Criminal Enterprise, page 13
Stevens walked back through the snowy lot to his Jeep. Drove away from the high school, looking for Windermere at red lights and stop signs, but she was gone again, maybe for good.
He drove home, preoccupied. Thought about Windermere and Carter Tomlin. Thought about Windermere, period. He’d been happy to see her. Too happy, maybe. And now that she was gone, he could almost feel her absence. He felt like he’d betrayed her somehow.
Stevens pulled into his driveway. Turned off the Jeep’s engine and reached for the door handle. Then he realized he’d blanked on Andrea’s McDonald’s.
“Shit,” he said, starting the Jeep again. “Damn it, Carla.”
51
TOMLIN CALLED RYDIN on Monday. “I’ll take the damn job,” he said. “I can’t pass it up.”
Rydin laughed. “Jesus, pal. Don’t sound so enthused.”
“I’m saying yes, aren’t I?”
“All right. When can you start?”
Tomlin leaned back in his chair. “A week, maybe two. I need some time to close up around here.”
“Two weeks from Monday,” Rydin said. “I’ll send over the paperwork.”
Tomlin hung up the phone and looked up to find Tricia standing in the doorway. She leaned against the frame, watching him. “Who was that?”
“A friend of mine,” Tomlin said. “A job offer. I’m closing the office.”
Tricia didn’t react. “When?”
“Friday next. We’re going to close out our contracts and turn out the lights.” He studied her face. “Sorry for the short notice.”
She shrugged. Said nothing.
“I’ll pay you a nice severance. And I’m happy to write you a reference letter.”
“What about the bank jobs?” she said.
He looked at her. “The bank jobs are over,” he said finally. “The FBI thinks someone else did it. We keep quiet, and we’ll get away clean.”
She said nothing for a beat. Then she nodded. “Next Friday, then.”
Tomlin watched her walk out of the office. He waited to hear her start typing again, but she wasn’t moving out there. Christ, he thought. You can’t please everyone. He turned to his computer and began to review the outstanding accounts. There weren’t many. A quick bookkeeping job with the diner down the street, a couple of personal clients to deal with. He could be wrapped up by Wednesday if he tried.
Tricia appeared in the doorway. Looked him straight in the eye. “I have a job for us.” She held up her hand. “Wait. It’s not a bank, boss. It’s bigger money, less risk. No police. We clear a hundred grand, easy. Maybe more.”
“Big money, no risk.” Tomlin forced a laugh. “Sounds too good to be true.”
“It’s for real.” She took a couple steps into the room. “It’s a private score. I’m telling you, no risk at all. No way the cops make a connection.”
“A hundred grand. We just walk in and take it.”
“We bring guns. We surprise them. A hundred grand, boss, I promise.”
Tomlin looked at her. She was wearing a white blouse, and the light from the lobby silhouetted her body beneath the thin material. She was staring at him, waiting for an answer, any hint of boredom gone from her eyes, and he felt a sick thrill run through him and knew he couldn’t walk away yet. “I’m listening,” he told her. “Keep talking. If it’s good like you say, I’ll think about it.”
Tricia walked into the room and perched on the edge of the desk. “It’s good.” She gave him that ingénue smile. “It’s the best fucking score of your life.”
52
WINDERMERE SAT ALONE in her spotless kitchen, staring out through the living room at the city lights beyond. She felt lonely tonight, even more so than normal, and she knew it was Kirk Stevens’s fault.
She’d hoped the BCA agent would see something in her Tomlin theory. She’d worked with the guy long enough that she figured she knew a thing or two about how he thought. Instead, he’d shot her down, too.
Easy, she thought. Your suspect coaches his daughter’s basketball team. He’s a successful accountant. And he’s Stevens’s goddamn friend. Anyone would be skeptical.
Windermere opened a beer and walked through the kitchen to the living room’s big picture window. Stared down and out at the city, the cars on the streets and the twinkling skyscraper lights beyond. If she stepped back a ways, she could see her own reflection, and as she stared at it, she realized she didn’t like what she saw.
She looked damn exhausted. Pretty much a disaster. Her hair hung bedraggled. Not that she really cared, but she was starting to look old. Goddamned Carter Tomlin would rob her of her youth.
Carter Tomlin. Stevens said he’d made contact a week or so back. Around the same time Windermere had come to his door, maybe a few days after. And his first meeting with Stevens, he’d mentioned her name. Why?
Easiest answer: he’d cozied up to Stevens to keep an eye on her. And why would Tomlin want to track her if he wasn’t guilty of something?
Except that wasn’t right. Maybe the guy was just freaked. He’d done something else wrong, a hit-and-run accident. He looked like the kind of guy who’d lose sleep over a speeding ticket. Now the FBI was on his ass, talking about bank robberies. Why wouldn’t he be scared?
What about the break-in story? The auto-body receipt? She’d dropped by the place, a little shack with a gasoline smell and a rusty old Mercury in the mechanic’s bay. A funny place to take a brand-new Jaguar, she’d thought, but the guy behind the desk punched something into his computer, came out with the service record. Swore he’d done the job. The whole thing stunk pretty bad, but really, there wasn’t much she could do.
A guilty man would have asked for his lawyer when the FBI showed up at his door. He would have seen the cops coming. Tomlin didn’t ask for his lawyer. Instead, he reached out to Kirk Stevens. It was a weird move, but was it guilty-weird? Not necessarily.
Windermere turned away from the window and walked back into the kitchen. Drained her beer bottle and set it down on the counter. Maybe Tomlin was the red herring, after all. The bank robberies had stopped after the shoot-out with Jackson. Either his partners were real and in hiding or they didn’t exist and the real robbers were gone.
So what? she thought. Risk my career on Tomlin, or go back to CID and kiss Doughty’s ass enough times that Harris doesn’t fire me? She could work the Jackson leads until his friends, or Tomlin, or whoever, stepped out of line again, and this time take them down for real.
Windermere stared at her empty beer bottle for a couple of minutes. Then she straightened, grabbed her coat off the chair, rode the elevator down to street level, and walked the three blocks to her gym. She changed in the empty locker room, ran the treadmill for an hour, and then spent forty-five solid minutes kicking the shit out of some poor punching bag. Then she quit and walked home, exhausted and sore, still nowhere near any kind of resolution.
53
DRAGAN PARKED the Camry in front of an industrial park north of Saint Paul, and Tomlin squinted through the windshield out into the darkness. “This is it?”
Tricia poked her head between the two seats. “That one on the end,” she said, pointing. “With the security camera.”
Tomlin stared across at the building, a low windowless box among boxes. There was a roll-up garage door at the front, and a smaller door beside it, overtop of which a camera was mounted.
“Underground poker,” Tricia had told him. “Ten grand minimum buy-in. Totally illegal. My ex used to play.”
Tomlin nodded. The police sometimes busted high-stakes poker games, he knew, in suburban houses or anonymous office parks. “How many players?”
“Five or six. And they re-buy all night.” She looked at him. “A hundred grand, easy. I’m not lying.”
A hundred grand. That meant forty grand each, after Dragan’s share. And no police, either. A bunch of illegal poker players weren’t going to report a robbery. If Tricia was right, this was damn easy money.
Tomlin admired the girl’s profile in the dim glow from the streetlight. She looked like Becca a little, but younger. Wilder. Tricia smiled. “What?”
He shook his head and turned around again. Watched through the windshield as the first car pulled up. Two men climbed out and unlocked the front door. “You’ve been in there before?” he asked Tricia.
She nodded. “A couple of times.”
“What’s the layout?” He could feel his nerves starting to tense, the adrenaline ramping up. “How many people? What do we expect when we go inside?”
“There’s a front room and a back room. A couple of poker tables in the front and a kitchen in the back.”
“Where’s the money?”
“At the bar, in the back of the first room. That’s where they buy in.”
“How many people?”
“Five or six at the tables.” She paused, thinking. “A guard at the door, the bartender, the dealer. Tommy—he runs the game—and the waitress. So maybe ten people.”
“Armed?”
She nodded. “The guard, definitely. Tommy, too.”
“The players?”
“No way. Tommy makes them check their guns behind the bar.”
Outside, more cars were arriving. Lexuses and blinged-out Hummers. Young men in flat-brimmed baseball caps and leather jackets. Tomlin watched them stand at the front door and look up at the security camera. After a moment or two each time, the door swung open and the men disappeared inside.
“You can get us in there?” he asked Tricia.
“The boys know me.” She winked at him. “They all want in my pants.”
Tomlin looked at her again, those big eyes, that ingénue smile. She can get us in there, he thought. She can get in anywhere. He turned to Dragan. “Keep the engine running.”
Tricia frowned. “You want to do it tonight, boss? I thought we were just scoping it out. Getting a feel for the game.”
“This is your game,” Tomlin said. “You’re not ready to take it?”
“I’m ready,” she told him. “I’m worried about you, is all. We’ve been here twenty minutes and you’re ready to run in there like a cowboy.”
He looked at her. “So you’re scared.”
“Fuck you,” she said. “You want to do this, let’s do it. If we’re smart we sit on it a week, though. That’s all I’m saying. The money’s not going anywhere.”
The money’s here, Tomlin thought. The money’s here, now. Why wait? “I have a fucking assault rifle,” he said, reaching into the backseat for the guns. “What the hell do I care about smart?”
54
STEVENS SAT AT home in his living room, watching the Timberwolves fold to the Chicago Bulls. A waste of a basketball game, he thought, though in truth, he was hardly watching. He was thinking about Carla Windermere instead.
Stevens half wanted to call her, make sure she was okay. Apologize for the other night, outside the gymnasium, though he wasn’t sure he’d done anything wrong. She’d shut down so fast on him, like she was hiding her hurt, and he realized his former partner had staked more than she’d shown on her Carter Tomlin theory.
I let her down, he thought. She opened up to me, figured she had an ally. I pretty much laughed in her face.
But come on. Bank robbery?
Nancy poked her head in from the kitchen, where she’d barricaded herself behind another stack of paperwork. “You want to talk about it, Agent Stevens?”
Stevens blinked. “What, the game?”
“I bet you couldn’t even tell me the score,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What’s the matter?”
Stevens glanced at the TV, found the score. Realized she was right and shook his head, sheepish. “Bumped into Agent Windermere the other day,” he said.
Nancy frowned, just for a second. “She rejected your advances. Poor boy.”
“Well, there’s that. And she’s got a case going sour.”
“A sour case and unrequited love.” Nancy sighed. “These are the days of our lives.”
Stevens pushed himself out of his chair. Crossed the room to her and took her in his arms. “You’re catty tonight.”
She smiled up at him. “I’m not sorry.”
“You will be.” He slid his hands under her shirt and leaned down to kiss her. “You ready?”
“Don’t you dare,” she said, tensing.
“Too late.” He ran his hands up her sides, tickling her stomach, holding her tight as she shrieked and struggled against him. Finally, she wrenched free and stepped back, gasping. “Bastard.”
“You deserved it.”
She brushed her hair from her eyes. “You’re next.”
“Not ticklish.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She gave him a sideways smile. “I have my own ways.”
He followed her into the kitchen and kissed her again. Slid his hands back under her shirt and laughed as she tensed. He ran his hands across her smooth back and felt her relax into him as she returned his kiss, her eyes closed.
“She thinks Carter Tomlin’s a bank robber,” Stevens said, when he’d pulled his mouth from hers. “Like he does it as a hobby or something.”
Nancy frowned. “Heather’s dad.”
“The same guy. I thought it was crazy, at first.”
“But you don’t anymore.”
“I don’t know.” Without taking his hands from her skin, he turned her around, his hands on her stomach now. “He has a thing for Agent Windermere, anyway.”
“Who doesn’t?” she said. “How does he know her?”
“She came by his house,” he said, kissing her neck. “Apparently she connects him to a bank heist in Midway.”
Nancy sighed as he brought his hand up to her breast. “This is some weird foreplay, Agent Stevens.” She spun in his arms, kissed him hard again, pressing her body to his. “Enough talking,” she said, between kisses. “You got me riled up, now you deal with the consequences.”
—
SHE DRAGGED HIM upstairs and shoved him down on the bed. They undressed each other, clumsy and urgent, and then she lowered her body to his, and they kissed again and made love, hard and fast.
Afterward, they lay side by side, staring up at the ceiling, gasping and sweaty. Nancy cast one arch eye at him. “Let’s see your Agent Windermere do that.”
He rolled over and kissed her flushed cheek. “Why bother?”
She let him kiss her. “Damn right.”
He watched from the bed as she stood and dressed again, fixing her hair in the mirror. “This was fun,” she said, catching his eye. “But now I have work to do.”
“I feel so used.”
“As you should.” She blew him a kiss from the doorway. “This is why I keep you around, Agent Stevens.”
Stevens listened to her walk down the stairs. He felt sleepy, closed his eyes, let his mind wander. Found himself thinking about Tomlin again. It was a little weird that he kept bringing up Windermere. It said something. What, though, Stevens wasn’t sure. He reached for the telephone on the nightstand. Speaking of being used, he thought, picking up the phone and dialing Tomlin’s number. If he wants to keep tabs on Windermere, maybe I want to keep tabs on him.
The phone rang a couple of times, and then Becca Tomlin picked up. “I’m sorry, Kirk,” she said. “Carter’s out tonight. I’ll tell him you called.”
Alert the local bank branches, Stevens thought. “That’s all right,” he told Becca Tomlin. “I’ll try again later.”
“Okay,” she said. “Have a good night.” She paused, then came back. “Oh, Kirk—are you there?”
“Still here.”
“We’re throwing a little get-together this weekend, just a few of our friends for dinner,” she said. “It’s kind of a celebration for Carter’s new job. Do you have plans Saturday night?”
A dinner party with an alleged bank robber, Stevens thought. Interesting. “I’ll have to check with Nancy,” he said, “but it sounds good to me.”
“Perfect. Carter would love to see you.”
Stevens thanked her and told her good night. Then he dressed and walked back downstairs. Found Nancy at the kitchen table, poring over a stack of briefs. “We’re partying with the bank robbers Saturday night,” he told her. “Consider yourself warned.”
55
DRAGAN BACKED the car up alongside the warehouse, pulling to a stop beside a Mercedes convertible. “This is good,” Tomlin told him. He glanced back at Tricia. “You ready?”
“Always.” Tricia picked up a pistol and chambered a round. “You’re sure you want to do this tonight?”
“Positive. Get us inside.”
Tricia glanced at him again, then out at the warehouse. She leaned forward and squeezed Dragan’s shoulder. Stuffed the pistol in her coat and stepped out of the Camry.
Tomlin twisted in his seat to watch her as she walked to the door. There was an intercom button about halfway up the wall, and he watched Tricia press the button and smile up at the camera, just an innocent girl looking for some fun.
Tomlin hid his own pistol in his pocket and picked up a duffel bag and the assault rifle. Then he stepped out of the car and crept alongside the building until he was pressed up against the garage door underneath the camera.
“I just want to party,” Tricia was saying. “Play some poker. You guys are too good for me, or what?”
There was a long pause. Tricia kept her smile pasted at the camera. Finally, the door buzzed, and Tricia pushed it open. Tomlin gripped his rifle tighter, pulled on his ski mask, and followed her into the building.
The place was just as Tricia had described. A main room about thirty feet deep, soft lighting, dark walls. A door to the back room, the light brighter: the kitchen. A bar with a few racks of alcohol and a guy in a suit behind it. Two poker tables, one empty. Six men at the other. And Tricia just inside the door, holding her pistol to the bouncer’s wide chest.
Tomlin walked into the room, holding the AR-15 like a Marine clearing city blocks. “This is a robbery,” he said. “Move and we kill you.”
