In the Company of Wolves_Thinning The Herd

by James Michael Larranaga

  Quin winced. He checked his watch: 8:30 a.m. He had to meet with Stray Dog today so he could finalize the documents for Rebecca to sign. He knew it was important for her to pass along her estate while she was alive, and he knew they were both running out of precious time.

  Wolf packs travel in overlapping territories, which means they sometimes compete for the same food.

  There wasn’t a booth in Hell’s Kitchen restaurant in downtown Minneapolis that could possibly fit Louis Schultz’s wide girth, so Ben and Harold agreed to sit around a large table.

  Last night Ben and Harold had been discussing the revelation about Quin’s unusual mental condition when they received an unexpected phone call from Louis.

  Now to see his business rival sitting across from him, along with Spencer Lunde, was even more mind-boggling to Ben. The two men openly admitted to sending employees into Safe Haven to steal files.

  Lunde even bragged that he was so convincing in his role as an FBI agent that not only had he fooled Ben, he had fooled Sheriff David Carlson and Deputy Monica Jansen.

  “Congratulations,” Ben said, finally. “You’re a master thespian, Lunde. What do you two want from us?”

  Louis pulled a sheet of paper from his coat. “We found something that belongs to you.”

  Ben reviewed the paper. Harold read over his shoulder. It was a printout of his private investor list—all the names, the viatical deals, the expected maturity dates, and the actual maturity dates of each policy. Ben fumed and turned to his partner. Harold was in a state of shock.

  “You thief!” Harold said, pointing over the table at Lunde, as if this breach in security was a reflection on Harold—and it was.

  Lunde calmly took a bite of sausage. “Actually, gentlemen, Quin is the thief. He worked for me.”

  “I knew there was something wrong with him,” Harold said. “All week long I’ve been saying that–“

  “There’s no way Quin could’ve accessed our database that fast,” Ben said. “He had help.”

  “That’s right,” Louis said. “He had help from my former employee. The one you recruited away from me.”

  “Christopher Gartner,” Lunde said.

  “Right, Christopher sold us your data. We’re now offering it back to you for a finder’s fee,” Louis said. “There’s a lot of suspicious activity in your files.”

  Ben thought about this while Harold threatened them with legal jargon about breaking and entering. He read the printout again. Many of the expected maturity dates of the policies matched the actual maturity dates—strong evidence that Safe Haven had murdered clients to meet investor expectations. Louis was a tough competitor and a shrewd negotiator. If he held this evidence over Ben’s head, he’d want a lot of money.

  “What if I say I don’t care that you have a copy of this?” Ben asked.

  “Then the list might somehow wind up at the FBI,” Louis said. “They’d find it fascinating. Seven or eight politicians are named as investors.”

  After all the deals Ben had negotiated against Louis, this was by far his most important. He couldn’t lose against this greedy pig.

  “If you think I’m paying you to buy back a copy of my own database, you’re wrong, Louis,” Ben said, watching the smile melt off his chubby face.

  “You’ve been murdering clients,” Louis said. “The evidence here supports that.”

  “I call it thinning the herd, but yeah, we’ve moved a few along,” Ben admitted. “You have, too,” he said, egging Louis on.

  Louis said nothing.

  Ben tried again. “Admit it. You’ve killed clients. It’s the only way to win at this viatical settlement game.”

  Louis winked. “You’re right. We have murdered some of our clients.” He said it casually as if everyone did it now and again.

  Lunde looked surprised at Louis’s admission. He was clearly an outsider and hadn’t realized until now that Benson & White also dabbled in the game of high-stakes murder.

  “The difference is,” Louis said, “We hide our evidence better than you do.”

  “I won’t pay for a copy of my own database,” Ben repeated.

  Louis’s neck swelled like that of a king cobra about to attack. “Then I’ll go public and put you out of business. You’ll go to jail!”

  “If I go down, you go down,” Ben said confidently. He was winning this negotiation. He had it locked up.

  “You don’t have anything on me!”

  Ben laughed at seeing his rival frustrated. “Are you sure about that?”

  Louis looked at Lunde. “What’s he got?”

  “Nothing!” Lunde said.

  “Harold, would you show the men what we have?” Ben said.

  It was Harold’s brilliant idea to record the conversation with an app from his phone. He slipped it out of his pocket, set it on the table, and played the last few words Louis had just spoken: “You’re right. We have murdered some of our clients. The difference is we hide our evidence better than you do.”

  “Now the two of us are handcuffed together, Louis. If I drown, you go down with me,” Ben said.

  Louis was puzzled and at a loss for words, as if all the fat cells in his body had suddenly cut off the oxygen to his brain.

  “That tape is not admissible in court,” Lunde said.

  “It’s just as admissible as the stolen database you bought from Christopher,” Harold said.

  “And much more compelling to a jury,” Ben added.

  Louis gasped. “All right! We’re even. We’ll call this a draw.”

  Ben realized Louis wasn’t the great businessman or negotiator that he once thought he was. The man’s trick was merely to steal information from competitors to make it easier to outbid them.

  Ben went in for the kill. “I’m winning this one, Louis. I’m telling you to back off the Rebecca Baron deal. Withdraw your proposal.”

  “And get nothing?”

  “Staying out of prison is something.”

  His expression settled, as if he knew he’d been outbid. Louis had no counteroffer. “What about Quin and Christopher?”

  “They’re my employees,” Ben said. “Let me worry about them.”

  Ben could see him consider this, too. Louis rubbed his face hard. “We’re cool then?”

  “If you keep the database hidden, I’ll keep this recording hidden,” Ben said. ”But if you start poaching my clients for investors, I’ll kill everyone who knows you.”

  “But it’s possible that Christopher still has another copy of that database,” Louis admitted nervously. “If he uses that against you, and you use that recording against me, then we all go down.”

  “Let me worry about Quin and Christopher,” Ben said.

  Louis nodded and started squeezing away from the table as Lunde tried to stop him.

  “Wait a minute! What about me? I lost two partners sneaking around that mansion,” he said, following Louis.

  “And you were paid an hourly fee for your work,” Louis replied.

  “What about the bonus you promised?” Lunde asked.

  “The deal didn’t go through,” Louis said. “You didn’t get us Rebecca, and Ben’s not buying the database. No deals, no bonus.”

  Louis shoved his way past a line of customers and out of the restaurant, with Lunde following him. Ben could hear them arguing as they climbed the stairs to the exit. It was hard to decide who was angrier, but he knew he wouldn’t see them again. Their window of opportunity had closed.

  “Now I suppose we have to locate Quin and Christopher and stop them from making the deal with Rebecca?” Harold asked.

  “They have too much momentum. How can we stop them now?” Ben said.

  “So they’ll close the deal,” Harold said.

  Ben had thought about this most of the morning, and with Louis out of the way, there might now be a ray of hope for them to win back Rebecca’s business.

  “The doctor told us Quin is unstable, right?”

  Harold nodded. “Yeah, he’s a
wacko.”

  “And she told us he’s capable of violence,” Ben said. “I say we sit tight for a couple of days. We give them a chance to close the deal with Rebecca. After that, I might know of a way we can steal the policy from Christopher and his lunatic friend.”

  Stray Dog sat in his favorite booth at Barrio, gulping his Bloody Mary as he told Quin how he’d sold the data to Spencer Lunde and former boss Louis Schultz. He made it sound dangerous and Quin got the sense that his friend was exaggerating, but it was good to see Stray Dog so confident and empowered.

  Stray Dog pulled a stack of cash out of his pocket and slid it discreetly across the table. “Your half of the $50,000,” he said with an unsinkable joy. “That was a great idea, Buddy.”

  Quin held the money, cradling the stack in his hand. “Once Ben finds out about this, he’ll be looking for us.”

  “Don’t worry,” Stray Dog said. “I’ve got the contracts right here, and you’ve got the money. We can meet with Rebecca today and close this thing. Then you and I can vanish.”

  “Vanish? Where will you go?”

  “We need to hide out for a while in the Virgin Islands,” Stray Dog said, handing him airline tickets. “Once Ben finds out about the stolen database, and that we beat him out on this settlement, we’re on the run.”

  Quin had no plans to go anywhere with Stray Dog. He was concerned about Rebecca’s health. He wanted to be around when she needed him.

  “I’m not going with you.”

  “You have to! We’ll lay low until Rebecca dies and we collect her life insurance. Then we’ll return with enough money to start our own business.”

  How could he say this without beating the poor dog down? “I’m not interested.”

  Stray Dog shrugged his narrow shoulders and slurped more of his Bloody Mary. “All right, do whatever you want with the settlement money, but you have to get out of here for a while.”

  “I won’t ask Rebecca to sign these papers and then leave her to die alone,” Quin said.

  “Her ex-husband Mike can take care of her,” Stray Dog said. The he cocked his head, as if his ears detected a nuance in Quin’s voice that only a wolf could hear. “Do you have feelings for her?”

  Quin looked down at the plane tickets, at the stack of money, and then back up at Stray Dog. He couldn’t avoid the truth anymore. He felt something for Rebecca that was different from what he felt with Zoe. “Yes.”

  “Have you slept with her?”

  “No.”

  Stray Dog shook his head. “Oh, great. Then it really is love!”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We’re not supposed to have personal relationships with our clients,” Stray Dog said.

  “It’s for her protection. Ben is a wolf,” Quin said, regretting the words as soon as he said them.

  “Don’t pull that chivalry crap with me,” Stray Dog said. “She’s a client of ours. She’s dying—she’s checking out, hasta la vista, vaya con dios! You can’t save Little Red Riding Hood.”

  Quin wouldn’t let those thoughts sift too far into his mind. It would be selfish to leave her now just because she was damaged goods. It was also unfair to Zoe if he had feelings for another woman.

  “I wish you’d sleep with her and get it over with,” Stray Dog said. “Then maybe you wouldn’t be in love with her after all.”

  This pissed Quin off, and he slammed his fist on the table. “Watch your mouth!”

  “OK, OK. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “When does your plane leave?” Quin asked.

  “Monday afternoon.”

  “Then let’s get her to sign these papers today.”

  There weren’t enough cigarettes in the entire prison to alleviate the stress level welling up inside Helene. She paced the visitors’ lounge in disbelief. How could Quin do this to her?

  She watched her father, Hawk, sit with his back straight against the chair, his head up. Why wasn’t he angry like her? Had old age finally shrunk his brain?

  “Tell me again, because this isn’t making much sense to me, Papa,” she said, chewing on the foam tip of her cigarette.

  “Quin needed a loan,” Hawk said. “We talked, we drank, he had a vision.”

  “And then you gave him $8.5 million so he could help a woman?”

  “Not gave, loaned.”

  She felt sorry for her father. She’d tried to protect him from something like this with her nephew Jimmy and his wild friends. Instead, Quin had stolen the money right out from under her.

  “Papa, that’s too much money.”

  He shrugged. “I have more.”

  “But the point is he has to repay you, with interest. What guarantee do you have that Quin will return the money?”

  “I trust him because he’s your son, Helene Woman of the Storm, and you are my daughter.”

  Oh, no, she thought. This was her fault. She walked to the soda machine, bought a second Diet Coke, and sat next to her father.

  “Papa, I have to tell you something about Quin,” she said, choking on her own words. The guilt and shame she’d carried with her to prison resurfaced like an underground river bubbling through the cracked surface of a dry creek bed. “Quin isn’t my son.”

  He looked at her with a smile, his silver eyebrows rising. “I know.”

  She closed her eyes and opened them again to see the same smiling face. “I’m sorry—“

  “I knew what you were doing,” he said. “Protecting me.”

  “And you let him live with you even though you knew he was not a relative?” she asked.

  “I sent him out of the house all the time,” Hawk said. “Got him a job up north. He’s not around too much, you know.”

  The fact that Quin wasn’t a blood relative was only the tip of a much larger iceberg.

  “Papa, there’s something else about Quin that you need to know,” she said. “He’s Navajo, not Sioux.”

  The wrinkled smile on his face dissolved as he thought about this. She couldn’t read his expression. Did he know this, too? Did he understand that Quin was a fake?

  He shook his head, as if he disagreed with her. “He knows the ways of our people.”

  “He studied the ways in school,” she said.

  “Quin knows more about the ways than even my own grandchildren,” he said in a tired voice. “Maybe my grandchildren should go back to school.”

  She thought about her nephews, the ones like Jimmy who never completed their education because of the easy wealth they’d found from the reservation casinos. “But taking classes and reading books won’t make Quin one of us,” she said.

  “Why are you drawing lines?” he asked. “He’s Indian.”

  “But Papa, he’s taken money from you, from us—“

  He raised his hand, signaling her to stop talking, the way he had when she was a little girl. There would be no more discussion on this topic. He would have the final word.

  “Quin has a life spirit in him I have not seen on our reservation in many years,” he said. “And I know that as my friend, he will return my money.”

  She snapped open her Coke and sipped the cold beverage, hoping that her father was right. She had millions of questions for Quin, one question for every dollar he had stolen from her inheritance. Why would he do this? Who was this woman? Would he bring the money back?

  She decided the only way to find out was to contact her nephew Jimmy. It wasn’t as if she trusted the kid, but what choice did she have? She’d tell him the truth and have him follow Quin to see where the family money had gone.

  Quin had arranged the contract signing with Rebecca for four o’clock, and he stopped by his apartment to shower and shave beforehand. When he reached the top of the broken staircase, he immediately noticed something was wrong. His apartment door was open, and somebody was inside.

  Zoe wouldn’t leave the door ajar. It could be Big Ben or Harold waiting for me, or maybe Lunde.

  He stepped closer to the open door and peered
inside, heart pounding and his watch posting his heart rate at 120 beats per minute.

  A woman was inside, sitting on the couch reading one of Quin’s Vince Flynn novels, holding a cup of coffee she must have bought at Spyhouse. When she looked up he recognized Dr. Kirsten Hayden.

  “How did you get in here?”

  She looked up from the book and checked her own fancy compass watch. She was wearing baggy jeans; he thought she looked better in tight ones.

  “You read Vince Flynn political thrillers?” she asked. “I would’ve thought you’d read detective stories.”

  “I hate detective mysteries,” Quin said, entering the apartment. “I like the character Mitch Rapp. When in doubt, WWMRD: what would Mitch Rapp do?”

  She tossed the paperback on the table. “Too much testosterone for me.”

  “Enough with the book club banter,” Quin said. “How did you get in here?”

  “The door was open.”

  He walked into the room slowly and looked around. Somebody had been here. He sensed a change and looked for evidence.

  “Well? Aren’t you curious about my vacation?” she said.

  Quin walked to the kitchen. Everything was in place, even the laptop computer. “I already know about your vacation. You sent me e-mails, remember? Why are you here?”

  “I’m worried about you,” she said, standing up and walking over to him.

  This was how she had made him fall for her once before. She’d get in close, almost within touching distance, and talk. But he was over her; he had Zoe and Rebecca as love interests now.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” he said.

  “You’ve got a new assignment,” she said. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “Not really,” he said. “I’m short on time. How did you find this apartment?”

  “I met with Harold Reiker and Ben Moretti, your employers at Safe Haven,” she said. ”Ben mentioned this place.”

  He tried to conceal his surprise, but he knew from the satisfied expression on her face that he hadn’t succeeded.

  “What else did they say?”

  “I did most of the talking. I told them about your condition,” she said, moving closer, reaching out.