The Loot (Charlie McCabe Thriller) Read online

  “Didn’t see anything you liked?”

  “Sure. I got a job in Biloxi. Entry-level paralegal working for a lawyer’s office.”

  “When do you start?”

  “Today,” Charlie said. She tilted back the bottle.

  “This ain’t Biloxi.”

  “Nope,” she said. “And I’m not some ambulance chaser’s secretary either. I almost went. Almost. And I was standing there in the airport stateside, about to make my connecting flight, and I just . . . didn’t. I changed up my ticket and came home. I was like . . . who do I even know in Mississippi? Is this what I want? To start my life over in some town I’ve never been in, in a career I don’t care anything about?”

  “So what do you want?” he asked her.

  “Figuring out that I wasn’t going to Biloxi—that was step one of my cunning plan for reintegrating into society. This is step two, which is the part I’m a little hung up on. I figured I’d come home for a few days, try to get my head sorted out.”

  “Good a plan as any.”

  One of the college kids shouted over from his table. “Hey! Barkeep! Can we get another round over here?”

  “In a second,” Dutch called back. He lowered his voice and rolled his eyes. “‘Barkeep,’ Jesus. ‘Prithee, yon sirrah, thank thee for gracing my humble tavern.’ So . . . let’s draw up a plan of attack. What’s your real hang-up here? Moving to a strange city or working behind a desk?”

  “Can I say both? Mostly the desk. If I can get used to Afghanistan, I can get used to Biloxi.” She frowned. “Three weeks ago I was crouched at the side of a road, at the edge of a province whose name I couldn’t even pronounce, sweating buckets inside an eighty-pound bomb suit. I was crouching over this IED, some Frankenstein contraption one of the local assholes built from a pressure cooker, rusty carburetor parts, and some leaking explosive glop that was probably brewed from fermented goat shit. And dealing with that, making it safe, was my job. For the better part of a decade, that was my job. Now I’m supposed to . . . what? Pretend none of it happened? Like I can sit in a lawyer’s office and answer phones all day, like a normal person?”

  “Nobody said it’d be easy. But look, you’ve got help, if you reach for it. It was a different time when I came home. A different war. People weren’t lining up at the airport to thank us for serving, you know?” Dutch gave her a close look. “It’s easy to land the wrong way when you come home. Easy to hit the skids. I did, and it took me a long-ass time to claw my way back to standing upright. I don’t want to see you making my mistakes. You’re smarter than that.”

  An AC/DC song revved up on the jukebox. One of the trust fund kids shouted over the music. “Hey, Grandpa! Can we get another round or what? Paying customers over here!”

  Dutch sighed and reached for a pint glass.

  “Excuse me one second,” he said. “I gotta spit in another round of beer.”

  “Don’t do anything on my account.”

  “Won’t be. Just my general sense of decorum. One more thing to noodle over: Are you home because it feels like the right place to be, or are you home because you’ve got unfinished business to take care of?”

  He left her alone with her thoughts and the music and her bottle of stout. She tapped her bottle against the sticky, varnished bar in time to the beat until Dutch came back around again.

  “Last time I saw you,” he said, “was at the funeral.”

  “I know.”

  “You were out the next day.”

  “They needed me back,” she said.

  “They didn’t need you that bad.”

  She shifted gears. “Does my dad still come around?”

  Dutch shook his head. “He did; then he didn’t so much; then not at all. I ain’t seen him in a year, maybe. He either quit drinking or does his drinking at home.”

  Charlie held up two fingers. “Door number two. Bonus question: You hear if he’s into anything he shouldn’t be?”

  Dutch’s unkempt eyebrows knitted tight. “Such as?”

  “Such as a couple of guys from the city, guys with scars and scuffed-up knuckles, paying him a social call.”

  His eyes darted to one side and took in the faces around them. Just a quick, furtive check as he reached down and came up with another two bottles of stout. He opened one for her, one for him.

  “Treat this like a top-priority intel briefing,” he said.

  “Secondhand, out of date, and probably wrong?”

  “There you go. You know your dad always had a thing for the sports book.”

  Charlie frowned. “He’s gambling again?”

  “Someone said that someone said he is. You know how it is. Small towns. Anyway, unconfirmed word is he got in a little too deep.”

  “He’s retired and living on his factory pension,” Charlie said. “How deep could he possibly get?”

  “Deep as his bookie lets him get. And before you ask, no, I got no idea who he’s placing bets with. Point is your houseguests are probably debt collectors. They didn’t hurt him, did they?”

  Charlie shook her head. “No, he wasn’t bruised. He just looks . . . he looks tired, Dutch.”

  “He’s been through a lot.”

  He was kind enough not to add the word alone. He didn’t have to. She heard it, loud and clear.

  “I’ll do a little digging,” she said. “Sort it out. Meantime, I’ve gotta find a source of ready income, or this is my last beer for a while. Also, you know, I need to pay for food and a roof over my head. That too.”

  “You ever think about security work?” he asked.

  “What, like a mall cop?”

  “No, like bodyguard work. I know a guy in town, Jake Esposito; he runs an outfit called Boston Asset Protection. It’s piecework, contract jobs whenever he needs extra hands, but the pay is decent, and he likes hiring veterans. Not out of the goodness of his heart either. He wants to work with professionals who can follow orders and get shit done. The job requires a certain temperament, you know? Gotta be able to simmer down a situation before it boils over, but also be ready to get rough if and when you have to. Half diplomat, half boxer.”

  “Sounds like my old job.”

  Dutch flashed a yellowed smile. “Don’t it, though? It ain’t a desk at least. Sound like something you might be interested in?”

  Charlie eyed her bottle and smiled.

  “Yeah, what the hell. Could be fun.”

  Their bottles clinked. Dutch rummaged in an old Rolodex, tugged out a half-wrinkled card on faded cream paper, and passed it over. The card had an address in Copley Square in stark black type.

  “I’ll call him and let him know I’m vouching for you. So make me proud, kid. Go on over tomorrow; he’ll put you through your paces.”

  “Thanks, Dutch. Thanks for giving me a shot.”

  He tossed back a swig of beer and ran the back of his hand across his whiskers.

  “Hell, I’m not giving you anything. Impressing the man, that’s on you. Just stay sharp. Jake’s . . . got his eccentricities, is all I can say. He doesn’t hire brain-dead gorillas in suits, either; tough only goes so far in that line of work. He’s looking for folks with at least as much wit as they’ve got muscle.”

  “What’s he going to do,” Charlie asked, “make me solve math problems?”

  He regarded her with a faint, impish gleam in his eye.

  “Just stay sharp, kid.”

  THREE

  Charlie’s father was asleep by the time she puttered into the driveway. The pickup gave a last melodramatic cough as she turned the key. Her dad was in his recliner, legs up, television tuned to a home-shopping channel. She turned off the TV and doused the lamp. He snored through it all. She lugged a case of Bud Light into the kitchen and stashed it in the fridge before padding up the hall to her old bedroom.

  She stowed everything from her duffel bag, sorting her dresser’s top drawer neat and tight. Socks and underwear in razor-straight rows, shirts folded, a life in compressed order. She took down lin
ens from the hall closet and made the bed tight enough to bounce a quarter off the fitted sheet. Good enough. Then she stripped down, slipped under the covers, and tried to sleep.

  Tried to.

  Maybe it was the house; maybe it was all the changes; maybe it was just too damn quiet. The silence of the countryside was an oppressive, heavy thing. She expected engines, aircraft, the machinery of a military base in constant motion. All she got was the trilling drone of crickets outside her window and a tidal wave of bad memories to see her through to the dawn.

  Charlie finally found a few hours of shut-eye. Then the first rays of dawn speared into her eyes and forced her out of bed. She groaned, rolled out from under the covers, waking up as her feet touched down. She pulled on a pair of gray sweats and went for a run.

  Two miles up the road, two miles back, her trainers pounding the muddy roadside as she fought her way up a towering hill. It was a cool morning, and a light fog drifted through the trees like strings of gossamer smoke. Charlie hated running. She hated it right up until she hit the wall of endurance and burst through, feeling the endorphins flood her body, a chemical high that mingled with the burning in her lungs and the ache in every muscle. Tomorrow she’d hate it all over again. This was her before-coffee, before-conscious-thought routine, had been for years whenever she was at liberty to do it. She couldn’t argue with the results; running had kept her fast and lean, good traits for a soldier standing five feet two.

  Her father was awake by the time she got back. He ate cold leftover pizza off a paper plate, silent in the glow of the television screen.

  “I have to go into town,” she said. “Got a job interview.”

  “Take the truck,” he told her.

  Boston traffic was a full-contact sport. The city was an hour east, a straight shot down the I-90 corridor, and it didn’t take long before Charlie’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. The striped lines on the pothole-riddled pavement were more suggestions than rules, and trucks strong-armed each other to fight for exit lanes off both sides of the road. Charlie took exit 22, got off on Stuart, and cruised through the streets of Boston’s Back Bay as she hunted down the address on the rumpled business card.

  She realized, as she slowly rolled through a sluggish intersection, that she was still in Afghanistan.

  Her eyes were in ten places at once but perfectly focused everywhere they landed. The trash can by the roadside. The man with his head ducked against the wind, walking too close to the curb. Every open window, every rooftop perch that might hide a sniper. Consciously, she knew she was home. She wasn’t taking point in a convoy, watching for IEDs and suicide bombers; she was driving her father’s battered pickup truck and going for a job interview. She was safe now. Deep in the marrow of her bones, though, in the training and habits she’d internalized for the better part of a decade, she couldn’t accept that. Her mind and body had been taught to survive in a land that wanted her dead. She couldn’t turn it off like a light switch.

  She wondered if she ever would.

  Charlie found the address on Newbury. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting; the idea of a security company conjured thoughts of reinforced doors and fences topped with concertina wire. Instead, the corporate offices of Boston Asset Protection sat snug along a row of placid storefronts, two doors over from a clothing boutique and a cozy-looking coffeehouse called the Thinking Cup. She found a spot to park a few streets down. She paused, checking her face in the rearview mirror, and brushed her bangs to one side. She’d done the best she could to dress up for the interview; she’d found a wool blazer the color of charcoal and a nice pair of slacks in her old closet, still sheathed in plastic from the last time they’d been dry-cleaned. She wasn’t sure how a prospective bodyguard was supposed to look, so she’d opted for “professional, but not too dressy.” Something to show she cared about her appearance but wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. She’d gone for a clean pair of running shoes instead of heels, in case the interview got physical; she wasn’t looking to jog another couple of miles, not with the sun up and the muggy summer heat on the rise, but she’d jump a literal hurdle or two if it’d prove she was the right woman for the job.

  Just inside the front door, she saw the room exactly how her training had taught her to study a new and strange place: in slices and snapshots, a string of hard data fed straight to her brain stem. Lobby, storm-gray walls, ten feet by fifteen feet. Three exits: closed doors left and right of a curved wood desk the color of beach sand, and the glass door at her back. One other person. Late forties, frizzy black hair, and plastic-rimmed cat-eye glasses, sitting behind the desk. The air smelled like warm potpourri. As Charlie walked in, the receptionist flipped her nameplate facedown, laying it flat on the desk. Then she hid her hands behind the wood.

  Charlie glanced at the flat nameplate, then at the receptionist. The woman smiled at her in silent expectation. No explanation for the bizarre gesture, but somehow Charlie felt she was intended to notice it. Like the woman wanted to throw her off a step and see what she’d do before they’d said so much as hello. She decided to leave the bait alone.

  “I’m Charlene McCabe,” she said. “I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Esposito.”

  “Let’s see,” she said, running her finger down a notepad. “Yep, gotcha right here, sweetie. Jake!”

  Charlie winced at the sudden shout. A box on the receptionist’s desk clicked, and a man’s tired voice echoed over the speaker grille.

  “Sofia, please, for the love of God, use the intercom. I bought it for a reason.”

  Sofia cupped her hands to the sides of her mouth and shouted at the closed door on the left. “Loud and clear, boss! Can I send her in?”

  A long-suffering sigh gusted over the speaker. “Please. And maybe put a fresh pot of coffee on? Don’t . . . don’t feel you need to reply. Just do it. Thank you.”

  Sofia adjusted her glasses and smiled sweetly across the desk. “You can go right in, honey.”

  The office behind the door was as bare bones as the man behind the desk. Jake Esposito had a bland, agreeable face and short, slicked-back hair, and he moved with meager economy. Every gesture reserved, every expression muted. He shook hands like a robot trying to pass for human, a steel grip but hesitant, like he was afraid he might crush Charlie’s hand by accident. His desk was sparsely populated, just an intercom box, a phone, and an accountant’s lamp. A filing cabinet and a slender bookshelf rounded out the furniture, the rest just a span of empty presidential-blue carpet and pristine walls. Jake gestured to a solitary chair opposite his, and they both took a seat.

  “Dutch says you’re good people,” he told her, his voice measured and tinged with a Latin accent. “He doesn’t give recommendations lightly, and I don’t take them lightly. He said you just got out of the service?”

  “Yes, sir. Army, honorable discharge. I can provide paperwork—”

  He held up two fingers, cutting her off. “First thing, call me Jake. I haven’t been ‘sir’ in a long-ass time, and I plan to keep it that way. Second, I trust Dutch more than I trust paper. He said you were a specialist.”

  “Yes, si—” She paused, catching herself. “Yes. I was an 89D, explosive ordnance disposal.”

  “Things that go boom in the night. Dangerous work. What made you pick that for an MOS?”

  Charlie stared down at the desk. A light caught her eye, soft and amber, glowing on the intercom box.

  “I was into electronics as a kid. Crystal radios, circuit boards . . . I guess I was sort of a nerd before it was cool to be one. So I had the baseline skills. Meant they didn’t have to train me up from scratch.”

  “I’m fully qualified to shovel horse manure,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I want to volunteer for the job. There are safer and easier ways to get through a tour.”

  Charlie looked for a way to explain it. “I’ve never been much for ‘safe and easy.’ I’m stubborn that way. And my first week in-country . . . I saw what an IED can do, up close and pe
rsonal.”

  Jake leaned back in his chair. He seemed to read her like the open pages of a book, written in a familiar language. “You lost somebody.”

  “Nobody I knew. It was this Podunk village, a few klicks outside the ruins of Chakari. Some kids were playing soccer, and . . .” She shook her head. “The thing about bombs is they don’t discriminate. You have to aim a gun, aim a missile. You can’t bury a bullet in the sand and kill somebody a week, a month, a year later with it. And it wasn’t like the Taliban gave a damn: if they weren’t trying to terrorize the locals into supporting them, they were punishing them for saying no. Those people didn’t deserve that shit. They didn’t deserve to live in fear; nobody does. So I figured I’d try to help ’em out a little. Least I could do, right?”

  “I’d argue you could have done a lot less,” Jake said. “So I imagine that’s pretty detail-oriented work.”

  Charlie tapped her index finger against the side of her head. “When I wasn’t in the field, I was training for the next time out. My CO always said that the detail you miss is the one that kills you. The enemy was always getting trickier, craftier. Each bomb was a puzzle. No prize for second place.”

  She was thinking about details. The light on the intercom. The bare desk, the bare walls, not even a ghost of a hole where any art used to hang. Nothing that said anybody actually worked here.

  She remembered Dutch’s sly warning to stay sharp.

  Cataloging the room, breaking it down into slices of data, she shot a look at the bookshelf. Neat, short rows of business-management manuals, like the set dressing for an office comedy, and not a single one of them had a creased spine or a rumple. They might as well have been wrapped in plastic. Two shelves down, a small photograph stood in an oval frame. It depicted Jake and Sofia, smiling arm in arm, lifting coconut cocktails in some tropical paradise. The picture wasn’t the detail that jumped out at her. It was the position of the frame.

  It was tilted so that the photo was at her eye level, facing her seat. Not facing him like she would have expected. The memento was for her benefit, not Jake’s.