should be a cinch.”

Warner paused. “How do you know this stuff?”

“We did our research, Marty.” He could feel someone beside him, punching numbers into the phone. “Now, go ahead and make that call.”

A
rthur Pender stared out the window of the restaurant, watching cars pull in and out of the parking lot as the night settled in beyond. Another perfect score, he thought. This is easier than flipping burgers.

Sawyer had purchased the van in Kansas City on Monday, the day after LaSalle’s wife paid his ransom. The four of them had driven up to Chicagoland that night, arriving in Highland Park around four in the morning. They found a cheap motel by the highway and turned in at dawn. For Pender, it was the first time he’d slept, really slept, in a week.

Tuesday was decompression day. Mouse and Sawyer rented a little Toyota, headed into Chicago, caught a Blackhawks game. Pender and Marie hit Lake Michigan. Took a long walk. Ate a nice dinner. Got a bit drunk and made the best of their alone time.

They spent Wednesday doing preliminary intel, scoping out Warner, getting a feel for his routine. Confirming travel times. Double-checking Mouse’s computer work with practice and old-fashioned observation.

Thursday: dress rehearsal. Everyone a bit antsy. Fraying tempers. Everything nailed down and nothing to do. Sawyer and Mouse fighting over the remote. Marie withdrawn, worried.

Friday was D-day. Pender didn’t sleep much, as usual. Game day always gave him a rush. Like waiting for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

He kept Marie awake with his tossing and turning and finally left her around three in the morning, headed to Sawyer and Mouse’s room. Found them watching action movies on cable. Watched for a while and fell asleep in an easy chair.

They spent the morning doing final recon work. Parked the van beside Warner’s Lexus in the Metra lot, babysat Leanne Warner all day in the Toyota, and then headed back to the motel. The hostage room all set up. Marie locked in the bathroom, rehearsing her lines in the mirror. Sawyer taking a nap and Mouse watching TV. Loose.

They drove back to the parking lot in the late afternoon. Pender and Sawyer in the van. Mouse in the Toyota. Marie on the platform. Everybody focused. Everybody calm.

Ten to seven. The train arrived. Marie found Warner on the platform. Followed him out into the parking lot. Pender phoned Mouse and gave him the all clear. Mouse flashed the high beams at Marie. Point of no return. No quitting now. Go go go.

It played exactly as they drew it up. They snagged Warner no problem, got him back to the motel, made the pitch.

Warner called his wife. Calmed down a little. What’s sixty grand to this guy? Probably kept that kind of change in a jam jar in his basement. Walking-around money.

Leanne Warner had no trouble producing the ransom. Had the money by Saturday afternoon with plenty of time to spare. No police. Mouse tailed her in the Toyota to be sure.

She drove a black Lincoln Navigator, and came alone, as instructed. Left the money in a duffel bag at the drop site and parked nearby to wait.

Mouse scoped the scene in the Toyota and phoned in the all clear. Sawyer and Pender drove up in the van, sunglasses on and hats pulled low. Pender grabbed the cash bag. Checked it, counted it, found it clean. All glorious, well-used twenties. Kicked Warner from the van blindfolded. Slid the door shut behind him and drove off into traffic.

Perfect execution.

Leanne Warner was good with instructions. She didn’t try to follow. According to Mouse, she played the usual tune: ran to her husband, hugged him, took off the blindfold, tearful reunion. Then they drove home.

“No cops,” Pender warned them both. “Even after it’s over. We’ll be watching the house. You call the cops, and we come for the kids.”

They divvied up the money in Racine, just across the state line. Pender set aside twenty thousand for expenses: van, rental car, cell phones, motel, food, and gas. That left forty thousand for the team. Ten thousand apiece. Even split. Ten thousand for the Warner job and ten thousand from Kansas City made twenty for the month. Add it to the twenty-five or so from the September jobs and you had the makings of a decent autumn.

They stripped the van clean and abandoned it behind a warehouse in Waukegan. Pender and Sawyer paid cash for a GMC Savana on lease return at a used-car dealership in Lake Forest, and they threw the burner phones and the old plates into Lake Michigan when they dropped off the rental car.

Now they sat in a Denny’s in Racine, trying to figure the next move. “We could do Milwaukee next week,” Mouse was saying. “Won’t take much looking to find something suitable.”

“Milwaukee’s too close,” said Pender. “We pull a job in Wisconsin, there’s a chance someone catches on. I was thinking Minneapolis. Quick, before it gets too cold. Then down to Detroit and then south to the sunny stuff.”

“I like that,” said Marie. “Can we do Florida?”

“Disney World,” said Mouse.

“Disney World,” said Pender. “You want to kidnap Mickey Mouse?”

“You know he’s filthy rich,” said Mouse. “Minnie pays the ransom and we’re set for life.”

Pender laughed. “How about it, Sawyer? Florida?”

Sawyer looked up from his Grand Slam breakfast. He nodded. “Would be nice to try some surfing.”

“Cheers to that,” said Mouse, lifting his glass. They drank to the plan and then ate in silence, reflecting on the success of the job, and when the plates had been cleared and the bill was on the table, Pender cleared his throat. “All right,” he said. “Sawyer and Mouse, you guys drive up to Minnesota tonight. Grab a motel and try and find someone for us to key on.”

Pender smiled at Marie. “We’ll take the train, you and me. These guys can pick us up at the station tomorrow.” He pulled out his wallet and put cash on the bill. “Great work, everyone,” he said. “See you in Minnesota.”

K
irk Stevens stared down at the body on the pavement and shivered. He blew on his hands and rubbed them together and looked back longingly at his Cherokee, parked some thirty yards back in the shadows. He shivered again and looked down at the body, and then into the yawning cab of the Peterbilt parked behind.

The sheriff’s deputy glanced into the cab and then looked back at Stevens. He was a young guy, buzz-cut and brash. “Don’t know why they had to call you all the way out here,” he said, frowning. “Not like we can’t solve a murder or nothing.”

Stevens crouched down to get a closer look at the body. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

The dead man was barely more than a kid himself. He wore a Twins hat cocked sideways and a big camouflage parka, and his 9 mm pistol lay on the pavement where it had scattered off behind him. His chest was a mess of blood and goose down and buckshot.

The deputy leaned against the cab of the Peterbilt. He looked down at Stevens. “So what do you think happened?” he said.

Stevens glanced up at him, and then at the truck, lit up in the blue-and-red glow of the deputy’s patrol car lights. Besides the truck and the
patrol car and Stevens’s old Cherokee, the rest stop was deserted, though through the trees Stevens could trace the lights of the cars headed north to St. Paul on Interstate 35.

The cab door was open. The dead kid had eaten a hot buckshot dinner. The truck driver was nowhere to be found.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” the deputy said. “This yo tried to hijack the truck. Driver let him have it. Then he panicked and ran. Stole the yo’s car and he vanished. Sound good?”

Stevens looked up at him. “Maybe,” he said.

The deputy snorted. “Sounds better than good. This is open-and-shut, is what it is. No reason to get the BCA out here.”

No argument there, Stevens thought, feeling his muscles groan as he pulled himself to his feet. He’d been watching a movie—a good movie for once—with Nancy and the kids when the call came down the line. Stevens was next up on the rotation, and for his luck he’d earned a sixty-mile drive and a smart-ass rookie companion out in the bitter air of the Minnesota hinterlands, any hope of rest or relaxation now gone.

Life with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Stevens had been a city cop, once, fifteen years ago now. Five years in Duluth. Five years was enough. He’d gotten sick of the murders and the drug grabs and the cheap dollar-store robberies, the boring sawed-off crimes of desperation. A job came up at the BCA and he took it, and the requisite move to St. Paul, and had never regretted the decision. These days, however, life with the state’s police force seemed to consist mainly of paperwork and whodunit homicides, another small town with another new body, a rate of about a couple per month.

Robberies gone bad, drug deals gone bad, marital squabbles gone bad. It wasn’t exactly world-changing stuff.

Stevens looked around at the crime scene. The cab of the big truck was riddled with holes, and the mirror hung half shot off its stanchion. Stevens walked around the back of the truck to where the rear door had been wrenched open. The cargo inside—a mountain of DVD
players in slim cardboard boxes—was strewn haphazardly across the floor of the trailer. He peered in and kept walking.

He walked alongside the rig to the passenger-side door. The truck was parked close to the trees, and the light from the trooper’s blue-and-reds didn’t quite permeate. Stevens squinted in the darkness at the door. He reached out and touched it and felt the door give. He let it go and it swung back, a half inch or so open.

Stevens called out to the deputy, who came around with a flashlight. He held the light up to Stevens and then at the door. “Shit,” he said. “What does this mean?”

Stevens looked down at the pavement leading up to the brush. “Shine a light down there,” he said, and the deputy obliged him.

“Shit,” said the deputy.

“Sure looks like blood,” said Stevens. He glanced into the brush. In the dim light, he could just make out an impromptu path. “Follow me with that light.”

They found the truck driver about fifteen feet in, the shotgun by his side and a bullet hole in his head. Stevens looked back at the deputy. “There’s a third player,” he said. “Probably headed north to St. Paul.”

The deputy nodded and disappeared down the path. Stevens looked down at the dead truck driver in the shadows for a moment. Then he turned back toward the truck. The wind howled through the trees and he shivered again, thinking about Nancy and the kids and the movie he’d missed. He walked back to the pavement and around the truck and back to where the deputy sat in his patrol car, hollering excited instructions into his radio.

Stevens stood alongside the patrol car, waiting for the deputy to finish. In Duluth, he thought, I was just like this kid. I thought every case made me a hero.

He caught his dim reflection in the patrol car’s rear window as he waited, and he stared at it a moment, a forty-three-year-old career cop with thinning hair and a paunch, his tired eyes betraying a mounting fatigue. Sooner or later they would catch the third player, some
woebegone kid with a gun and a trunk full of hot electronics. They’d lock him up and he’d cop to the robbery and do time and be ruined, and someone else would jump in and hijack tractor trailers, and sooner or later they’d wind up a body themselves.

Another botched robbery, Stevens thought to himself. Another day in the glamorous life.