Frankie Aguirre and Art Jefferson - 03 - Simple Simon

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “Does this puzzle say something?” Art gently pressed.

  Simon began to rock. His cheek stung, and he remembered heavy footsteps. And a man with red hair. A stranger.

  “What does it say?” Art asked once again, putting a hand on Simon’s back.

  Eyes open, and Simon saw it. Just like he had before the man with red hair hit him. “I know kiwi.”

  For a few seconds the statement brushed Art, tickling his intellect, and then the connection was made. To an hour spent with Nels in the com room, to one of Bell’s past employers. A time and an entity that should mean little to him, except for their relationship to the kid sitting next to him, and what he had just said.

  “Again, Simon. What does it say?”

  “I know kiwi,” Simon repeated. A friend had asked him to do so.

  Art straightened where he sat and rubbed Simon’s back. Scratch one hole, Art said to himself. But he knew he’d done more than fill a hole. He’d created a mountain.

  * * *

  The time had come to rewrite a small portion of one man’s history, and Rothchild silently thanked Bell and Marconi for making it all possible. Smiling at the computer screen, he reached forward and pressed the ENTER key.

  What happened next took less than five minutes, and would have taken less time had not the completion of some changes been required for others to begin. Over phone lines and through the air, from sixty feet beneath the Headquarters-Operations Building, millions of bits of digital instructions flowed to hundreds of computers in several countries.

  All of the systems resisted the unexpected intrusion, demanding proper authorization, just as they did with any communication.

  It took just milliseconds for their security to be breached.

  The first changes, actually creations, were in overseas banks, and here was where Rothchild believed he’d done his best work. Next came alterations to the records in U.S. banks, and then credit bureaus, and phone records, and on, and on, and on. It was all automatic, scripted in advance. All Rothchild had to do was watch the progress meter on his screen climb toward a hundred percent.

  Beauty, he thought to himself.

  * * *

  “You nervous?” Calvin Pachetta, behind the wheel of the motionless blue Chrysler, asked the man seated to his right.

  Maurice ‘Big Mo’ Tucek shook his head and lit a cigarette, his first in three years.

  Calvin looked back out the windshield, toward the black Lincoln parked in front of Mama Josie’s Ristorante. “Who you figure is setting this up?”

  Big Mo, a hundred pounds lighter than the last time he saw Calvin, rolled down his window a bit and spit the smoke through the crack. “Somebody with connections.”

  A slow nod moved Calvin’s puggish head. “Where they got you?”

  “I ain’t supposed to say.”

  Another nod. “Me neither. But it’s nice. Good schools, too.” Calvin tapped thick thumbs impatiently on the steering wheel. “I’m Buddy Burns,” he said almost proudly, a smile lifting his cheeks. “What name did they give you?”

  “I ain’t supposed to say,” Big Mo said once again.

  “Right,” Calvin agreed. “Me neither.”

  Someone about Fiorello’s size came out of Mama Josie’s, but then passed the Lincoln and continued on.

  “You know, I kinda think it’s the guys who made us rat,” Calvin theorized.

  “When did that truck hit you?” Big Mo asked sarcastically. “Of course it’s the feds. Who else would know where we lived, huh?”

  “But why didn’t they just say so?” Calvin asked, truly at a loss.

  “Look, Calvin, we sold our souls when we ratted. We are owned. They know we’ll do whatever they want ‘cause they know we’re more afraid of our old buddies than them.”

  Calvin considered that, then said, “The guy threatened me. Said it would be real easy to let slip where me and Loretta and the kids are now.”

  “Yeah, well, we do this and everything is right as rain,” Big Mo said, puffing deeply on his smoke. As he let it out he saw what they’d been waiting for and tossed the cigarette through the crack and into the gutter. “Here he comes.”

  “He’s alone.”

  “You ever remember Kermit keeping a sidekick?”

  “He never needed one,” Calvin recalled, then added with some regret, “Until now.”

  “You know how to get to Calumet Harbor?”

  “I told you before, yeah.” Calvin started the car.

  Big Mo took a gun from an envelope between his legs and screwed a silencer to the threaded muzzle. “This is nuts,” he said quietly, then louder, “Let’s fucking get this done.”

  * * *

  The phone on G. Nicholas Kudrow’s nightstand rang at three. He snatched it up during the first ring. He had not been able to sleep. “Yes.”

  “It’s the Giraffe,” Section Chief Willis reported.

  “Your people are certain?” Kudrow’s wife stirred, but a gentle hand on her hip stilled her.

  “They have a tape. And pictures.”

  The expectation that had kept him awake drained suddenly away. Kudrow could feel the tiredness filling the void it left. “Good. I want it tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kudrow laid the handset in its cradle and let his head sink into the soft down pillow. He was asleep in two minutes, eyes dancing in REM sleep not long after that, a smile lasting through it all.

  * * *

  Big Mo, feet wide against the motion of the boat, ripped the duct tape from Kermit Fiorello’s eyes first, then from his mouth. The sun was almost up, blue haze to the east, and the lights of Chicago across the water to the west. The cabin cruiser’s motor was silent after a half hour run into deep water. Calvin was vomiting over the side.

  “What in the name of holy fuck is going on!” Fiorello yelled, competing with the cawing of an early flight of gulls on final to the stockyards. More duct tape held his hands and arms together behind, and his legs were similarly bound at the ankles. He sat on a padded bench at the rear of the boat. After a second to orient himself, he looked right at Big Mo. “You look like someone.”

  “My hair used to be reddish,” Big Mo said. Calvin, wearing a puffy orange life preserver, finished his heaves and came aft from the pilot deck.

  Fiorello squinted, studying the face, his eyes going wide after a minute. “Holy son of bitch! Mo? Big Mo? Is that fucking you?”

  Big Mo smiled and confirmed it with a nod. He respectfully crossed his hands in front. One held the silenced pistol.

  Fiorello winced suddenly, and rolled his neck. “Shit. My fucking head.”

  “Sorry I had to bop you, Mr. Fiorello,” Calvin said.

  Fiorello knew that voice without question. “I don’t fucking… Calvin? You, too.” He looked skyward in disbelief. “This boat must be sinking ‘cause the rats are on deck.”

  Calvin, offended, stepped back.

  “Look,” Big Mo began, “I didn’t have to take the tape off.”

  “Then why did you?” Fiorello demanded defiantly. “You wanted to show me your pretty new hair?”

  Big Mo glanced down, then back to Fiorello. “No, I wanted to ask you a question, and I thought it rude to do so with you not being able to see who’s doing the asking.”

  “A question!” Fiorello blew a breath hard past his lips. “You bring me into the middle of… Where are we?”

  “Lake Michigan,” Calvin answered.

  “The middle of fucking Lake Michigan to ask me a question. Okay. Ask away.”

  Big Mo crossed his arms over his chest, the pistol pointing toward Indiana. “I was wondering if you wanted me to shoot you in the head before we throw you in, or if you just wanted to drown.”

  Calvin shuddered when Big Mo said ‘drown’.

  Fiorello could say nothing. He looked to his feet. Not only did duct tape circle his ankles, but so did a length of yellow nylon rope, which snaked over the deck to a pair of anchors and a half dozen cinder blocks all
tied together. “You’re nuts.”

  Big Mo looked to Calvin. “I guess that’s a no on the shooting.”

  Calvin nodded and dragged the weighty conglomeration to the side, lifted it over the deck rail, and let go.

  “NO!”

  The slack on the line was gone before Fiorello could finish his scream. His feet snapped away from the bench and were pulled toward the rail, dragging the rest of his pudgy frame, which stuck on the rail.

  Calvin reached down and gave gravity a little help, lifting Fiorello over the edge. He screamed once more before a splash and a sucking WHOOSH drowned him out. Calvin brushed his hands against each other and looked to Big Mo.

  “I kinda wanted to shoot him,” Big Mo admitted, then motioned for Calvin to take them back in.

  Chapter Twelve

  Missing Links

  Nelson Van Horn looked long at the piece of paper the A-SAC handed him before his eyes came up. “Where did you get this?”

  “Do you know what it is?” Art responded with his own question. Behind him, one of the com room’s secure fax machines began to spit pages.

  “It’s KIWI ciphertext.”

  Art handed a photocopy of the page from The Tinkery to Van Horn. “And this? Is this in KIWI also?”

  Van Horn needed just a quick scan to confirm that it was. He nodded and asked again, “Where did you get this?”

  “Nels, I can’t tell you that right now. But I need to find out something.”

  “What?”

  “What’s in these,” Art said, seeking the information as confirmation of, well, the impossible made real. “Can you do that loop back thing you told me about last week?”

  “Sure, but…”

  “Nels, this is damn important. And sensitive.”

  No shit, Van Horn thought, looking at the pair of ciphertext pages. For all he knew they could be things not intended to be seen. Intelligence of the highest order. And to have someone hand him two pages of ciphertext— KIWI ciphertext! —and want to know what was in them, well…

  But it wasn’t just someone. It was the A-SAC. It was Jefferson. No one came straighter than him.

  “All right,” Van Horn said. “It’ll just take a minute.”

  * * *

  A quarter to five, the sun red and low in the west. Keiko Kimura stood on the balcony of her second floor room at the Belle View Inn and watched a fishing boat lumber in the distance. She could not see the setting sun, but its shimmer was quite plain, and quite beautiful, on the wide waters of the Potomac.

  She was in America.

  The hunger roiled impatiently within. One boy could not quench the desire.

  But she had to resist the temptation to seek out another just yet. There was the one she had been promised. The one she had to work her magic on.

  And only that one.

  America, a smorgasbord of her favorite flavors. She ached at thought of what she would miss once she was gone. Her desires denied.

  Being here, experiencing here, only to leave. Torture, she thought. It is torture.

  * * *

  A stale bagel sat on the desk of Angelo Breem, United States Attorney, a bite-size chunk missing and a fly picking at the rest. Breem rolled a brief tight and swung at the insect, making contact and batting it across his office. It landed on the floor by the door and was squashed when Assistant United States Attorney Janice Powach came excitedly in.

  “A knock would be nice,” Breem commented, turning his attention quickly back to the work on his desk.

  Powach approached, a devilish, satisfied grin teasing. She stood right at the edge of Breem’s desk, red skirt pressed against it, and said nothing.

  After a second, Breem knew he had to ask. It was a familiar game, and would have grown tiring long ago if the legs beneath the skirt weren’t wrapped around him on occasion. “Yes, Janice?”

  “We got a transfer hit on one of Fiorello’s accounts,” Powach said. “One hundred thousand from a stateside account to an overseas account.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Breem grunted, but did not look up. Fiorello had ceased being interesting, becoming more a reminder of that damn Jefferson.

  Powach leaned forward on the desk, and now he looked up. She had on a white blouse, the loose one. “Don’t you want to know who got the money?”

  “Okay,” Breem said, his eyes moving from her face, to her neck, and to the cleavage she was so innocently letting him admire. “Who?”

  “The name is Anne Preston,” Powach said, and when Breem did not react or lift his eyes she put a hand under his chin and lifted.

  “Preston. Who’s that?”

  “Her name isn’t Preston anymore,” Powach explained. “It’s Jefferson.”

  Breem’s eyelids batted fast, and he pulled slowly back, settling into his chair. “Anne Jefferson?”

  “His pretty new wife,” Powach confirmed, standing now, the inviting curve of her body drawing no interest from her boss.

  “His wife!” Breem commented incredulously. “Son of a bitch.”

  “Was it okay not to knock?” Powach asked playfully. Breem was staring past her.

  “He used his wife,” Breem said, a gleeful smile forming. “Jefferson, Jefferson, Jefferson. I have you.” A fist came down hard on the meaningless work of the day. “I have you!”

  * * *

  As he was leaving for the day, Craig Dean didn’t notice the contrast of the shiny black Chrysler LHS parked next to his aging Toyota, but he jumped when his name was called through an open window.

  The shudder faded, and Dean turned and bent to look through the passenger window of the LHS. Mr. Kudrow sat on the opposite side, behind the wheel. “Mr. Kudrow.”

  “Long day, Dean?”

  Keys jingled nervously in Dean’s hand. “Yeah. Well, you know.”

  Kudrow nodded. “Get in.”

  Eyes that had been fatigued slits ballooned. “I…was heading home.”

  Kudrow looked forward through the windshield, away from Dean. “It’s about MAYFLY, son. There may have been a leak.”

  A wet bulge rolled down Dean’s narrow throat. He told himself to stay cool, that it was all right, that, after all, he was the one doing the postmortem on MAYFLY, and that he had been really careful with the money and they’d never find it, so there was no way he could be accused of anything. Be cool. Be cool. It was probably something simple anyway. Maybe a crypto clerk that quit some time ago—they were always leaving. Or the British. There had been that initial suspicion of someone in their structure, since they used MAYFLY, too. Cool, calm, easy.

  Dean opened the door and got in, the comfortable leather accepting his wiry frame. Kudrow locked the door from his side and rolled the window up.

  “We have to talk about it,” Kudrow said, then started the car.

  “Where are we going?” Dean asked, nervous eyes on the ignition.

  “We can’t talk here. You’ll understand.”

  The LHS pulled out of its space and moved through the workers’ lot, passing two guard posts where barrier gates sank into the pavement and allowed it into a serpentine path between concrete planters. Dean forced his gaze straight ahead, glancing only once or twice toward Kudrow once they were off base and on the highway, heading northwest. Hands at ten and two, Kudrow never even tickled the speed limit.

  They meandered on interstates and state routes until, just outside a place called Sunshine, Kudrow said, “We’re being followed.”

  Dean looked cautiously over his left shoulder, out the tinted rear window, but all he could see were headlights that appeared no different from any other. “Where? Why would anyone follow us?”

  A rural intersection came fast upon them, and Kudrow hardly slowed when he turned the LHS right, heading now for Patuxent River State Park. “Because we’re about to save your life,” Kudrow said, looking briefly at his passenger. “I’m disappointed in you, son.”

  The bulge that had rolled down his throat now seemed minuscule to what Dean fought to keep down. He slid a hand on
to the armrest built into the door, searching for the door release.

  “It won’t open unless I want it to,” Kudrow said, flicking a switch quickly once to demonstrate. “Good old American ingenuity.” He turned left onto a narrow, rutted access road that snaked into the trees. “But you’re more familiar with how our Japanese friends work, aren’t you, son?”