The Bodies Left Behind

of here, put it all behind us.”
    Hart rose. He winced as he accidentally reached his shot arm out to steady himself. He looked out at the lake. “Let me tell you a story, Lewis. My brother . . . younger’n me.”
    “You have a brother?” Lewis’s attention had turned from the house. “I’ve got two.”
    “Our parents both died about the same time. When I was twenty-five, my brother was twenty-two. I was kind of like a father figure. Well, even back then we were into this kind of stuff, you know. And my brother got this job one time, easy, just numbers. He was a runner mostly. He had to pick up some money and deliver it. Typical job. I mean, thousands of people do that shit every day, right? All over the world.”
    “They do.” Lewis was listening.
    “So I didn’t have anything going on at the moment and was helping him out. We picked up the money—”
    “This was Milwaukee?”
    “No. We grew up in Boston. We pick up the money and’re about to deliver it. But turns out we were going to be set up. The guy ran the numbers operation was going to clip us and let the cops find the bodies and some of the books and some of the money. The detectives’d think they closed up the operation.”
    “You two were fall guys.”
    “Yep. I had this sense something was wrong and we went around back of the pickup location and saw the muscle there. My brother and me, we took off. A few days later I found the guys hired to do the clip and tookcare of them. But the main guy just vanished. Word was he’d moved to Mexico.”
    Lewis grinned. “Scared of your bad ass.”
    “After six months or so I stopped looking for him. But it turns out he never went to Mexico at all. He’d been tracking us the whole time. One day he walks up to my brother and blows his head off.”
    “Oh, shit.”
    Hart didn’t speak for a moment. “But see, Lewis, he didn’t kill my brother. I did. My laziness killed my brother.”
    “Your laziness?”
    “Yep. Because I stopped looking for that son of a bitch.”
    “But six months, Hart. That’s a long time.”
    “Didn’t matter if it was six years. Either you’re in all the way, a hundred and ten percent. Or don’t bother.” Hart shook his head. “Hell, Lewis, forget it. This’s my problem. I was the one hired on. It’s not your issue. Now, I’d consider it a privilege if you came with me. But if you want to head back to Milwaukee, you go right ahead. No hard feelings at all.”
    Lewis rocked. Back and forth, back and forth. “Ask you a question?”
    “Sure.”
    “What happened to the prick killed your brother?”
    “He enjoyed life for three more days.”
    Lewis debated a long time. Then he gave a what-the-fuck laugh. “Call me crazy, Hart. But I’m with you.”
    “Yeah?”
    “You bet I am.”
    “Thanks, man. Means a lot to me.” They shook hands. Then Hart turned back to his BlackBerry, moved the bull’s-eye to the closest part of the Joliet Trail and hit the START GUIDANCE command. The instructions came up almost immediately.
    “Let’s go hunting.”

    A SLIGHT MAN in his thirties, James Jasons sat in his Lexus, the gray car slightly nicked, a few years old. He was parked in the lot of Great Lakes Intermodal Container Services, Inc., on the Milwaukee lakefront. Jasons was watching the cranes offload the containers from ships. Incredible. The operators lifted the big metal boxes as if they were toys, swung them from the ships and set them down perfectly, every time, on the flatbed of a truck. The containers must’ve weighed twenty tons, maybe more.
    Jasons was always impressed by anybody with skill, whatever their profession.
    A rumble filled the night. A horn blared and a Canadian Pacific freight train ambled past.
    The door of the old brick building opened. A brawny man in wrinkled gray slacks, a sports coat, blue shirt, no tie, climbed down the stairs and crossed the parking lot. Jasons had learned that the head of thelegal department of the company—Paul Morgan—regularly worked late.
    Morgan continued through the lot to his Mercedes. Jasons got out of his car, which was parked two slots down. He approached the man, arms at his sides.
    “Mr. Morgan?”
    The man turned and looked over Jasons, who was nearly a foot shorter and a hundred pounds lighter than the lawyer.
    “Yeah?”
    “We’ve never met, sir. I work with Stanley Mankewitz. My name’s James Jasons.” He offered a card, which Morgan glanced at and put into a pocket where it could be easily