Two Jakes

by Lawrence de Maria

  “It has the same consistency,” Christian said.

  Garza opened his trunk. He stood back for a long moment and then took out a large bouquet. After checking it for leakage, especially around the stems, he placed it on the back seat of his car. A little fresh air wouldn’t hurt the flowers. He also didn’t want to risk the bouquet being crushed by his purchases. With rising anticipation he entered the modest store that fronted the huge bakery complex. The smell of fruitcake was overwhelming. He’d once asked a sales clerk if he could view the production facilities, only to be told that the company’s insurer now forbade the once-popular tours. Damn insurance companies ruin everything, the clerk had griped. Garza, while not mentioning that he occasionally worked, in a manner of speaking, for an insurance company, wholeheartedly agreed with the man.

  The walls and shelves of the store were lined with fruitcakes. Platters of samples, each on a small doily, were everywhere. Most people, Garza included, preferred the regular Claxton fruitcake over the dark variety, made with more molasses. But the dark variety was useful for one of Garza’s favorite treats, which involved soaking several loaves in Myer’s Rum for a month in his refrigerator. Even snotty Christian usually asked for a loaf.

  One of the platters featured “Nut-Free Fruitcake.” Garza didn’t remember ever seeing the product. Must be new. A small placard next to the platter read: Southern Original Fruitcake, For Those With an Allergy to Nuts. He tried a piece. Not bad! He thought of the mare and her foal. What a pity.

  He took his time, tasting a sample, sometimes two, from every platter. A clerk finally came over.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  Probably thinks I’m just here to eat the samples, Garza mused.

  “Let me have 40 regular, 20 of the dark and 10 of the nut-free, all in individual one-pound loaves.” The man stared at him as he picked up another sample. “And perhaps you can help me carry them out to my car.”

  He gave the clerk a generous tip for loading the fruitcakes into his trunk and a half hour later pulled into the parking lot of the Bartlett Home and Hospice on Pine Needle Road in Statesboro. With a bouquet in one hand and a Claxton fruitcake in his jacket pocket he walked up the stairs to the nursing home’s large veranda and said hello to a small group sunning themselves in rockers and wheelchairs. Bradley Cooper wasn’t among them. Most were asleep but a few smiled, probably hoping he was visiting them. One elderly lady put out an onion-skin hand to him. He took it, careful not to squeeze too hard. It felt like a trembling little bird in his hand.

  “Lawrence?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

  She quickly lost interest and he went through the door.

  As he walked past the central nursing station, the duty nurse said, “Those sure are lovely flowers, honey.”

  Every woman below the Mason-Dixon Line said “honey,” either at the beginning or end of a sentence. Garza really loved the South.

  The bouquet certainly was spectacular. Figuring it was the least he could do, Garza had spared no expense. Bradley Cooper was one of the insurance unit’s most important clients. If anything, the florist had gone a bit overboard with the Vanda orchids, spray roses, gloriosa lilies and chrysanthemums.

  “Thank you,” he replied, handing the fruitcake to the nurse. “You are very sweet.”

  She smiled indulgently. The nursing home was only a few towns over from Claxton. It was not her first fruitcake.

  Cooper was in Room 126, down a long hallway. Garza came to a recreation room. Inside a young man in a wheelchair sat at a table, moving some blocks around with his right hand. His left arm was folded awkwardly in his lap. He seemed to be having trouble holding his head up. Stroke victim, Garza assumed. He’d always been surprised at how many younger residents were confined to assisted-care facilities.

  There was nobody in the hall and none of the other patients appeared to have visitors. As he walked past rooms his senses were assaulted by a variety of human and mechanical smells and sounds unique to nursing homes. One never got used to them. Nothing out of the ordinary, to be sure. Bartlett was immaculate, unlike some of the assisted-living facilities he’d been, where residents sat in dirty pajamas amid overflowing trash receptacles. After those visits he’d sent off scathing anonymous letters to the authorities. But no matter how nice some nursing homes were, Garza had long ago decided he would shoot himself before it ever came to that.

  When he finally reached Room 126, he walked in, closed the door and smiled at Bradley Cooper, who was watching a television on a small ledge at the foot of his bed. The old man looked up and nodded, trying to place Garza. When he couldn’t, he went back to his show.

  “What are you watching?”

  “CSI,” Cooper answered, sounding annoyed.

  Of course, Garza thought, suppressing a laugh. While no spring chicken – he was 81 – Cooper looked surprisingly healthy. His skin tone was good and his voice strong. Garza knew that recent surgery on a blocked intestine had laid Cooper low. That and some leg troubles had forced him into the nursing home. There was nothing terribly wrong with Bradley Cooper.

  Cooper had a roommate and Garza walked over to his bed. Compared to this shriveled old fellow, Cooper looked like Derek Jeter. The man looked up with rheumy eyes and Garza gently patted his arm with his free hand.

  “How are you, old timer?” Garza said.

  “The clams are flying.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Garza replied, and turned back to Cooper.

  “He never makes any sense,” Cooper said. “Alzheimer’s. I keep asking for a roommate with some marbles left, but all I get is the wackos.”

  Garza knew the old goat was feisty. He frowned and Cooper apparently had second thoughts.

  “You here to see him? Sorry I said that. He’s not as bad as the last one. Least he’s quiet most of the time. But I’ll be glad to get out of here. Soon as they reverse this damn colostomy.” Senior citizens, Garza knew, showed no hesitation in discussing the most intimate details of their medical condition, even with total strangers. “That’s a hell of a bunch of flowers. But they’re gonna be wasted on him.”

  “Actually, Bradley, these are for you.”

  Cooper looked at the massive arrangement. He was obviously confused, but also pleased.

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend of your cousin. Asked me to drop them off. Here, why don’t you smell them before I get a nurse to put them in water?”

  “My cousin?” Cooper scrunched up his face in thought as he leaned in to take a whiff. “Which one? Gladys?”

  “Yes. She’s quite fond of you.”

  “You’d think she’d visit once in a while. Decatur ain’t all that far.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be seeing you soon,” Garza said. “Here, let me prop those pillows for you.”

  “What’s those little white thingamajigs?”

  “Baby’s breath,” Garza said as he put a handkerchief to his own face and pressed the turkey baster’s bulb at the bouquet’s stem. The little spray of liquid hit Cooper squarely in the nose.

  “Jesus,” he managed to gurgle.

  “Actually, Mr. Cooper, it’s Jesús.”

  Despite the flowers, an almond odor began to permeate the room. The old man’s eyes rolled back. His chest heaved and his face turned purple. Garza wasn’t worried about the color. It would soon fade to the light blue hue typical among the recently deceased in nursing homes. Cooper fell back on his pillow with a plop, quite dead. A bolus of some recently eaten glop dribbled out the side of his mouth. That, too, was consistent with a sudden stroke or cardiac event. Nothing like a little verisimilitude, Garza thought as he went to open a window. A few drops of cyanide on the rose petals nearest the center of the bouquet glistened in the afternoon sunlight as they quickly evaporated. The odor soon dissipated. He looked out the window, which faced a broad expanse of lawn at the back of the nursing home. Perhaps a dozen or so residents were sitting on benches or in wheelchairs facing the sun. A large black
man dressed in whites moved among them, checking their blankets, occasionally stopping to pat an arm or a shoulder. The orderly laughed at something one of the residents said. This was a very nice facility, Garza decided.

  When he turned from the window he noticed the roommate, who was now sitting up and staring at the arrangement.

  “Want to smell them?”

  “I don’t think so,” the man said.

  Jesús Garza laughed softly and walked out, dumping the flowers and turkey baster in separate trash bins. They would leave no traces, and, even if they did, the chemicals involved would be indistinguishable from many of those found in any medical establishment’s refuse. More than likely they would be in a landfill or incinerator before anyone questioned the death of an old geezer like Cooper. The fruitcake would be opened and eaten in short order. Besides, Garza’s fingerprints, which weren’t on file anywhere, were now interspersed with those of hospice staff. So, he could have his little fun and leave tasty calling cards.

  Garza had long ago decided that the lack of security at nursing homes was second only to that at funeral homes. The closer to the grave the less one’s personal safety mattered. If anything, assisted living facilities in the South were more laid back than their counterparts elsewhere. Southern hospitality. Flowers and fruitcake got him the run of every nursing home he visited. (Christian was partial to Russell Stover chocolates when on similar assignments.) Yes, nursing homes were easy. Of course, not all the clients were in nursing homes. That called for a little more creativity. They occasionally had to deal with clients so active and vital they were threatening to become centenarians and blow a hole in the bottom line. Christian still bragged about the skydiving accident he’d arranged for an 88-year-old!

  But Bradley Cooper’s sudden death, not exactly a stop-the-presses event at a nursing home, would be written off as a massive infarction or embolism. There would be no autopsy. Within a month, his insurance company would pay off on a $4 million policy owned by a subsidiary of the Ballantrae Group that had purchased the policy from Cooper in return for $450,000 in upfront cash that allowed him to afford assisted living care. Such arrangements were perfectly legal and not unique to Ballantrae. According to actuarial tables, even after paying premiums in some cases for up to 12 years, a company could make a nice return, of say, 15%, on its investment when the insured finally passed away. Of course, if the insured died much sooner, the new beneficiary could make a real killing. In the instance of Bradley Cooper, who succumbed after only six months at Bartlett, Ballantrae realized almost $3.5 million in profit on its $450,000 investment, or about 777%.

  Of course, killing codgers was illegal. But Ballantrae had suffered some severe reversals in the economic downturn. Garza didn’t know all the details, but knew that the company’s mortgage department, in particular, had taken a shellacking. Victor had been pressing Garza and Keitel to increase the body count among insurance clients who were surviving long past their expiration dates. They argued that it was risky and took them away from more important assignments. Victor was adamant, arguing that the death of 20 or 30 seniors, spread out among the 16,000 nursing homes across the nation, would go unnoticed. It would be a rounding error. “A drop in the bucket list,” he joked.

  But not on the profit statesment. Garza estimated that their insurance activities were easily generating $100 million in much-needed cash a year.

  Given all of Ballantrae’s schemes, their workload was getting onerous. He and Christian might have to join a union. The teamsters would probably be a good fit. Or maybe ask for a piece of the action from the River Styx unit, as Garza dubbed the operation.

  He headed out of Statesboro. A company jet had dropped him in Macon but he planned to drive the six hours to Miami, stopping off for a restful night in St. Augustine, one of his favorite cities. He knew a restaurant that served the best frog legs and shrimp in Florida. His cell phone buzzed. He saw the name.

  “What are you doing for the next few days?”

  Alana Loeb rarely wasted words.

  “Nothing important,” he sighed. So much for the frog legs.

  “I want you to go to New York. I need some background on a private investigator there.”

  Because of his intelligence background in the Castro government Garza was given all Ballantrae’s sensitive research assignments. Victor and Alana considered him the brains and Christian the muscle. That rankled the German and even bothered Garza, who, despite his frequent teasing, knew how innately smart his partner was and didn’t like him denigrated that way.

  “What is his name?”

  “Jake Scarne.”

  “Why the rush?”

  “He’s heading to Miami any day now. And he may be a problem.”

  Garza listened for a moment, asked a few questions and then hung up. Alana, as cool a fish as he’d ever encountered, sounded worried. She was putting too many fingers in Ballantrae’s dikes. And she was plugging only the leaks she knew about. Victor hadn’t told her about his insurance scheme. Alana didn’t draw many lines, but euthanizing old people for profit was probably one of them.

  So Sheldon Shields was suspicious of the “accident.” Garza wondered why. But if the old man was willing to buck his brother – Alana said Randolph called Ballantrae to warn him about the private investigator – it meant serious trouble. It wasn’t that he and Christian didn’t have experience dealing with private investigators. Some of Ballantrae’s business practices attracted them like flies. But they’d always been able to buy or scare off the ones that somehow got through Victor’s lawyers. They certainly never even came close to killing one. Let’s hope the lawyers can deal with this Scarne character, because with Sheldon’s money behind him it was unlikely he could be bought.

  Garza called his secretary on his iPhone. He told her to book him a commercial flight out of Jacksonville, two hours away, with a return to Miami. He also told her to do an Internet search on Scarne, as a “potential client.” She had access to the sophisticated legal and law enforcement databases Ballantrae’s in-house lawyers used.

  “Email the results to me,” he instructed her.

  He’d start making calls to his contacts in New York while driving to Jacksonville. And once in New York he’d do some legwork on the ground, and also break in to Scarne’s apartment. By the time he got back to Miami he’d know everything about Scarne, including his shoe size.

  His secretary called him back. He was booked on an 8:20 P.M. nonstop to Newark. He had time to kill. Just as well. He’d have to find a UPS store to ship the damn fruitcake to his home. He’d expense it. It was their fault after all. He had another thought and called his secretary again.

  “I don’t want to stay at one of our regular places. Get me a room at the Waldorf.” He then gave her the name of his three favorite Manhattan restaurants. “Reservations at 8 P.M. for the next three nights, in any order. You’re a doll. I have some fruitcake for you.”

  Garza’s stomach rumbled. Could his system stand two Cracker Barrel meals in one day? Every cloud had a silver lining. It was still light out. Garza smiled. He decided he could make a quick stop at the pasture and treat the mare and foal to some nut-free fruitcake.

  It was now on the way.

  CHAPTER 13 – A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

  “There is a wonderful story about Charles De Gaulle. After World War II he visited Stalingrad at the invitation of the Soviets. Viewing the devastation, he was heard to mutter, ‘What a magnificent people. What a magnificent people!’ His hosts, making the natural assumption, proudly began to recount the valor of the Russians who had prevailed. ‘Non. Non. Not the Russians,’ De Gaulle said. ‘The Germans, that they could come so far.’

  There was an appreciative twitter and Emma Shields looked up from her notes on the podium and smiled at the 40 or so students sitting in the front rows of the New School auditorium. At least a few of them knew their history.

  “Sometime it takes an enemy to see an opponent clearly. In De Gaulle’s case, he saw pas
t the atrocities of war to praise the underlying character of a misguided and misled nation. Would that the peoples of today’s world – friend and foe alike – pay Americans the same compliment for our accomplishments, not in war or conquest, but in furthering the advancement of mankind in so many realms. It has long been apparent that the character of the American people is a distillation of all the races, creeds, languages, hopes, angers and histories of the world.

  “America is – and has always been– different. Americans have confounded statesmen for hundreds of years. Bismarck, with unconcealed envy, said that Providence watched over ‘fools, drunks and the United States of America.’ How else could the Iron Chancellor, or anyone else, regard a country that grew in might and prosperity despite cataclysms that included a Civil War that would have torn any other country asunder? To understand America – and the character of its people – one must not look at the country through the pragmatic political prisms used by the Bismarcks of the world. America was, and is, more than merely lucky. It has forged a political and cultural society that has molded citizens who – despite inevitable disagreements – have one thing in common: Love of country. Not the jingoistic patriotism so many people assume they have, but a deep love and respect that comes from an understanding that they are stewards of something special.

  “Americans are not necessarily braver or smarter than other people. But you can make an argument that, given their country’s power and influence, they are often more responsible. Yes, responsible. They make mistakes, sometimes terrible mistakes. But in a time when a world left to its own devices produced some of the most savage regimes and madmen in history, Americans usually came down on the side of the oppressed and the vanquished. And they have righted many wrongs. Not always, but surely enough times to register on the global conscience. Historically, Americans have been generous with aid and comfort during natural disasters. Over the last century, American science has saved, conservatively, a billion lives that would have been lost to disease or starvation. It is certainly one of the great ironies of history that many people alive today in the Third World want to destroy the very country that saved them. Is every American innovation – particularly in matters of culture – a step forward? Of course not. But Americans walked on the moon, and can usually be trusted to broaden the human experience more often than not.