No Plan B

Chapter 24

Some people pick hotels more or less at random. Other people are more careful. They take all kinds of different factors into account. The price. The location. The amenities. The ambience. The discretion of the staff, depending on what they’re planning to do while they’re there. And who they’re planning to do it with.

Emerson and Graeber paid a great deal of attention to their choice of hotel in St. Louis that Thursday. But for them only one thing mattered. It was all about the parking lot. It had to be large. And it had to be shaped in such a way that at least some of the spaces were positioned well away from the main building. Graeber spent a good half hour with his phone after they left the warehouse. He used a few different review sites until he found a place he thought was suitable. Then he switched to his favorite mapping app and pinched and zoomed and swiped until he had double-checked it from all angles. It looked promising on the screen. But when they arrived on-site they figured that half of the lot must have been sold since the satellite pictures they had seen were taken. Now the section they had been interested in was surrounded by contractors’ hoardings emblazoned with computer simulations of a new office building.

Emerson and Graeber moved on to their second choice of hotel. The parking lot was smaller but it was early enough in the day for plenty of spaces to be vacant. Graeber pulled the van into the most isolated of them and Emerson walked across to reception. He booked one room. He paid for the whole night but he knew they would be leaving at half past one in the morning. That would give them time to get to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and still have about an hour for surveillance before the delivery guy they’d learned about showed up for work. The schedule left them with twelve hours to fill. Emerson figured they should use it to get some rest. They’d had an early start. A long drive from Chicago. Followed by a busy morning. So they would split the time into four shifts. Then take turns, one of them in the room and one in the van. The room would be more comfortable. But the van was more important. Its contents were too valuable to be left unattended. And they would be too hard to explain away if anyone in authority found them.

The car was old. It was some kind of station wagon. It was long and green and there were fake wood panels attached to the sides. The kid with the dark hair opened one of the rear doors. The blond kid moved his hand to the center of Jed’s back. He shoved. Hard. Jed tried to stop himself but his fingers skidded across the dusty paintwork and he wound up facedown in the foot well. The blond kid slammed the door. He turned to his buddy. His hand was raised for a high five. Which he never received. Because his buddy was lying on his back on the sidewalk. Unconscious. One of the Minerva guys was standing over him. He had a smile on his face.

The other Minerva guy said, “Want to tell me what’s going on here?”

The blond kid’s mouth drooped open but he didn’t speak.

The Minerva guy took a pistol from the waistband of his jeans. “This is what you need to understand. I’m a law enforcement officer. I witnessed you attempting to kidnap a minor. I shoot you, I get a medal. So if you have anything close to an innocent explanation, now’s the time.”

The kid didn’t respond.

The Minerva guy checked his watch. There were eight minutes before the next bus was due. Which was annoying. This could be the only action he would see all day. He would have preferred to draw things out a little. Have some fun. Instead he frowned and said, “Show me your phone.”

The kid didn’t move.

The Minerva guy pressed the muzzle of his gun against the kid’s sternum. He reached into the kid’s pocket and helped himself to the phone. He glanced at it and said, “Passcode?”

The kid stayed silent.

The Minerva guy said, “OK. This phone’s old. A fingerprint will unlock it. Hold out your hand.”

The kid didn’t move.

The Minerva guy said, “Let’s recap. Passcode, or fingerprint?”

The kid didn’t answer.

“OK,” the Minerva guy said. “I’ll go with your fingerprint. You know your finger doesn’t need to be attached to the rest of you for it to work, right? Or your thumb? Or whatever you used to set it up? Maybe I’ll have to snap off all your fingers, one at a time.”

The kid’s eyes opened wide and he blurted out a string of six numbers. The Minerva guy entered them into the phone then opened its photo library. It was full of pictures of people surfing and drinking beer and hanging out on beaches, plus one shot of someone’s ass. There was nothing that seemed relevant so the guy switched to the phone’s messages app. Straightaway a different picture filled the screen. It was of Jed Starmer. At the Greyhound station in L.A. Taken on Tuesday afternoon. The guy clicked and swiped and saw that the picture had been sent from a California number. There was a note attached to it. A route number. And an arrival time. He handed the phone to his partner, then said to the kid, “How much?”

The kid’s eyes opened even wider. “I haven’t got any money. But I can get some. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”

The Minerva guy slapped the kid in the face. Openhanded, but still hard enough to knock him over sideways, into the gutter. Then the guy reached down, grabbed the kid by the undershirt, and hauled him back onto his feet. “How much will you get for snatching the boy?”

“Oh. Nothing. Nada. Honest.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true.”

“Then why did you snatch him?”

“We had to. We don’t have any choice.”

“Everyone has a choice.”

“We don’t. We’re working it off. There’s a debt we owe.”

“Oh yeah? Who do you owe? What for?”

“A guy we met. He gave us some drugs. A lot of drugs. We were supposed to sell them. But they got stolen. And we didn’t have any money to pay him back.”

“Who’s the guy?”

“I don’t know his real name.”

“Where is he?”

“New Orleans.”

“So now you supply him with runaways?”

The kid looked down and nodded.

The Minerva guy said, “You have someone at the Greyhound station in, where? L.A.?”

The kid said, “He moves around. L.A. San Fran. Austin, Texas, one time.”

“He buddies up to lonely looking boys? Finds out where they’re going? Makes sure no one’s going to miss them?”

The kid nodded.

“How many times?”

“This is the fourth.”

“How many more?”

The kid shrugged. “He said he’d tell us when it was enough.”

The Minerva guy checked his watch again, then pulled a plasticuff from his back pocket. “Turn around. Hands out behind you.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Call 911. You’re looking at a lot of jail time, pal. Hopefully in the place where I work. I’ll make sure you get a real good welcome.”

“No. Wait. Please. Can’t we–”

The guy spun the kid around and secured his wrists. Then he pushed him toward his partner and opened the back door of the car. He said, “We better check the boy’s OK. Make sure you’re not in any more trouble.”

Only he couldn’t check on anyone. Because the back of the car was empty. The opposite door was open. And Jed was gone.