Liars & Thieves Read Free

Willie’s locks. My best time was twenty-six seconds, but two minutes was the average, and if I hurried or wasn’t paying strict attention, I couldn’t get the lock to open. Willie spent some time watching me, and even opened one a few times himself.
    Willie the Wire was twenty years older than me, a slim, dapper black man who worked Washington hotels in his younger days as a bellboy. Finally he quit carrying bags into the hotel for guests and specialized in picking locks and carrying luggage out—sans tip. The last time he got out of prison he promised himself an honest job, but with his reputation, no one would hire him. A friend of mine knew him and mentioned his plight to me. We had dinner a few times, and he showed me a couple of things I didn’t know about locks, so I bankrolled this establishment and we became partners. He knew I worked for the CIA, but we never talked about it.
    That weekend as we played with the locks on his sample safe deposit boxes, he wanted to talk about Dorsey O’Shea. “This might be a setup, man. You ever think about that?”
    “Why would Dorsey want to set me up?”
    “Maybe somebody who don’t like you wanta burn you—how the hell would I know, man! You’re the fuckin’ spy, you tell me.”
    “I can’t think of any reason under the sun.”
    “She look like real money. That right?”
    “She’s got it, yeah.”
    “You don’t know what the hell you gettin’ into, and that’s a fact. This man got somethin’ on her besides movies of her gettin’ cock. Whoever looks at faces in those flicks, anyway? You in over your simple head, Carmellini.”
    Perhaps he was right, but Dorsey O’Shea didn’t hang with Willie the Wire’s crowd. Although being a porno star wouldn’t hurt your rep in some circles, a lot of minds weren’t quite that open. If Kincaid was a real son of a bitch he could squeeze her for serious cash.
    That’s the way I had it figured, anyhow. On the other hand, maybe I just wanted to see if I could pop Kincaid’s box at the bank. I had never done a safe deposit box before, so what the hell.
    I called Dorsey on Monday morning, right after I called the agency and said I was sick. “Today’s the day. Pick me up at my house at ten o’clock.”
    She showed up ten minutes late, which was amazingly punctual for her. I got in with her and directed her to a costume place that a friend of mine owned in a strip mall in Silver Spring. When we came out, she was wearing a maternity dress. We had a hard plastic shape strapped to her stomach to fill out the dress. I thought she looked about seven months along. I pushed on her new stomach and it felt real to me—the proper resistance and give. On the way to the bank I drove and briefed her.
    “I don’t know if I can do this, Tommy,” she said when I finished.
    “Do you want those tapes or not?”
    “I want them.”
    “You have two choices—pay up or do a deal. Killing Kincaid will leave the tapes for the cops to find. Odds are he has the tapes in his box at the bank. He thinks they’re safe there. He may have duped them—I don’t know. If we clean out that box we may get something he wants bad enough to trade for. Everything in life’s a risk.”
    “My God!” she whispered.
    “We’re about a mile from the bank. Think it over.”
    When we pulled into the bank parking lot she looked pasty and haggard, which was fine. Anyone who looked at her could see she was not her usual self.
    “All right,” she said.
    I went through it again, covering everything I could think of, including contingencies.
    “Make it good,” I said, and handed her the small bottle I had brought with me. She made a face and drank half of it.
    “All of it.”
    “Jesus, this tastes bad.”
    “All of it.”
    She tossed off the rest of the goop and threw the bottle on the back seat.
    We went into the bank and sat outside the security door until Harriet finished a telephone call and came to open it for us. I had a leather attache case