Thriller 2: Stories You Just Can't Put Down Read online

  Jim looked at the quadrants on the computer screen and felt his blood congeal.

  “Four.”

  “With your fingerprints all over them.”

  “It’ll never hold up.”

  Carl smiled, an expression that looked like it hurt. “Famous author of serial-killer novels. Writer known for gruesome torture scenes. Don’t you think a jury would agree that you fit the profile?”

  “I’ll tell them the truth.”

  “We’re talking about the law, here. The truth is irrelevant. Face it, Jim, you’re fucked. Finish the book, live happily ever after. You can’t seriously be thinking that if we don’t pull the trigger today, there won’t be tomorrow? Or the next day.”

  “Have you read the book lately, Carl?”

  The question momentarily disarmed the editor. “What do you mean?”

  “The ending we talked about, it just won’t work. People will see it coming.”

  “You haven’t changed in over ten years. People want to see it coming.”

  “It won’t be believable.”

  “Since when does that matter? Suspension of disbelief is the cornerstone of a thriller, buddy. You should know that better than anyone. You think James Bond can really survive all those explosions without messing up his tuxedo?”

  “But this character—he’s different. He doesn’t always do the right thing.”

  “Your books have a moral compass,” said Carl. “That’s what we’re selling. Reassurance. Faith in the outcome. So have a little faith and start writing, or we’ll kill your fucking wife.”

  “Okay.” Jim lifted the manuscript and removed the bottom page, glancing nervously at the clock. “But I don’t think I can finish in time.”

  “Show me something and I’ll go away. Just get a few words on the page and maybe I can buy you some time. We can always kill your wife—or someone else close to you—another day.”

  “Let me show you what I’m talking about.” Jim turned the page around so it was facing his editor. He carefully selected one of his red pens and took the cap off, circled a paragraph near the top of the page. “Read that.”

  Carl slid the laptop to one side, just as the image of Emily jumped to the lower right quadrant. Jim took a deep breath and held it, wondering if he loved his wife more than his characters. Thinking about all the things that had changed since he first sat down in his chair behind this scarred desk and started writing so many years ago.

  He thought about continuity and the suspension of disbelief, and he wondered whether any of that mattered in the end as long as you told a good story.

  “So what’s your point?” Carl adjusted his glasses as he looked up from the page. “I read it, it’s great. So what happens next?”

  “This.”

  The pen shattered the lens before puncturing the right eye. Jim shoved it forward with an underhand motion, rising out of his seat as he forced it deeper into Carl’s brain. The overstuffed chair flipped backward and Carl’s head hit the wood floor like an overcooked egg. His legs kicked once, twice, and then he was dead.

  Jim came around the desk and knelt next to his editor. There was surprisingly little blood, and he made a mental note to get that right the next time he wrote a murder scene.

  He stood and ran his hands through his hair, willing his heart to slow down. Took a deep breath, then another, opened the door to his study and prayed he hadn’t written himself into a corner.

  The town house was quiet. But there, almost beyond hearing, tiny voices from downstairs. Jim felt a surge of adrenaline and bounded down the stairs two at a time.

  Emily was sitting on the couch, watching television. She smiled when he cleared the threshold and Jim felt his heart explode. Before she could say anything he was across the room with his arms around her. He kissed her and let it linger until she gave him a squeeze and stepped back to look at him.

  “It’s nice to see you, too.”

  “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “I knew you were writing, silly. I never disturb you when your door is closed.”

  “You look nice.” Jim let his eyes wander across his wife from head to toe, her simple cream blouse and brown skirt a nice complement to her hair. He thought about how she’d been wearing a dress in the upper left quadrant on the computer and then slacks in the third one. How she’d been lugging a heavy briefcase in one frame and then running her hands through her hair in the next. They must have shot the video on different days, or perhaps it was some other technical wizardry.

  Amazing what they can do with computers nowadays.

  Continuity and attention to detail did matter, but not as much as knowing your characters. He’d known his editor for a long time and could tell when he was lying. When to suspend disbelief.

  Emily never came into his study. He’d wait until she went to sleep, then move the body into the garage. A cop he’d interviewed for a story last year told him about a pier on the west side where the mob guys liked to dump bodies. Something about the currents pulled the body under, then took it out to sea.

  He’d keep Carl’s cell phone and make random calls to restaurants and airlines over the next couple of days, make it seem like Carl was still alive, then break the phone into pieces and throw them in the trash.

  “Did you cut yourself?”

  Jim glanced down at the red smear across his right hand. He forced a smile and wiped it across his jeans. “Just ink.”

  “You and your pens.” Emily stepped over to an end table where an answering machine sat, its light blinking. “Your editor called and said he might be coming over. Want me to play the message?”

  “No, thanks. I already talked to him.”

  “What did he want?”

  “The usual. Deadlines.”

  “You finally get that ending figured out?”

  Jim rubbed his fingers together, where after years of writing, ink the color of blood had left its mark.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I think I’m happy with how the story is going to end.”

  SEAN CHERCOVER

  This former P.I. has the experience to infuse his writing with a heavy dose of authenticity. His realistic portrayals of both cops and the down-and-outers of the world have garnered Sean high praise and well-deserved awards. His first novel, Big City, Bad Blood, even gets praised on the FBI’s Web site for its accurate depiction of law enforcement. His writing has been compared to Steve Hamilton, Lawrence Block and Dennis Lehane, but as his readers know, Sean has a powerful voice all his own.

  Sean’s intense love of scuba diving is sometimes reflected in his fiction, so it’s fitting that his experience in the waters of the Caribbean can be felt in “A Calculated Risk.” Tom Bailey, the main character, uses his deep passion and understanding of the water and boats to make a living. He’s brushed up against the wrong side of the law many times before but this job takes him firmly over the edge. The real question is—will he be able to come back?

  A CALCULATED RISK

  Tom Bailey turned the wheel over to starboard and guided his forty-two-foot power catamaran, Zombie Jamboree, just inside the coral reef, relying on the lower helm’s depth finder and night-vision monitor. He stole a glance at the luminous hands of his Submariner: forty minutes until dawn. Perfect timing.

  The man who called himself Diego said, “How’s our timing?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Better be.”

  A threat? Or just a common expression. The man’s tone was even, carried no particular menace. It was hard to tell. And because they were running dark, Bailey couldn’t read anything in the man’s face.

  But he was tempted to say, Or what?

  He said, “Dude, you came to me, I didn’t come to you.” He checked their GPS coordinates, cut the engines. The tide would take them in quiet from here. “Twelve minutes and we’ll be right on Labadee Beach.”

  Labadee was a private beach within a walled compound on the north shore of Haiti. Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines owned the beach and the
compound. The whole place would be empty until the next cruise ship arrived on Thursday. This was Tuesday. The Zombie Jamboree drifted in on the tide and the men didn’t speak until they arrived at Labadee.

  Right on time.

  “Can we get close enough?”

  “She’s a cat, she draws three feet,” said Bailey.

  About thirty feet from shore, Bailey said, “You jump in now, you’re about up to your nipples. Tide’s behind you. You can wade in from here.” They walked out to the aft deck, Bailey carrying a flashlight with a red lens to deaden the light, the other man carrying a black Pelican case. About the size and shape of a thick briefcase, but made of injection-molded plastic, with O-rings and strong latches and a one-way purge valve.

  Watertight.

  The man who called himself Diego stopped on the swim step, looked up at Bailey. He said, “You remember what I told you.”

  Bailey smiled. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Even in the dim light, the man’s eyes shone with contempt. “I have to worry about you,” he said. “You are the one part of the plan I can’t control. I know I won’t fuck up. I plan everything, down to the minute, and then I execute with precision. I leave nothing to chance. The only chance of failure is if you fuck up.”

  “Bad logic,” said Bailey. “If I fuck up, then you fucked up by hiring me, dude.” Bailey didn’t usually say dude this often. But he could tell that it bothered his client, and he didn’t like his client.

  The man looked to the deserted shore, back at Bailey, and launched into it again. For the seventh time. “You head straight for Dominican waters. You stay there. Go fishing. Go diving. Work on your tan. Whatever. You don’t go ashore. You don’t get drunk. You don’t smoke grass. You put down anchor at the end of the day, like you’re settling in for the night. You go dark. You stay dark. You return here at eleven-thirty tonight. Right here. Yes?”

  “Yes, Diego.” Bailey waved the flashlight toward shore. “And I signal with three flashes, at three-minute intervals.”

  “All right.” The man let go of the railing, sunk until his feet hit the sandy bottom. He was about up to his nipples. He started walking toward shore, the black Pelican case floating out in front of him on the calm water, its handle in his left hand.

  Starlight glittered silver off the black water, creating a gossamer wake behind the man as he waded in. There was the gentle hiss of the tide kissing the sand, and the ever-present tree-frog music, floating on the sweet island breeze. And that was all.

  Not a soul on the beach to witness the arrival of the man who called himself Diego.

  Bailey jabbed at the purge valve of his regulator, then stuck the regulator in his mouth. He put his right hand over his face, applying pressure to both mask and regulator. Left hand, holding the spear gun, pressed against his chest. Rolled back, plunged into the Caribbean Sea.

  Like falling into a warm bath. Beneath the surface was where he felt truly at home. At peace. He needed the time down here, and tried to get a dive in every day.

  He kicked his fins, got some depth, pinched his nose through the silicone mask and cleared his ears, kicked again in the direction of the anchor line.

  The top of the coral reef was forty-two feet from the surface, and Bailey added a little air to his BC as he arrived. He floated along the top of the reef, pulled the rubber tubing back to ready his spear gun.

  Tried to concentrate.

  But his mind was busy, replaying the initial meeting with his client.

  “Your monkey cannot come along,” said the man, and gestured to the vervet monkey that sat on the starboard bench devouring a mango. The monkey mistook the man’s gesture, let out a piercing shriek and scooted back a foot, clutching the mangled mango to her chest.

  “Relax, I don’t want your fucking mango,” said the man. Then, to Bailey, “See? He’s loud.”

  The wake of a passing yacht caused the Zombie Jamboree to rock ever so slightly, and the man overcompensated with his leg muscles like a subway virgin, almost stumbled, but corrected in time. The man was clearly not possessed of sea legs, and Bailey didn’t relish the idea of a seasick passenger. He decided to charge extra.

  Bailey took his feet off the gunwale and planted them on the deck, stubbed out the joint he was smoking.

  “She.”

  “What?”

  “She,” Bailey repeated. “She’s loud. Her name is Miss Judy.” He took a swig of Dos Equis, then rubbed the cold bottle against his bare chest. “Anyway, she doesn’t live aboard. She’s just a friend, she’s not my monkey. She’s not anybody’s monkey.” He hit the man with a goofy smile.

  The man waved Bailey’s words away impatiently. “I don’t give a shit. Boy monkey, girl monkey. Your monkey, not your monkey. The monkey is not to come with us on this trip. Understand?”

  “Sure. No monkey.”

  Bailey didn’t like this man, but then again, he didn’t like a lot of his clients. Liking your clients was not part of the people-smuggling business.

  Most of Bailey’s clients were rich Americans sneaking into the Bahamas to engage in some extramarital recreation, or to drop some cash at the local casinos. The smarter ones came to stash money in offshore accounts. Bailey didn’t smuggle things, just people. There was too much risk when you started moving unknown cargo across international borders. You might get boarded and find yourself holding fifty keys of coke. Or guns. Or anything. It wasn’t worth it if you got caught, and even if you didn’t, there were moral considerations. Where were the guns going? Would they be used to liberate people, or enslave them? Were the drugs going to middle-class suburbanites, or would they contribute to the rot of the inner cities? So Bailey saved himself the headache. People were easy. Easy to move, easy to hide. And people-smuggling had always seemed morally uncomplicated.

  Free people moving about freely. The idea held great philosophical appeal. At least, it used to. Things changed after 9/11, but Bailey was a good judge of people and he knew he’d never smuggled a terrorist. Not yet. Lately, he had started to consider the merits of retirement. Of going legit.

  He could continue to run the Zombie Jamboree as a fishing charter, simply knock off the undeclared, cash-only side business. But if he were going legit, it wouldn’t be as a fishing charter. Too much stink, and all his time spent on the surface, and too many asshole customers who blame the captain when the fish don’t bite.

  No, the plan for going legit went like this: move to an island where he wasn’t known—an island with a good economy and stable political climate. Barbados was perfect. Buy a small dive shop there, and hire a couple of young guys to help run the place. Maybe even move ashore and charter the cat for pleasure cruising. Or hire a local captain to babysit the fishing tourists.

  That was the plan. But it was a plan with a significant price tag, especially on an island like Barbados. If he stayed with the people-smuggling sideline, he might make the nut in a couple years. But if he went legit as a fishing charter, what with the cost of fuel these days, it could take another decade.

  So a couple more years of people-smuggling, and out. He’d still be a few years on the right side of forty when he reinvented himself yet again, this time as a law-abiding dive-shop operator. He might even meet a nice woman, fall in love…have a kid.

  Or maybe he was kidding himself. But what the hell. He’d come a long way on this ongoing journey of personal transformation; might as well buy in to the whole dream. Stranger things have happened.

  The man who called himself Diego was no terrorist, but neither was he simply a playboy looking for a good time or a tax dodge. Whatever he was, he was a hard guy. Dangerous. Not weight-lifter hard—those body-proud posers were only dangerous to themselves. Like Bailey, this guy had a lean and flexible musculature. His hardness was a mental hardness. Hence, dangerous.

  Whatever this guy was, he was a bad dude. He knew it, and he knew that you knew it, and he never made any effort to convince you of it. That’s the way it is with truly dangerous men. They never
try to convince anybody. They just are. If you’re an even halfway bad dude, you’ll recognize it. If you don’t, you’re not worth worrying about.

  Bailey recognized it. He’d been a bad dude himself, in a former life. But that was before the first reinvention. These days he was known, to those who thought they knew him, as a friendly expat American who liked rum and reefer, diving and women, in approximately that order.

  Among the Caribbean’s expat, live-aboard set, there were two distinct groups. There were those, like Bailey, who never talked about their former lives, and there were those who never shut the hell up about their former lives. All you had to do is pull up a stool next to them at the beach bar and you’d hear all about it, in excruciating detail.

  Dot-com millionaires who struck gold with an IPO and then dumped out just ahead of the bust; stock-market day-traders who’d had the discipline to quit while they were ahead; software developers; venture capitalists; real estate speculators; doctors and dentists who’d diligently saved their money and retired while still young enough to live the rest of their lives chasing after Jimmy Buffett’s bliss. The stories were all different, and all the same.

  And of course there were the trust-fund babies. Their former lives consisted mostly of homogenous boarding schools and ski trips in the Alps and absent parents and kindly nannies. Bailey preferred the second-generation trust-fund babies; they seemed to have accepted their lot with a little more grace than their furiously idle parents.

  Bailey’s group—those who didn’t talk about their former lives—consisted of retired arms dealers, drug runners, mercenaries, white-collar embezzlers and blue-collar thugs. A growing number of Russian “businessmen.” Also scattered around the Caribbean were former civil servants, mostly of the U.S. and U.K., some of France, and a few Israelis. Civil servants, true, but not the kind that ever saw the inside of a cubicle. Bailey had worked for Uncle Sam, in his former life.

  The man who called himself Diego didn’t seem to fit any of these categories. He used the name Diego and spoke with a slight accent, but Bailey guessed that the accent was no more authentic than the name. He lacked the olive complexion, and while he had a good tan, it looked like it had been recently acquired in a salon. Bailey guessed the man for an American, but he couldn’t be positive.