Luther Blue checked his Rolex and decided that it was none too early to make a call. If he was up, everyone should be up.
He dialed and waited.
“Shields.”
“I know who I called, thank you,” Luther said dryly.
“What’s up?”
“You tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me what I want to hear.”
“It’s too early to play games, man.”
“Tell me if I’m going to run into your cousin Connor when I arrive at headquarters this morning.”
“No. No, you definitely will not run into Connor.”
“So you are telling me you took care of the problem?”
The pause was just a beat or two too long.
“You didn’t do it, did you?” Luther tried to keep his temper under control.
“I honest to God haven’t had an opportunity.”
“A good agent doesn’t wait for opportunities. He makes them.”
“Look, he was around this weekend, but the entire family was there. My dad, his dad, my brothers, my sister. He was never alone. There was just no chance to-”
“This is just more of the same to me, Shields. I’m really tired of hearing it. As far as I’m concerned, you created this problem, one, by bumbling into him in that alley down in Santa Estela-what, two fucking years ago? And two, by not taking care of him right then and there.” The anger began to build. “You’re telling me in two fucking years, there wasn’t one time you could have taken him out?”
Silence.
“Shields?”
“I heard you, man, I-”
“You’re just so much bullshit, you know that? Do I need to remind you who works for who here?”
“No. No reminder necessary.”
“Then tell me how you’re so certain I won’t be coming face-to-face with him at any time soon?”
“He’s out of the country.”
“Where?”
“No one knows, except maybe the guy he reports directly to, and the Director.”
“So how do you know he won’t be around?”
“I talked to him yesterday. He said he’ll be gone for at least three, probably closer to four, weeks.”
“Did he say anything about that deal in Santa Estela?”
Another pause.
“Shields?”
“Not recently.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“He asked about it when I saw him the first time, maybe a month, two months after that night. The night he saw you. I told him it had been taken care of. That everyone had been arrested and the authorities were ID’ing all the kids to send them home. He was concerned about that.”
“He never followed up?”
“Why would he?”
“Oh, maybe if he saw me walking through the office, it might shake his memory.”
“I told you. You’re not going to run into him. He’s gone for probably a month.”
“You don’t seem to understand my situation here, Shields. I am at a real disadvantage. I don’t know what this guy looks like. I could be standing next to him in an elevator, or passing him in the hall, and he could be remembering me, and I won’t even know it. You have any idea of how vulnerable that makes me?”
“He’s never seen you at HQ, he’d have said something to me, but-”
“I’m tired of looking over my shoulder, you understand me? I’ve spent the last two years looking over my shoulder, and I’m goddamn tired of it. Every new assignment here in the States, I’m holding my breath, wondering who I’m going to be working with, who I’m going to run into. Well, I’ve been reassigned back here for a while. I do not want to have to be concerned about this again.” Luther took a deep breath, tried to calm himself. He knew that when he got really upset, his voice had a tendency to grow shrill. He hated when that happened. “When he gets back here, I want him taken out. No ifs, ands, or buts, you hear me? No excuses. Take care of him. I’m done with this shit, Shields.”
“Okay, I hear you.”
Luther checked the date on his watch. August 9.
“I want him gone within a week of his stepping foot off the plane, hear?”
“I heard you.”
“Hear this.” In spite of his best effort to maintain control, Luther could feel the anger, the need for control, rising in him rapidly. “By the fifteenth of September, one way or another, there will be one less Shields on the federal payroll, and frankly, at this point, I don’t care which of you it is.”
He hung up before the agent could respond.
Dumb son of a bitch. It’s that old, blood-is-thicker-than-water crap. Connor Shields was lucky he was out of reach right now. For two cents, Luther would take care of him himself. If he knew where he was, and what he looked like.
Luther had connections everywhere. Unfortunately, he didn’t know where Connor was. He’d just have to be patient and wait for Connor to come to him.
Patience was not one of Luther’s virtues.
He sipped at his coffee, then put the cup down slowly and forced himself to concentrate on the breathing exercises they taught him in anger-management class. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn’t.
Today it did. When the waitress returned to ask him if he’d like another cup, he smiled and declined like a gentleman.
A gentleman who, at midnight tonight, would receive a fresh shipment from a very small, very poor Central American country where the chief export was its children, and its import was the money sent back by the workers who had fled illegally to the United States to work as laborers.
Luther took out the wish list he’d compiled from his roster of usual clients and studied it carefully.
Four of the older girls, between the ages of ten and twelve, were to go directly to a lovely Tudor-style house in a northern New Jersey suburb. At this most unlikely-looking brothel, they would replace four girls who were being sent to a house outside of Philadelphia, where they would be traded for four girls who would move on to D.C.
“Keep ’em moving, keep ’em confused,” he told the owners of the houses. “And keep the product fresh. Make sure there’s always something new. That’s the way to build up that repeat business.”
And when the girls reached their midteens, worn out in mind, spirit, and body?
“You just dispose of them. You can’t send them back to their families.” He’d given this speech to all of his customers at one time or another. “Look, you got a cop or two on your payroll, right? Of course you do. Now, if I were you, when the girls just don’t have it anymore, when they start losing that fight, I’d give ’em to the cops, a little reward for their loyalty. When they’re done with the girls, they can take care of them. Trust me, no one knows how to get away with murder better than a cop.”
He drained the coffee in the cup and left a ten on the table with the bill for his breakfast. Once outside in the swelter of an early August Virginia morning, he paused and took a deep cleansing breath, just as he’d been instructed to do.
To have a good day, keep the anger at bay.
It had become his mantra. Not that it always worked, but today, it was good enough to take the edge off. He got into his car and prepared for his meeting.
Then it was off with the Rolex, on with the Timex.
Damn, but he loved that gold watch with the diamonds, loved the feel of it on his wrist, loved the way it looked, so classy, so expensive. With a sigh, he dropped it into its box and placed it in his briefcase.
He had yet to meet the FBI agent who could afford a watch like that. The watch, the house in Myrtle Beach, the condo in Manhattan, the apartments in Paris and London-all real estate in his mother’s name, of course-the new Jaguar… who could live like that on what the government paid?
He wondered idly how his good friend Agent Shields spent his share of the money they’d made since he’d recruited him three years ago. He hoped Shields was as smart about it as he himself had been. Maybe he should have a chat soon, find out where it was stashed. In the unfortunate event that something should happen to his good buddy, shouldn’t someone know where to find the cash?
After all, in their line of work-legitimate as well as illegal-an untimely accident could occur at any time.
And as far as Luther was concerned, Connor Shields was headed for an accident, as soon as he’d taken care of one little loose end.
Maybe sooner.