Dead Anyway

by Chris Knopf

  “You didn’t read the ad very carefully,” he said. “It’s off the market.”

  Shelly had a narrow, pinkish face with an aquiline nose and close-set eyes. His full head of white hair was on the long side, suggesting a hint of vanity. His eyes were grey-gold, not unlike my own natural color, and also likely fitted with contacts, since he didn’t wear glasses.

  “That’s what negotiations are for,” I said.

  “What are we negotiating?”

  “Continued post-career success for Shelly Gross.”

  “I’ve already had plenty of success.”

  “Partly thanks to me. And if you don’t care about that, do it for the general well-being of society.”

  “Vigilantes aren’t good for society,” he said. “It’s one of the first things you learn.”

  “Then call it a public-private partnership. You set the rules.”

  “How do I know you’ll follow them?” he asked.

  “Every successful partnership is built on trust. I didn’t have to hand you Frondutti.”

  “That was your choice, not my request.”

  “This is not a good negotiating technique,” I said. “It won’t yield results.”

  “What technique?”

  “Playing hard to get. Pretending you aren’t interested in what I have to offer, thinking that will cause me to turn supplicant, giving up more than I want just to earn your acceptance. I don’t care that much about your acceptance, and you’re not my only option. I picked you because of your record in Connecticut, but you have successors, and they’re still on the job.”

  He took another bite of his burger.

  “So what technique would you suggest?”

  “Give me something. A crumb. I don’t need much.”

  “So why me?” he asked. “Like you said, I’m not even on the job.”

  “Right. Which means you have more time to focus on the project. And you probably know more about the people I’m looking for than any current agent. And you’re keeping yourself in great physical shape. What, so you don’t get tired pushing the buttons on the remote while sitting by yourself in the living room?”

  He pointed at me with his fork.

  “Don’t get personal,” he said. “That doesn’t work with me.”

  “Yes, it does. That’s the first honest thing you’ve said.”

  He went back to his meal, this time with his eyes cast down at his plate. A waitress finally realized he had a booth mate and came over to take my order. I asked her to bring me whatever he was having.

  “You won’t blame me if I wonder just who the hell you are,” he said, finally.

  “I won’t blame you for trying like hell to find out. But I’d rather you put that time and energy into helping me find Jason Three Sticks. He might not be the most wanted man in this area, but I bet he’s the most elusive. What do you got to lose?”

  He finished off his beer as mine was arriving, but didn’t order a second.

  “He’s in Connecticut,” he said. “Somewhere in Fairfield County, though his operations spread across the whole North-east. He’s gone by a variety of aliases over the years, Austin Ott is only the most recent. Contract murder is a featured product, but he’s into a lot of other things, what the Bureau quaintly calls criminal enterprises. Hijacking, prostitution, cyber-fraud, money laundering. Not as a principal, but as a backer. This guy is at the top of the region’s crime syndicates, and has at least two or three layers of security between him and the action. That’s expensive and time-consuming to maintain, but it’s working for him. Don’t let the fancy name fool you. This guy’s as evil and merciless as the worst of the lowlifes he deals with.”

  He waved the waitress back over and asked for his check, with my beer thrown in.

  “That’s all you know?” I asked.

  “No. That’s all I’m telling you. Bring me something I don’t know and we’ll see from there.“

  We sat in silence as the waitress cleared the table and went through the credit card ritual. I worked slowly on my beer. He took a newspaper out of his pocket folded to the crossword puzzle.

  “I usually do these before I head home. Go ahead and finish your beer,” he said.

  “No, you don’t. You do them when you get home,” I said, standing up and walking out of the restaurant with the beer in hand, my fingerprints and DNA still within my sole proprietorship.

  ON THE way home, I retrieved the video transmitter, assuming Shelly would waste little time discovering the camera across the street, which I left with the serial number scratched out. I imagined him setting up a camera of his own, hoping to catch me pulling mine out of the bush. His friends at the Bureau would tell him about the transmitter, and probably try to track it down in order to follow the signal back to me. Or maybe he’d assume I’m smart enough to stay ahead of them and not bother with any of that.

  “Big assumption,” I said out loud. “Don’t start making it yourself.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “They want to give us $8.6 million, with twenty percent held in escrow for a year as a reserve against undisclosed liabilities, meaning things they didn’t catch during due diligence,” said Evelyn over the phone the next day. “It’s a lot of money, Arthur.”

  “What does Bruce think?”

  “He gave me a four hour lecture on all the pros, cons, considerations and ramifications. He’s my counselor, that’s his job. Net, net, he thinks I’d be crazy not to say yes.”

  “Of course you’d be.”

  “But it’s your agency,” she said. “It isn’t up to me.”

  I’d never thought of the agency as anything other than the place Florencia went to work every day. By law, shared property, but never in my mind. It was all hers to benefit from in any way she saw fit. Its ultimate disposition so remote a prospect, the topic was never broached even in the vaguest terms. Even now, fully accepting that Florencia was gone forever, I couldn’t separate her business from her corporeal being, as if a part of her lived on.

  “It’s surprisingly hard for me to let it go,” I said.

  “They want an answer in a week. I don’t know if I can stall beyond that. But I’ll do whatever you want.”

  I looked over at my computer. It was alerting me that Ethan, the administrator at the agency, was logging into the system. It presented an interesting quandary. Technically, I owned the place, so stealing all that data and maintaining surveillance over the operations wasn’t illegal. That would all change as soon as possession changed hands. At least in the matter of the spyware. On the other hand, would they bother to tack corporate espionage on to identity theft and document forgery, to say nothing of kidnapping and torture? I’d already chosen my path. There was no point in splitting hairs.

  “Give it a day and say yes. Just be sure Bruce hires an experienced M&A attorney. Brandt’s not naïve. He’s only throwing you a big number to guarantee he closes the deal. For his kid’s sake.”

  “The money will be waiting for you,” said Evelyn. “And don’t tell me you’re not coming back. If I think that, I’m not sure I can keep doing this.”

  I had no response to that, so I wrapped up the call with a cornball joke from our childhood, and when she laughed, she became a co-conspirator in the deflection. There was nothing else we could do.

  I WANTED to sneak up on Henry Eichenbach the way I did with Shelly Gross, but that proved a challenge. No addresses for Henry, past or present, showed up anywhere, and no phone numbers were listed on any public database. Google gave up dozens of bylined articles, but that was it. Most of the articles, including the most recent, were run by his former employer, the Connecticut Post. The editor was a woman named Marion Bertz, who’d been in the job since the mid-nineties.

  I bought two more disposable cell phones and sent one to Ms. Bertz with a note asking her to forward it on to Henry. I signed the note, “A Confidential Source.” I’d preprogrammed the phone with the number for the other disposable. It only took a few hours for him to call.
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  “I’d like to have another conversation,” I told him.

  “Sure. It’s been lonely lately. I miss our old times sitting by Long Island Sound.”

  “That’s not a good idea. Here’s what we do,” I said, then told him the plan.

  “Pretty James Bondy,” he said when I was done.

  “Interesting perspective for a guy who’s erased from the Internet all evidence of his existence.”

  “I’m big on privacy.”

  “Use the clock on your cell phone. It’s the most likely to be synchronized with mine.”

  After hanging up, I spent the remainder of the day on basic research and my appearance, trying hard to match the last getup I’d exposed to Henry, which was unfortunately my first attempt and thus the most amateurish.

  After night fell, I left the house in a rental car left over from stalking Shelly Gross. It was so innocuous I had to check the rental receipt to confirm it was a type of Hyundai. Not that it mattered. It drove well and suited the purpose.

  During one of my general explorations, I’d identified restaurants and bars in the area that had restrooms and rear exits in close proximity. The one I’d selected that night was by far the best, a dive bar in Stamford with the men’s room only a few feet from a door that led to a parking lot connected to the street behind. It didn’t seem feasible that the police or FBI would have Henry followed merely on the basis of a barely believable story of an anonymous character who’d singlehandedly tracked down a notorious fugitive. But I couldn’t know everything, and there was no reason to risk it when I could take a simple precaution.

  Though no precaution could protect me should Henry decide to betray me to the cops; there was nothing I could do about that. I didn’t necessarily trust him, but I trusted his professional self-interest and journalistic pride.

  Enough to take the chance.

  As I waited in the parking lot, I visualized Henry getting off the barstool, leaving a half-consumed beer and enough cash on the bar to cover his tab. I saw him walking down the narrow hallway past the women’s room to the men’s, opening the door so it blocked the view to the back of the hall, then strolling out to the rear parking lot. I was already moving when the door opened and he stepped out, so it only took a few seconds to snatch him up and disappear into the night.

  “I’m going to be really irritated if this is a hit,” he said, pulling on his seat belt.

  “Hadn’t occurred to me. Should it?”

  “Ha-ha. No way I’m giving you up, pal. Way too much fun. A name would be nice, though.”

  “Peabody will do.”

  I flipped the lights on when I reached the end of the block and dove deep into the labyrinthine streets of outer Stamford. No one was following, as far as I could tell.

  “I’m screaming along with this big piece on the Eyeball. I’m grateful, I admit it. I told Shelly I’d embargo it until his old outfit was done interrogating the creepy old bastard, or after four weeks, whichever came first. I need the time anyway to gin up the advance. I’m hoping the Times will like it, though they got a hard-on about anything Connecticut. Spent too much time in grad school jerking off to John Cheever. Mansionenvy is my interpretation, though if they ever dragged their precious asses out of the city I’d show ’em around some of the rat-hole neighborhoods in Bridgeport. Makes Bedford-Stuy look like the Botanical Gardens.”

  “What do you know about Austin Ott, the Third?” I asked.

  “Whoa, quick left without a turn signal. Three Sticks? What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  “That’s too bad, because nobody knows anything. Compared to Three Sticks, Sebbie Frondutti’s been living in Macy’s window. I’m not entirely sure he’s a real person, if you want to know the truth. Criminals are just as likely to create myths as regular civilians. Maybe more so.”

  “That’s okay. I need to know, one way or the other.”

  Henry shifted his bulk around the passenger seat, causing a faint sway in the ride. I used the GPS in my smartphone to get back on to a major commercial strip along Route One to look for a place to stop.

  “What’s the plan, Stan?” he asked.

  “Burgers and beer.”

  “Those are the two things in the world with which I am most familiar. If we can find a game on, it’ll be a trifecta.”

  We did find all three not soon after, and once ensconced at the end of the bar with the array before him, Henry nearly glowed with contentment.

  “I can tell you, without reservation,” he said, biting down on a giant wad of beef that leaked condiments back on to the plate, “that none of my other confidential sources ever showed this level of generosity. Though don’t expect special consideration. Okay, maybe a little.”

  I let him gorge for a while, then asked, “Who’s the new Sebbie?”

  “Say what?”

  “Who’s the most serious organized crime figure in Connecticut not currently in jail?”

  “You’re asking me? I should be asking you.”

  “I wouldn’t know the answer. I’ve researched it on Google, but I need greater certainty.”

  He kept his eyes on me while taking the last bite of his burger, chased down with the beer.

  “I would surely love to know what your story is,” he said.

  “Give me another name,” I said. “It worked out for you last time. It might again.”

  “Unless you believe in fairy tales like this guy Ott, the best candidate for local boss would be Ekrem Boyanov, in my not-so-humble opinion. He and his organization got forced out of Bosnia during the war. They call him Little Boy. Works out of the South End of Hartford, where a lot of Bosniaks are taking over the old Italian neighborhoods, appropriately enough. I haven’t done much on him, which is probably smart. I don’t think guys from that part of the world have the same respectful regard for the Fourth Estate that we’ve enjoyed with our traditional Mediterranean professionals.”

  I remembered that name from my research on Sebbie Frondutti. There was little about him in the press, which spoke to his success in evading unwanted attention. I noted that to Henry.

  “Sure, he’s not only scary, he’s good. The gang is into all the usual things, drugs, girls, chia pets. Kidding. Extortion, rackets, probably grand larceny—boosting stuff out of warehouses, hijacking trucks full of booze and cigarettes. I don’t know if they’re techy enough for cyber-crime, but it wouldn’t surprise me. They must love it here. Land of opportunity.”

  I bought him another beer and told him about my encounter with Shelly Gross, without going into details.

  “He might want to talk to you again,” I said. “And it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that they’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  “Hence the out-the-back-door routine.”

  “Should make sense to a paranoid like you.”

  “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean people aren’t out to get you,” he said, clinking my water glass with his beer mug.

  An hour later, I dropped him off at another parking lot near the bar where I’d picked him up. I thanked him for the tip.

  “I would truly love to know what the fuck your story is,” he said, after opening the car door.

  “Understandable for a reporter,” I said. “But do us both a favor and concentrate on someone else.”

  “That kind of talk always makes me try harder,” he said, getting out of the car.

  I waited until he made it to the street and disappeared around the corner, then I drove back to my house, resisting the urge to check my rearview mirror every thirty seconds and mulling a theme of the evening: where is the line between paranoia and precaution?

  IF YOU want to evade an Internet search engine, have a name like John Smith, not Ekrem Boyanov. In a few seconds I had his address off Franklin Avenue in the South End of Hartford, and a home phone number. His profession was listed as stonemason, and he had a wife and two kids. There wasn’t much else in the public record. He had one criminal charge, for
allegedly stealing some heavy equipment off a construction site, but the case was dropped for lack of evidence. When he was arrested, some in the Bosniak community spoke with alarm about possible police persecution, a charge the leadership, and the police themselves, vehemently denied.

  Nevertheless, Little Boy’s name did pop up a few times on lists of notable Connecticut underworld figures, and in a memo from Shelly’s old outfit leaked to the Hartford Courant. The question was whether they had enough on Boyanov to launch deportation proceedings, deciding later they didn’t, especially given his status as a political refugee. Again, a robust defense by community spokespeople also played a part, raising the potential for some nasty PR for the State’s Attorney. The writer of the memo noted that Little Boy never inflicted his illicit activities on his fellow Bosniaks, an opinion that in effect caused some of the bad PR they hoped to avoid.

  I SPENT the next three days deep in the convivial land of Internet research. And though I almost believed there was nothing you couldn’t learn online, it took until the third day to settle on the right strategic vehicle.

  A food truck called “Grub On The Go.”

  It was owned by a man named Billy Romano, who expressed a keen interest in selling the business so he could move to Florida and fulfill his wife’s lifelong dream, if not his own. He went on to note, that the reasonable cost of the truck and nonperishable inventory was just the beginning. The real value was in the route, earned over many years of intense competition and negotiation with some of the biggest manufacturing operations in the Greater Hartford area.

  I had to agree, though I didn’t drop for the first price he put on the table when I called him on his cell phone.

  “Sorry, bub,” he said, after hearing my number. “We got to do better than that. Florida real estate ain’t that cheap.”

  “I haven’t seen the truck,” I said.

  “The truck’s mint. But that don’t matter. It’s the route you’re buyin’.”

  We batted the ball back and forth a few more times, and I finally settled on a price contingent on inspection of the vehicle. We set a time and place to meet.