Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 10/01/12

by Dell Magazines

  "Scared? Max?"

  "Call it overcautious, then."

  "All right," Dottie said, calling them to order. "This is a teaser, just a taste. It indicates good faith. It's not the real deal." She meant the diagram.

  "And the hundred grand Carmody brought to the meet was good faith on the other end," Dugan said.

  "What went wrong?" Jean asked.

  "The guy knew Carmody?" Kinsella suggested.

  "Max set it up," I said.

  "You've got it back to front," Dottie said to me. "Carmody was running Max." She put a funny spin on the verb.

  "Running?"

  "Max was working out of a storefront," Kinsella told me. "Mom-and-pop security operation run by an ex-cop named Benziger. Not a bad Joe, just a fall guy."

  "Max was low-rent," I said. "He was hungry, he wanted back in the game."

  "Max was already back in the game," Dottie said. "Carmody was trawling him. Guy on his uppers, makes it look like he'd step over a dollar to pick up a dime. Bent cop, has a grudge or two to settle. You see where I'm going with this, Jack?"

  "Who was Carmody?" I asked.

  Their eyes slid around, each of them trying to decide how much to tell me, or what any of them knew. I realized they were chasing smoke.

  Kinsella pulled a face. "Nuts to this," he muttered. He turned to me. "Carmody was covert ops, off-the-shelf, under the radar. He recruited Max for this."

  "What was this?"

  "Oh, what the hell," Kinsella said. "Control Dynamics."

  Jean Weinstock smiled in spite of herself, relieved the cat was out of the bag. "Might as well tell him the rest."

  So they did. Or as much as they trusted me with.

  "You think somebody went shopping," I said.

  Jean nodded.

  "And they shopped it to Max."

  She nodded again.

  "Not to buy, but to sell."

  She nodded a third time.

  "Carmody posed as the buyer."

  "Right on the money, Jack," Jean said.

  "But there was a genuine buyer," I said, looking at Dottie.

  "In the woodwork."

  Her turn to nod.

  "And they're still out there," I said.

  "And the product," Dottie said. "Or its design protocols."

  Same difference, seemed to me.

  "What do you want me to do?" I asked her. I knew there was a punchline.

  "Just like Max said," she told me. "Make the meet."

  "Easier said than done."

  "Not if there's a pattern."

  Crazy Eights, I thought.

  Dottie looked around the room. "Walk it through," she said. "How many people knew there was going to be a meeting, and which of them knew where it was supposed to happen?"

  "Three, to the first question," Kinsella said. "Max, Carmody, and the leaker from Control Dynamics." He ticked them off on his fingers. "Four, if you count Jack, but he didn't bet into the game."

  "Anybody?" Dottie asked them.

  "Four, even if you leave Jack out of the mix," Jean said. "Carmody was a beard, but figure in the unknown factor, somebody who wanted to take him out of the bidding."

  "Okay," Kinsella said. "Who knew about Fenway?"

  "The leaker," Jean said.

  "And the shooter," Dugan pointed out.

  "What about Max?" Dottie asked Jack.

  He shook his head. "Carmody said he was waiting for a phone call," he told them. "They wanted to use me as a cutout. Max didn't know where the drop was planned, either."

  "So, what's he scared of?" Jean asked.

  "Incoming," Jack said.

  "I don't buy it," the lieutenant said. "Max Quinn's got an attitude that could scale fish. He knows to watch his back."

  "What, then?" Jean asked.

  "Losing the collar, maybe," Dugan said.

  The others looked at him.

  "Jack makes the drop, there's no issue, but Jack turns them down, and Carmody makes the drop anyway because he didn't want to let his mark off the hook," Dugan said. "Problem being, like Kinsella says, maybe whoever it was knew him by sight."

  "They can't let Carmody walk away," Jean said.

  "Max isn't laying low because his nerves have gone bad," Dugan said. "He doesn't want to queer the play. He needs a guy like Jack, because Jack's not a threat. No offense."

  "None taken," Jack said.

  "Meaning the guy can't smell cop," Jean's lieutenant said.

  Dugan nodded.

  "How do we get next to him, then?" Jean asked.

  "We sweat Control Dynamics," Kinsella said.

  "How?" the lieutenant asked him.

  "Benziger said Max was his point man. No contact name, no e-mails. But the leaker's handwriting has to be all over this project." Kinsella tapped the diagram. "Who has responsibility for it, who's the lead engineer, who's on the design team?"

  "I'll take that one," Dottie said.

  "Excuse me," Jean said, "but if you go in there with a FISA warrant and the full-court press, our guy's going to ground."

  Dottie smiled. "You're invited," she said.

  Which was all Jean wanted. Dottie DiNapoli might be a pro, but Jean was looking for the confirmed kill.

  Which left me, basically, with my thumb up my ass. The cops had invited me out, except as a diversion.

  I was surprised to get a call from Johnny Vig. Same place, he said. I went to the North End. I knew he'd find me.

  And he did.

  "You're going to step on your dick, Jack," he said, without any foreplay.

  "I should be so lucky," I told him.

  "No joke," he said. "A guy's mobbed up, that's one thing."

  "What are you trying to tell me?"

  "I'm giving you this one for free," he said.

  Nothing in Johnny's world came without a price, and I'd owe him one later.

  "We had a conversation about a guy," he said.

  I nodded. He meant Evans Carmody.

  "You know how things kind of—" He paused. "—interleave?"

  I thought that was a good word for it.

  "Mutual friend," he said. "Guy tried to take me down, on a shaky bust, but the guy's straight."

  Who else but Max Quinn? I waited for Johnny to fill me in.

  "There's another guy," Johnny said.

  I said nothing.

  Johnny pretended to be reluctant, like I was pulling teeth to get the information. "Max worked with him at the States," he said, meaning the State Police.

  I waited him out.

  "Benziger," Johnny said. "He's private security, now. Max is on his payroll."

  There was more, I knew.

  "Word is, Benziger's into the loan sharks for a few hundred large."

  "That might present a problem," I said.

  "Not mine," Johnny said. "It's not my money."

  "Whose is it?"

  "Benziger went to the Winter Hill boys."

  Not just a problem, I thought. A death sentence, he didn't pay off the weekly interest.

  "You see where I'm going," Johnny said.

  I did.

  "Benziger's dirty. Max Quinn is stand-up."

  "Even though he tried to fit you with a frame?"

  Johnny smiled. "Can't do the time, don't do the crime," he said.

  Meaning he'd been guilty, but Max couldn't pin it on him.

  "Point being, Benziger and Max Quinn, I don't see it."

  I didn't either.

  "Lie down with a dog, you get up with fleas," Johnny said.

  The first surprise was that Control Dynamics ran their own internal security, which shouldn't have been a surprise at all, but it raised a question in Jean's mind. Why had Benziger thought he could land a contract with them? The next thing was that their security chief didn't stonewall. He knew better.

  "Oscar Ruth," he said, shaking hands. "Most people call me Babe." He was ex-military, career, twenty years an MP. White sidewall, high and tight, his shave so close his skin was shiny.

  "You k
now an ex-cop named Max Quinn?" Dottie asked him.

  He nodded.

  "What's your relationship?"

  He tipped his head to one side, smiling. For a guy who looked like he could bend nickels with his teeth, he had a charming, disingenuous smile. Jean figured he'd gotten a lot of mileage out if it. "I asked Max for a favor," he said.

  "Personal?" Dottie asked.

  He shook his head. "Professional. I wanted him to see if he could compromise any of our personnel." He held up a hand, forestalling the next question. "We have bids out with Defense, law enforcement, Homeland Security. We work with the national labs in New Mexico, Los Alamos and Sandia, which means access to classified material. We need to be watertight."

  "Wouldn't the FBI have done clearance investigations?"

  "That's correct," he said.

  "What was your issue?"

  "Primarily, we do applied research," he said. "Give us a problem, we come up with an answer. Sometimes there are a range of answers, or even an accidental answer to a question that was never asked. The guys who work here, in this shop, what we call the Skunk Works, are just computer geeks."

  "In other words, they're not cleared for classified jobs."

  "Need to Know," Babe Ruth said.

  "Complex polycarbonate structures," Jean said. She stepped forward and handed him the file folder.

  He didn't bother to open it.

  "You gave this to Max, to use as bait," she said. "Not the whole nine yards, just a taste of what might come."

  "Calculated risk," he said.

  "To see if somebody in your outfit would sell it."

  "Three mils thick, conforms to the wearer. Stronger than Kevlar," he said. "You take a hit from a 7.62 or a 5.56, you might get a bad bruise or a broken rib, but it won't penetrate. It affords real protection from shrapnel, IEDs. If you had the design, you could reverse-engineer it, find the weak points."

  "Max might have been your weak point," Jean said. "He went on a fishing expedition."

  "You can't fish with an empty hook," Babe said to her.

  Ted Benziger had an easy smile and a ready handshake. "What can I do for you, Jack?" he asked.

  "I'm trying to get a line on Max Quinn," I said.

  "What's he to you?"

  "We go back."

  "Me and Max go back too," he said. "Funny your name never came up."

  It was late afternoon, but still light. Daylight Savings didn't end for another month. We were outside in the parking lot of the mini-mall where Benziger rented office space. He was loading some boxes of files into the back of an SUV.

  "Not to be rude," he said, again with the easy smile. "You can see where I might be looking out for a friend."

  "I wouldn't call Max a friend," I said.

  "There's a lot of that going around."

  "It's about keeping faith."

  "There's the thing," he said, sadly. "You think you know somebody, you'd trust them with your children's lives. And then they screw your wife on you, or clean out the cash drawer."

  I nodded. Benziger was talking too much. I wondered why he was cleaning out his office. A man with nothing to hide. He was eager to seem transparent.

  "I'm cool with Max," he said. "Maybe you get older, if not necessarily wiser, you lower your expectations."

  There it was a second time. Saying more than he needed to, but reluctantly. I was beginning to smell a rat.

  "Max, he plays it close. Too close for comfort." Benziger shrugged. "Hard to trust a guy, he won't trust you in return."

  "You have to earn trust," I said.

  "Ain't it the truth?"

  "Max set me up," I said. "He asked me to make a drop. The guy who made the drop got killed."

  Benziger nodded. "Out back of Fenway," he said.

  There was no reason Benziger wouldn't know this. It was in the police blotter, which was reported in the local papers.

  "Must have felt wrong to you, you turned it down," he said.

  "I might have felt the same."

  "A hundred thousand in cash, a guy I'd never met, a place I didn't choose?"

  "Why did the other guy make the meet?"

  "You tell me," I said. "Somebody was looking to score."

  "Who, and what?"

  "Like you say, that's the thing. Both guys who made the meet were hungry. One of them was looking for a buy. The other guy was looking for a sale."

  "Guy made a bad bargain."

  "Maybe he was too trusting," I said.

  "He made the wrong call," Benziger said.

  "Speaking of making the wrong call, I hear you're into the Winter Hill crew for a couple of hundred K," I said. "A hundred large would cover the vig."

  Jesus, he was fast. I was behind the curve, and he had the gun out in less than a thought.

  "Sometimes a plain, dumb bastard is just too smart for his own good, Jack," he said. "You step in shit, you don't come out smelling like a rose."

  The muzzle of the Glock 40 looked as big as the entrance to the Sumner Tunnel.

  "This is where we part company, Jack," Benziger said.

  Dottie and Jean were just pulling into the parking lot when they saw Benziger draw his gun on Jack.

  "This is bad," Jean said.

  "It ain't good," Dottie said, but she didn't step on the gas or brake hard. She turned off to the right, fluid and easy, not attracting Benziger's unwelcome attention, and eased the unmarked car into a vacant space, keeping her eyes front. "What's the background?" she asked Jean.

  She meant civilians, the chance of collateral damage. Jean shook her head. "They're in the clear," she said.

  "Benziger know you?"

  Jean nodded.

  "You circle around in back of him," Dottie said, "I'll take the front."

  Jean didn't ask about rules of engagement.

  They got out of the vehicle. Dottie kept her back turned. They were two rows of cars away. Jean glanced over. "We've got an unknown factor," she said, quietly.

  "More than one," Dottie said.

  "No," Jean said. "We're going long."

  Dottie looked at her across the roof of the car.

  Jean inclined her head, the barest movement. "Move to your left," she said. "Out of the field of fire."

  Dottie didn't question it.

  The unknown factor was Max Quinn.

  One of the sounds you never forget is the slide on a pump gun being racked, as the round seats. Chick-chock. It might be the last sound you ever hear. I hoped it wasn't.

  Benziger didn't break eye contact with me. "You're late to the party, Max," he said.

  "I just came to help clean up," Max said. He was behind me and to the right.

  "I can drop Jack," Benziger said, still not looking at Max. "Wouldn't take but a moment's thought."

  "I could give a rat's ass about Jack," Max said. "I'm here for you, Teddy."

  "We can work this out," Benziger said.

  "In your dreams," Max said.

  My scalp was prickling, and sweat was breaking out along my spine, but I knew better than to speak.

  "Put the gun down," Max said.

  "No can do," Benziger said.

  "You got me on one side, and two cops coming up on you from behind," Max said.

  "I'm dead either way, then," Benziger said.

  "You got that right," Max said. "Difference is, O'Donnell and the Winter Hill mob will part you out like a used car, tires and rims. I'll kill you clean, Teddy, that's what you want."

  Weinstock and Dottie DiNapoli had moved into position, but I wasn't comforted. If they shot Benziger, the odds were that a stray round or a through-and-through would clip me.

  "Nuts to that," Benziger said. He bent down and put the Glock on the ground and straightened up again, hands behind his head. Jean Weinstock came up, pulled his hands down, and cuffed him.

  "You okay?" Dottie asked me, holstering her gun.

  I looked around at Max. "Thanks," I told him.

  He cradled the shotgun at port arms. "Blow me," he
said.

  A man of few words, as always.

  "Who was he working for?" Jean's lieutenant asked her.

  "Max? I don't know. DiNapoli's not talking."

  "I don't imagine you'd get much out of Frank Dugan, either. Good bust?"

  "Benziger killed Carmody, that's what you mean," she said.

  "Close the case, then, Detective."

  She hesitated.

  "I served two tours in Vietnam, the late 1960s," he said. "You know what I learned, aside from ducking incoming?"

  Jean waited him out.

  "Never trust a spook," he said. "Even if they're dead."

  "It was a sting," Tony said to me.

  "I was looking through the wrong end of the telescope."

  "Max Quinn played you for a sucker."

  I shrugged. "I knew that going in," I said.

  "You let it happen," my brother said.

  "All right, I should have seen it coming," I said, a little irritated. "Cut me some slack."

  "You're missing the forest for the trees, Jack," he said.

  "What, that Max Quinn has it in for me?"

  "No, that Benziger was in it for the money."

  "Everybody's got a price."

  "You don't."

  "That's flattering," I said.

  "You wouldn't betray a friend, or a promise."

  "It's a weakness."

  "There never was a secret buyer," Tony said. "No crazed Arab mullahs, no jihad, no terrorist outfit like al-Qaeda or the Iranians. It wasn't going to happen."

  I looked out at the kids, practicing on the ice.

  "Maybe not this time," I said.

  Copyright © 2012 David Edgerley Gates

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