No Plan B

“No need.” Brockman shook his head. “You think this guy has a television? A computer? A subscription to The New York Times? He’s destitute, for goodness’ sake. Stop looking for trouble. There isn’t any.”

Hix tapped his fingertips on the tabletop. “Media exposure is good for the brand. We always publicize. We always have. If we change now we would only attract more attention. Make people think something is wrong. But I do think we need to know. Did he look?” Hix turned to the guys in the T-shirts. “Best guess. No wrong answer. The chips fell where they fell. We understand that. Just tell us what you believe.”

The guy with the broken nose took a deep breath through his mouth. “I think he looked.”

“You think?” Hix said. “But you’re not sure.”

“Not one hundred percent.”

“OK. Where was the envelope?”

“In the bag.”

“Where was the bag?”

“On the ground.”

“You put it down?”

“I needed my hands free.”

“Where was it when the car arrived?” Hix said.

The guy with the sling said, “On the ground.”

“In the same place?”

“How could we know? I wasn’t there when Robert put it down. Robert wasn’t conscious when I picked it up.”

Hix paused for a moment. “OK. How long was the guy alone with the bag?”

“We don’t know. Can’t have been long. A couple of minutes, max.”

“So it’s possible he looked,” Hix said. “Glanced, anyway.”

“Right,” the guy with the broken nose said. “And the bag was ripped, remember. How did that happen? And why? We didn’t do it.”

Brockman leaned forward. “It was a crazy scene, from what you told us. Wreckage everywhere. Total chaos. The bag probably got ripped by accident. It doesn’t sound like some major clue. And the other two haven’t reported that he looked.”

The guy with the sling said, “They haven’t reported at all. We don’t know where they are.”

Brockman said, “Must still be on their way back. Phone problems, probably. But if there was anything to worry about they would have found a way to let us know.”

“And the guy didn’t mention anything about it to the police,” Moseley said. “I’ve talked to the lieutenant over there a couple times. That has to mean something.”

“I still think he looked,” the guy with the broken nose said.

“We should pull the plug,” Riverdale said.

“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” Brockman said. “We didn’t set the date. We didn’t pick the time. The judge did when he signed the release order. You know that. We pull some bullshit delaying tactic, we wind up ass-deep in inspectors. You know where that would land us. We might as well shoot ourselves in the head, right here, right now.”

Riverdale scowled. “I’m not saying we delay. I’m saying we go back to the original plan. The switch was always a mistake.”

“That would solve Friday’s problem. If there is one. But then we’d have no way out of the bigger jam we’re in. Carpenter’s situation.”

“I said from the start, the solution to that is simple. A bullet in the back of his head. I’ll do it myself if you’re too squeamish.”

“You know what that would cost? How much business we would lose?”

“We’ll lose a lot more than money if this guy joins the dots.”

“How could he do that?”

“He could come down here. You said so yourself. He could dig around. He was a military cop. It’s in his blood.”

“It’s years since the guy was an MP,” Moseley said. “That’s what the lieutenant told me.”

Hix tapped the tabletop. “What else do we know?”

“Not much. He has no driver’s license. No employment history, according to the IRS. Not since he left the army. No social media presence. No recent photographs exist. He’s a hobo now. It’s kind of sad, but that’s the bottom line. Doesn’t sound like much to worry about.”

Brockman said, “Hobo or millionaire, what kind of crazy person would travel halfway across the country because he read a few documents and saw an innocuous picture?”

“Speculate all you want but this still worries me,” Riverdale said. “Each time we met, we thought we had the problem contained. Each time we were wrong. What if we’re wrong again now?”

“We weren’t wrong.” Brockman slammed his palm into the table. “We handled each situation as it came up. Ninety-nine percent.”

“Ninety-nine. Not one hundred.”

“Life isn’t perfect. Sometimes there’s broken glass to sweep up. Which we’ve done. We found out there was a leak. We plugged it, the way we all agreed to. We found out about the missing envelope. We retrieved it, the way we all agreed to.”

“And now this strange guy has looked in the envelope.”

“He may have. We don’t know. But you have to admit, it’s unlikely. He didn’t tell the cops. We know that. And he didn’t tell the FBI or the Bureau of Prisons. We would know that. So say he figured everything out from a couple of seconds alone with the envelope. Why keep the knowledge to himself? What’s he going to do with it? Blackmail us? And you think he’s somehow going to schlep twelve hundred miles before Friday? Come on.”