Broken: A Leopold Blake Thriller

by Gordon Hopkins

  Ignoring the advice he gave himself moments ago, Lance argued with the billionaire. “I’ve seen the numbers, too, I think the numbers look pretty good compared to most other companies in the same field.”

  “You do? According to these estimate, Blake Health Care lost over a million dollars last year in bogus insurance and disability claims. I heard we were paying a woman disability because she had developed agoraphobia. She was supposedly afraid of open spaces and crowds. Do you know how we found out she was faking?”

  Lance knew the case well. “Yes, I know. She got caught on camera attending a baseball game at Yankee Stadium.”

  “You know this isn’t the only example.”

  “I know. Now, here is something you may not know. Blake Investments is still paying her disability claims.”

  “What?” Leopold was outraged.

  “I’m sorry, but we didn’t have any choice. She got a psychiatrist to say it was her first time out. She was attempting to overcome her fears. It was all very heroic. That is, until the mean old company paying her for not working accused her of fraud. According to her psychiatrist and her lawyer, she is now so traumatized and riddled with anxiety that she is afraid to even answer the phone.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Of course it’s ridiculous, but do you know how much it will cost in legal fees to prove it’s ridiculous? In the end, it’ll be cheaper just to keep paying her claims.”

  Leopold shook his head. “No. That is not acceptable. If we allow thieves to rob us, it only encourages more thieves.”

  Lance started to speak, then thought better of it and silently closed his mouth.

  Leopold sighed. “You obviously have something to say. So say it.”

  “I’m just wondering who is talking now. Is it Leopold Blake of Blake Investments or Leopold Blake, the famed criminologist?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean the criminologist is understandably outraged at thieves getting away with theft, but the other Leopold Blake should realize it’s just the cost of doing business.”

  Now it was Leopold’s turn to be quiet. He sat thinking for several moments. Then, “Okay, how about this? Let’s hire a risk consultant, someone experienced who can look at our processes and recommend some economical ways to cut down our losses.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.” Lance said. “I’ll put together a list of candidates.”

  “Thanks.”

  Since the men had reached a détente, for the time being at least, they shook hands and Leopold exited Lance’s office. Jerome was standing in the hallway, right outside the door.

  “I thought I told you to wait in the lobby.” Leopold said to his bodyguard.

  The larger man responded, “I can’t protect you with nineteen stories between us.”

  The two men entered the elevator and Jerome pressed the lobby button. “You look annoyed.”

  “I’ve just been informed there are two Leopold Blakes.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “If I’m expected to protect both of you, I’m going to need a raise.”

  “Funny.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No.” Leopold took a long breath. Then, “Ray Lance thinks my work as a criminologist is getting in the way of my business, affecting my judgment.”

  “He said that?”

  “Not in so many words, but he strongly implied it.”

  “And you think he’s right.”

  “No.”

  “Of course you do. You wouldn’t be annoyed if you thought he was wrong.”

  The elevator dinged and the two men stepped out. “You’re supposed to be my bodyguard, not my therapist.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jerome was silent after that, which annoyed Leopold even more.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wall Street was less than a mile long. It was also the most famous street in the world. The economy of the entire world rose and fell dependent on the deals made in the offices on that small stretch of concrete.

  Leopold and Jerome left the building and walked towards Leopold’s car. Jerome stopped and opened the door for his employer, but Leopold walked right past. Always prepared for his employer’s ever-shifting moods, Jerome closed the door and resumed walking by Leopold’s side.

  “I’m hungry.” Leopold said. He stopped at a street vendor and ordered a hot dog with mustard and onions. “Would you like something?”

  The bodyguard shook his head. “Those things will kill you, you know.”

  “I hired you to protect me from assassins, not my lunch.”

  Jerome’s job as Leopold’s protector meant he needed to be acutely aware of his surroundings at all times. It was a little after eleven, and some of the stockbrokers and businessmen who were the cogs in the Wall Street Machine were taking an early lunch break. Despite - or perhaps because of - Wall Street’s status as the financial capital of the world, it was also a popular tourist destination. It wasn’t unusual to see power ties and Brooks Brothers suits and the Wall Street Journal mingling with “I Heart NY” T-shirts and Lonely Planet guidebooks. Jerome’s eye was drawn to one quintessential tourist, wearing cargo shorts, a T-shirt with the Statue of Liberty on the front, sneakers, and a straw hat. He had a backpack perched on his shoulders with a canteen swinging on one side. He looked more like he had prepared for a trek through the streets of Mumbai than Manhattan. He held a map open in front of him. Despite the map, he seemed to know where he was going, walking in a straight line towards the New York Stock Exchange without hesitation.

  Jerome’s hackles rose when the man saw Leopold. He actually did a perfect double take, looking in Leopold’s direction, then turning away, then turning back again, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. After a short pause, the tourist dropped his map and marched directly towards Leopold. Jerome took his employer by the arm to lead him away. The tourist broke into a run, throwing his arms wide as if to give Leopold a bear hug. The bodyguard lifted Leopold off the ground and threw him over the hot dog cart before diving behind it himself, just as the tourist arrived and detonated the bomb in his backpack.

  The cart slammed into Leopold, Jerome, and the unsuspecting hot dog vendor, but protected all three men from the brunt of the explosion. The cart split apart, spraying the men with hot dog water (the vilest form of water known to man) and obliterated bits of wiener.

  “Are you all right?” Jerome asked.

  “I think so.” Leopold answered.

  The hot dog vendor whipped off his paper hat, which was now smoldering. “I’m all right, too. Not that anyone asked.”

  Leopold ignored the irate man. “It looks like you were wrong.”

  “About?” Jerome asked

  “You said these things would kill me. It looks like they just saved my life.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Leopold worked his jaw, opening and closing his mouth but no sound came out.

  A nice change of pace, Mary thought rather unkindly.

  In addition to destroying the hot dog cart, the bomb blew out several street-level windows and set a car on fire but, thankfully, no one was seriously hurt. Police had taken over the lobby of an office building across the street and turned it into a command post. Leopold was being checked over by a paramedic. “I’m fine,” he said, but the paramedic had insisted. So had Jerome.

  “How do you feel?” Mary asked.

  “I told you, I’m fine.” Leopold opened and closed his mouth again. “I think my ears popped.”

  A second medic was looking over Jerome. “They should both be fine. Just a few scrapes.”

  Jerome stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it. “I still have that ringing in my ears, but it’s fainter now.”

  The paramedic was a small man, barely five-five. He had to reach over his head to slap Jerome’s hand away. “Don’t do that,” he snapped. “The ringing should be gone shortly, but you should see a doctor right away. I don’t think your eardru
ms were perforated, but you need to see a doctor to be sure.”

  As soon as the medics had withdrawn, Mary sat down next to Leopold. “Who knew you were going to be here today?”

  “No one.”

  “How can that be? Didn’t you have a meeting today? The man you were meeting with must have known.”

  “I told Ray Lance I wanted to meet with him today, but I wasn’t sure when I would be available. He said he would be in his office all day so I could drop by whenever. So you see, even I didn’t know when I was going to be here.”

  “But this man targeted you.”

  “Actually,” Jerome said. “I’m not sure that’s true.”

  Mary tried not to show her irritation. “But you said he made straight for Leopold.”

  “Not at first.” Jerome raised a finger to his ear but stopped when the paramedic cleared his throat loudly. “At first, it looked like he was heading towards Broad Street.”

  “You mean the New York Stock Exchange,” Mary said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. At least, until he saw Leopold. The thing is, he obviously recognized Leopold, but he seemed surprised to see him. That’s when he changed direction.”

  Leopold said, “I think Jerome is right. This man originally intended to blow himself up in front of the Stock Exchange. He couldn’t get inside, so blowing himself up outside was some sort of symbolic gesture against the evils of capitalism or something like that.”

  Mary finished for him. “Until he saw one of the richest men in the country wandering around the street like an idiot and decided blowing you up would be even better.”

  “I wasn’t wandering around like an idiot.” Leopold turned to Jerome for confirmation. “Now, was I?”

  After a moment’s consideration, Jerome answered, “I think it would be imprudent to call my employer an idiot.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  Mary wasn’t convinced. “Does the name Waris Khan mean anything to you?”

  “No. Should it?”

  “It’s the name of the man with the bomb in his backpack.”

  “Not really a tourist, I take it, despite how he was dressed?”

  “New York City, born and raised.”

  “How did you get an ID this quick?”

  “Fingerprints.” Mary explained. “We found his, uh, left hand in the street about half a block away.”

  “Well, I gotta …”

  “Don’t.”

  “Hand it to you.”

  “One person has already tried to kill you today.” Mary warned. “Do you want to make it two?”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.”

  “Next time, try harder.”

  “So what is our next move?”

  Mary rolled her eyes extravagantly. “What’s this ‘our’ shit? You aren’t investigating this crime. You’re the victim. You getting involved in the investigation is beyond inappropriate. I’m going to talk with Waris Khan’s family. I don’t care what you do as long as you stay away from me. You should probably get your ears checked.”

  Mary got up and stepped outside. She headed towards her car, but stopped in the middle of the street and turned around abruptly. Leopold and Jerome had followed her. “What did I just say to you?”

  Leopold shrugged. “Don’t know. I think I need to get my ears checked.”

  Jerome added, “Me too.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  There was no point in trying to keep Leopold out of the investigation. He had consulted in his criminologist capacity for both the NYPD and FBI. He had higher-up contacts who would do just about anything to keep him happy. One phone call is all it would take to get himself assigned to the case. Mary could make the case that it was inappropriate for Leopold, as the victim of the crime, to be involved, but it would be an uphill battle to keep him out, and Mary decided it probably wasn’t worth the effort. The best Mary could do was keep him close and keep an eye on him.

  The Khan family lived in a small, rented house on Staten Island, the greenest of New York City’s boroughs. Raheem Khan sat on a sofa, clenching and unclenching his fists, his eyes red from crying. His wife, Iris Khan (formerly Iris Rosenblatt), came into the room carrying a tray with cups and a pot of tea. She sat down next to her husband and began dutifully pouring the tea. Her eyes were also red.

  Mary took a chair facing the distraught parents. “When was the last time you saw your son?”

  “Four weeks ago, exactly,” Mr. Kahn said. “We had a fight, and he stormed out in the middle of the night. He hasn’t been home or to work since.”

  “Where was his work?”

  “We own a restaurant near the ferry terminal. He graduated high school last year. I wanted him to go to college, but he wanted to take a year off. I insisted that, if he wasn’t in school, he worked.”

  Mrs. Khan handed Mary a cup of tea. “Thank you. Is that what the fight was about?”

  “No.” Mr. Khan stood up and went to a nearby desk. He rummaged around in a drawer for a moment, then returned to his spot, handing a sheet of paper to Mary. “This is. I found it in his bedroom.”

  The printing on the paper was just a bunch of squiggles and dots as far as Mary was concerned. Leopold leaned over her shoulder and took a look. “It’s in Urdu.”

  Mrs. Khan stood up and handed tea to Leopold and Jerome. Mary had decided not to introduce them to Waris Khan’s parents. They both stood next to a cherrywood bookcase, and Leopold took note of the contents - books by Bertrand Russell, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Ayan Hirsi Ali, among others. All well-known atheists.

  Mary asked, “Can you tell me what this is?”

  Mrs. Khan sat back down next to her husband and poured two more cups of tea. Having run out of people to serve tea, she didn’t know what else to do with her hands and fidgeted with them in her lap. “It’s called ‘The Uprising.’ It’s a newsletter.”

  Mr. Khan snorted. “Newsletter? Bah! It’s the rantings of a bunch of kids with no clue how the real world works.”

  “But what is it about, exactly?” Mary asked.

  Mrs. Khan explained in a calm voice, “It’s mostly about the oppression of the Muslim minority in India and demanding more autonomy. Things like that.”

  “Just a bunch of stupid kids looking for something to be outraged about.” Mr. Khan was getting more and more upset. He gripped the arm of the sofa so hard his fingernails dug into the fabric. Do you know what happens when you give Indian Muslims control of their government? It’s called Pakistan. Have you ever been there, Sergeant?”

  Mary shook her head. “No.”

  “It’s a shithole.”

  Mrs. Khan put a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Raheem, please calm down.”

  Mr. Khan took a deep breath and lowered his head. “They did this. The people who wrote that trash. They turned my son into a monster.”

  Mary asked, “Did your son actually know the people who wrote this or was he just a reader?”

  “He knew them all right. He’d been acting strange for a few weeks before our big fight.”

  “Strange how?”

  “Staying out late. Missing work. Missing meals. The, one day, he asked me why I had abandoned my faith.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  Mr. Khan nodded towards his wife. “I’m a Muslim who married a Jew. What do you think?”

  Leopold said, “You disapproved of your son’s religion.”

  “I taught my son about Islam. I also made sure he knew about Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. Then I encouraged him to make up his own mind. The problem is, he didn’t make up his own mind. He was being brainwashed by those bastards.”

  “And you’re sure it was the people who produced this newsletter that your son was spending time with?” Mary asked.

  “Who else could it be?”

  “Didn’t it occur to you that your son might have a girlfriend?”

  “He didn’t have a girlfriend.”

  Mrs. Khan cleared h
er throat. “Actually, he did.”

  Mr. Khan gave his wife a shocked look. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?” When she didn’t answer, his face darkened. “You don’t think he killed himself over a woman?”

  “May we take a look at your son’s room?” Mary asked.

  Mr. Khan continued to glare at his wife without speaking. Mrs. Khan said, “Yes, of course. We haven’t touched it since he left.”

  Mary headed to the bedroom, and Leopold followed. He stopped, looked back and asked, “Does the name Leopold Blake mean anything to you?”

  Husband and wife both shook their heads.

  Waris Khan’s bedroom was small, with a single bed, a wobbly desk, and a tiny closet. Searching it didn’t take long. Jerome stood outside. The room was barely big enough for two.

  Mary found some more newsletters hidden under the mattress. She couldn’t read them, but she flipped through them, pulled out one page and showed it to Leopold. “Still think you weren’t targeted?”

  Leopold’s face was clearly visible on the page. There were pictures of several other men that Leopold’s recognized. All wealthy, none worth less than one hundred million. “All this proves is that he knew what I looked like.”

  There was one item they expected to find, but didn’t. Mary stuck her head out. “Did your son have a computer?”

  In the living room, Mrs. Khan was clearing up the dishes. “It’s on his desk. Go ahead and take it.”

  “It’s not here.”

  Mr. Khan stood up. “That’s impossible. It must be there. Waris didn’t take it when he left. I wouldn’t let him.”

  Mary shook her head. “It’s not here. Could he have come back for it?”

  “You don’t understand. I saw the computer today. This morning.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Leopold found an empty interview room at One Police Plaza and co-opted it as an ersatz personal office. He spent several minutes with his cell phone pressed to his ear not talking. Jerome didn’t ask what he was doing. Leopold would tell him when he was good and ready.

  Suddenly, Leopold said, “Thanks.” into the phone, clicked it off, and dropped it into his jacket pocket. “That was a translator who works for me in international banking. I took a photo of that newsletter with my picture and sent it to him.”