Killer Instinct

by Joseph Finder

  So I said nothing. And waited for it to sink in.

  God, I hoped Kate’s theory was right, that Kurt was a sucker for adulation.

  Kurt’s eyes flicked toward me, then back toward the windshield.

  I compressed my lips. Stared at the steering wheel.

  “You talked with that cop,” Kurt said. His voice was softer. “Kenyon. Did I not warn you to keep your mouth shut?”

  “You did. And I did. But the guy showed up at my office. He said he’s talking to everyone who worked with Trevor and Brett. So I gave him a whole lot of blather. He asked about you, and I told him that as far as I knew you had a good relationship with those two. That you played softball with them, and they really admired you.”

  Kurt nodded. “That’s good,” he said.

  It was working. Thank God. Relief flooded my body.

  “That’s very good. Very smooth. I see why you’re so good at closing deals.” He turned, his face a few inches from mine. “Because you’re a goddamned liar,” he shouted. His voice was deafening. His spittle sprayed my face. “I know every goddamned word you said to that cop. ‘He knows lots of clever ways to kill people,’ you said.”

  No. Had Kenyon talked to somebody on the force who knew Kurt?

  “‘I have to trust you,’” he went on. “‘Can I?’ No, asshole, you can’t trust anyone. You think you can talk anywhere in the building without my knowing?”

  Of course. With all the Corporate Security resources he had at his disposal, he had the conference room bugged too.

  “Now, I’m not going to say this again. Go behind my back one more time—within the company, to the police, anybody—I will find out. There is nothing you can do that I don’t know about. Nothing. And if you step over the line—one millimeter over the line…”

  “Yeah?” My heart was thrumming, fast and loud.

  “A little friendly advice? You think you and your wife live in a safe neighborhood. But break-ins happen all the time in that part of town. Home invasions. Bad guys take stuff. Sometimes they even kill innocent people. Happens. You’ve got a wife and unborn child, Jason. You want to be real careful.”

  55

  Graham Runkel’s apartment still smelled like a bong, and his 1971 VW bug was still in his backyard. It looked like he was working on it.

  “How’s the Love Bug?” I said. “El Huevito.”

  “I’m hot-rodding it. Turbo rebuild. Wait right here.”

  He came back with a Ziploc bag of marijuana buds. “The last of the White Widow. A peace offering. Welcome back.”

  “Not for me, thanks. I told you, I don’t do that anymore.” I handed him a wrapped package.

  “What’s this?”

  “A guilt offering. Because I’m a jerk.”

  He tore it open. “A complete set of The Prisoner on DVD? Unfreakingbelievable, Steadman.” He admired the picture of Patrick McGoohan on the front of the box. Back in Worcester, Graham used to come over to my house when my parents were at work, and we’d get high and watch old reruns of the classic British spy show. “What’s the occasion? Is it my birthday? I forget.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m here to ask for your help, and I feel like such an asshole just showing up after all these months that I figured this might make you feel a little less pissed off at me.”

  “It certainly goes a long way,” he said. “But what you really need is the comfort of the White Widow. You’re wound tighter than a…whatever’s wound really tight.” Graham’s brown hair was shoulder length and looked dirty. He was wearing his old red T-shirt with yellow McDonald’s golden arches on it. It said MARIJUANA and OVER 1 BILLION STONED.

  “If you wanted to do something to someone’s car so it wiped out while he drove it, what would you do?”

  He looked at me funny. “Wiped out?”

  “Crashed.”

  “Cut the brake lines? This a quiz?”

  “If you cut the brake lines, wouldn’t the brakes feel all mushy as soon as you start driving it?”

  “What’s this about, J-man?”

  I gave him a quick overview, told him about Kurt and what I thought he’d done. Graham listened with his bloodshot eyes open wide. This was a guy who believed the DEA put transmitters in every copy of High Times magazine, so he was inclined to believe my theory.

  “It was a Porsche?” he said.

  I nodded. “Carrera 911. Brand-new. At most, a year old.”

  “Was the driver wasted?”

  I shook my head.

  “Just lost control? No other car involved?”

  “Correct.”

  “Hmm. Well, yeah, you wouldn’t cut the brake lines. The driver would know right away. You wouldn’t loosen the lug nuts on the wheels either—the car would start wobbling as soon as it hit the road. But look, man, unless the cops are total bozos, this is the first stuff they’d look for—missing lug nuts, slashed tires, a bolt missing from the steering knuckle, cut brake lines. Shit like that.”

  “It’s all going to be fairly obvious,” I said.

  “Of course, if somebody screwed with the ball joints…man.”

  “What?”

  “The driver would just lose control.”

  “Screwed with the ball joints? How? Like, cut it? Wouldn’t that be obvious?”

  “Unless they weren’t cut. Shaved down or filed away or something. Weakened somehow. So when the car—”

  “Weakened?” I said. “How do you weaken metal?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. Lots of ways, I figure.”

  “Weaken metal,” I said aloud, but really to myself. I thought of that story Kurt had once told me about how his team had put something from a tube on parts of a Taliban helicopter in Afghanistan. “I think I know.”

  “Okay, man. Good. So why don’t we celebrate?” He reached for the bag of marijuana. “Last call,” he said.

  I got home around seven-thirty. Susie and Ethan were finishing up a take-out dinner in the kitchen—I guess they’d found a sushi place that delivered—and Kate was in bed and clicking away in cyberspace.

  “Kate, have you been outside at all today?”

  “Outside?” She gave me a puzzled look.

  “You look like you could use a little fresh air.”

  “Fresh air?” Then she saw me putting my index finger over my lips. She nodded. “Good idea,” she said.

  She slipped out of bed, and I lifted her up. It was surprisingly easy, probably because of all of Kurt’s strength conditioning. I carried her down the stairs and out of the house. Ethan came out of the kitchen, saw me carrying Kate, and rolled his eyes.

  I took her out to our small backyard. “I’m sorry, but I have to assume that Kurt has our bedroom bugged.”

  Her eyes widened. “No way!”

  “I don’t know. I just have to assume it. Listen, how long does Susie have that rental in Nantucket?”

  She cocked her head. “Till the end of September, probably. Why, you’re thinking maybe we could borrow it for a couple of days? I’m not exactly in the best condition to take a vacation.”

  “I’m not talking about a vacation. Do you think it’s safe for you to fly over there?”

  “Flying’s fine. As long as I don’t exert myself. But what’s this all about?”

  “I want Susie and Ethan to go back to Nantucket and take you with them. As soon as possible. Tomorrow morning, first thing.”

  She looked at me. A series of expressions played on her face: confusion, skepticism, amusement.

  Then realization. “It’s about Kurt, isn’t it?” she said.

  Susie and Kate and Ethan got in a cab the next morning for Logan Airport and a flight to Nantucket. I went to the office, and at nine o’clock I grabbed a few minutes between meetings. I returned a call from the CEO of the Red Sox, who turned out to be a supernice guy—I guess I was expecting George Steinbrenner with a Boston accent or something—and wanted me to set up a demo of the PictureScreen and get him some numbers. We agreed to meet in a week.

  A
s soon as I hung up, I took the elevator down to the lobby. Left the Entronics building, drove a few blocks away, took out Sergeant Kenyon’s card, and called him from my cell.

  The phone was answered in a gruff voice, a Spanish accent: “State police, Trooper Sanchez.”

  Office noise in the background, phones ringing, voices.

  I said, “Sergeant Kenyon, please.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  I paused just a second. “Josh Gibson.”

  In a minute, Kenyon picked up. “Mr. Gibson,” he said. “Let me take this in my office.” He put me on hold, then picked up again a few seconds later.

  “Well, this is a nice bit of timing,” Kenyon said. “I was going to call you, give you the news.”

  “News?”

  “Accident Recon found nothing.”

  “They found nothing,” I said. That stopped me in my tracks.

  “That’s right. No evidence of a crime. No evidence of a crime means no investigation. Means I get assigned to something else.”

  “But I know that Kurt—I know he did something to the car.”

  “If the CARS unit says there’s nothing wrong, there isn’t a lot I can do.”

  “They didn’t look hard enough.”

  “You may be right. I don’t know. They’re busy. Lots to do.”

  “It’s there. He did it. I know it. Did anyone check the ball joints?”

  “I don’t know what they checked. All’s I know is, they didn’t find anything.”

  “Where’s the wreck?”

  “Scrapped, I bet.”

  “Scrapped?”

  “Processed out of the system, anyway. That’s what they normally do.”

  “Who?”

  “Tow yard. It’s theirs now. Normally they ask the deceased’s family if they want it, and when it’s totaled like this, the family always says no, so they sell it off for scrap. Why?”

  “You’ve got to get your Accident Recon people over there to look at it again before it’s scrapped.”

  “Out of my hands. Out of police custody too.”

  “Which tow yard?”

  A pause. Kenyon laughed. “Uh-uh. Forget it.”

  I tried another approach. “If you search Kurt Semko’s apartment, I’ll bet you find some tubes of something called LME. Liquid Metal Embrittlement agent. Issued to the U.S. Army Special Forces.”

  “LME, huh? Well, here’s the problem, see. There’s not going to be any search. No evidence of a crime means no investigation means no search warrant. That’s the way it goes in the real world.”

  “He’s got the stuff there. I’ve seen it. That’s your evidence.”

  “Let me explain something to you, Mr. Steadman, because you obviously don’t know how the system works. If you want to get a search warrant, you have to get a judge to sign off. The judge isn’t going to sign off unless there’s what you call probable cause.”

  “I’ve seen the stuff in his apartment.”

  A pause. “I don’t know what you saw, but my instinct about you is that you’re an honest fellow. Are you willing to be my informant?”

  “Confidential, sure. But not named. No way in hell. Kurt knows people all over. He’d find out. Kurt bugged the room you and I talked in at Entronics, you know. He heard every word we said.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The guy is dangerous. So you see why I can’t go on the record as your informant.”

  “Doesn’t work that way, Mr. Steadman. Judge uses something called the Aguilar-Spinelli test.”

  “The who?”

  He sighed. “Basically, it means that you can’t issue a search warrant based on plain old hearsay. If the warrant application’s based on information you get from an informant, you’ve either got to list the name publicly or establish a long history of reliability. As a confidential informant. Which obviously you don’t have. Now, if you’re willing to put your name on the search warrant—”

  “Forget it. Not going to happen.”

  “Then there’s no search warrant.”

  “Don’t you want to solve this case?”

  “Look here, Mr. Steadman. My hands are tied. As far as the state police goes, there is no case anymore. I’m sorry.”

  “So Kurt’s just going to get away with this?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Steadman.”

  I called directory assistance, got the number for J & A Towing—the company that had towed away Trevor’s car—and gave them a call.

  “You have my brother’s Porsche,” I said to the woman who answered the phone.

  “Okay?”

  “Name is Trevor Allard.”

  “Hold on.”

  When she got back on, she said, “Hey, looks like we already talked to your brother’s—widow. She said she didn’t want the wreck. She gave us the go-ahead to sell it for scrap.”

  “Shit,” I said. “That was my brother’s car.”

  “The wife was listed as the next of kin. It’s probably been picked up already. Wish I could help you.”

  “Can you find out if it’s been picked up yet? I’m sorry to bother you—it’s just that—well, it was my brother’s car. And if I can salvage anything from it—well, there’s, like, a sentimental value. He really cared about that car.”

  “Hold on.”

  I waited.

  A man picked up. “This is Ed.”

  “Ed, my name is—”

  But he kept talking. “We followed all the proper procedures, sir. We notified the next of kin, and she authorized us to scrap it. The wreck’s scheduled to be picked up this afternoon by Kuzma Auto Salvage—”

  “You still have it?”

  “Like I said, it’s scheduled to be picked up.”

  “Listen. This is really important to me. What do you get from the salvage company for it?”

  “I really couldn’t tell you. That’s worked out between them and us at the time.”

  “Ballpark.”

  “Could be a hundred, two hundred bucks.”

  “I’ll give you three.”

  “You really want this wreck, huh?”

  “If I can salvage something from it—anything—for my brother’s sake—”

  “I don’t think three hundred bucks is going to motivate anyone, know what I’m saying. We got a relationship with this salvage company, and we already sold a bunch of vehicles by weight.”

  “Ed, is this your towing company?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Three hundred to your company, and another three hundred to you personally for expediting this sale.”

  He chortled. “That important to you, huh?”

  “Do we have a deal? Or do I have to buy it off of Kuzma Auto Salvage, for what I’ll bet will be a fraction of that?”

  “It’s a Porsche, you know.”

  “A Porsche or a Kia, it’s a heap of steel and aluminum now.”

  “Cash?”

  “Tow it to my yard in Cambridge, and you’ll get six hundred bucks in cash. Unless that Porsche’s made of titanium, you’re getting a pretty damned good deal.”

  He chortled again. “I’ll have one of the guys tow it out to you tomorrow.”

  “Today,” I said. “By two o’clock this afternoon. Before I come to my senses.”

  56

  My comfortable corner chair at Starbucks was still available.

  I sent an e-mail to Yoshi Tanaka’s personal e-mail address—it was on the back of his business card, which I kept in my wallet—from Kurt_Semko@yahoo.com.

  “Kurt” wanted to pass on to Yoshi some troubling information he’d discovered about Dick Hardy in the course of a routine security sweep—Hardy’s Hushmail account, the Samurai Trust in the Channel Islands, the trading of Entronics options on the Australian Stock Exchange. “Kurt” wasn’t comfortable reporting this within normal channels in the company, since no one, not even he, the new Director of Corporate Security, would dare take on the powerful CEO of Entronics USA. But he thought Yoshi should know about it. “Kurt” insisted
that none of this ever be discussed over the phone or in person. He told Yoshi not to write to him at his Entronics e-mail address.

  I hoped Yoshi could read English better than he spoke it.

  If Kurt was telling me the truth—and I had no reason to doubt that he really did have the goods on Dick Hardy, since that was what he was good at—then what Hardy was doing was not only illegal, it was basically disgusting.

  I was sure the top leadership of Entronics in Tokyo had no idea what he was up to. The Japanese were far too cautious, far too scrupulous, to play that kind of sleazy, low-level game. The games they played were on a far higher level. They’d never tolerate this. They’d get to the bottom of it, confront Hardy, and bounce him out on his ass in a Tokyo minute.

  Trevor Allard’s wrecked Porsche was a terrible sight. The front end was so badly crumpled it was almost unrecognizable. The hood stuck way up, the driver’s door was just about off its hinges, both front tires were flat. The undercarriage had been ripped apart. Looking at it, you could see that no one could have possibly survived the crash.

  Graham and I stood there, looking at it solemnly.

  “My landlord’s going to have a cow,” Graham said. “Did I say you could have it towed here?”

  “Yeah. This morning.”

  “I must have been asleep. I thought—I don’t know what I thought.”

  “As soon as you find the damaged part, I’ll have it towed away.”

  “And if I don’t find anything?”

  I shrugged. “It’ll just have to stay here until you do.”

  He wasn’t sure whether I was kidding. “Guess I’d better get to work.”

  He got out his toolbox and began dismantling the wreck. After a while, he said, “This is not fun. No wonder they didn’t find anything.”

  He removed the front left wheel and poked around in the dark innards of the wheel well. “This one’s fine,” he said. “No ball joint damage here.”

  Then he went around to the other wheel and did the same. A few minutes later, he announced, “This one’s fine too.”

  “What else could it be?”