The Contractor Read online

  THE CONTRACTOR

  Thriller by Paul Moomaw

  Kindle: 978-1-58124-118-1

  ePub: 978-1-58124-316-1

  ©2012 by Paul Moomaw

  Published 2012 by The Fiction Works

  http://www.fictionworks.com

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I have never killed a woman. I have nothing against the idea, but no one has ever paid me to. I think most women are not considered important enough to hire dead. Mostly they die by accident, or are collateral damage, or taken out in a fit of pique.

  Now someone does want the death of a woman. His name is Edward Angwin, and he wishes his sister to die. Despite the possibility of complications that make my inner scold call me a fool, I have agreed that I will take the contract, but down the road. I have a job to do right now, and I will not distract myself with thoughts of anything else. I am no multitasker. One thing at a time is my way, and always has been. I was one of those children who have to have every type of food separated on the plate. First eat all the peas, then all the chicken, then all the yams. My father knew that and always brought my dinner with everything mixed together in one big pile. He called it teaching me to deal with the real world, but I understood early that it was because he was a sadistic asshole.

  At any rate, Angwin can wait. He is not even on my plate. The man who is, whose name is Erubiel Lucero, sits across from me right now.

  Some of my targets make me work. Others might as well step in front of a truck. That is Lucero. Maybe he was too lucky too long and got careless. Or he may just be too stupid to believe that he can die. He can, and he is about to. He has become a nuisance to the people who sent me to do this—the Mob, the old one run by the wise guys, the made men with operatic names.

  They have been my fiscal bread and butter for years. I am not one of the Family, just a contractor they have access to when needed, another example of the growing corporate habit of outsourcing. I am a deniable asset. If I get caught on a job they never heard of me. It works both ways because they do not even know my real name. I am David Hyde in their Rolodex. It is a marriage of convenience and I have no doubt that one of us will want a divorce some day. In the meantime I am on call when they have an inconvenience that needs dealing with.

  Lucero is an inconvenience. The wise guys already feel hemmed in by newcomers. On the East Coast the Jamaicans have shut them out of valuable real estate and the Russians are nipping at their heels. In the West, drug lords from Mexico are pressing hard. All that pent-up irritation needs a place to go, and when an upstart home boy from Albuquerque defies them, he gets it. The Russians, the Jamaicans, the Mexicans have to be accommodated in an uneasy peace; but Lucero has no connections. Slap him down and no one will care.

  I sit in his house, drinking his booze and getting to know him. I make a point of meeting and connecting with the people I kill. Some might call that a waste of energy, but it is how I do things. Part of it is practicality. I learn their strengths and weaknesses, the chinks in their armor, so that when I make my move I can be precise and deadly. I am sure part of it is ego, too, engaging in harmless chatter with someone, disarming him with my presence, fooling him. It is the ultimate con game with the highest stakes of all. But it also offers them a place in my memory, a little bit of the only kind of immortality I believe in. Sometimes in my idle moments I imagine all of them in a room deep inside the recesses of my consciousness, sitting together and talking about me.

  Lucero is going through his important man act, laying it on heavy, and I can feel the start of a sneer forming in my mind. Then my inner scold whispers, Never underestimate your opponent, and the sneer dies stillborn. That is one of the oldest rules. Condescension leads to carelessness, and I am never careless.

  Lucero fed me drinks the first time I met him, too. He was easy to find. He owns a restaurant that serves as his headquarters and money laundry, and he is dependably there every evening from six to nine. He prides himself on being businesslike, he says. All I had to do was walk in and ask to see him, and out of his office he came. Nobody seemed interested in who I was or what I wanted. He shook my hand, led me to a table at the back and offered me a drink. “Anything you like. It’s on the house,” he said, with an expansive wave of his hand. He enjoys grand gestures, like making a big deal out of a two-bit drink.

  I told him on that first visit that I was a small businessman from Montana who has lucked into a source of prime British Columbian weed. The Montana part is true. I was raised in Livingston, in the shadow of the Absorakee Mountains. Everything else is a fairy tale. The multiple entry points across the border through the woods. The out-of-work loggers who need money and aren’t too choosy about how they earn it packing the stuff on foot to hidden drop points, where my brother and I—I made him up, too—pick it up and take it to his isolated farm. The need to market it, which is difficult to do in Montana, because there aren’t that many people there to begin with, and most of them prefer beer. My fear of trying to make a connection in the Northwest, because it is too close to home.

  The only question he asked was, “Who sent you to me?”

  He will find that out too late to matter. For now, I have made up a story about a migrant worker who tried to be bigger than he was and bragged that he used to work for the guy who runs it all in New Mexico, Erubiel Lucero.

  “He said you own the best restaurant in town, too.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Manuel Baca.”

  A shake of the head. “The only Baca works for me is my father-in-law, and he’s in the back counting my money.”

  “He probably wanted to look important. At least he knew who you are.”

  “Around here, everybody knows who I am, even the cops.” Another shake of the head. “Those cops. My father-in-law is always complaining they cost too much. Biggest line item in the budget, he says.”

  That was the end of the first visit. He might be interested, he said. H
e would let me know. He asked where I was staying. I gave him the name of a hotel near the Old Town district, an overpriced, pretentious place that offers only suites, and attracts two kinds of people—the very rich who don’t have to care how much they spend, and the people who want others to think they are that rich.

  “Pretty pricey for a struggling little businessman.”

  “Champagne tastes. So I need some champagne money,”

  A flicker of disdain passed through Lucero’s eyes, and knew I had him. The hotel bit closed the deal. Now he thought he understood me, that I was just another greedy guy with big eyes, someone he could handle. Suddenly I wasn’t a threat, didn’t have to be taken seriously, which was exactly what I wanted. He was opening a wide door, and if he had the sense to look through it, he would see his grave marker.

  It was back in my hotel room, after that meeting, that I had my first contact with Edward Angwin. When I checked for messages with my cellular phone, there was one, from a number in Seattle. The voice was male, careful and tentative, and asked me to call, no reason offered. I was immediately on my guard, first, because the number he called is my business line, so to speak, and I am not used to getting calls on it from people I don’t know, and second, because the call was from Seattle.

  I have developed a set of rules over the years. I think of them as rules of engagement that determine how I conduct my business. There are only a few, but I try to follow them with rigor. One of them, and one that I have never broken, is that I do not do business in Seattle. I live there and it would be reckless to risk fouling my own nest. So my first impulse was to delete the message and forget it. But my curiosity was aroused as much as my caution and I decided there was no danger in answering. I could always drop it afterwards with no harm done. It was only ten-thirty in Seattle, so I punched in the number. It rang several times, and I was about to hang up, when the phone picked up on the other end.

  “Hello?” It was the same man who left the message.

  “You called,” I said, and repeated the number he used to reach me.

  “I was told you can help us,” he said. His voice was cultured. More than educated. Trained, with the carefully modulated crispness of a radio announcer, an actor, a person for whom the voice is a tool, or a shield to hide behind. “We have a situation.”

  “We have a situation,” he repeated, when I did not respond immediately.

  “I heard you.” I waited for him to speak again

  “I think it’s the kind of situation you make a living resolving,” he said, and paused into my silence, long enough to count to ten perhaps, before adding, “A life or death situation, you might say.” He fell silent again.

  “Who is we?”

  “The people I represent. I can’t be more specific right now.”

  “And who referred you to me?”

  “A Mr. Valenti, I talked to him in Phoenix. He said you are very efficient.”

  I smiled and shook my head at the thought of this person, whoever he was, walking up to Guido Valenti and trying to hire him to whack someone. This fellow was lucky he was still breathing.

  “I will have to verify that.”

  “I understand. You can reach me at this number any time after seven. When should I expect to hear from you?”

  I hung up without answering. It was too late to call Guido Valenti. He was undoubtedly already in bed, sampling the wares of his latest male model. He thinks his sexual tastes are a secret, but it is really that nobody gives a damn whom he fucks. On the other hand, it is also why he will never go any higher in the organization that he is right now.

  So I waited until I got back to Seattle to call Valenti, who confirmed he was approached by a “silly shit” looking to hire a hit.

  “He says his name is Mr. Smith. Believe it? He comes to the hotel, walks up to the front desk, and tells Toussaint, who is working that shift, that he needs to see me, that it’s confidential, and it has to do with my other business. So I saw him. Figured it couldn’t hurt to know what he’s up to, if maybe he knows something I don’t want him to know. I made him give me his real name and address, and his social security number. He coughed them right up, so he’s either federal, or an idiot. Either way, I didn’t want anything to do with him, so I passed him on to you. Do whatever you want, as long as you keep it away from us.”

  “Hey, thanks,” I said.

  “Any time.”

  Valenti had passed his hot potato very firmly to me, and so I did meet Angwin two days later.

  That was last Wednesday. Now it is Friday, and I am back in Albuquerque, sitting at Lucero’s kitchen table with a shot of tequila in front of me. Lucero has called personally and given me directions to his house. He lifts his glass.

  “Here’s to maybe getting richer.”

  “I was surprised you called me yourself,” I say. “I thought the boss always had someone else do the phones.”

  Lucero shakes his head and drains his glass. “Until I’m sure what I’m going to do, I prefer to keep things to myself.” He gives me a look. “That goes for you, too.”

  “Of course.”

  “What’s your brother’s name again?”

  “Jared.”

  “Funny name.”

  “Not in Montana.”

  Lucero asks for my brother’s telephone number. I give him a number and he reaches for the telephone. “Say it again?”

  I repeat the number, slowly, as he punches it in. His call will go to a telephone in Montana, where it will be bumped by satellite to a room somewhere in Minneapolis, where a man who has been waiting for this call will answer. The switch will be seamless. Why be the Mob if you can’t afford a little high technology? I vetted the man in the room, and he sounds more North Dakota than Montana, but Lucero won’t know the difference.

  After a long pause, Lucero says, “Is this Jared?” He listens, then says, “This is Lucero. You know who I am. I’m sitting here with your brother.” He listens again, then grins and offers the telephone to me. “He wants to make sure you’re really here,” he says, and nods approvingly as I take the phone. “Good to be a little cautious.”

  “Hey, Jared.”

  “You really with Lucero,” the man on the other end says.

  “I really am.”

  “Does it look good?”

  I glance at Lucero and smile. “Looks really good. Mr. Lucero is someone you can count on.” Lucero grins and waves his glass again.

  “Get it arranged,” the man in Minneapolis says. “Call me back when it’s done.”

  “I’ll call right away. Let me see if Mr. Lucero wants to talk some more.”

  Lucero shakes his head.

  “He says no.”

  “Be in touch,” the man on the other end says, and hangs up.

  I hand the receiver back to Lucero and he replaces it on its base. “What kind of deal do you want to make with me?”

  I lean forward and do my best to sound tentative. “My brother and I can bring the marijuana into the country and store it at his farm. After that, we need to hand it off. We can’t take the time away from our own work, and there’s no one up there we can trust to be loyal enough.” I pause and grin. “Or smart enough.”

  “So you want my organization to transport the weed.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How much are we talking about?”

  “It’s been building up. We’ve got maybe three hundred pounds right now, and we can probably bring in fifty to a hundred pounds a month most of the time.”

  I can see Lucero calculating expenses versus potential profit.

  “It’s killer stuff,” I say. “It will fetch a good price.”

  “And we have to bring it all the way from . . . from where?”

  “The nearest town is called Eureka. It’s in northwest Montana, ten or twelve miles from the Canadian border.”

  “All the way from there to here.” He shakes his head. “That’s a hell of a long way, primo.”

  “It’s not that far.�
��

  “Far enough.”

  “We’ll sell it to you for a good price.”

  Lucero shakes his head again, more emphatically this time. “You don’t sell, and we don’t buy. If we’re going to do this, we will take the stuff, and sell it in our pipeline, and give you a percentage.”

  I look across the table at him, hoping I can make him see greed and caution battling inside me. “How much?”

  “You’ll get thirty percent,” he says.

  “That’s not very much.”

  “That’s the deal.”

  I hem and haw for a moment, then say, “How do I know we’ll get our money?”

  For the first time since I have been around him, anger flares in his eyes. He leans forward and slaps the table.

  “You calling me a fucking crook?” he says, and then the anger is gone as quickly as it came, and he leans back in his chair and laughs. “That’s a good one, ain’t it? I guess I am a crook, now I think about it.” He grabs the bottle of tequila and fills both our glasses. “So here’s to getting a little bit richer.”

  “I’ll have to pass it by Jared.”

  “You tell him it’s a take-it-or-leave-it deal.”

  I nod and take a sip of tequila. I hate tequila. Only a Mexican could drink it sober. But anything to get the job done. “He’ll go along. The farm loses money. He has to do carpentry jobs to break even.”

  Lucero shrugs. “I guess being poor sucks. I used to be poor, but so long ago I don’t remember for sure.” He drains his glass and stands up. “For now I’m going to trust you to get your end ready, just as long as you know that if you let me down, you can’t run far enough.”