Peter W. J. Hayes was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, before moving to Paris and later immigrating to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After college he drove delivery trucks and bartended, then lived in Taiwan for a year before backpacking across mainland China. Returning to Pittsburgh, he moved to the other side of the bar to begin a long career in marketing. Following a six-year stint as chief marketing officer for one of the world’s largest investment houses, he retired and turned to crime writing.
Hayes is the author of the Silver Falchion–nominated Vic Lenoski mystery series. His short stories have appeared in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Crimeucopia, Mystery Magazine, Pulp Modern, The Literary Hatchet, and various anthologies, including three Malice Domestic anthologies and The Best New England Crime Stories.
His short stories have been finalists for the Derringer and Al Blanchard Awards, and he was a finalist and highly commended for the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award.
Visit Hayes at www.peterwjhayes.com.
John still wakes sometimes in the night, sweating, reliving that moment at the bagel shop near his offices. In his dream—before nausea forces him awake—he sees again his daily order of orange juice and a sesame bagel on the table in front of him, untouched. He knows it’s Friday because he smells walnut cream cheese—his favorite. He always reserves that spread for the last day of the workweek, as a treat to start the weekend.
Which is when the two men slide into his booth, directly across from him.
One is young, his face scrubbed shiny. He wears a pink polo shirt; just another suburban dad returning from his young daughter’s soccer game.
The second is older, with a flattop John remembers from 1950s photos of his grandfather. That man’s face is weathered, the bags under his eyes swollen. John straightens and opens his mouth to protest, but the older man lifts a large, vein-skeined wrist and shows his palm.
“Hear us out.” His voice is calm. Authoritative.
The younger man slides a business card across the table to him. John recognizes the round blue logo of the FBI.
From that moment on, for the rest of his life, John will never eat walnut cream cheese. Even the smell of it turns his stomach.
*
Truly, the arrival of the agents was a relief. Until that moment he’d been trapped. He was only a few years out of college, still in his first job at an accounting firm. He didn’t know where to turn, how to extricate himself.
Two years into his job, he’d been promoted to one of the firm’s largest accounts. While reviewing their cash flow, he’d noticed that some cash deposits appeared regularly, as if they were timed and structured. He’d then spotted how the deposit totals exactly matched overnight transfers to offshore accounts—while a few vaguely titled line items adjusted as if they were accepting the deposit amounts.
For John, it was like lifting his eyes from hand-hewn stones and lines of mortar to see the inside of a cathedral.
At first he was excited, but a few guarded questions revealed that his more experienced colleagues didn’t see the shell game concealing the overseas transfers. He wondered for a time if he could be wrong, but he knew he wasn’t.
Then came the proof. Not long after his discovery, his boss, Mario Coom, tapped him on the shoulder after their weekly staff meeting. Mario, a fit, middle-aged man with wavy black hair and a permanent five o’clock shadow, led him into his office.
John still remembered that office, with its tall windows and city views, the shelves of acrylic awards and photos of Mario with city council members and sports stars. At that time, it was the type of office he desperately wanted to inhabit one day. His dream office. Mario closed the door and looked him up and down. Then, his brown eyes burning in a way that made John uncomfortable, Mario told him they had a snitch in the company. How their largest client, a Mr. Volkov, was concerned. That John needed to be loyal, now more than ever.
Mario didn’t explain why a legitimate accounting firm might have a snitch. Or the coincidence of their largest client having the same last name as the city’s biggest crime boss. Or why—and this part truly worried John—Mario even trusted him with this information.
John wasn’t the snitch, and he understood Mario might be testing him. But common sense told him if he quit the company, Mario would assume he was guilty. Worse, the large amount of cash moving through the accounts meant the stakes were high. He also knew that if he stayed and the money laundering was discovered, he would be complicit. Perhaps arrested.
Which was why, when John saw that round blue logo on the business card, despite a shudder of fear, he pulled the card and his bagel closer as if they were life rings tossed to him as he drowned.
*
Eighteen months after that first FBI visit, John slid into a booth at a bagel chain in El Paso, almost two thousand miles from his last job. He placed his orange juice and sesame bagel—slathered with the plain cream cheese he always chose for Mondays—on the table in front of him.
His first day of work, his second chance.
Behind him were months of secret depositions and closed grand jury testimony. His arrangement with the FBI was simple. He knew his company’s bookkeeping practices, and Volkov’s accounts in particular. The snitch in the company passed along copies of spreadsheets to the FBI, and John explained them. He worked with an FBI forensic accountant, a plump, balding man with oddly modern eyeglasses that looked out of place on his pale face. His last name was Crane, and he talked as he worked, turning their sessions into an unexpected masterclass in money laundering. John was fascinated. By the time they finished—and Volkov’s trial was underway—John knew Mario’s laundering techniques were, at best, mediocre.
No wonder he’d spotted them so easily.
He mentioned that to Crane, who laughed.
“You’d be good at this. And you should know, each launderer has a signature. It’s in the techniques they use to hide false transactions. I’d recognize an individual’s work anywhere, Grasshopper.”
When John stared at him in confusion, Crane added, “Never saw the old Kung Fu television series, huh? And you’re right. Mario’s work is shoddy.”
But where was Mario?
The day the FBI served their arrest warrants, Mario’s penthouse was empty, his luxury car gone. The FBI mounted a short-lived search. Volkov was the FBI’s real target, and Mario’s role was just an office boy, as one of the agents put it. There were serious bad guys to catch.
John didn’t really care, and now he had a second chance. He stared at his orange juice and sesame bagel with its plain cream cheese, and stood. New beginnings meant ending old habits, he decided, and tossed his breakfast into the garbage receptacle. He bought a take-out coffee and muffin and drove the last mile to his new office.
The U.S. Marshals’ WITSEC program had placed him in a midsize accounting firm that specialized in bookkeeping for car manufacturers. A retired U.S. Marshals Service commander sat on the company board, which told John, now living under the name of John Craft, that the Marshals were as tightly knit as the mob. As he crossed the parking lot to his new job, the sun reflected off the building’s glass windows, hurting his eyes. It was barely eight fifteen, yet the heat of the asphalt seeped through the soles of his shoes. Of course they didn’t relocate me to Hawaii, he thought. It was safer to place people somewhere no one wants to go.
His new boss, Walt Tierney, walked him around the office and did introductions. At the end of a series of low-walled cubicles he met Susan Sanchez. Suzy stood in a single fluid movement and offered her hand. Her black hair fell just below her shoulders, her brown eyes were so bright John had trouble meeting her gaze. Her hand was refreshingly cool after the outside heat.
He didn’t want to let go
Suzy worked on the team handling the company’s largest client. John could tell from the way Walt introduced her that he respected her work. As Walt led him to his new office, John glanced over his shoulder. Suzy was watching him, her head above the low cubicle partition. If eyes could smile, hers were certainly doing so.
That Friday, he asked her out.
And just like that, seven years passed and dawned on the Saturday of their five-year-old son’s birthday party.
John couldn’t imagine not being married. He loved Suzy and their two children, even the small suburban house the Marshals Service had provided. He even liked Suzy’s extended family. Her aunts, uncles, and cousins enveloped him, dismayed that his parents were dead and he had no siblings. It was as if those facts made them want to protect him all the more.
It was all a lie, of course. John’s parents lived in a small suburb outside Boston in a white Cape Cod that leaked around the stone chimney, no matter how many times John’s father caulked or replaced the flashing. John’s only communication with them was through Linda Fesco, his case officer. Each month, he wrote a letter and enclosed several photos of Suzy and the kids. All hard copy, email was out of the question.
He’d been surprised when the FBI suggested witness relocation. He wasn’t the snitch and didn’t think he needed protection, but the FBI introduced him to Linda, who gave him a gut-wrenching presentation about the likelihood of retribution from Volkov’s gang. Grudgingly, he’d agreed to a diluted version of WITSEC lasting ten years. Controlled communications with his parents would be allowed. To Linda and the FBI, he acted as if WITSEC was unnecessary. Secretly, he liked the idea. He imagined dates and job interviews after the ten years were up, and letting slip—in a hushed voice—burnished anecdotes from that period of his past he really couldn’t discuss.
Linda Fesco was with him the day he visited his parents and explained he was leaving, that communications would be rare and monitored. His mother barely said a word, fighting not to cry. His father, an accountant himself, had followed the Volkov trial in the news. As Linda skated past topics best left unsaid, John saw his father making the links anyway, his gaze flicking from Linda to John and back. As Linda and John prepared to leave, his father grasped his hand and pulled him close. Not a hug, really, his father rarely hugged, but close enough for John to hear him say, “I’m proud of you, son. You did the right thing. Take care of yourself until we see you again.”
In the car with Linda, he fought back tears. He was his parent’s only child, and he suddenly understood how terrible this must be for them. For the first time since the bagel shop and the arrival of the FBI agents, everything felt real and final. Worse, his father was wrong. He hadn’t done the right thing. He hadn’t done anything but desperately grab the life preserver thrown to him.
And now he was running away to hide.
He tried not to relive that pain and self-recrimination now, waiting for the oven to finish warming pizza bites for the five-year-olds at his son’s birthday party. Parents were still stopping by, dropping off his son’s day-care friends. Suzy’s family was out in force, swarming the house, their voices raised in excitement. It was a rush of noise and warmth. John thought about how his mother would love to be here. He could see her distributing paper plates and warning the children not to spill their punch. It saddened him.
The doorbell rang and Suzy bumped him with her hip, her cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling. “I’ll do this, you get the door.” She was almost breathless with excitement, and John felt a rush of happiness for her, followed, as he headed to the door, by a surge of gratitude. Despite everything, he was glad for his life.
His son, Toby, had answered the door and was grinning at a girl offering him a brightly wrapped gift. The girl’s mother spotted John and smiled, her teeth surprisingly white, as her husband pivoted from closing the door. He and John locked eyes.
For John, it was like being shot with a low-voltage Taser.
It was Mario Coom. His dark hair was thinner, the jawline softer, but it was Mario. Right down to the five-o’clock shadow. John was so mesmerized he kept walking toward them, as if Coom was a magnet and he was no more than iron filings.
Mario was the first to snap out of it. He blinked, looked around the living room, and spotted Toby. He dropped a hand to the back of Toby’s neck and stared at John, as if asking whether he needed to crush Toby’s pale neck in his hand.
John stopped dead, unable to look at what might happen to his son, and turned to Mario’s wife. He introduced himself, both first and last name, and managed to hide the quiver in his arm as they shook hands. He turned to Mario, who in a deft move transferred the covered dish in his right hand to his wife and reached for a handshake. He didn’t release Toby’s neck.
“Mario Rabino,” he said, and squeezed John’s hand so hard John thought his fingers might rearrange themselves. “Can you show me where to put this dish?”
John eked out a yes. Mario released John’s hand and Toby’s neck and took back the covered dish. Dazed, John led him to the kitchen, just as Suzy disappeared into the living room with a plate of pizza bites.
Mario slid the casserole onto the countertop, turned to John and showed him the blade of a paring knife. It took John a split second to realize it was his own knife, from the block knife holder on the countertop. Mario scanned the kitchen and looked at him. “Phone. Give me your phone.” His voice was compressed. “I won’t say it again.”
John understood in a rush, his mind finally working again. Mario hadn’t spotted a landline, and all he needed was John’s cell phone to stop any calls for help. He handed it over. Mario pressed one finger to his lips in a signal to stay silent and disappeared into the living room. Not knowing what else to do, John followed.
Mario was talking urgently to his wife. John moved close enough to overhear her say, a surprised look on her face, “But we were going to the mall, to look at couches.”
“We’re staying,” Mario replied harshly, leaning closer. She tightened, as if she expected to be slapped. The tone of Mario’s voice, and their movements, were so intimate and practiced they left John cold.
“Are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” John flinched and found Suzy standing next to him, a quizzical smile on her lips.
“No, yes, I’m fine. Just overwhelmed by all the kids.” He tried to smile and knew he failed.
Mario raised his phone to his ear, watching John and Suzy together. He stepped close to Toby, the blade of the paring knife sticking an inch or two from his right fist. John looked down and saw Suzy holding her phone. He turned to step away, but Mario’s wife approached them, a bright smile on her face.
“I hope you don’t mind if Mario and I stay for the party?” She touched Suzy’s forearm with her fingertips. “We do so love children’s parties.”
“It’s not a problem at all,” Suzy replied, and glanced at the silk scarf Mario’s wife wore around her neck. “And that’s a beautiful scarf.”
“Oh.” She touched it self-consciously. “I burn so easily from the sun. I have to be careful when I’m outside.”
John sidestepped away from them, impressed at how easily she lied. He’d already overheard their original plans, and from the angle where he stood, he’d spotted a heavy dose of makeup edging out from underneath the scarf. Together, the makeup and scarf were meant to hide something, and John guessed it was bruises. He moved a few more steps away, watching Mario. Mario finished his phone call and pocketed his phone, saw John was free of Suzy, and backed away from Toby. He gave John a toothy smile that said, “Gotcha,” and pointed at his fist, where the paring knife was hidden.
*
For two hours Mario never strayed far from Toby. John examined every possible permutation of why Mario might be in his house. Perhaps Mario was the original snitch for the FBI and was relocated to the same city by the Marshals Service? But if that was the case, they were on the same side and Mario wouldn’t threaten him. He discounted that possibility. That left only the raging coincidence that Mario fled to El Paso, and the Marshals Service blindly relocated John to the same area. It was insidiously bad luck, as if Mario was the rainwater his father couldn’t keep out of his house. But John’s mind kept shifting to how the day might end. He was sure Mario wouldn’t just herd his wife and daughter into his car and drive away, never to be seen again.
There was more to come.
He was right. As a stream of parents arrived to collect their children, Mario took a call and came over to him.
“Outside. There’s someone you need to meet.”
Mario placed his hand in the small of John’s back and guided him through the late-day heat to a white SUV waiting in the driveway. Mario opened the back door and gestured John inside. When John hesitated, Mario leaned close and said, “Just a conversation. Do you really think we’d grab you in the middle of the day with everyone watching? We just need to be clear on a few things.”
John glanced about and saw Mario was right. Several parents stood in a group in front of the house. Two of Toby’s friends chased each other around the large purple-blooming Texas Ranger plant by their front window. Suzy was standing with another mother, her hand shading her eyes, watching what he was doing.
John clambered into the back of the SUV. The door slammed shut behind him and Mario took the front passenger seat.
The man waiting for John in the back seat reminded him of the young FBI agent from the bagel shop, all those years ago. Like him, this man wore a polo shirt (yellow, this time), but instead of wrinkled chinos he wore blue jeans ironed to a knife-edge crease. One leg was crossed over the other, displaying expensive loafers and no socks.
“So you’re John,” the man said, looking him up and down with piercing blue eyes. He was in his forties, his sandy blond hair cut short above a chiseled face. John stared back, thinking the man looked like an unusually virile spokesman in a perfume ad.
“I’m Alfred,” the man said.
Deep in his subconscious John smelled walnut cream cheese and fought down a surge of bile. He knew the man’s name wasn’t Alfred. Somehow he would have preferred this Alfred to be overweight, swarthy, and drowned in tattoos, like the driver.
“I’ll keep it short.” Alfred smiled, his teeth straight and white. “I always liked a child’s birthday party. Do you like your family, John?”
John nodded.
“Now, Mario told me you worked for him back in Boston, and I’m guessing the Marshals Service was kind enough to move you here. A bit of bad luck running into Mario again, isn’t it?”
John thought the man’s tone was oddly mechanical. Almost bored.
“I was getting ready to bring John into the business,” Mario said from the front seat. “He had potential. I told him we had a snitch, to see how he’d react. I didn’t know we actually had one. But John kept quiet. That’s potential.” Mario twisted around in his seat to make eye contact. “I was ready to bring you in. Where the real money is.”
John wasn’t sure what to say. Mario was grooming him? That’s what the snitch conversation was about?
“Well, isn’t that nice and all,” Alfred said. “But we’re here today, and the three of us are going to work something out.” He pegged John with his gaze. “You keep quiet about Mario, okay? Anything happens to Mario, arrest or otherwise, and your wife and kids disappear. It will be your worst nightmare, and we’ll let you live for the rest of your life to think about it. Do I make myself clear?”
John heard every word and felt let down. Despite not admitting it to himself, on some level he’d known this was the outcome. His family was the best leverage they had. Now that he heard the words, they sounded almost anticlimactic.
“And remember this,” Alfred added. “We’re watching you. You try and run, and you’ll be the only one left alive.”
“Okay.” John summoned the courage to look him in the eye. “Is that it?”
Alfred gave him a cold smile. “I don’t think we need more.”
John turned to Mario. “Give me my phone back.”
Mario glanced at Alfred, who nodded. Mario rummaged in his pocket and held out the phone.
John took it. “You don’t have to worry about me.” Before anyone could say anything more, he opened the door and slid into his baking hot front yard. Toby was standing by the front door, and John walked to him, placed his hand on the back of his neck and massaged gently, as if he could make the pressure of Mario’s hand disappear. He knew he couldn’t. He knew it would always be there, as it was on his own neck. A slow boil of anger started inside him.
*
Suzy, of course, wanted to know why he got into the SUV. He passed it off by saying he’d met Mario at the driving range and they were talking golf. The car was just to keep cool. Suzy offered to invite Mario and his wife over for dinner and John declined, admitting in a soft voice that he didn’t really like Mario. Suzy eyed him, but didn’t bring it up again. And then John settled in to wait. He was quite sure Mario would call, he just didn’t know when or how. No one threatened to murder your family and then walked away as if nothing happened.
But, when his phone rang at work two days later, it wasn’t Mario. It was Linda Fesco from the WITSEC program.
“Just checking in,” she said jauntily.
“It’s not the end of the month,” John replied, guardedly.
“What, I can’t check on my charges?” She said the last word as if he were a fourth grader.
John stayed quiet, to let her think he was considering her question. “Nope,” he said finally. “Same old, same old. Had my son’s fifth birthday party over the weekend.”
“I bet that was fun.”
“Kind of crazy, house full of five-year-olds, but yeah.”
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much.”
Now it was her turn to be silent for a few seconds. “Uh-huh. Well, if anything unusual comes up, give me a call.”
“Will do,” John said, and hung up. He stared at the phone for a few seconds, trying to remember the last time Linda Fesco called him off schedule. He already knew the answer. It was never.
Two days later his office phone rang, and when he picked it up, Mario was on the line.
“John, you play golf, right?” Mario asked, without preamble.
“I do.”
“Okay. Saturday morning, tell your wife you’re going to the driving range with some guys. Get to this address by ten o’clock.” Mario listed a place that was surprisingly close by. “Come up to suite thirty-two hundred. And John?”
“Yes?”
“Take a long look at a photograph of your wife and kids before you come. Just so you and I are clear.”
John didn’t need to be reminded. He went to bed every night and woke up every morning thinking about it, the time in between punctured by dreams of the bagel shop.
John arrived at the suite at ten o’clock on Saturday, to find himself alone with Mario in an office space of low-walled cubicles and offices. The name on the door was Potter Accounting. Mario ran an electronic wand over him to check for microphones. He inspected John’s cell phone, to be sure it was turned off, as instructed.
Mario handed back John’s phone. “On your way home, turn it back on when you pass the driving range.” He waved at the office. “This is where the real magic gets done. Potter Accounting, get it?” He directed John to a desk with a laptop. “From now on, you work for us.” He studied John carefully. “And you know what that means, right?”
John did. He was there to cook the books and hide whatever money Alfred was laundering. He’d expected Mario and Alfred to do something like this—to incriminate him—and he knew he had no choice but to go along with it. Worse, this time there would be no FBI agents sliding into his booth one morning at breakfast. If he wanted out, he would have to do it himself. And he was quite sure he would have only one chance.
*
John stayed patient for five months. Sometimes Suzy complained about his golf and he shifted the day of the week or time. Mario was surprisingly flexible about it. What Mario wouldn’t change was his approach to hiding offshore transactions. John spotted them just as easily as before, which led him to question how to make them harder to trace. Thinking up ways to disguise the transactions became a game to him, something to relieve the boredom.
He tested each new idea against what he’d learned from Crane, the FBI forensic accountant. Slowly, a method formed. He could camouflage the offshore transactions by randomizing the amounts and frequency of the deposits and corresponding transfers. He kept the approach in his head, never putting it to paper. He told himself it was just a way to keep himself interested and challenged, nothing more. Until the day he walked out of the office at his regular job to find Linda Fesco standing next to his car.
He didn’t recognize her at first. Normally she wore a dark suit and white shirt with her hair pulled back in a severe bun. Today, a short sun dress barely reached a quarter of the way down her supple, tanned thighs. Her bronzed shoulders were bare and large sunglasses sat atop a head of shiny hair that tumbled halfway down her back. She was shapely, smiling, and looking to all the world as if she was waiting only for him.
John stopped a few feet from her, his entire body jangling. “What are you doing here?”
“Just thought I’d stop by. See how you’re doing.”
“Are you on vacation?” John knew it was a ridiculous question, but he couldn’t reconcile this seductive woman with the Linda Fesco of the Marshals Service. Panic struck him. Any moment Suzy would leave the office building for their drive home. After they married she’d kept working, the company simply shifting her under a different boss. Suzy couldn’t see him talking to a woman who looked like this, a woman obviously waiting for him.
He looked at the office building. It was worse than he thought. Twenty feet away, Suzy stood motionless between the double doors leading into the lobby. Her hand was on the door handle, as if she’d turned to stone midmovement.
“You have to go,” he said, turning to Linda. He heard desperation in his voice.
Linda glanced in Suzy’s direction, reached out a hand, took him by the collar and rose onto her toes. She placed her lips near his ear. “You need to do the right thing here, John.” She let go and dropped back to her usual height.
“What are you talking about?”
She smiled, so broadly he knew she was doing it for Suzy to see. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Do the right thing, John, and it will all work out okay. And I suggest you tell Suzy I’m an old girlfriend passing through town, and that I decided to surprise you. It might work. But if I don’t hear from you, she’ll see me driving by your house a few times.” She twirled and crossed the parking lot to a convertible parked in a fire lane. She slid into the driver’s seat, blew him a kiss, and zipped out of the lot.
John turned toward Suzy, who was walking toward him. The despair on her face broke his heart. A delirious anger overtook him. He was being used. Set up. Played
He tried to control the turmoil inside him. “Hey,” he said, as she drew close.
She stopped several feet from him. “Who was that?” Suzy’s voice was fraught and thick.
“Oh. An old girlfriend. From college. I didn’t even know she was in town. I guess she’s passing through.”
Suzy pressed her hand to her abdomen where she once carried his children. She didn’t say anything, just walked around the car and got into the passenger seat.
John turned to the driver’s side door, willing his hands to stop shaking.
*
That night, once the children were in bed, John and Suzy went around and around, arguing about Linda. John invented a name and backstory for her, and stuck to his tale about her passing through town. Suzy kept returning to how much time he spent playing golf, and finally reached a point where she asked if it was golf at all. Exhausted, they both fell asleep at five in the morning. Nothing was resolved; they were just too tired to continue.
They drove to work in silence. In his small office, John swilled coffee. He had to act. He knew it. If Suzy spotted Linda again, she would never believe his lies. His anger shifted and swelled. What Linda had done was no different than Alfred. Worse, really, because Suzy knew about it. He swigged more burnt, bitter coffee, already well past his two-mugs-a-day routine. He’d thought WITSEC would burnish his life, make him mysterious and dashing. In truth, he felt cheap, dirty, and desperate. The Marshals Service had promised they would protect him, but Linda had weaponized the program and didn’t care if his family was within the blast circle.
But Linda was right about one thing. It was time to do the right thing. And he would.
Over the next few days, he and Suzy settled into a prickly stalemate, talking only about their children and family logistics. Out of deference, John waited until Saturday to say he was going golfing again, and drove straight to Potter Accounting. Mario showed up for the first hour and John did what he asked. As soon as Mario returned home, John opened a new offshore account in Panama, then installed the methods he’d worked out over the past few weeks to camouflage the transfers into it. He also added a new sub-account to one of the payables line items and backdated two years of payments from it into a collection of local bank accounts. He doubted Mario would spot it. Lately, Mario paid less and less attention to details.
During the middle of the week, he called Linda and left her a message.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he told her, when she returned his call.
“I knew you would.”
He didn’t like the arrogance in her voice, but he asked for a meeting in a week.
“Why so long?” she asked.
“I need time to put something together,” he said quietly. “I’m being watched. And we need to meet somewhere safe. My family is in danger.”
“I’ll send you the details.” Her answer was brusque, the tone take-control. The call ended.
I bet you will, John thought, as he put down his phone.
*
John hadn’t quite lied when he asked for time to put something together. That something was cash, which needed time to channel through his randomized system of transfers. He had specific cash totals in mind for both of the accounts he’d opened.
A week later he met Linda at, of all places, a bagel shop. It was Linda’s suggestion, and he wondered if she’d picked it on purpose after reading his FBI file. It fit a pattern about her that was obvious to him now. She was so blindly ambitious that if the FBI met sources in bagel shops, in her mind she should as well.
They’d argued over the meeting time, John holding out for early evening. He had his reasons.
“What do you have for me?” she asked, as soon as he sat down. She was professionally dressed again, her hair severely tied into a bun.
He uncapped his bottle of iced tea and took a sip. When he was finished he held up a flash drive for her to see, but slid it into his shirt pocket. “I have some questions before I give you that.”
She pulled her gaze away from his shirt pocket and met his eyes. “I’ll answer what I can.”
“You picked El Paso for a reason. It was no accident. You sent me here.”
“That isn’t actually a question, but yes.” She didn’t hide the derision in her voice.
“You thought I would bump into Coom?” John fought down his anger. “How is that even possible? The probability is no better than the lottery.”
She tilted her head back, looking down at him, scorn in her eyes. “Is it, though? We had reports he was here, which makes sense. I mean look at this place. Half the city is in Mexico. There’s fifty large accounting firms here, more than two hundred little ones. I bet half are laundering cartel money. Guys with Coom’s skills run to places like this. On top of that, accountants like certain neighborhoods, which means their kids go to the same schools and day care. We dropped you into the middle of all that. Was it a long shot? Of course. But I placed people in cities all along the border. I call the program Retread. The truth is, people gravitate to what they know best. I took accountants, mobsters, drug smugglers, guys who ran illegal gambling, you name it. Placed them where they were bound to meet their own kind. And when they do, they join up. Can’t help themselves. All I have to do is lean on them and boom! I have an informant in a crime network.”
John struggled to understand the enormity of what she was saying. How many people like him had she put in danger? “But I’m not a crook. I don’t want any of this.”
She shrugged. “And yet you’re working for Coom again.”
He stared at her, fighting anger. “They threatened my family.”
She gazed at him, a half-smile on her lips. She didn’t believe him. He could see it.
He tamped down his anger and tried to think through her viewpoint. “If I was bait,” he said slowly, “you were watching me.”
“Not really. We don’t have the budget for that. But we knew you wouldn’t run into Coom or anyone at your day job. So once in a while we’d follow you on a weekend. And one Saturday, guess who’s having a birthday party? We took photos of everyone going in and out. And who do we see, but Coom?” She snapped her fingers. “Then we did start following you. Okay, enough of this. Hand over the flash drive. I’ve got the FBI on a string. You need to understand, this is my ticket to Quantico. After this I’ll be working for them and done with this carny job babysitting people like you.”
“And all this was your idea?”
“Damn right. My baby. Took me two years to get my boss to go along with it. I checked who might go into WITSEC, convinced them if they needed it, like you, and decided where to send them.”
John’s mind flashed to Coom’s hand on the back of Toby’s neck, to the paring knife in Coom’s other hand as he hovered behind his son. All because Linda wanted to job hop.
“What happens now? To my family?” John asked.
“Nothing. You give me the flash drive. In my reports you’re just a confidential informant. Your name never comes up. The FBI take down Coom and his boss, and you stay here for the next two-some years of your ten-year deal. Then you do whatever you want.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “And you understand if the arrests are messed up, my family will be killed. That’s the threat.”
She waved a hand as if she was shooing away a fly. “Oh, for goodness sake, grow a pair. You’ll be fine.”
He didn’t believe her for a second, but that was okay. Carefully, he placed the flash drive on the tabletop and slid it over to her. “If you can, give it to the forensic accountant I worked with at the FBI. Crane. He knows Coom’s work.”
She picked up the flash drive and tapped it on the table. “Well done, my friend. We’ll all be a lot better off.” She slid out of the booth.
No, he thought, the plan here is for you to be better off. He watched her leave the shop.
He waited thirty seconds and followed her outside. As she climbed into a nondescript Chevrolet sedan, he cut over to his own car. She headed north and he followed, staying as far back as he dared. He had one shot at this, and he couldn’t lose her.
Fifteen minutes later, Linda left the highway and threaded through a suburban plan of tightly packed homes built along Spanish lines. The Franklin Mountains loomed in the distance, the sky above them purple and pinpricked with stars. She finally turned left, slowed, and swung into a driveway as a garage door lifted. John continued through the intersection and circled the block. The road took him past the far end of Linda’s street. He took the next left, and driving slowly, squinted between the houses until he spotted the back of Linda’s house. He took his foot off the gas, memorizing the back of her house and what he could see of her backyard. Just before the next house blocked his view, he spotted a small roofline in Linda’s backyard. A shed. He goosed the gas.
Perfect.
*
For the next month, nothing changed. John called Mario once a week and set up a time to meet. He and Suzy continued their cold war, talking only when they needed to. But the following week, Mario didn’t answer John’s call. That weekend, John drove to Potter Accounting to find the door padlocked and a note pasted to the door, asking anyone with information about Potter Accounting to contact the FBI.
Two days later, at work, his phone rang.
When he answered it a male voice introduced itself as Steve Carryer. “John,” he said, “I just want you to know that I’m your new case officer. We should meet, I’m thinking next week.”
“Oh,” John said carefully. “What happened to Linda?”
“Just some reorganization at our end. Nothing to concern yourself with. And I see you barely have two more years left with us.”
“Right, it was ten years from the start.”
“And you’ve been busy. Married and a couple of kids. I’ve got a boy myself. And this whole business with Mario Coom. I just want you to know you have nothing to worry about. FBI rolled up the whole network. The few who got away were low-level, and they ran to Mexico. They won’t be back. I think there’s a commendation in the works for you.”
“What I’d really like is to tell my wife the truth. Why I’m here. What’s going on.”
Steve was silent for a few of John’s heartbeats. “Well, let me bounce that upstairs, but I’m thinking it shouldn’t be a problem. When we meet I’ll give you the final word. Don’t say anything until then. Okay?”
He agreed, and when he met John the following week, he was given the go-ahead.
That night, the children in bed, John took Suzy into their bedroom and closed the door. Slowly, he told her the whole story. About the Volkov trial, the move to El Paso, Coom showing up at the birthday party and forcing him to work weekends, all under the cover of golf outings. Who Linda really was, how she had set him up, and that it was finally over. She listened to him, her knees drawn up to her chin on the bed, her eyes half-closed. Then he told her about his mother and father and their Cape Cod house in Boston. He even told her about the chimney leak his father was unable to repair.
What he didn’t mention was his series of withdrawals from banks in El Paso. The one hundred thousand in cash and the glass Mason jar. How he slipped out of the house at three A.M. and parked in the driveway of a house a block from Linda’s house, one with five newspapers lying jumbled by the front door. And he certainly didn’t tell her about hiding the glass jar of cash inside Linda’s garden shed.
When he finished, Suzy said she needed to think. The next day, after dinner, he saw her on her laptop, reading newspaper stories about Volkov’s trial.
The following morning, the newspapers exploded with the story of Mario Rabino’s arrest, his real name of Coom, the charging of his boss and colleagues, and the end of a cartel money laundering operation That night, once the children were in bed, he and Suzy lay in the dark next to each other, staring at the ceiling, until Suzy rolled onto her side, facing him, shifted closer and slid her arms around him. He took a chance and kissed her lightly. He tasted the damp salt of tears. She burrowed against him and tightened her arms so hard he could barely breathe, as if she would never let go.
*
Several weeks later a short follow-up article in the newspaper described how the FBI’s review of Potter Accounting’s financials revealed two years of monthly bribes to a member of the Marshals Service, and how the cash was found hidden in a glass jar in the garden shed behind the Marshal’s house. Her hearing was imminent.
John didn’t give it much attention. He didn’t think Linda would get a harsh sentence, if any at all. The evidence was largely circumstantial, although it was there in the documents on the flash drive. But she would lose her job and never again endanger the people she was charged to protect simply to further her career. That was all he really wanted.
Three months later, returning from the driving range one Saturday, John stopped at one of the El Paso public libraries. Inside, he sat at a public computer and visited the website of a bank in Panama. He entered an account number and waited as the site churned. He knew he shouldn’t check the account, but he couldn’t help himself. The account was his fail-safe. If the FBI hadn’t arrested Coom, or something went wrong, his plan was to take Suzy and the kids and escape in all the confusion of the arrests. He didn’t need the money now, but there was something he couldn’t let go. He wanted to know if the FBI’s forensic accountants had found the account, if Crane had discovered it. He wanted to know how well his camouflaging techniques worked. That, more than anything, made him risk a peek.
The account balance appeared. He’d set the deposits to cut off once the account reached five million dollars. It was all there. Had they really missed it? He searched the screen and saw a red dot next to the notifications link. A message. He clicked.
Well done, Grasshopper. I almost missed this. Almost. This is your work, Coom doesn’t have the brains. I only know of one other who uses these techniques, a Spanish launderer I named El Capo. We almost had him once, in a hotel in Marrakech, but he escaped. As you have. I read the report and saw your case officer used you. Put your family in danger. And she was taking bribes. For what, I wonder? Interesting, how the payments were so easy to find. I think I’ll give you a choice, Grasshopper. I’m going to leave this account here. You’ve earned it, and after what happened, you deserve it. Take it, if you want. Or, come and work for me, here at the FBI.
Keep in mind I know your signature now, my friend.
The note wasn’t signed, but John knew it was from Crane. He saw Crane’s natural skepticism in his question about the bribes. He reread the note and a door opened inside him, not to the big shiny office with the city views and rows of acrylic mementos. He didn’t care about that, he realized. It opened to something better, to the columns, crypt, vault, and rose window of that same cathedral he’d seen years earlier when he first understood what Coom was doing.
He sat back. Crane offering him the five million was likely a trap, or at least a test. He knew that, although he had an odd feeling that Crane was serious.
He would decide later. It wasn’t about the money, he knew that now. It was about being good at something. Doing the right thing in the way he thought best. Not running away. He’d done that, and he knew it because the dream about the bagel shop no longer woke him at night.
He deleted his browser history and shut off the computer. On the way to his car, he called Suzy.
“Hey,” he said, when she answered. “I’m finally on my way home.”
*The opening of “El Paso Heat” came to me unbidden, and I was taken with the way the young protagonist—just at the beginning of his business career—was overwhelmed by circumstances he lacked the confidence to control. Making the best of poor choices, he soon finds himself in El Paso, only to discover that he and his new family are the victims of a much darker force—the naked ambition of someone charged to protect him. Whether he can find the wherewithal to protect his family and extricate himself from this new danger, of course, becomes the existential question of the story.