Foreign Éclairs Read online

  Ahead and to our left, the galley kitchen featured almond appliances, fluorescent lighting, and the white trimmed-in-oak cabinetry that had been all the rage in the 1970s. Slightly shabby with its worn linoleum and dated fixtures, the narrow space was nonetheless clean. I sniffed the air. Bleach. An improvement over the musty welcome at the front door.

  The agent turned and gestured to our right into what I presumed was the dining room. “In here.”

  Yablonski sat on a folding chair at the center of a long, collapsible table. He had a laptop open to his right and paperwork piles everywhere else. The plaster walls in this windowless, rectangular room had been painted a high-gloss white that reflected the bleak illumination from four bare, high-wattage bulbs overhead. I blinked in the brightness.

  “Come on in,” he said, waving us into the two folding chairs opposite him. “So it seems we’re required to work together again, doesn’t it, Ollie? I’m sure you’re delighted by the prospect.”

  His words sang with sarcasm, but his gaze was warm.

  “Always a pleasure to work with you, Joe. I only wish it were under better circumstances.”

  “Someday, perhaps,” he said. He glanced over the top of my head and nodded to the agent who had brought us in. “That will be all.”

  She ducked out of the room. A few seconds later, I heard the front door open and close.

  “Let me tell you what we’ve uncovered in the few short hours since you both neatly avoided assassination. Well done, by the way.” He turned to me first, “Ollie, let’s go back to the night of your mugging. You identified two assailants, am I correct?”

  “Yes, Viceboy and Dagger,” I said, “but both of them are dead. Executed gangland style, according to the Metro Police.”

  “Mr. Sargeant informed you of the existence of a third gang member, correct?”

  “He did. He said the police would try to pick this person up and question him. I believe his name is Cutthroat.”

  “Mr. Cutthroat is in custody. He’s refusing to say a word to the detectives, but I’m convinced he’ll talk with us.”

  “Us?” I asked. “He’s here?”

  “Not yet.” He turned his attention to his laptop and navigated using his touchpad. Swiveling the computer around, he asked, “Do you recognize these men?”

  The question had been directed to me. There were three faces on the screen. I studied them but none looked familiar. “No.” I turned to Gav. “You?”

  He made a low noise that, in any other situation, could have been amusement.

  Before he could answer, I slapped my forehead. “Of course you do.”

  He had an arm around the back of my chair and used his fingers to rub my shoulder. “I haven’t met any of them in person, though.”

  Yablonski identified each of the men in turn as he pointed to their photos. When he got to the last one on the far right, he said, “And this is Kern. Their leader. It’s not a clear image, but it’s the best we’ve got. We have every reason to believe that he stayed back in Armustan and chose not to accompany his lieutenants on this mission, but we don’t want to overlook the possibility that he may be in the United States.”

  Kern didn’t face the camera directly. His attention seemed to be focused on something low and to his left; I couldn’t get a good look at his eyes. Although the photo was blurred, there was no missing the wavy brown hair that hung past his shoulders, his full, bushy beard, and the heavy mustache that covered his lips. From this hazy image it was impossible to determine the man’s age; he could have been twenty-four or forty-seven. So I asked. “How old is he?”

  “Our best guess—thirty-two,” Gav said.

  A door opened at the back of the house. Angry protestations followed, along with the unmistakable sounds of bodies scuffling and struggling. Alert, I sat up straight, but when Yablonski didn’t seem to be bothered, I relaxed.

  A male voice: “Where is this place?” More scuffling. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”

  “Right on time.” Yablonski stood. He made his way to the rear of the home and spoke to the new arrivals. “Up here.”

  I turned to Gav. “What’s going on?”

  Before he could answer, Yablonski returned to the room, carrying another folding chair. He opened it, placed it at the head of the long table, and resumed his original seat.

  A moment later, two agents half-dragged, half-carried a rangy young man into the room. He shouted profanities and struggled against his captors, his eyes wide with panic.

  Shackled, with his hands cuffed behind, the guy wouldn’t have gotten far even if he had managed to break away, but I can’t say that I blamed him for trying. He smelled of hot fear and cold dread. His face shone with perspiration. Beneath his open leather jacket, his T-shirt was stained with sweat.

  Yablonski pointed to the folding chair he’d set up. “Have a seat, Mr. Cutthroat.”

  I watched as the ferocious-eyed young man took in the stark room, its temporary furnishings, and Yablonski’s apparent authority. As the two agents pushed him into the chair, he glanced at Gav, then at me. I could tell my presence puzzled him most of all. “What’s going on? Who are you people?”

  Yablonski brought his face close to Cutthroat’s. “Right now we’re your best friends.”

  A sheen of perspiration gathered along Cutthroat’s upper lip. He had wide-set eyes and a sharp, straight nose. Scar tissue from an old wound zigzagged from near his right ear down to his chest. I wondered if that injury was how he’d gotten his name.

  “You can’t hold me. I know my rights.”

  Unruffled, Yablonski regarded him thoughtfully. “You want us to let you go?” He sat back, crossing his arms. “Fine.”

  Cutthroat glanced up at the two agents flanking him, as though he expected them to snap to it and release him from his bonds. They stared straight ahead as though they hadn’t heard a word.

  Yablonski cleared his throat. “But before we do, let me ask you this: Where will you hide?”

  “Hide?” Cutthroat asked. He slid a quizzical glance at me and Gav again. “What do you mean?”

  Yablonski wrinkled his face and scratched his forehead. “I mean, Detectives Beem and Kager were able to find you and pick you up less than a day after they learned of your existence. How long do you think it will take the men who killed Dagger and Viceboy to hunt you down?”

  Cutthroat looked ready to jump out of his own skin. His gaze darted about the room as though looking for an exit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, convincing no one.

  Yablonski leaned forward again, resting his thick arms on the table, never taking his eyes off the fidgety captive. “You know what they did to your friends,” he said. “How long do you think you’ll stay alive out there once they find out about you? Hmm?” He waited for that to sink in.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with Viceboy and Dagger getting offed.”

  “You and your friends went back a long way, didn’t you?” Yablonski shuffled through papers. “Look what I have here.” He held up a photograph of a grade-school class where three boys’ faces had been circled in red. “Did you first meet Bobby and Roger in Ms. Winchell’s second-grade class,” he asked as he tapped the photo, “or do the three of you go back even further, Steven?”

  At the mention of each of the gang members’ real names, Cutthroat/Steven flinched. “I didn’t have anything to do with them getting killed,” he said again.

  “We know you didn’t,” Yablonski said smoothly. “But if you can tell us who did, we might be able to offer you protection.”

  Cutthroat shook his head, more in an expression of disbelief than of refusal.

  Yablonski turned to his laptop and navigated the touchscreen again. From my vantage point, I could see that he’d returned to the three photos he’d shown me earlier. Turning the laptop around to face Cutthroat, he asked, “Do you recognize any of these men?”

  The young man leaned back, fear in his eyes. “The one on the left and t
he one in the middle,” he said. “They killed Viceboy and Dagger.”

  “What about the man on the right?”

  Cutthroat squinted. “I never saw him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “That’s not a real good picture. He could be anybody, but uh-uh. I don’t think I ever saw that guy.”

  “How do you know the two other men killed your friends?” Yablonski asked.

  Pain worked its way across Cutthroat’s face. His eyes hardened and his mouth tightened in a way that made it seem he was trying not to break down in front of us. “I watched them do it.” His Adam’s apple bounced up and down, twice. “I was supposed to stay on the outside, to make sure Viceboy and Dagger stayed safe.” He gestured toward the laptop with his chin. “But these guys . . . there was no forewarning.”

  “Why did the two men kill your friends?”

  Cutthroat looked away. He shrugged.

  “Steven,” Yablonski said, his gray face darkening with impatience, “your friends made some bad decisions and it got them killed. Do yourself a favor and make the right decision now.” He spoke slowly, allowing every syllable to settle before moving to the next. “I can help you. I can offer you protection.”

  “Nobody can protect me.”

  “I can,” Yablonski said. “I’ve done it before with much bigger fish than you. All you have to do is tell us everything you know. From the start.”

  He waited while Cutthroat fidgeted and bit his lip.

  “Take us back to the beginning, Steven,” Yablonski said. “Tell us everything you know. What did Viceboy and Dagger get into?”

  “Who are you, anyway?” Cutthroat asked. He turned and pointed his chin toward us. “Who are they?”

  “I told you before: Right now, we’re your best friends. Your buddies got in way over their heads. Once they stepped in, they had no chance of getting out alive. But you do. One chance. And this is it.”

  Cutthroat seemed to be waging an inner war with himself. Arguments played across his features so clearly I could almost hear them. “Listen,” he finally said, “I told them—I told Viceboy and Dagger—that they were messing with the wrong people.”

  Yablonski nodded. “From the beginning,” he said.

  Cutthroat took a deep breath. He tossed a look over his shoulder. “Can I get these cuffs off? And a cigarette?”

  “Cigarettes will kill you. Aren’t we here to prevent that? You can have water,” Yablonski said, but he allowed the cuffs to be removed. One of the agents stepped out and returned a moment later with four bottles of water.

  “Now,” Yablonski said when we were settled. “Talk.”

  Sometimes leaning on the table, sometimes gesturing with lanky arms, Cutthroat told us about how Viceboy and Dagger had been approached by the two men. “They promised money—lots of money—and guns. The kind that are hard to get.”

  “Where were you?” Yablonski asked. “During these negotiations, I mean?”

  “I had to take my grandmother to the hospital that day,” Cutthroat said with a frown. “But when I got back Dagger and V—we used to call him that for short—told me about these guys and the money we were looking at. They didn’t try to cut me out. They wouldn’t. The three of us always worked together. We came up in the ranks together and had each other’s backs.” He gave a shrug as though it didn’t matter, but the look in his eyes made him look lonely and forlorn.

  Yablonski tapped his computer screen. “When did you finally meet these two men?”

  “Never did. They didn’t know about me. V thought it would be better if I stayed on the outside to make sure the two guys made good on their promises. I was their backup, y’know. I stayed out of sight when they met up, but I was always around.”

  Even though I didn’t know where any of this was going, I was too fascinated to interrupt.

  “When was this?” Yablonski asked.

  Cutthroat took a deep drink of his water. “A week ago maybe?” He studied the ceiling for answers. “Yeah, a week ago last Tuesday. That’s when my grandma fell and I had to take her in.” He looked at me and at Gav. “She’s okay, by the way. No broken hip or anything. Just a lot of bruising.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said.

  “Back to the story,” Yablonski said.

  “Those two guys?” Cutthroat lifted his chin to indicate the two men in the photos. “They were bad news. Really bad. Viceboy and Dagger hooked up with them again a couple days later. That’s when I saw them in person for the first time and when I heard what they wanted.” Cutthroat shook his head. “Weird accents. No idea what country they were from, but nobody asked. These guys were scary. There was this look in their eyes.” He affected a shudder. “Never seen anything like it.”

  “What did they want?”

  Cutthroat worked his jaw. “How do I know you won’t take everything I tell you and use it against me?”

  “You don’t,” Yablonski said, folding his arms. “But what have you got to lose? Now tell me: What did they want?”

  “They were crazy, these guys. Kept talking about a woman they wanted killed, but kept talking about how it had to be done a certain way.”

  “More detail, please,” Yablonski said.

  Cutthroat leaned forward. “They came in with this plan. They wanted Viceboy and Dagger to kill this woman—”

  “Her name?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember. Somebody who worked in the White House and—”

  I sucked in a breath. Although the disclosure came as no real surprise, it was still shocking to hear him admit it aloud.

  Cutthroat’s gaze settled on me.

  Gav squeezed my hand.

  “Back to the kill job,” Yablonski said without looking at me. “Why did they need Viceboy and Dagger? Why couldn’t these two men simply kill their target on their own?”

  “They said it was because they didn’t know the streets out here. I thought it was because they were setting my friends up, y’know, so the killing couldn’t be traced to them. And that’s exactly what happened.” Before Yablonski could say anything, Cutthroat went on, “I told Dagger and V that they were messing with the wrong people. I told them that we can’t go after people in the White House. I tried to talk them out of it, but they went ahead because the money was too good to walk away from.”

  “You’re here, and they’re dead,” Yablonski said. “Looks like you made the better decision. Keep going.”

  I wanted Yablonski to ask why the two men had only stolen my purse rather than kill me when they’d had the chance. But Cutthroat started talking again.

  “So V and Dagger broke into some other lady’s house. Somebody who worked in the White House, too. I wasn’t there, I swear I wasn’t.” He glanced around the room as though looking for us to say we believed him. “Once they had her tied up they called the foreign guys, who came to ask her questions.”

  “What kind of questions?” Yablonski asked.

  “I wasn’t there, remember?” Cutthroat said. “I can only tell you what my buddies told me later. They said she was real scared and that the foreign guys promised her that if she told them everything they’d let her live. So she did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Tell them everything. Like who worked at the White House and how many guards are usually around and what she does at work. That kind of stuff. V said that the two guys were especially interested in some chef and they asked a load of questions about her. Dagger thought that was funny—like maybe they wanted to learn how to cook some secret recipe or something—but the lady told them about how the chef is married to some special undercover agent. That’s when the big-money guys got really excited.”

  Cutthroat looked around at all of us again as he took another swig of his water. “They killed that lady, the one whose house they broke into,” he said. “But you probably already knew that. The two guys told V and Dagger that they’d have another job for them soon, and they’d be in touch. The next day, they told them to steal a purse and
get the chef lady’s keys. No idea what they planned to do to her, but that’s what they wanted. Next thing I know, my friends are dead.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be their backup,” Yablonski said. “What happened?”

  “They took Dagger and V out to this warehouse miles away from our turf. Said that’s where the guns were hidden and it wasn’t safe to bring them out in the open. I was supposed to follow behind without anybody seeing me, which was tough. I was too far back, I guess. By the time I found a place to hide my car and sneak in, Viceboy and Dagger were dead.” His voice cracked. “I was too late.”

  “Tell me more about what Viceboy and Dagger told you before they died,” Yablonski said. “About the woman they killed and about the chef. Anything you remember about that? Anything at all.”

  Cutthroat stared at his hands, which he fisted and stretched several times. “Viceboy told me that the main target was this lady chef, and that the two foreigners wanted to know everything about her first—like her schedule and stuff—so that they could make a big spectacle out of offing her in public.” He looked up. “And they were only hitting this other lady—the first one, the one who they killed in her house—to get that information. Like I said, they were really excited to find out the chef was married to some Secret Service dude. It, like, changed the whole plan.”

  Yablonski scratched his forehead. “Take him upstairs,” he said to the agents.

  “Wait, what’s going on? What’s upstairs?” Cutthroat asked, panicked again. “You said you’d keep me safe if I told you everything.”

  “Upstairs is a bedroom. This is a safe house. I wager you couldn’t do better tonight, given your circumstances.”

  The agents replaced the young man’s handcuffs. “Do I have to have these on?”

  Yablonski didn’t answer. “You will remain here indefinitely in case we have further questions. After we’re satisfied, we will make arrangements for safe housing elsewhere.”