Full Ratchet: A Silas Cade Thriller Hardcover (5 page)

A
in’t you never looked in a mirror? Plain as the nose on my face.” He laughed. “Hell, it kind of
is
the nose on my face, right? Not just twins, we’re like
identical
twins.”

“I don’t know.” Close up our differences seemed stronger—different lines in the face, different hair, different habits of movement. “Didn’t you say you were born two years later?”

“Yeah, I guess. But anyway I got the records, and the state don’t lie. I mean, not about shit like that. Paper going back twenty, thirty years. Want to see the copies?”

“Maybe later.”

“Sure.” Dave drank off half a Rolling Rock and clanked the bottle onto the toolbox by his stool. “You should of told me you were coming.”

“I travel around,” I said. “Work. I had a job nearby and I thought I’d look you up.”

“Travel, huh? That accounting business, I figured you sat in an office all day. Keeping the books.”

“It’s just as boring as you think.”

His hair was on the long side. I’d been in Kentucky a few years ago, chasing a penny-stock fraudster who liked the horses, and back then every guy in the region seemed to have his head shaved down to stubble. It looked like boot camp. Now the style pendulum was apparently drifting back to the 1970s.

Besides that: my height, maybe no surprise, but ten or twenty pounds more muscle and most of that in the belly. In the country men carried their weight with pride. When we shook hands, his felt hard and calloused—from manual labor, not the
makiwara
.

“You ain’t drinking. Want coffee or something?”

“It’s a little early.” I put my own beer on the workbench. The shop was crowded inside, tools and mysterious engine parts dark with grease cluttering every horizontal surface. That distinctive smell of gasoline and differential lube was cut with an ozone tang—the welding equipment, I assumed. An inexplicable frame of steel pipe sat half assembled on the concrete floor.

Beyond it, just inside the bay door, a decades-old muscle car gleamed black. Unlike the rest of the garage, a two-foot space was cleared all the way around—no junk, no tools, even the floor swept perfectly clean. The hood was up, with a cloth draped over the side panel and into the engine compartment, so you could lean in without marring the finish.

Dave saw me looking. “1969 Charger.”

“You keep it in good shape.”

“Grandpa’s axe, right? Rebuilt from the pistons out, and more than once.” He smiled, his eyes on the vehicle. “That’s a work of beauty in a world of sin.”

Through the open doors I could see the clumpy field with the old tractor, between the road and the hill behind Dave’s shop. In daylight it was even clearer the mower had been abandoned halfway into the job: half the field was cut down to turf, and half had wild grass and weeds two feet high.

Dave seemed to have trouble keeping up with everything except his car.

“You race it?”

“On occasion. Dirt track, on the weekends. I told you that, didn’t I? In the letter?”

“You any good?”

“Yeah.”

I waited, but he didn’t say more, just drank the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle toward the back of the shop. It landed in a wooden box of empties, somehow not breaking.

“Silas?”

“Yes?”

“Is that your real name?”

“Sure it is.” Which wasn’t quite lying. That’s what people called me.

“Because I asked around. Some of the answers . . .”

“Around?”

“You know.” He waved one hand vaguely, then reached over to retrieve another Rock from the stained refrigerator alongside the bench. “Don’t know if I mentioned, I did a stretch some time back. Eleven months at Houtzdale.”

“Why?”

“Why? Bad fucking lawyers, that’s why.” But he laughed and popped open the beer. “Criminal conversion of a motor vehicle, if you have to ask.”

“Borrow the wrong car?”

“Nope. Stole it myself.” Once again not boasting, just stating a fact. “I admit, kind of a dumbshit thing to do. You been inside?”

“No.” Not really. Not counting an MP holding cell in, well, let’s just say, a major American military facility in another country.

A very dusty country. They told me I can’t ever discuss what I did in the service.

“Nothing to do all day but lift weights and talk shit. You think
accounting
’s boring . . . anyway, some of the guys, I see them now and then. In the city.” Pittsburgh, I assumed. “Silas Cade has a reputation.”

“Some other Silas.”

“Like, some company’s got a problem with the numbers, cash disappearing from bank accounts, bent accountants and all that—you’re the go-to. Mr. Fix-It.” He stared me in the eye. “CPA with a bullet.”

“Huh.” Not a bad description, actually.

“So.” His grin was gone. “True?”

Outside a light rain began to fall, pocking the dirt, pattering on the shop’s metal roof. So much for the beautiful day we were supposed to have. The interior was dim and dank, the only other sound a hum from the refrigerator’s compressor. I sat still in the wooden chair, hands on my knees, staring back.

“What do you want?” I said.

“You’re my
brother,
Silas.” He leaned forward. “My whole life thinking I’m alone in the world, and then I find out I have a brother. Ain’t that something to celebrate?”

“Why did you track me down?”

“You’re here, right?”

I shook my head. “I’m leaving.”

“You and me—we can do stuff. We can get some shit
done
.”

Great.
I got some ideas,
he’d written.

“What are you talking about, exactly?”

“Let me tell you.” He leaned back, grinned again, and picked up the beer. “I got
plans
.”

And what plans they were.

“It’s just lying on the ground, most of these places. I can show you seven steel mills, all shut down in the eighties, all no more’n twenty miles from here. Every one of them, the pipe is sitting there like, like, I dunno, apples on the tree. Or ground. Whatever—we just got to drive a truck in and pick it up. Copper and steel and iron. Tons of it! You know what that kind of metal’s selling for? China wants it, they’ll pay anything.”

I looked at him. “Let me get this straight—you want to steal
scrap
metal?” I thought about the scavengers you see in the Bronx, rolling shopping carts piled with plumbing and doorknobs ripped out of abandoned houses, off to trade at the recyclers for ten or fifteen bucks.

“It’s an idea. Something, you know, I work out here all day, sometimes nobody comes by. I got time to think.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Whatever. It’s just a start. Capital formation. Right? I saw a show on the cable about that.”

It only got better. Once the initial investment was assembled, Dave figured we could finance the guns and cars and maybe some helpers . . . and start knocking over casinos.

“They’re everywhere, you notice that? Over in Chester, or the Meadows, even right on the river in downtown Pittsburgh. Everyone goes in with their wallet full up, comes out flat. All that cash money, piling up.”

“Um.”

“They drive it over to the bank in the morning. Or maybe in the middle of the night. It’s not like, I mean, those places don’t
ever
close. But in between, it just sits there. Waiting.”

“Dave—”

“Easy, right? And we’re a perfect team. I got the connections around here—set it all up, no problem. You, we can trust each other, see? So we don’t need nobody else.”

Trust?

I didn’t know where to start. “Look, they expect—there are thousands of idiots thinking exactly the same thing. Hey, let’s go get some of that free money there! And the smart guys running the casinos? They
know
that.”

“Course they do. Don’t mean they don’t get stuck in their ruts, though. Know how many times they been robbed, ever? Since they started putting in tables and slot machines, I mean—not the racetracks.” He raised a hand when I started to answer. “Zero. Never. Not one single once.”

“Doesn’t that kind of prove my point?”

“Proves they’re fat and happy and lazy. Like the Steelers.”

Jesus. “Maybe, but they’re not stupid. There’s basically a private army of rent-a-cops and security and fucking
assault
forces, not to mention the entire law-enforcement apparatus of the state, ready to protect its tax base. You might as well try to steal the gold out of the Federal Reserve vaults.”

“Yeah, yeah. We can figure it out.” He waved a hand dismissively. “That’s all just, I dunno,
logistics
.”

I felt very tired. “You never saw
Ocean’s Eleven
, huh?”

“Look. You know why people get caught? When they try something like this?”

“Because they trip about twenty alarms and then heavily armed guards converge from everywhere and shoot them dead.”

“No, no.” He shook his head, grinning. “Afterwards, I mean. It’s the money. Most guys, they can’t think any further than grabbing the cash and running away. Maybe they planned ahead and rented a storage locker, but most of them don’t even do that. The bags of hundred-dollar bills, that’s like the goal line.” He drained his bottle and set it next to the first. “When really, it ain’t no more’n the opening kickoff.”

All that talking in the pen, I guess Dave thought he’d learned something. “Football doesn’t send you to jail for thirty years.”

“But that’s where
you
come in! See? It’s your
business
. I figure you know exactly how to take a few hundred pounds of twenty-dollar bills and turn it into a nice, safe, boring bank account that the IRS and the FBI will never ever notice.”

I stood up and turned to look out the bay at the falling rain. Mud spattered gently in the dirt lot, dirtying the welding tanks that Dave had left outside. A fresh, wet smell drifted in.

Dave’s plan was the stupidest, most wrongheaded, misguided, moronic idea I’d ever heard.

“Your plan,” I said, “is the stupidest, most wrongheaded, misguided . . .” I stopped.

Dave was chuckling behind me. I turned back, and he started laughing, then harder, then so hard he wheezed and bent over with his hands on his knees.

Usually I get the jokes tossed my way. Brothers or whatever, Dave and I didn’t seem to be very well synchronized.

“What?” I said. He just shook his head, still laughing, and swiped at the corner of one eye. “What’s so funny?”

“Had you
going,
Silas!”

Oh, for Christ’s sake. “Are you—?”

“You’re right, that’s all bullshit. I wouldn’t do none of that.”

I grunted, didn’t say anything.

“I mean, scrap steel’s like three hundred dollars a ton now. You can make more money chopping firewood. And sticking up The Rivers, hell, only an idiot’d even
think
of that.”

I stared at him. “So why are we talking about it?”

“’Cause maybe you’d have said yes.” He got off the chair and gave me another bear hug. “Fortunately, you actually ain’t that dumb.”

I disengaged myself. Hugging’s not my thing.

“Fine.”

“Some people’ll do
anything,
you know?”

“Glad I passed the test.” I was still irritated.

“Relax, man. Like I said, I got lots of time to think out here. Maybe I think too much.”

Yeah, maybe so. I shook my head.

Dave picked up the three bottles and dropped them in a crate already overflowing with empties, then checked his pockets. “I got something I got to do. Helping some guys up in Glassville. You want to come along?”

“I don’t know—”

“You didn’t tell me you were coming, right?”

“Huh?”

“So I promised. But it’s all right. I know they’d be happy, have someone else.”

I crossed my arms. “Stealing cars? Bank robbery?”

“I
told
you I was kidding.” He didn’t seem bothered. “A little demolition work. Half a day, eight hundred bucks. You’ll get a fair cut.”

“Demolition.” I felt pulled along, but what the hell.

My brother.

“It’ll be fun.” He walked over to pull down the first of the bay doors, which screeched and rattled and slammed onto the concrete floor. “What else you gonna do today?”

W
e took my car.

“The pickup ain’t registered,” Dave said, gesturing at the brokeback Ford. “And I left my other truck up the road, kinda in the middle of something.”

“Up the road?”

“Yeah, you see it?”

“Might have.”

“Tumbug, he owns that land, and he wants to build a little cabin. I said I’d help start the foundation. We got a deal on the cinderblock from the concrete plant over in Connellsdale. I drove it here, but as soon as we started unloading, Bug’s all like, shit, my back hurts! It’s killing me!” Dave went back into the shop, came back a moment later with a five-gallon plastic bucket holding a pair of sledgehammers, a corded hammer drill, gloves and some other tools. “You ask me, I think he was just worried about missing the start of the Panthers game.”

“Why don’t you drive that?” I pointed at the bay that held the Charger.

“Oh, no.” For the first time he seemed completely serious. “She’s just for
racing
.”

When all the bay doors were closed, Dave went inside the office once more. “Too much beer. I’ll be right back.”

The rain had eased, hardly more than a drizzle. It felt like it was going to be that kind of weather—on and off, clouds heavy overhead. I wondered what I was doing here, whether I should just get in the Malibu and leave, right now.

Instead, I took out my crummy phone and dialed Ryan.

Ten rings.

No answer.

He hadn’t picked up earlier in the morning, either—I’d tried twice, once when I got up and once on the way to Dave’s shop.

When he didn’t answer his phone yesterday, it was five rings then
click
. Now it was just ring-ring-no-answer.

If that meant something, I didn’t know what. I tried another number.

Zeke picked up right away.

“Silas? Shit. Wait.”

My phone rang fifteen seconds later—he had to call me back through the Canadian anonymizer.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Zeke demanded.

“Nothing. I lost the tail and they never came back.”

“You sure?”

Dave was still inside. I put my back to the shop and watched the road.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“At least you’re alive.”

“Um . . . you thought I might not be?”

“You talked to anyone else yet? Since yesterday?”

This was not making me feel better. “Just tell it.”

“There’s a team looking for you,” he said. “They came into Volchak’s last night, around eleven—direct to the bar, then around the tables. A thousand bucks for an address or a phone number. They had your name. Said it right out loud.” He paused. “They had your
name
.”

Shit. “Anyone give me up?”

“Sure. The guys are like, I know him! Silas, yeah, that asshole!”

“
What?
”

“Well, everyone tried—fake information, of course. For a grand? But the men in black didn’t actually pay out, so I guess it’s all fair.”

“Were you there?”

“No. I got three calls right after they left.”

“Who were they?”

“No one knows.”

Thin sunshine brightened, filtering through the overcast, then faded away again.

“But one of them was a woman,” he added.

“I thought you didn’t see them.”

“Not at Volchak’s.”

I don’t think he was doing it deliberately, so I suppressed an urge to yell into the phone. Speaking slowly: “Did you encounter them someplace
else
?”

“After I heard, I went up to your place. They were coming out when I got there.”

Worse and worse.

So far, I’ve always been able to keep my public and work lives completely separate—my home is Manhattan, for God’s sake, not a cave in the mountains. To most people, I’m a guy they see around, something in finance or insurance, a face at the gym. Not
hiding,
in other words. But when I’m on the job, I disappear. Completely. No connection to the real me whatsoever.

Until now.

“Recognize them?”

“No. A woman, like I said, and two men.” He gave me a useless description. Unless someone’s albino or missing an arm or something, eyewitness testimony is pointless. Five ten, fit, short hair—we all look like that, Zeke and me included.

Which Zeke knew, of course. “The girl, though—reminded me of someone. Maybe it was the hair. Stylish.”

“Stylish?”

“A blonde. Light colored. Too dark on your street to see much.” Which is one reason I chose the place. “Good cut.”

Maybe he’d started reading
Vogue
. “So?”

“So she was in charge.”

“How could you tell?”

“She got into the front passenger seat. Plus the body language. I was down the block, by the laundromat. Couldn’t hear anything, and they drove away before I could get close.”

“How’d you know they were coming out of my apartment, then?”

“Because the lock was broke when I went up. They’d drilled it out and punched the deadbolt. Metal bits on the floor, they didn’t even try to clean up.”

He didn’t bother describing the car. It would have been a rental or stolen or a throwaway.

“Ryan’s still not answering,” I said. “I talked to him once, twenty-one hundred last night or so, but now nothing.”

“I’ve been calling him too. Nothing.”

“You check out his place?”

“Don’t know where he lives. You?”

“No.” Ryan might have had a life somewhere, but he kept it secret, which is good practice until you need someone like Zeke to come help you out.

“No one else cares about Ryan. They’re all talking about you. And your new friends.”

Suddenly I had new friends everywhere.

“It’s two teams,” I said. “Guys in a car, following me out of Pittsburgh, and a separate group at my apartment in New York.”

“Working together, though.”

“That’s not an unreasonable assumption.” Given the timeframe. “But it’s hard to believe Brinker has enough sway to whistle up a nationwide manhunt.”

“How much do you think he’s skimming?”

“I don’t know.”

“Millions?”

“Maybe.”

“So there’s your juice.” Zeke had a simple view of the world.

What made it complicated was Markson. Brinker had obvious reasons to want me out of the picture. Someone at Clayco corporate, worried that Markson might find out about Clay Micro’s spectacular malfeasance, might also want me out of the picture. Nothing made sense otherwise; companies following Markson’s business ethics just don’t hire people like me or my pursuers.

But still:
two
teams?

A door banged. I glanced back to see Dave coming out of the office.

“I have to go,” I said.

“You want my advice, stay out of the city for a while.”

“You serious?”

“They didn’t toss it.”

I didn’t follow. “Toss what?”

“Your place. I looked in, and everything was in order. The way they treated the lock, if they’d done a search it would have been totally ransacked.”

“Well, fuck.” More bad news.

“That’s right.” Zeke got the final word. “They’re not after information, or clues, or whatever. They want
you
.”