by Chris Knopf
“And you don’t know why you went out on your own?” she asked.
“Actually I do. It used to be a habit of mine, under normal circumstances. Get out of the house and go off on some meaningless chore, just to clear my head and breathe a little fresh air. What I don’t know is why my sense of self-preservation didn’t tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘ ’Yo bud, these aren’t normal circumstances. You aren’t living in Stamford anymore doing market research on feminine hygiene.’ ”
“You did that?” she asked.
“What?”
“Researched feminine hygiene?”
“Absolutely. Did at least twenty focus groups in different parts of the country. The product wasn’t exactly hygienic. More cosmetic. Essentially perfume for the nether regions. I learned a lot. Once a group gets going, respondents will tell you anything.”
After I filled in Natsumi, I went over the story again with Little Boy and the other Bosniaks. I was afraid they’d see it as a flagrant provocation, deserving of ruthless reprisals, which I’d have to struggle to suppress. What I got were grins and some gentle teasing.
“Hey, lucky they not kick you in the nuts,” said Little Boy. “That’s what we do.”
“The nuts, then the head. Not necessarily in that order,” said one of his boys.
“I thought they were going to kill me,” I replied, I hoped matter-of-factly.
“Kill you? The goose who’s laying all these golden eggs?” said Little Boy. “No way. They just working off a little steam. Probably got impatient waiting for you to come out of the house. I been on those stakeouts. It gets damn boring.”
Cheered by the outpouring of concern, I slipped away to spend some time with the sort of company that rarely failed to gratify my expectations.
My computer.
I liked to believe aeronautical engineers never lost their wonder over the proposition that objects heavier than air can fly. By the same token, even a tech hound like me finds it difficult to believe that you can see an image of your house taken from a tin can orbiting the earth so clearly you can make out the Weber grill on the patio. On a clear day, whether you’re grilling hot dogs or chicken breasts.
This was the kind of wonder and appreciation that filled my heart as I zeroed in on the house in New Rochelle. Knowing two of the streets in close proximity, it took only a few minutes to identify Newbury Street. Then, with two of the street numbers of nearby houses, it was child’s play to pin down number twenty-five.
From there, I used a simple directory service to capture the home’s phone number. I could have obtained much more, like the market value of the house, the yearly tax bill, the number of bedrooms and any outstanding mechanic’s liens, but all I cared about was ownership. This came up as New Heritage Properties, a real estate management company headquartered in Bermuda. Aside from having an oxymoron for a name, my sense before doing more research was that research would turn up absolutely nothing. Corporate confidentiality in Bermuda wasn’t the steel vault of the Cayman Islands, but close enough.
I wouldn’t be able to get much further, but somebody else could.
I wrote to Shelly Gross and described the day’s events. I included all the information I’d obtained about the meeting house, and ended with another request: “I bet you could dig up the phone number of the guy who called that house today. He might have taken some precautions, on the other hand, maybe not. It could save a lot of lab time.”
I also gave him the make and model of both the SUV’s and their license plate numbers.
“Surely something will connect,” I wrote.
He wrote back soon after.
“So you didn’t get high definition images, DNA samples or fingerprints of these guys?”
EVELYN CALLED soon after that.
“I talked to Bruce,” she said. “I told him someone from the insurance commissioner’s fraud unit had contacted me asking a bunch of questions I couldn’t answer. I said the fraud people instructed me not to discuss the call with anyone, but I said screw that and immediately contacted him. He sounded very concerned. He asked me a lot of questions I couldn’t answer, mostly because I was making it all up. I told him they wanted to interrogate me, but I was terrified to do it on my own, so could he just do me this one huge favor and come along? I don’t do damsel in distress very well, so maybe that’s what convinced him.”
Evelyn would be the last person on earth, maybe just behind Hillary Clinton or Margaret Thatcher, to make a good damsel in distress. Under any circumstances.
“It probably was,” I said. “Brilliant job.”
“I hope so. Now it’s your turn. Just keep me informed.”
I exited the call filled with contrary emotions. Admiration for my sister’s courage and imagination, countered by a vague panic over how to play a ploy I hadn’t conceived of myself.
Insurance commissioner’s fraud unit? Was there such a thing?
I dove onto the web and quickly discovered that there was. Bruce would know that, having spent most of his career in Hartford, the insurance mecca of the nation. Chances were, he knew the commissioner and half the people in his office. Two minutes after Evelyn’s call, he probably knew there was no investigation, current or planned. At least I had to assume that.
I couldn’t see a way to make this happen without Bruce Finger. And no way to compel him, least of all without his awareness and willing consent.
I put my head between my hands and tried to force a strategy.
I couldn’t do it, because there wasn’t any. Nothing elegant, subtle or immune from risk. Which made me recall something I’d heard from a Vietnam veteran I once interviewed. I’d forgotten the original subject, but remembered the discussion taking a radical turn into the limits of human endurance in the face of desperate circumstances.
“Sometimes, man, the only way out is through,” he said to me.
I took out my phone and called Bruce Finger.
“Mr. Finger?” I asked in my Clint Eastwood voice.
“Who’s calling?” he asked.
I told him I was a private investigator for the insurance carrier who covered the largest number of Florencia’s clients. I supplied enough information, gleaned from the agency’s files, to prove my intimacy with the company in question, information no one else could possibly have.
“So you’re not from the insurance commission,” he said.
“I lied to Ms. Cathcart. I didn’t think she could handle the truth. You can. In fact, I think you were expecting my call,” I said.
“You need to tell me what this is all about,” said Bruce.
“You know what it’s about.”
There was a long period of silence on the other end of the line. I shut my eyes, tightly, adding darkness to the quiet.
“I do not,” he said, finally.
“You were the acting president of the agency. The fiduciary responsible for the ethical management of your clients’ funds. You don’t know that some of them are missing?”
More long periods of silence.
“I had no idea,” he said. “I’m retired from all that.”
“Do you think retirement conveys immunity?” I said.
“I did the best I could,” he said. “My experience was underwriting and product development. I’d never worked in distribution, much less at an agency. Mistakes might have been made. Nothing intentional. Are you in contact with current management?”
“I will be.”
“Should I be talking to my attorney?” he asked.
“That’s up to you. My clients would prefer a quiet and painless resolution. For all involved.”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“We have a meeting. All the issues are put on the table. We propose a solution, you and your counter-parties discuss, modify and agree. A check gets written, and we move on with our lives. People like the insurance commissioner never have to get involved.”
“I still don’t know what I’m being accused of,” he said.
“Do you think I’d be talking to you if there was nothing to discuss?”
“You’re a fixer,” he said. “I’ve heard about you people. I think you’re loathsome.”
I was surprised on two counts. That I wasn’t the only one aware of these mythical characters, and that a man of Bruce Finger’s stature believed in the myth.
“More loathsome than a trusted advisor who mismanages what he’s been entrusted with?”
“What do you propose?” he asked, in the exhausted voice of a person falling reluctantly into bitter old age.
“A meeting,” I said. “Here’s who you need to call.”
I HARDLY had a chance to catch my breath when a call came in on the cell number I’d given Jenkins. They were ready to make a transaction.
“Half a mil of merchandise, made up of the following,” he said, then read off a shopping list composed of fifty percent gold and the rest an assortment of exotics.
We arranged a meet for that night in the parking lot behind an abandoned warehouse in an old industrial park in the North End of Hartford.
As soon as I got off the phone, I tore Little Boy away from ESPN and had him pick one of his guys to head over to the warehouse, with luck, ahead of the other party. It was four hours before the meet, plenty of time for a capable stakeout man to dig in.
The rest of us bent to the task of loading the goods into Little Boy’s minivan. Luckily, I had the quantities to cover the order. I’d have to replenish after the next round. I’d sent a partial payment to CMT&M to stay out of arrears, gaining some breathing space. No reason to start stealing until I had to.
After we loaded the van, Little Boy sent another advance man to relieve the first. There was no way to know for sure, but the first guy was fairly certain no one from the other side was skulking about. The warehouse was in a bland industrial park, but well apart from the other buildings, none of which he thought would make for a decent sniper’s nest. That opinion held some authority, given the Bosniaks’ painful familiarity with snipers.
We spent the remaining time hanging around the TV room, the Bosniaks smoking cigarettes and me writing myself notes in the little soft notebook I kept in my back pocket. It was a habit I started in the early days of my recovery, when my memory was re-learning how to function and my imagination was running well ahead of my organizational abilities.
At that moment, it really served no greater purpose than keeping my mind calm and my doubts and fears—always looking for opportunities to assert themselves—at bay. Checklists and to-do lists had that effect on me. They ordered the world, and expressed an implied state of optimism. Why bother making a checklist if you didn’t think any of the items would ever be checked off?
Finally, the moment came for us to leave. I drove with Little Boy in his minivan and the others followed in the Outback, causing transitory damage with their cigarette smoke, though I was hardly in a position to complain.
When we got to the parking lot, Jenkins was there leaning against a rented box truck with sides advertising cheap moves to Hawaii, embellished by painted images of palm trees and hula skirts. Jenkins, like most of his crew, was smoking a cigarette and looking slightly bored with the whole thing.
He gave a languid wave when we pulled up alongside and dropped his cigarette to the ground, raising a tiny plume of red sparks. I climbed out of the van and Little Boy followed, keeping a few paces behind me. The other Bosniaks parked on the street and walked across the parking lot, keeping at least ten feet between them. Jenkins watched all this with a face that exuded either grudging respect or uncontainable contempt.
Little Boy walked up to Jenkins and offered a fist bump, which Jenkins accepted. Everyone else had their hands in their pockets, exhaling steam and shuffling their feet. The harsh light from the parking lot floods turning us all into backlit cutouts. Soon one or two on either side had cigarettes lit, which did nothing to illuminate the setting, though it did calm a few nerves, some by proxy.
“We got the heavy boxes,” said Little Boy to Jenkins. “You got the cash?”
Jenkins swiveled around to show us all a backpack. Then he swiveled back again.
“Even usin’ hundreds, a half million’s a lot of paper, you know?” he said.
“I need to at least take a peak,” said Little Boy, flicking on a small flashlight.
“Dig,” said Jenkins, offering up his back again.
Little Boy unzipped the backpack and peered in. A long minute later he looked at me and stuck up a thumb.
“Okay,” I said, jerking my head at Little Boy’s crew. They proceeded to open up the Outback and off-load the metals into Jenkins’ vehicle. Part way through, Little Boy reached over and grabbed a piece of Jenkins’ backpack.
“Whoa, dude, not too frisky,” said Jenkins.
“We’re delivering,” said Little Boy. “Your turn.”
Jenkins neither gave in, nor moved away. Instead, we all stood and watched the transfer of the little boxes. When the last left the Outback, Little Boy gave the backpack a gentle shake.
That was when Jenkins reached into the inside of his jacket and pulled out a silver revolver.
Little Boy dropped to the ground, and in less time than you can think a thought, had a gigantic, gold-plated automatic in both hands pointed at Jenkins’ head. One of Jenkins’ boys thought this was a good time to stick an elbow in the face of one of the Bosniaks, to which the Bosniak responded predictably, swatting away the elbow with his left arm and planting a right jab directly into the middle of the other guy’s face.
Things went downhill from there.
Jenkins was yelling, “I’m cool, I’m cool,” holding his hands in the air, the only intelligent response to the handheld cannon pointed at his forehead. Though he still held his nasty little gun. His colleagues were not so inclined, even to semi-surrender. At least two all-out fist fights were underway, each evenly paired, the fighters weighing in at around two hundred pounds apiece, experienced and incapable of giving ground, even in the face of sure defeat.
It was a strangely quiet affair. The occasional fist fall yielding barely a wet thud, most of the noise coming from the rustle and frenzy of sloppy physical contact. The grunt and growl of enraged men in mortal conflict.
Little Boy pulled a tiny revolver out of his jacket pocket and tossed it to me. He gestured toward Jenkins.
“If he move, shoot him,” he said.
I’d rarely touched a gun, but I’d watched plenty of TV. I knew how to look like I knew what I was doing.
Little Boy waded into the melee, and threw one ferocious punch into the first face that presented itself. When the guy dropped, he planted another on his own guy.
Two down.
The other combatants, instinctively turning toward this new threat, for some reason dropped their hands, allowing Little Boy to slam another fist into Jenkins’ boy, and in the recoil, crack the edge of his hand into the face of his own man. Thus in less than ten seconds, all the fighters were safely flat on the ground.
That was when Jenkins shot Little Boy.
A little late on the draw, I shot Jenkins, more or less.
“Fuck, man, tha’s just wrong,” said Jenkins, slapping a hand on his thigh, where my bullet had winged him, improbably, dropping him on his ass. He flailed his arms trying to get back on his feet, which he finally did, allowing him to level his gun at my face, though before he could pull the trigger Little Boy shot him again, this time in the middle of the body. He fell back in a heap, frantically holding the bullet wound. I soon saw why, as great waves of red blood flowed over his dark fingers.
“Motherfucker,” he said, looking down at his stomach. “I hate gettin’ shot.”
As last words go, I guess these were as good as any. He twitched a few times, then lay still.
Little Boy was sitting on the ground, gripping his gun in one hand and the fleshy part of his chest near his armpit in the other. Blood covered the front of his jacket, but he was grinning.
“Dope don’t
know how to shoot, that’s for sure,” he said.
I walked over to him.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked.
“Just business. Sometimes it get a little rambunctious. Any of our boys dead? Don’t want to move too much to look.”
I looked around at the carnage.
“Not that I can tell,” I said. “Jenkins is done for sure.”
“Idiot bastard. Trying to get the drop on me. What he think, I’m a tourist?”
“How bad are you?” I asked.
“Can’t be that bad if I’m talking to you, right?” he said. He felt around the wound, pulling away a hand holding a puddle of blood. “Maybe should get this plugged up, though. You think?”
I left Little Boy and stripped the backpack off Jenkins, then walked over to the only one of Jenkins’ contingent both still alive and awake. Though not entirely sure he’d stay that way. I stuck the snub nose in his face.
“Consider the transaction complete,” I said to him. “Tell Three Sticks we’d appreciate the next engagement be free of gunfire. You could lie and say we started it, but you know we didn’t. That you get to keep the product is a matter of good faith. Do you understand me?” I asked.
He nodded, tentatively. “Do you understand me?” I repeated, wiggling the gun.
He nodded more enthusiastically.
“I understand,” he said. “Jenkins was being a dumbass.” When we were all back in the minivan I told Little Boy we had to get him to a hospital.
“Not necessary,” he said. “Our guy from Hartford already on the way. He get to your house faster than they check me through ER. Better this way. This thing nothing,” he added, nodding at his own midriff.
Then he passed out. I was tempted to take advantage of that and just drive him to the nearest hospital, but one of his boys, anticipating the impulse, told me to do what Little Boy said, the threat of noncompliance implied. So I complied.
Their doctor was a half hour away when we got there, so we kept Little Boy in the van with the engine running and the heat on. His breathing was steady and firm, and as far as we could tell, the bleeding had stopped. One of his men had Little Boy’s head cradled in his lap, and occasionally brushed back his unruly hair and said something in their native language. None of them seemed all that concerned.