by Tom Fowler
“What the hell did you get into now?” Gonzalez said.
“I didn’t do it.”
“What?”
“My usual response to the police,” I said.
“So you didn’t pay Alberto Esposito a visit last night?” Gonzalez said.
“Would denying it help?”
“Not really.”
“What do you want, Gonzalez?”
“I think we should talk.”
“We’re already talking.”
“In person, I mean,” he said.
“Let me guess,” I said. “This isn’t the kind of invitation I should decline.”
“You got it.”
“Then I’d love to,” I said, with as much sincerity as I could summon.
“You know where the Denny’s in Perry Hall is?”
I frowned. Denny’s? “Unfortunately, yes.”
“See you in forty-five minutes.”
Before I could answer, Gonzalez hung up.
“I’d be delighted,” I said to the empty line.
Forty-eight minutes later, I squeezed the Caprice into one of the few remaining parking spots in the Denny’s lot. The popularity of Denny’s always mystified me. I understood its appeal at two AM after a night of drinking beer, but its allure stopped there. When I walked into the restaurant, Gonzalez nodded at me from the first booth on the left. It was a bit past the claw machine and a few booths from the restrooms.
Elegance.
Gonzalez possessed a tan Hispanic skin tone and dark hair worn short. A couple dots of gray in his beard yet none in his hair made his age tough to guess, but looking at his face, I went with late thirties. Gonzalez stood a shade under six feet and kept himself in shape, making his choice of restaurant all the more confusing. No sooner did I slide into the booth than a waitress appeared. All things considered, I would have rather sat across from her. I ordered coffee and skimmed the menu as I waited for Gonzalez to talk.
He didn’t seem to be in a hurry. I noticed this restraint before with criminals. We worked together twice previously but enjoyed only limited interactions in person. Another few minutes would eclipse all the time spent with Gonzalez before. He sipped his coffee and alternated between looking at me and glancing around the restaurant. The waitress returned with my coffee. Gonzalez ordered the traditional Grand Slam breakfast. I ordered a western omelet with an English muffin and hoped the dish wasn’t too difficult for a place like this. Maybe I should have opted for a plate of bacon and home fries. “I asked around about you,” Gonzalez said.
“Good for you,” I said. “I’m not surprised.”
“Talked to a Captain Sharpe. He said you’re a pain in the ass and you don’t care about doing things the right way.”
“I prefer to think of it as cutting down on paperwork,” I said. “Save the trees.”
“He also said you do good work and you get results.”
“At least he got something right.”
Gonzalez smirked. “They might cut corners in the city, but we try to do things the right way out here.”
“Is breakfast at Denny’s in your field manual?”
“I’m a humble public servant,” said Gonzalez.
Before I could fire off a witty retort, the waitress returned with our food. She also freshened our coffees before walking away. My omelet was a nice shade of yellow, with some small scorch marks at the edges, just like I liked it. The muffin could have used another minute in the toaster but overall, I couldn’t complain. I put butter and jelly on the muffin and cut my omelet as Gonzalez tore into his bacon.
“I take it you have people watching Esposito?” I kept my voice low.
“What makes you think that?” he said.
“The alternative is you have someone watching me. If you do, I can only hope she’s hot.”
My comment got Gonzalez to smile. “Yeah, we have people on Esposito. We know who he used to work for.”
“You watch everyone who used to work for a gangster?”
“What if we do?”
I let his question linger as I ate some of my omelet and drank some coffee. The coffee was predictably mediocre, but the omelet tasted as good as it looked. I doubted I would do a lot of dining at Denny’s, but it was good to know they had improved.
“He used to work for Tony Rizzo,” Gonzalez said.
“I’m aware,” I said.
“Then you also know he left town for a few years and recently came back.”
“I do.”
“Any theories?”
“I don’t need to theorize,” I said. “Esposito told me what he wanted.”
Gonzalez frowned and put his fork down. “He did?”
“Yes.”
“Why would he come to you?”
“Because I’ve known Tony Rizzo most of my life. He remembered me.”
Gonzalez fell silent and sipped his coffee. His forehead showed deep frown lines. I never noticed before. Definitely late thirties.
“What did he tell you he was after?”
“He wants Tony’s job,” I said.
“He wants to run the Baltimore mob?”
“He might want the restaurant, too. It’s a nice place.”
“Did he say anything about the county?” Gonzalez said.
“Not really,” I said. “But considering you don’t really have anyone in charge out here, he might have an eye on consolidation. Or he might make a power grab in the county first, so he can bring more to bear against Tony.”
“How did you factor into all of this?”
I told Gonzalez about Esposito visiting me to ask about writing ransomware. To his credit, and to my surprise, he knew what it was. He also didn’t ask me if I agreed to do it, which I liked.
After a couple moments of eating, Gonzalez said, “You’ve told me all you know?”
“It’s more than you knew,” I pointed out.
“We’re watching his house.”
“But not listening.”
“We didn’t get a warrant for his phones.”
“Sergeant, I’m disappointed. You can get directional microphones in a number of places, including Amazon.”
“I told you. We try to do things right in the county.”
“To the point you need people like me who do things the wrong way to fill in the gaps for you,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like a good method.”
The waitress came back and asked if we needed anything else. We did not. She dropped off the check and walked away again. I could hear the bustle of people in the lobby waiting for a table.
“We’ll get him,” Gonzalez said, “and we’ll do it the right way.”
“Nice to hear,” I said. “I’m looking at him, too, and I’m going to try and bring him down. If it’s in the county, I’ll give you a call.”
“So I can arrest him.”
“Exactly. For arresting someone like Esposito, you’ll probably get a commendation. I wonder if your principles about doing things the right way would allow you to accept it.” Gonzalez reminded me a lot of Rich. Wherever I went, I encountered a cop who loved to quote the rulebook.
“Sharpe was right,” Gonzalez said. “You are a pain in the ass.”
“I probably am,” I said. “Just remember to thank me in your acceptance speech.”
Gonzalez shook his head. He looked at the check. “You got it?”
“Is this also part of doing things the right way?”
“It’s part of being a humble public servant.”
“I’m not sure which part is worse,” I said.
When I got home, Gloria was finishing a breakfast she made herself. I acknowledged the rarity of the event, while being thankful my house wasn’t reduced to ash. Judging by the smells in the kitchen and the crumbs on her plate, she made turkey bacon and toast. I would need to check the toaster and microwave for damage later.
I went to my office and got back to work while Gloria headed upstairs. A few minutes later, she came down. I looked for any message from Chris Selle
rs and again found none. “Already hard at work,” Gloria said from the doorway. She wore capris and a Polo hoodie. Her overnight bag was slung over her shoulder.
“Heading home?” I said.
“You look like you need to work,” she said, “and I have some things I need to do.” Gloria came to my desk and planted a lingering kiss on me. “I’m sure we’ll talk later.”
“I’m sure we will.”
A minute later, jet fuel ignited near my house and Gloria’s rocket roared to life. I heard her drive away and pondered my next move in this case. My cell phone rang. It was Rich.
“I was deep in thought,” I said.
“Then my interruption is no loss,” he said.
“You wound me, dear cousin.”
“We need to talk,” said Rich.
“This is the second time I’ve heard those words from a cop today.”
“Maybe something will stick this time.”
“Don’t count on it,” I said.
“I’m serious.”
“The last guy who said we needed to talk took me to breakfast. I’m holding out for lunch from you.”
“Fine,” said Rich, “how about The Abbey at one o’clock?”
“How can I say no to The Abbey?”
“See you at one,” Rich said, and then he hung up.
I went back to work, such as it was. When I checked to see if anyone changed or downloaded Chris Sellers’ code, I found it removed. I spent a few minutes searching other popular coding sites and repositories but couldn’t find a trace of it anywhere. Chris had minimized his already tiny online footprint. If it got any smaller, it wouldn’t even leave a dent in the sand.
Before Chris went all the way underground, I needed to find him. He removed himself from the coding community. Social media was a non-starter. Anna Blair showed no recent online activity. At this point, I needed to find a straw I could grasp. Then I remembered Bobbi Lane. Besides her pretty face and toned runner’s physique, I recalled she and Chris worked for the same company. Maybe she could reach out to him on my behalf. I called her to run my idea past her.
“I still haven’t heard from Chris,” she said after we exchanged pleasantries.
“I’m not surprised,” I said. I told her about contacting Chris online and the disastrous meeting at Starbucks.
“Can I help you find him?” Bobbi said.
“I hope so,” I said. “Is his company email address still active?”
“Maybe. You want me to email him and ask him to meet you?”
“No. Not yet, at least. I only want you to contact him because you’re concerned. If he answers, we go from there.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll email him right now.”
“Good. Thanks. Let me know if you hear anything.”
“I will.” She paused for a second. Before I could bid her adieu, Bobbi said, “Do you want to go running tomorrow?”
I couldn’t turn down an invitation like this. “Sure,” I said. “Text me later, and we’ll work out the details.”
She said she would, and we both hung up. I used a lifeline. Now I hoped it paid off.
I got to The Abbey a little after one. The smell of burgers and beer welcomed me as I walked through the door. Several people sat at the bar, and about half the tables were full. Even with the more recent Fells Point location, the original Abbey in Federal Hill remained popular. The TV showed some sports-talk show on ESPN. I spied Rich in back near the bathrooms. He wasn’t alone; Detective Paul King sat across from him and turned as I approached. An iced tea sweated in a tall glass in front of Rich, and King nursed a bottle of imported beer.
“Drinking on the job?” I said as I pulled out a chair beside Rich. It wouldn’t feel as much like an interrogation if I didn’t sit across from him.
“It’s my day off,” King said.
“And Rich dragged you out here anyway?” Rich rolled his eyes.
“It’s The Abbey,” said King. “Not much dragging required.”
A waiter came to take our orders. I got a Santa Fe burger with fries and an Ommegang Abbey Ale. Rich and King both ordered boring basic burgers without even looking at the custom menu and its random exotic meats. One day, I would try the camel burger. The waiter left and returned after a minute with my beer. I took a sip. It was flavorful and a little hoppy. “OK, I’ve sipped some beer,” I said. “Let the lecture begin.”
“No lecture,” Rich said, “just words of caution.”
“Which you can’t deliver without help?”
“You know about the task force I was on,” King said. I nodded. “I did some asking around about Esposito.”
“And?”
“He’s a son of a bitch.”
“I’m glad you brought him,” I said to Rich. “This kind of piercing insight is hard to come by.”
“Make your fucking jokes,” King said. “It’ll be real funny when you run into Esposito again.”
“So what do you know besides the son of a bitch part?”
“He likes to take people.”
“You mean kidnap them,” I said.
“In a way,” King said. “No ransom or anything. He just takes people who piss him off.”
“And then what?”
“Then they usually die.”
“Does he torture them?” Rich said.
“Don’t know,” said King, “but I doubt he’s giving them a spa treatment.” He looked at me. “You refused him. I’m glad you did, but it tweaked him a little. Then you beat up his goons and went to his house to piss him off. You’re on his radar now. You might want to be careful.”
I thought about the warning. I had already been taken once, in Hong Kong, and spent nineteen days as a guest of the Chinese penal system. It was an experience I didn’t want to repeat or relive, and tightness spread across my chest at the memory of it. “OK,” I said, “I’ll watch my back.”
“And stop trying to piss him off,” King said.
The waiter brought our burgers and fries. He returned with fresh beers for King and me and another iced tea for Rich. The Santa Fe burger was its usual delicious, spicy self. King’s revelation about Esposito dampened the mood, however. Esposito was a prick, and I enjoyed tweaking him, but I would need to take him seriously. It sounded like he was prone to a viciousness Tony lacked. Maybe it was why Tony sent him away. Regardless, I would need to be vigilant.
Chapter 10
I got home and pondered how I could find Chris Sellers or Anna Blair. Then I pondered some more. All my pondering didn’t get me anywhere. They were in hiding. Chris already proved to be good at disappearing, which made me wonder about Anna. As long as Chris was with her, he could keep her hidden, too. But if they were apart, she would be left to her own devices. Maybe she was just as adept at vanishing as Chris but maybe not.
A quick MVA search got me her license plate. I didn’t know if she would still have her own car. After all, if I could find it, Esposito and his cronies could find it, too. For now, it was the straw I decided to grasp. I didn’t have many to choose from, after all. The next part of this plan would take more time and be a lot harder. Luckily, I knew a way to smooth it out.
I used the VM the BPD’s network would treat as one of its own to access traffic cameras in the city and to tie into the county’s feed. Once done, I wrote a script to convert license plate data to regular expressions and compare the output with Anna Blair’s tag. It sounded like it would work.
I watched it run for a few minutes. The cameras observed tags and fed them through optical character recognition into a proprietary format (conveniently created by the makers of the camera system). My script took the output and turned it into a regular expression for comparison. It worked on every tag I watched. None were Anna Blair’s, but at least I knew my system worked.
I let the script run. It would send me a text if it found a match. I had some downtime. Esposito knew where I lived, which bothered me. He already sent a couple of goons to my house. Next time, he might send more
or send them armed. I packed two bags and headed out. First, I stopped at the gym and beat the hell out of a couple of heavy bags before finishing with a nice run on the treadmill. After a shower, I went to a nearby shooting range and killed a bunch of paper targets who definitely had it coming.
When I started doing this job, I didn’t expect to spend many days hitting the heavy bags and shooting targets. Things always sound easier before you try them. I cleaned my gun at the range and packed it back into the bag along with the remaining ammo. This job proved to be more than I expected, and this case served as the latest example. Still, I liked what I was doing. Esposito was an unprincipled prick. The BPD could form another task force, but the first one didn’t accomplish anything. I liked my odds better than theirs.
After the range, I went home and made dinner. I wasn’t feeling fancy, which turned out to be a good thing when I looked in the fridge. I bought a good stock of the basics but not much beyond. Basic it would be. I sautéed green peppers, mushrooms, and onions, added sausage, and served the whole thing with marinara sauce over rice. Anthony Bourdain wouldn’t come around to try and learn my secrets, but it tasted good and filled me up.
Once I finished dinner, I checked my scripts. No hits on Anna Blair’s license plate. I hadn’t expected any the first day. Hell, I didn’t know if she would be driving her own car. When it came down to it, I didn’t know if she was still alive. Such is the nature of grasping at straws. I washed the dishes and put them away before my phone chirped to indicate a text. It was from Bobbi Lane.
She wanted to run in the heat of midday, right at noon, and then get some lunch. I preferred the morning, but running under the sun’s zenith with someone who looked like Bobbi Lane was much better than going out early alone. We decided she would come to Baltimore, and we would run laps around Federal Hill Park. We left lunch in the air. I checked back on my script, saw the expected zero results, and unwound with some Netflix before going to bed.