by Rex Burns
“That’s what I want to see in that fucker’s eyes just before I pull the trigger.”
“But we took the Advantage paycheck, Bunch. We promised we’d do a job. And Martin’s our only lead to Tony, isn’t he?”
CHAPTER 10
THAT’S WHAT KIRK told Reznick, too, a couple hours later.
“You mean some workers are moving cocaine through the company shipping system?” He stared at the tall man whose face, despite a fresh shave that left dots of crusty blood in a line along his jaw, was pale with weariness and puffy and unhealthy. In fact, if it weren’t for the man’s cold eyes, Reznick would wonder if Kirk had been on a three-day drunk. “You sure you know what the hell you’re talking about?”
“Some kind of network has been set up within the company, Mr. Reznick. How much is shipped and from what points, I’m not sure. Obviously, since it comes in and goes out of here, at least two other locations are involved.”
The plant manager ran a hand across his cropped, curly hair. Kirk had told him that the agent, whose name he’d never known, was dead. That was bad enough, but the news that really shook him was of the illegal operation in his own plant. It was big and it was professionally organized, and if the newspapers ever got wind of it … Reznick had wanted to arrest Martin and Atencio immediately. When Kirk told him there wasn’t enough evidence to do that, he wanted them fired. Kirk talked him out of that, too, on the grounds that Martin wasn’t working alone and probably wasn’t the organizer. He was at the middle of the distribution system, not at the head of it.
“But you said they know we’re onto them. You said that young man—Newman?—probably confessed he was an undercover agent.”
“They’re worried. That’s one of the reasons they killed Chris. The other is that they’re making enough money to risk killing someone. That much cocaine, assuming it’s pure, means a hell of a lot of profit.” Especially in the Denver area, where a shortage of cocaine had generated a spate of murders and gang squabbles. “Mr. Reznick, they’re not going to run from a setup like this. They killed to protect the trade as well as themselves. They’ll lay low for a while and if things stay quiet, they’ll be back. Just like flies on puke.”
“It comes in from one of our supply plants and then they distribute it to our regional wholesalers? How does the gang know what containers have the cocaine?”
“I don’t know. Nor am I certain that Martin’s is the only ring here.”
“What’s that mean?”
“There could be another just like his operating in your plant, each one ignorant of the other.” Devlin nodded toward the window that overlooked the sprawl of metal roofs and loading docks. “You ship a lot of goods and you hire a lot of people.”
“But it definitely involves more than my plant?”
“Definitely.”
A thought worked behind the man’s dark eyes, and Devlin could see the relief it brought. If the ring involved more than one Advantage Corporation site, that meant Reznick didn’t shoulder the blame all by himself. In fact, if he worked it right, he could make some take-charge points with the board of directors by clearing up the mess.
“You don’t think we should bring in the police right away, do you?”
“We could. But the ring touches a lot of jurisdictions—local, state, and federal. You would lose control of the operation.”
Reznick stared through the vertical blinds over the windows. “But what about your man’s death? Isn’t there some sort of accessory risk if we don’t tell the police about the dope ring’s involvement?”
“They’ve been told enough to avoid that. Besides, the evidence of Martin’s role in the murder isn’t admissible in court.”
“Why the hell not?”
“It was extorted by force.”
“Oh… . Oh, I see.” He eyed Kirk a bit oddly and then pushed back in his swivel chair. “I see.” Then, “What do you recommend next?”
“We put in another agent.”
“Who in God’s name would take that risk?”
Bunch and Devlin had asked that too, and had come up with an answer. “He’ll have to be paid enough.” Kirk told Reznick how much was enough and the man blinked, but he didn’t say no.
“Will he do it?”
“I’m sure he will. Don’t you have to hire people to replace Newman and Visser?”
“Yes, I guess we do.”
“It would help if a couple other vacancies could be filled at the same time. The larger number of new employees is better cover.”
“I see—yes. Yes, I can arrange that with Personnel.”
“Just make certain our man is the one who takes Visser’s place on the warehouse crew. If they want to keep the operation going, they’ll have to bring him in.”
“Why?”
“It takes more than one person to handle the canisters. And they can’t take the chance that somebody who’s not in on it will discover what’s going on.”
“He’d better be a good actor. Convince them he’s no better than they are.”
“They’ll believe that, all right.”
The name Bunch and Devlin had both come up with was Vinny Landrum. He was on the telephone by the time Devlin got back to the office.
“What’s this crap you got a job for me, Kirk? Get into something you and Homer can’t handle?”
“I need somebody who’s a natural sleaze ball, Vinny. You’re the first name I thought of.”
“Yeah. I get wet dreams about you too. So what is it and how much does it pay?”
“Come over and we’ll talk about it.”
“When I can work it in, Kirk. Maybe this afternoon, if I’m not too tied up. Maybe tomorrow morning, if I feel like it.”
Bunch, red-eyed and yawning before he started his day’s work looking after Humphries and the Japanese-American Princess, had shaken his head at the name. “I hate that asshole, Dev. I wish we’d started with him instead of Chris.”
“We didn’t.”
“I don’t like him and I don’t trust him. That bastard would sell out his own mother.”
“He never had a mother. And we’ll just have to keep him honest, won’t we? We’ll just have to do a better job for him than we did for Chris, won’t we?”
Bunch had looked at Devlin. The gray morning light from the arched window made the bags under his eyes look puffy and etched. “Newman understood it was a dangerous business.”
“No. He was told it was a dangerous business. But he didn’t understand it. He didn’t have a chance to understand it.”
“Hey, we didn’t do it to him, Dev. Martin and that scumbag Tony did it. They’re the ones, not us.”
“We—I—put him in over his head. And he went under.”
“You want to blame yourself, go ahead. But I’m not taking any part of it. And you’re a damn fool if you do.” He added, “And maybe just a little bit phony.” Bunch paused in the doorway before starting on the day’s official work. “ ‘Luxuriate in self-pity’—that what you sensitive types like to do? Does it make you feel better to think you helped kill the guy? Bullshit. The ones I’m going after are the ones who did it. I’m sure as hell not going after myself!”
No, Kirk thought, it didn’t make him feel better to think he helped kill Chris. In fact, he’d like to be able to dismiss that thought entirely. But despite Bunch’s scorn it still nagged. Sometime after Vinny called, Kirk finally reached for the telephone.
He’d wanted to give the sheriff’s officer time to bring the bad news, because he wasn’t sure he had the courage to do it. The voice that answered after a number of rings told Kirk that they knew: a teenager’s voice, it had the stuffy, cramped sound of grief. When Devlin identified himself, there was a long pause before the youth said, “Just a minute. I’ll get my dad.”
Mr. Newman’s voice wasn’t deep, but you could tell it had lost some strength. “We appreciate your calling, Mr. Kirk. Chris liked working for you. He told us that when we talked to him last … last Thursday night, it was
.”
“He was a fine young man, Mr. Newman. The police—and we—will do everything we can to catch the people who did it.”
“I appreciate that. Any—ah—information yet on how he died? All the sheriff told us was he was killed. Stabbed.”
“Yes. In his apartment.”
“Did … Was it sudden, Mr. Kirk? Did my son hurt?”
“I haven’t seen the autopsy report, Mr. Newman.” That was the most Kirk could say. “As soon as I have information, I’ll send it on to you.”
“I appreciate that.”
There were a few more words, but it was the sound more than the content that had any meaning at all—another human voice that spoke their son’s name in a way that a small bit of their grief was shared. After Devlin had hung up and sat in silence for a long time, he made a second call, this one to a florist. Then he tried to bury his thoughts in the routines of work.
Vinny Landrum came in sometime around mid-afternoon. In cold weather, he liked to wear a trench coat, apparently because that’s what detectives did on television. But on this warm afternoon he had on lime-green slacks and white patent leather belt and shoes. An orange sport shirt open at the neck showed the glitter of gold chains: power dressing Miami Vice style.
“Vinny—you give new meaning to the phrase ‘a sight for sore eyes.’ ”
“I’m surprised you know taste when you see it, Kirk. I figured yours was all in your mouth.” He looked around the office and then sat to flick something off his cuff. “Where’s that big asshole Bunchcroft?”
“Out on a job.”
“Good thing one of you is working. It’s starting to look a little seedy around here.”
“The cleaning crew’s due in tonight.”
“Yeah. Sure. You said you got business, Kirk.” Vinny glanced at his watch. “I’m pretty busy, so let’s get to it, right?”
“Process serving or skip tracing?”
“Hey, I make a living, right? It’s a hell of a lot better than you people been doing lately.” He tapped a filter cigarette from the box to his mouth and torched it with a butane lighter. “I hear about you people: no divorce cases, no debt collection. Maybe your shit don’t stink like everybody else’s or something.”
“I might have some work for you, Vinny. The kind that pays a little bit. But if you’re too tied up right now …”
“Hey, don’t get cute, Kirk. I’m here, right? Just tell me the deal.”
“Undercover.” Devlin explained as much as Landrum would need to know and a bit more than he should be trusted with: a big local company, suspected narcotics, the need for an inside plant who could be convincing in a short time.
“What’s the pay?”
Devlin told him. The lowest figure anyway.
“Shit. I make more than that skip tracing. And I’m my own boss.”
“There’s also a hazardous-duty bonus.”
He squinted at Kirk through a puff of smoke. Behind him, vague figures moved across the frosted glass panel of the door, looking for one of the other offices in the building. “What kind of hazard and what kind of bonus?”
“We had an agent in there. He was killed last night.”
“Well shit! I’m not going in—they’ll be looking for another one! How goddamn dumb do you think I am, Kirk?”
“Five new people are going to be hired at the same time. Only one’s the plant. You’ll go through the regular employment procedure for cover. There’s no way they’ll know you’re an agent.”
“I bet that’s what you told the last sucker! I’m not going through any employment procedure. You just wasted my fucking afternoon.” He mashed out his cigarette and started to rise.
Devlin told him what the bonus was. “Besides, you’ll be right at home with these slime balls, Vinny. They’ll never spot you for a plant.”
“How much did you say?”
He told him again. The shorter man chewed his lip. Overhead, the sculptress began rolling something heavy across the floor. Then he shook his head. “Not enough, Kirk.”
He upped the amount.
“Oh?” His eyes narrowed and he tried to read Kirk’s face, tried to find the balance between demanding too little and losing it all. “It’s my ass, Kirk. And I don’t notice you or Homer all that eager to do it.”
“They might know us. Besides, you have a talent for undercover work, Vinny. You’re always getting under the covers with some client or other.”
“Five hundred a week more, you son of a bitch, and just leave my personal life out of this!”
“Two hundred, Vinny. And that’s it. I can get anybody else in town for less than that.”
It was true and he knew it. The man nodded and tried to hide the greedy triumph in his eyes. “All right. What’s the deal?”
Devlin filled him in on where to apply for the job and the people he’d need to keep an eye on. “They’ll advertise tomorrow morning. Be at the employment window before seven so you’re first in line. You apply for the warehouse job.” They worked out a cover identity: Vincent Landscomb. Vinny wasn’t all that imaginative, which, given Devlin’s memory of Chris’s body, was probably a good thing. And Kirk set up the communications schedule as well as a couple of basic emergency routines. The latter brought a frown.
“You and jumbo turd Homer gonna cover me, right? I mean none of this out-to-lunch shit if I push the panic button, right?”
“You’re a valuable property now.” Devlin smiled. “For once you’re worth more alive than dead.”
“Yeah? Well, you remember that, hear? And remember this, too: You’re my contact. I mean, if that two-ton blivet is my only backup, I don’t care how much you pay. You can shove this up your nose.”
“I’m your contact,” Devlin said, and gave Vinny a quick quiz on the information they’d gone over. After Devlin listened to the white patent shoes trip lightly down the iron stairs, he turned his chair to the window and gazed across the flat roofs of the neighboring warehouses toward the mountains. A couple hundred miles beyond that silhouette of the Front Range were the San Juan Mountains and, in a high valley whose surrounding peaks dwarfed the problems and purposes of those who lived there, the ranch where Chris grew up.
CHAPTER 11
KIRK CALLED THE office answering machine when he pried himself out of bed late the next morning. Bunch’s voice told the recorder he was on his way up to Broomfield to answer a company’s inquiry about debugging their offices and telephone lines to qualify for bidding on secret government work. Sergeant Kiefer told it he had a copy of the forensics report on Chris Newman, and a muffled voice said cryptically, “I got the job. I start today.” Kirk and Associates’ newest agent was in place.
As Devlin headed for his garage, Mrs. Ottoboni, who owned the other half of the Victorian duplex, waved good morning over the low fence that separated the two backyards. Hers was a series of billowing colors—the result of a long summer’s feeding and watering and the flowers’ last efforts to draw life before the late-September sun dropped any lower. Devlin’s patch of yard was easy-care weed that merely needed an occasional trim to retain a touch of respectability. A few bare patches of dirt were the remnants of last spring’s planting fever. Only the petunias that had been a gift from his neighbor flooded a sunny corner of the small yard near the garage. Devlin thought Mrs. Ottoboni sneaked over to care for her orphaned seedlings.
“There was a man around yesterday asking about you, Mr. Kirk.”
“Oh?” Since a couple years ago, when Mrs. Ottoboni had witnessed a small fracas in his backyard and probably saved his life by calling the cops, she’d had a kind of proprietary interest in his health and welfare. Anything out of the ordinary—the milkman coming late, a new mailman on the route, someone asking questions—might be a clue for one of her neighbor’s cases. So Devlin received a constant nattering of Neighborhood Watch reports and newspaper clippings that she judged might be of help in his work. Exactly what she thought was his work, he never could be certain. When he tried to ex
plain that it was usually tedious detail wrapped in boring repetition, she only smiled knowingly and nodded agreement with a detective’s need for circumspection in discussing such topics.
“He said he was doing a background check on you for security reasons. Asked all sorts of things about you.”
That was possible. One of the many types of jobs Kirk and Associates bid was to upgrade the mechanical security devices of companies that did classified work for the government. In fact, that’s what Bunch was doing in Broomfield this morning. “Did he show any identification?”
“Oh my, yes! A whole string of cards down to here! But they didn’t mean a thing to me—I wouldn’t know a real one from a counterfeit. He asked about your habits and if you had loud parties or if a lot of strangers went in and out. What your routine was like. If you’d ever been arrested or owed money.”
“Did he ask whether you would trust me with national secrets?”
“He did! And I told him I certainly would! Not that I know any national secrets. In fact, the whole idea of a national secret seems to me a contradiction in terms, and I told him that. He didn’t think it was very funny. A very serious young man—as tall as you are, but no sense of humor.”
“Did he say he’d be back?”
“No. I watched him, though. He went down this side of the street asking questions and then back up the other. I’m not sure what the Fettapaldis told him.” The gray head bobbed at the frame house across a narrow walk from her fence. “They’re likely to say anything if it can cause harm to somebody.”
“Sounds like a routine clearance check, Mrs. Ottoboni. Thanks for telling me.” And for indirectly letting him know that Kirk and Associates was still in the running for at least one of the bids they’d placed.
It was always hard to find a parking place near the police administration building during working hours. Devlin finally had to settle for a pay lot a couple blocks away. By the time he reached the homicide offices, most of the detectives were on their way to lunch. Kiefer, shrugging into his neatly pressed sport coat, paused long enough to toss a brown envelope Kirk’s way before heading for the elevators.