Outsourced Read online

  Dave Zeltserman lives in the Boston area with his wife, Judy. After working for over twenty years as a software engineer, he now spends his time writing novels. Serpent’s Tail also publishes his “man out of prison” noir trilogy: Killer, Pariah and Small Crimes.

  Praise for Pariah

  “A doozy of a doom-laden crime story that not only makes merry with the justice system but also satirizes the publishing industry” Washington Post, Best Books of 2009

  “Darkly enjoyable… clear, crisp prose; his fearless portrait of amorality; and his smart plotting… what a fine addition to the local literary scene he’s become” Boston Globe

  “Pariah is a terrific blast” Metro

  “Pariah is sure to catapult Zeltserman head and shoulders above other Boston authors. This is not only a great crime book, but a gripping read that will crossover to allow greater exposure for this rising talent” Bruce Grossman, Bookgasm

  “Sheer astounding writing” Ken Bruen

  “With this book Zeltserman entrenches his position as the ranking neo-noirist, putting a contemporary spin on a tradition that goes way back to Thompson and James M. Cain. If you like your fiction dark, lean and uncompromising, Pariah has to be at the top of your list” Roger Smith

  “It’s the kind of book that is going to spoil whatever I read next, as it’s going to be found wanting compared to this” The Bookbag

  Praise for Small Crimes

  “There’s a new name to add to the pantheon of the sons and daughters of Cain: Dave Zeltserman” NPR’s Top 5 Crime and Mystery Novels of 2008

  “Zeltserman’s breakthrough third crime novel deserves comparison with the best of James Ellroy” Publisher’s Weekly

  “A Jim Thompson mentality on a Norman Rockwell setting… Small Crimes is a strong piece of work, lean and spare, but muscular where a noir novel should be, with a strong central character who we alternately admire and despise” Boston Globe

  “Small Crimes is one of the finest dark suspense novels I’ve read in the past few years” Ed Gorman

  “Zeltserman creates an intense atmospheric maze for readers to observe Denton’s twisting and turning between his rocks and hard places. Denton is one of the best realised characters I have read in this genre, and the powerfully noir-ish, uncompromising plot, which truly keeps one guessing from page to page, culminates with a genuinely astonishing finale” Sunday Express

  “Small Crimes proves a deft entry in the tradition that goes back to Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me, James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Charles Willeford’s High Priest of California - small masterpieces celebrating the psychopath as a grinning archetype, as American as apple pie” Sun-Sentinel

  OUTSOURCED

  Dave Zeltserman

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Serpent’s Tail,

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  3A Exmouth House

  Pine Street

  London ECIR OJH

  www.serpentstail.com

  This eBook edition published in 2010

  Copyright © Dave Zeltserman 2010

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real

  persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced,

  transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in

  any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as

  allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as

  strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised

  distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s

  and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eISBN 978 1 84765 316 1

  Outsourced is dedicated to all the software engineers I’ve worked with over the years. And maybe even to a couple of my old managers.

  1

  The bar was mostly empty, which was typical for a Wednesday at two in the afternoon. Dan Wilson had the bartender pour him a Guinness Draft and a Harpoon IPA, and brought the beers back to a table in the corner where his companion, Shrinivas Kumar, sat waiting.

  Dan, a large affable man with close-cropped hair that was far grayer than it should’ve been given his forty-eight years, handed the Harpoon IPA to Shrinivas – or Shrini, as he liked to be called – and took a seat across from him. As usual, Dan’s mouth was twisted into a slight grin. Dark circles under his eyes betrayed his typical good humor, however.

  Shrini was fourteen years younger than Dan. He had a medium build, olive-color skin, and a serious demeanor. He dressed neatly and wore a musk-scented cologne. Shrini grew up in a northern region of India, near New Delhi, before moving to the States to attend college at the University of Florida. Majoring in computer science, he had moved to Massachusetts after graduation where he worked steadily as a software engineer until a year and a half ago. That was when the small software company he and Dan worked for had shut its doors. Since then he’d had one short-term contract job lasting four months, but nothing else. He took his wallet out.

  “How much do I owe you for the beer?”

  “Shrini, come on, buddy, put your wallet away. You get the next round, okay?”

  “In that case, cheers,” Shrini offered, lifting his glass.

  “Just like old times, huh?” Dan said, a sadness in his eyes countering his grin.

  Both men drank quietly, both deep in their own thoughts. Shrini started to say something then closed his mouth, his body tensing as he looked around to make sure no one was within earshot.

  “You are meeting your friend, Joel, this afternoon?” Shrini asked, his voice low.

  “That’s right. I got a two-hour drive up to the boondocks of New Hampshire. Goddamn redneck bastard. His house is in the middle of nowhere. The damn place is like a military compound.”

  “You are sure you can trust him?”

  “We worked together for eleven years. I can trust him.” Dan paused to sip his beer. “Joel and I have kept in touch the last seven. He’s a good guy, good heart. A little abrasive maybe, but a good guy.”

  “And you think he will want to do this?”

  “I’d have to think so. He was laid off two years ago and hasn’t worked since. I know he never made any big money and with three divorces I’m sure he didn’t save shit. At this point, he’s probably spending down his 401K like the rest of us.”

  “That is still a big leap to being willing to do this.”

  “I know the guy. He’ll want to come onboard. And what the fuck else is he going to do? A fifty-five-year-old software engineer out of work for two years? Maybe go back to school for bioengineering? At his age? Or how about becoming a real-estate agent? How many real-estate agents do we need?”

  Dan had worked himself up with his speech. He drank the little Guinness he had left and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. When he looked up, he noticed his companion frowning deeply.

  “Shrini, buddy, what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t like this. This is very big what we’re doing, and I don’t know your friend. I know people in India I could bring here—”

  “You got to be kidding me,” Dan said, raising an eyebrow. Then, muttering under his breath so it was barely audible, “I’m not bringing in people from overseas. With the way things are today, the FBI would be on us in a heartbeat.”

  “Please, hear me out—”

  “Shrini, you’ve got to trust me on this. Joel is exactly
what we need. Politically, the guy is far right to the point of being nuts and his religion now is the goddamn second amendment. He’s got all the guns we need, and I guarantee you none of them are traceable.”

  Shrini, very low, “There are other places we can get guns.”

  “Yeah, there are. But not without putting us at risk. And there’s more to it than that. When you meet Joel, you’ll think he looks like nothing. Five foot six, a hundred and fifty pounds maybe. But he works out every day, and bumping into him is like bumping into a brick wall. And he’s definitely got the balls for this, maybe more than the two of us.”

  “Dude, I got the balls to do this.”

  “I know you do, buddy, and I trust you. I wouldn’t be here talking with you if I didn’t. Let me tell you more about Joel. He was kind of a fuck-up in college, dropped out in the middle of his freshman year so he could go to Israel and enlist in their army. This was nineteen seventy-three. He ended up fighting in the Yom Kippur War. You could never tell by looking at him, but this guy is as hard as nails.”

  Shrini was frowning again. “How did he end up back in the United States working as a software engineer?”

  “After his army service, he married an Israeli woman and then moved back to the States. For a number of years he sold bathroom accessories to department stores. I guess he got sick of that and went to school at night and got a degree in computer science. His first job as an engineer was in my group at Vixox Systems. We drank a shitload of beers together when he went through his first divorce.”

  Dan lowered his gaze to his empty beer mug, and started pushing it back and forth between his hands. Shrini chewed on his lower lip as he sat silently.

  “You’re not having second thoughts, are you, Shrini?” Dan asked after a while. “Because if you are, that’s okay. We can walk away from this anytime.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m very serious. I’m doing this.”

  “You look so damn worried. We’ve worked out all the details. This is going to work fine. And don’t worry about Joel.”

  “I won’t worry about your friend. I’ve been working with you long enough to trust your judgment.”

  “Then why do you look so constipated?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Come on, talk to me.”

  “I keep thinking about Gordon. Whether we are making a mistake.”

  “We’ve talked about this.”

  “But he is so strange.”

  “I’ve known Gordon almost twenty years. Yeah, he’s a little different, but he’s more eccentric than strange. But, you know, we need him. This won’t work without him.”

  Shrini showed a slight smile. “I think you worked out the plan so we would have to need him. So you could help Gordon out one more time.”

  “Yeah, that’s my mission in life, to help out my misfit friends. Gordon, Joel… you.”

  Shrini responded by flipping Dan the bird, a good-natured smile breaking over his face. The smile faded as the moment passed. “You are sure we can trust him?”

  “No question. I’m willing to bet my life on it, aren’t I?”

  “You mean both our lives.”

  Dan looked back at his empty mug. “We can trust him.”

  “So we are really doing this,” Shrini said.

  “Yep, we’re really doing this.” Then very low, barely loud enough for Shrini to hear, “We’re going to be robbing a fucking bank.”

  Shrini finished his Harpoon. “I’ll buy us another round.”

  “I better not.” Dan sighed. “I’ve got to head off to the boondocks of New Hampshire.”

  Dan wore dark shades as he drove, and even so, had to squint against the glare from the sun. It was a struggle keeping his eyes open. Seven months earlier an ophthalmologist had told him that he had retinitis pigmentosa. According to the doctor, he’d probably had it since his mid-thirties. At least it explained the problems he was having with bright sunlight and driving at night. He knew things were getting worse. Over the past couple of years he felt as if he’d been losing a portion of his peripheral vision and recently he’d been having trouble focusing on small print. He hadn’t told anyone yet about his condition, especially his wife, Carol. That was the last thing she needed to hear now.

  He thought about Carol. His being out of work had been especially rough on her. This morning, though, she surprised him. It was as if the clock had been set back and nothing in the world was wrong. Before Carol left for work, she came over to him and sat in his lap and gave him a long passionate kiss. It had been months since she had done that, and the tenderness in her eyes nearly floored him. She was so damned beautiful at that moment that he felt himself physically aching.

  Whatever he had to do for Carol, for his children, he was going to do. Even if it meant robbing a bank…

  Although he had been able to put up a good front for Shrini, the idea of the bank robbery terrified him. Except for pocketing a candy bar from a drug store when he was a kid, he had never stolen anything – never broken the law, never resorted to violence, never really even been in much of a fight since eighth grade, and here he was planning a bank robbery. Actually, he had planned a bank robbery. He and Shrini had already worked out the details. Now it was simply a matter of putting it all in motion.

  The plan seemed to have taken on a life of its own, carrying Dan and Shrini along with it. Neither of them were capable of backing down. Both probably wanted to, at least Dan did. At least he would have if it weren’t for the fact that his retinas were deteriorating. When he lost his job, he also lost his long-term disability insurance. Without that insurance he was screwed. Unless he followed through with the robbery, he would be sentencing his family to a life on welfare. Robbing that bank was going to require nerve and somehow he was going to have to find a way to muster that nerve within himself.

  In the meantime he would have to keep from getting overwhelmed by the whole thing. Focus on one step at a time. He tried telling himself that. He broke out laughing. The problem was he was a damned good software engineer and was always searching for mistakes in his logic. Now he was doing the same, playing out the worst-case scenarios in his mind. He tried to slow down his thoughts, tried to simply concentrate on the road. A knotting in his stomach almost doubled him over. His hands ached as he gripped the wheel. He had to get himself under control before he arrived at Joel’s house, otherwise the plan was dead. Joel had the uncanny ability to smell fear on people.

  God, he wished he had brought an extra shirt with him. The one he was wearing was already wet with perspiration. He was going to have to stop off at a mall along the way. He couldn’t meet Joel feeling the way he did, especially with a shirt drenched in sweat. Somehow he was going to have to muster up some sort of confidence, some nerve.

  2

  Gordon Carmichael sucked in his gut as he studied himself in the bathroom mirror. At fifty-eight he still had a full head of thick blond hair, and as far as he could tell, not a single gray hair in the mix. He moved his face from side to side as he examined his skin for wrinkles. Satisfied, he took a step back. He pushed his bottom lip out, raised his chin, and patted the flesh under his jaw. If it weren’t for those damned jowls he could pass for his early forties. He pushed the flesh back with his hand, seeing what he would look like without them. Mid-thirties, maybe. If he could only afford the surgery to take care of them there was no reason why he wouldn’t be able to pass for a much younger man.

  He gave himself one more look in the mirror before turning away. He had already shaved five years off his resumé and was going to need to shave a few more off to get his age under fifty. Forty-seven seemed as good a target as any, jowls or not!

  Gordon sighed. He made his way out of the bathroom, through a cramped bedroom, and to a third room that served as a combination dining room, living room and computer room. There wasn’t much to his condo – only four hundred and twenty square feet. At one point he had it paid off. During his three years of being out of work he had taken all the
equity he could out of the place. He had tried making his monthly living expenses by trading stock put and call options, but a bad few months had cut his savings down to under five thousand dollars. Now he had a stack of home equity loan bills that were past due and last week received his first foreclosure notice. If things didn’t turn around soon he was in deep shit. He sat down in front of his computer, brought his resumé up and gave it a facelift by changing some of the dates while slicing four more years off his tenure at Vixox Systems. He felt a twinge of regret as he looked over his cosmetically updated resumé. One of the few accomplishments that meant anything to him was his twenty-one years at Vixox. Now, after two adjustments, those twenty-one years had been reduced to ten. For some reason, the thought of that made him feel a bit empty inside.

  He posted his updated resumé on several high-tech job sites. Before turning off the computer, he checked his email and saw he had something new from Elena. The letter simply stated that she could no longer contact him because she was marrying someone from Oregon. Even though the letter was only two short sentences he had to read it several times before it registered. When its meaning finally hit home, he sat frozen for a long moment, wanting nothing more than to put his fist through the computer screen.

  “That’s it!” he yelled to his empty condo. “I’m out of here!”

  He grabbed his car keys and made it to his front door before stopping. What he wanted to do was get in his car and drive until he hit the Jersey shore. Not that he knew anyone there or even liked being in Jersey, but it was far enough away that he could distance himself from his problems. As he was about to head out he remembered he had agreed to meet Dan the next day for a few beers. He thought about blowing Dan off but decided it wasn’t in his best interest. So the Jersey shore was out, at least for the time being.

  Still, he had to get out of there. For the hell of it he decided to visit Peyton. The two of them had been friends for over twenty years, even longer than he had been friends with Dan. At the peak of the tech market craziness – right before the tech crash of ’01 – Peyton had struck it rich. The startup where he was working had been bought for a ridiculous amount of money and Peyton had cashed out at the top, clearing almost eight million dollars.