The Extractors by Gary Phillips

Author:Gary Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stark Raving Group
Published: 2014-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Three feet from the downed woman, the Accord’s driver swerved away from hitting her and rear-ended a FedEx van that had also skidded to a stop in the street. McBleak didn’t look back as he ran from the scene at top speed. As McBleak made the corner, the women’s friends went to her aide. The second cab, containing the shadow man, was snarled in the small jam up of cars around the shaken woman and her friends getting her back to the sidewalk.

The plan had been loose, to improvise, and that’s what Sawyer and McBleak had done. Figuring the tail had little choice now, he could either go stake out Sawyer’s apartment or shop again. Given the time of day, McBleak assumed he’d choose the workshop first, and if Sawyer didn’t show in a few hours, he’d switch over to the apartment. Meanwhile, this would give Sawyer time to meet with him.

McBleak took a cab back to the red brick building. Along the way, he texted a message to Roger Meredith, the man who was being forced out of his own company by the shareholders, led by Garner Woodward. The text was routed through a cloned number that, if Meredith texted back, would go into a black hole. If he called the number back, he’d get a message with a woman’s throaty voice on it, stating Garner Woodward wasn’t available at the moment. McBleak had paid a voice actress to record the message. Money bought many a convenience, he reflected.

The text, supposedly from Woodward, read: “Hey, Rog, sorry to be knocking the pins out from under you, but that’s how the cookie crumbles, am I right? Tell you what, as a consolation, come on down to the fight tomorrow night on my dime.”

Finished, he turned off the phone. Half a mile away from his building, McBleak got out and walked. He doubled back to make sure he wasn’t being tailed as well. He arrived and entered. Sawyer was already there in his workshop area. There was a tall rollaway tool chest, various disassembled variety of locks, mechanical and electronic, laying about on a workbench, and technical texts in a metal bookcase, including books on concrete and metals.

Sawyer sat at an industrial desk, the printouts of the man tailing him on the desk. He munched from a bag of chips, offering some to McBleak. He waved them off and perched on the edge of the desk, picking up one of the shots.

“You know, if you had your Batcave really tricked out,” Sawyer began, “we’d be able to feed that pic into the master computer, and its mammoth face recognition data bank would tell us who he is.”

McBleak grinned. “That would mean one of us would have to have computer skills. I think I may have a way to ID him.”

“If, as you figure, he’s been sic’d on me by this Conway on behalf of Woodward, what is it they hope to find out?”

“How crooked I am.”

“Hell, he could have just asked me that,” Sawyer said dryly.

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