Here is a preview of Sunk Costs, a crime novel by Preston Lang, published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books…
CHAPTER ONE
Dan stood on the side of the road, flapping his hand at cars and trucks, trying to hitch a ride. An SUV full of college kids stopped about fifty yards up the highway then tore off as Dan reached for the door. Central Illinois is full of witty individuals. It was just after 9 a.m. when the little Dodge pulled onto the shoulder and backed up to let him in.
“You’re very kind.”
It’s not common for a single woman to pick up a hitchhiker, but it does happen. One time Dan got a ride with a radical Unitarian minister who’d tried to get him to go with her to a logging protest in Oregon. She was probably right about a lot of things, but he hadn’t joined the movement. The driver of the Dodge was middle-aged in a rumpled blouse and dress pants. There was a matching blazer slung over the passenger seat that she tossed in the back so he could sit down. Inside it smelled like makeup and pretzels. Not the worst-smelling car Dan had ever gotten into.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“New York?”
“I’ll take you as far as I can.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes—no music, no conversation. Finally, she spoke.
“You got anyone expecting you in New York?”
“I have people to see, but there’s nothing set.”
“You do drugs?”
“No.”
“Not at all? Never?”
“Drugs killed Elvis. I stay away.”
“You speak any Chinese?”
“No, I don’t,” he said.
Not entirely true, but he didn’t feel like shaking out his weak Mandarin for this lady.
She looked at him sideways a little longer than you should if you’re supposed to be watching the road.
“You got a license, got it with you?” she asked.
“Yeah, I can take the wheel if you need me to.”
“Do you have a criminal record?”
“No.”
“Be honest with me.”
“They don’t always like you hitchhiking, but they don’t arrest you for it.”
Of course, you could be arrested for hitchhiking, but Dan never had been—or for any of the other less-than-wholesome games he’d played. As far as he knew, he had the record of a Mormon eagle scout.
“Do you know why a manhole cover is round?” the driver asked.
“Why?”
“I’m asking if you know.”
“I don’t.”
“Give it some thought,” she said pointedly.
If a driver wanted to talk about the baby Jesus or play complicated word games, Dan went along with it. It wasn’t his car and he wasn’t paying for gas. He gave serious thought to manhole covers.
“I guess…it won’t fall into the hole if it’s round.”
“Would a different shape fall in?”
“It might.”
“Anything else?”
“Round is pretty—it’s a good shape.”
“Does that matter to you?”
She looked at him again, longer this time, studying his eyes carefully. A lot of people think America’s highways are flush with serial killers and Satanists. They’re not, but they can be pretty well stocked with mean, drunk bastards and sadistic jokers. This woman didn’t seem to fall into either of those categories, yet all Dan’s instincts told him she was dangerous. He had jumped out of moving cars before, but on a cold morning like this one, he was just too tired. The idea of busting a leg on the highway was the kind of thing he was willing to balance with the idea of dodging a kitchen knife coming from a fire-eyed woman driving sixty miles an hour. They were both quiet for a while. The driver turned back to the road and relaxed her gaze.
Then she reached down around her feet and pulled out a gun. She pointed it at Dan’s face and didn’t slow the car.
“You want to get shot?”
“No. I do not.”
“You want to make some money?”
“Sure.”
“Well, there’s money where we’re going. You want to help out?”
“I do want to help out. Do you need to be pointing a gun at me?”
“Not anymore, no.”
The woman tucked the gun back in a holster strapped down on her left calf. Dan was breathing just a little bit harder than usual.
“I’m sorry about that,” the driver said. “You seemed pretty cool, but I needed to give you a little real pressure.”
“Why?”
“You’re going to have to tell some lies and drive the car a bit. If it all goes right, I’ll give you eight thousand dollars cash. How does that sound?”
Crazy. All of her words sounded crazy, but the woman was calm and steady. She was a whole lot of trouble, but it was a rational, calculated, indoor kind of trouble.
“I need a little more information. And some of the money up front,” Dan said.
“You’ll have your money by the end of the day. Eight thousand in cash.”
She pulled off the highway and soon made it to the parking lot of a strip mall where she stopped the car in front of a bagel shop. She took out her wallet.
“Here’s thirty dollars. Get as many bagels as that buys.”
“You hungry?”
“Or you can just take the thirty dollars and run off. I won’t come after you. You can take my money and call the police on me—say there’s a crazy lady pulling guns on poor hitchhikers.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“But you might run off?”
He took the cash and walked into the shop. The girl at the counter looked overworked even though the place was empty.
“How many bagels can I get for thirty dollars?”
“Just plain, you can get three dozen for twenty-six.”
“I’ll take that.”
“You need anything else? Coffee, cream cheese?”
“No, that’s it.”
Dan watched her put bagels in a large box.
“You’re bringing this to work?” she asked.
“No, I’m having a brunch.”
“Don’t let it get out of hand.”
He held the money—one twenty and two fives. Last chance to bail. When he looked back out at the car, the driver was pushing buttons on the radio, looking for a song or the news. Thirty dollars isn’t a lot of money. If you got a coupon, it might get you a place to stay for one night. It might keep you fed for a few days. It’s not a long-term solution to anything. Dan paid and brought the bagels back to the car—three boxes inside two bags that had the name True Bagel written in bright orange.
“Good job. Good job.”
The driver handed Dan a hat.
“I want you to wear this,” she said.
He put it on, a nice fitted cap a few sizes too big. He had to fold it up in the back so it wouldn’t fall over his eyes. Written on the hat in the same bright orange lettering as the plastic bags were the words True Bagel.
CHAPTER TWO
The woman stayed in the back seat while Dan took the wheel like a chauffeur. She’d outlined the plan quickly but clearly, repeating all the important facts twice. He’d nodded and recited back to her when she asked him to. If you were a new hire and she’d been assigned to train you, she’d do a good job, but you wouldn’t like her.
“A coin envelope?” he asked.
“It’s like a little manila envelope. Probably it’s yellow. It’s in the filing cabinet of room 5G.”
“Is the cabinet locked?”
“Yeah, it’ll be locked.”
She put a bolt cutter on the front passenger seat next to him. It was about two feet long with a green handle, the kind of thing you might have stolen from the janitor’s office when you were in junior high.
“Show me you know how to use this,” she said, throwing an old combination lock up into the front seat. He took the bolt cutter and snapped through the thin metal up at the top.
“They’ve got a combination lock on the file cabinet?” he asked.
“No. It’s a key lock. But you can pull out the drawer, jimmy this inside, and then snap the bolt.”
“No one will be in that office?”
“A guy called Carl will be in there. I’ll get him out. When he leaves, you go in.”
She’d given him almost nothing of the story other than what he would need to get the key, but there would be time for learning more when he had the thing in his hand. All in all, it wasn’t that scary—no violence, no real breaking and entering.
The woman lay down in back below window level, covered in a blanket. Dan drove to a large office park—security check at the gate.
“Morning,” the guard said.
“Bagels for Price & Klein.”
“Let me see ID?”
Dan hadn’t expected this.
“I don’t have it with me.”
“You’re driving a car without a license?”
“You want me to go back and get it? The people at Price & Klein are going to be wondering where their bagels are.”
It could go either way. If the guard had a bad breakfast or a cheating wife, he’d turn away someone without ID. Instead he shrugged and waved Dan through.
“You told me you had a driver’s license,” the woman said from the back seat.
“I’m not showing it to anyone if I can help it.”
She didn’t really care anymore—they were inside—but it was clear that she had no concern for whether or not Dan got caught down the road. His ID, his name, his fingerprints? She had no real interest in protecting them. When you’re working with a strange woman who pulled a gun on you at sixty miles an hour, you’ve probably got to watch your own back.
Most cars were clustered close to the building. Dan couldn’t park directly in front, so he drove around the side where there were open spots.
“Don’t park here. I can’t see the entrance.”
“So get out and stand in front of the building.”
“No, that won’t work. Drive back in front and park away from the building.”
“You can’t even show your face in the parking lot? The guards will arrest you on sight?”
“A security guard can’t arrest anyone. Remember that on the way out—if a guard tells you to stop, you keep right on moving.”
This was a lesson Dan had learned at age twelve. He didn’t need a reminder from a white lady in a blazer. He drove to the front of the building and parked ten rows out from the curb. He took off his jacket, shoved the bolt cutter down the back of his pants, then put his jacket back on. He cinched his belt so the cutter wouldn’t move around. It felt awkward and obvious, but Dan knew that people didn’t usually worry too much about a little lumpiness in the man bringing them bagels.
At the front desk inside, he was asked for ID again. He fidgeted with his pockets for a second.
“Left it in the car. I signed in at the gate.”
“Who was at the gate?”
“Old guy with a mustache?”
“Harold. Yeah, okay.”
Dan signed in illegibly—Jo Jo Smoothly. Bagels for Price & Klein.
“Take the elevator up to five.”
So far, so good. Though there did seem to be a bit more security than he would have expected at what felt like a low-key suburban office park. If it got strange, he could cut and run, but for the moment everyone seemed to believe in him as a bagel deliveryman. Maybe there was something to be said for that lifestyle—driving around bringing hungry people their food for minimum wage, making enough to rent an attic bedroom somewhere.
The office of Price & Klein was tastefully decorated for winter, some holly and pine that you could put up for Christmas and keep until March. The woman behind the desk gave him a smile. She was sharp and well-dressed but spoke casually.
“Oh, I didn’t know it was a bagel day,” she said.
“Ordered by Mr. Marley.”
“Great, great. Break room is just down there. Third door on the right. If you can put it all on the trays that would be pretty terrific.”
Dan found the break room and put the bags on the table then started to spread the bagels out on two metal trays. A young woman in glasses came in while he was at work.
“Bagel day on Tuesday? You want to see a girl get giddy?”
“Yes, I do.”
He stopped work for a second and gave her his full attention. She did a quick shimmy, then shrugged. She was nerd chic all the way, and she knew it.
“So what’s it like working at True Bagel?” she asked.
“It’s pretty terrific. What do you do here?”
“Just another accountant lost in the woods.”
“Well, here’s the spread. Nice to meet you.”
“You should get a hat that fits.”
“What if my head gets bigger?”
“That’s a really good point.”
She took a bagel and went back to work while he walked out of the break room and down the hall toward room 5G. The door was shut, but he could hear a man on the phone from inside.
“I am qualified to park there. I’ve been parking there for—I’ve parked there for the last four years. You can’t just—That is a valid spot for me. You are not to touch my car. You understand me?”
The door opened and a man emerged, slamming it behind him. When he made the turn toward reception, Dan entered room 5G. The drawers of the filing cabinet were locked and grimy. They housed old hard copy documents. Dan wrenched open the one marked F-J and snapped the metal with the bolt cutter. It made a fairly loud noise, loud enough that a voice came from the next office.
“You okay, Carl?”
“Yup,” Dan said, as deep as the man he’d heard speaking on the phone.
He found it in a folder marked Harding—a little envelope, just like the lady said. Dan looked inside—a small key, probably for a safe deposit box. He put it back in the envelope, slipped that inside his jacket, and left. As he neared the break room, a man blocked the hallway with an open container of cream cheese in his hand.
“Where’s the cream cheese?” the man asked.
“Aren’t you holding it? In your hand?”
“This is left over from last week. I’m scraping as it is.”
He showed Dan the inside of the container—it was close to finished. He was a big man, clearly not used to having his authority challenged, especially by someone who carried around bread for a living.
“Marley didn’t put any in the order,” Dan said.
“The order always includes cream cheese.”
“Not today.”
“You’re going to stand there and lie to me?”
He was intense, the kind who’d fight you over a nickel in change, a harmless joke, some missing cream cheese.
“I’m sorry, sir. Someone messed up the order. Do you really want me to make an extra trip just to get the cream cheese?”
The big man looked up, exasperated, and that’s when Dan slipped around him and out to the stairwell.
“If you want to hold onto your job, you better get back here right now.”
But Dan didn’t want to hold onto any kind of job. Three steps at a time down to the lobby and don’t look back. On his way out of the building he saw Carl striding in angrily and gave him a tip of the hat. Carl ignored it and went to the elevator while Dan walked toward the exit. Smooth as it could be.
“Wait up.”
The accountant from the break room jogged to catch him just before he reached the exit. He considered making a run for it, but she was smiling and didn’t look like she was about to call police or try to wrestle him to the ground.
“Sorry, I’ve got a busy day,” he said. “I really need to get back on the road.”
“Sure,” she said, giving him a quick handshake. “My name is Kate. Can you give me a ride back to the store? I have to get something at the flower shop. That’s next door to you, right?”
“I’m not going directly back to the store.”
“Where are you headed?”
“I have to go to my aunt’s house. I have to make sure she’s taken her medicine.”
“What does your aunt have?”
“Diabetes, emphysema, cirrhosis. It’s a mess, really.”
“You’re a very good nephew,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Now tell me, are you going to meet Heller somewhere, or is she out in the car?”
“Who’s Heller?”
He had a pretty good guess who Heller was, and he took a glance toward the exit. They weren’t close enough to be seen from out in the lot, and they were both smart enough to smile and speak quietly. The guard at the desk didn’t seem to think they were remotely interesting.
“Heller is crazy, she’s violent, and she’s not your friend,” Kate said. “How’d you meet her in the first place?”
“Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What’d you get out of Carl’s office? The money wasn’t just sitting in there, was it?”
“What money?”
She looked him up and down. “You’ve got something poking out of the back of your pants.”
“Maybe I do.”
Then Kate frowned and moved in closer to Dan than an American usually does to a stranger, giving the bolt cutter a gentle tap.
“But it’s not money,” she said.
“I’ve got four dollars.”
“You’re better off dealing with me than with her. What is it you have right now? A key? Okay, let’s say it’s a key. How much is she giving you for it?”
“What do you want?”
“I want to buy you breakfast. I’ll tell you as much as I know, and you can decide whether you’d rather take your chances with me or with her.”
Dan didn’t say anything, but he didn’t leave.
“Go out the building by the back way,” Kate said. “Hop the fence and walk around to the road. It’ll take about eight minutes. I’ll pick you up in my car. Or don’t. Go with her, and take your chances.”
Just like Heller had done before, Kate was daring him to walk away from her.
“There’s a back exit?” Dan asked.
“Yeah. You can’t drive a car out that way, but you can walk. Go uphill until you come to a street called Climax. I’ll pick you up there.”
“Why not just give me a ride in your car?”
“Because Heller is out in the lot. Right?”
Dan gave half a nod.
“Better that she doesn’t see us together,” Kate said.
She gave him a confident smile while he made up his mind. But it was the old story: sexy accountant wins every time.
CHAPTER THREE
Dan and Kate took a booth in a bar and grill about ten minutes from the office. It didn’t look like the kind of place that served breakfast, but Kate said they made great scrambled eggs. There were two other groups in the place at a quarter to eleven, and R. Kelly was on medium-high. Like a cranky old man, Dan always thought restaurants played their music too loud. In this case, though, it gave him confidence that two people speaking quietly in the back wouldn’t be heard. He knew schemers who’d gotten busted by strangers for talking in public. Lots of people had good hearing and nothing better to do with their lives than run to the police. Dan liked to think he was smart enough to cover the obvious things.
“I think what you took out of the office was a key. Am I right?” Kate asked.
“So you don’t actually know anything?”
“I know a lot. I think there’s a safe deposit key, and I think it opens up a box with a lot of money in it.”
“Why do you think that?”
Kate played with her fork. She didn’t do it in a threatening way, but Dan wished she’d put the damn thing back on its napkin.
“Your friend Heller and this guy Leonard Tsai had both been at the company a long time. They made less than they thought they should. They both got kind of bitter and bored. So Tsai created this fake company, then he ordered our office supplies from there. Called the company Penciltech. He was ordering cheap from someplace else then charging the company a pretty big markup when they paid Penciltech. It didn’t take him long until he was shaving something like three thousand dollars a month. He’d been doing it forever.”
“Did anyone ever say, ‘Hey Leonard, we can get it cheaper from Staples?’”
“You ever worked as an office supply manager?”
“No.”
“Because you really seem to understand the ins and outs of the game.”
“So no one ever checked?”
“You’re getting a little ahead of the story, but for the most part people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about where the supplies are coming from. I mean, other than the guy who’s making the buys. And that was Tsai. He’d been doing it for ten years. Can you do the math?”
“Three hundred and sixty thousand dollars.”
“Say, you know how to multiply. You been to fourth grade or something?”
“Twice.”
Kate smiled and put down the fork. Her talk was smooth and she had confidence, but occasional awkwardness crept into her motions—a flailing gesture, a quick unfocused look in the eyes.
“I think he may have been investing it somewhere. It’s probably over half a million by now. One day—I don’t know when—Heller finally noticed something funny. Penciltech. So she asks Tsai for some money. A lot of it. He puts her off. In the meantime, he’s taking the money out of the account, dissolving the phony business, shredding as much of the evidence as he can. He turns it into cash, and he puts it in a box somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Hold on, there’s more.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I have a good sense of when there’s monkey business going on in the office.”
“Monkey business?”
“Like how I knew you weren’t really there to deliver bagels.”
“Because my hat didn’t fit me?”
“Once I knew that Heller was looking into Tsai, it was easy to figure out that Tsai had been doing something strange. Then I discovered that Penciltech is not a place where a real person can buy a real pencil. That answered the large questions.”
“The largest question is where is the box?”
“I haven’t even told you everything: Heller killed Tsai.”
Kate smiled triumphantly—she’d finally managed to give him a little bit of a jolt.
“So she’s wanted for murder?”
“No. Not at the moment anyway.”
“She shot him?”
“Why would you say that?”
He shrugged.
“No, she shoved him down the stairs of his basement.”
“How do you know?”
“On a night when his wife was out of town, he went headfirst into reinforced concrete. You think that was an accident?”
“I know a lot of people who fall down stairs—it happens.”
The food arrived, and they stopped their conversation momentarily. The waiter put down the eggs and smiled, but he seemed a little upset about having to serve at this time of day.
“What I think is that she got tired of him stalling her, then she shoved him. Didn’t mean to kill him, just let him know she was serious. The police actually came into the office and asked some questions. But they didn’t learn anything.”
“Did they talk to you?”
“No, why would they? The investigation was just a sleepwalk. They talked to Mr. Price. They talked to the people who sit on either side of Tsai. Then the cops went home, and as far as I know, they’re done with it.”
Kate took an approving forkful of eggs and bacon.
“He was dead. We all moved on. But Heller went through his office the day after he died. She got caught. No real trouble, but everyone thought she was kind of losing it—emotional over a colleague’s death and everything. They put a lock on the door. Then Heller got really weird trying to get in. Finally, the HR guy sat her down and told her that she had to take a leave of absence. She got in his face. Ended up taking a swing at him. Mr. Price came by to soothe things, she went after him too, and they fired her. She came back two days later, looking crazy. They stopped her before she got too far, but security threw her out and they threatened her with prosecution. Two nights after that she tried to sneak in after hours. Set off all the alarms, and she had to run before the cops got there. They’ve posted her picture at the front gate—don’t let this lady in. That’s why she needed you. At least it was Part One of why she needed you.”
“Why was she so sure the key was in the office?”
“She was right, wasn’t she?”
Dan took his time with a bite of scrambled eggs. Kate seemed profoundly unimpressed with this.
“She might have been,” he said finally. “But what would I need you for?”
“How much is Heller going to give you?”
“Let’s say she offers twenty thousand dollars.”
“Darling, you go with me, we split it right down the middle. You’re going to end up with two or three hundred grand. Heller will push you down a flight of stairs as soon as she’s done with you. Me, I’ve got a nice, sensible plan.”
“You wouldn’t push me down stairs if you got the chance?” he asked.
Kate smiled and put her hands, palms up on the table in front of her. “You’re not scared of me, are you? I’m just a CPA with small hands.”
“Why do you trust me?”
“Because you have a nice smile and a hat that doesn’t fit.”
He took off the cap and his shoulder-length hair flopped out.
“But you might need to see a barber,” she said. “We’re going to need a shorthaired man to get the job done.”
Click here to learn more about Sunk Costs by Preston Lang.