August Snow

by Stephen Mack Jones

  “You guys got a gift shop here?” I said, admiring my mug. “I’d like to pick up a couple of these, Christmas being right around the corner.”

  O’Donnell ignored my attempt at humor. “You’re shaking the tree a little early and a little hard for my tastes. And my tastes are what count.”

  “Yeah, well, I just keep waiting for you Fed-types to back me up.” I took a sip of the coffee. It really wasn’t bad this time. “I’m out there getting my ass kicked doing your work.”

  “We didn’t invite you to this party,” O’Donnell said, tearing open two packs of powdered creamer and one sugar and sprinkling them into her coffee. “You crashed it. Now you’re crying like a baby with a scraped knee? Gee. And I thought you were having such fun.”

  “You sure know how to hurt a guy,” I said.

  “Looks like Dax does, too.”

  I asked her if her cybercrimes guy had gotten any further into Titan’s computer systems. She said whatever progress her cybercrimes geeks were making was none of my business. Which I interpreted as little to no progress.

  We drank our coffee quietly for a moment, each of us gauging where the other stood on the chessboard. I wanted to think I’d played the sacrificial pawn earlier at the bank, hoping to reveal whether Leslie Brewster was the king, the bishop, or one of several very nasty knights. Then again, I may have just been an emotionally compromised, arrogant pawn who ambled boldly and stupidly into a battlefield sacrifice.

  Thanks a bunch, Sun Tzu.

  Either way, it appeared O’Donnell was happy I was out there. I was the little whirling dervish kicking up dust devils at the foot of a black mountain of dirty money.

  O’Donnell finally said, “Couple years ago we lost the man we believed to be the consultant in Baltimore because we went in too early with our legal guns blazing. They smelled us coming. Next thing we know, the guy’s lying on an expensive Persian rug with two in the chest and one in the head. Not a good day for the Bureau. We came close in Boston, but what’s that old saying about being close? Something about horseshoes?” O’Donnell sighed and eased back in her chair. “Listen. When these guys get spooked, either of two things happen: We end up with a handful of nothing and threats of lawsuits from legions of bank attorneys. Or people disappear or die and we’ve still got a handful of nothing. They’re gold-plated cockroaches and they sense when light’s coming their way.”

  “If these guys are as serious as you say they are,” I said, moving the ice pack from my left cheek to my right eye, “then I should have my lawyer—”

  “There won’t be any Titan lawsuits brought against you,” O’Donnell said. “They may pursue a restraining order, but other than that, these guys want this afternoon to go away, quickly and quietly. Pardon me for putting it this way, but you’ll just end up being dismissed as one wacko black man in a city filled to overflowing with wacko black men.”

  The ice pack felt good against my cheek and eye, though I’d much prefer to lick my wounds at home with a couple ibuprophens and a local brew. Maybe an Atwater Java Porter. Or Motor City dark ale. O’Donnell surprised me when she broke the long silence by telling me she was Catholic and, for as cynical as the job had made her, her faith still meant a lot to her. Just like she supposed it meant for me. She said she was carrying guilt—albeit a negligible amount—about how she was using me. But there was the greater good and ultimately people like her and me were just small cogs in the machinery of protecting that greater good.

  I told her I appreciated her candor and that once all of this was over, we could both get back to being good Catholics.

  Uncharacteristically, she issued a brief laugh and said, “I don’t think it works like that.”

  “It’s gonna have to this time,” I said.

  I told her about the two guys who had broken into my house. The threats made and the offer literally put on the table. I described the man passing himself off as Leslie Brewster. I told her I suspected he was the same man behind Mariana Spiegelman’s near-fatal fall and her husband’s hasty exit from TSIG.

  With every word I said, O’Donnell edged closer to her desk and held me steady in her blue eyes.

  When I finished, O’Donnell said, “You believe this man is the consultant?”

  “Tha’d be my guess,” I said. “I doubt he’s the only one. An operation like this probably has several Brewster types. But my gut tells me he’s pulling the strings here.” I told O’Donnell I’d be glad to give her sketch artist the same description. O’Donnell smirked and said, “Sketch artist? What is this? 1940s Chicago?” Then she reached into a desk drawer, pulled out an iPad and slid it across her desk to me. “Touch the FaceComp app. There ya go. Now you’ve got twelve hundred facial structures, chins, cheeks, mouths, eye shapes, eye colors, lips, ears, hair types and colors and skin tones at your fingertips. Tats and piercings we can add later.”

  “Like an Etch A Sketch,” I said. “Or Mr. Potato Head.”

  “Yeah,” O’Donnell said. “Exactly like a sixty-million-dollar Mr. Potato Head linked to local, State and Federal criminal databases and facial recognition programs.”

  For the next twenty minutes I selected, deselected, composed, fine-tuned and perfected the consultant’s face on the iPad. It was a very good likeness. I slid the iPad across the desk back to O’Donnell.

  “Goddammit,” she muttered.

  “You know the guy?”

  O’Donnell picked up her phone and punched three buttons.

  “Ann?” she said. “He’s here. Yeah, Detroit. Get everybody in the main conference room, five minutes.”

  O’Donnell hung up. As quickly as she hung up, she pulled a file from her desk and handed it to me. Inside were a series of 8”x10” black and white photos. Each photo was stamped INTERPOL, followed by a serial number, location and time.

  “What am I looking at?” I said.

  “You’re looking at how all of this could go south,” she said. She reached across the desk and pointed to the small, blurry figure of a man in all of the photos. His face was obscured by a fedora in every single one. “You’re looking at a man we believe to be someone we call the Cleaner.”

  “Cute name,” I said. “I take it he’s not a janitor.”

  “Of a fashion,” she said. “We believe there have been three or four consultants so far. One in Boston. One in Charleston. The last one we know of at Monroe & Morgan Wealth Management in Baltimore failed. Rare, but it happens. Failures answer to the Cleaner. An assassin. The face you just composed is damned close to the guy from Philly we believe was brought in to kill the Philadelphia consultant, but for whatever reason the trigger wasn’t pulled.”

  I squinted at the blurry photos, unable to ascertain much save for the fact that this Cleaner guy was thin and knew where the CCTV cameras were in a variety of cities.

  “Nice photos,” I said. “Maybe you’ve got some of Big Foot?”

  “That’s the best we’ve had in five years. We think he’s Russian.” She paused, swallowed hard, then said under her breath, “Or Czech. Maybe Ukrainian. Possibly German.”

  “So essentially,” I said, handing the file back to her, “this guy is a ghost.”

  Reluctantly, O’Donnell nodded. “You should’ve walked away from this when you had the chance.”

  “And this Brewster guy?”

  “We’re pretty sure he’s the one who staked the initial claim in Philadelphia,” she said. “The tip of the spear. He sets up an operation, appoints a man on the ground like Atchison, then moves on. If the consultant or the man on the ground fails, he meets the Cleaner. Sloppy isn’t tolerated. Sloppy gets mopped up. At least we’re pretty sure that’s the structure.”

  I told her about the threat Brewster had leveled at Vivian Paget and asked if she could send a couple agents to Traverse City until this whole thing was over. She said she didn’t have an agent to spare, but she would have a chat with the State Police.

  “Keep ice on that,” O’Donnell said, pointing in the general direction of
my face. “I’d never admit to saying this, but you’re much better looking when somebody hasn’t stomped the bloody shit out of you.”

  “So I’m back in the pot, waiting for the cannibals to ring the dinner bell?” I said.

  “I’ll light a novena candle and say a prayer for you,” O’Donnell said. “In the meantime, keep the stars as your guide and the stripes as your shield, patriot.”

  Twenty-seven

  By the time I got back to my house, some of the swelling had gone down on my cheek. My right eye, however, was completely closed. I compelled my good eye to perform overtime duties watching for tails and carefully surveying the neighborhood for any cars or people I didn’t recognize.

  I popped the cap on a Motor City Honey Porter dark ale, downed three ibuprophens with it and stood at my living room windows staring out at the quiet street. I hadn’t felt like this in a long time. Not since my trial. No, even longer—not since a woman I’d loved was gunned down in a goddamn convenience store.

  Like someone lashed to the mast of a rudderless ghost ship, whipped by winds and a hard, cold rain from all directions.

  “Fuck this,” I said to the empty street outside my windows.

  I finished my beer, cleaned myself up and went to the local branch of my bank. A bank I’d hoped was at least modestly under its own control. When I returned, I walked across the street to the Rodriguez house and knocked on the door. The Rodriguez boy peered out from one of the living room windows. He saw me, grinned and waved. I heard his father sternly tell him to get away from the window.

  The door opened and there stood Carlos Rodriguez, splattered with plaster and drywall mud, Louisville Slugger in hand.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “We need to talk, Mr. Rodriguez,” I said.

  “About?”

  “Taking control,” I said.

  Reluctantly, he let me in.

  His wife came in from the kitchen. It was cold in the house and they were all wearing winter coats.

  “Mrs. Rodriguez,” I said, “would you mind taking your son to the kitchen?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need an honest word with your husband and I mean not to offend you, your son or the home you’re trying hard to make here.”

  She nodded and gestured for their son—Manolito—to come with her to the kitchen.

  Once they were gone, Rodriguez took a tighter grip on the baseball bat’s handle and said, “What’s this about?”

  “It’s about you and your family squatting here,” I said. “It’s about your wife and son being illegals. And it’s about you being man enough to accept help.” He stared at me for a hard minute. Then I held out an envelope.

  Without taking the envelope, Rodriguez said, “What’s this?”

  “This is what neighbors do,” I said.

  Tentatively, he took the envelope and opened it. His eyes widened at the sight of the money inside.

  “I’m an ex-cop,” I said. “I won the lottery. There should be enough to last you folks for a while. Buy some space heaters until we can figure out how to get the heat going. Food. Clothes maybe some toys and books for the boy. Something nice for your wife. And I’d like it if you, Jimmy Radmon—”

  “The drug dealer kid?”

  “He doesn’t deal anymore,” I said. “I’d like it if the three of us sat down and talked about what we can do with a couple other houses in the neighborhood. You and Jimmy would be working together. And I’d be the paymaster. We flip the houses, you and Jimmy get a cut. That is, if you’re good enough for the job.”

  “Why—why would you do this?” Rodriquez said. I could see that his grip on the bat had loosened a bit and, imperceptible to most, his defensive stance had relaxed.

  “Because I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t have control over your own life. And if you’re like me, you hate it and hate God for the corner you feel you’re backed into.”

  Rodriguez looked at the money once again then back to me. “I’ll do this—for my son—”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “Don’t lay this off on the kid. Do it for yourself to be the man your son already sees in you.” I paused and we looked at each other for a moment. Then I put my hand out and said, “Deal?”

  Rodriguez’s strong, work-bitten hand gripped mine. “Gracias.”

  I’d started to leave when Rodriguez added, “You don’t mind my asking, Señor Snow, but what happened to your face?”

  I thought for a moment before saying, “Slipped on a bar of soap.”

  Rodriguez nodded. I left and drove north to visit my parents.

  The October day was bright and cold. The cemetery’s collection of old-growth oaks and dogwoods caught the light of an increasingly distant sun, their fall colors luminescent. I brought along a copy of Octavio Paz’s first poetry collection, Luna Silvestre.

  I parked in the small circular drive near St. Ignatius Cemetery and walked uphill for a minute or two, turning right at the Kowalski family plot. My parents were buried beneath one of the taller oaks of the cemetery. The tree would soon shed its leaves, covering my parents beneath a red and gold patchwork quilt in preparation for a cold winter.

  Small flags were stuck in the ground near the headstones: Near my mother’s grave there was an American flag and the flag of Mexico. Near my father’s grave was another American flag with the green, black and red broad-striped flag African-Americans had adopted as their own.

  I smiled. I could guess who’d put them there—Big Jake the caretaker, whom I’d met on my last visit to the graves.

  I sat with my back against the oak and stared at their headstones for a few minutes. I wondered if they could feel my presence. And I wondered what they might think seeing me with a swollen-shut eye and a badly bruised cheek, from a battle I’d brought on myself and had chosen to lose.

  I did not look like the success they’d hoped for. The man whom they had worked so hard to raise to loftier heights: A social-worker fighting the good fight of the poor and disenfranchised. A lawyer raging against the machinery of exclusion, bigotry and hate. A teacher inspiring children to dream bigger and imagine the greater heights of their own potential.

  Something.

  Anything but an ex-cop with a couple bucks in his pocket and no family.

  “We are defined by the people we lose …”

  In the distance, I heard a riding mower giving the cemetery one of its last cuts before the grass slept and the snows came. If it was Big Jake I’d have to thank him for the tiny flags.

  After reading two of Octavio Paz’s poems to the headstones, I sat wondering if the money I’d given Carlos Rodriguez was simply my way of saying goodbye. A way of defining myself to a stranger. Aside from the sounds of distant traffic and Big Jake grooming the rolling terrain, the cemetery was quiet.

  Halfway through another poem—“Between Going and Coming”—I heard footsteps shifting fallen leaves.

  I turned and looked, hoping it would be Big Jake. But no: it was the man calling himself Brewster.

  I dropped the book, pulled out my Glock, cocked the hammer and came to a knee.

  Brewster smiled and held up the palms of his hands.

  “As good a place as any to drop you,” I said.

  I quickly glanced around: twenty yards behind him in the eleven o’clock position was a man in a long, black trench coat. It wasn’t Brewster’s original thick-necked bodyguard who’d become so well-acquainted with my living room floor. His new companion was the wiry brown-haired security guard with wire rim glasses. The man I’d fought. Dax. His coat was open and his hand rested discreetly on what could have been a machine pistol. If he was as good with a gun as he was with martial arts, then equal and deadly forces were now in play.

  Dax smiled at me. Nodded.

  Where there was one bodyguard, there was likely another. By this time, I’d earned more than one thick-necked, mouth-breathing bodyguard.

  “I’m only here to see if you’ve reconsidered my original offer,” Brewster
said. “As they say in advertising, for a limited time only.”

  “Turn around and get back in your car,” I said. “Or I’ll kill you where you stand.”

  Brewster was thirty feet away. I hated the thought of using headstones as cover. Seemed a sacrilege. But the dead didn’t care and headstones are just rocks.

  “I have the money in the car.” Brewster gestured over the hill. “Of course, you realize my offers are on a sliding scale; we’ve deducted twenty percent from the original amount. A countdown of sorts.”

  “A countdown,” I said. “To what?”

  Brewster smiled and shrugged.

  “You’re scared, aren’t you?” I stood from my kneeling position. Brewster’s smile slowly faded and he looked at me with hard dark eyes. The eyes of a shark, its nose sensing blood in the water. Perhaps his own. “This whole Titan deal is going south and you’re scared. Hell, I’d be scared too if I found myself in the cross hairs of an assassin.”

  “Not unlike most of your black brethren,” Brewster said, cracks in his cool façade beginning to show, “you seem never to know when to shut up or walk away.”

  “I take that as a compliment,” I said.

  Brewster said nothing. His eyes cut to his left for a split second. The third man. Behind a dogwood. Hand on the stock of his gun. A machine pistol.

  “Why’d you kill Eleanor Paget?” I said.

  The question shocked and annoyed him. “She was a mean-spirited, selfish old bag who blustered and railed against the prevailing winds of change. But kill her? I had no interest in or incentive to kill a madwoman baying at the moon. What would my payout be? Perhaps one of the board members had her killed. Who knows? Who cares? Patience, persuasion and large amounts of cash are my weapons of choice, Mr. Snow.” Brewster’s easygoing grin was beginning to quiver at the edges.

  “What about Atchison?” I said. “Did he kill her?”