Dead Cat Bounce

by Norman Green

  He stopped next to a giant elm. The tree was a monster, it completely dwarfed its neighbors. He stood there, leaning by one hand against the deeply ridged bark of the tree as he looked down the slope in front of him. There was a clearing about a hundred and fifty yards ahead. He could see the bright green of cultivated grass shining between the tree trunks, the glint of a galvanized metal chain-link fence. A dog sat just inside the fence, small in the distance, tan and dark brown, lean and hungry-looking. Doberman, he thought. The thing knows you’re up here, and he wants a piece of you…. He moved forward carefully, slowly halving the distance between himself and the dog before finding a clump of bushes to hide behind.

  The dog became agitated when Stoney dropped down out of sight. He stood up, pointed his snout skyward, and howled. “Yourrrrr!”

  A moment later the Dobie was joined by another dog, similar in color but heavier. Probably a Rottweiler, Stoney thought. The second dog sniffed at the first, then lay down in the grass next to it. A moment later, two men showed up, probably guards. Stoney crouched, motionless, behind his bushes as one of them scoped the woods with a pair of binoculars.

  “Anything?” The second guard’s voice carried clearly up the hill.

  “No.”

  “Stupid mutt. Probably some goddam turkeys again.” He cuffed at the dog. “Get on back up to the house, you!”

  The Doberman looked at the guard, trotted a few steps away; and yowled again. “G’wan, I said,” the guard yelled. “Fuckin’ pain in my ass. Get goin’.” The guard with the glasses gave up, and the two men walked back in the direction they’d come from, followed by the Rottweiler. The Doberman was last, and he paused, turned and looked back at Stoney.

  Yeah, Stoney thought. I see you, too.

  He made his way back north again, came out of the woods almost exactly where he’d entered them. Halfway across the McMansion’s backyard, he noticed a tick crawling up his forearm. He watched it negotiate the hairs on his skin, moving slowly and deliberately. After a few seconds, he flicked the thing off into the grass. Should have killed you, he thought. When he got back inside, he went into one of the bathrooms and examined himself carefully. He found one more, crawling resolutely up his sock. It didn’t squash when he stepped on it, so he wound up flushing it instead. Friggin’ bloodsuckers, he thought. You got to watch yourself every minute….

  SEVEN

  Stoney stepped out of the elevator and into the front corner of Tommy Bagadonuts’ loft. Straight ahead and to his left, a row of windows looked down on the narrow street, several floors below. To his right was the kitchen area, an island of cabinets, appliances, and countertops in the middle of a long narrow room. Beyond that lay the rest of the living spaces.

  “Hello?” He craned his neck out, looked around. “Tommy?”

  “Come on in.” Tommy was in the office area at the other end of the loft, maybe forty feet away. He got up and hurried across the space between the two of them. Even at home, Stoney thought, the guy always looks well put together. Fat Tommy was wearing a hand-knit wool sweater that emphasized his height and minimized his girth, a carefully creased pair of gray slacks, Italian loafers. Stoney handed the flowers he was carrying to Fat Tommy.

  “Where’s your opera singer?”

  “On tour,” Tommy said, accepting the flowers, holding them out at arm’s length, the better to admire them.

  “She coming back?”

  “‘Oo knows,” Tommy said, shrugging expansively. He carried the flowers over to his kitchen and rummaged around in a cabinet, fished out a clear glass vase about ten inches high. He filled it with water at the sink, put the flowers in it. He came back, set it down on the end of the counter, and fussed with the flowers until they were arranged to his satisfaction. “Don’ worry,” he said. “I gonna take a nice picture, senda to her the e-mail. Tell her you wasa think about her.”

  Stoney looked at him. “You got e-mail?”

  Tommy drew back. “Yeah, I got e-mail. I wasa buy the compute, maybe two months ago. Tuco wasa come over, set up everything, show me how to use. I tol’ you, very smart boy.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. Especially for a kid who couldn’t read a year ago.”

  “He gonna be okay, Stoney.” Fat Tommy tapped a thick finger against his temple. “Very smart boy. You an’ me, we wasa do something good with him. You gotta see now, he figure his own way to do everything. Just needed, you know…” He looked at the ceiling, searching for the right English words.

  “A little encouragement.”

  “Yeah,” Tommy said. “Exactamente. You want a nice coffee?”

  “Nah, that’s all right.”

  Fat Tommy ignored Stoney’s answer. “Hey, I gotta nice Italian roast. You gonna like.” He busied himself measuring water, grinding beans, pouring cream into a little ceramic pitcher. “So? You calla you wife yet?”

  “Yeah. We’re supposed to meet at a steakhouse up by the Tap tomorrow night.”

  “Tappan Zee Bridge? Nicea place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Don’a you worry, everything gonna come good.”

  “I hope you’re right, Tommy, but I don’t have your confidence. Donna’s been in a pretty strange head ever since I quit drinking. I don’t get it. I don’t know if she’s got too many birds on her antenna or what.”

  “Listen to me,” Tommy said. “Everything different, all of a sudden. Everybody wasa worry about you. I know you stoppa to drink, stoppa to smoke ju-ju weed, sniff powders, alla that stuff you wasa do. That’sa nice, you make everybody happy, maybe we don’ gonna bury you so soon. But you become different guy now, you understand? Nobody understand exactly what to do with you. I wasa think, maybe you gonna find the baby Jesus, go find another line of work.”

  Stoney squinted at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Fat Tommy shrugged. “Well, I’ma ask around, you know, what’s gonna happen. Here’sa this guy, used to be alla time drink, get high, now he’sa go to meeting instead. ‘Watch out,’ they tolla me. ‘Everything gonna change now.’ I don’ know what to do. I don’ wanna be the guy, you know, make you go back. Me an’ Donna, I think we do the same lilla dance. Check, you know, peek, he’s okay? I don’ know, what he’sa do now? You hear me? You gotta have some patience. Gonna take time.”

  “Yeah, all right. Listen, don’t be surprised if Donna calls you sometime in the next few days.”

  Tommy nodded. “She wanna talk about money.”

  Stoney looked at him, surprised. “Money? Is that what she said? She call you already?”

  “No. But I know she gonna call. Everybody don’ gonna be like you, Stoney.”

  “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”

  Fat Tommy shook his head. “Every year,” he said, “tax time, I make a nice report. Marty Cohen used to help me do. This year I hadda find a new guy. Anyway, nice report, show everything, almost. So much over here, so much over there, this building, that company, all that stuff. Plus, I tell you few things we don’ gonna write down, some cash over here and over there. I give to you, along with tax paper, you don’ even look. You sign the name, hand back. Am I right?”

  “I suppose. But it’s been a while since you and I needed to worry about money, Tommy.”

  “Stoney, people don’ worry about money because they need. You go hungry in this country, you don’ try very hard. People worry about money because they wanna new house, new car, new fur coat.”

  “Or because they gotta put their kids through school.”

  Tommy tilted his head, looked at Stoney. “Okay, that, too. But usually, they want, they no need. But I know you don’ think about, too much, so I take care. No problem.”

  “I trust you, Tommy. With my money, anyhow.”

  Tommy snickered. “Everybody got his limitation. Listen to me. Donna is like a woman who wasa sleep for a long time. You understand? But now she’sa wake up, she’sa look around, she start to worry about everything. For so many years, she wasa just trust you, now she wan
na see for herself. So don’t worry, when she’sa call me, I gonna make everything okay.”

  “You can tell her the truth, Tommy.”

  Tommy snickered again. “Don’ worry, she gonna like. Okay?”

  “Okay. Next topic. You remember the guy I was checking out? Charles David Prior? I’m gonna make a move on him. I got a feeling he’s too fat to pass up.”

  “Yeah? Whatta we know about thisa guy?”

  “So far, not much. We know he lives in a big house in the woods in Jersey, got a fence all the way around, got security guards and dogs. But that kid you put me onto is checking into him for me, we’ll see what the kid comes up with.”

  “Okay by me.” Tommy brightened. “Hey, wait,” he said. “I got another idea. I know thisa guy, in case we aska him, he gonna find out a few things only a thief would wanna know. You know what I mean? I gonna give him a call.”

  Stoney trudged up the stairs and down the hallway, glanced at the door across the hall from his on the way past. He ignored the impulse to knock and went on past. He had barely gotten through his own door when the phone rang. It was the kid from Jersey, the investigator he’d hired. “I’m off your case,” the kid said.

  Stoney held the phone away from him, stared at it in disbelief, then put it back to his face. “Are you nuts? I hired you to do a job, pal.”

  The kid was adamant. “I’m off your case.”

  “Look, man, you can’t do this to me, you hear me? You can’t hang me up like this. What happened, somebody get to you? You gotta tell me what happened, you fucking weasel. What’s the goddam problem?”

  “The goddam problem is this.” Stoney gritted his teeth and listened while the kid got himself together. “I don’t know what you’re into, and I don’t want to know, but I’m not getting killed for you. Do you understand me? I am done with your case.”

  Stoney took a breath. “What are you talking about? Somebody threaten you or what?”

  “Not verbally, but the message was pretty clear. There’s a man in the morgue this morning, and he’s there because I was turning over rocks, looking into your guy, Prior. I don’t know what you think I am, okay, but I told you before, I deal in information, not violence. I’m finished. Matter of fact, I’m gonna be out of town for a couple of weeks.”

  “You are unbelievable. All right, look, you wanna bail on this, I suppose I can’t blame you, but you gotta meet with me and tell me how far you got. If you got some shit stirred up, you owe me that much. You can’t run away and leave me here in the dark.”

  The kid was silent for a few seconds. “All right,” he said finally. “Meet me tomorrow morning, and I’ll give you what I got.”

  “Fine. Where?”

  “I’ll call and tell you in the morning. And come alone.” He hung up.

  EIGHT

  The place had been a service area once, but now it was nothing more than a bus station standing solitary guard in the middle of a massive parking lot. It was favored by commuters, they drove in from all over North Jersey, parked in the lot, and rode the bus into Manhattan. The lot was surrounded by the Jersey Meadowlands, a swampy expanse of pale brown marsh reeds. Stoney sat on the hood of his Lexus, trying to stifle his irritation.

  A two-year-old Toyota Camry in need of a wash circled the parking lot once, then again, the driver seemingly unable to locate a parking spot to his liking. Finally, the car slid up to where Stoney waited, and the passenger side window rolled down. The kid was behind the wheel. “Get in,” he said.

  Stoney slammed the door shut and fought to keep control of his tongue. Careful what you say to this guy, he told himself, careful what you call him, because you need as much cooperation out of him as you can get. “Tell me what happened,” he said, his voice unnaturally flat and calm.

  “First of all, I got nothing on your wife. It’s too soon to say anything for sure, but up to now I got squat.”

  Stoney wanted to be relieved, but he wasn’t. Just because the kid didn’t find it, didn’t mean it wasn’t there. “So what’s the problem?”

  “Let me get out of here first,” the kid said. He looked around, nervous, then stepped on the gas and headed for the entrance for the Jersey Turnpike. He watched his rearview mirror as they hit the ramp. “Anybody behind us?”

  Stoney glanced over his shoulder. “Half of New Jersey is behind us.”

  “Well, keep your eyes open,” the kid said. He got onto the turnpike, but took the next exit, followed it through the tollbooths and out onto local streets.

  “Where we going?”

  “I don’t know. This is Secaucus. I’m not going anywhere in particular, I just want to keep moving. Look, here’s what happened. Something told me I needed to be extra careful with this job, and it’s a damned good thing, too. For me, at least. You know anything about computers?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “All right. Basically, a computer leaves tracks, just like your feet. When I go digging through somebody’s dirty laundry, okay, I don’t want the tracks going there to be mine, you get me? So what I do, I piggyback on a server at a bank in Jersey City. There’s a back door on the server…well, anyway, from the server I access a computer in a law office in Newark, and I run my shit from there. You get me?”

  “Yeah,” Stoney said, irritated.

  “They had a break-in at the law office. The place got trashed, but the only thing missing was a couple of hard drives.”

  “You musta hit a trip wire of some kind. What were you doing, you were running searches on Prior, am I right? Were you doing anything else?”

  “No. Just Prior.” They passed a truck dealership, turned into an industrial park behind it. In the distance, the turnpike soared on green legs high up and over the marsh. The kid drove past the last of the warehouses, down to where the road ended in a small parking lot. Beyond the end of the parking lot, the waters of the Jersey Meadowlands lay turgid and motionless. A few men stood fishing from a ledge at the water’s edge, right past a sign that warned anglers not to eat any fish they pulled out of the marsh due to the toxic nature of the environment the fish lived in. The kid parked, sat there watching the fishermen. “There was a security guard at the office building in Newark. Someone grabbed him from behind, and they stuck a knife up under his rib cage. Right through his heart.”

  “Shit.”

  The kid didn’t look at him. “I can’t think of a reason to kill the guard, other than to send a message.”

  “So I guess you got the message.”

  “I’m not taking any chances.”

  “What did you find on Prior?”

  “Some of the standard info. I mean, I got the same shit you can get on anyone in about two hours. Couldn’t get his Social Security number, though, which is, like, unheard of. The guy is supposed to be some kind of businessman, but I never found out what he does. There was no evidence of any business-type activity on his part anywhere. There’s no credit history on the guy past the last three years, either, and the college he supposedly graduated from up in Massachusetts never heard of him. No kids, no wives, no ex-girlfriends. I couldn’t find a thing that made me think that Charles David Prior is the name this cat’s mother gave him.”

  “So you’re telling me he’s a rich guy, but you don’t know how he got the money, and you don’t know who he really is.”

  The kid swallowed. “Yeah. He owns that house in Alpine, bought it outright three years ago. Keeps some money in an index fund, but that’s just his walking-around money. Working capital. He plays with commodities, that’s a crapshoot, you can win big or lose it all in a big hurry, but he’s just playing. You and me, we might put a C-note on the Jets game, this guy drops ten grand trying to guess which way the euro dollar is gonna bounce tomorrow morning.”

  “How’s he do at it?”

  “I only saw his last few trades, and he was one and four. But like I said, I think he’s just fooling around. Oh, and his golf handicap is three.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “
I’d say it means he’s got it all.”

  “Got the world by the balls, huh? So how much money does this guy have?”

  “I don’t know.” The kid shook his head. “Listen, what I got on this guy is basically the top layer. Anything more than that, he’s got it buried, and he’s standing guard. Sorry.”

  “Shit. All right. Whoever hit the office building, do they have any way of tracing the searches back to you?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, they do, if they have somebody good enough, they can follow me back to the server at the bank, and if they can get into that, they’ve got me.”

  “Why don’t you smoke the server before they can get to it? Didn’t you say there was a back door?”

  “Yeah, I did. I thought I could wipe the drive, but the bank has gotten smart, and their security shut me down when I tried.” One of the fisherman on the boulder leaned back, and his fishing rod curled into an arc as his catch fought for its life.

  “I suppose that doesn’t mean that they can’t get in, whoever they are.”

  “Hey, I’m not going to kid you. I’m pretty good, okay, but there’s always somebody better. You can design the best security system money can buy, but there’s always someone, somewhere, smart enough to beat it. If these people want it bad enough, okay, they can get into the server, and that means they can get to me.”

  “And you’re gonna run.”

  The kid’s voice rose. “Fucking right I’m gonna run! After I drop you back at the lot, I’m going straight to the airport.”

  “So you’re giving me nothing, am I right?”

  “Not quite nothing,” the kid said. He reached into the backseat, dragged a briefcase into his lap, opened it, and rooted around inside. He fished out a manila folder, handed it to Stoney, shut the briefcase, and chucked it back behind him. “There’s everything I got on Prior. It’s who he is now, where he goes, all that kind of shit. You might be able to do something with it, I don’t know. At the very least, if you find someone else to do this for you, it’ll give them someplace to start. And your money’s in there, I’m refunding your retainer.”