بخش 02 - فصل 06

6

Hodges stands to the left of the doors, right hand in his sportcoat pocket, enjoying both the shade and the balmy summer air. His heart is beating a little faster than normal, but that’s okay. That’s just as it should be. Oliver Madden is the kind of thief who robs with a computer rather than a gun (Holly has discovered the socially engaged motherfucker has eight different Facebook pages, each under a different name), but it doesn’t do to take things for granted. That’s a good way to get hurt. He listens as Madden shuts the KingAir down and imagines him walking into the terminal of this small, almost-off-the-radar FBO. No, not just walking, striding. With a bounce in his step. Going to the desk, where he will arrange for his expensive turboprop to be hangared. And fueled? Probably not today. He’s got plans in the city. This week he’s buying casino licenses. Or so he thinks.

The Navigator pulls up, chrome twinkling in the sun, smoked gangsta glass reflecting the front of the building … and Hodges himself. Whoops! He sidles farther to the left. The man in the coverall gets out, tips Hodges a wave, and heads for Hangar A.

Hodges waits, wondering what Barbara might want, what a pretty girl with lots of friends might consider important enough to make her reach out to a man old enough to be her grandpa. Whatever she needs, he’ll do his best to supply it. Why wouldn’t he? He loves her almost as much as he loves Jerome and Holly. The four of them were in the wars together.

That’s for later, he tells himself. Right now Madden’s the priority. Keep your eyes on the prize.

The doors open and Oliver Madden walks out. He’s whistling, and yes, he’s got that Mr Successful bounce in his step. He’s at least four inches taller than Hodges’s not inconsiderable six-two. Broad shoulders in a summerweight suit, the shirt open at the collar, the tie hanging loose. Handsome, chiseled features that fall somewhere between George Clooney and Michael Douglas. He’s got a briefcase in his right hand and an overnight bag slung over his left shoulder. His haircut’s the kind you get in one of those places where you have to book a week ahead.

Hodges steps forward. He can’t decide between morning and afternoon, so just wishes Madden a good day.

Madden turns, smiling. ‘The same back to you, sir. Do I know you?’

‘Not at all, Mr Madden,’ Hodges says, returning the smile. ‘I’m here for the plane.’

The smile withers a bit at the corners. A frown-line appears between Madden’s manicured brows. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The plane,’ Hodges says. ‘Three-fifty Beech KingAir? Seating for ten? Tail number November-one-one-four-Delta-Kilo? Actually belongs to Dwight Cramm, of El Paso, Texas?’

The smile stays on, but boy, it’s struggling. ‘You’ve mistaken me, friend. My name’s Mallon, not Madden. James Mallon. As for the plane, mine’s a King, all right, but the tail is N426LL, and it belongs to no one but little old me. You probably want Signature Air, next door.’

Hodges nods as if Madden might be right. Then he takes out his phone, reaching crossdraw so he can keep his right hand in his pocket. ‘Why don’t I just put through a call to Mr Cramm? Clear this up. I believe you were at his ranch just last week? Gave him a bank check for two hundred thousand dollars? Drawn on First of Reno?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Smile all gone.

‘Well, you know what? He knows you. As James Mallon rather than Oliver Madden, but when I faxed him a photo six-pack, he had no trouble circling you.’

Madden’s face is entirely expressionless now, and Hodges sees he’s not handsome at all. Or ugly, for that matter. He’s nobody, extra tall or not, and that’s how he’s gotten by as long as he has, pulling one scam after another, taking in even a wily old coyote like Dwight Cramm. He’s nobody, and that makes Hodges think of Brady Hartsfield, who almost blew up an auditorium filled with kids not so long ago. A chill goes up his back.

‘Are you police?’ Madden asks. He looks Hodges up and down. ‘I don’t think so, you’re too old. But if you are, let me see your ID.’

Hodges repeats what he told the guy in the coverall: ‘Not exactly police, but in the neighborhood.’

‘Then good luck to you, Mr In The Neighborhood. I’ve got appointments, and I’m running a bit late.’

He starts toward the Navigator, not running but moving fast.

‘You were actually tight on time,’ Hodges says amiably, falling in step. Keeping up with him would have been hard after his retirement from the police. Back then he was living on Slim Jims and taco chips, and would have been wheezing after the first dozen steps. Now he does three miles a day, either walking or on the treadmill.

‘Leave me alone,’ Madden says, ‘or I’ll call the real police.’

‘Just a few words,’ Hodges says, thinking, Damn, I sound like a Jehovah’s Witness. Madden is rounding the Navigator’s rear end. His overnight bag swings back and forth like a pendulum.

‘No words,’ Madden says. ‘You’re a nut.’

‘You know what they say,’ Hodges replies as Madden reaches for the driver’s-side door. ‘Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.’

Madden opens the door. This is really working out well, Hodges thinks as he pulls his Happy Slapper from his coat pocket. The Slapper is a knotted sock. Below the knot, the sock’s foot is loaded with ball bearings. Hodges swings it, connecting with Oliver Madden’s left temple. It’s a Goldilocks blow, not too hard, not too soft, just right.

Madden staggers and drops his briefcase. His knees bend but don’t quite buckle. Hodges seizes him above the elbow in the strong come-along grip he perfected as a member of this city’s MPD and helps Madden into the driver’s seat of the Navigator. The man’s eyes have the floaty look of a fighter who’s been tagged hard and can only hope for the round to end before his opponent follows up and puts him down for good.

‘Upsa-daisy,’ Hodges says, and when Madden’s ass is on the leather upholstery of the bucket seat, he bends and lifts in the trailing left leg. He takes his handcuffs from the left pocket of his sportcoat and has Madden tethered to the steering wheel in a trice. The Navigator’s keys, on a big yellow Hertz fob, are in one of the cupholders. Hodges takes them, slams the driver’s door, grabs the fallen briefcase, and walks briskly around to the passenger side. Before getting in, he tosses the keys onto the grass verge near the sign reading LOADING AND UNLOADING ONLY. A good idea, because Madden has recovered enough to be punching the SUV’s start button over and over again. Each time he does it, the dashboard flashes KEY NOT DETECTED.

Hodges slams the passenger door and regards Madden cheerfully. ‘Here we are, Oliver. Snug as two bugs in a rug.’

‘You can’t do this,’ Madden says. He sounds pretty good for a man who should still have cartoon birdies flying in circles around his head. ‘You assaulted me. I can press charges. Where’s my briefcase?’

Hodges holds it up. ‘Safe and sound. I picked it up for you.’

Madden reaches with his uncuffed hand. ‘Give it to me.’

Hodges puts it in the footwell and steps on it. ‘For the time being, it’s in protective custody.’

‘What do you want, asshole?’ The growl is in stark contrast to the expensive suit and haircut.

‘Come on, Oliver, I didn’t hit you that hard. The plane. Cramm’s plane.’

‘He sold it to me. I have a bill of sale.’

‘As James Mallon.’

‘That’s my name. I had it changed legally four years ago.’

‘Oliver, you and legal aren’t even kissing cousins. But that’s beside the point. Your check bounced higher than Iowa corn in August.’

‘That’s impossible.’ He yanks his cuffed wrist. ‘Get this off me!’

‘We can discuss the cuff after we discuss the check. Man, that was slick. First of Reno is a real bank, and when Cramm called to verify your check, the Caller ID said First of Reno was what he was calling. He got the usual automated answering service, welcome to First of Reno where the customer is king, blah-de-blah, and when he pushed the right number, he got somebody claiming to be an accounts manager. I’m thinking that was your brother-in-law, Peter Jamieson, who was arrested early this morning in Fields, Virginia.’

Madden blinks and recoils, as if Hodges has suddenly thrust a hand at his face. Jamieson really is Madden’s brother-in-law, but he hasn’t been arrested. At least not to Hodges’s knowledge.

‘Calling himself Fred Dawlings, Jamieson assured Mr Cramm that you had over twelve million dollars in First of Reno in several different accounts. I’m sure he was convincing, but the Caller ID thing was the clincher. It’s a fiddle accomplished with a highly illegal computer program. My assistant is good with computers, and she figured that part out. The use of that alone could get you sixteen to twenty months in a Club Fed. But there’s so much more. Five years ago, you and Jamieson hacked your way into the General Accounting Office and managed to steal almost four million dollars.’

‘You’re insane.’

‘For most people, four million split two ways would be enough. But you’re not one to rest on your laurels. You’re just a big old thrill-seeker, aren’t you, Oliver?’

‘I’m not talking to you. You assaulted me and you’re going to jail for it.’

‘Give me your wallet.’

Madden stares at him, wide-eyed, genuinely shocked. As if he himself hasn’t lifted the wallets and bank accounts of God knows how many people. Don’t like it when the shoe’s on the other foot, do you? Hodges thinks. Isn’t that just tough titty.

He holds out his hand. ‘Give it.’

‘Fuck you.’

Hodges shows Madden his Happy Slapper. The loaded toe hangs down, a sinister teardrop. ‘Give it, asshole, or I’ll darken your world and take it. The choice is yours.’

Madden looks into Hodges’s eyes to see if he means it. Then he reaches into his suitcoat’s inner pocket – slowly, reluctantly – and brings out a bulging wallet.

‘Wow,’ Hodges says. ‘Is that ostrich?’

‘As a matter of fact, it is.’

Hodges understands that Madden wants him to reach for it. He thinks of telling Madden to lay it on the console between the seats, then doesn’t. Madden, it seems, is a slow learner in need of a refresher course on who’s in charge here. So he reaches for the wallet, and Madden grabs his hand in a powerful, knuckle-grinding grip, and Hodges whacks the back of Madden’s hand with the Slapper. The knuckle-grinding stops at once.

‘Ow! Ow! Shit!’

Madden’s got his hand to his mouth. Above it, his incredulous eyes are welling tears of pain.

‘One must not grasp what one cannot hold,’ Hodges says. He picks up the wallet, wondering briefly if the ostrich is an endangered species. Not that this moke would give a shit, one way or the other.

He turns to the moke in question.

‘That was your second courtesy-tap, and two is all I ever give. This is not a police-and-suspect situation. You make another move on me and I’ll beat you like a rented mule, chained to the wheel or not. Do you understand?’

‘Yes.’ The word comes through lips still tightened with pain.

‘You’re wanted by the FBI for the GAO thing. Do you know that?’

A long pause while Madden eyes the Slapper. Then he says yes again.

‘You’re wanted in California for stealing a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, and in Arizona for stealing half a million dollars’ worth of construction equipment which you then resold in Mexico. Do you also know those things?’

‘Are you wearing a wire?’

‘No.’

Madden decides to take Hodges’s word for it. ‘Okay, yes. Although I got pennies on the dollar for those front-end loaders and bulldozers. It was a damn swindle.’

‘If anyone would know a swindle when it walks up and says howdy, it would be you.’

Hodges opens the wallet. There’s hardly any cash inside, maybe eighty bucks total, but Madden doesn’t need cash; he’s got at least two dozen credit cards in at least six different names. Hodges looks at Madden with honest curiosity. ‘How do you keep them all straight?’

Madden doesn’t reply.

With that same curiosity, Hodges says: ‘Are you never ashamed?’

Still looking straight ahead, Madden says: ‘That old bastard in El Paso is worth a hundred and fifty million dollars. He made most of it selling worthless oil leases. All right, I flew off with his plane. Left him nothing but his Cessna 172 and his Lear 35. Poor baby.’

Hodges thinks, If this guy had a moral compass, it would always point due south. Talking is no use … but when was it ever?

He hunts through the wallet and finds a bill of particulars in the matter of the KingAir: two hundred thousand down, the rest held in escrow at First of Reno, to be paid after a satisfactory test flight. The paper is worthless in a practical sense – the plane was bought under a false name, with nonexistent money – but Hodges isn’t always practical, and he’s not too old to count coup and take scalps.

‘Did you lock it up or leave the key at the desk so they could do it after they put it in the hangar?’

‘At the desk.’

‘Okay, good.’ Hodges regards Madden earnestly. ‘Here comes the important part of our little talk, Oliver, so listen closely. I was hired to find the plane and take possession of it. That’s all, end of story. I’m not FBI, MPD, or even a private dick. My sources are good, though, and I know you’re on the verge of making a deal to buy a controlling interest in a couple of casinos out on the lake, one on Grande Belle Coeur Island and one on P’tit Grand Coeur.’ He taps the briefcase with his foot. ‘I’m sure the paperwork is in here, as I’m sure that if you want to remain a free man, it’s never going to be signed.’

‘Oh now wait a minute!’

‘Shut your hole. There’s a ticket in the James Mallon name at the Delta terminal. It’s one-way to Los Angeles. Leaves in—’ he looked at his watch— ‘in about ninety minutes. Which gives you just time enough to go through all the security shit. Be on that plane or you’ll be in jail tonight. Do you understand?’

‘I can’t—’

‘Do you understand?’

Madden – who is also Mallon, Morton, Mason, Dillon, Callen, and God knows how many others – thinks over his options, decides he has none, and gives a sullen nod.

‘Great! I’ll unlock you now, take my cuffs, and exit your vehicle. If you try making a move on me while I do either, I’ll knock you into next week. Are you clear on that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your car key’s on the grass. Big yellow Hertz fob, can’t miss it. For now, both hands on the wheel. Ten and two, just like Dad taught you.’

Madden puts both hands on the wheel. Hodges unlocks the cuffs, slips them back in his left pocket, and exits the Navigator. Madden doesn’t move.

‘You have a good day, now,’ Hodges says, and shuts the door.