by Mike Cooper
All the same, I wouldn’t want to tangle with them.
“You haven’t said why you’re still in town.”
Harmony nodded and eased her own posture slightly. “Talking to people like I was, they kept telling me how nice and quiet Clabbton is. Small town, peaceful. Everybody knows everybody.”
“That’s my impression. More or less.”
“But the county—Dave’s welding shop, what happened out there? Sounds like someone drove a tank through. Then something out at an abandoned steel mill, which the news is talking up like a drug war. And last night an armed gang stormed a hospital. A hospital! It’s like we’re in Ciudad Juarez.”
“All since you came to town.”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “You were here first.”
I noticed a news van parked up by town hall. It was around the side, half hidden, which was why I’d missed it earlier. The telescoping antenna was fully raised, cables spilling out the open rear doors, but no one was visible.
“The Russians are out of control,” I said. “If this is Chihuahua, then they’re the Zetas. They’ll be stringing bodies from that railroad bridge there soon enough.”
“Exactly.”
I studied her posture. “You’re worried about them coming after you.”
“Yes.”
“My friend who looked you up—you have a reputation of your own.” I crossed my arms. “Yeah, the guy I’ve seen is a monster, but I think you could take him.”
“Aw, that’s sweet.”
“But if you’re concerned, just fly home to LA. No one’s going to follow you there. You’re just a hired hand, same as me. No one cares.”
“Clay Micro.” Harmony finally sat back. I felt some tension go out of my own muscles. “This is some bullshit commercial dispute. I’ve done corporate work before. At the end of the day, it’s just another deal.”
My interest sharpened. “You know the details? Because I sure don’t.”
Harmony shrugged. “Someone’s buying, someone’s selling, who cares? Whatever Clayco is up to, it’s not the sort of thing they start killing civilians for all over the gameboard.”
“So?”
“So if they’re willing to shoot up hospitals and welding shops and horse barns just to make a point, then either they’re not rational or the stakes are way higher than anyone’s bothered to tell me. See?” She frowned. “Either way, I’m still in it.”
“Maybe.”
“And so are you.”
I started to get the picture. “You want an entente here, is that it?”
“My enemy’s enemy.” She opened her hands. “We share some intelligence, we’re both safer, we both live another day.”
I thought about it. Ryan, missing. Russian killers, trying to kill me. Mysterious shell company surreptitiously buying out the American heartland, possibly with the assistance of the most famous billionaire in the country. Zeke, badly wounded.
Blond assassin, asking for help.
I hadn’t exactly signed a nondisclosure agreement.
“All right,” I said.
—
We walked to the railroad bridge. Just a pair of tourists in charming Clabbton, viewing its picturesque sights—anything not to stand around on the sidewalk, drawing attention from locals.
“First thing, more background,” I said. “Some people I know have been looking into this. The paperwork’s murky, but Clayco is owned by Wilbur Markson.”
“The Buddha?”
Again? Whoever did Markson’s image management deserved a big bonus. “Yeah, the teddy-bear savior of capitalism. What’s peculiar is, he also owns Clay Micro’s buyer—a shell company called Dagger Light.”
“Huh? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Markson’s not looking too clean on this.”
Harmony frowned slightly, thinking. A light breeze lifted the hair from her forehead. I was a little taller, and I noticed the top buttons of her shirt were undone, pushed by the vest.
“Brinker’s working with the Russians,” she said, glancing up. I quickly moved my eyes to safer territory. “And they seem most interested in eliminating a potential roadblock to closing the sale.”
“Namely me. Yes.”
“But they could be on either side of the deal. The contact that hired me—”
“Midwest generic.” I repeated the phrase she’d used.
“Yeah. Like, maybe, Ohio.”
We thought about that.
“I’m not sure where to go with this,” Harmony said finally.
“Me neither.”
We leaned on the bridge rail, looking down the cut. Tracks curved around a long bend, trees in spring bloom overhanging the right-of-way.
I wondered how much of what Harmony told me was true. Part of me said everything, you suspicious cretin! And I sure wanted to think so.
But that particular part of me was also the part keenly interested in looking down her shirt. Untrustworthy, perhaps, in some matters.
“Okay,” I said, pulling out the paper sack Dave had given me. “Here’s our new clue.”
“What’s that?”
“The Russians borrowed Brendt’s car when they attacked the welding shop.” I held up my other hand. “I know, I know, but I really think it was coincidence.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We checked the car that morning, but there was so much crap lying around Elsie didn’t see anything unusual. I guess she found this later.”
“Doesn’t look like much of a clue,” Harmony said, shaking the paper sack open to peer inside.
“The best ones never do.”
“What?”
“Because if they were obvious, they’d have been noticed already.”
She gave me a look. “That’s like a detective koan.”
“Don’t touch anything in there.” With a may I? gesture I took the bag and set it on a waist-high girder in the middle of the bridge. “Might be prints.”
“Got a dusting kit?”
“No.”
“Friends at the FBI lab?” Harmony was off and running. “Think the locals have a forensic team waiting to go? We’re not quite CSI Pittsburgh here.”
“Yeah—”
“Not to mention I don’t think brown paper even picks up fingerprints.”
She had a point but I was too far in to concede. “Are we going to do this right or wrong?”
“Fine.” Harmony walked to the end of the bridge, studying the ground, then picked up a small stick and returned.
“Let me.” She used the twig to poke around in the bag. “Okay, Murder She Wrote, here we go. Ready to bust the case wide open?”
She withdrew a roll of duct tape. It was clearly new, the edges of the roll still sharp and clean, but a jagged tear indicated at least some had been used.
We looked at it.
“Lots of uses for that,” I said. “Friction grips. Taping magazines. Covering gun ports.”
“Uh-huh.”
I sighed. “Or possibly taping up boxes for the post office. I know.”
“Yeah.” She let the roll slide off onto the girder. “On the other hand . . .”
She abandoned the stick, reached in and came out with a scrap of white paper.
“No way. A receipt?”
“Maybe they’re not so smart after all.”
We looked at the thermal-printed strip. Duct tape, “Misc Hardwr” and “Snack Item” for a total of $18.37. Paid in cash of course, off a twenty.
And the name of the store: “Rankin Avenue Hardware.”
“It can’t be this easy.” Even Harmony was skeptical.
“Where’s Rankin Avenue?”
“Let’s find out.” She handed me the receipt and pulled a slick-looking smartphone from somewhere inside her vest.
“You have the internet on that thing?”
“Well, duh.” Typing away already, two thumbs flashing.
I thought about my crummy, prepaid basic service. “Is that safe?”
“Wha
t?”
“Don’t you worry about being tracked? The government listening in? The permanent data trail?”
Harmony stopped long enough to give me a you’re-not-serious look. “Type 1 encryption tunneled through either local wifi, packet radio or, if necessary, public GSM. The gateway’s proprietary and offshore—I buy time from some Ukrainian hackers. How do you do it?”
“Never mind. What’s the number?”
“Why?”
“I won’t write it down, I promise.”
She thought for a moment. Cautious.
“All right.” She read it off.
“Thanks.”
Harmony went back to the search, which took only another fifteen seconds. Less time than I probably would have needed at home, on Verizon FIOS.
“Eight miles south of Pittsburgh.” She showed me the screen, with a map displayed. “What do you think?”
—
We took two vehicles.
“We’re partners now, aren’t we?” Harmony said. We stood beside my hand-me-down pickup. “You should ride with me. I’m not sure you’ll even make it to the city—that tire looks halfway flat.”
“Nah, it’s fine.” I hoped. “But I was followed at least once already. With two cars, we can keep an eye on each other, see if either of us picks up a tail.”
“You just don’t trust me.”
“Of course I do.” Not. “But the point stands—we’re safer in two cars than one.”
“Think you can keep up?”
“Stay under forty and we’ll be fine.”
She had an Escalade around the corner—a monster. Oversize spoked wheels, blackout glass, chrome racks on the roof, rear and front ends. The paint was dark gray with a silver lightning bolt down each side.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Like it?”
“You damn well better stay under the speed limit—that thing will draw police attention from every jurisdiction in the state.”
“After you shot my car, I decided, no more fucking around.”
“Is it armored?”
“Well, no.” She shook her head. “Some people I know, they lent it to me. I’d have preferred something more discreet, but this is what they had.”
People? “The M1 Abrams was already checked out?”
“I had some work in Youngstown a while ago.” Harmony tapped a keypad on the door and beeped the monster open. “Squared away a problem, totally unrelated, but it solved some issues for a guy here. You know, interstate commerce stuff.”
“Sure.” Presumably the kind of commerce that federal task forces were established to combat, but whatever.
“So he thinks he owes me a favor, and I’m collecting.”
I looked over her shoulder as she climbed in. In the driver’s seat her head was a good foot higher than mine. “He didn’t offer anything else, did he? An antitank gun? Maybe a rocket launcher?”
“No, but the tank was full.”
“Which is probably, like, five hundred dollars worth of gas.” I stepped back. “Keep your phone on.”
“If we have an encounter, you draw their fire, and I’ll do mop-up.”
“Sure.”
The afternoon was still clear and bright. Driving northwest, glare quickly became a problem. I found some sunglasses on the dash—not too scratched, so I left them on.
We didn’t have to coordinate the driving patterns. Harmony knew what she was doing. Once on the highway, twenty-five miles of open road, we slowed and sped up, switched off point and pace, drifted farther apart and closer together. A good team with several cars could have stayed with us, but it seemed unlikely.
Of course, they could also just wait. We weren’t exactly under the radar—Harmony’s absurd penis mobile drew even more attention than the Charger.
My phone rang. The incoming number didn’t mean anything. At this point I was in front, so I glanced in the rearview and saw the Escalade’s massive grille five cars back. No obvious problem.
“Yeah?”
It was Johnny. “I’ll keep it quick. Just wanted to let you know we’ve got confirmation on Sweetwater.”
“Wow.” I still hadn’t quite believed Wilbur Markson could be in. “How much?”
“They own fifty-one percent of Dagger Light, which is buying Clay Micro.”
“You told me that. Who’s got the forty-nine?”
“Rockwire Industries. They’re a gas industry supplier—pipe, drills, vehicles. All kinds of equipment. Not exactly consistent with Markson’s pledge never to invest in nonrenewable energy.”
“How big?”
“Midsize. And they’re local—not far from Pittsburgh. Clay Micro’s practically a neighbor.”
Now that was interesting.
“But that’s not the interesting thing,” Johnny continued.
The Escalade switched lanes, came up on my left, passed and dropped into place a hundred yards ahead. Traffic slowed, thickening as we neared the I-376 junction.
“What?”
“Somebody bought Rockwire. Last year. More offshore-entity bullshit, but they seem to be coming out of Cyprus.”
“Russians, all right.”
“Looks that way.”
Ever since the chaotic nineties, Cyprus had been a favorite destination for Russian flight capital—to the point, now, of so dominating the island’s economy it might be considered a fully held subsidiary of Putin’s oligarchs.
“And Markson is mixed up in this.”
“Controlling interest on both sides of the table. You think the Russians know?”
“Shit.”
“That’s sure what it feels like.”
“How public is this?”
“Not very. And not provable. Any lawyer could throw up a blizzard of objections and counterarguments. But it’s good enough for me.”
Me too, if Johnny said so. “Why do you think he’s in?”
“Markson?”
“It totally undercuts his entire image. Thirty years of financial probity and ethical investing! Why would he even talk to mafiya money?”
“I don’t know.” Johnny paused. “But I’ll tell you this—I’ve just started building a short position on Sweetwater.”
“Whoa.” I thought about that. “You think Markson’s in trouble?”
“It’s one explanation. You said it yourself—thirty years. Most fund managers haven’t been alive that long, let alone beating the S&P every damn year. What if the long glorious run’s finally ending?”
It made sense. Markson was almost sixty and had more money than God. At this point he was playing for his immortal reputation—and if results started to slip? He’d lose the aura.
“This could get Clara a Pulitzer,” I said.
“Let’s wait awhile.”
Meaning he hadn’t been able to lay down a big enough bet yet.
“Okay.” I needed to extricate myself first anyway. “But give her the background. You can trust her not to publish until it’s safe.”
“I know.”
“Let me know if you find out more.”
“And you,” said Johnny. “Like, if you happen to find yourself pointing a gun at the man himself—you absolutely must call me before you pull the trigger.”
It’d be the inside trade of a lifetime. “That’s not going to happen, and even if it did, remember all those subpoenas you just got?”
He made a dismissive snorting noise. “Yeah, yeah.”
Some debris in the road—it looked like a tire had blown, leaving scraps of rubber and some long skid marks. I swerved to avoid the biggest, and the truck shuddered. For a moment it felt like it was going out of control, but I held the wheel and got back into the lane. Harmony drifted back during the few seconds this took, let me pass her on the left. I glanced over, saw her frowning at me, but I gestured with the phone and she nodded.
“That’s great work, Johnny,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Rankin Avenue Hardware was a shabby building on a commercial
strip in one of the hollowed-out zones around Pittsburgh, the kind of neighborhood with more buildings boarded up than occupied. At five P.M. a couple of contractors’ trucks were parked out front, one sagging under a bed full of old junk—probably a trash-out. Harmony drove past slowly, nodded at me through the windshield and kept going around the block.
I couldn’t interpret the nod, but I didn’t want to be anywhere near her rolling arrest-me-now billboard, so I pulled over across the street and waited. She walked up a minute later and I got out.
Traffic was sporadic in both directions. We could see the front of the hardware store, though its broad windows had stock piled against them inside, blocking the view.
“Before we go in,” I said. “I was just talking to someone.”
“Me too.” She looked at me. “You first.”
“Clay Micro’s buyer is definitely owned half and half by Markson and the Russians. They’ve partnered up.”
“Markson and the mafiya.” She shook her head. “That’s a hard sell.”
“Johnny thinks maybe Markson’s finally hit the skids, and he had to scout the only kind of money that won’t talk about it. He can’t go to a bank or the markets or any kind of legitimate investor—it’d be all over the internet in five minutes. But criminals know how to keep their mouths shut.”
“But why would he sell to himself?”
“Well, he can’t just hand over assets to the Russians. Clayco is a well-known U.S. company. Doing it this way, he can start shifting ownership without people noticing. Remember, he only has half of Dagger Light—the other owners get the rest. The Russians are probably happy to keep it sub rosa for now, too—the government is worried about investment coming in from dubious regimes abroad.”
“Okay . . .” She sounded doubtful.
“And it’s just Markson’s bad luck that Clay Micro turned out to be one big septic tank.”
“Why would the Russians be hooked up with Brinker, though?”
“I don’t know. But Brinker probably met them early on—he’d have had to, even if the deal was totally nonpublic. Nabors, the Clay Micro CFO, knew about it, right? So I’d guess that Brinker and the Russian team met and sized each other up, and each realized they’d found a soul mate.” I shook my head. “Brinker’s just as bad as them, certainly.”