Dead Anyway

by Chris Knopf

  By now, my physical condition had improved to the point where I could get through the whole day without stopping to rest and catch my breath. My right leg, still sore, had become limber enough that it almost had a normal swing, though I liked having the cane in case of sudden collapse. I hadn’t completely reconciled myself to the new shape of the world, but I could usually navigate my way around without running into things, or feeling nauseated by the manifold irregularities.

  My math skills had developed to the point where I could add, subtract, divide and multiply at the level of a modern third grader. Not bad for a guy who used to unwind by swimming around the equations supporting Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.

  I stayed at Gerry’s shop long enough to build up more strength and receive a shipment of some crucial equipment bought online at the anarchist’s café: a beefy laptop rigged for wireless and cell phone access, a scanner, printer, router and two external hard drives with a terabyte of storage space apiece.

  When I had the laptop up and running and the wireless connections configured, I took it with me in the Outback and prowled around Stamford for public wireless access. After I tested a half-dozen connections, found while parked outside hotels, restaurants and cafés, I was confident that I’d configured everything for optimum receptivity.

  Parked in front of an accommodating Starbucks, I opened an account with a major email provider under one of my dead guy’s names, with the screen name “MrPbody.” I hoped Evelyn would recognize the professorial dog Mr. Peabody from Rocky and Bullwinkle—the name she called me through most of my childhood—when it unexpectedly showed up in her mailbox.

  From there, I started to surf, tapping “Organized crime, Connecticut” into Google. I didn’t expect “Portraits of CT-based Hit Men” to pop up on the first page, but I knew very little about crime, organized or otherwise, and had to start somewhere.

  One of the dangers researchers face is the natural tendency to treat as received truth the manifold misconceptions, biases and opinions formed by Hollywood movies. I had trained myself to wipe away all prior assumptions on any subject about which I had minimal empirical knowledge. I used to pretend I was the Man from Mars, a recently arrived alien sent down to study strange Earthling ways.

  Now I had a better role to play—the Man Who Just Awoke from a Hundred Years in a Coma and Had a Lot of Catching Up to Do.

  The first three Google pages were rich with information, which took almost an hour to read or download for future study, then it petered out. I kept clicking through the pages, however, having learned that some of the most rewarding material was often twenty, thirty, or even a hundred pages in. The Google search algorithm was a marvel of speed and efficiency, but it wasn’t omniscient. Often the best stuff was tucked deep inside the search, where the less obsessive never took the trouble to look.

  And this was no exception. On page sixty-three was the retirement notice in the University of Michigan alumni magazine of an FBI Special Agent named Shelly Gross, who’d spent the last ten years of his career setting up task forces around the country focused on organized crime, most recently in Connecticut, where he decided to settle down in Rocky Hill, a fact corroborated by an obituary on his wife in the Rocky Hill Post.

  The singular success of the Connecticut project was noted in several sources. There was no mention of Shelly, but quite a bit on the nature of the various rackets the task force targeted, and the methods by which they seriously compromised criminal enterprise.

  I jumped from there into a people search, which quickly yielded results for the only Shelly Gross living in Connecticut. I also tried to locate three crime bosses that my initial research had shown to be deeply entangled in the state’s rackets over a long period of time, but not surprisingly, the public search sites yielded very little. There were more legal, professional search programs for tracking people down, but I’d never felt compelled to use them, on the theory that the cost would never justify the improved penetration.

  I now abandoned that qualm, which quickly led me to a short list of three overachieving punks: Ronny DeSuzio, Ekrem Boyanov, and my favorite, Sebbie “The Eyeball” Frondutti. He was an entrepreneurial underboss who’d set up a satellite operation in Connecticut for one of New York’s prominent crime families. He had a taste for nightlife, having rolled up through acquisition and intimidation a string of restaurants, strip joints, night clubs and other entertainment venues across the state and into Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

  This provided Sebbie with diversified revenue streams, legal and illegal—including unregulated gambling, prostitution, drug sales and cigarette smuggling—enmeshed in such a way that confounded regional law enforcement. Until Shelly rode into town. Backed by Federal resources and leverage, he’d soon built up a rock-solid case against Sebbie, leading to a racketeering indictment.

  Sebbie was an hour away from being arrested when he dropped out of sight. There was a lot of conjecture by the media that the disappearing act had followed a tip-off from someone inside the investigation. The team was led by Shelly Gross, but included undercover cops with the State Police. Predictably, the Feds implied the leak came from the staties, and vice versa. That they were able to try and convict everyone involved in Sebbie’s little empire other than Sebbie himself never cleared the air of rancor that hung around the prosecution.

  Before moving on, I took note of the name of a reporter, Henry Eichenbach, who wrote a long exposé on Sebbie for the Connecticut Post. I searched for him on the Post’s web site, but he wasn’t listed among the editorial staff, so I went back to Google and found his blog. This was expected, since any newspaper reporter with a pulse sets up a blog in anticipation of the mad dash to online media. I read through the site, noting he was working on a book about the Fed’s secret Connecticut organized crime task force. The date of that posting was almost three years old. I checked Amazon unsuccessfully for a book.

  I was grateful to see that Henry had a contact email address in addition to the regular comment mechanism.

  MrPbody wrote him this message:

  “Looking for the Eyeball?”

  From there, I downloaded what looked to be the remaining worthwhile information, and pulled away from the Starbucks, nervous that more than two hours online might draw notice. I went back to Gerry’s studio and spent the rest of the day packing up, wiping down anything that might reveal a fingerprint, vacuuming anything that might capture a fiber, and scrubbing anything where bodily fluid or epithelials might have been left behind. I wasn’t a forensic scientist, but I was a world-class obsessive, so if I couldn’t be expert, I could at least be thorough.

  CHAPTER 5

  I felt reasonably secure at Gerry’s studio, and would have contentedly stayed there forever, but practicality drove me to move on before others at the clock factory registered my presence.

  I’d already picked out the next stop, a tiny, furnished, single-story house in Wilton, a town just northeast of Stamford, Connecticut, with a nice view of an abandoned crushed stone and gravel distribution center, and thus one of Wilton’s less desirable properties. I found the place over the Internet, avoiding the owners and limiting personal exposure to a woman at a real estate office. She gave me the key after I showed her my driver’s license, signed the lease and paid three months’ rent in advance, plus the security deposit.

  Invisible from the road, and well removed from other houses, it featured the ultimate in privacy at a very affordable price. Still, I waited for nightfall to move in with my duffle bag and computer gear. The place had a kitchen with an eat-in area, a living room, two bedrooms and a single bath with a metal-lined shower. A drop-leaf pine table in the kitchen opened into a decent workspace, so this became my base of operations.

  After setting up the gear, I made out a provisioning list—hardware, software and consumables—before picking out a bedroom, where I slept in my clothes on the bare mattress, registering the need for sheets and towels.

  The next day I went to the Wil
ton post office and secured a P.O. box, then I went back to the house and opened up an email account. I’d come to the decision that cruising a string of wireless hot spots, some intentionally unsecured, some not, was too time-consuming and inefficient. Sitting on a traceable IP address was an exposure, but couldn’t be helped.

  I continued to harvest information on the New England underworld and outside influencers in New York and else-where. I copied the pertinent data into a ten-gig flash drive that screwed into a pen, and then deleted the file on my computer to the extent that was possible, shy of throwing the thing in a furnace.

  My last act for the day was checking email, where I found this in MrPbody’s box, from “EichenWrite.”

  “Yes.”

  I wrote back with a description of a bench in a park in Norwalk that looked out on Long Island Sound. I gave him three time and date options, with the words, “pick one.”

  He came back almost immediately with his pick, and a request for more information. I wrote, “See you then.”

  Then I went and did something I really didn’t know how to do—buy a wig. I found the shop by searching for wigs designed for chemotherapy patients, on a hunch that the product line would strive for utility over glamour. I wasn’t disappointed by the selection, in principle, just the complications involved in getting the most natural look. I couldn’t sign up for all the fittings, the back and forth, so I bought a dozen wigs in a variety of cuts and colors, much to the disapproval of the wig seller.

  Back at the house, I tried on a sort of Michael Landon mop that demanded little in transitioning at the fringes. I put my L.L. Bean hat over it and a pair of bulky sunglasses over my regular lenses. A little too ridiculous. Without the hat wasn’t much better. So I tried it with a baseball cap, with the hair slightly swept back and streaking out the back, which seemed to do the trick.

  My appointment with Henry Eichenbach was set for the next morning at ten o’clock, so I spent the rest of the day and evening installing new gear, stocking the house with various necessities and organizing as efficient a domestic operation as possible. Having worked out of my home for years while my wife tended to her time-consuming office job, household management had fallen to me. Florencia was a neat person, but would never have risen to the level of tidy precision that I brought to the task.

  She used to mock me that she was Julia Roberts in Sleeping with the Enemy, but she liked things clean and orderly, and efficiently configured, without having to make it so herself. In all our divisions of labor we were absurdly compatible, achingly so, I thought as I lay in bed that night, despite all my efforts not to think about such things.

  I’D CHOSEN the park bench at the beach in Norwalk because it would be impossible to photograph my face straight on, unless the photographer was out on a boat. The Thimble Islands were out there, lumps on the horizon, but too far away for anything but a spy satellite surveillance camera.

  The bench was open to the west, but on the east was a windowless brick building housing a set of rest rooms.

  I sat in the Outback before the appointed time—blending in with the cars and trucks whose drivers parked there to watch the water while they caught a smoke, ate lunch or had a cup of coffee—and watched for Henry’s approach.

  He was on time, which was notable. He didn’t look around for a backup, also notable. I’m not an expert on surveillance, of course, but I have some experience with how people think and behave. It’s almost impossible to not steal a glance in the direction of a person you think is watching you. Henry’s glances were far more generalized, looking for the guy who was supposed to meet him on the park bench.

  I was disappointed by his appearance. Full head of curly, but neatly cropped grey hair, heavy black-rimmed glasses, and a creepy grey Colonel Sanders goatee cut so it formed a point directly under his chin. His face and body were round, with most of the mass settled into his jowls and butt. None of which had any bearing on his skills or integrity as a journalist, so I shook off my first impression and strolled over to the park bench.

  I was wearing a light coat with a big collar pulled up around my neck, with the lower half of my face covered in a scarf, and the hat, wig and sunglasses obscuring the rest. It wasn’t the most imaginative disguise, but good enough for the purpose.

  “Give me the recorder or let me frisk you,” I said, sitting down next to him. I pitched my voice low and hoarse, like Clint Eastwood, whom I’d mimicked often to Florencia’s delight.

  “I don’t have a recorder,” he said, after a pause, “and I’m sure as shit not going to let you feel me up.”

  “Okay,” I said, and got up to leave.

  “Wait,” he said.

  I stopped. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small digital recorder. I told him to shut it off, rewind and erase our brief conversation. I watched him go through the actions, then sat back down.

  “Paranoid, are we?” he asked.

  “Cautious,” I said.

  “Are you one of Sebbie’s boys?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Then what can you?”

  “You’re here because you don’t know where he is. And you want to know,” I said, looking up and down the beach and out over the water.

  “I do,” said Henry. “I miss the old sociopath. Hasn’t been nearly as much fun without him.”

  “Are you freelance or staff?” I asked.

  Henry pulled a small notebook out of his jacket.

  “Mind if I take notes?” he asked, somewhat sarcastically.

  “Nope.”

  “Good,” he said, clicking a ballpoint pen, “let’s start with your name.”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Huh?”

  “You can call me anything you want,” I said.

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “You’re in witness protection. Interesting,” he said. “We must’ve met, but I can’t place you, I admit it. Nicely done. You don’t have to confirm anything. I know the drill.”

  “How’s the book coming?” I asked.

  “Slowly. Who told you about that?”

  “It’s on your web site. You should check it once in a while. Anyway, it’s understandable. You’ve been on a big story over a period of years. You’re eager to track down a key player. Getting by as a freelance journalist isn’t easy, now that they’ve broomed you out of the Post. Why wouldn’t you be writing a book?”

  “Hey, not broomed. I was empowered to seek fresh opportunities.”

  Henry wasn’t a young man. The grey hair, paunch, baby boomer affectations, sun damage on his pale skin figured him to be about sixty, maybe a little more or less. His eyes were widely spaced, and close to bulging. But brimming with a stirred-up mix of defiance and self-deprecation.

  I knew the type. I’d always cultivated relationships with reporters at newspapers and trade magazines, print and online. They were my favorite starting points when venturing into a new realm of inquiry, and my favorite sources at the wrap-up phase.

  I liked their inquisitiveness, since it was a lot like mine. And their intelligence and eagerness to cross rhetorical swords. I didn’t like their arrogance and first amendment-entitled insufferability, but nobody’s perfect.

  “I have a proposition,” I said. “I doubt you’re going to like it. But I’m proposing it anyway.”

  “O-kay,” said Henry, stretching out each syllable, unsure.

  “I don’t know where Sebbie is. But if you give me a few key pieces of information, I’ll find him.”

  Henry had been sitting sideways on the bench. Now he swiveled around and faced the Sound. He slapped the tops of his thighs and huffed a few times.

  “You’re right. I don’t like that at all. What kind of a putz do you think I am? Who’re you working for? Sebbie’s not my favorite person, character-wise, but I’m not helping you kill him.”

  “I’m not going to kill him. I just want to talk to him. And I’m not working for anyone but myself. Like you.”

 
“I suppose you can’t prove any of that.”

  “No. If you decide to help me, it’ll be blind trust,” I said. “You won’t know immediately if that trust was justified. But if things go as hoped, your agenda will be advanced in ways that might prove the salvation of your book project.” I turned and faced him. “If you help me,” I said, “your knowledge of the world will expand exponentially. If you decide not to, I’ll just go to the next name on my list and he or she will have that privilege.”

  I stood up and started to walk away. He called to me to come back, but I kept walking. A careful study of the behavior of anti-hero archetypes, which I’d made when I was about twelve years old, taught me that indifference to the supplications of the recently put-down amplified their desire to restore the relationship.

  “Okay, okay,” Henry yelled. “Come on back. We can talk.”

  I took a few more paces, but at a slower pace, then turned slowly, reluctantly, as I’d seen Steve McQueen do. I walked back to the bench, and after taking a moment for my injured brain to locate exactly where it was, I sat down.

  “What is your deal, man? I don’t get it,” he said.

  “My deal is my deal. Your deal is your book. Where we converge is a wish to talk to Sebbie. All you have to do is tell me the name of his closest confidant. Based on your articles, I’m guessing it’s Wayne Frankenfelder, owner of the Miss Kitty Lounge. Sebbie seems to think of him as a surrogate son. Or so you implied in your reporting.”

  “Who cares who his friends are?”

  “Human connections are irresistible. Whether you’re a journalist or a street thug, you risk everything to keep the ones you value intact. Especially a highly social guy like Sebbie who loved hanging around his restaurants and clubs. This underpins my theory that he never left Connecticut.”