Stone Cold

CHAPTER 2

“GREAT JOB, HARRY, as usual,” the head of the Homeland Security team said later, clapping Finn on the back. People had been screamed at and reports filed, e-mails fired off and cell phone batteries sucked dry as the clear lapses in airport security revealed by Harry Finn had been broadcast to all appropriate parties. Ordinarily, Finn would not have been tasked by the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS as it is commonly known, to execute an airport security breach because the FAA kept a stranglehold on that field. Finn suspected it was because the FAA boys were well aware of how many flaws there were in the system and didn’t want anyone outside their domain to realize it as well. However, folks at DHS had managed to get authorization to do this one, and picked him to pull the trigger.

Finn wasn’t an employee of DHS. The firm he worked for had been retained by the agency to test the security strength of both government and sensitive private facilities around the country. They did this using a hands-on, head-on approach: They tried to breach the places any way they could. DHS did a lot of this type of outsourcing. They had roughly a $40 billion annual budget and had to throw the money somewhere. Finn’s firm got a little out of this business, but then even a little slice of billions was a nice revenue stream.

Normally Finn would have left the airport without revealing what he’d done and let the chips fall. However, DHS, obviously fed up with the state of airport security and no doubt wanting to make a robust statement, had instructed him to go in and confess so they could dramatically storm in after him and make a big splash. The media would be salivating and the airline industry reeling, and Homeland Security would look very efficient and heroic. Finn never got in the middle of that. He did not give interviews and his name was never in the newspapers. He just quietly did his job.

He would conduct a follow-up briefing for the airport security personnel he’d just run rings around, trying to be both encouraging and diplomatic in assessing their performance or lack thereof and recommending changes in the future. Sometimes the briefing sessions were the most dangerous things he did. People could get very ticked off after finding out they’d been both snookered and embarrassed. In the past Finn literally had had to fight his way out of a room.

The DHS man added, “We’ll get these people in shape somehow, some way.”

“I’m not sure it’ll be in my lifetime, sir,” Finn said.

“You can wing it back to D.C. with us,” the man said. “We have an agency Falcon standing by.”

“Thanks, but I have someone here I’ve been meaning to visit. I’m going back tomorrow.”

“Right. Until next time.”

Until next time, Finn thought.

The men left and Finn rented a car and drove into the Detroit suburbs, stopping at a strip mall. From his knapsack he pulled out a map and a file with a photo in it. The man in the picture was sixty-three years of age, bald with several distinguishing tattoos, and went by the name Dan Ross.

It wasn’t his real name, but then neither was Harry Finn’s.

CHAPTER 3

ARTHRITIS. And on top of that the damn lupus. They were a lovely duo, perfectly synchronized to make his life a painfully throbbing hell. Every bone creaked, every solitary tendon shrieked. Each movement sent a mule kick right to his gut and yet he kept going, because if you stopped, you stopped for good. He downed a couple of potent pills he wasn’t supposed to have and plunked a ball cap on his hairless, pale-skinned head, pulling the brim low over his eyes and then donning sunglasses. He never liked people seeing what he was looking at. And he never wanted people to get a good look at him.

He eased himself into his car and drove to the store. Along the way the meds kicked in and he felt okay, or at least he would for a couple hours.

“Thank you, Mr. Ross,” the sales clerk said, glancing at the name on the credit card before handing it back along with his purchases. “You have a good day.”

“I don’t have good days anymore,” Dan Ross replied. “I only have days left.”

The clerk glanced at the hat covering the hairless head.

“Not cancer,” Ross said, reading the man’s thoughts. “Might be better if it was. Quicker, you know what I mean?”

The clerk, who was in his early twenties and of course still immortal, didn’t look like he knew what Ross meant at all. He gave an awkward nod and turned to help another customer.

Ross left the store and debated what to do next. He had no money worries. Uncle Sam had taken care of him in his old, busted-up age. Pension was first-rate, health care coverage gold-plated; that was one thing the feds did well. One of a short list was his opinion. Now he just had time. That was his chief concern. What now? Home to do nothing? Or lunch at the local deli where he could fill his belly, watch ESPN and flirt with the pretty waitresses who wouldn’t give him the time of day? Yet he could still dream, couldn’t he? Dream of the days when the ladies gave him far more than simply time.

Not much of a life, he had to admit. He thought this as his gaze discreetly eased in all directions. Even to this day he could not overcome the impulse to check whether he was being followed. You got that way when people were always trying to kill you. God, he had loved it, though. Beat the hell out of the deli-or-home bullshit debate every miserable day of this screwed-up dilemma playing out as his “golden” years. Over three decades ago he’d been in a different country every month. Every month during the busy season anyway. Seen the world on a wing, a prayer and a weapon of choice, he’d always said. He allowed himself a nostalgia-fueled smile. That’s all he had now, memories. And the damn lupus. I guess there is a God after all. Pretty damn shitty to find out now.

Unfortunately for Ross, while his observation skills were good, they were no longer infallible. Down the block in his rental car Harry Finn sat and studied the inimitable Mr. Ross. Where to, Danny? Home or the deli? Deli or home? What a long fall it’s been for you.

During the times Finn had observed this internal debate, Dan Ross had picked the deli over home about three-quarters of the time. This ratio held true today as he turned and walked down the street and into the Edsel Deli, going strong since 1954, the sign over the door said, making it far more popular than the dismal car after which it was named.

Ross would be in there eating and watching every move of the cute waitresses for at least an hour. Then it was twenty minutes by car back to his house. After that he would sit out in his backyard, read the newspaper, and then it was time to go in, take a nap, fix a modest dinner, watch TV, play Solitaire by the small table near the front window with the lamp illuminating the cards, and then the man would call it a night. By nine o’clock the lights in the small bungalow would go out, and Dan Ross would fall asleep and wake up the next day to do it all over again. Finn methodically counted off in his head these ticks of the older man’s threadbare life.

After Finn had tracked Ross to this town, he’d made several trips here to learn the man’s routine. This surveillance had enabled him to concoct the perfect plan to complete his task.

About five minutes before Ross would appear from the Edsel, Finn got out of his car, strode across the street, glanced in the window of the deli, and located Ross at his usual table in the rear, studying the bill he’d just been handed. Finn walked unhurriedly down the street to where Ross’ car was parked. In two minutes he was back in his rental. Three minutes after that Ross emerged from the restaurant, slowly edged down the street, climbed in his car and drove off.

Finn left in the opposite direction.

Ross went through his usual litany of triviality that evening, finishing it off with three fingers of Johnnie Walker Black and, ignoring all label warnings, combining it with a potent pop of meds for the pain. He barely made it to his bed before the paralysis set in. At first he assumed it was the drugs, and he actually welcomed the numbing feeling. Yet as he lay on the bed it occurred to him with slight panic that it might be the lupus moving to a higher, more aggressive stage. When he suddenly found it difficult to breathe he knew it was something else altogether. Heart attack? But where was the elephant on the chest, the shooting pain down the left arm? Stroke? He could still