The Shadow Box

by Maxim, John R.

  “But Meester Parker. It was only to quiet him. Meester Parker, please don't hit me for this.”

  “Hit you? No, I won't hit you. I'll just shove that syringe right up your ass.”

  At least the new man, Yahya, knew what to try. D-amphetamines. Stimulants. The only bad thing about Yahya is you can't give him an order without getting a science lecture. “This man is obese. He might be hypertensive. Give him too much, too fast, and his heart will—''

  “Hey! You want to get paid? Shut the fuck up and give it. I need him awake. Today, Yahya. Today.”

  But Yahya turned out to be right.

  Aaronson came around but he went right from coma to spasm. His heart sounded like an Uzi and he was starting to hallucinate. It's that shit that he eats. It's all that grease and cholesterol.

  Parker tried slapping him. “Talk to me, Arnold. Say words. What does Doyle have on AdChem?”

  Aaronson took a flaccid swipe at him, tried to slap him back. Parker brushed the arm away but the porker tried to grab him in a headlock while yelling something about Doyle. His first reaction was that this guy has more guts than he expected, that this might take a while, but then he realized that Aaronson thought he was Doyle. So Parker tried playing the part.

  He said, come on, wake up, we have to be in court. Did you bring all the stuff about Lehman-Stone? Did you bring all the stuff about AdChem? Aaronson said, “You go to . . .” and “Leave me . . .” and other part sentences that sounded very much like he was blowing Doyle off. He seemed to want no part of this.

  Okay, then how about the Baron?

  Nothing.

  Rast? The Baron Franz Rast von Scharnhorst?

  A blank.

  Same when he tried Rasmussen. Aaronson’s eyes said he didn't know and didn't care. He leaned over to one side and threw up.

  “Nausea,” said the Pakistani, Yahya. “Nausea, disorientation, aggressiveness. All these are symptoms of overdose.”

  Parker ignored him. “Arnold? Where's Moon? The bad guys are looking for him because he burned down their houses. Let's go get Moon. We have to find him and hide him.”

  As far as Parker could tell, all this meant absolutely nothing to Aaronson. Doyle's friend seemed more interested in picking half-digested bacon off his pants. Parker repeated the name and the part about burning. There was no sign, not a glimmer, that Aaronson had the first clue about the torchings or that he'd ever heard of anyone named Moon.

  Let's try the Fallons.

  “Arnold . . . these guys murdered Jake. And now they want to hurt Michael. We really should go find him and tell him.”

  A spark appeared.

  “You know what else? They killed Bronwyn. They were trying to get him but they got Bronwyn by accident. Poor Michael. He was going to marry her.”

  The spark became angry. “Lehman . . . Stone? Pills?”

  “Yeah. Good boy, Arnold. Michael found out about Lehman-Stone and the pills. We can't let them hurt him anymore.”

  “Scumbags . . .”

  “They certainly are. Shouldn't we tell Michael?”

  “Safe. Michael's safe.”

  “Yeah, but you can't be too careful. Safe where, Arnold?”

  “Hotel. Dums . . . dummas hotel.”

  “Dummas Hotel? Where's the Dummas Hotel?”

  Aaronson gave him a look as if he was an idiot. He pronounced it more clearly. “Dumb-ass hotel. Martha's dumb-ass hotel.”

  Ah, shit.

  Okay, let's work on Martha.

  “Martha who, Arnold?”

  “Martha Vin-yer.”

  Parker blinked. Cape Cod had popped into his mind. The Fallon kid left a trail to Cape Cod. Could Arnold be saying Martha's Vineyard? Would Fallon go to all that trouble and then hide out right next door? Maybe. Maybe it's even smart.

  “Enunciate, Arnold. You confuse me when you don't enunciate. Say Martha's . . .”

  Aaronson said it with him. “Martha's . . . Vin . . . yard.”

  “Good, Arnold.” That's a one-suitcase answer. “Now let's see if we can pin it down a little better.”

  But Parker had to wait because a call had come in from the Mexican, Hector, who was one of the two men tailing Hobbs. He would take it in the other room.

  Once there, he put the phone to his ear and looked back out through the door at Aaronson. Doyle's snoop had slid from his chair and was down on all fours in front of it. His arms were trembling. They had trouble holding his weight. And now they collapsed. He hit face-first but it didn't seem to hurt him. He rolled off his belly and onto his side where he curled himself up in a fetal position. One leg kept twitching but the rest of him was still. Good. Let him sleep some of it off.

  “Yeah, Hector.”

  “We are in Brooklyn,” said the voice. “Mr. Hobbs came by taxi. He went into a little office building. It's more than two hours and we don't see him come out. Do you want that we wait because Haroun thinks he maybe sneaked out the back.”

  A look of pain.

  “Hector . . . you didn't cover the back?”

  “Yes, but in back there is a fence with barbed wire. I said to Haroun, Mr. Hobbs is too rich to climb fences but Haroun said—”

  “Wait a minute. Brooklyn? Where's this office?”

  “Also in Brooklyn.”

  “The address, fuckhead. Is that a glass-front building on Flatbush?”

  “Brown glass. Yes.”

  Jesus Christ, thought Parker. He's in with Doyle.

  “Hector, which Haroun is with you?”

  “The one who is from Ankara.”

  The Turk, nodded Parker. Claims he killed fifty Kurds for the bounty. Says he still has a necklace made out of their fingers.

  “Get back here, Hector. Tell Haroun to stay.”

  “Haroun thinks Mr. Hobbs is no longer our friend.”

  “Yeah, well, tell him…” Got to be careful on the phone. “Tell him we don't like Mr. Hobbs either. He's worse than the Kurds. Do you hear what I'm saying, Hector?”

  ”I will tell Haroun.”

  Parker broke the connection.

  He looked up to see Mohammed Yahya standing in the doorway, his eyes on the floor. He could have done without Yahya hearing that. But he would need this one, at least until he made his deal with the dagos.

  “Something on your mind?” he asked him.

  ”I said it was too much. It was too much.”

  Yahya stepped aside and cocked his head toward Aaronson. Aaronson's eyes were partially open. He was no longer twitching.

  Chapter 32

  Why Jake died was vengeance, pure and simple.

  It wasn't money, it wasn't greed and it wasn't that Jake got into something he shouldn't.

  Johnny G. said, ”I understand that, I believe it, but I still have to know what we've got here.”

  Moon nodded. He would tell him what he could. Parts of it, Johnny knew already because he was going on fifteen back when Tom Fallon died and had heard a lot of the talk.

  The “family problem” Jake needed him for had started long before. Tom Fallon came home from the army, went to college, and got his degree in accounting because he had a head for figures and Jake said he'd throw him lots of business. Jake, it should be understood, never took a dime in graft. What he'd do, you'd come to him for a favor and if he helped you he'd pull out someone's business card. He might tell you, for example, that you ought to have more insurance or who you might use when you need a lawyer or, in Tom's case, who you should get to do your taxes.

  Johnny G. is making faces. He understands one hand washing the other and he's asking could we speed this up a little.

  Well, the long and the short, Tom didn't want handouts and he especially didn't want to be under his brother'sshadow, which he was even when he was in the ring and winning. He didn't want to work in New York either because everybody there knew Jake. He went to work in Bayonne, New Jersey. Company was the American Eagle Import-Export Company. Back then, lots of companies had patriotic names but this was laying it on a bit t
hick considering that the founder had been in the Nazi navy before that.

  Armin Rasmussen. He was pharmacist's mate on a German U-boat that got depth charged by a destroyer off Cape May and had to surface. Officers got sent out west but the enlisted men got put in a camp just outside Uniontown, New Jersey. Some were put to work on farms, some on road gangs, and some worked in factories that were left short-handed by the war as long as they weren't in war-related industries. The Geneva Convention said you couldn't make them do that.

  The war ended, the crew got sent home, saw what was left of Germany, and some of them turned around and went back to the only country that was still in one piece. The pharmacist's mate went back to work for this little drug and chemical company he'd been working for as a prisoner. He showed them how they could get a lot bigger selling certain products to Germany because Germany didn't have anything except money. They had money because the Marshall Plan was helping them buy what they needed. Within four or five years, Rasmussen owned the company.

  Like Moon said, too many companies had “American” in their names and it got confusing when you went to the yellow pages. He changed the name to the Eagle Chemical Company and had an offshoot called Eagle Sales and also a printing company for making labels and such, a shipping firm, a couple of warehouses, and they bought a maker of veterinary products over near Philadelphia. Drugs meant for livestock didn't get the same scrutiny as drugs meant for people so, before long, they were regrinding those medicines to stamp out counterfeit pills.

  Tom Fallon knew it. Maybe not from the start but he knew it and he found a way to justify it.

  “How?” asked Johnny G. He looked away when he asked.

  “The pills were good, they were doing good, and the company was making money. Add to that, the bigger companies were trying to drive Eagle out of business by low-balling their prices and claiming Eagle's goods were tainted. That wasn't right either because Tom says they weren't.”

  “Up to a point.”

  “Yeah. Up to a point.”

  To back up just a bit, Annie Fallon worked at Eagle, too. It's where Tom met her. She married Tom, stayed for another five or six years, and quit when she was pregnant with Michael. Another ten years went by. Then one day, Annie took some painkillers made by Eagle and gave them to one of her aunts who had sciatica. The aunt went into convulsions and died. She told Tom. Until that minute, she might not have suspected the pills but she saw how stunned and sweaty he got and she knew that something was wrong. The same night, Tom says she must have been listening in when he called his boss to ask what they put in those pills. Long story short, they were only supposed to be for export and Tom had no business taking a bottle home.

  Moon couldn't recall what was in them. And no one put poison in them on purpose. Tom said they were just cutting corners and someone got careless with this one batch and they used a kind of solvent that was meant for cleaning machinery. Rasmussen said they'd caught the whole shipment and dumped it in the New Jersey marshes but Tom knew better from the shipping records.

  Annie, meanwhile, with her husband not able to look her in the eye, decided to do some detective work. On a hunch, she went out to the New Jersey printing plant and bluffed her way in because they knew her. She spotted printing proofs of labels for drugs that she knew were made by other companies. She swiped some. Then she saw cases of animal drugs, all made by Eagle, but they were being relabeled for humans.

  Right then, she got caught. The security chief back then was another German named Brunner. He came down, ripped her coat off, began searching her. When she fought him, he slapped her. Being Annie Fallon, she slapped him back. He knocked her cold.

  Rasmussen, of course, called Tom Fallon in. Brunner was there. Rasmussen reminded Tom that if his wife ever opens her mouth, his son will have a jailbird for a father. He pointed to a photograph of his own wife and children which he kept on his desk.

  We all have families, he said, and all of them are innocent. We will not let them suffer just because one woman can't keep her nose out where it doesn't belong. Control your wife or this man—he's pointing to Brunner—will do it for you.

  He made it clear that going to the authorities in hopes of getting favorable treatment would be a serious mistake. Brunner would not stop with his wife. The boy would also pay.

  “So Mike's mother never ran off,” said Johnny G., frowning. “Brunner killed her?”

  Moon was silent for a long moment. That was a reasonable suspicion. He was tempted to let it stand. But he decided to try not to lie. He shook his head no.

  “She . . . lost all respect for Tom,” Moon told him. “Shouldn't surprise you that she'd want to leave him.”

  “It doesn't. But she would have taken Michael.”

  Moon shrugged. “When love turns to hate,” he said, “who knows what a woman will do?”

  Part of the hate was that her husband, who fought in the ring, was in the same room with the man who broke three of her teeth, threatened her life and that of her kid, and did nothing about it. She told him that she'd be no wife to him. She said he was no husband, no Catholic, not even a man. That's when Tom took real hard to the bottle. But it was a good while after that before Annie was gone. They lived together, for Michael's sake, though it didn't do any of them much good. And, after a time, Annie started to crack.

  She wasn't a drinker herself. Just wine on holidays. But all this time she was pretty sure that other people, somewhere, had to be dying from the pills that killed her aunt and from God knows what else Eagle was making. By her lights, knowing that and not stopping it was the same as murder or at least it was a mortal sin. But she couldn't tell anyone except her priest and all he was telling her was to pray for guidance. She got close to a breakdown, went to her doctor, her doctor prescribed Valium.

  A while after that, she and Tom took Michael out to the house on Fire Island. They were hardly speaking except to fight but they went out for Michael's sake. After they came back home she got this feeling that someone had been in the apartment. Tom said it's just her nerves. Nothing was missing or out of place. Well, her nerves were certainly part of it and she needed another Valium to settle down.

  She went to the medicine cabinet and again she sensed something was wrong. Even her Valium didn't smell quite right. She checked those in the cabinet against those she had packed and brought with her to Fire Island. They did smell different and they even felt different. She was sure that someone, maybe Tom, was trying to poison her.

  She waited until the next morning, until Michael went off to school, to confront him about the bogus Valium. Tom was working at home now, partly to keep an eye on his wife so she didn't go blabbing to her cousins. She told him she's had enough. She was going to call her mother and ask if she and Michael could move in for a while. She'd give him twenty-four hours to make this right or she'd tell her mother everything. And then her cousins. The chips can fall where they may.

  “It was poison this time?”

  ”Yup.”

  “Brunner?”

  ”Yup.”

  “And Mike's father still didn't do anything?”

  Moon hesitated. “He finally went to see Jake. Jake called me.”

  Johnny G. waited.

  “We listened. Heard all of it. Then me and Jake went back to get Annie. She was packed and gone and she wasn't at her mother's.”

  Johnny G. made a face.

  “What?” Moon asked him.

  “She ran off with her boyfriend. That's the story, right? Some guy who used to be a priest.”

  “That's the story.”

  “Came out of nowhere, didn't he?”

  “Johnny . . . who else would an Annie Fallon run away with? Me?”

  The younger man didn't press it.

  “Jake picked up Michael at school, told him his mother got a little crazy and took off. Michael couldn't believe it either but I'm not sure he was real surprised. Jake took him home, left him with Jake's housekeeper, said he and his father would go out looking for
her.”

  “Where were you?”

  ”I had Tom stashed at Brendan Doyle's place—it's just up the street—until Jake could come over and ask him more questions.”

  Jake, he explained, had supposed right along that Tom had some kind of sweetheart deal at Eagle. He was living too good to be a Boy Scout. But Jake figured it was just a bookkeeping crime like helping the owners do a little skimming. Counterfeiting drugs never crossed his mind.

  Anyhow . . . that evening, with Tom passed out at Doyle's, he and Jake drove over to New Jersey to pay a call on Rasmussen. Jake caught him just as he was leaving his office, walking to his car. No mistaking him. Big man, bigger than Jake, and his license plate says, “Eagle I.”

  Jake says, “Mr. Rasmussen. A moment of your time.”

  Rasmussen looks down his nose. Says, “Tomorrow,” Figures he's a salesman.

  Jake says, “The name is Jake Fallon, you fat tub of shit.” Jake threw a right hand that near to popped his eye out.

  Jake went at his kidneys, whaled on him a few more times. Hit a man's kidneys just right and there's no need to tie and gag him for a while. Moon brought up Jake's car and they stuffed him in the trunk. Drove him back across the bridge and up near Westchester County Airport. Took an hour. Jake aimed at every pothole he saw.