But I’d already determined that Trish wasn’t the penny-pinching type, so I forced myself to disregard it as the least likely motivation, comforting though it was.
The second possibility scared me because it meant that Trish knew about Robert’s connection to my family. Which meant she knew about my family. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’d changed my name, bought new IDs, deleted all my social media accounts, only used cash whenever possible, and obtained a new social security number. Done everything I could to vacuum up whatever breadcrumbs connected me to my old life and the people in it. But no matter how hard I tried, with some of those crumbs out there and online, there was only so much vacuuming I could do.
Denise still had years’ worth of photos on social media in which I was featured prominently. There were articles where I was quoted and blog posts I’d written for my old recruitment firm that still came up in Google searches. All under my actual name, of course, not Rick Carter, but anyone who was willing to dig would find out enough about my past to do some damage. My hope was that by setting up a new life with a new identity, several thousand miles and one large ocean away from who I used to be, I could protect those who might get hurt.
The plan worked for ten years. In retrospect, that was longer than it should have.
Trish had to have known that Robert being on the hit list would be a nonstarter for me. Sure, she could have still used her charm to convince me to take the job—
I touched my eye, remembering the way the knife point felt against it.
—but the risk of me breaking my rule about not going to the authorities went way up. Maybe, deep down, I really was a monster who secretly relished the idea of helping knock off the guy who would replace me in all future family photos, but she couldn’t take that chance. (Nor should she have. I’m an asshole, an alcoholic, and an accessory to many murders, but I’m not a monster. Even if the previous truths don’t make for the most compelling argument.)
In this scenario, she didn’t tell me about Robert because she honestly believed I represented her best chance to find the kind of professionals she needed for the job. So she neglected to include the one name that could derail the whole thing to ensure I would fulfill my responsibility without distraction.
I hoped it was one of the first two reasons. Trish being cheap or Trish being strategically deceitful. Because the third option terrified me.
In that scenario, she knew about my family. Knew about Robert’s connection to them. And rather than that relationship being a threat to our partnership, one that needed to be avoided, it was instead integral to it. They cut off my fingertip and refused to take no for an answer not because I was the best in the business, but because when it was all over, I was going to take the fall. And not just as part of my “No Cops Guarantee” if one of my candidates got caught.
The more I thought about it, the more obvious it became. This was an organization with immense reach and resources. If they wanted to, I had no doubt there were people within their ranks skilled enough to execute all six members of the task force as efficiently as the three professionals I provided. But then there would be a direct link between them and the hits. Their people were good, so it wouldn’t be glaring, but it would be there for anyone who looked hard enough.
And when six agents across three different intelligence communities go down at the same time, there are plenty of people afterward who are looking at everything. Maybe they connected the dots back to Trish and her Board of Directors, maybe not.
Why take the chance, though, if you can just hire yourself a patsy? Robert gave me motive. Flimsy, sure, but Trish would take care of that. (Asking Ian to take out Robert was likely laying the groundwork. He was easier to connect to me than the more clandestine Ghost or The Persian.) Evidence would be planted, witnesses would be bought, and overnight I would go from ancillary player to underworld kingpin. The buck would stop with me. All for the low, low price of one million dollars. A bargain, really.
I’d deny it all, of course. When they brought me in—whatever agency that might be—I would tell them everything. Every last detail. I’d recite every word of my conversation with Trish verbatim and draw them a frigging oil painting of the house on Albert Street with its fancy water heater, my “No Cops Guarantee” be damned.
Trish had to know this was true as well. Which meant after the jobs were finished, my time on this earth would be measured in hours. Things go much smoother when your patsy is too busy being dead to defend himself.
This raised a fourth possibility, that Robert was on the list simply to frame me, tie me into everything on a personal level. But that meant she would also have to plant false evidence on Robert after his death that connected him in some way to the task force’s investigation, which seemed like a lot of extra trouble to go through when she could just frame me in some other way. Much as I wanted to believe Robert was just a pawn in all this, I couldn’t get there without making some leaps in logic. No, he was involved. I just didn’t yet know how.
Pulling Ian from the equation wouldn’t prevent any of those scenarios from playing out, it would merely delay them. That was the only move I had, though, so I was going to make it.
Tomorrow, Ian would no-show for his meeting with Trish. He wouldn’t tell her he was backing out and provide some bullshit explanation; he would just ghost her. It would buy me extra time. Not a lot, but every little bit helped. Depending on her mood, Trish would either try to reach him on her own or reach out to me to see if I could track him down. Either way, I would hear from her. She would poke around to see if Ian had told me about Robert without showing her hand, so I’d have to watch what I said, but that was fine. I’d gotten good at tap dancing with criminals. I’d apologize for Ian flaking out—
The kid’s rep really would be shot; he was right about that. Collateral damage that I would spend a long time cleaning up, but necessary. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but I’d find him more jobs. His career wouldn’t be derailed as much as it would be delayed.
—and tell her I’d spend a day trying to track him down, then would start searching for a new candidate right away. She’d want to know why I didn’t have a backup option in place from the start and I’d explain that I did but that person had just accepted another contract, so I needed to dive back into my database and pull out someone else. Given the nature of the job, it couldn’t be just anyone, but give me two, three days at the most and I’d have a new candidate for her.
When I failed to produce anyone within that timeframe, give or take, she’d tell me my services were no longer required and that she’d find someone on her own. At that point she’d offer the hits on the two MI5 agents and Robert to either Ghost or The Persian, rather than bringing in a third operative and risk expanding the pool of people who knew about what was going on. She’d be hard-pressed to find anyone better anyway, at least on short notice. Whichever one she chose would be in the US within a day, assuming Robert became a higher priority than the MI5 agents, given my newfound knowledge of his involvement.
If all of that played out like it did in my head, that gave me four days on the low end, six on the high end. Split the difference and I had five days to get to New Jersey, locate Robert Baglioni, and somehow convince him that his fiancée’s estranged ex-husband popped up after ten years to save him from one of the world’s top assassins who, by the way, was only there because of me.
Piece of cake. But first I needed to pay off Ian.
Loan sharks don’t need my services. Along with death and taxes, one of the universal truths is that there will always be desperate people who need money fast but for whom banks and other legitimate lending institutions are not viable options. And people like Matteo Claes will always be there to fill the void. They don’t need an intermediary to find them work; business comes to them and it never slows down.
The relationship between Matteo and I was similar to the one I had with Joey Walls, but much more symbiotic. In short, our clientele overlapped. The people to whom he lent money often owed it to the same people that could use my services. When he came across a new name or caught wind of a potential job, he kicked it my way. I, in turn, referred him to my clients when they were in need of any of his offerings, such as illegal gambling or money laundering. It worked out great. We’re both professionals who respected and valued what the other brought to the table. The look he gave me that afternoon, however, was not one of respect. And any value I held in his eyes was not apparent as he asked me to repeat my question.
“One point three million in cash, Matteo,” I said. “Do you have it or not?”
We were sitting in his office, a room off the back of the check cashing place that was his hide-in-plain-sight corporate front. He even had business cards printed up. I was standing on the other side of his desk, the generic gray metal kind that furnishes the cramped offices of warehouse managers and accounting supervisors everywhere. The only difference was the glass hookah sitting on its corner. The silver pipe at the end of the hose dangled from Matteo’s long, dainty fingers as he exhaled a plume of sweet-smelling smoke into the already clouded air.
“What kind of operation do you think I have here, Rick?” he asked.
“A successful one,” I said. “Come on Matteo, just for the bookmaking alone you’re liable to have that much on hand. Don’t fuck with me on this, okay? It’s important.”
He took another hit from the pipe. The water gurgled in the bowl, like a kid slurping the last of his soda from a paper cup. The sound made me think of Ethan, of all the sodas I’d bought him and Maggie over the years.
“Please,” I said.
Matteo sighed and clipped the pipe to the side of the hookah. “Three percent fee. That’s my friends and family discount, so don’t even try to negotiate.”
“Done,” I said. There really was no need for a vig of any kind since I was about to pay off the loan before I walked out the door, but a million in cash isn’t easy to withdraw from any legitimate bank without raising eyebrows and he was going to just hand it over. Three percent seemed more than fair. He opened the laptop sitting next to the hookah and pulled up his account info, then spun it to face me. I bent over and logged into my own accounts. Trish had made the second deposit of $450,000 that morning. I’d checked from the backseat of the Uber on the way in from the airport.
Within ten minutes, $1,300,000 (plus his $36,000 fee) was in his account and my total net worth had gone from nearly seven figures to a little over $300,000 in less than twenty-four hours. Five minutes later, one of his employees brought in a square brick made up of hundred-dollar bills. The bills were strapped together in packs of a hundred, all held together with Saran Wrap. The entire brick weighed about twenty pounds and fit into my carry-on bag with room to spare. Being a millionaire never felt so insignificant.
“That’s a lot of money for a man who buys his suits off the rack,” Matteo said as I zipped up my bag. A loose edge of plastic wrap got caught in the teeth, so I had to undo it and try again without breaking the zipper. My fingers were shaking. Matteo glanced at the bandage around my pinkie and said, “You in some kind of trouble, Rick?”
“Nope,” I replied, getting the bag all the way closed this time. I hefted the strap over my shoulder and across my chest. “Just going away for a little while. Need some walking around money.”
Matteo whistled. “That’s a lot of walking.”
“God willing, brother.”
