Shaban parked the Porsche on a side street two blocks from Jay Sanderling’s house. With his collar turned up, he walked along the sidewalk to number 421 on Egerton Avenue in Woodbridge. The lights were on, and there was movement in the windows. He circled the house, peering in, and saw a small boy playing with model cars in the living room and his mother preparing dinner in the kitchen. A nice domestic scene.
The father, however, was not in sight. Shaban moved to the garage, separate from the house and sitting well back at the end of a gravel driveway. He beamed a pocket flashlight through a side window and saw only one vehicle, a Chevrolet Suburban, in the two-car garage. The Suburban was the wife’s car. Mr. Sanderling had not yet come home.
That was no problem. He could wait.
He positioned himself behind a screen of hedges in a drift of brittle leaves. The night was turning chilly, but he was indifferent to the cold.
The problem that faced him was unprecedented in his experience. Never before had a courier run off with the product. And this one, Kyle Ridley, was the last person he would have suspected of duplicity. An intelligent girl, reliable—so very reliable that he had not even insisted on picking her up at the airport. He had been content to let her come to him.
And now, on her sixth assignment, she had—what was the expression?—skipped out. At first he couldn’t believe it. But when she had not arrived by noon and had failed to answer repeated phone calls, he had begun to worry. That was when he’d taken a trip to her residence. Her car had not been in its numbered space, and her apartment, which he’d accessed after jimmying the lock, had been empty. Many of the clothes had been removed from the closet. Some had been left strewn on the floor. She had packed in a hurry. She had left her phone behind, and the SIM card had been removed and smashed.
It was all very disappointing. He had credited her with more sense. Now he would have to track her down and recover the goods, and of course he would have to kill her. Later he would make his confession to Father Gjergj and say five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys to cleanse his soul.
The purr of an engine drew his gaze to the street. Headlights approached. Shaban eased closer to the garage wall, out of sight. The car, a Ford Taurus, turned into the driveway, and the garage door slanted open with a shuddering creak. As the Taurus eased inside, Shaban followed. When the engine fell silent, he moved up slowly toward the driver’s door from the rear.
A man with a briefcase emerged. He turned toward the driveway and stopped, facing Shaban. A gasp hissed out of him.
“Hello, Mr. Sanderling,” Shaban said.
“Jesus. You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry for that. Was not my intention. It should not have been needed to meet you in this way. You should have taken my calls.”
“I—I was busy all day. Didn’t have time.”
“When I call, you make time.”
Sanderling set down his briefcase and pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “Look, the thing is—I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“No?”
“It’s too risky. I can’t take the chance. The money is good, but if I lose my job … You understand.”
“I do not understand. We had an agreement. A man honors his obligations.”
“I can’t take the risk.”
Shaban glanced at the clutter of tools hanging from hooks on the wall. There was no broom, but he did see a snow shovel. Casually he lifted it by the handle. The wide blade was aluminum, reinforced with a galvanized steel edge. He tapped it against his open palm.
“There are many kinds of risk.” Tap. “When I could not get through to you, I took the trouble to find out some things.” Tap. “Personal things.”
Sanderling’s eyes flicked to the shovel’s blade, beating out its steady rhythm. “What things?”
“Your wife is Joanna. She is employed at Raritan Bay Medical Center as a registered nurse.” Tap tap. “Is good to be a nurse. She helps people. She must have a heart that is kind. Your child is Joshua.” Tap. “Joshua is nine years old and attends public school three blocks from here. Is allergic to peanuts. Is on the drug Ritalin for hype—hyper—” He gave up on the impossible word. “The drug Ritalin.” Tap tap.
“How the hell …?”
“You are not the only source available to me. I have friends in many places. I am capable of many things.” Tap. “You understand me, sure, yes?”
Sanderling’s voice was thick. “Yes.”
“Good.” He replaced the shovel on its hook. “I do not wish to be cruel. Is not my nature. But I’m a pragmatist. Your assistance is needed. So I obtain it. And you will be paid, like before.”
“All right.”
“I’m sorry, but you make a mistake to think you can go into business with us and, later on, walk away. Is not that kind of arrangement. Once you prove useful, you are called again. Is not a call you can ignore.” He shrugged. “These are the rules. You should have known them.”
“All right,” he said again, and for a second time he pushed his glasses higher on his nose.
“So you will do it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you set it up from here?”
“No, I need to be at the command center. It’s not as if the system is on the web or something. It’s our own network. It can be accessed only from our dedicated terminals.”
“Then you go back to the office.”
“You mean now?”
“Sure, yes.”
“I can’t go back now. My wife is making dinner.”
“Dinner will be late.”
“I’m off duty. It won’t look right. It’ll raise too many questions.”
“You go back anyway. Make excuse. Get to one of your dedi—dedi …” He tried again. “Dedicated terminals. And set it up.”
“It can’t wait until morning?”
“No. I already texted you the details. You will forward any hits to my phone, like last time. You will set it up to work automatically. You will not even have to make the calls yourself.”
“I know,” Sanderling said, sounding unhappy.
“No one will find out, and you will make money. You buy your wife and child something nice. New TV, maybe.”
The man nodded.
“No hard feelings, Mr. Sanderling?”
“No, no. Of course not.”
“Don’t be scared. You do the smart thing, sure, yes. Believe this.”
Shaban left the garage, satisfied. It was unnecessary to watch Sanderling pull away in his Taurus. There was no doubt the man would do as he was told.
He walked back to his Porsche, satisfied. He was sure he would find Kyle Ridley now. The girl had been crazy to think she could ever get away. She’d been carrying two kilos of pure heroin, with a street value of at least $220,000 once it was cut. Her very life was not worth so much.
He would find her, and he would get the shipment back, and then he would kill her quickly and simply—a single bullet placed between her eyes.
No pain. He would be sure of that. He was not a cruel man.