Dead Anyway

by Chris Knopf

  There wasn’t much else for us to do but wait and hector Leo with well-intended questions and condolences. Through it all, I was able to dispense drinks and meals to the unfortunates who were behind Leo in line. They all spoke quietly and had a vague look of shame, though none thought the occasion demanded they go hungry. Still, I was glad no one said, “Leo would have wanted it this way.”

  The ambulance showed up soon after, and after they hauled away their ashen-faced patient, the parking lot cleared and I was left with Leo’s laptop and the next phase of the process.

  I took the laptop into the cab and turned it on, slipping in the boot disk as soon as I could open the little CD tray. Once inside the operating system, I installed the same spyware that now infected Ethan’s server room workstation at Florencia’s agency, and did a quick search for passwords, but Leo was far more security conscious than my last victims. It didn’t matter. As soon as he was back on his machine, which would be in a few days if my research held, I’d have it all.

  Minutes later, I shut down the computer and wiped it down with diluted bleach. Then I took it to the parking lot entrance and turned it over to CMT&M plant security.

  “In all the confusion, I didn’t realize I still had Leo’s briefcase. Hope he’s okay,” I told the guard.

  He took the case from me and stuck it under his desk, as if it was in imminent danger of further unauthorized possession.

  “Makes you want to give up the donuts and start jogging,” said the guard, whose enormous pot belly I had the good sense not to look at.

  “We’ll be lightin’ candles,” I said, and left him with my digital Trojan Horse safely ensconced beneath his desk.

  CHAPTER 16

  Natsumi woke me up at three in the morning screaming into the disposable phone I used to communicate with her.

  “Oh my God, John, I’m so afraid,” she squeezed out between hacking sobs.

  I sat bolt upright.

  “What happened?”

  “A man. He had a knife. I thought he was going to kill me. Oh, God. He was in the backseat of my car. He grabbed my hair and stuck the knife into my neck. It cut me. He whispered in my ear. It was horrible.”

  “Are you bleeding?” I asked.

  “It’s a little cut. I’m in my car at the casino. I took a late shift for another dealer. The doors are locked. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Drive away. Now.”

  I heard the faint sound of the car starting. Then she came back on the line.

  “He asked about you. He called you the guy who was looking for Bela Chalupnik. I told him your name. I thought that was safe since I don’t believe it really is your name. What is going on?”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, closing my eyes in the dark and cursing my foolishness.

  “I told him the same thing I told Ron Irving. I described what you looked like. I said I hadn’t seen you since that night, but you promised to get in touch with me sometime, thinking that might stop him from killing me. I guess I was right.”

  “You didn’t see him.”

  “He told me to lie down across the console, and that he’d shoot me if I tried to look up. Then he just left. What do I do?”

  I played a little movie in my head, on fast forward.

  “Go home and pack the most important stuff you have that you can fit in a suitcase you can handle. Computer, meds, jewelry, passport. One change of clothes. Then drive to New Haven and park in the train station parking lot. I’ll arrange to have the car towed and stored when I get the key. Take the train to Hartford, and walk to this hotel.” I gave her the name and directions from the station. “Take the elevator to the fifth floor. I’ll meet you and we’ll take it from there.”

  “I’m frightened.”

  “This is all my fault. But I’m going to make good on it. Right now you need to trust me and do exactly what I tell you to do.”

  “I trust you. Even though my mother says I shouldn’t.”

  “Where is your mother?” I asked.

  “Kyoto. We talk on the phone.”

  “Does the casino have her address?”

  “No. I told them she wasn’t in the country and that’s all I said. I didn’t want the background checkers invading her privacy.”

  I thanked God for the one bit of good luck embedded in all the bad.

  “No other relatives?” I asked.

  “No. You have to tell me now. You can’t pretend anymore.”

  I finally relinquished, with a strange rush of pleasure, all my reticence before Natsumi.

  “Florencia.”

  “Who is that?”

  “That was my wife’s name. Her real name. The rest will have to wait. Call me when you’re on the train.”

  When she hung up, I felt a familiar rage surging within me, a feeling that was effective in dousing its corollary, raw fear. If there was any way I could be driven to greater effort, this was likely it. I gave voice to that, loudly, alone in the room, then went about the proper preparation.

  THE HOTEL was in easy walking distance to the train station. I rented a room to legitimize my presence, and used the time to case the layout. As hoped, there was a separate service elevator that worked without a key, accessible from the utility room that stored sheets and towels and tiny bottles of shampoo and body lotion. I’d asked Natsumi to call me when she was on the train heading north, which she did.

  “Do you think anyone followed you to New Haven?” I asked.

  “That’s a frightening thought.”

  “Sorry. Do you?”

  “I can’t tell. I’m a psychologist, not a spy.”

  “So you passed your exams.”

  “I did. Now it’s just the thesis. I’m changing my topic to ‘Effects on the Nervous System Resulting from Knife-Wielding Attackers.’ ”

  Her next call came as dawn was creeping up from the horizon.

  “I’m on the move,” she said. “Rolling suitcase in hand.”

  “Is anyone you recognize from the train behind you?”

  “No. And stop saying things like that. It’s freaking me out.”

  “Sorry. When you get to the hotel, go to room 535. Knock on the door and I’ll come out.”

  “If this is just an elaborate ploy to seduce me, I’ll kill you.”

  “I’m not that imaginative.”

  “Maybe you should be,” she said. “I might like it.”

  “What room am I in?”

  She confirmed it, and we hung up.

  I COULDN’T bear waiting in the room, so I went and stood by the elevator. As soon as she cleared the doors with her rolling bag, I grabbed her free hand, ignoring the startled look on her face, and pulled her down the hall to the freight elevator. I asked her not to talk. As we waited for it to show up, I could feel my pulse thumping in my ears. The doors slid open. Empty, thank God.

  I pulled her in and hit the button for the bottom floor. We went down and the doors opened on a gloomy, shadow-laden concrete world. I held the doors open and listened. Nothing.

  I pulled her out of the elevator and toward the loading dock used to load and unload convention displays. There was a security guard sitting at a little desk, reading by a task light that barely illuminated the cavernous space. I waved at him and said it was a long story as we zoomed by, and he never budged, having been charged with keeping unauthorized people out and given no guidance on those passing the opposite way.

  I hit the button for the big loading dock door and we slipped out as soon as we had the headroom.

  The Subaru was waiting at the curb. I opened the hatch and told her to crawl under the blanket that lay there waiting. I put her suitcase in the foot well of the front passenger seat, got in and started the car.

  No one followed as we drove down the street and on to the entrance ramp to the highway. Unless they were invisible. I shot the car up the ramp and into the waking day. I let Natsumi know it was now okay to talk.

  “Well, that was a first,” she said, pulling the blanket off her
head.

  “Can I just say I’m sorry one more time, or do you want me to spend the rest of my life apologizing?”

  “I don’t like apologies. The Japanese do it so much it’s hard to believe they really mean it.”

  “Would you describe the voice of the guy who attacked you as high, low or in-between?”

  “In-between.”

  “Did you detect an accent?” I asked.

  “You say detect, which means any accent he had would be subtle. I’m guessing a borough of New York City, but I’m not sure, having only lived in Connecticut, so all New York accents sound the same to me. Where are we going?”

  “To my apartment. I have a room waiting for you.”

  “With room service, I hope.”

  “Of course.”

  “I need your real name,” she said.

  “Arthur. But I’d rather you called me Alex. That’s the name I usually use. Most of the time.”

  “I’m Natsumi all of the time.”

  “Not anymore. You’ll need a new name.”

  “You’re going to explain all this to me, right?”

  “Yes. As soon as we can get to a place where I can look you in the eye so you can see I’m telling the truth.”

  “That bad?”

  “That bad.”

  I DROVE directly to the apartment above the garage and carried Natsumi’s rolling bag to her room. I apologized that she didn’t have her own bathroom, and she reminded me that we’d abolished apologies. I asked her to meet me in the kitchen as soon as she felt ready to do so.

  She showed up a half hour later freshly showered and wearing a dark blue sweat suit.

  “Is it too early for wine?” she asked. “Just joking. Coffee would be nice, though.”

  As I worked on the coffee, I started in on my story, beginning with Florencia’s murder and the attempt on me. I told her everything, deciding there was nothing to be gained by doing otherwise. Now that she was in, she needed to be in all the way. I told her that.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I think.”

  I told her about my sister Evelyn and how she faked my death, and my friend Gerry Charles and his guitar collection. About Henry Eichenbach, Madame Francine de le Croix and Sebbie “The Eyeball” Frondutti. I described my meeting with Fred Tootsie and how it led me to Clear Waters Casino, and with her help, Bela Chalupnik, aka Pally Buttons.

  “And thereby stupidly connecting you to me by talking to that security guy at the Sail Inn,” I said. “And by asking you to get Bela’s photo. I don’t know why I wasn’t thinking more clearly.”

  I spared nothing in describing my interview with Pally at the abandoned gravel business, and my subsequent chat with Shelly Gross. And finally, the sale of Florencia’s insurance agency, my journey north to Hartford and the purchase of Billy Romano’s food truck.

  “For the purpose of?” she asked.

  “Breaking into organized crime. It’s the only path to Austin Ott.”

  She took it all calmly, her face neutral, her head nodding at the right times to signal she was following the narrative.

  “I knew there was something up with you,” she said.

  “You’re a perceptive person.”

  “But you kept coming back, even though I was suspicious.”

  “I did. I knew you were a good person who wouldn’t hurt me. I’m also perceptive. At least I used to be.”

  “Though I never imagined anything like this,” she said.

  I booted up one of my laptops as I was telling her my story. I did a search for “Arthur and Florencia Cathcart” and set the computer in front of her so she could pick through the material. She looked up at me a few times as she read.

  “You’re a lot skinnier and balder, but I see the resemblance,” she said. “Your wife was very beautiful. I can tell she was a very good person. I’m so sorry.” She read some more, then looked up at me. “What does all this mean?”

  “It means I have to find the people who did this thing. And now it’s no longer my private enterprise. I’ve involved you, so there’s an even greater need to follow this through to the end.”

  “What do you mean ‘this’? What is ‘this’?”

  I didn’t have an answer, because I’d never had anyone but myself around to ask the question.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m figuring it out as I go along.”

  “What’s wrong with going to the police? Why do you think you have to take this on by yourself?”

  Another unanswerable question.

  “No one will try as hard as me or care as much about the outcome. I’m dead anyway, so who’s better suited to the job?”

  She frowned.

  “You’re not dead. You might be a little nuts, but you’re not dead.”

  “You should go visit your mother for a while. You’ll lose your job, but I’ll compensate you for your lost salary. You can be on a flight tomorrow.”

  “You want to get rid of me,” she said, in a tone that belied the harshness of her words.

  “I want you to be safe. I put you in this situation.”

  “Enough with the guilt. Crap happens. I’m staying with you. I make $45,000 a year. Feel free to write the check. What happens next? I’m signing up.”

  She got off her chair and started to clean up the kitchen, not a difficult task, since I kept it impeccably clean. I watched her for a while, then realized I was on the verge of falling asleep, the night’s frenzy having finally taken its toll. Natsumi told me to go ahead, that she’d occupy herself studying my larder and filling out a shopping list.

  “This is really going to cost you, buddy,” she said. “You’ve never seen my monthly mascara tab.”

  “I’ve got boxes of makeup in the other room. You can probably help me with that.”

  “I can help you with a lot of things,” she said. “More than you know.”

  Soon after, I was out cold, allowing mercifully little time to absorb another massive, irredeemable shift in the nature of the universe.

  LEO DUNLOP survived his ersatz heart attack, to my relief, since that wasn’t a foregone conclusion, as careful as I was with the dosage. I knew he was okay because forty-eight hours after collapsing he logged back on to his computer. I didn’t bother to copy down the log-in information. It would all be there when I wanted it.

  He started out by returning emails telling more or less the same story, thanking people for their concern and explaining it was probably just something he ate. He didn’t directly blame my iced coffee, which was also a relief. He noted that toxicology tests showed traces of Dobutamine, which can induce arrhythmia and angina, but no one knew how that could have gotten in his bloodstream.

  He spent a long time with his correspondence, the story growing in drama with each email. Then he went to a web site that featured bikinis, with the innocuous name Sun and Fun that probably just squeaked by the corporate censors.

  Eventually, his voyeuristic ardor slacked, he actually started to do some work. I was glad to see he’d been truthful about his duties at CMT&M, as the enterprise financial management system came up and he went right into accounts receivable. He was one of five billers, the work divvied up based on the size and geographical location of the customer. Fortunately, for my purposes, Leo’s customers were among the largest, and his territory was the lower Great Lakes industrial region.

  He was also impressively productive once he actually got under way. His keystrokes were fast and sure, and far more precise on the first pass than mine would ever be. Probably allowed for more time with the bikinis.

  As with most industrial businesses, about a third of the customers accounted for most of the sales, the other two-thirds a long tail of small, infrequent orders. Each had been vetted and approved by the comptroller’s office, and given the same credit terms, a tolerant and leisurely sixty days before interest was applied.

  I left the spyware running in the background, gathering and recording all the incoming data, and searched for services that
allowed you to open a small sales office, or merely create a mailbox that expressed the dignity of an actual street address. Part way down the first Google page was a site called spacejockeys.com that stopped me immediately. I’d seen the name before, when I was burrowing around Florencia’s personal financial file which she kept in a walled-off subaccount within the general agency system. I took a break from the current task to go back into those files to find the reference.

  It was an entry in accounts payable covering the lease of five hundred square feet of office space at an address in Scottsdale, Arizona. The service gave you a discount if you paid twenty-four months in advance. The issuer of the purchase order, Florencia Cathcart, chose that option. Based on the date, the lease had six more months to go. I copied all the information into a Word document for later examination, then went back to my original endeavor.

  The spacejockeys site allowed you to choose from a menu of vacancies, with specifications, and to pay with an ordinary credit card. I deployed one of my rarely used, dead guy Visas, burning up nearly the entire credit limit.

  I chose Evanston, Illinois as the location, and leased a simple drop box in an outlying industrial park. I called it First General Metallurgy Associates, LLC.

  Part of the spacejockeys service was logistics handling. You could have packages and mail shipped to the site, then forwarded on to another location. So I opened up another operation, this one a warehouse near Gerry’s shop in the clock factory where you could lease small storage cages.

  Natsumi came in the room and looked at the screen over my shoulder.

  “Do you mind?” she asked.

  “Why would I deny my partner in the purchase and distribution of industrial precious metals?”

  “Sounds expensive.”

  “Not if you steal them.”

  “Okay. Noted.”

  LEO WORKED past closing hours, but eventually logged off. I waited another hour, then logged back in and started exploring.

  The financial management system at CMT&M was nicely tied together and nearly unsecured. Leo had access to every subprogram but corporate finance and human resources, which was the barest minimum protection. It was also child’s play to get behind the reports and functional screens to the application itself, where I could make adjustments at a deeper, less noticeable level.