The Fixer, Season 1 Read online

  The Fixer

  Season 1:

  Complete

  A JC Bannister Novel

  Rex Carpenter

  Rex-Carpenter.com

  Contents

  * * *

  The Fixer Series

  Chapter 1 - Mr. Rothstein

  Chapter 2 - We Go

  Chapter 3 - Shot in the Back

  Chapter 4 - Vargas

  Chapter 5 - Not by Half

  Chapter 6 - Old Friends

  Chapter 7 - Tell Him I’m Coming

  Chapter 8 - A Cakewalk

  Chapter 9 - One Wrong Word

  Chapter 10 - Charlie Don’t Surf

  Chapter 11 - Hadn’t Gone Well

  Chapter 12 - A Lot of Hardware

  Chapter 13 - Like I Shoulda Done Ten Years Ago

  Chapter 14 - Iraq. 2003.

  Chapter 15 - Above Your Pay Grade

  Chapter 16 - Bad Bit of Work in D.C.

  Chapter 17 - Find a Way, Senator

  Chapter 18 - What Did You Do?

  Chapter 19 - Through Playing Nice

  Chapter 20 - There Is No Company

  Chapter 21 - Per Your New Stipulations

  Chapter 22 - Doused in Motor Oil

  Chapter 23 - Your Lawyer

  Chapter 24 - I Have a Problem

  Chapter 25 - In Any Language

  Chapter 26 - It’s Forgotten

  Chapter 27 - Straight Through

  Chapter 28 - Movie Star

  Chapter 29 - You Gonna Kill Him?

  Chapter 30 - Did You Hear Me?

  Chapter 31 - Franklin Adams

  Chapter 32 - She Wants to Fly

  Chapter 33 - Enough Embarrassment

  Chapter 34 - We Just Did

  Chapter 35 - Burn Him

  Chapter 36 - Hook, Line and Sinker

  Chapter 37 - The Bit

  Chapter 38 - Bet on the Lady

  Chapter 39 - Open Up

  Chapter 40 - I Have an Offer for You

  Chapter 41 - You’ll Get to Pick Up the Dead Bodies

  Chapter 42 - Perhaps Some Fresca?

  Chapter 43 - We Regret to Inform You

  Chapter 44 - Mrs. Marcus

  Chapter 45 - Colossal Mountain

  Chapter 46 - Agent Kowalski

  Chapter 47 - Your First Loyalty

  Chapter 48 - Planning It All Along

  Chapter 49 - You Owe Me Now

  Chapter 50 - Rendered to Another Country

  Chapter 51 - You Let Him Off His Leash

  Chapter 52 - Lisa Hannigan

  Chapter 53 - Detective Campbell

  Chapter 54 - Please Stop Him

  Chapter 55 - You Save Our Lives

  Chapter 56 - Messy

  Chapter 57 - Joan

  Chapter 58 - Let’s Ride, Buddy

  Chapter 59 - This Is Your Plan?

  Chapter 60 - Two Ways

  Chapter 61 - Agent Oldham

  Chapter 62 - Detective Karen Garcia

  Chapter 63 - Cut Them to Pieces

  Chapter 64 - Lorraine

  Chapter 65 - Things You Can’t Unsee

  Chapter 66 - Blown All to Pieces

  Chapter 67 - I’m Gonna Kill All Of Them

  Chapter 68 - That’s Not Gonna Happen

  Chapter 69 - Benched

  Chapter 70 - The Last Person

  Chapter 71 - Every Man In This Room Deserves To Die

  Chapter 72 - I Can Live With It

  Chapter 73 - From One Country Boy To Another

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2015 by Rex Carpenter

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher and copyright owner of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. For information contact:

  [email protected]

  Rex-Carpenter.com

  Facebook.com/RexCarpenterWrites

  The Fixer Series

  * * *

  Joan: Portrait of a Vengeful Young Woman

  Duke: The Education of an Assassin

  The Fixer, Season 1: Complete

  The Fixer, Season 2: Complete

  The Fixer, Season 3: Complete

  The Fixer, Season 4: Complete (Coming Winter, 2017)

  Receive a free copy of the exclusive The Fixer, Season 1: Prologue: Indonesia by visiting Rex-Carpenter.com/newsletter.

  WARNING: The Fixer is for mature audiences. It contains strong language and violence. If it was a movie, it would be rated R. If it was on TV, it would be on cable. If it was an album it’d have a Parental… you get the picture.

  Chapter 1

  Mr. Rothstein

  JC Bannister sat comfortably on the worn leather bench in a booth in the back corner of the bar. He was close enough to see the exit through the back entryway but not close enough to smell the bathroom. The tables around him were lightly populated with the Tuesday evening after-work set. Lawyers, lobbyists, aides to politicians. Bannister hated D.C.

  The man across from him introduced himself as Mr. Rothstein. Expensive, well-tailored, three-piece suit, probably from Saville Row in London. Nice shoes to match, likely Italian. Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso watch that easily cost as much as the suit and shoes combined. It all added up to serious money.

  Good for JC.

  The man was near six feet tall, about the same height as JC. Similar swimmer’s build but Rothstein was much softer. More slender. Calluses on his hands from the weights at the gym, but lacking the toughness of real work. Which meant neither military nor law enforcement.

  Good for JC as well.

  There was also a discrete and almost imperceptible listening device in Mr. Rothstein’s ear, positioned just poorly enough to permit the earwig to be seen.

  This was bad for JC.

  JC’s team was in place. Joan was positioned near the bar, about twenty-five feet away from the booth Mr. Rothstein and JC were sitting. She had snapped a picture of the client as she returned from her well-timed bathroom trip and then uploaded it to Duke, who was waiting at the coffee shop around the corner. He had in turn uploaded the image to his own computer network, ran facial recognition software on it remotely and was now reporting back to his teammates who could hear them through their perfectly positioned and totally invisible earwigs. Gorman, the fourth member of their team, had been shot and killed two days ago in Indonesia.

  “Guys, this is not Rothstein” Duke said over their communication devices. “That was his mother’s maiden name. Allow me to introduce Mr. Daniel Meier, power player in D.C. and currently working for the law firm of Blah Blah Meier and Blah. His daddy’s firm, it’s based in Los Angeles with offices all over the world, including New York, Miami, Chicago and D.C., which is run by our new friend here. He’s thirty-two, unmarried and although wealthy enough to be sitting at this table, holding this meeting, nothing suggests he would be able or even willing to swim in water this deep.”

  At five foot seven Joan didn’t have JC’s height advantage to look over the people there. She strolled around the bar instead, scanning for who might be with Mr. Meier. The bar wasn’t particularly busy. It took all of a minute before she returned to her previous position. “Nobody sticks out here,” she said. “Only one eyeing you guys is me.”

  JC took this all in through his earwig as he continued his conversation with the prospective client.

  He took a deep breath.

  He
was about to begin his hard sell.

  He leaned forward, elbows and forearms on the table, hands clasped loosely.

  “Listen, Mr. Rothstein,” JC said, using the pseudonym for now, “we both know why you called me. You’re in way over your head. You have a problem that you don’t know how to solve. That’s why you’re here, talking to me. You see, I am a kind of… fixer. That is the easiest way to describe what I do. People seek me out when they have problems that need to be fixed. Often the solution is someone getting themselves dead.”

  “So, you’re really just a hitman? An assassin? A killer?”

  “Well, that’s an oversimplification. It’s inaccurate and frankly a bit inelegant. I prefer to call myself a solutionist. Sometimes the solution to a person’s problem is a dead body. Sometimes dead bodies occur on the path to said solution. But killing is rarely the goal. Solving the problem is.”

  “So how did you come to be a… solutionist?” Mr. Meier said.

  “Through the course of service to my country, I was taught how to kill. I became quite good at it. A specialist, if you will. I don’t enjoy killing, but it is a marketable skill, is it not?”

  “Well…” Mr. Meier started.

  “If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be sitting here, having this conversation on a Tuesday night, would we?”

  “True.” Meier sipped his Scotch. The first time he had done so since the drink was served.

  “I do not kill indiscriminately. There are lines that I will not cross. I know my limitations. I work with a loose team of other specialists whose skills compliment my own. Where I have deficiencies, they have strengths, and vice versa.”

  Duke snorted in JC’s earwig. “Loose team, my ass. When was the last time you worked without us, JC? Bolivia? How’d that turn out?”

  “Yeah, we’re going to have to talk about these imaginary ‘deficiencies’ one of these days, JC,” Joan said.

  “Regardless,” JC continued to both his team and Mr. Meier. “The service my team provides is world class. We have never had an unsatisfied client in the past seven years.”

  JC had finished his sell. Truthfully, it wasn’t that hard of a sell. People who came to him were already looking to buy. Desperation. Fear. Hatred. Those were the big three. Revenge sometimes. Occasionally power. Rarely hope. Rarely.

  He knew there would be a couple questions and then the big silence. Usually he would simply let the potential client wait it out, getting over their fear on their own. He never wanted to push a person to contract for his services. It had to be their choice. Their free will to go down this path. So he waited.

  “How do you know I’m not a cop?” Mr. Meier asked.

  “Three reasons. First, your hands. Too soft for law enforcement.”

  “Could be FBI. CIA? Military?”

  “Hardly. Hands are still too soft. Body too. You exercise. You’re fit for an office worker, but neither fit enough nor rough enough to be police or any of those agencies you mentioned.”

  “What’s the second reason?”

  “Your clothing. Too expensive. With clothes, shoes, and watch combined, I imagine we’re talking almost twenty thousand dollars. No agency would put up that kind of money. Maybe Mr. Bond’s might.” JC smiled as Mr. Meier chuckled. “But you’re not 007, are you, Mr. Rothstein?”

  “No, no I’m not.”

  “So I’m guessing executive of some kind. Maybe a politician’s aide. Lawyer, perhaps.”

  Meier’s eyes widened ever so slightly. JC knew he could easily beat him at a game of poker.

  “And the third?”

  “You don’t feel like one. You don’t have the law enforcement persona.”

  “Really? What persona do I have, Mr. Bannister?”

  It was time to flatter.

  JC brought his left hand up to his face, rested his chin on his thumb and let his fingers curl over his upper lip. Pretended to contemplate. All an act.

  “Power.”

  “Power? What power do I have?”

  “Hard to say. A lot of power flows around D.C. But you’re accustomed to it. Being around it, serving it, dispensing it.”

  Mr. Meier became quiet and sipped his drink again, enjoying the compliment.

  JC would usually let the client continue to stew in their thoughts at this point. But this was not a typical meeting. Mr. Meier’s poorly concealed listening device saw to that. It was time to press.

  “But this evening, Mr. Rothstein, you’re not the one wielding the power, are you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not the one in control here, tonight, are you? You do not hold the power of this decision.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Mr. Meier.

  “Say it,” Duke whispered.

  JC indicated towards Mr. Meier’s ear and the barely visible earwig. “Whoever put that in didn’t do a good enough job,” JC said.

  “You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill,” Duke whispered one of his favorite movie lines.

  “Tells me you have either enough disposable funds to buy some nice toys,” JC continued, “or the powerful friends who borrowed it for you didn’t listen very well when they were told how to use it.”

  “Duke, I’m going to beat you when this is done,” Joan said.

  JC said nothing. He knew Duke’s penchant for quoting movie dialogue and his love of Apocalypse Now. And although he would need to scold the younger man later, right now he was more interested in one thing.

  Who was the one pulling Meier’s strings?

  Mr. Meier’s face hardened. He had failed in his subterfuge and been exposed by the ones he had been trying to fool. Apparently an unusual and uncomfortable position in his regular life. He touched the earwig, pushing it slightly into his ear more. Looked down at the table. Nodded his head. Said, “Okay.” Then looked back up at JC.

  “Tomorrow night. Central Library in Arlington on North Quincy. Be there at six thirty. In the north parking lot.”

  “Tell your boss we will be there, Mr. Meier.” JC smiled slightly as he dropped Meier’s pseudonym, twisting the knife just a bit.

  Mr. Meier froze, eyes flaring. He then slid out of the booth. Stood. Adjusted his seven thousand dollar suit. Checked his nine thousand dollar watch. Looked at JC with poorly concealed irritation and frustration.

  “Don’t forget to bring your girlfriend at the bar.”

  JC’s smile disappeared.

  “Or your friend at the coffee shop next door.”

  Mr. Meier turned on his heel and left.

  Chapter 2

  We Go

  Duke was pissed. Raging.

  “How could he know? Seriously, how could he know?”

  “Duke, we’ve been working together for three years. With Meier’s money and power, I don’t imagine it’s too hard,” Joan said

  “I know, Mac, but come on. That guy? We got found out by that guy?”

  Joan shrugged. “Tell you what, though. You call me Mac again, I’m going to stab you in the neck.”

  “Calm down you two,” JC said. He knew Joan didn’t really like the team’s nickname for her. But Duke was glaring at her, ready to start an argument over nothing. Now was no time for infighting.

  Duke threw up his hands and stalked around the playground. It was their pre-arranged rendezvous point if anything were to happen during the meeting and just a swift ten minute walk from the bar. They had all left separately after Meier revealed they were under surveillance. It took Duke about twenty minutes to arrive, JC and Joan about thirty. They were over cautious.

  JC was sitting on top of the jungle gym. Duke planted himself on the ladder to a small slide. Joan went and sat in a swing, waiting. She wasn’t the boss. It was JC’s next move.

  “We go.”

  “What?” Duke exclaimed.

  “We go.”

  “Come on, man! They know us. They know who we are. You’ve got no idea what we could be walking into!”

  “Duke, the only thing
we’re sure they know is that you guys were with me tonight. That’s it. All that means is maybe they had the bar under surveillance longer than we knew about.”

  “Or maybe we’re finally done!”

  “Or maybe we expected the wrong thing tonight. We went in there expecting a rich guy who needed us to fix a problem for him. That was our level of preparedness. We didn’t expect a team with surveillance and multiple assets. We got outplayed. We didn’t get found out by that guy. We got found out by his boss.”

  Duke was shaking his head. JC paused. He had put Duke in charge of surveillance. He had been asking for more responsibilities, for more duties. JC knew he was looking to the future, looking towards running his own team someday. As upset as he was at Duke for dropping the ball, he knew it didn’t come close to how badly Duke was kicking himself. They had gotten lucky tonight — lucky that getting found out was all that happened to them. JC knew Joan would support his play. She always did. But he needed to make sure Duke was going to back his play as well. Needed him to be with the team, ready to go forward, not looking back.

  “Duke, it wasn’t that guy who found us out. It was his boss and their team.”

  Duke stopped, beginning to understand JC’s decision now.

  “Don’t you want to find out who’s behind this guy?”

  Duke and Joan both nodded curtly.

  “Because I sure as hell want to find out whose hand is up this sock puppet’s ass.”

  *****

  Daniel Meier returned to his office. The team that performed the surveillance this evening was not his team but provided security for his boss. He did not meet them after leaving the bar. They had other places to be and truthfully, Meier had no desire to see them.

  He had planned to get a late dinner but the meeting with Bannister had set him on edge. Going back to his office was the one place he felt he could go and relax.

  “Hold my calls,” he told his secretary as he passed by without looking at her.