In the Company of Wolves: Thinning The Herd

by Larranaga, James Michael

  It hadn’t been long since the medical examiner gave permission for the ambulance to transport Munroe Pilson’s body off the property. Quin stood outside freezing his butt off, drinking coffee with Big Ben. A television news crew was filming from across the street.

  One of several investigators with the FBI, Spencer Lunde, had been taking statements from everyone. Lunde was a brawny man with a whiskered face.

  Quin knew something else was bothering Lunde. The man had an angry, cheated look on his face, like a father who’d returned home from vacation to discover his kids had thrown a wild party in his absence.

  Quin leaned in and whispered to his boss, “What do you think the feds want?”

  Big Ben turned to him, his upper lip quivering, showing his canine teeth. “How can I say this politely? Shut the hell up.”

  Smiling and lowering his head, Quin drank more coffee. Best not to nip at the alpha when he’s tired.

  “What a tragedy,” Spencer Lunde said. “You’ll have to leave the driveway untouched for a few days until the crime scene investigators finish their work.”

  “Why are you here?” Big Ben asked. “The FBI doesn’t cover local matters.”

  “When your employee Cassy and her boyfriend disappear, that’s a missing person’s case. We also investigate bank fraud and corruption,” Lunde said, looking up at the villa.

  Big Ben pointed at Lunde. “The sheriff’s deputy killed one of my clients. Why isn’t somebody interrogating her?”

  “They sent her downtown already,” Lunde said, staring down at Big Ben through mirrored glasses. “You got a problem with that?”

  Big Ben’s signature smile burst onto his face, but behind it was anger. “I’ve got a dead client. I want some answers.”

  “We all want answers,” Lunde responded.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Big Ben asked.

  Quin watched Lunde looking past them toward the mansion.

  “I meant you’ve got a lot of bad luck,” Lunde said. “An intern disappeared a week ago, and now one of your clients is shot right in your driveway.”

  “What does Cassy have to do with this?” Big Ben asked.

  “Don’t know. Maybe a little, maybe a lot,” Lunde said, sniffling, wiping his big nose with his coat sleeve. “Are you her replacement?” he asked Quin.

  Quin looked up at Lunde and nodded. “I started work this morning.”

  “Hell of a first day,” Lunde said, smiling with chapped lips.

  Quin glanced around the yard at the police tape and the blood stains in the street. It was a hell of a first day.

  Big Ben leaned in close to Lunde so the sound of his angry voice wouldn’t carry across the yard.

  “I explained Cassy White’s problems last week to the sheriff. At the Christmas party, she told everyone she and her boyfriend were going to elope.”

  “I know what you told the sheriff,” Lunde said. “Made sense last week, but she still hasn’t called her parents or her friends. I have to believe there isn’t a bride on this side of the Mississippi who could elope and not call somebody or post photos on that damn Facebook.”

  The sheriff, who had been inspecting the scene across the yard, trudged his way through the snow toward Lunde. “Can I ask him a few questions?” The sheriff tilted the broad brim of his brown hat. It left a red mark around his forehead, as if he wore it so tightly it cut off the circulation to his scalp.

  “Go ahead,” Lunde said. “I’ve heard enough for now.” Before walking away, he kicked Quin’s boot and winked. “Good luck, kid.”

  The tension he left behind was awkward. Quin wondered if the others had noticed the wink, the private signal.

  Big Ben shuffled his boots in the snow. “Who’s investigating this murder, the police, the sheriff’s department, or the FBI? We have too many chiefs and not enough Indians—oh, sorry, Quin.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Quin said. He hated that phrase, but he wasn’t offended by it.

  Sheriff Carlson smiled a toothy grin. He handed out his business card to Quin and Ben. “This will only take a few minutes, Mr. Moretti. I know how upsetting this must be for you.”

  “Darn right. I watched one of my best clients get shot today!” he shouted. Big Ben zipped his coat and played with his gloves. “Quin, I’m sorry about what happened here today. If you want to call it quits right now, I’d understand.”

  “No. No. I’m still interested in working here,” Quin said, grasping for his opportunity. He’d hustled too hard get this job to walk away now.

  “You sure? I didn’t mean to throw you in the middle of all this—”

  “Yeah, the worst is behind us, right?” Quin said, looking around at the blood in the street.

  “Good. You can have lunch with James and Christopher. They’re leaving in ten minutes to make calls over at Fairfield Hospital. After lunch you can take the rest of the day off.”

  Excellent idea, Quin thought. He’d get a chance to tag along with a couple of the other sales people to see how they ran their business. Hopefully they’d give him an insider’s view of how they set these deals up.

  “Why am I going to the hospital?” Quin asked.

  “Because we invest in the terminally ill,” Big Ben said. “Hospitals are where we find our clients.”

  Quin followed Christopher Gartner and James Rice through the buffet line at the Fairfield Hospital cafeteria. Quin wasn’t hungry. Pilson’s shooting had left him with a queasy feeling, but his coworkers were loading their trays with sandwiches, yogurt, juice, and coffee. Quin set an apple and hot water on his tray. He assumed Christopher and James planned to be here all afternoon. The men continually scanned the crowded cafeteria, slowly making their way through the line, adding more food to their trays.

  How could they concentrate on their work after a man was killed at their office? All Quin could think about was the shooting. James and Christopher were only thinking about finding their next prospect.

  Big Ben’s earlier description of Christopher as a stray dog was accurate. A man in his midforties, he was definitely the runt of the litter. He had a petite frame and dark circles under his eyes. He searched the buffet the way a stray dog scans a garbage dump in search of food: sniffing, scanning, sniffing some more.

  Christopher Gartner is the omega wolf.

  “Mr. Warren in the corner,” Stray Dog said over his partner James’s shoulder.

  James was a bald black man, maybe thirty-five years old, with a mustache and beard. He had a shiny head and shiny wingtip shoes to match. “Yeah, he’s my lead. You keep an eye on the table. Don’t talk about the shooting until I get back. I want to hear what happened this morning.”

  Stray Dog unraveled a wad of bills. “Go ahead. I’ll take Quin to another table.”

  A chubby cashier with a hair net brightened when they approached. “Good afternoon, Christopher. How are you today?”

  “Hey, Gwen,” he said with a nod. “I’m great. How’s your son?”

  “Better these days. Thanks for asking,” she said, ringing up the order quickly. “He drives me crazy sometimes. You know teenagers.”

  Quin watched Stray Dog reach into his coat and hand something to the cashier.

  “Here, I picked these up yesterday.”

  “Tickets to the Timberwolves game! You didn’t have to do that,” she said, her face brightening.

  “Your son likes basketball, so I picked up some tickets. It’s how I roll,” he said, bragging and looking back at Quin as if to say, ”This is how you impress people; you could learn a thing or two from me.”

  “Thanks, thanks a lot, really,” she said, hugging Stray Dog with her flabby white arms.

  He whispered something in her ear and strutted away with his tray in hand. Quin followed.

  “Excuse me, sir?” the cashier said to Quin. “Did you plan to pay for your lunch?”

  He was surprised and embarrassed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought—“

  Stray Dog barked out a loud laugh, and t
he noise level in the cafeteria fell. People were staring. “You thought what? That I’d pay for your food?”

  She smiled at Quin as he reached for his own wallet. “Stop! I’m pulling your leg. He already paid for your lunch,” she said.

  Stray Dog shook his head, laughing, glancing at the nurses and hospital staff. “Ah, Gwen, we had him.”

  “Don’t be so cruel,” she said, containing her own laughter. “He does this to all the interns,” she said, patting Quin on the hand.

  I bet he does.

  Quin slipped the wallet back into his sport coat. “I’m Quin Lighthorn,” he said to the cashier. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too, Quin. Good luck.”

  Stray Dog nodded. “We’ll sit over here away from the crowd. God, you should’ve seen the look on your face!”

  Quin sat with him, surveying the room. The crowd was divided into small groups, some wearing blue or green scrubs and others wearing white lab coats. James was in the far corner speaking with a white coat.

  “Gwen seems like a friendly person,” Quin said, striking up the conversation. What else could he say to somebody who had made him the butt of a joke?

  “Yeah, she works part-time, the afternoon shift,” Stray Dog said, gnawing at his bagel. “Her son is in and out of the hospital regularly, so she took a job in the cafeteria to be near him.”

  “What’s wrong with her son?” Quin asked, sipping his coffee. He still had no appetite.

  Stray Dog gulped his juice and blurted out a single word before biting his bagel again. “Leukemia.”

  “That’s not good,” Quin said. He had known a young boy who had died of leukemia. It was a slow death, with neighbors stopping by regularly to drop off food for the boy’s parents.

  “She’s got life insurance on him, though,” he said. “Not many parents carry life insurance on their kids. Small policy, only about $25,000, which is table scraps in this business, but I give her credit for having the foresight.”

  That’s a lot of detail to know about a cashier, Quin thought. “How do you know she has a policy on her son?”

  “I asked her,” he said. “In this business, you got to talk to a lot of people, and you have to keep them talking. They’ll reveal almost anything, believe me. Anyway, her son isn’t terminal yet, but if he takes a turn for the worse, she’ll probably sell the policy early. She’s got big medical bills, and she wants to take him on a nice vacation.”

  “She’s one of your leads?” Quin asked, watching Stray Dog slurp through his yogurt. He ate like a wolf too, always licking the sides of his mouth.

  “I consider Gwen one of my clients,” he snapped back, as if Quin had reached for the wrong bone. “I’ve been working that deal since I started. Don’t even think about talking to her—”

  “No problem, I was just curious,” Quin said. Now he understood why Stray Dog had given her tickets to the game. He was schmoozing with her. Quin certainly did not intend to steal anyone’s leads.

  “See, the thing you have to understand about being a death broker is that this is a very long sale,” Stray Dog said, pointing at Quin with his spoonful of dripping yogurt. “When I started, I went eight weeks without finding a policy. Now, if I’m having a good month, I’ll find at least three policies. It kind of goes in streaks—some months you’re hot, some months you’re not.”

  Feast or famine. Quin watched James across the cafeteria talking to the doctor. “What’s your friend doing over there?”

  “Working the deal, man,” Stray Dog said, his sullen eyes lighting up. “Mr. Warren is a lab tech and one of his best bird dogs. Warren works in oncology, and for a fee, he tells us which patients are terminal.”

  “Is that legal?” Quin asked.

  Stray Dog rolled his eyes without saying anything, as if answering the question would somehow implicate him. “We collect the names of the terminally ill, and we bring them back to the office, where Richard Pomeroy and Bob Mullen follow up and introduce our company. They’re excellent closers.”

  This confirmed Quin’s hunch that Stray Dog and James were relatively new employees. Young pups playing outside of the wolf den.

  “And you get paid if the client agrees to cash in their life insurance?” Quin asked.

  “That’s right, as soon as they sign the contract, we get a bonus,” he said. “The bigger the policy, the more money I make. But James and I get paid up front, as soon as the deal is signed. We don’t wait until the client dies. Ben and his investors have to wait.”

  “Who finds the investors?” Quin asked.

  “That’s Ben Moretti’s job,” Stray Dog said, digging his spoon in his yogurt container like a dog pawing an empty dish. “Nobody is allowed to set up the investor side but him. That’s his thing, you know?”

  Of course the alpha was the one who set the deals up. Quin dipped a tea bag into his hot water, attempting to enhance the taste and get his appetite back. “And you make good money?”

  “Sometimes I make great money. I’ve got a big deal in the works right now. The biggest deal anyone ever brought to Safe Haven. I found a gal with an inoperable brain tumor, and she’s got a $10 million policy.”

  Stray Dog was probably already dreaming about how he was going to spend his commission.

  “And you signed her up?”

  “Not yet. We had our first brief meeting with her in the office today. Ben has to find enough investment capital before we can make her an offer. The big deals take longer to close,” Stray Dog said.

  James set his tray on the table, smiling and chuckling to himself. “Pure gold. Paying that man is worth every penny,” he said. James always laughed midsentence, as if his own words amused him.

  “More leads?” Stray Dog asked, wagging his tail.

  “Two more names,” James said. “Both of them are executives, so you know they’re insured.”

  Stray Dog patted his friend on the back. “Way to go, buddy. You’re the man.”

  Quin held his tea and thought about how these two made their living snooping around hospitals. They were like dogs digging through the trash, looking for scraps. Back home on the reservation, people shoot dogs like that; otherwise, they’d start a pack and run wild.

  James scratched his beard, staring back at Quin. “Look at him, man. He’s got the ‘novice look’ about him.”

  “You all right, Quin?” Stray Dog asked.

  Quin shot him a smile to look at ease. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “Don’t worry,” James said. “You won’t be out in the field with us. Ben just wants you to see how the front end works. How we dig up prospects.”

  “Right. Interns can’t work the front end. Takes too long to teach you how to find good leads,” Stray Dog said, as if Quin couldn’t possibly fit into their small exclusive club. “You’ll work in the office.”

  Good. Quin didn’t want to be out here sniffing leads anyway. He wouldn’t be comfortable hustling people in a hospital cafeteria. “What’s the back end?”

  “Grunt work mostly,” James said. “Reading the obituaries to see which of our clients died over the weekend. Sending out mailings to clients, all the things Cassy did before she left.”

  “Ben said she eloped last week,” Quin commented, fishing for more details about the former employee.

  “Good thing, too,” Stray Dog said. “She probably would’ve been fired soon anyway.”

  “Really? Why?” Quin asked.

  “She got too big for her britches,” James said. “In the last couple of months, tension grew between Cassy and the rest of us, and then her boyfriend started showing up at work. What was the jerk’s name?”

  Stray Dog wiped his messy face with a napkin. “Martin.”

  “Yeah, ‘Tardy Marty’ we called him because he was always showing up late to pick up Cassy from work,” James said with a chuckle. “He showed up to the company Christmas party with Cassy, and within an hour they’re both drunk. They told everyone they were going to rush off that night to Vegas to elope
.”

  “Then today you show up,” Stray Dog said. “And Ben tells us you’re the new intern. Congratulations.”

  Quin wondered why they treated Cassy’s disappearance so casually. “Nobody has seen or heard from her. How do you know she got married?”

  “All she talked about was marriage and having babies,” James said. “Cassy and Martin are probably sitting on a beach in Mexico, sipping margaritas. I have to admit, I’m jealous.”

  Quin wondered whether Stray Dog and James really believed that. It was possible they were covering up some other truth about Cassy. Why else would Lunde be so suspicious?

  “Enough about her, she’s history,” James said. “Tell us about what happened this morning when Pilson was shot.”

  Quin reflected on the details of the shooting. The images of Pilson were vivid, and the echoes of gunshots came rushing back. He set his drink down, removed a homemade teabag from a small pouch he carried in his jacket, and dipped it into the hospital’s weak brew.

  “OK, here’s what I saw…”

  Wolves are social creatures. The cooperation of the lowest-ranking wolves is crucial for the survival of the pack.

  By four in the afternoon, the sun had already dropped beneath the horizon, leaving only a streak of watery red in the pale clouds.

  Ben sat comfortably in front of a fireplace in the mansion’s den, sipping a merlot and thinking about the sequence of the day’s events. Everything had happened so quickly—a couple of shots, and Pilson was dead. He kept imagining the details because he knew he’d have to retell the story again to the FBI, but for now his lawyer had erected a safe wall around him.

  He looked out onto the lake while sniffing the wine’s smoky bouquet. By now the wind-chill factor had fallen to minus twenty, and people were still outside in those little shacks. What the locals saw in ice fishing was a mystery to him. He had grown up in Virginia, just outside Washington, DC. He’d fished as a boy, but never on a frozen lake. And to think people actually drove their vehicles out there, for God’s sake.