Charles Mirho nursed a bourbon at the end of the bar in Stamford, Connecticut, waiting for the call that never came.
He was supposed to have heard back by nine. That would have given the old man time to get home and do what he had to do.
But now it was ten fifteen and the phone still hadn’t rung; the two calls he had placed back to him from his throwaway phone had gone unanswered. He was starting to feel pretty certain something had gone wrong.
That or he was being set up—and not even a fool would do that.
Even an old fool.
The local news was on the TV. Something about a four-year-old who had fallen out of an apartment building in Stamford.
It left two options, and either one meant he was going to have to earn the money he was being paid. Mirho had spent three years as a sergeant in the military police before moving into intelligence. His specialty was interrogations. He was the guy they brought in when all the “new age” shit didn’t get anywhere. Not that that assignment lasted long. A couple of drunken brawls and a messy sexual harassment charge got him a general discharge, hastening his new career. Now he was in private practice. With one highly notable but confidential account. His new specialty was digging up dirt on people. Or creating it when there was none.
Though there was always something, if you pulled up the rock and looked under.
Mirho tossed a twenty on the counter, and had gotten up to leave when something on the overhead screen caught his eye.
A car accident. By the looks of it, a bad one. It was the headline that grabbed him.
FATAL ACCIDENT NEAR BEDFORD IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY
He stopped and said to the bartender, “Mind turning that up, Al . . .”
“An old-model Honda, with only the driver inside . . .” was what he heard.
Then the camera zoomed in on the car and Mirho realized things had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.
In the parking lot, his cell phone rang. Mirho glanced at the number. Only one person it could be. He answered, not relishing how it would go. “Mirho here.”
“Do we have it?” the caller asked. Mirho was supposed to have gotten back to him by now as well.
“No, not yet.” Mirho sighed. “There’s been a complication.”
“What do you mean by ‘complication’? You met with him, didn’t you?”
“I met with him,” Mirho acknowledged. He’d worked for a lot of tough men in his day. But this was one who knew how to use the hammer. Someone you didn’t want to be feeding excuses to.
He laid the whole thing out for him as best he could.
“So where’s my money, Charlie?” his boss replied indifferently.
“I don’t know, maybe in a police station somewhere,” Mirho said, until something else occurred to him. “Unless someone got there first.”
“Someone got there first? Well, that wouldn’t be good for business, would it, Charlie?”
Mirho opened his car door. “Or for them.”
“Find that money, Charlie. And more important . . .”
“I know what’s more important,” Mirho said.
But just to make sure, the caller added, “More important, you find me the rest of what we’re looking for as well.”
Mirho’s father, an oil lease salesman from East Texas, always had a saying that selling didn’t even begin until the customer said no. In this trade, it was more like it wasn’t work until something went wrong.
Mirho shut his door and started up his car. “That’s what you pay me for.”