A Billion Ways to Die

by Chris Knopf

  He looked over at Patricia Cheerborg.

  “You’re not going to have a different opinion, are you?”

  She took off her glasses and dropped them over her sunken chest.

  “Heavens, no, Chuck. How ill-advised would that be at this point?”

  “But you agree with Goldman.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t.”

  “Isn’t that a double negative? You’re supposed to be our staff writer,” he said.

  “I’m your Director of Communications, Chuck. The staff writers work for me.”

  He looked around at all of us, grinning.

  “Isn’t she great?” he asked. “Don’t know what we’d do without her.”

  “You’d hire another Director of Communications. She just wouldn’t be as good as me. Now, can we let all this expensive talent go back to doing honest work?”

  Andalusky had us take everything with us when we left.

  “Otherwise, some pain in the ass will get hold of it and start whispering in the CEO’s ear before I have a chance to give him the story.”

  “You have your own Ansell Andersens, perhaps?” asked Imogene.

  Andalusky didn’t comment, but at the door he stopped and thanked me for the report.

  “And I’m going to remember where we worked together,” he said, poking me gently in the sternum. “I’m nothing if not persistent.”

  “Me, too, Chuck,” I said.

  CHAPTER 17

  A week later, my sister called. Before I had a chance to feel bad about undercommunicating, she got to the point.

  “Our mutual friend needs to hear from you,” she said.

  “Really. Do you know why?”

  “I do. I’m afraid to say.”

  “How come?” I asked.

  “He thinks they’re watching me. In fact, this is the last time I’m calling on this phone.”

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “I don’t think he’s being paranoid,” she said, and hung up.

  I was in the kitchen leaning against the counter. Natsumi was putting two mugs of coffee on a tray with assorted muffins. It was Saturday, just after sunrise. Natsumi was in her sweat suit. She looked up when I put the phone back in my pocket.

  “It was Evelyn,” I said. “Shelly wants to talk to us. She sounded spooked.”

  “More than usual?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know why?” she asked.

  “No. She was in a hurry to get off the phone.”

  “Should we be worried?”

  “Not until we talk to Shelly.”

  The family room, equipped with a large-screen TV we never watched, was our favorite room in the house. The attraction was a wall of windows and french doors that looked out over the woods. Squirrels and intrepid snowbirds were already up foraging. At other times, we’d seen fox, deer and coyotes. Having grown up in an apartment and living most of adulthood staring at books, paper reports and computer screens, the abundance of wildlife in a county adjacent to New York City was startling.

  “They’re just biding their time,” Natsumi said. “Eventually we humans will screw everything up and they can have back all the real estate.”

  We sat on opposite couches, nursing our coffees.

  “I set up Shelly with a secure phone number, online drop box and dedicated e-mail,” I said. “Why would he send us a message through my sister?”

  “None of those things are actually secure.”

  “That’s part of the message,” I said. “He’s being monitored.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Fix his plumbing.”

  “Of course.”

  THE NEXT Wednesday morning, I called in sick. Gyawali was kind and sympathetic, as I expected him to be. He said nothing I was working on was so pressing that it couldn’t wait a few days. Then he said he had some news for me, but thought it best to wait until I came in. I asked for a headline, but he insisted I forget about work and concentrate on feeling better. Since I couldn’t tell him this made it impossible not to think about work, I thanked him and hung up.

  Then I left Natsumi and drove up the Merritt Parkway into Connecticut to a diner in Stamford where I met up with Little Boy Boyanov and one of his men, a quietly vicious guy named Kresimir. Little Boy, a block of a man with a head the size of a medicine ball, greeted me with a bone-crushing handshake and an order of pancakes, sliced bananas and a side of ham.

  “Need to keep your strength up for the caper,” he said.

  “Did you get everything?” I asked him. He looked a little disappointed.

  “Give me something hard to do, then you can ask if I got everything.”

  “Sorry. Of course you did.”

  “Nothing stolen,” he said. “All borrowed from the brother of a friend of mine. Twenty-five hundred bucks will cover the whole day.”

  “That’s not borrowed, that’s rented.”

  “You’re good for it, Mr. G., I know that.” He handed me a baseball cap with the name of a plumbing contractor embroidered on the front. He and Kresimir put on caps of their own. “Tool belts and other plumbing shit is in the van. I’m wearing my tightest jeans so my ass hang out the back.”

  “Probably not necessary,” I said.

  “Describe possible threats,” said Kresimir. “I want to be prepared.”

  It wasn’t hard to imagine some of the supplies in the van were capable of firing off hundreds of rounds a minute.

  “Should be zero,” I said.

  “Should be,” said Kresimir.

  “Shelly will be alone, but the place could be bugged. If other people show up, they could be federal agents. So don’t shoot anybody.”

  “Unless our lives are threatened,” said Little Boy.

  “Unless your lives are threatened,” I agreed.

  “When aren’t they?” Kresimir asked.

  I followed the van, borrowed from an outfit called Brunoli Brothers Plumbing, which Little Boy explained was actually a pair of Bosniaks who’d borrowed the name for business purposes.

  “You tell me how many people in the South End of Hartford will be calling Kovač Cousins Plumbing,” he said. “Maybe next generation.”

  “Capice,” I said.

  We met up next in the parking lot of a restaurant just south of Rocky Hill owned by another friend of his. I left my car and climbed into the van. As promised he had a tool belt waiting for me, plus a clipboard and an iPad, which he handed me.

  “If you’re the boss, you gotta look like the boss,” said Little Boy. “That’s my daughter’s. Don’t drop it.”

  I watched as Kresimir slipped a Glock into a tool bag he planned to carry into the house. He had another gun taped to his right ankle. No doubt Little Boy was similarly armed. Since they’d no sooner go to a picnic any less prepared, I didn’t bother to say anything.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. G,” said Little Boy, reading my thoughts, “we won’t shoot you unless you get in the way.”

  It was a comfort that so far they hadn’t shot me, even when I’d been technically in the way.

  I hoped Shelly still tightly adhered to his daily schedule, which would mean he’d be just getting home from the gym when I drove the van down the street in front of his house. I wasn’t disappointed, as we fell in behind his plain wrapper hybrid. I followed him up to his house and into the driveway. The garage door was going up, but he stopped and got out of his car.

  “Hello there, sir,” I said, as I left the van. “Looks like our timing is pretty good.”

  “Good for what?”

  I looked down at my clipboard.

  “There’s some trouble with your kitchen sink?” I said, looking up again.

  “Not me,” he said.

  I looked at the clipboard again, then showed it to him.

  “Isn’t this your address?” I asked.

  He looked at where I was pointing.

  “No, it’s not,” he said. “And that’s not today’s date.”

  He handed m
e back the clipboard, allowing his eyes to drift toward Little Boy and Kresimir, who were now out of the van and standing behind me.

  “Fucking dispatcher,” I said to my fellow plumbers.

  “We got to get rid of that girl,” said Little Boy. “Too bad she’s such a hot babe,” he added, an improvisation Kresimir seemed to enjoy.

  “Though since you’re here,” said Shelly, looking toward his house, “I’ve got something you could take a look at.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he walked down his front walk. We followed. Inside the house, he showed the way down into the basement. We gathered around the water heater.

  “Damn thing runs out of hot water when I’m halfway through a shower,” he said. “Any ideas?”

  “We don’t have ideas,” said Little Boy. “Only facts. Things work or they don’t.”

  “Interesting philosophy,” said Shelly. “For a plumber.”

  “Philosophers would do well to learn a little plumbing.”

  As Little Boy and Kresimir made what they thought were sounds of mechanics at work, Shelly pulled me over to a workbench. He took my clipboard and used a pencil from the bench to write, “They’re connecting the dots.”

  “Who?” I wrote back.

  “Don’t know. Two heavies shoved their way into my house. Flashed bureau IDs too fast for me to verify. Showed me a dozen head shots. One of them was you.”

  “Which me?”

  “Arthur,” he wrote. “Circa 2005.”

  Before the shooting that killed Florencia.

  “What did you tell them?”

  He looked at me flatly.

  “Nothing,” he said, out loud.

  “Did they tell you the reason for the interview?” I wrote.

  He studied my face as he wrote the word.

  “Cybercrime.”

  If he hoped for a look of recognition from me he was disappointed. Though he might have seen the fear cinch up around my heart. I gestured in a way that meant bafflement.

  “You should leave the country,” he wrote.

  “What about Captain Perry?”

  “I’m way too compromised. I’m afraid to connect. You could try.”

  “Risky?” I wrote.

  “Very.”

  I asked him if there was anything else, and he shook his head. I went back over to where the Bozniaks were pretending to repair Shelly’s water heater, happily chatting in their native language between metallic clanks and bangs. I wrote on the clipboard that we were done there and could leave any time.

  Back upstairs on the way to the van, Shelly took my arm and handed me another note.

  “Evelyn will go down with you,” it said.

  “Not going to happen,” I wrote back, though we both knew that wasn’t up to me.

  BACK AT the restaurant parking lot, I gave Little Boy an envelope with thirty hundred dollar bills. It was more than he expected, though it would be hard to overpay the Bosnian gangster after all his past service, or overensure his help in the future. We parted after bear hugs and well wishes for our respective families.

  I drove the rest of the way home in a fugue of muddled dread. There hadn’t been a moment since I limped away from my sister’s house, officially dead and driven by blind vengeance and grief, when I hadn’t expected the ultimate reckoning. It helped to be utterly absorbed in the task at hand, in the hunting and being hunted by assorted antagonists on both sides of the legal divide, but that was getting harder to sustain.

  Natsumi, ever perceptive, wouldn’t let me speak when I first came in the door. She touched my lips with the tips of her fingers, took my hand and led me into the big living room with the wall of windows. The sun was getting near the horizon, drawing slender black shadows from the trees across the forest floor.

  “You’re frowning,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  I told her everything Shelly told me, describing the body language that accompanied his story. She listened impassively, at least by outward appearance.

  “How much time do we have?” she asked.

  “It’s impossible to know. My image was only one of a couple dozen. It can’t be a coincidence that I was included, but that doesn’t tell us how close they are. Though no matter what, they’re closer to Evelyn.”

  “You looked different in 2005,” she said.

  “Sixty pounds heavier, long dark hair, huge moustache. Nothing face-recognition software would have a problem with.”

  “What are your instincts telling you?”

  “To cut and run.”

  “What does the rest of you want to do?”

  “Stick it out at Fontaine. We’ve invested a lot in getting there. And risked a lot, but it’s paying off. I’m getting closer to Andalusky by the day. Pulling this off again in the future is beyond unlikely. It’s now or never.”

  “That’s what I think,” she said.

  A squirrel hopped in front of a big picture window, stood up on its haunches and looked through the glass. Another squirrel ran into the scene and pounced, resulting in a squirming ball of grey fur. We watched silently until they took off again, one in pursuit of the other.

  “Let’s keep packed bags with cash and essentials in each of the vehicles,” I said.

  “Meanwhile,” she said, “we stay here?”

  “As good a place as any, now that we’re dug in.”

  “Okayo is starting to speak to me. I’m the only one who can keep up with her workout. We talk about training and nutrition. I’ve never been in such good shape.”

  “Study up on microfinance,” I said. “If e-mail is any indication, outside of her dermatology practice and working out, The People Project is all she does.”

  “And you’ll be?”

  “Working and worrying, like any red-blooded American corporate employee.”

  AN URGENT e-mail was waiting for me on my computer when I got back to the office the next day.

  “M. Goldman:

  Please see Ms. Jennifer Richardson in Human Resources at eleven a.m. today.

  J. Richardson.”

  I wrote back to ask for specifics and if there was anything I should bring to the meeting. She didn’t answer, so I left a message on her voice mail. Then I went to see Imogene, who was little help.

  “I’ve never been asked to see HR,” she said. “Is it like being sent to the vice principal? I never had that happen, either.”

  I went back to my workstation and pretended to focus on my current research assignment until quarter to eleven, when I started the long trek down the building’s endless hallways to HR.

  Jenny wore a skirt whose length I thought might not meet minimum HR standards, and black high heels with some sort of animal skin fabric across the toe. She had a loose, wide-neck knit sweater on top that exposed a lot of collarbone. She only needed a glass of wine and plate of mini egg rolls to complete the picture.

  “My college reunion is tonight,” she was quick to tell me. “I’ve been prepping for two weeks.”

  “With some success.”

  “You need to look young, trim, professionally successful, approachable, mature and a torment to the guy who never asked you out. Without stirring up enough jealousy with the women to make somebody slit your throat in your sleep.”

  “It might be easier to pretend you’ve had a sex change and just get yourself a nice business suit.”

  She guffawed loudly, drawing the eyes of her HR colleagues, with some lingering on her butt as we moved through the cubicles to the walled-off room. I sat in the interrogation chair, which she softened by pulling her own chair out from behind the desk and moving it so close our knees nearly touched. She held a big pad of paper in her lap.

  “Are you liking it?” she asked “The job.”

  “I am.”

  “We have to ask you. It’s just a formality.”

  “If I like the job?”

  “No. What I’m about to ask you. About a transfer out of Gyawali’s group.”

  “Oh. Not sure.”

&n
bsp; I just noticed she was holding a pen in time to see her stick it in the corner of her mouth. It made her look like she’d graduated from college the day before.

  “It’s a promotion, actually, as much as a transfer. You’ll still be in Cultural and Economic Development, only working directly for Chuck Andalusky. More strategy stuff, less research. There might be some travel. You’ll have to get your shots up to date. Still unsure?”

  “What kind of shots?”

  “Rabies? I don’t know.” She clicked her pen in and out a few times and held it poised over the clipboard. “Can I start the paperwork? You know we can’t do anything around here without paperwork. We still have a division that builds paper mills. Makes you suspicious, doesn’t it.”

  “Okay,” I said, hoping whatever trepidation I felt would appear as appropriate as my excitement. “Let ’er rip.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  It took a week for the new job to be formalized, and after that, about ten minutes for the news to spread through the research division. Manfred and Imogene were the first to show up at my cubicle.

  “So, they grab the new guy while he still doesn’t know any better,” said Manfred.

  “Into the valley of the shadow of death,” said Imogene.

  “You do know what you’re getting into,” said Manfred.

  “Obviously not,” said Imogene.

  “We both turned them down. Couldn’t pay me enough.”

  “When do you start weapons training?”

  “Don’t worry about the Ebola vaccine. The side effects go away in a few weeks.”

  “Have they heard from the last guy who got the gig?”

  “Do ransom notes count?”

  “Gee, that sounds really encouraging,” I said.

  Imogene smiled with her lips clenched shut.

  “We’re kidding,” she said. “It’s what you do when you’re jealous.”

  “Not me,” said Manfred. “I just sulk and plan revenge.”

  “Speaking of revenge, I think Ansell’s in his office sharpening knives,” said Imogene.

  I didn’t see Ansell the rest of that day, but Gyawali asked me to stop in before I left for the night. He was in his stark, paperless office wearing an off-white shirt that looked like he’d ironed it a few minutes before. He swiveled away from his computer screen and offered his hand. The grip was soft and dry.