“From which I gather that a boater blowing himself up in a power-boat is not a rare event,” I said, when Stan had finished his discourse.
“No, not rare,” he said, with a wet laugh.
“Which takes me back to my question. What got you interested in Welch?”
“Besides there being four months to go on his policy’s suicide exclusion?”
“Besides that.”
“Not much, at first,” he began. “What happened with him wasn’t so different from shit that happens every weekend. Guy took his boat out on a Saturday morning to fish. Went out real early, way before dawn. Topped off his tanks before he left. Stayed out a few hours. Then, just after sunrise, he starts up the engines to head back in andka-boom. Huge explosion. It’s bad, but it happens. But you look a little closer, and you start to wonder.” Stan paused to clear his throat. It sounded like a lung coming up.
“First, there were the stats. In insurance we keep statistics on all kinds of stuff, and the frequency of that kind of accident, on boats the same make, model, and age as Welch’s, is low. Real low. I mean, besides Welch, it’s never happened. The boat was designed so it wouldn’t happen. By itself, it means nothing, but it’s an attention-getter.
“Then, there was the service history. Welch took good care of that boat, and kept meticulous service records. A year before the accident, he’d had the engines overhauled, the fuel tanks checked, and the fuel lines replaced. He’d used the boat for the next year with no reported problems. Then, out of the blue, on his way back in… boom. That gets me wondering a little more.
“Next, there was Welch’s experience with boats. This guy was no weekend skipper-he knew his way around, but good. This was the fifth boat he’d owned, and he’d worked in marinas from when he was twelve years old, all the way through college. Why is that important? Well, for his boat to go up like that, the buildup of fumes must’ve been intense. It’s hard to believe he didn’t smell anything topside, and impossible that he’d miss it when he checked below. Unless he didn’t check below. Unless Mr. Experienced forgot the most basic safety precaution in a gas-powered boat and didn’t check for fumes before he started up. Now I’m really getting curious.
“Finally, there was the fishing. Turns out that Saturday-morning fishing was a regular thing with him-spring, summer, and fall. He’d been out ten weeks in a row prior to the blast. Eight of those ten weeks, his fishing buddy-guy lives over in Wilton-went with him. In fact, best I could tell, this guy had gone with Welch twenty-one of his last twenty-five Saturday-morning trips. But the Wednesday before this last one, Welch calls his pal to cancel. Said something had come up. Still don’t know what that ‘something’ was.” Stan paused again. I heard gum wrappers crinkling, and his chewing got more vigorous. “Now I’m thinking so much, it makes my head hurt.”
“Nobody else-the local cops, the Coast Guard-get a headache over this?” I asked. Stan chuckled a little. It turned into a wheeze.
“Just me. ’Course, the local cops got, what, fifteen guys on the force, oldest one has maybe a dozen years’ experience. And I think one of ’em had actually been on a boat once. As for the Coasties… well, they know their shit, no question. But they’re kind of jaded. They see so many people doing such incredibly stupid shit on the water, there’s nothing they won’t believe about how dumb a person can be. And to tell the truth, I didn’t have much else to go on. To all appearances, the guy was happily married, in good health, had more money than God. No evidence of depression or mental instability. No sign that he or his wife was a cheater. And the wife-she had no interest in the claim. Didn’t give a damn if she got paid or not.”
“Any sign that somebody else was involved?” I asked.
“Not a one.”
“You talk to the fishing buddy?”
“Till I was blue in the face. He said the same as everybody elseWelch was a happy guy with everything to live for.”
“So, you finally convinced yourself it was accidental?” Stan laughed, more loudly this time.
“Hell no. After thirty years of this, I know the guy did himself in. I just got tired of trying to prove it.” His laughter dissolved into a fit of coughing. It sounded like the other lung was coming up.
Steven Bregman lived a few miles from Scott’s Corners, on a bumpy lane that ran off of Old Stone Hill Road. A pair of brick columns and a scuffed red mailbox marked the entrance to his property. It was almost five and dark out, and I passed by three times before I found it. The gravel drive was smooth and bordered by a line of tall firs. I followed it for half a mile, and then I saw a clearing, and light from spots mounted high in the trees.
The drive ended in a large, brick-paved circle. In the center was a stone fountain surrounded by curved stone benches and well-groomed shrubs. The main house was at twelve o’clock. It was a handsome, Italianate pile in brick and stone, two generous stories tall, with a slate roof and decorative brackets on the overhanging eaves. There were lots of windows, all tall and arched and framed in dressed stone. There was more stone along the foundation, and around the entrance portico too. A tower with four windows and a dangerous-looking finial rose above the roofline at one end of the house. At the other, there was a deep, arcaded porch that wrapped around to the back. The windows were dark.
At nine o’clock, set well back from the circle, was a carriage house. It was long and low and built in the same style as the residence, but with six pairs of wide, wooden doors dominating its facade. One pair was opened, and I saw a Bentley resting comfortably inside. There were lights on at the end of the building closest to the main house. I pulled the Taurus up to the opened bay. Someone called to me as I climbed out.
“You March?” I recognized Bregman’s nasal voice and heavy New York accent from the telephone. He was standing in a narrow doorway at the lit-up end of the carriage house. “I’m in the office,” he said. He made a “come on” gesture and went inside. I walked across the bricks and through the opened door.
The end of the carriage house had been partitioned off from the car bays to make Bregman’s big office. The walls were brick, three of them broken up by tall windows. The long wall on my left was mostly high, built-in shelving, packed with glass bric-a-brac and with a wet bar at the far end. Bright lights hung amid the old beams and rafters.
There was a desk across the room, with a polished stone top. There were two flat-screened monitors on it, and two keyboards, and some neat stacks of paper next to an open metal briefcase. Bregman stood behind it.
He was a tall, skinny guy of about fifty who looked like a vulture. He had rounded shoulders and a long curved neck with lots of extra skin around his large Adam’s apple. His head was narrow and topped with wiry black hair. His brows were black and wiry too, and his dark eyes were set deep and close to his bony nose. The shadow of a heavy beard darkened his sallow skin. His mouth was small and mean and lipless. He wore tan trousers, a green sweater over a blue shirt, and brown loafers. He sat, and eyed the inside of his briefcase as if it were a carcass.
Bregman didn’t look up as I crossed the room, or offer me his hand to shake or a place to sit, either. I sat anyway, in one of the two yellow leather chairs that faced his desk.
“You said you had some questions. Go ahead and ask them. But make it quick; I’m pressed for time.” He spoke fast and didn’t look at me.
“I’ll get to it, then,” I said. “You know Gerard Nassouli?” Bregman was silent. He kept picking through his briefcase, and after a while I thought he hadn’t heard me. I was about to repeat the question when he responded.
“Am I supposed to?” he said. He managed to make it sound bored, distracted, and snide, all at once. He was annoying me.
“Well, I suppose you do-that’s why I’m here. But I wanted to hear you say it.” He glanced up at me.
“Your tone’s kind of arrogant for someone who’s sitting in my house, asking for my time,” he said, but there wasn’t much force to it, and he seemed more interested in his briefcase. I didn’
t say anything. “Where am I supposed to know this guy from?” he asked.
“He ran MWB in New York, and maybe you did some business with him fifteen years ago or so.” Bregman glanced over at me again, still distracted, and nodded a little-I wasn’t sure at what.
“And if I did know the guy, so what?” he asked, his eyes flicking back to me again.
“Then I’ve got other things to talk to you about,” I said.
“Other things like what?”
“Other things like blackmail.”
He nodded to himself some more. He took a small stack of business cards from his briefcase, squared the edges, and put them next to a stack of papers on the desk. His long, pale hands were shaking a little. He pulled a few more papers from his case, put a few others in, closed the case, and stood it on the floor. Then he opened a drawer in the desk, and took out a slim, black semiautomatic pistol and pointed it at me.
“You greedy bastard,” he said. His voice was quavering with rage and fear and a rush of adrenaline. “What’s the matter, motherfucker, you didn’t bleed me enough the first time? You want more?” His thin lips were white, and so were his nostrils and the fingers of his right hand around the pistol grip. It didn’t look like he’d had a lot of experience shooting, but that didn’t matter much. I’d be awfully hard to miss at this range. He was swallowing a lot and his big Adam’s apple was jumping up and down. His hands shook more. Mine might too if I moved them, but I didn’t. I kept them, and the rest of me, perfectly still.
“You’ve got the wrong guy, Bregman,” I said slowly, but Bregman cut me off.
“ I got the wrong guy? You got the wrong guy, motherfucker. You got the wrong guy.” His voice was tight, like he was trying to yell but couldn’t get enough air to do it. He got up and came around the desk. His movements were stiff and jerky, but he kept the gun on me the whole time, pointed mostly at my head. He stood in front of me.
“You think I’m going to take this shit? Get up, you cocksucker,” he said. I started to rise, slowly, and as I did he backhanded me across the face with the gun. At least, he tried to. But I don’t think he’d ever hit anyone before, and he didn’t do it well or quickly. I sat back down as he pushed the gun at me. I drew my head back a little and with my left hand grabbed his wrist and the gun as they passed by my face. I twisted hard and felt something snap and Bregman screamed. I stood up and as I did I brought my right knee into his crotch. I got him dead on and with a lot of momentum behind me, and his scream turned into a weird bellow, like his intestines were going to come out of his mouth. He went down on his hands and knees, and then screamed again and collapsed on his right elbow, with his right hand out at an odd angle. Then he threw up.
My chair had tipped over, and Bregman’s gun was underneath it. I righted the chair and picked up the gun. It was a Beretta. The new ones have this cool automatic safety that engages if you drop them, and it had worked as advertised. I set the manual safety too and slid the clip out. There was nothing in the chamber. I put the clip in my pocket and stuck the gun in my belt behind my back. My hands and knees were shaking now. I took some slow, deep breaths.
Bregman was in a fetal position and still retching. He was crying too. Shit. I got a glass of water from the wet bar and drank it. Then I drank another. I filled it again and got some ice from the little fridge and wrapped it in a bar towel and brought it and the water and some more bar towels to Bregman.
I got him into one of the yellow chairs and helped him clean himself up a little. When I was sure he wouldn’t retch anymore, I gave him some water and wrapped his wrist in the bar towel with the ice. Then I pulled the other yellow chair over and sat down facing him.
“Now, would you care to tell me just what the fuck your problem is?” I asked.
Chapter Sixteen
I fished in my pockets for exact change, but all I had were bullets. They don’t like ammo in the toll baskets at the Triboro Bridge, so I slowed and steered the Taurus into the single lane reserved for unfortunates with only paper money.
The bullets were from Steven Bregman’s Beretta. I’d given the gun back to him, minus the clip, when we’d concluded our little chat. I’d left the empty clip in the mailbox at the top of his driveway, and kept the bullets. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the guy… or maybe it was.
A sprained wrist and a kick in the balls had temporarily drained Bregman of his violence and galloping paranoia, but had left him by turns self-pitying, self-justifying, and conspiratorial. It was an unattractive mix. Still, Bregman was my pot of gold. When I’d got him calmed down, and explained why I was there-and convinced him that it wasn’t to stick him up-he’d told all. Almost all, anyway.
The first fax had come to his office about a year ago, with a cover sheet that read: “We’ll talk soon.” The documents in it, according to Bregman, were a trumped-up, out-of-context misrepresentation of dealings he’d had with Nassouli, a long time before. The second fax had arrived a few days later. It had the same cover sheet as the first, but its contents were even more toxic. Bregman wouldn’t tell me anything about his business with Nassouli, or anything specific about what had been sent to him in the faxes, but whatever it was had shaken him badly. And, he’d told me, it would’ve sent his investors running for the hills. So when the third one showed up, he’d been inclined to follow instructions.
It had come two weeks later, and it was short, just a single page. It named an amount-Bregman wouldn’t say how much-that he was to have available in a week’s time. He would receive transfer instructions then, and he would have to act on them immediately. Bregman did as he was told. A week later, in the early morning, the last fax came. It gave him four hours to wire the money to a numbered account at a bank in Luxembourg. Bregman had met the deadline, and hadn’t heard a word since.
But from then on, he’d been brooding over what had happened, and been waiting for the other shoe to drop. It had driven him nuts. A few months after making the payment, Bregman’s anger and fear had reached the boiling point. He couldn’t take it anymore; he couldn’t just sit there; he had to do something. What he did was hire himself a PI-he wouldn’t tell me who-to identify the blackmailer. Though he never said, I got the feeling that for Bregman this was the first step in some dark revenge fantasy he’d been nurturing.
Bregman had hobbled his own efforts from the start, however. He hadn’t told his investigator anything about the first two faxes, or given him any background on Nassouli or MWB, which had left the guy with nothing to go on besides the delivery instructions. After two months in Luxembourg, his investigator had mainly found out how seriously they take their banking secrecy over there. The funds had been transferred out moments after they’d come in, and the account had been closed the same day. Neither guile, nor threats, nor bribery had been sufficient to discover anything else.
Besides the story he’d had to tell, Bregman wasn’t too helpful. He had no theories on who might’ve been behind the blackmail, beyond “Gerry, the motherfucker.” And he recalled Trautmann only as “that psycho security guy.”
His fretting and whining over his wrist and groin grew louder as our conversation wore on, but the thought that his blackmailer was victimizing other people had clearly cheered Bregman up. He couldn’t keep the smile from his sour little mouth or the glint from his narrow eyes. He’d tried inexpertly but persistently to find out who my client was, and when that didn’t pan out he’d tried to bribe me. I left before I kicked him in the nuts again.
I made it through the tolls and across the bridge and, finally, to the southbound FDR Drive. It was ten o’clock when I pulled the Taurus into a garage on Seventeenth Street. I gave the guy there something extra in his tip and told him to keep the car close. I’d be leaving early tomorrow.
Bellerose is a small, working-class neighborhood at the edge of Queens, hemmed in by parkways and right up against the Nassau County line. Belmont, where the horses run, is just next door. It’s an old neighborhood, mostly Irish and Italian and German and Polish.
Lots of cops, lots of firemen, lots of guys in the trades.
It’s about fifteen miles east of Manhattan, and to get there you take the Midtown Tunnel to the Long Island Expressway. You stay on the LIE, past the crowded Calvary and Mt. Zion Cemeteries, through the blighted stretches of Rego Park, past Shea Stadium and the strange relics of the ’64 World’s Fair, out to exit 30. From there you pick up the Cross Island Parkway, and take it south a few exits, past a park and a golf course and the frightening hulk of Creedmore Psychiatric, to Hillside Avenue. That’s where you get off.
It was 4:45 on Friday morning, overcast and still dark, with the temperature hovering near forty degrees, when I made the turn onto Hillside. I was in my Taurus, a thermos of coffee, a peanut butter sandwich, and a liter of water on the seat next to me, a pair of binoculars and a camera on the floor, and a Glock 30 digging into the small of my back.
I’d come to talk to Bernhard Trautmann. My story was going to be the same as the one I’d told to Al Burrows-that I was doing research for a writer interested in MWB. But I really didn’t care if Trautmann bought it or not. Given what I’d heard about the guy, I wasn’t expecting pleasant chitchat over tea and cakes. I was going to stir him up and see what happened. I’d come out here early in the hopes of getting a look at him before the stirring started.
Hillside Avenue is a gritty, commercial street. It runs east-west, with two lanes going in each direction, and a concrete strip in between and traffic lights every five paces. The buildings along it are small, low, flatroofed, and ugly. They’re faced in brick and fake stone and stuff that looks like roofing shingle, and they house a dense assortment of businesses. Mom-and-pop groceries, auto-body shops, hardware stores, diners, pizzerias, banks, pet stores, bars, and check-cashing places. Most of the storefronts were dark when I drove by, their steel security curtains still rolled down.
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