24. Mac
24
Mac
It's a conspiracy
It’s a long day, but at least there’s some action. I’m able to confirm that Rossi’s guys are, in fact, getting ready for the drop on Sunday. In addition to the ever-present guard, two other guys show up and go inside the unit, emerging hours later with clipboards. A long-distance zoom with my lens tells me what I already know—it’s a pre-sale checklist.
But after another day without so much as a glimpse of his bulletproof SUV, I’m starting to get concerned. Normally a Kingpin likes to periodically remind his minions who’s in charge, and he gets involved in the big stuff. A quick sale of this much artillery is pretty big stuff, if you ask me. But Rossi hasn’t shown his ugly mug.
I even follow the checklist guy who takes the papers with him, in the hopes that he’s bringing it to the boss in person for a review. He doesn’t. He goes to the Lucky Goat and settles in on a stool, gluing his eyes to the game on the tv behind the bar and his hand to a glass of whiskey.
So, on my way home, I decide to take a detour. A simple internet search—Wes isn’t the only one who knows how to use public access to his advantage—yields me the address I’m looking for. Rossi’s monstrosity is twenty miles from Ulysses, so maybe it’s less of a detour and more of a hike. But as I suspected, it’s completely locked down, which is part of the reason we don’t typically hit them at home.
Only a few lights are on inside, and there are several cars parked out front—fancy, Italian and German cars, clearly not owned by the help—but I can’t spot the black SUV I saw the night of the warehouse debacle. Which doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t home; there’s a huge garage, too .
I wonder, not for the first time, if he’s gone underground until after the sale. It’s smart. Cowardly, but smart.
When I get home, I check the bedroom and hear that Eleanor is in the shower. So, I change for a workout. After shredding my pecs and shoulders, greeting my girl and rubbing one out, I head into Wes’s cave. Dimitri is sitting on the other side of his desk and they’re chatting about hockey when I arrive. The conversation cuts short, not that I care. The Southeast doesn’t have a lot of ice-based sports, so I never really got into it.
Dimitri is all business. “What do we know today?”
Wes takes his turn first. “Well, they’ve definitely got the law in their pocket.” He spins his laptop to show us the officer profile of Christopher McCloskey, including a sealed disciplinary file that shows he’s been reprimanded for accepting bribes, selective enforcement, and witness tampering. The dirty-cop trifecta.
“Good to know,” Dimitri nods. “I assume you have added him to the file. We may be able to use this.”
“Done. I also found your photo again and took it down. That’s twice, if anyone’s counting.”
Dimitri sighs and nods again. “Good catch. Keep watching. And you, James?”
I prop myself against the back of the chair that sits opposite Wes’s desk leaning on both hands. “Looks like the sale is a go. They did inventory today and they’re just guarding the unit now. It’s a waiting game until Sunday. I set up a camera before I left—Wes can you make a program that’ll alert us to any movements?”
He shrugs. “Give me an hour.”
The job is Rossi, not the weapons, but I know we all feel the same—it’s not a true win unless we get those guns off the market. It’s usually easier to get it all in one fell swoop, in and out, but that might not be an option this time.
“I think we need to refocus. We should be trying to find Rossi, keeping some eyes on the house. If he’s in there, I have a feeling he’s going to just stay put. It’s fucking Fort Knox. He’s even got dogs patrolling the perimeter. Short of blowing it to hell, we’re not getting in.”
“Can we get eyes inside?” Dimitri asks Wes .
“I can try, depends on his firewall,” Wes hedges, scratching the back of his neck. “But I’ve got people who owe me favors at most of the big network security providers, so I should be able to crack on.”
“For now, let us hope he will be at the drop in person. It will still be the cleanest take down,” Dimitri says.
“What if he doesn’t show?” Wes asks.
“He cannot stay in his house forever.”
Privately, I disagree. He can if his house is anything like ours. “To do this right, we need a 24-hour watch. I’m going to need some help—I’m just one man.”
“That is a good plan. I will take nights.”
Wes and I turn to look at Dimitri, wearing twin expressions of shock. “What happened to bedtime at 10 o’clock sharp?” Wes asks.
“Yeah, you’ve never volunteered to throw off your sleep schedule,” I echo. The one time I can remember him taking the night shift was when I had a concussion and couldn’t stay awake at night.
“That was before.”
“Before?” Wes prods.
“Before one of us had something to come home to,” he says, fixing me with a look that’s part dare, part self-congratulatory. Like he wants me to acknowledge his sacrifice, but I’d better not say anything about it.
Wes’s smile is knowing, but he hides it by taking a sip of his drink.
I’m impressed. It didn’t take her long to melt Dimitri’s outer layer of ice, and that shit’s thick—he is from the frozen Motherland, after all. Or, maybe it’s his version of an apology to me for wanting me to kill her. “Thanks, man. That’s really—”
“You still fall asleep on the night watch. You think I do not know?”
Okay, it’s not an apology to me. “That was once. Maybe, twice. And you know the first time it was because of the concussion.”
He snorts. “I will start tonight after some rest. That is all?”
Wes and I exchange a look. “All on my end for now,” I say and Wes nods his agreement. Dimitri stands fluidly and leaves.
“What just happened?” I ask, pointing at the door and Dimitri’s pounding steps down the hallway .
Wes chuckles and shakes his head in disbelief. “He doesn’t stand a chance. Oh, you hear that timer? I think that means supper is ready.”
Eleanor is setting plates down on the table when we enter the kitchen—she must have heard us coming—and Wes sets a hand over his heart. “Only two place settings? But what’ll we do with Hawkeye?” he asks in a low, conspiratorial tone, throwing a thumb my way.
She laughs like they’ve got some sort of fucking inside joke about it and turns back to the island to grab the other plate and the roll of silverware wrapped in a napkin, which she hands him with a smile. “Off you go.”
“Yeah, keep smiling, pipsqueak,” I call after him as he retreats down the hall. “It’ll be dogfood from now on.”
I settle down at the table and turn my head up as she approaches with silverware for us. “Thank you, darlin’, smells delicious.”
She smiles proudly, looking down at the meal. “Chicken piccata, homemade pasta, roasted broccoli. I don’t know how you guys were eating it steamed, it’s so… fibrous,” she says, wrinkling that cute nose.
It only took, like, two days of eating her food to question how I was eating any of it before. I’m never going back. My first bite bursts on my tongue with tart, lemon flavor. “Fucking fantastic,” I moan.
She’s watching me with a keyed-up expression. “Good? Not too salty? I was a little concerned because I’m used to a different kind of kosher salt than what’s here—kitchens use Diamond and most home cooks have Morton—so I was worried that the salinity was a little off—”
“It’s perfect,” I say, cutting her nervous explanation short. The way she glows with satisfaction is enough to convince me that I should make a point to assure her how amazing everything is from now on. I like that look of contentment.
We fall into light conversation as we eat. I’m spearing one of the final few broccoli trees when I remember to update her on the change to my schedule. “Just so you know, I’ll be leaving a bit earlier and getting home a bit later for the next couple of days. We’re doing surveillance somewhere a little bit further, now.”
“Oh, okay,” she says, looking down at what’s left on her plate. “Is it just you doing surveillance? ”
“It was before, but Dimitri’s helping now.” I sit back a little and regard her. “You know, he took the night shift. He’s never taken the night shift willingly like that.”
She tilts her head. “You said that with a certain emphasis but I don’t think I have enough context to understand what exactly you mean.”
“He said he did it so we could be together more, and he’s not a man predisposed to being soft or sentimental.”
At that, she laughs. “I’d never have guessed,” she says, the gentlest of roasts. “That was really nice of him.”
“It was. You must have won him over somehow.”
“I think it was the knives.” She smiles and pushes around the last broccoli piece, before spearing it on her fork. “I’m surprised Wesley can’t help with your surveillance. Isn’t hacking into people’s doorbell cameras kind of his wheelhouse?”
I snort. One of his favorite topics. “Do yourself a favor and don’t ask Wes about doorbell cameras, unless you like anti-establishment and personal privacy rants.”
At that, she smiles. “Love ‘em. And conspiracy theories.”
“Oh, really?” I push my plate away, finished. “Such as?”
“Well, have you heard about all the cheese they’re keeping in caves in Missouri? The government bailed out big dairy years ago and they’ve just been hoarding, like, a billion pounds of it.”
My smile turns doubtful and I blink at her. “Big dairy? Seriously?”
“It’s why there’s cheese so many places it doesn’t belong, like stuffed in the crust of a pizza that’s already topped with it—government subsidies. It’s a conspiracy,” she declares, crossing her arms as I chuckle. “I’m gonna find it one day. If I ever go missing, look for me in the gouda.”
“I’m going to look this up, you know,” I say, wearing a huge, amused grin. “I’m not just going to take you at your word.” I totally would.
“Good, you shouldn’t. If I had my phone, I’d send you some links.”
I laugh. “To answer your original question, no. Wes won’t hack doorbell cameras for this kind of thing—Dimitri and I can handle the watch. We need his RAM for more important things most of the time. ”
“The anti-establishment stuff, I get. But why does he draw the line at doorbell cameras? Don’t you guys regularly do stuff that’s pretty invasive? And isn’t he, like, a hacker? Seems like getting into places he isn’t invited is kind of the idea.”
I shrug and collect both of our plates to go start washing up. “We all have those lines we won’t cross.”
Her laugh is more of a bark, like she didn’t mean to make the noise out loud and stopped herself. I throw her a look over my shoulder.
“You’re telling me there’s a line you won’t cross?” she asks, raising an eyebrow at me.
I pause, considering. I’d told myself no video inside her apartment was that line. But, really, combining looking in through her window and the audio from the bugs kind of made that a moot point. I haven’t dug through her past enough to know every single detail, but that’s just because she’s here with me now, and I don’t feel like I have to.
“For some things, maybe. But not when it comes to protecting the things that are mine.” I place the plates in the sink and turn around to face her. She’s sipping from her water glass. “There’s nothing I won’t do to protect you, Eleanor. I’m not the good guy, and I don’t want you to forget that. I’m the guy that would kill everyone just to save one person, if that one person is you.”
From the look on her face, I know she believes me. And I’m heartened by the flash of heat I see, however buried it is behind the discomfort.
“I know,” she says quietly. “But I also really hope we never have to put that to the test.”