“Interviewing?” Kenny laughs. “I’m not here for a job – I’m here as a client.”
I rocket up in my seat.
That’s all Kenny needs to see. Big putz grin. “I’m telling you, real estate is always hot,” he adds, the canary still fresh in his teeth. “Seventeen million – and that’s just from the buyout. Where else you gonna get free cash like that? I mean, without getting arrested, of course.”
The instant the door slams behind Kenny, I sink down in my seat. Charlie’s up and moving, unable to stop. “Maybe we should call Shep,” he says as he starts pacing. “He’s still my friend… he’ll listen to reason…”
“Just give me a minute…”
“We don’t have a minute – you know he’s gonna be here any second… and if all we do is sit around… I mean, what’re we still doing here anyway? It’s like pulling the pin and waiting with the grenade in our pants.” He wheels around, all set for me to argue, but to his surprise, I give him nothing but silence. “What?” he asks. “What’d I do now?”
“Repeat what you just said.”
“About the grenade in our pants?”
“No – before that.”
He thinks for a second. “What’re we still doing here?”
“That’s the one,” I say, my voice now cruising down the runway. “How do you answer that?”
“I don’t understand.”
“What are we still doing here?” I ask as I stand from my seat. “Shep just had us nailed for swiping three million bucks – but does he tell Lapidus? Does he tell Quincy? Does he call in his buddies from the Secret Service? No, no, and no. He walks away and saves the conversation for later.”
“So?” Charlie says with a shrug.
“So what’s the first rule of Law Enforcement 101?”
“Be a power-mad donkey’s ass every time you pull someone over?”
“I’m serious, Charlie – it’s page one in the rulebook: Don’t let the bad guys get away. If Shep smells something wrong, he’s supposed to go straight to the boss.”
“See, now you’re reaching. Maybe he’s just giving us a chance to explain.”
“Or maybe he’s-” I stop mid-step. Up goes the suspicious eyebrow. “How well do you know this guy, Charlie?”
“Oh, c’mon…” he says with a roll of his eyes. “Now you think Shep’s the thief?”
“It makes perfect sense when you think about it. How else would he know about the original Duckworth fax?”
“He told you, Sherlock – he saw it come in…”
“Charlie, do you have any idea how many hundreds of faxes come in here every day? Unless Shep spends his days hunting through every fax in the building, there’s no way he’d find it. So either someone tipped him off before it got here… or somehow, some way…”
“… he knew it was coming,” he says, completing my thought. His mouth gapes open. His body stiffens, like his blood’s running cold. “You really think he…”
“You don’t know him at all, do you?” I ask.
“W-We hang out at work.”
“We should get out of here,” I blurt. I take off and rush to the door.
“Right now?”
“The longer we sit here, the more likely we’ll be tagged as scapegoa-” Tearing the door open, I look up. There’s a figure in the doorway.
With his chest in my face, Shep steps forward, forcing me to step back. Once he’s in the room, he whips the door shut. He studies Charlie, then stares at me. His thick neck keeps his head brutally arched, but it’s not an attack – he’s taking our measure. Weighing. Calculating. It’s like one of those silences at the end of a first date – where decisions get made.
“I’ll split it with you,” Shep says.
6
“Excuse me?” I ask as Charlie moves in next to me.
“No joke,” Shep says. “Three ways – a million each.” “You gotta be kidding,” Charlie blurts.
“So it was you who sent the first letter,” I say.
Shep stays silent.
So does Charlie. His teeth flick against his bottom lip. Half of it’s disbelief and the other half’s…
Charlie’s whole face lights up.
… pure adrenalized excitement.
“This could easily be the single best day of my life,” Charlie beams. The boy couldn’t hold a grudge if it was glued to his chest. I’m different.
Turning to Shep, I add, “You were just in here blaming us, and now you expect us to hold hands and be partners?”
“Listen, Oliver, you can chew my head off all you want, but just realize if you blow the whistle on me, I’m gonna blow it right back on you.”
I cock my head sideways. “Are you threatening me?”
“That depends what you want the outcome to be,” Shep shoots back.
Standing in front of my desk, I watch Shep carefully. Deep down, I may not be a thief, but I’m also no sucker.
“We’re all here for the same thing,” Shep quickly adds. “So you can either be a mule and get nothing, or you can share the profits and walk away with a little something in your pocket.”
“I vote for the profits,” Charlie interrupts.
“Screw this,” I say, storming to the door. “Even I’m not that stupid.”
Shep reaches out and grabs me by the biceps. Not hard – just enough to stop me. “It’s not stupid, Oliver.” As Shep says the words, the swagger’s gone. So’s the Secret Service. “If I wanted to blame it on you… or turn you in… I’d be talking to Lapidus right now. Instead, I’m here.”
Even as I pull away, Shep has my undivided attention.
He looks up at the NYU diploma on my wall and studies it carefully. “You think you’re the only ones who have that dream? When I first signed up with the Service, I thought I was going straight to the White House. Maybe start with the Vice President… work my way up to the First Lady – it’s a nice life when you think about it. What I didn’t realize was that before you get on Protective, you usually spend five years or so on Investigations: counterfeiting, financial crimes, all the scut work we never get credit for.
“So there I am, a few years out of Brooklyn College, in our Miami office in Florida. Anyway, on the drive from Miami to Melbourne, there was this wide-open stretch of unlit highway. Drug-runners would land their planes there, dump duffel bags full of money and drugs, and then have their partners pick it up and drive it down to Miami.
“Night after night, I’d fantasize about finding these guys – and every time, the dream was the same: In the sky, I’d see the red lights of a fleeing plane. Instinctively, I’d cut my own lights, slow the car, and stumble upon an army green duffel bag full of ten million dollars in cash.” Turning back to us, Shep adds, “If it ever happened, I’d throw the bag in my trunk, leave my badge behind, and just keep on driving.
“Of course, the only problem was, I never found the plane. And after missing four consecutive promotions and barely surviving on government pay, I realized that I don’t want to work until the day they put me in the ground. I saw what it did to my dad… forty years for a handshake and a fake gold plaque. There’s got to be more to life than that. And with Duckworth… a dead man with three million dollars… it may not be as much as the clients here have, but I’ll tell you… for guys like us… it’s as good as we’re gonna get.”
Charlie nods his head ever so slightly. The way Shep talks about his dad… there’re some things you can’t make up. “So how do we know you won’t play Take the Money and Run?” I ask.
“What if I let you pick where the transfers go? You can start over from scratch… put it in whatever fake company you want. I mean… with your mom here… you’re not going on the run for two million dollars – that’s the only guarantee I need,” Shep says, ignoring Charlie and watching my reaction. He knows who he has to work on.
“And you really think it’ll work?” I ask.