Rogue Asset (Rogue Warrior Thrillers Book 11), page 6
“Yeah… Errol Green.” He sneered at the name. “What does a guy with your background possibly have in common with a lowlife figlio di puttana like that, anyhow?”
“I owe a friend a favor, and they know him from way back.” It didn’t make a lot of sense to be too specific about Dawn, he knew. “Now… let me ask you a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Why threaten to kill him over such a small sum? He’s a career criminal. Surely, you’ve got some use for him that could make up the money?”
Johnny turned his head slowly and glared at Bob. “So you want me to offer him work!? AFTER THE MAN STEALS A QUARTER MILLION FROM ME? VAFFANCULO! MIERDA!”
Bob waited a beat until the redness had departed the man’s cheeks. “A hundred and fifty,” Bob corrected.
Johnny exhaled long and slowly, through his nose, until once again composed. “With the interest, yes.”
Bob resisted the urge to curse Errol’s name. Even in accepting help, he couldn’t be completely honest. “And how much is the vig?”
“A very generous twenty-five percent of the principal a week,” Johnny said. “And we ain’t even compounding it, given that he’s got nothing worth taking. I include his pitiful life in that calculation, I should note. So that’s just the first two weeks he owes. At the end of next week, it’s $175,000.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t just dealt with him,” Bob said. “Given how wealthy your family is, his debt is a rounding error.”
“It’s a goddamned insult is what it is. It’s not a ‘debt,’ Singleton. He stole that money by rigging up as a bookie and taking advantage of my otherwise generous patronage. He… he…” Johnny looked like he might have a stroke as he tried to restrain his building rage. “He fucking CONNED me. ME. So… we drag this out as long as it can go. The more in debt he becomes, the more terrified he’ll be. And only then, when he’s praying for a resolution, will I ‘deal with’ him, as you so euphemistically put it. Vinny…” He called his driver over. “You got it?”
Vinny reached into his long coat and took out a brown folder, which he handed over. “Here it is, Johnny, all there.”
“Take a look at this,” Johnny said, passing the file along to Bob.
Bob opened it. Inside was a duplicate of his National Security Agency intelligence jacket, photos of him captured by traffic cameras across the United States, even interdepartmental memos between the NSA and CIA Clandestine Ops. It had everything on him short of his deal with Adam Renton and the name of his late fiancée, Maggie.
He closed it. “Okay. Nice to know the US government is doing its usual bang-up job of protecting secrets.”
“We don’t know just your name, Singleton. We know exactly who and what the fuck you are.” He switched to Italian. “Dice che parli Italiano passabile.” It says you speak passable Italian. “Anche, altre lingue.” Other languages too.
“Si, quando necessario,” Bob answered. “Ma sono fuori allenamento.” When necessary. But I’m out of practice.
“Good. Then understand me when I say we will get our money back, one way or another.”
“Errol doesn’t have it. He’s an idiot, and his fiancée is just as bad. He had it for less than a week when she lost it on a crypto scam.”
Johnny’s head dropped slightly, as if an already low opinion had somehow sunk a few degrees lower. “Maybe he’ll be able to raise it if I cut off your head and send it to him in a fucking box. How does that sound, Singleton? Or would that strike you as unnecessary?”
Bob shrugged. “Won’t get you anywhere. For one, he really doesn’t have the money. I’m not lying about that. For another, he barely knows me. Like I said, I’m a friend of a friend.”
Bob noticed a woman approaching out of the corner of his eye. She was tall, elegant, with collar-length blonde hair, wearing a long fall coat that had probably once been on a fashion runway somewhere, electric blue pumps. The driver tried to waylay her, but she gently moved him aside with a single hand gesture and a quiet comment.
“Mr. Singleton,” she said.
“This is my fiancée, Alessandra,” Johnny said. “She should probably not get involved in such business.” If he was trying to be forceful towards her, Bob thought, the tone was remarkably subdued, as if he was used to not getting what he wanted.
“Johnny loves to talk in the park,” she said. “The pigeons make him feel magnanimous. Me, I would have preferred we go for a drive.”
“Why’s that?” Bob asked.
“An old piece of advice from my nanny: if you want to ask someone a difficult question or have a difficult conversation, do it while they’re behind the wheel. They will be paying too much attention to traffic to effectively hit you, particularly if you are in the back seat.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Bob said. He had the sense that just by her presence, she’d taken control of the meeting.
“Walk with me for a few minutes,” she said.
Bob got up and strolled beside her as she wandered, Vinny just a few feet behind them. “He was very impressed by your curriculum vitae,” she said once they were a few feet away from Johnny. “You’ve killed a great many people, that your government knows of, with many more suspected. That is the sort of résumé Johnny respects.”
“It’s a shit job…” Bob said. She glanced over, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop and finish the joke. “That’s it, no punchline,” Bob stressed. “It’s just a shit job. And I generally don’t do it anymore.”
“Generally. But you’ve been involved in several disputes since leaving the CIA’s employ.”
“Unavoidable,” Bob said, realizing it was complete bullshit even as he said it. You had choices, Bobby, and you made them, the little voice reminded him.
She stopped walking. “Then your present predicament will be familiar. Because you seem to be representing Errol Green, and his problem is, as you say, unavoidable.”
Which means she wants something. “Perhaps we could skip the verbal cryptography and just skip to what it is that you want from me, Ms…”
“My last name is Guidotti. What we want is a favor, an important one. One that requires someone well trained in both combat and investigative work. Such men are extremely expensive, and as wealthy as my family is, many do not wish to work for us. You fit the requirement perfectly, no?”
“Well… no. I’m no longer in the security business.”
“Nevertheless, you want to help your friend. So perhaps we can help one another. In less than a week, Johnny and I are expected to marry, in Padova, Italy.”
“Congratulations. But what you need is a priest.”
She dipped her head at that, perhaps annoyed, but not showing it. “Amusing. But what we need is protection. Someone wants to ruin my wedding by murdering my father, Don Giacomo Guidotti.”
“Someone?”
“An assassin, a world-famous contract killer who goes by the nickname ‘the Ghost.’ We have been reliably informed by men within our organization that the Ghost has been hired at the sum of $10 million.”
Bob didn’t hide his surprise. “You DO have a problem. He’s been around for nearly twenty years and famously doesn’t miss a target.”
“It’s true,” she said. “It’s most concerning. And it’s why you’re going to come with us. And you’re going to stop him.”
9
They resumed walking. Bob had so many questions, he wasn’t quite sure where to start.
“Maybe we should start with why you want me,” he said. “You must have entire armies of soldiers. Probably a few ex-service or police in there, to boot.”
“Sure, sure,” she said. She stopped walking and took out a gold cigarette case. Her movements were precise, almost as if she were trying to gauge their utility by the second. She opened the thin, corrugated container, lifted the spring-loaded holder arm, and took out a gold-leaf filter-tipped Sobranie cocktail cigarette, a famously expensive dark tobacco blend, the paper a pale blue.
“I thought they banned those,” Bob said.
She shrugged. “In the UK only. But I’ve always liked them.”
Bob drew his Bic disposable and lit it for her before she could fish for a lighter.
“Thank you.” She resumed walking and blew out a plume of white-blue smoke. “Sure, we have all the men we could ever need. But we have been reliably informed that the Ghost looks for weak points, men in organizations who need money or will accept a bribe. On top of this, he is a master of disguise, so much so that even familiar faces cannot be trusted. I… realize this makes him sound like a character from someone’s vivid imagination.”
“Oh, I’m well aware he’s real,” Bob said. “I had a mission about twenty years ago to escort a French diplomat out of Eritrea during some violence. He got to her before I did, unfortunately.”
That interested the young woman. “So you’ve dealt with this man?”
“Not really. We couldn’t find a trace of him in North Africa. He shot her from a distance with a .30-30 and disappeared in the wind. But everything we heard at the time confirms what you’re saying.”
“The men around us cannot necessarily be trusted,” she said. “Family? I do not believe he could disguise himself that well. Staff? Of that I am less confident. But he will not know you, or that you are involved. And he is unlikely to be able to remove you quietly. So…”
“You want me to come to your wedding and… what, find him before he strikes? Something like that?”
“Exactly that.”
“And in exchange…”
“In exchange we will reduce your friend’s debt. So he will be free of two-thirds, $100,000, and only owe us $50,000.”
She must’ve been genuinely worried, Bob guessed. A merc could be hired, short-term, for a hell of a lot less than a hundred grand.
“Our fathers, Don Vito and Don Giacomo, have had a feud between their two families going back to before the First World War. Decades of northern Sicily being drenched in blood at each other’s hand. After we wed, they will strike a formal agreement to merge the two families’ business ventures into one corporate entity, to end the violence. You will come to the wedding and ensure the Ghost does not kill one or both of them before that can happen.”
“Why in Padova?” Bob wondered. “If both families are Sicilian…” He let the thought trail. Mafioso didn’t tend to tread on each other’s turf, and there were other families from other organizations than the Cosa Nostra in charge of mainland cities and regions.
“It is my mother’s hometown. She cannot attend, as she and Giacomo do not see eye to eye. But I promised her long ago that I would have it there, and I am a person of my word. You will attend in the guise of Johnny’s ‘American friend.’”
Bob looked up and realized her route had led them in a circle around the park, back to the bench, where Johnny sat with an increasingly tepid cup of coffee. He looked unhappy to not be involved. But Bob was more fascinated by Alessandra anyway. She’d known what she wanted to say, and perhaps how he’d answer, and timed the circular trip perfectly to conclude where they’d started. She had a shrewdness to how she’d recounted and termed the elements of her life.
He needed to keep a close eye on her.
“Are we about done?” Johnny rose from the bench. He brushed breadcrumbs off his thousand-dollar suit trousers.
“We are,” Alessandra said. “Mr. Singleton is going to meet us in Padova on Tuesday… Isn’t that right, Mr. Singleton?”
“Just Bob is fine, too,” Bob said.
“We shall have a room reserved for you at Hotel Al Bosco, a lovely boutique hotel downtown. The hotels there are considered neutral turf by… local interests, on account of the tourism ramifications.”
“And my flight over there?”
Johnny looked away quickly. “Maron… the nerve of this fucking guy,” he muttered.
“Johnny… please,” Alessandra said.
“No! His fucking friend steals my fucking money, and he has the fucking balls to ask me to book his fucking flight for him? How about I just shoot this motherfucker here and now, and we worry about the wedding and Errol Green later? How about that idea, huh?”
She sighed loudly and gave him a sharp, almost parental look of disapproval. “I apologize for my fiancé’s temper, Mr. Singleton. Johnny feels he and his friends can handle the security without your involvement. And I’m sure you can handle getting there on your own.”
“That’s her nice way of saying I don’t want you there,” Johnny spat.
“Johnny also realizes the unique nature of the threat and is not going to upset his fiancée the week before the wedding. ISN’T THAT RIGHT, Johnny?” She fairly barked it.
Johnny nodded twice quickly, cowed.
Alessandra gave Bob another half smile and tossed the gold-leaf cigarette filter on the ground before stepping on it with an electric-blue-and-cheetah-print pair of Manolo Blahnik heels. “In Padova, Mr. Singleton, on Tuesday. We will see you there.”
Errol was pacing, his hands behind his back, like a professor in deep contemplation. But there probably wasn’t much going on between those ears, Bob had decided. Errol could be clever, but he was never going to be thoughtful.
“Sweetie, could you perhaps sit down for a few minutes instead of fidgeting?” Dawn asked. They were seated around her four-person breakfast table. Kandi was conspicuously absent, which Errol put down to one of them needing to earn a living.
He stopped pacing. “Easy for you to say, Beanie. You ain’t got your life on the line.”
Bob ignored the man’s whining and stifled a grin. “Beanie?”
“I collected Beanie Babies. It’s NOT a thing, OKAY?” Dawn said, way too forcefully.
“Okay… Beanie,” Bob said. He had to admit to himself he was slightly too happy to have something that would bug her on a moment’s notice. “Not a thing, definitely.”
Her eyes narrowed into a withering stare. “Most definitely. Maybe we could keep on the matter at hand?”
“Right. The men who conned Kandi, Errol. You said you tracked them down?”
“Yeah. The dude who runs the operation is Antwon Corrigan. His business card says he’s, like, CEO of Ascendent Crypto Tech or some shit. Truth is he’s just a baller from the west side who got all fancied up, leased a Porsche and a warehouse.”
“With the amount of money he took off you,” Bob said, “he probably didn’t have to lease.”
Errol stopped pacing again. “For real, dawg? This shit is humiliating enough as it is. I do not deserve this. All I was doing was making a living, keeping it real.”
“So—” Dawn began to say.
“So I don’t need your privileged fucking friend rubbing my nose in it!” Errol barked. “Motherfucker STOLE my money, dawg!”
Bob had always wondered how career criminals did that: completely overlooking their own behavior to the point of feeling the victim. He supposed it was down to emotional development, or a lack thereof. He’d read an article in Science about how people with profound immaturity could seem externally normal, but would rewrite their own memories like three-year-olds, to turn the blame on others.
He figured it was the same mechanism that caused a lack of scruples and empathy, letting politicians and crooks lie and deceive so glibly. It was just put to a different purpose.
But Errol’s was taking the cake. He glanced, puzzled, at Dawn, then gestured Errol’s way. “Is he… I mean… he’s serious… right?”
Dawn looked sad. “Yeah. Yeah, Bob, he is.”
“WHAT!?” Errol demanded. “Motherfuckers… how am I in the wrong here!? They promised Kandi fifty percent returns on paper. On PAPER.”
Just… let it go, Bobby. It’s enough that you’re saving his life. You don’t have to listen to him whine as well. “I need traveling money to get to Italy,” Bob said. “Kandi said this dude is a dealer as well? Maybe he has some of your cash available, maybe not. If he does, I can get that back. But he’s probably got liquid assets on hand either way.”
“Uh-huh,” Errol said, suddenly interested. “Mostly meth, though I think he slings a little crack too. But… like I said, he’s got at least six guards, real bad dudes.”
“Okay,” Bob said, resigned to a busy evening. “I take it you won’t be going in there with me?”
“Man… you crazy? I mean… you find any product, I can move that for you on… say… a thirty-seventy split.”
Bob got up from the table and grabbed his round-collar leather jacket off the back of the chair, putting it on. “We’ll just skip that part entirely,” he said. “So… Gary, huh? Knew a car dealer out there once, most crooked guy I ever met… until I met Mr. Golden Gloves here.”
“Hey!” Errol snapped.
“Uh-huh,” Dawn said, ignoring her older brother’s whining. “What happened to that guy?”
“He sold me a car. Then someone shot him and burned the place to the ground.”
“Nobody likes car dealers,” Errol suggested.
10
GARY, INDIANA
The guard at the front gate had just lit a rollie cigarette, which was about what Bob had expected. It was after nine at night, the storage facility and yard barely lit by emergency lighting, the flare from the Zippo lighter guaranteed to ruin the man’s night vision for at least three minutes.
From the way he sat, slouched, atop a low-rise gate pillar, Bob had expected him to be unprofessional.
The man took two puffs, and it went out. He lit it again.
A joint, even better. Weed tended to be moist and therefore went out repeatedly, which meant the guard would keep reducing his night vision to nothing.
That meant that when Bob did approach, he would be able to concentrate primarily on avoiding the main building windows. The first two floors of the three-story, office-style low-rise were probably mostly empty at night. But if Errol was to be believed, Antwon Corrigan occupied most of the top floor and had plenty of help at all times.
