Blown

by Chuck Barrett

  "Wake me next time," Kaplan walked toward the back of the store. "My turn."

  When Kaplan returned to the Jeep, Tony was standing in front with the hood open.

  "Mr. Kaplan, we have a problem," he said. "Car won't start."

  Kaplan leaned over and reconnected a loose cable. "No, I guess it wouldn't."

  "Did you do that?"

  Kaplan ignored him. "I'll drive." He held out his open palm.

  Tony handed him the keys.

  They both got in and Kaplan started the Jeep.

  "I was not going to leave you if that's what you were thinking," said Tony.

  "Nope, I'm guessing you weren't."

  Kaplan drove in silence toward Paducah in the pre-dawn light. It wouldn't be long before the sun would be glaring in his face, always an issue when traveling east in the early morning unless the sky is covered with clouds. He glanced at Tony; the old man's eyelids were already sagging. His head bobbed a couple of times, each time he opened his eyes, then gravity would pull them shut again.

  Kaplan broke the tranquility. "Tell me more about this broker thing," he said.

  Startled from slumber, Tony jumped in his seat. "What?"

  "How did you get started as a broker?"

  Tony looked at him while he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "Long story."

  "We seem to have plenty of time."

  Tony took a couple of deep breaths. "It started many years ago when I was living in Miami."

  "How long ago?" Kaplan interrupted. "Give me a framework in time."

  "Thirty years, at least." Tony readjusted himself in the seat. "It began rather innocent actually. A car in South Beach hit my roommate while he was crossing the street. In the crosswalk too, mind you. Ended up with a broken arm, lots of bruises, nothing very serious but it put him out of work and he got fired from his job. I told him he should sue the driver for medical expenses and lost wages." Tony paused. "To make a long story short, turned out the driver was the teenage son of a very wealthy and prominent Miami plastic surgeon. The father offered my roommate thirty grand to shut up and go away. Thirty grand was a lot of money back then—"

  "It's a lot of money now."

  "Right. Anyway, a light bulb went off in my head. It got me to thinking there was potentially a lot of money to be made. I just had to find the right people. Come to find out, there were literally thousands of people who would take a bump from a slow moving car for fifty percent of the take."

  "Kind of like an ambulance chaser."

  "Except I was not a lawyer…more like an unofficial mediator. I'd go straight to the drivers and try to arrange a settlement to keep it out of the legal system. The odds were good. Most of the time it worked, sometimes it didn't and I'd find a cheap lawyer and have him file a lawsuit. First year I pulled in over a hundred G's—and that was my take."

  "That's a lot of con money."

  Tony laughed. "Turned out to be a drop in the bucket, as one would say."

  In the distance, Kaplan could see the glow of city lights reflecting off the clouds above. "What do you mean?"

  "After doing a little research about corporation formation at the Miami-Dade Public Library, I got more creative and devised a plan. A long-term plan. Pure genius, if I do say so myself. A venture sure to net hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Billions over a lifetime. But it took considerable startup capital to fund the kind of corporate network needed to make it work and I couldn't exactly waltz into a bank and ask for a loan."

  "So you went to someone with a lot of money."

  "Yes. And there was only one man I knew at the time with that kind of dough. In my mind it was going to be a match made in heaven, but as it turned out, even heaven had archangels. He put his son in charge of my venture. Big mistake. And the son was not a patient man. He never understood the business model. He expected immediate grandiose results as opposed to the slower safer model I devised. His impatience caused mistakes in the field and, being the idiot that he was, he only knew of one way to address those mistakes and that was to make an example of anyone who made a mistake. But when too many people started coming up missing or dead, the authorities were pressured to investigate."

  "Who was he?" Kaplan asked.

  Tony shook his head. "A bigger dumbass I have never met. Anyway, I had the son, with his father's money of course, set up a multi-level corporate structure under one ultimate corporate umbrella. After that, it was just a matter of recruiting."

  "Recruiting what?"

  "In the beginning, mostly people to participate in the medical scam. It was the keys to success…make or break to the plan. Ground floor, if you will."

  "You mean finding people to jump in front of cars?"

  "No, no. That was chump change. The money… the king's ransom was in billing. That's when I became a broker. When the corporation needed doctors, I went out and found doctors who needed patients to bill. When the billing company needed insurance information, I found thousands of people willing to sell their health insurance information for a few bucks. Whether it was private health insurance or not, didn't matter. The big bucks came later with Medicare and Medicaid, almost no oversight. In the beginning we staged accidents. Very elementary scams that I soon figured out weren't even necessary. Our corporate structure cross-billed and the insurance money poured in. One-car accidents could reap thousands from medical payments billed to auto insurance, doctors' billing to health insurance, lab bills…labs that the corporation owned, by the way. It was all just a paper shuffle. Our doctors prescribed medications so everything looked legit and soon we ended up with a stockpile of prescription meds. High dollar meds too. Before I knew it, I was brokering meds all over the world at black market prices."

  "Sounds like the kind of crap that still goes on today."

  "In a way, it does. Except now I think they are all in cahoots with each other…doctors, health insurance companies, and drug companies that is. It's still all about billing."

  "And no one ever got caught?"

  "Sure they did. There were casualties. Those were factored into my model. Publicly, the corporate level would be appalled, clean house, and in some instances even prosecute. But, the higher the Feds looked in the corporate structure, the cleaner it was. Some facilities were even shut down…guess who owned the replacement? New corporation name but owned by the same conglomerate at the top. What I had to contend with and hated was repeatedly explaining to the son that this was part of the process…not killing off every mistake. But he still—"

  "Hold that thought," Kaplan interrupted as they reached the outskirts of Paducah and he saw a cop car parked on the side of the road with his radar speed gun mounted in the windshield. He looked in his rear view mirror and saw the patrol car pull out and fall in behind him. He glanced at the speedometer, he wasn't speeding so what was the cop's interest in tailing him? Could the authorities have already put out a BOLO on the Jeep? "Looks like we got company."

  "Were you speeding?"

  "Nope. But it won't be a good thing if he runs these plates." Kaplan spotted an all night diner a block ahead on the right. "I'm not going to wait around and give him the chance."

  Kaplan flipped on his right turn signal and tapped the brakes. As soon as he did, the rack of blue lights lit up.

  "Now what are you going to do?" Tony said. "You can't very well beat up a cop."

  Kaplan braked and pulled to the curb. He was struggling to formulate a viable plan but coming up short.

  The police car's siren came on and Kaplan heard the Interceptor engine kick into high gear as the patrol car made a u-turn and sped off in the opposite direction.

  "That was close," Tony said.

  "Too close… we need to dump this car now. We can't wait till Nashville."

  "Getting paranoid?"

  "As much time as has passed and the fact that we're still in the same vehicle? You bet. We've been pushing our luck for a while and now that it's daylight…" Kaplan turned into the parking lot. "…staying in this car any lo
nger is just plain stupid."

  He pulled up to the front door of the diner and got out of the car. Next to the entrance he bought a copy of The Paducah Sun from a newspaper machine. They walked inside, sat down in a booth, and ordered coffee. He flipped to the classified section and pulled it out, and then he handed the rest of the paper to Tony. "See if there is any news about Little Rock while I find us a car."

  Within minutes he found what he was searching for, a cheap older model non-descript sedan that might make it a few hundred miles down the interstate. The clock above the diner's grill read 6:30 a.m. It was early, perhaps too early to make the call, but he did it anyway.

  After several minutes of talking, he turned off his phone. "Anything in the paper?"

  "No. Maybe we will learn something tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow we'll be far gone from here and you'll be safe and sound in WitSec's custody."

  Kaplan chugged the rest of his coffee. "Drink up," he said to Tony. "We need to get moving."

  Five minutes later he had located the address given to him over the phone, made a quick drive by, and parked the Jeep a couple blocks away. After stuffing the Jeep's tag in his backpack and leaving the keys in the ignition, he and Tony walked toward the address. Other than a stray cat followed by a litter of kittens, he and Tony were alone on the streets of the dilapidated neighborhood.

  "Kind of a rough part of town," said Tony.

  "Looks that way. Guess I'll owe Jeff a new car."

  "You might owe him more than a car."

  Kaplan narrowed his eyes and stared at Tony, then looked ahead at the road and wondered if Jeff's home would be okay. "You might be right."

  The car turned out to be a 1991 Mercury Sable station wagon and not a sedan as advertised in the paper. It was parked in the weeds on the front yard. Actually the weeds were starting to grow around the car. Two ruts marked its path in and out of the yard.

  The Mercury Sable and its Ford counterpart Taurus were two of the most popular model cars in the late eighties and early nineties. Especially the Taurus. 1991 was about the time its popularity began to wane. The car's original color was wine, now it was faded and bleached by the sun. Several oxidation spots blotched the roof, hood, and trunk.

  The owner met them at the front door. He was barefoot. His jeans were torn and his undershirt dingy. He smelled like he was on a two-day drinking binge, which could explain the man's foul mood at that hour of the morning. A cigarette dangled from his lips with an extra long ash just waiting for gravity to pull it free. He claimed the oil had recently been changed and the air conditioner didn't work. When he moved his mouth to speak the ash fell to his front porch.

  He held out a key to Kaplan, "Here. Drive it around the block."

  Kaplan took the key, "That won't be necessary."

  Kaplan walked over to the vehicle and reached through the front grill under the hood. A second later the hood popped loose. He raised it and made a cursory check of belts and hoses. He slipped into the driver's seat, inserted the key, and started the engine. A puff of gray smoke billowed from the rusted tailpipe. The cloth seats were ripped and stained and the interior reeked of smoke and booze, which wouldn't matter anyway since, with no air conditioner, he'd have to drive with the windows down.

  He put his left foot on the brake and pressed hard. With his right foot he pressed the accelerator revving the engine past a fast idle. He worked the gear selector from drive to reverse and back several times. Remarkably, the transmission never slipped.

  A few minutes later he walked back to the front porch where Tony stood waiting.

  "You are not seriously going to buy that clunker, are you?" Tony said to Kaplan.

  The man on the porch frowned at Tony’s remark.

  Kaplan reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of bills. He counted out four, one hundred dollar bills and held them out. "It'll get us where we're going."

  "Where's that?" The man asked.

  "St. Louis."

  The man took the bills, nodded, and stuffed them in his front pocket. Then he walked back inside his shanty of a home.

  No bill of sale. No title. Nothing. In this neighborhood, the money for the car was nothing more than booze and drug money.

  They were two blocks away when Kaplan stopped and attached the license plate from the Jeep to the Sable. Two minutes later, he drove up the on-ramp to I-24 southbound toward Nashville.

  "I can not believe you paid four hundred dollars for this junk heap," Tony said.

  "It's all about hours," Kaplan replied.

  "Hours?"

  "It will be several hours before anyone can tie us to this car. By then, we'll be in a different state and a different car."

  22

  Moss arrived at the scene of the accident just after the sun broke the horizon in the eastern sky. Inspector April Moore slept almost the entire time they were on the road from Mayflower, Arkansas to Searcy, Arkansas. He drove the distance in just under two hours, which included a stop in Conway for food, gas, and restrooms, the only time Moore was awake for more than fifteen minutes.

  It had been a long night. In reality, it had been a long twenty-four hours. Yesterday at this time he was just getting out of bed at his home in Chicago. What he wouldn't give to be back there now. Instead he had been working an evening shift in firearms training only to be interrupted and reassigned to WitSec. And to make matters worse, the assignment landed him back in the town he had just moved from, Little Rock. A town he'd grown to loathe during his WitSec tenure at the Little Rock Field Office.

  A long day and a long night and now, as the sun cleared the tree line, he was staring at a charred Crown Vic upside down in the grassy median. The grass in a three-foot perimeter around the car was scorched. The twisted wreck's original paint melted off by the fiery crash.

  He turned and poked the woman in the arm. "Moore, wake up. Get ready for some crash-burn physics."

  She roused in her seat and he could see her absorbing the scene in her mind.

  "Looks toasted," she said. "Burned hot enough to take off the paint."

  "Yep." Moss surveyed the scene. The lanes closest to the median were closed in both directions. Arkansas State Police were funneling all the morning travelers into one lane causing a minor backup of traffic. Gawkers made it worse. There were two fire trucks, two rescue units, state, county, and Searcy police cars, and a newer model black Ford panel van with WHITE COUNTY CORONER stamped on the side in bold, white letters. Two men in coveralls were loading a body bag through the rear door.

  He was following the trail of his witness and the man accompanying him. A man who he now knew was Gregg Kaplan. A man who had connections of his own high in the ranks of the federal government. This search continued to get more complicated. The trail had been easy enough to follow, though; Kaplan left a string of bodies behind him like breadcrumbs. Whether deliberate or unintentional, it had kept the mystery man from falling out of sight altogether. At first he thought Kaplan was a fugitive and might be connected to Tony, but now he knew the man was not. But who was this mystery man? More importantly, why was he with Tony?

  Moss signaled Moore. "Come on. Let's check it out," he said. He rolled himself out of his seat and into the morning air. It was warm and damp and he knew it would be another Southern scorcher with afternoon thunderstorms firing up shortly after lunch. There was no breeze. The air had a lingering stench of burnt vehicle mixed with recently sprayed chemicals on a nearby field by a crop duster. Moss looked around, on his side of the road was a field of soybeans—waist high and leafy. Across the highway, corn, which seemed to have just tasseled. The saddest thing of all was that he had been in the South so long, he actually knew what these crops looked like.

  The Searcy Police chief held up his hand signaling Moss to stop as he approached. Moss pulled out his creds and held them up for the officer to see. Moore did the same. "Figured the feds would show up sooner or later. Didn’t expect the Marshals though."

  "What made you think the fed
s would show up?" Moore asked.

  The chief looked at Moss then turned to Moore. "Crown Vic, no IDs, and those." The chief pointed to two handguns lying in the grass. Both Glocks and both with sound suppressors.

  The chief gave Moss and Moore a full briefing on the one-car accident. He explained the skid marks on the asphalt indicated the car swerved and lost control. Since no large animal tracks could be found as a source of the swerve, he had initially attributed the crash to be caused by the driver falling asleep at the wheel.

  "I'm not buying it," Moss said. "Something's not adding up. But what?"

  "You think it's connected to the incident in Little Rock, don't you?" The chief asked. "Is that why y'all are here?"

  Moss gave him a quizzical look.

  "The shootout at the restaurant was all over the late news last night and the scanner at the station has been buzzing all morning."

  Moss paused. "Hard to say. At this time, the only similarity is the type of vehicle and even that would be speculation at this point. A lot of people own Crown Vics. It's a popular car. I'm sure there are a few folks around here with sound suppressed handguns too. What do you think, Chief?"

  "I reckon there's a handful, but these two ain’t from around these parts. Plates were hard to trace but finally we found out they belong to some corporation in Memphis. Seems it don't exist either. Not at the registered physical address anyhow. Nothing there but a vacant lot."

  "Anything suspicious on the car?" Moore asked. "Like dents or paint transfer."

  "Think someone ran them off the road?"

  "Just a thought," she said.

  "Nothing on the car we could find. That's why I'm ruling it a one-car accident. My men have been up and down the highway. Searched the medians. There is no evidence of other vehicle involvement." The police chief looked at Moss. "I'll make sure you get a copy of my report if you want it."

  "Thanks. That would be great." Moss paused and looked at Moore then back to the chief. "I think Inspector Moore and I will run into town and get something to eat. Any suggestions?"