The Negotiator: A Novel of Suspense Read online

  From Bellows Falls to Brattleboro is about thirty minutes on Route 5, bypassing Interstate 91, to enjoy the view and to avoid snoopy State Police troopers and overhead aircraft or drones.

  “What did you find out from the hot real estate agent back there?”

  “A full name,” I said. “George Windsor. And where he’s currently residing, the Putney Homestead Bed and Breakfast, outside of Brattleboro. He certainly doesn’t enjoy staying at a chain hotel.”

  “George Windsor,” she said. “True name?”

  “True as it gets, if it gets him into a police station and feels confident he’s not going to get rousted.”

  “True name, true job?”

  “Department of Justice? I … I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem right.”

  “What does?”

  I stopped at an Irving Service Station, made a quick inquiry of a cheerful teen boy working inside, and then went back out to the Ford. I kept on driving. On Main Street in Brattleboro I pulled in, just by the Old Brooks Library, a hundred-plus-year-old Victorian-style building.

  “What’s here?” Carla asked.

  “A bit of anonymous surfing,” I said as I got out.

  “Then why here? We must have passed about a half dozen libraries from the time we left Manchester.”

  “This library’s small, but not too small. We go into a small town library, then we’re remembered. I don’t want to be remembered.”

  She looked up at the old edifice. “You really need me in there?”

  I smiled. “I’ve grown accustomed to your chilly face.”

  Inside the library had the hushed silence, smell of old books, and the low hum of knowledge being stored that still gave me a brief frisson of joy, years after I had gotten my first adult library card some years and miles ago. A helpful male librarian with a black Van Dyke beard and a pierced eyebrow directed Carla and I to the banks of the computers, and as we sat down, Carla said, “What a waste of space.”

  “Say again?”

  “All these old books, all these crowded shelves.” She started tapping on the keyboard. “Everything out there can be scanned and stored.”

  I pulled a hard plastic chair next to Carla. “Then what? An EMP pulse, a screw-up in some computer file, or a zombie apocalypse later, these books will still be patiently waiting on shelves, waiting to be read. What do you think of when I say the word archipelago?”

  The keyboard tapping went on. “You haven’t said that word.”

  “I just did.”

  “All right, I suppose Indonesia. Or the Philippines. Or maybe the old Soviet prison system.”

  “Extra points for the Gulag reference, Carla. When I think of archipelago, I think of all these hundreds of libraries, spread across the country, all of them a little island of knowledge. Each existing by themselves, each connected to each other.”

  She cocked an eye at me. “You certainly had the interesting upbringing … whoever you are.”

  “You have no idea,” I said.

  The thought of sharing Google and Bing searches with someone else gave me a queasy feeling, like sharing my toothbrush with a roommate who was coughing and hacking up his lungs. But Carla was quite good at making Google and Bing dance to our tunes, and we went hither and yon looking for the elusive and currently dead Kate Salzi. We did the usual Facebook, home address, and general searches, and Carla was able to dip in and out of some semi-secret federal databases.

  Within an hour, we were finished, in more ways than one.

  Kate Salzi didn’t exist.

  And neither did George Windsor.

  Thirteen

  On the sidewalk in front of the library, Carla and I leaned against the still-warm front fender of my Ford.

  “She doesn’t exist,” she said. “And neither does he.”

  “On the contrary, they both do exist.”

  “But there’s nothing out there … nothing.”

  “Wrong,” I said. “There’s two things out there. One is my intimate connection to the deceased Kate Salzi, just a few days back, along with the fingerprint hit from that water glass. And the other is my equally intimate connection with George. They’re both real. As real as me.”

  Carla said, “Interesting point. As real as whoever the hell you are. Her fingerprint came back, but not the source. Which means she entered the criminal justice system at one time, or was interviewed for a job requiring fingerprints.”

  “Then her records were scrubbed.”

  “As well as George Windsor’s.”

  “By whom?”

  “I know you don’t like me bringing this up, Mrs. Pope, but all signs point back to the Department of Justice. Or maybe some other none-such-agency using the DoJ as a cover.”

  “If that’s true, then there should have been info on George Windsor being a member of the DoJ.”

  “He was scrubbed as well for the purpose of this op.”

  “And what’s the purpose of this op? To capture or kill you? Or have that Rembrandt painting verified? The Department could have done it much simpler by setting up a trap to arrest you, and having that painting examined by its own experts.”

  “I’m pretty hard to catch,” I said.

  She gently kicked my foot with hers. “I seem to recall trapping you in your bathroom.”

  “And I seem to recall wiggling free and getting you wet.”

  “Don’t get cocky.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  We got back into the Ford and drove slowly through downtown Brattleboro, which was lovingly rebuilt and restored, with lots of trendy shops and boutiques. At the outskirts of downtown, we both spotted the Putney Homestead Bed and Breakfast, a two-story bright yellow building with wraparound porch, lots of bay windows and decorative scrollwork.

  “Nice,” she said.

  “Only the best for our hardworking … chasers.”

  I took a parking spot across the street, near a barbershop and a bakery cum sandwich place called St. Anthony’s. The barbershop and the bakery were both popular and busy. We were maybe seventy-five or so feet away from the inn’s front porch, a quick walk from where we were parked.

  “Well,” I said.

  “What now? Go inside and find George, guns ablazing?”

  “It’s an idea.”

  “Not very bright,” she said. “You don’t know if he’s there, or if he’s there, where he might be. He might be in his room with a couple of rough and tough bodyguards, or might be having a late brunch with innocents sitting around him.”

  “It was an idea,” I repeated. “I didn’t say it was a good one.”

  She swiveled in her seat. “Here’s another idea. I’m starving. Would you mind going into that place and grabbing something to eat?”

  “Takeout?”

  “Sure. We could sit here, eat quickly, and keep an eye on the place.”

  “You paying?”

  “No.”

  I undid my seatbelt. “Do I need to remind you of that rescue effort back in Manchester?”

  “I didn’t need rescuing, and I can still remember it.”

  I opened the door. “What would you like?”

  “Turkey club and an iced tea.”

  “You want sweetened or diet?”

  Carla pursed her lips. “Does it look like I need a diet anything?”

  I got out and proceeded to the bakery.

  Inside it was warm and steamy with conversation and cooking. There were small round tables with wrought-iron chairs, nearly all of the tables occupied. I shouldered my way up to the counter, ordered two turkey clubs and two iced teas, and I was told it would be ready in twenty minutes by a tall, strikingly attractive woman in a black tanktop and whose entire right arm was tattooed with orchids and skeletons.

  Any other time, a twenty-minute wait would h
ave been irritating.

  I was seeing it as a gift today.

  I went back to the entrance, pretended to scan a bulletin board, which had adorable postings about a local ham and bean supper, a knitting collective, a string quartet playing to benefit Tibetan refugees, and a student production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

  While I was pretending, I was also watching what was going on outside. Carla was still in the passenger seat of my new Ford, but she had something held up to her head. It seemed like she was talking into her hand, but I didn’t think that was logical. The fact she had a hidden cellphone with her—okay, that was logical.

  Then the door opened and she stepped out onto the sidewalk. She gave the bakery a quick glance. From the angle of the door and where I was standing, I was pretty confident she didn’t see me.

  Carla turned again and ran across the street, right up the front lawn, and then to the porch of the Putney Homestead Bed and Breakfast.

  The front door of the Putney Homestead swung open, and there was movement. Two men stepped out, the younger one dressed in a dark suit with no tie, white shirt with open collar, and the look of a hungry hunter around his full and curious face.

  The other man was considerably older, wearing khaki pants, a gray cardigan sweater, and an Irish tweed cap, and that was the man known in some circles as George Windsor.

  “How about that,” I said.

  The conversation was brief but animated. Carla was waving her arms around a bit, and George gave it back as good as he got, also with plenty of arm movement. The other man stepped back, as if to allow his two betters to do their business while he did his job, which was to keep his boss safe, if not happy.

  Temptation.

  I could walk out of this bakery, go across the street by those lilac bushes, and then scoot across the lawn, and in a manner of seconds, start shooting and Get Things Done.

  But George wasn’t alone. That hard man was moving his head, looking back and forth, scanning and evaluating. Even if I were to stroll up the flagstone pathway like I was getting ready to check in or review the brunch menu, George’s buddy would immediately zone on the approaching threat and drop me without hesitation.

  I could go in a sudden blitz, but if that guy was good—which he definitely looked like he was—he could push George behind him and start ripping off rounds at me. In the subsequent exchange, I might get him, and then George, but only by being very, very lucky would I be able to avoid getting hit myself.

  Plus, in the ensuing crossfire, Carla Pope might get hit as well.

  She started walking briskly back to our Ford. George and his bulky buddy went off the porch, to the rear, and then a few seconds later, a black Chrysler Escalade exited the rear parking lot of the building and went out onto Main Street.

  Carla got back into my Ford.

  “Hey, number nineteen,” called out the tall woman with the deadly tattoo. “Your order’s up!”

  Carla being shot in the crossfire.

  I was surprised the thought didn’t bother me at all.

  Back into the Ford I went, grasping two bottles of Lipton iced tea in one hand, and a white wax paper package with our respective and identical lunches.

  “Anything happen?” I asked, passing over her lunch.

  “Like what?”

  “Like George emerging from that house and begging forgiveness?”

  “Nope.” She opened her bag. “Where’s the chips?”

  “You didn’t ask for chips.”

  “That’s part of the agreement when it comes to a sandwich,” Carla said. “It comes with chips.”

  “It also comes with napkins, but I didn’t have to ask for napkins. You want chips? You know where to find them.”

  We ate quietly after that, the noise of the wax paper and napkins being rustled around. As she ate, Carla Pope had no idea how lucky she was. If she had encountered the younger and angrier me, I would be considering taking her out to another rural Vermont road, not in search of any more leads in this matter, but a place where I could easily dump her body.

  But my age was her good fortune. Plus a curiosity in wanting to know what was going on, although at my own pace and speed. I could force the issue now with Carla, but now it seemed like George had left the scene. Perhaps she and he would meet again, at a time when I hadn’t been sent away on a food run. In the meantime, well, perhaps I could figure out what this FBI bureaucrat was really doing. And I’m sure she would be stunned at what I was currently thinking, but I was wondering how much she’d really liked her older brother, and maybe she had something else going on that didn’t involve avenging Clarence.

  Maybe something else … like recovering that stolen Rembrandt on her own and giving her major props among her FBI crew.

  Maybe.

  I ate and looked out at the B&B, running through thoughts, options, and ideas. Nothing settled, just randomly tossing things up in the air and seeing where they land and how they fit together.

  “Good sandwich,” Carla announced.

  I grunted in reply. I was thinking of other meals past, before I had hired this woman’s older brother. Once I had been on Rue Elgin, in the old town section of Quebec City, a part of the city that looked like it had been transported from a medieval section of France and plopped down on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. The waitstaff was older men and women who took pride in their profession, and the five-course meal was a gourmet’s delight, from start to finish, with three different kinds of wine being served.

  Another time soon after that, I was halfway up a remote mountain valley in Afghanistan, eating cold mutton and bread, with cold weak tea, a flickering fire before a circle of men that barely warmed our faces, shivering under a scratchy and smelly wool cape.

  I took another bite of the sandwich. Funny thing was, I had fond memories of the cold mutton rather than the medium-rare sirloin steak with sautéed mushrooms and a Merlot reduction on the side. You see, in Quebec City, I was involved in a complicated negotiation between a Montreal motorcycle gang, and another motorcycle gang based in California. The object of their desire was an intricately designed, constructed, and painted memorial Harley-Davidson motorcycle that had enormous sentimental value for each gang.

  The dinner was held at this supposedly neutral spot, and the gang members had arrived without their colors, dressed in what I guess passed for their best clothes, yet none of the dressing up could hide the dirt under their fingernails and the contempt behind their eyes. One gang was in one private dining room, and the other was in another. Between courses I shuttled back and forth, and when dessert and café au lait was offered, I skipped out and left, not bothering to even go back to my hotel room to fetch my stuff.

  The next day, before I left the city, I picked up a copy of the city’s daily newspaper, Le Soleil, where the lead story was a bloody shoot-out that had erupted the night before, near Rue Elgin, with one dead, three wounded, and enough bullet holes in nearby windows and masonry to outfit a Michael Bay movie.

  But the cold mutton, though, that was a more pleasant story. It involved a negotiation between a Pashtun warlord who had a bit of pressed and hammered copper jewelry that may—emphasis on the word may—have belonged to Alexander the Great when he had been traipsing through these very mountains back during 330 bc or thereabouts. The other party was a very tired and frightened woman from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, who was covered in a full burqa, and whose voice shook every time she said something to our hired translator. The warlord wasn’t quite sure of the valuable nature of his possession, but he eventually passed it over to us in exchange for two small gold bars, a large herd of goats, and eight cases of 7.62mm ammunition.

  The warlord had been a joy to be with, for he went on and on with stories about these mountains and the fights that had gone on for centuries, and I had been so entranced with his talk that I spurned my usual fee and only a
sked to hold that piece of jewelry in my hand before we successfully returned to Pakistan.

  That food was a pleasant memory, as pleasant as the Quebecois dinner was unpleasant.

  I crumpled up my sandwich wrapper. The next few hours would determine where this sandwich would go into my memory banks.

  “Tell me more about Clarence. Was he popular? Lots of buds? Lots of girlfriends?”

  “I told you before and—”

  “And I’m not satisfied. C’mon. Give it up. I’ve been extremely clear why revenge is on my menu. But you? Threatening your career, maybe even your life, for a criminal brother?”

  She slumped lower in her seat. “He was more than just a criminal … he was … loving. He stood up for me at school, whenever the mean girls tried to make my life miserable, and I paid him back by trying to help with schoolwork. He was also protective. And innocent, almost like a gentle giant.”

  I had a series of memories quickly flash by, all of them concerning Clarence and me on a job, from one extreme to the other, from jobs that wrapped up quick and clean, all the way up to jobs that ended with Clarence dragging me out by my collar from a blown meeting place, using his other hand to put down suppressing fire.

  “Please don’t be offended, Carla, but innocent isn’t exactly the first thought that comes to mind when you mention your brother Clarence. Not even the fifth thought. Or tenth.”

  She sighed. “Clarence was good at what he did. He could be scary. Threatening. Deadly. But he never … he never came up with a scheme or a plan of his own. He was always just the follower, never a leader. He was a loaded weapon, and he was content to be used like that … aimed and forgotten after he got paid. And paid from whomever he was hired out to, no matter the job.”

  “How much of an embarrassment was it to you, working for the feds and having a crooked brother in the background?”

  “Not embarrassing at all,” she said, “since it’s been three years since I last spoke to him.”

  So there you go. And I left my follow-up question unasked: then why are you here?

  That took care of the conversation for a bit, and I idly tapped on the steering wheel, thinking of what Carla had just said, and also thinking of what she had done earlier, going out on her own to talk to George Windsor, for whatever reason. I wanted to be suspicious of her background, but I recalled my own fingerprint research on her. She was who she said she was, unless the FBI was very good at hiding folks like Carla in plain sight, making everyone think she was just a lowly bureaucrat.