“What can I get you?” the bartender asked. He was about my age, wearing one of those standard issue T-Shirts that bar and grills have turned into the unofficial industry uniform. This one was a god-awful shade of yellow with his name, Frank, stitched in blue above the name of the bar, Beers & Cheers.
“Cheeseburger and fries,” I said, handing him the laminated menu.
“Anything to drink with that?”
“1800 and lime on the rocks, please.”
Frank flicked his eyes at the clock above the door leading to the airport concourse, the one that said it was just a few minutes past 11:30 in the morning, but left without saying anything. I’m sure I wasn’t the first traveler to booze up before brunch was over, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be the last.
There was a guy in a sweater and khakis three stools down from me, taking his time with a plate of nachos while he scrolled through something on his phone. At one of the four tables behind me, a young couple sipping fruity drinks laughed and talked almost as loudly as the Hawaiian shirts they were wearing.
Otherwise, the place was empty. If Colin, Nigel, or any of their colleagues were still assigned to follow me, then their orders must have been to pull back significantly, because they were nowhere to be seen. Or maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough. Maybe Gilligan and Mary Ann with the loud shirts were just waiting to see what flight I boarded so they could notify another team who would keep an eye on me in Cozumel. I didn’t care. Are you sensing a theme here?
My food arrived. I ate and watched a muted midday game show on the TV hanging in the corner. It was dull as hell, yet oddly mesmerizing. When my phone rang in my pocket, I didn’t react until it was about to kick over to voicemail. It was my old phone. Sergei’s was tucked into my carry-on. I’d use that for all outgoing calls moving forward, but I wanted to make sure Trish could reach me in case anything did go wrong. Old habits die hard, I guess. Or maybe I was more afraid of that gun in my mouth going off than I wanted to believe.
“Hello?” I said.
“Rick?”
The voice, deep and American, broke my trance the rest of the way.
“Ian?” I said, alert. “What’s wrong?”
“You always said to give you a call if I had a question about a job that I didn’t feel comfortable asking the client.” This was true, but it rarely happened. In most cases, it was because my client changed the terms of the deal or the specs of the job that I had presented. I had placed Ian on a dozen jobs before this, and he had never called me after accepting a contract. I didn’t like it.
“Christ, that was quick,” I said, checking the time above the door. It was 12:04. “Did they already contact you?”
“Yeah, like five minutes after you sent us the chat invite last night.”
“Well, these are serious players,” I said, trying to persuade myself as much as Ian that everything was copacetic. “People like that don’t dick around.”
“Yeah, no, that part was fine,” Ian said. “The call was over quick, like they usually are. We set up a time to meet at their location tomorrow, but in the meantime they gave me the names of the principals to go over. They wanted me to do some research, see how good I was at the preliminary stuff I guess.”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I’m used to it. The weird thing though is she gave me three names, not two. You said it was supposed to be two, right?”
I had been swirling the ice in my glass, waiting to say something else placative, but that last line got my full attention. I sat straight up on the stool and forgot about the rest of my fries.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. Somewhere deep in my brain I was aware that we were having this conversation on my old phone, the one that may or may not have been compromised, the one that Trish may or may not have been eavesdropping into. But any concern I had about talking on a tapped phone was buried under my growing unease about the extra name.
Did everyone get three names? And did their contract rates go up accordingly?
Could be Trish was just trying to save money on my fee, but I never liked it when a client altered terms behind my back. It spoke to a lack of trust. And bad things tended to happen to people that criminals didn’t trust.
“There were the two you told me about,” Ian said, “and a third guy. Not even in London; he’s over in the fucking States.”
This wasn’t good. My tongue felt very heavy. And dry. “What’s his name?”
Ian paused. “You sure? Over the ph—”
“What’s his goddamn name, Ian?”
“Some cop in Philly,” he said, suddenly sounding a little concerned himself. “Robert Baglioni.”
You are cordially invited to the wedding of Denise and Robert on August 4 . . .
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
I squeezed the phone so tight I thought I might shatter the screen. I shut my eyes and let my head fall until it landed in a puddle of condensation where my glass had been resting. I took a deep breath and exhaled. It came out very shaky. My legs were tingling and the muscle controlling my sphincter all at once felt suspect. There were still the same four people in the bar, but my ears filled with a loud rumbling as my blood pressure skyrocketed.
“Rick?” Ian said. “You there?”
I tried to answer but nothing came out, so I took another breath instead. This one was a little steadier.
“Rick?”
“I’m here,” I said. It came out the way it sounds when someone gets off a roller coaster and is trying to convince you they’re fine while also not throwing up.
“It’s not a big deal,” he went on, “and they’re paying me extra for it. You just always said to call you if anybody ever changes the deal, so I wanted to—”
“How much?” I asked.
“How much what?”
I sat up straight and opened my eyes. Blue and black dots swam in my vision for a few seconds until they cleared. The bartender gave me a glance, then went back to watching the boring TV game show.
“How much more are they paying you?” I asked.
