Dead on Arrival

45

‘The guy’s going to be out of the hospital in a day. A day!’

The client was furious, and Oliver Lincoln could understand why. He had been paid very well to execute a simple assignment, and he’d failed.

‘Do you want me to try again?’ Lincoln asked. ‘No charge, of course.’

The client was silent for a minute, apparently thinking. ‘No. If you try again it’ll be obvious that he was the target of the DEA shooting. Just forget about DeMarco. It’s time to execute the last part of the plan.’

‘Are you sure?’ Lincoln said.

‘Yes. The bill’s stuck in the House. That goddamn Mahoney.’

Lincoln had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. He was very good and very careful, but if he executed the last phase of the client’s plan … well, every cop in the country would be looking for the people involved, and they’d be looking for years. But, he thought, the only way they could get to him was if the client talked, and that wasn’t ever going to happen.

‘You blew it,’ Oliver Lincoln said to the Cuban. ‘You were supposed to incapacitate the man. He was barely wounded.’

The Cuban was embarrassed; she’d failed only one other time during her career and that had been nine years ago. But she’d be damned if she’d apologize to Lincoln.

‘You still need to pay my expenses,’ she said.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ Lincoln said.

‘You will pay my expenses. Now, do you want me to try again or return the money you gave me? Minus my expenses, that is.’

‘No, to both questions.’

‘What?’

‘No, I don’t want you to try again, and no, I don’t want you to return the money. It’s time to take care of the target that you prepared for last month. The client wants that target eliminated now.’

‘Is the plan still the same?’ the Cuban asked.

‘Yes. Nothing’s changed.’

‘If you’re thinking that I’m going to accept the payment you gave me for DeMarco for this subject, you’re a fool. We already negotiated the price for that assignment.’

She was correct. Her fee for her next assignment was much larger than the amount she’d been paid to kill DeMarco, which was only appropriate considering the risk.

Lincoln said, ‘Of course I’ll pay the price we agreed upon.’ Then he smiled. ‘And I’ll let you keep the money from the last assignment as well, even though you failed.’

‘Why?’ the Cuban said, immediately suspicious. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘So you’ll sleep with me,’ Lincoln said.

The Cuban didn’t say anything; she couldn’t tell if Lincoln was serious or not.

Lincoln struggled not to smile. He knew the last thing she wanted to do was have sex with him, but would she for seventy-five thousand dollars? Exactly how greedy was this woman?

The Cuban still didn’t respond. She stared at Lincoln’s face, her eyes blazing, yet at the same time he could tell she was considering his offer.

‘No,’ she said at last, but he could tell it just killed her to say that.

‘A hundred thousand,’ he said. ‘For one night.’

She cursed in Spanish. She looked at Lincoln, then looked away, then back at Lincoln. He could tell she couldn’t make up her mind. But enough of this; he had to get going. He had a date in an hour. ‘I’m just teasing you,’ he said. ‘I’m letting you keep the money because the next assignment is so critical and because I’ve moved up the date. And because I like you.’ What he didn’t add was: and because it’s not my money.

The Cuban’s face was flushed, embarrassed that she’d actually considered his offer — and that Lincoln knew it. Finally she said, ‘Well, I don’t like you. And maybe I’ll kill you one day for nothing.’