“Hold my calls,” he told his secretary as he passed by without looking at her.
“Of course, Mr. Meier,” she said. Then, to his closed door, she said, “It’s ten thirty, who the hell is going to call you now?”
Meier sat at his desk. Turned around to the bookshelf behind him. Turned on his high-end audio system. Put on his equally high-end Grado headphones and started up Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain. Maybe not his most celebrated or his most famous, but it was the one Meier liked best and that is what mattered to him.
He couldn’t listen to it. Couldn’t stop thinking about Bannister. Ridiculous waste of time for him to go to the meeting. His boss knew his feelings about the military and soldiers, both current and former. Knew he considered them a necessary evil. Contemptible but useful at times. But his father had secured the position for him, in addition to him running the D.C. offices for the firm, so he did what his boss requested. But tonight good old Miles was losing out to the irritating Bannister, so he turned off the audio equipment and went home.
It was almost midnight when he arrived at his two story townhouse in Georgetown. His girlfriend’s shoes were just inside the front door. She apparently had come over. Lights were all off. No TV sounds from upstairs in the bedroom. Probably fell asleep. Dinner was still on the table. Meier didn’t touch it. He couldn’t stand her cooking and avoided eating it whenever possible. Sat down on the sofa. Sent a text to his father. “Meeting went well. Call me tomorrow for details.” It was nine p.m. in L.A. and his father wouldn’t be asleep for another four hours. But he knew his father was conscientious about time zones, having lived in both New York and Los Angeles. He would wait until tomorrow to call.
Meier wanted to go upstairs and sleep in his bed. But that meant waking up his girlfriend. And the mood he was in he really didn’t want to deal with her tonight. It had been four months already and he was tiring of her.
“Scratch that,” he said out loud, “tired of her.”
Worried that she might hear and wake up, he decided to sleep on the sofa. Leave early, before she got up. Skip the gym. Just go back to the office. Meier decided to call his girlfriend in the afternoon and break up with her over the phone. Made a mental note to call the security firm and have them come by around lunch time to change the locks and the alarm code.
What had Bannister called me? Soft? Son of a bitch.
Chapter 3
Shot in the Back
JC checked out of his hotel room that night only a few hours after he checked in. The plan had been to stay in D.C. and prepare for the meeting the next day. But lying down in the deluxe suite at The Jefferson he couldn’t get comfortable. He thought it was simply because he wasn’t at home. No matter how nice the hotel he never slept as well as he did when he was in his own bed. But his discomfort continued. It was just past midnight when he remembered what was contributing to his sleeplessness; a rental truck full of guns parked in long term parking at Logan International Airport. His name on the rental agreement. His face on the closed circuit video inside the airport parking lot. His fingerprints all over the van.
The meeting with Meier and his boss could not happen tomorrow night. He needed to take care of that van. Which meant a one day delay. He called Meier.
“Do you know what time it is?” Meier said.
“Listen, Meier, I have other pressing business tomorrow. I need to reschedule for the following evening.”
“What is this, amateur hour?” the lawyer groused. “Waking me up at one in the morning to cancel our meeting?”
“I’m not canceling,” JC said. “Rescheduling. It couldn’t be avoided.” Irritated at Meier's tone.
“The hell it couldn’t.”
JC was exasperated. He tried being nice, being professional. Now he had to try it the other way. “You don’t like it? I don’t care. You’re not the decision maker, Meier. You’re barking like you have the power, but you don’t. You and I both know it. Now shut up and relay the information to your boss, and if your boss doesn’t like it, they can go to hell. Same as you.”
JC hung up. One of the rules of business all over the world — you don’t have to like the client. But when your client is an arrogant prick, it makes the work that much harder. He packed what little he had brought and called Joan from the lobby. Woke her up.
“Plans have changed. I’m going back to Boston tonight.”
Joan said nothing. JC thought she hadn’t heard him.
“Oh, the truck, right?”
“Yep.”
“Just let it stay there another day or two. It’s not going anywhere. Nothing is going to happen to it,” she said, then yawned.
“Needs to be done. I want to finish up with the Jakarta mess. I called Meier and postponed the meeting one day. You need to call Duke in the morning. Let him know you guys have the day off.”
JC could hear her stretching over the phone. “Call him yourself, boss. If I call, he’ll want to drag me to some lame film festival or something.”
Joan was probably right, JC thought. Duke was the newest addition to the team and the youngest. He had been working with Bannister for three years. Although Joan fought with him it was more akin to sibling rivalry than anything else. He knew their argument after the meeting with Meier this evening was already forgotten by both of them.
“Alright. I’ll tell him you went to Cincinnati early for a meeting but you’ll be back late tomorrow night. Happy?”
“Thanks, boss.” He could tell she was already drifting back to sleep. “When’s Gorman’s funeral?”
JC was quiet. He hoped she would fall asleep before he had to lie to her.
“Boss?”
“It’ll be in a few days. Not sure if we’re going to make it.”
“We need to try.” Joan yawned again.
JC said goodnight as he walked to his rental car. Got in, started it up and pulled out of the hotel parking lot.
*****
Gorman had already been buried. Shot in the back in Indonesia, the team brought his body home on their chartered jet from Jakarta the day before. While Duke and Joan went to their homes in the Boston area, JC had driven to Cambridge. He left Gorman with a medical examiner who owed him more than a few favors. She promised Gorman would be taken care of and laid to rest in Mount Auburn Cemetery later that afternoon. He had felt it would be best if they did not attend his funeral. Told himself that Gorman would have agreed. The job in Jakarta had been all over the news. Their involvement was unknown by the authorities, as it should be, but any kind of attention or mistakes greatly increased their chances of scrutiny. And a funeral of a gunshot victim that required the granting of favors to be accomplished could possibly increase scrutiny. Which is what JC hoped to avoid.
He arrived at Logan Airport at around eight in the morning. Turned in his rental car and picked up his van, the one he had driven to Cambridge with Gorman’s body. Only thing it held now were three bags full of guns, sourced and paid for by their client in Indonesia. Headed over to Newton Highlands, a suburb of Boston, and parked outside of his bike shop, Strong Arm Cyclery. A legitimate business front. Put a quarter in the meter. Twenty minutes. Walked inside. Nine thirty a.m.
“Hey, boss,” his two employees, Tommy Coletti and Vincent Mercier, called out in unison. They were both five foot ten, both had close-cropped military-style haircuts, both had biceps the size of most men’s legs. Many people thought they were brothers, if not twins.
“Hey, guys,” was JC’s half-hearted response. He tossed the keys to Mercier. “I’ll need you to drive that over to Gorman’s later. Keep money in the meter. The van’s loaded.”
“Sure thing, JC. Just tell me when.” Mercier put the keys in his pocket.
“Uhh, boss?” Coletti said. “Where’s Gorman? Doesn’t he usually take care of that stuff?” While Coletti and Mercier were aware of JC’s career as a fixer and most people who worked for him knew each other, he tried hard to keep the operations of his front businesses and his other work stric
tly separate.
JC dreaded the answer. The first time he would have to speak it out loud. “We lost him in Jakarta.” It hurt more than he thought it would.
“Aww, hell,” Coletti said.
“Man. I’m sorry,” Mercier said.
“What happened?”
“Not now, guys. Give me a few, okay?” JC went upstairs to his office. Closed the blinds that overlooked the sales floor and repair area of the bike shop. Made himself a cup of tea and tried to relax. Tried to sort things out in his head. Recriminations started shooting through his mind again. He’d lost team members before. But this was the first time it felt like it was directly his fault. What could he have changed? In the end, he knew two things: given the same situation he would make the same choice again and nothing would change what had happened.
The only thing he could do is try to move forward while honoring his friend.
Which meant the job with Meier. He’d had initial meetings with intermediaries before. It wasn’t uncommon. But something about this one was bothering him. It felt off. Maybe it was just Meier. It wasn’t the guy’s money that bothered him. In all honesty, JC was likely wealthier than Meier was. It was his attitude. Pure, unfounded arrogance and contempt is what JC had felt most in the meeting. He had little patience with people like that.
The phone rang. Once. Twice. Then stopped. One of the guys must have picked it up. Footsteps up the stairs. A light knock on the office door.
“JC, there’s a guy on line one. Says he’s got the bike.”
“Alright,” JC sighed. Mercier closed the door.
“Hey, Vince!”
Mercier opened the door again.
“Yeah, boss?”
“Who was the armorer in your unit? The one that worked at the ammo depot you guys pulled me out of?”
“Uhh, Mickey Sparks? Skinny guy. Nervous energy, right?”
“Yeah, sounds like the one. He was supposed to be a machinist as well, wasn’t he?”
“He was. Pretty good one, too. He did some work for us here until you opened that shop with Gorman.”
“Good. Call him up. Tell him I’ve got a job for him. I need someone to run Gorman’s machine shop. It’s too good of a business for us to just let it go.”
“Sure thing.” Mercier left.
JC looked at the phone. Saw the red-orange LED light of line one blinking back at him. “Of all the rotten, God-forsaken times to get the call,” JC muttered. Picked up the phone. “Strong Arm Cyclery. How can I help you?”
There was a pause. “Hello? Is this Strong Arm Cyclery?”
“Yes, it is, how can I help you?”
“Yes, I have an old bicycle that’s sitting around, taking up space. Any chance you’d like to buy it?”
“That depends. What kind of bike is it?”
“It’s an old British bike, a Royal Enfield Revelation.”
The code had begun. Whenever someone needed JC’s services they called the bike shop and jumped through a number of coded hoops. They could only learn the correct answers from a former client of JC’s. This caller had passed the first hurdle. The Revelation was an exceedingly rare small wheel bicycle made in the mid-1960s. There were rumored to be only one hundred ever made. JC had two downstairs in the showroom.
“Really? A Royal Enfield Revelation? Is it the folding version or the non-folding version?”
“The folding one. There’s a large hinge in the middle of the frame,” the caller said. This was the second hurdle: the Revelation was never produced as a folding bicycle.
“Excellent. Any chance you know the serial number?” JC said.
“Yes, it’s, let me see, it’s 159,000.” This was the third and final step: no Revelations were made with a serial number higher than 151xxx. If the caller had a real Royal Enfield Revelation he had just gotten all the questions wrong. Which meant he didn’t have the bicycle. Which meant he needed a fixer.
JC rubbed his forehead. There was no way his team could pull two jobs at the same time. Not with Gorman gone. Not with the meeting with Meier’s boss happening tomorrow. He was going to have to do something he hated doing. Something he had only done twice before.
“Sir, I’m sorry but I am unable to help you in this matter at this time.”
The man paused. “Do I have the right number?
“Yes, you do, sir. I am deeply sorry but we are booked solid for the next month or two. Is there any way you can call us back then?”
“But I need to get rid of this damn bike.”
“I understand. And I do apologize. Perhaps there is another solution you can find. Something that will tide you over for the next two months. Then give us a call back and see if we are available then?”
The man’s hesitation bothered JC. He couldn’t tell if it was due to irritation, apprehension or because JC was deviating from what the man was expecting.
“Yeah, I’ll see what I can do.” Spoken quietly and with resolve. JC regretted the delay, but it was necessary.
The man hung up. JC remembered that he had yet to call Duke about the postponed meeting with Meier. He made the call. Easy. The kid was stoked. JC hung up, leaned back and continued rubbing his forehead, trying to stop the pounding in his head.
*****
Twenty minutes later JC went downstairs. Coletti and Mercier had the TV on one of the news channels. The big story was the violence in Indonesia two days ago. Reports varied between calling it an attempted coup and an attempted presidential assassination. All reports agreed that the attempt had failed and there were dozens of dead bodies all over Jakarta.
“Was that us?” Mercier asked.
JC nodded.
Coletti whistled. “Was the mission a success?”
“We achieved our objective. The client is happy. But losing Gorman? Makes it kind of hard to call it a success.”
Coletti and Mercier nodded. Gorman had been well liked by the team.
“How did he die?”
“Shot in the back. Hung on for about ten minutes, but…” JC trailed off.
Coletti and Mercier were quiet. Watching TV.
“And the guy who shot him?” Coletti said.
JC pointed to the TV. “That’s him right there.” Shaky cellphone video footage was being shown of a man crawling on the ground. Another man walked in frame, stood over him and pointed a pistol at his head. The network cut back to the news anchor before the man holding the gun could pull the trigger.
“Did he?” Mercier asked.
“Yeah. He took it in the head.”
“Good.”
“Ain’t right,” Coletti said, “Cowardly, shooting a man in the back like that.”
JC felt the same thing when he saw the video on the airplane. Unedited the first time because the network didn’t know what they had. But now he felt more numb than anything. Move forward. If he said it a few more times it was going to sound almost like a mantra.
“Mercier, I need you to pick up Sparks and take him over to Gorman’s shop. Take your car. I’ll drive the van.”
Coletti rubbed the back of his neck. “JC, yeah, I talked to Mickey. He’s not doing so well. Divorced. Can’t really hold down a job. Spends most of his time at a bar up in Waltham.”
JC didn’t care about that. Right now he needed someone who could run a machine shop. Someone he had a history with. Someone he knew and might be able to trust someday. “Go get him, Mercier. Slap him around. Scare him. Sober him up. I’ll see you at Gorman’s in an hour.”
Chapter 4
Vargas
The phone at the bike shop rang forty minutes later. JC knew he was close to being late if he didn’t hustle. He was headed out the door.
“Get that, will you, Tommy. I’m on my way over to Gorman’s.” He wondered if he needed to change the name of the machine shop.
“Boss, it’s for you. It’s Mercier.”
“Tell him I’m on my way.”
“Said he needs to talk to you.”
“What the hell?” JC grumbled
. The bell jingled as he let the door close. Took the phone. “I’m on my…”
Mercier cut him off. “We’ve got a local problem over here. Looks like some community outreach is in order, boss.”
JC stood there, trying to understand what his friend was talking about.
“Boss, you there?”
“What are you talking about, Vince?”
Mercier’s voice lowered. “We’ve got some trouble here, man. I really need your help.”
“On my way.” JC ran out the door.
*****
Gorman’s Auto and Marine Machine Shop was located about ten minutes away in Watertown. JC pulled up in the rental van. Everything looked fine from the outside. Mercier’s Honda was there. Looked okay. Front door of the shop was open which seemed odd, but it didn’t look busted. JC got out, walked up to the door slowly, listening for any hint of what was going on inside. He heard nothing.
He entered the front door. Nobody was in the waiting room or office. He walked further in, through the door that led into the machine shop proper.
Mercier and Sparks were standing not fifteen feet from him. Motionless. Unharmed. A group of young thugs were gathered there as well. Some sitting, some standing. Others walking around. JC counted nine. Baseball bats, screwdrivers, pipes. One kid had an old Buck 110 he was pretending to clean his fingernails with. Everyone turned when he walked in. JC stood there, feet apart, hands in his pockets.
“Mercier. Everything okay?”
“Sure, boss. You know, just a little community outreach.”
“That’s right. We’re reaching out to take whatever you got.” One of the thugs stepped forward, trying to assert his dominance. JC ignored him.
“Sparks, how do you like the job interview?”
“It’s, well, sobering.”
“I’ll say. We’ll have to talk about that in a minute.”
“Hey! Shut the fuck up.” The lead thug put his hand in his back pocket and drew out a Charter Arms Bulldog revolver, chambered for the .44 Special. Small, light and exceedingly powerful. He pointed it at the floor. JC turned his head to focus on the threat. Thin, wiry, baggy clothes. Probably about twenty years old. Shorter than JC but not by much. White. Almost half of the group was. Two blacks, two Hispanics and one Asian. All late teens to early twenties. A real ragged crew, JC thought. And at thirty-eight, he suddenly felt rather old.
[JC Bannister 01.0] The Fixer, Season 1 Page 2