That had bothered Moon some. He didn't think they'd risk hurting Doyle, not with him on the loose. Still, Jake was right. The least he could have done was ask Julie Giordano to keep an eye on him. But he did call Doyle's home and office a few times just to see he was alive and hear how he sounded. Didn't talk to him, though. Hung up when he answered.
He had also called Michael one time. He called him at that inn he bought in Edgartown and Michael answered the phone himself. Moon had figured that a desk clerk would answer. But it was Michael and he sounded real upbeat. He said, “Taylor House, Michael speaking.” He said it in a glad-to-meet-you kind of way. Except when he got no answer he sort of sucked in his breath like he wondered if trouble had found him again. Moon wished he hadn't made that call. Doyle, on the other hand, knew it was him. “Moon? It's you, right? Moon, you dumb fuck, talk to me.” Nice to know he's still his old self.
“He 's liable to belt you one when you see him,” said Jake.
Moon grumbled. “Doyle swings on me,” he answered, “he better be ready to hit on them too.”
He wanted to ask Jake if that man in Palm Beach, that Walter, was the one who murdered him. But he didn't. That would have been crossing the line into crazy. If Jake was to say yes, Moon knew it would just be his own heart again telling him to stop feeling bad about that choke hold.
But if it was Walter, he liked to think that Jake was standing there waiting for him when Walter went to his judgment. Jake would have worked out a deal with God. “Tell you what,'' he would have said. “Give me ten minutes alone with this son of a bitch and I'll do an extra year in purgatory.''
If God's any kind of a mensch, he'd have gone for it.
Might not care for the cussin', though.
Moon's watch said half past twelve. He knew he was stalling because he was not looking forward to facing Doyle. Going over to see Julie wasn't much better. You got one who says, “Let's wait,” and one who says, “Let's go blow their fucking heads off.”
What he'd do, he decided, was sort of take the middle road. He'd go find Johnny G.
Today's Thursday? Johnny would be down the docks. On the way, he'd find a drugstore, see about getting his prescriptions refilled.
Chapter 29
“Rasmussen” turned out to be the magic word.
Whatever it meant, whoever was who, it had worked for Parker just as well as it had worked for Doyle. It made the old man tell his Germans to get out. Made him shut up and listen for a change. Best of all, thought Parker, he had bought himself some time. Until he and the Baron had that little talk, he couldn't really afford to blow this burg anyway. But now, one way or another, give him three or four days and he just might be rich enough to do it.
By most standards, he was rich already. What Parker had, if he added it all up, came to about four million. Not bad for an ex-cop. Time was, he'd have been in pig heaven to have even a tenth of that put away. But economics aren't what they used to be.
Out of the four, about a million is in real estate which the Baron and Hobbs know nothing about. There's the house in Seattle, a restored Victorian, great view, looks out on Puget Sound. There's also a condo in Italy, up by Lake Como, and the place in Guatemala that is on a nice beach but the neighborhood otherwise sucks because everyone down there is either a retired drug dealer, or under indictment somewhere else, or some old-fart Nazi left over from Hitler.
He got all new paper to go with each address. Like, in Seattle he'll be Granville “Granny” Futterman, originally from Pittsburgh where he owned a couple of Auto-Lubes. He picked that name himself. No one ever wonders if a name like that is an alias and there are only so many questions they can ask about the Auto-Lube game. He might even get new teeth.
There's another half million or so divided between those three houses. All under the floorboards except in Guatemala where it's in gold instead of cash because the rats there tend to make nests out of currency. Guatemala is his last choice anyway. He's seen enough spies and Germans for a lifetime.
The point is, these are not what you'd call liquid assets. Italy and Guatemala have to stay intact in case, for example, he runs into someone he knows in some Seattle gin mill and he can't be Granny Futterman anymore. Plus, the Seattle real estate market is still in the shithouse. It could take him two years to get his money back out of that house.
A third million, give or take, is what Parker Security Services, Inc., would bring if he could sell it. But that's a total write-off if he splits. The revenues dry up the day he goes and it's not like Burns or Pinkerton will be lining up to bid on what's left. There's also maybe a half-million bucks worth of chemicals back at his office, sitting in drums and on pallets, which he wished he'd lined up a buyer for but now he didn't think he'd have time.
There's a small stash here in the city but that's traveling money. All the rest, like a jerk, he took in AdChem stock, which, along with most of the industry, will be even deeper in the toilet than West Coast real estate. He could sell it but he'd have to do that, like, in five-thousand-share lots and over a year's time so the sale wouldn't raise any eyebrows or get back to the Baron. He didn't have a year. The way things were going, he'd be lucky to have two weeks.
So what's the bottom line?
He could bag this thing now and have three houses plus about six hundred thousand in cash. Spend it living halfway decently, and it's gone in five years. He could invest it, live on the interest, but if interest rates don't shoot up a lot more than they have, we're talking maybe forty grand a year. He did better than that as a cop. He'd have almost that much if he'd stayed on and gotten his pension. Fat chance, though. He was one step ahead of an indictment. But at least he stayed long enough to catch old Bart Hobbs, that pillar of the financial community, bankrolling a drug buy.
A lot of them did that. Hobbs just got greedier than most and he got stupid.
The way it usually would happen, word would get around that so and so, some lawyer, some accountant, can turn a hundred grand into two hundred grand, tax free, within five days. It's to make a buy and everyone knows it but no one ever says that out loud. All you're doing is lending this guy some money. If he even mentions the word “drugs,” you say, “How dare you suggest such a thing” and you get up and walk away because you know he's wearing a wire. To be on the safe side, go back to your office and call the cops on him.
There's a risk you can lose your hundred but it's no worse than one chance in fifty that you will because ninety-eight percent of these deals go through. So, even if a shipment gets seized, you just put up more money on another deal because the law of averages says you can't lose. The dealers won't screw you because they're not about to rob their own bank. The middleman won't because the dealer would cut his balls off.
But Hobbs, would you believe, decides to cut out the middleman. Two to one isn't good enough. He wants three to one. Half the people he knows are doing cocaine so he tells one of them he wants to meet a dealer. The guy he asks has a possession rap pending so he flips Hobbs in return for a free ride and sets him up with an undercover cop.
Guess who?
All this, mind you, while Hobbs is already making very big money by driving down the value of a bunch of little companies so that AdChem can pick them up for a song. He's also AdChem's bag man for buying secrets from rival companies and for paying off certain government insiders, one of whom turned out to be Turkel.
Turkel's basically a shlub. But he ran a print shop in the basement of the FDA where they circulate confidential reports on what the big drug companies are developing, what's about to get approved, what isn't, and what drugs are about to be recalled. He knows who the FDA is investigating on suspicion of fudging test results. No company fakes them entirely but sometimes, for example, their lab animals die when they shouldn't and no one knows why. Rather than go back to square one, they'll replace those dead animals with new live ones. All rats look alike, right?
Turkel's not supposed to be reading this stuff. He's supposed to print up, say, fifteen c
opies and assign a number to each one, then seal each in a special envelope for distribution to the people on a special list. They are then individually responsible for the security of their numbered copies. This is supposed to ensure confidentiality but everyone but the FDA knows that confidentiality went out with the invention of the Xerox.
He knows that this knowledge is worth money. The big money would be in tipping the drug companies but Turkel has no idea how to make the approach. You don't just call up and ask for the president. What if he's honest? What if he pretends to go along but sets up a sting? There's Turkel, in a public crapper, passing copies of documents under the stall and the FBI kicks in the door just as he's taking the cash. Seen it a hundred times on TV.
Being too nervous to steal, Turkel plays the market instead. He knows when a stock is likely to shoot up and when it's likely to drop like a stone. He knows what new issues can't lose and which ones will be a disaster. He's doing okay but he's trading in hundred-share lots because he doesn't have much money. So he takes out a loan and now he feels like a player. Being a schmuck, he plays in his own name. Luckily, he's still not playing for serious money, otherwise the SEC would have spotted him in a minute. But he's scoring just enough, and often enough, to make his name pop up on the Lehman-Stone computer. Hobbs tracks him to the FDA basement and knows he has a live one. He flies down to Washington, finds Turkel driving a new BMW, and explains the facts of life to him.
The deal is that Hobbs will front for Turkel while, of course, he's making himself and AdChem rich on what Turkel feeds him. They tell Turkel what else to look for and who else might need to make some money. Turkel steers them to a toxicologist who's been with the FDA for twenty years, is on the approvals committee, is seriously in hock to a Maryland bookie, and thinks the FDA has fucked him over on promotions.
To Hobbs, this is the mother lode. If you want to stall a competitor's new drug, it only takes one person on the committee to question the research and want it sent back for more testing. And, meantime, to slip you the formula.
Hobbs bought Turkel and the toxicologist for himself and Lehman-Stone, and of course for the Baron who had already bought Hobbs. Everyone's getting rich but human nature is funny. You'll take the money but you hate whoever bought you. Hobbs, who is a world-class snob, hates the Baron for being an even bigger snob and because the Baron treats him like shit. This was good for Detective Lieutenant Philip Parker because it made Hobbs look for ways to become independently wealthy. This was also good because when Hobbs tried doing one drug deal too many, and got caught, he tried to save his own ass by offering to flip AdChem who he says is doing a whole new kind of dealing.
On the one hand, this had the makings of a very nice bust. Internal Affairs might have been so impressed that they'd be willing to forgive and forget. But his commander would have had to bring in the Feds and the Feds, as usual, would end up with all the headlines. He'd be lucky to get a citation out of it.
On the other hand, this also had the makings of a new career opportunity. Lehman-Stone and AdChem were in serious need of a security consultant who could keep such misunderstandings from arising in the future.
This was ten years ago. The job had made him a multimillionaire, but only on paper.
Three good things, however, had come out of Parker's breakfast with the Baron. The first thing . . . Rast or Rasmussen or whoever the fuck he is backed off on whacking Doyle or even snatching him. And he said he was sorry for losing his temper, no hard feelings about decking his German or about the blood on the rug. But Rast still needs a hole card because he has to stop Doyle from filing that suit, so he asks why don't we snatch Doyle's wife.
Parker was in semi-agreement about the wisdom of a snatch. But not of Doyle and not of his wife either. Who we'll grab, he told the Baron, is the “investigator” Doyle bragged about to Bellows.
Yeah, I know who he is.
Yeah, I can bag him in time.
This put the Baron in such a generous mood that he not only agreed to an immediate bonus—a quarter-million if he pulls it off—but he also upped the ante on the karate kid and the jig, of whom he is basically scared shitless. One million cash for Michael Fallon dead. One million cash for Moon. That's two eighty-pound suitcases filled with fifties and twenties. They'll be ready and waiting the day he produces.
Talk about traveling money.
The third good thing was an idea on how to play this both ways. But first things first.
Doyle had said “investigators.” Plural.
But as far as Parker could tell, they were all one guy. At least that's the word around the pharmaceutical industry. An investment counselor named Aaronson who's been making lots of phone calls to people in the business, asking lots of funny questions and who, lo and behold, happens to live not five minutes away from Doyle.
Parker had already put a tail on Aaronson and, sure enough, he was seen entering the building where Doyle has his office. His first thought was to go talk to him, lean on him hard. But how do you do that and then let him go?
“Just get him,” says the Baron. “Let Doyle know you have him. Then question him. I need to know what Doyle knows.”
“And if he doesn't want to tell me?” '
”I leave that to you.”
Yeah. I thought you would.
“If you're right,” says the Baron, “and Doyle has nothing, you can release this Aaronson in due course.”
Oh! I can? After tickling his balls with a live lamp cord wire? After he's seen my face? Release him, my ass.
In the end, and for his own peace of mind, he would have to give this guy to the camel drivers.
Parker returned to his office. It took him less than an hour to set up and rehearse the snatch.
They would steal a car, preferably a taxi, take Aaronson on his way to lunch. The tail says he eats at the same place every day, same greasy spoon diner on Flatbush Avenue where he always orders the same lunch. A Western or a Spanish omelet, home fries, buttered rye toast, and a Diet Pepsi. Always brings the Wall Street Journal, reads only the front page, then pulls out the New York Times and does the crossword.
Aaronson is a creature of habit. That's good, thought Parker. It should make this easy. That's if that shit he eats doesn't stop his heart while they're dragging him into a car.
That done, he would place another call to Mr. Julie Giordano.
This was that third thing, the other good idea.
In one way, it had surprised him that Fat Julie Giordano took his call about the Pakistani . . . whatzizname . . . Yahya . . . after Yahya named him as a reference. Wise guys don't like to talk on the phone. The most Parker had expected was for one of Giordano's minions to put him on hold, then come back with something short and unspe-cific such as “Boss says he's okay.”
But Giordano came on the line with a glowing recommendation. He said, “This person in question has been reliable on at least two occasions.” This, Parker assumed, had to mean that he'd done two hits. “Many persons, however, are thusly reliable.” Giordano had actually said “thusly.” He said, “But this one is special. I am letting him move on because to hold him would be like keeping a brain surgeon around in case someone gets a headache.”
The Brooklyn hood gave his blessing.
“But there's a condition,” said Fat Julie Giordano. “If we ever decide to get into this health care thing, maybe start our own HMO, we're going to need the right people and we'll want this guy back.”
You can't get much clearer than that.
Giordano as much as admitted that he was planting this guy. Getting him into the organization, finding out how it works, and eventually grabbing a piece of it. And he knew Parker heard him. It wasn't a warning because those guys don't warn. It was more of an invitation. He was saying, “Think about it and let's talk. I'll tell you what we can bring to the party, you tell me what's in it for us.”
That's what you want?
Then how's this?
I will tell you exactly how it works, how t
he stuff comes in and how it's distributed. I'll draw up an organization chart. Names and addresses of all the key people. Names of everyone we've bought and how we keep them bought.
This will take me about a day to lay out. At the start of that day, I want to see another one of those million-dollar suitcases. That's my consultation fee. At the end of that day, I'm gone. Think it over. You've got till morning.
Parker was sure that Giordano would go for it. All that remained was to work out how he, Parker, leaves there with that suitcase alive.
What's that old saying?
The devil is in the details.
Chapter 30
Michael had asked Doyle to be persuasive.
He didn't mean that persuasive.
“She's coming for Memorial Day weekend? We're totally booked for this weekend.”
An exasperated snarl. “Listen, dickhead . . .”
Michael held the phone away from his ear. He waited until the lawyer paused to take a breath.
“Okay, wait,” he said. “That will be fine. She can have my room.”
In fact, it's better. It's the biggest room in the house and it's the least he can do, especially since she's only staying through Monday.
Mrs. Mayfield will fly in tomorrow. He'll meet her, he told Doyle, show her around the island, and then he and Megan can take her out to dinner. He can sack out on a cot in the office.
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