Dead Anyway

by Chris Knopf

  Then I made up a duplicate package, addressed to Shelly Gross in Rocky Hill, and tossed it in the Outback for future mailing.

  THE JOB of a detective, or bounty hunter, in tracking down missing people has, in a way, become absurdly simple. For a nominal subscription cost, there are perfectly legal, universally accessible databases that cross reference details like name, phone number and email address to cough up a physical address. And often even richer information, like age, time at that residence, occupation, years of schooling, etc. Sometimes, there’s even a photo.

  This is how I was able to eliminate Omar Rankin, a distinguished-looking African-American, in about five minutes.

  Though a negative result, the speed with which it was achieved bolstered my confidence, helping to blunt the pain of my complete failure with The Jack Hammer. First off, both the phone number and email address Sebbie had given me were inactive. If I’d been the FBI, or even a regular police detective, I could still get the name and physical address attached to those accounts, but I wasn’t. Worse, there were surprisingly few Jack Hammers living in the northeast USA, betraying a surprising reluctance on the part of people named Hammer to inflict a lifetime joke on their children.

  I did dig up a Sledge Hammer, but he was a professional wrestler living in Atlantic City, when he wasn’t on the road, which was most of the time.

  I put my list of three Jack Hammers aside and went looking for Austin Ott. All Sebbie had provided on Austin was an email address. I found no correlation using the people search engine, though there were several Austin Otts.

  I moved on to Fred Tootsie, for whom all I had was a phone number, with a 516 area code, which covered Nassau County, Long Island. I ran it through the search engine and hit a correlation: Frederico DiDemenico, 23 Hartsfield Drive, Apt 3D, Jericho, NY. Age fifty-three. Occupation unknown. Affiliations unknown. I gave him a call.

  “What,” he said, answering the phone.

  “Hello, Fred. I was given your number by a friend in the business. He said I should call you about a project.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Mr. Jones.”

  “Sure. And this is Mr. Smith.”

  “I heard it was Mr. Tootsie,” I said.

  The line was quiet for a moment.

  “Who’s the friend?” he asked.

  “Can’t say. You understand.”

  “Not sure I do. What’s this project?”

  I strained to find something familiar in his voice, but soon realized that would be impossible. I remembered much of what the man in the trench coat said, but even without a damaged brain, things like the tone and timbre of a human voice are difficult to recollect.

  “Rather talk about that in person,” I said. “It’s sensitive.”

  “You want a lot.”

  “Do you normally conduct business over the phone?” I asked.

  I said this lightly, trying to make it sound more like a gentle inquiry than a taunt or criticism. He took it as intended.

  “I hear you,” he said.

  “I propose a meet,” I said. “I’ll toss you some options.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “Okay,” he said, and hung up.

  I moved to the last name on the list, Pally Buttons, and again hit a brick wall. The phone number Sebbie gave me was out of service, and based on the area code, it was likely a disposable like mine. Virtually untraceable even for law enforcement. This was going to be a much harder slog, so I put him in the to-do column and concentrated on Fred.

  I wrote down a few dates and locations on the South Shore of Long Island in easy driving distance of Jericho, printed it out and stuck it in an envelope. Then I drove to a FedEx retail outlet and sent it to Fred in one of their envelopes, which would be difficult to open without destroying. It was also trackable, so I could monitor its journey online, for what that was worth. As always, if there was a serious effort by the authorities to monitor Fred’s mail, I wouldn’t know until it was too late.

  I instructed Fred to put his response in the form of a message to a new wallbox.com account I’d opened for the purpose. I included a step-by-step guide to completing the task, not knowing Fred’s computer literacy, suspecting the minimum.

  I spent the next few days searching the other names on Google and the other subscription search engines. The paucity of information wasn’t surprising. It was only when a professional assassin was caught that his story could be told in some detail, though never fully, was my guess.

  Omar and Fred Tootsie were the only ones with public records, scant as they were. Fred had shown up in court records, charged in an assault case involving a brawl in Jones Beach between “Rival Italian gangs with rumored ties to organized crime.” Fred had been interviewed by the police in a nearby hospital, so at least for him, the brawl hadn’t gone that well. The transcript reported the only information he provided investigators was that he was a Caucasian male and a member in good standing of the Jericho Knights of Columbus. Which actually wasn’t true.

  Compared to the others on the list, Omar Rankin was positively flamboyant. Not only were all his personal stats plastered all over the Internet, he could also be found in news photos cutting a ribbon for a new basketball court in Harlem, protesting with local residents and clergy over lack of funding for a needle exchange program, officiating at a dance contest during a block party and generally establishing his credentials as a protean and relentless community activist in his Upper Upper West Side neighborhood.

  Hiding in plain sight? I couldn’t tell, but I catalogued the information just in case.

  Then one morning a little ping on the computer told me I had a message on wallbox.com. I went there and jotted down Fred’s selected time and place. Then I cancelled the account and started preparations.

  Fred had chosen a tatty little bar along Freeport’s Nautical Mile frequented by a clientele drawn from the older and consequently scruffier neighborhoods to the north. I’d been there a few years before, so maybe the ambience had improved, though their web site seemed to testify that it hadn’t.

  I’d been practicing my makeup skills, trying for the maximum change in appearance with the least effort. For that day’s outing I simply changed my nose and put a baseball cap over a wig, and a pair of glasses with clip-ons. Simple, convincing and comfortable.

  I drove to Long Island by way of the Throgs Neck Bridge, and headed south, arriving in Freeport two hours ahead of our meeting time. The place was called Donny Brooks, attesting to both its Irish roots and featured activities. I parked a half block away in a parking lot behind an ancient five and dime.

  I wished I’d learned more tradecraft back when I was tracking down people for my law firm clients. In my defense, there really wasn’t much of a need, since in ninety-five percent of the cases I was trying to give away money, not exactly a fearsome mission. But I had no idea how to spot genuine undercover operatives. All I could do was secure a booth with a good angle on the interior and hope for the best.

  It was midafternoon and the few patrons holding down barstools looked like regulars, a judgment reinforced by the aimless chatter with the bartender. The only other booth contained a ragged older woman who was having lunch with the waitress. If this was the state of the surveillance arts, the criminal world hadn’t a chance.

  I ordered a sandwich and an iced tea, which I nursed unmolested for the next two hours, during which a few more guys came in, better candidates for undercover agents, but how was I to know? And since there was nothing I could do if they were, I decided to stop thinking about it and started to read the Time magazine I’d brought along to signal my identity to Fred Tootsie.

  He showed up fifteen minutes early, holding his telltale, a copy of Sports Illustrated rolled into a tube. I saw his face before I spotted the magazine, so I already knew it wasn’t the man in the trench coat. The neurologist who examined me felt reasonably sure my visual memory was intact, and I’d tried to keep the man’s face fixed in my mind by c
onstant study of the sketch artist’s rendering. If that had been a false rendering, it would be another factor over which I had no control, so that was another thought I could only cast to the wind.

  Fred looked like a retired salesman. His face was round and fleshy, unhelped by a bedraggled head of grey hair, mostly on its way out, and a pair of thick glasses in plastic frames. He wore a windbreaker over a striped golf shirt, bulging at the waist, and a pair of polyester pants. He dropped down across from me in the booth and slapped the magazine on the table.

  “How long you been here?” he asked.

  “Two hours.”

  “You’re a patient fucker.”

  “Just cautious,” I said.

  “Was it worth it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Only so much caution you can have,” he said. “After a while, you just gotta say fuck it.”

  “That’s what I’m learning.”

  He studied me.

  “Take off your hat,” he said.

  “How come?”

  “Just cautious.” I did. “Now your shirt.”

  I did that, too, and he motioned for me to hand them over. He shook out the shirt and felt around the seams, then gave it back, along with the hat, also thoroughly examined. No one in the bar seemed to notice.

  ”What’s your racket?” he asked.

  “Search and discovery.”

  “Whatever the hell that means.”

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said. “I’m told you may be in a position to help.”

  He picked up an edge of his magazine and shuffled the pages with his thumb.

  “And if I do, what comes next?”

  “I just need a legitimate name and address. I’ll take it from there.”

  His dark eyes behind the glasses continued to examine me, his face reflecting little of what he thought.

  “I don’t work for free,” he said.

  “I don’t expect you to. Write down what you’d want.”

  I took a piece of paper out of my magazine and slid it with a pen across the table. He picked up the pen and looked down at the paper as if something was already written there. Then he jotted down a number. A thousand dollars.

  I took back the paper and folded it away in my shirt pocket. Then I took out another paper on which the names Pally Buttons, The Jack Hammer and Austin Ott were typed out. He leaned over the table and looked at the paper for a second, then sat back again.

  “Who’s the fuck who gave you that?” he asked. “Is that how you got to me?”

  I took out my last sheet of paper, the police artist’s portrait of the man in the trench coat. Fred picked it up and studied it with apparent concentration, looking over at the three names, then back at the picture. Then he put it back on the table.

  “Come up with the grand and we might have something to talk about,” he said.

  “I have it with me,” I said.

  “Really,” said Fred. “So you must be carrying more than that. I think I just left some money on the table.”

  “I’m good for another five hundred if I like what you say.”

  He showed his first smile, a cold thing that didn’t involve his eyes.

  “You’ll like what I say when I have the fifteen hundred in my pocket.”

  “I’m happy to do that,” I said, “though that shouldn’t tempt you to provide false information.”

  His smile lost its tenuous hold on his face.

  “Not a thing for a cautious guy to say.”

  I leaned closer to him so I could lower my voice.

  “I promise to trust what you say, but if it turns out you’ve lied, there will be consequences.” As I spoke, I looked from side to side, as if watching for eavesdroppers.

  Then I sat back and let him absorb it all. I thought rather well, considering.

  “That’s pretty big talk,” he said.

  I took an envelope stuffed with money and stuck it in the Time magazine, which I slid across the table. Fred kept his eyes on me and his hands off the magazine.

  “You could bet your life,” I said, “or you could take the fifteen hundred bucks and never look back.”

  My knowledge of the psychology of professional killers was limited at best, though I knew something about professionals in general, which was half the battle. Pragmatism tends to rule, upsides and downsides clinically weighed and decisions usually, though not always, driven by rational selfinterest. I trusted Fred to decide there was nothing to lose, and everything to gain in playing this one exactly as I wanted it played.

  “Okay,” he said, using my pen to circle The Jack Hammer. “That ain’t him. I seen him. I never seen the other two, so it could be one of them.”

  “Can you tell me where they live?” I asked.

  He thought about that.

  “Last I heard, Pally was back doing security at Clear Waters in Connecticut.”

  “What’s his real name?”

  Fred shook his head.

  “I want to say Chipmunk, but that can’t be it. Chalupnik. That’s it. I don’t know what nationality that is. Bulgarian or some shit.”

  “First name?”

  “Pally? Other than that, no fuckin’ idea.”

  “What about Ott?”

  He looked even more strained to recall.

  “Definitely New England. The biggest of the independents. Even the wise guys are afraid of him. Originally outta Boston, though I don’t think he’s there anymore. He’s kicked a couple jobs to me over the years. Subcontracts. Doesn’t get his hands dirty. Polite guy. Very calm. Everything went down according to plan, so no beef from me.”

  “So no guesses,” I said.

  He pondered some more.

  “Both jobs were up in Connecticut. So maybe he’s there. But you said guesses, and that’s all I got.”

  “Do you have a way to get in touch with him?” I asked.

  He scoffed.

  “No way. He gets in touch with you.”

  He sat back in the booth, put both hands in his lap and studiously ignored the Time magazine filled with money. I slid it closer.

  “Thanks for that,” I said.

  “I ain’t guaranteeing I got it all right.”

  “We’re okay,” I said.

  “Unless I lied.”

  “Unless you lied.”

  “Or I coulda just made a mistake. And you’d think I’m lyin’.” He lifted the tip of some sort of firearm up above the surface of the table, then put it back down again. “Which is why I’m gonna put a slug into your belly right now and be done with it,” he said, glancing down to where he had both hands under the table.

  “Noise,” I said. “And eyewitnesses all over the place.”

  “Worth the risk. They’re all a bunch of rummies. And this piece is quieter than a wet fart.”

  I was a little disappointed that I hadn’t foreseen this possibility, given the nature of my booth companion, though I felt no self-recrimination. I was in a daily contest between precision and expedience, trying to attend to every detail, while pushing, pushing forward. All with a mind I still didn’t entirely trust.

  “Yet you hesitate,” I said, “revealing your intent and wasting the valuable element of surprise. You’re not a hundred percent sure this is a good idea.”

  In fact, he looked entirely sure it was a good idea, and was more likely driven by curiosity than fear.

  “I don’t like being threatened.”

  “Neither do I,” I said.

  “This ain’t a threat, it’s a sure thing.” His face hardened and I could sense the gun moving under the table.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “You know nothing about me, but I know a great deal about you. I know where you live, what you do during the day, the names of your friends and all your family and where they live. You’re not the only professional I’ve spoken to. I’ve arranged things so if I’m killed, you and the people closest to you will be dead within a week.” I sat back in the booth and used my open hands to
point at the middle of my chest. “So go ahead. In the end, the world will be a better place.”

  A look of calculation on his face took the place of conviction. His eyes stayed fixed on mine, but the stiffness went out of his posture.

  “Who the fuck are you, anyway?” he asked.

  That was a good question.

  “Not sure, to tell you the truth. The concept of identity has become an abstraction. I’m not sure I still have what you’d call a conventional mental state. And my behavior seems propelled more by veiled compulsions than conscious deliberation.”

  “Whatever the fuck that means.”

  “You asked,” I said, and got up and left by way of the kitchen and out the back door, ignoring the chubby guys in greasy aprons who called out to me, and headed to where I’d left my car.

  In another minute I was absorbed back into that twilight realm of barren hope, discontinuity and pain, observed as much as felt.

  CHAPTER 9

  When I got back to my little house, I booted up my computer and saw a note from Evelyn to MrPbody. It was a simple message: “Call me.”

  “How are you feeling,” she asked when I reached her disposable.

  “Hard to tell.”

  “How’s the spatial acuity?”

  “Still the same, but I’m getting used to it. Tiredness continues to be a problem. Have you heard from Maddox?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “But that’s not why I called. You remember we were doing a valuation of the agency. Mr. Brandt had his auditors in all week.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “Great. They’ve been very complimentary of Florencia’s management. Bruce says they’ll be aggressive about getting a letter of intent on the table, but obviously not until they’ve done a thorough audit.”

  When it came to our respective professional pursuits, Florencia and I had a nearly perfect arrangement. I’d regale her with tales of my projects and occasional field exploits. She told me almost nothing about her work life. She said the last thing she wanted was to drag herself again through all the daily trials and tribulations. She loved the work, she’d say, but only because it never became an obsession. My work, on the other hand, was a delightful diversion for her, described with such narrative brio, that it became her favorite form of entertainment. So, for better or worse, this was the pattern we settled into. I did all the talking, she did all the listening.