Pent Up

by Damon Suede

  “Cavemen. Plain sight. There’s no revenge. That was just Andy’s superspy Tom Clancy bullshit.” He chuckled. Hope getting shut out, Andy brushing off the attacks, and spending like nothing had a price. “I wasn’t paying attention to the right things. His tribe. He kept telling me not to trust him, but for the wrong reasons, ’cause he started to care. Sex and guilt. Booze and money. The guy stuff, the gay stuff. Jesus.”

  She crossed her arms tightly. “Ruben… Slow down.”

  Ruben counted off facts on his dirty fingers. “Look: all along Andy swore some crook wanted payback. Obviously bullshit, right? Only, someone kept muscling him. Made no sense, and he kept treating it like a game.” Because it had been a game, to Andy.

  Hope tipped her head back, gears turning. “So you’re saying—”

  Ruben nodded. “First I thought the danger was a lie, then I thought he was a liar.” Andy had been trying to protect him and get clean, only some evil bastard wouldn’t let him stop. “Hell, even after I knew the deal, Andy had me convinced he was a villain and all this was payback. Ego. So fucking arrogant.” Some would-be hitman. “Taking him wasn’t revenge… this was an audition, a valentine.” Be mine.

  “From a secret admirer.” The light dawned and Hope blinked. “Andy just misread it. Andy wouldn’t let this jackass play. So the person we’re after has had no dealings with Andy or Apex or anything else. They want to come play with Apex. They want in.”

  Ruben rocked back and forth on his feet, “Someone he didn’t ruin, who’s known him twenty years, who can’t afford to play in Apex. Small fry with a big chip on their shoulder.” He closed his hand into a weak fist. “Wolf tickets. Whoever it was woulda had a lot to prove and a lot to lose.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Hope’s manicure rat-a-tatted on the keyboard. I can work with that.”

  “Listen.” Ruben held up three fingers. “Top of my head, I can name three options: The Balenciaga woman from the museum. The Texas Lampton guy. And Marlon Stanz.” It was a start, at least. Any of them made sense. “Plus, Andy tried to appease all of them publicly.”

  Hope raised her eyebrows.

  “Exactly my thought. Since when does Andy worry about bothering bystanders?”

  “Stanz is out. His wife invested.” She typed on the laptop. “And Balenciaga chick—Andy told me what happened—is an ex. Andy knew the parents. Ugly breakup in grad school. Sorry if that’s—” Hope looked uncomfortable.

  “No. Course.” He nodded. “Lampton?”

  “Nah. He’s a Ven-Cap bundler. He’d never put money in a fund. None of them in Apex.”

  Ruben scowled at his own stupidity. “But they fit. Relationships stretching back to college. Deep pockets.

  “Then I got nothing. I’ll let you get back to it.” Stymied, Ruben looked over the puddles of paper. “I don’t know how to help.”

  “With the files? Grab a trash can and shovel it all in. Those are just bullshit hard copies for the feds. We have digital backups running every four minutes. Actually, there’s a big clue right there. Anyone serious and under fifty would expect stuff to be backed up to the cloud. These assholes are old school and dim.”

  “So why throw the room around?”

  “Wolf tickets.” She tapped her nose and pointed at Ruben. “Kiddie show, in case we call the cops. These yobs don’t know better.”

  Ruben found a trash bag and stuffed armfuls of paper into it. Gradually he began to see parts of the floor and more evidence of a struggle.

  His phone rang, his brother’s number. “Yeah?”

  “Weirdest thing.” Charles sounded exasperated. “Who the hell do you know north of the city?”

  “Nobody.” Another wad of files stretched the plastic bag. He knelt to scrape more into a pile. “What happened now?”

  “That carbon monoxide whatsit. That detector you bought for the apartment.”

  Well, salvaged. “What’d they find?” Ruben’s hair stood on end.

  “Someone bugged it. It’s a fucking bug.”

  Ruben dropped the armful of paper. “It’s what?”

  “A bug, Rube. I cracked the case so I could see, and I know what a wire looks like. These boludos broke in and bugged our apartment.” Ruben knew better. It had been bugged when Andy threw it out. Andy knew. “Emilio just pinged it and found a receiver up in Westchester. One-a my cops. So I guess they’re loaded, these guys?”

  He turned to Hope and covered the mouthpiece. “Where’s Westchester?”

  She looked up. “Above the Bronx.” Like that meant anything to him.

  Charles explained. “It’s a suburb, above the top of Manhattan. Scarsdale, Dobb’s Ferry. Ritzy. Mansions and all.”

  Ruben sighed. “Is he sure? Your cop, I mean.”

  “Rube, it’s a fucking wire with a transmitter. Expensive, to hear him tell it. Several grand.” Charles got muffled. A muttered conversation.

  “Jesus Christ.” Now Hope sat watching him. He explained: “Bug.” He had her full attention.

  Charles said, “Look, I’m waiting for the cops and the adjuster, but I wanted you to know.” He hung up.

  Ruben sat looking at his phone.

  “Ruben?” Hope crossed her arms. “What kind of bug?”

  “I don’t know. It was in that CO detector Andy tossed. And we thought he was acting nuts. What the fuck’s in Westchester?”

  “A lot of clients. I mean as in a lot. Andy knows half of Scarsdale. He grew up there. Went off to boarding school with those guys. His dad’s firm was up there.”

  Again that quiver in his liver. Ruben pinched the bridge of his nose. While they sat here baffled, Andy was trapped, bleeding and—

  “Half his frat, even.” She tapped a nail on the edge of the laptop. Tick-tick-tick-tick. A manicured metronome. “Talk about assholes.”

  Ruben chewed his lip, thinking back to that grim party up near Columbia. He scratched his head. “Joining a frat seems so unlike Andy at all.”

  Hope scoffed. “His family’s idea. Back when Andy was still making nice and working for the family fund. Tibbitt, the stepdad’s name is.”

  Ruben nodded. “Fucking poser, according to him. Scarsdale. Total Neanderthal.”

  Their eyes met. Click.

  Ruben said, “Clan of the—”

  “Cave Bear. We’re both idiots.” Hope nodded.

  “A caveman valentine.”

  Her fingers clattered on the laptop keys and squinted at the rows. “No deals. No investments at all. Not even with his mother’s trust. Not even friendly tips.”

  “You think his stepfather could get that desperate?”

  “He’s no kingpin. Middle-aged paper pusher from the suburbs. Seriously. He sells insurance now.”

  “Since when? I thought he was a finance guy.”

  “He used to be, but he had to quit after Andy moved into the city. Ugly bankruptcy. Now he plays with the mom’s money and sells homeowner policies: fire, flood, act of God. Tries to drag Andy into small potatoes, mostly.” She looked dubious. “He’s a yutz.”

  “Then we have to go after him ourselves.”

  She looked askance. “We? I’m not some ninja.”

  “I mean no police.”

  “Then that leaves you.” She shrugged. “Does that mean you’re okay with dangerous?” She looked serious.

  A nod. “Yes. Yeah. Can you pull the stepfather’s info, all of it?” Talk about a burning desire.

  “Ruben, you don’t wanna rush in, here.” She scribbled on a piece of paper, folded it, and held it out to him like a tip.

  “I’m not rushing.”

  “You got your reasons.” Hope’s eyes met his and drilled deep. “He’s lucky he has you.”

  Ruben kept his yap shut. Thinner ice.

  “Oso, lying makes both of us look silly, and I need to know how much he matters to you.” She didn’t look upset, she looked… ready. “You care about him.”

  “Well, yeah.” He fished for the polite words to talk about his love life.

 
“Oh honey. For real? In New York City? This day and age?”

  “Andy and I are—”

  “Raging homosexicans. Yeah.” She sniffed. “Please. I danced in a club three years. If it happens, I’ve seen it.”

  He clamped his mouth shut, trying not to feel ashamed.

  She patted his arm. “None of my business where your grease goes. I’m a Christian, and a buncha them folks don’t like it, but the hell do I care? He looked happy. You’re happy. Better you than one of the debutantes circling his ass like pterodactyls.”

  So much for a closet.

  “Lord, what men don’t know is a lot.”

  “I’m not even—” Ruben shrugged, thoroughly discombobulated. “I gotta fix this, and I don’t know what to expect.”

  Hope sighed. “Hun, look at me. We both know better. Expectations are nothing but resentments waiting to hatch. You sit on ’em long enough, you get pecked. You wanna fix this, then you gotta. How brave do you feel?”

  He nodded. “I don’t even know where to look.”

  She crossed her arms and exhaled. “Plus we don’t even know what Tibbitt wants.”

  “Yeah we do. Andy humiliated him and now he wants Apex. He wants to take over.”

  Tibbitt wanted to be the hitman and Andy stood in the way.

  “And what does he want Andy to do?” Hope looked anxious.

  “Retire.” Ruben took the paper and looked down at his clothes. “I need to change.” And get a weapon, and some kind of plan. His autopilot kicked in.

  Hope held up her hands. “Let’s talk it through. Strategize. I don’t think this is a good idea.”

  He was already in motion toward the foyer. His body knew where he needed to be.

  “What?” Hope trailed after him. “You can’t just go knock on the man’s door.”

  Before he realized it, Ruben was in the elevator with his back against the wall.

  “Oso, what are you gonna do?”

  As the doors closed, he looked up and met her startled eyes. “Save him.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BEWARE OF silence; a dog has to stop barking to bite.

  The drive from Manhattan to Westchester had taken less than an hour.

  Ruben drove without blinking in a car rented with cash, just in case, to a suburb of mansions.

  To get the address, Charles had called in a favor with an ex-cop on his payroll. Just to confirm, he compared it to the paper Hope had given him. Bingo. A match.

  The residence was leased, not owned, by Herbert Tibbitt of Scarsdale, New York. Aside from a citation for not shoveling the sidewalks in winter, the city had no record of any kind of criminal complaints.

  Tibbitt was married to the former Cilla Bauer, Andy’s mom… which made this joker his stepdad. Herb Tibbitt was the man who’d booted Andy out of the house and out of his father’s brokerage. In two years, Tibbitt had run the firm into a ditch and started selling insurance with spotty results.

  From there, the trail painted itself right through the Apex files.

  Hope found a smatter of phone calls from Herb dating back to the New Year. Andy had said his mother had mentioned money problems at Christmas. Herb had tried to squeeze his stepson without luck.

  At some point Tibbitt must have gotten proof of Andy’s other activities, seen some blue-blood dickhead taken out or witnessed a strategic meltdown. A suspicious string of bankruptcies and foreclosures had led him right back to Apex and Andy’s control of it. Obviously the shame of being rebuffed and near-bankruptcy had provoked Tibbitt’s attacks.

  And given Ruben a job.

  He could only think of one reason why this son of a bitch would pay to install any kind of detector in Andy’s penthouse, and it wasn’t for auld lang syne. The installation order had come to the Iris maintenance staff by phone.

  I-95 was empty at midnight, and Ruben kept his speed five over the limit all the way to Scarsdale.

  Why does crappy music always sound better on a car radio?

  He parked three blocks away and kept to the dark side of the street, the air hot as a kiln. Ruben knew better than to wear black, but the dark Columbia sweatshirt two sizes too big covered his Kevlar. He was packing a sweaty handful of zip ties and a holstered weapon he’d only fired at a range.

  The neighborhood was a rolling panorama of House Beautiful covers: gently sloping lawns and sculpted trees behind gates and cameras. Range Rovers and sheepdogs. The kind of white-bread haven he’d dreamed of living in for his entire childhood.

  Ruben avoided security lights, keenly aware of his dark skin. Not quite midnight, but every six-million-dollar house silent, only a few bluish glows from the computers and TVs of insomniacs and binge watchers.

  He heard Peach in his head: Trying to pray is praying.

  Tibbitt’s spread was a prim two-story faux-Colonial set back on two acres at the top of a sloping drive. Rather than risk cameras, Ruben pressed right through the dense box hedges, breaking a few branches and emerging onto a landscaped lawn facing a glowing pool about fifty yards upslope.

  Where would Tibbitt have stashed Andy? Basement? Toolshed?

  Tibbitt had the run of the place and enough yard that the neighbors would never hear. The silent house glowed with careful uplighting, so he stuck to the zinnia beds and crept toward the back, aiming for the bluish gleam of the pool.

  The house was so lit that the rest of the yard seemed velvety black by contrast. Even the pool house was dark and dead silent. Why?

  Slow down. Ruben measured his breathing by his heart: four beats in, hold for four, four out, hold for four.

  Tactical breathing and powdered eggs were all Ruben remembered from his brief stay in boot camp way back when.

  In four, hold four, out four. His heart steadied and his feet followed.

  Hugging the hedges, Ruben did a press-check on his brother’s .45 to verify the first round was in the chamber. The slide was stiff.

  Guns had never been his thing, even in the bad old days. He knew the basics, but he was a so-so shot and distrusted anything mechanical. Holding one while walking into a confrontation had him crapping his proverbial pants.

  Only the thought of Andy inside, in pain, kept one foot in front of the last.

  The firearm was for show. He had to get in and out before it became necessary. Be smart. Once he found Andy, he had to bail before he ended up fighting some ex-con with a face like knuckles.

  For once in his life, he thanked God that he looked like a criminal. If he had to, he could bluff and bullshit their way to safety.

  Coming up the long driveway, he moved slowly and silently for a perimeter check. No security cameras. No alarm system. Nothing hardwired to the mains. Strictly bozo.

  He traced the electrical to the east side and dug the cutters out. Finally he got to use his executive protection course, and it was to commit a felony. Rescuing Andy wasn’t exactly self-defense, but it felt like exactly that.

  According to Charles and his cop, this house had no security system. Time to find out.

  Ruben squeezed the cutters and the yard went dark.

  One heartbeat, two heartbeats.

  No siren. No exclamations or movement from inside. No rabid Rottweiler. Nobody home?

  He peeked through a window: the house was a tomb.

  Ruben glanced at his watch. He’d been here seven minutes. Time to pick up sticks. Ruben swung wide and walked the fence’s perimeter.

  A cough froze him, and he edged around the back of the house.

  No sign of Andy yet, but someone was on the premises.

  In the backyard under a fig tree, Chunk stood smoking a cigarette, looking at the pool.

  Relief and joy and nausea. If the goon was here, then Andy probably was as well. If both goons were here, there’d be a fight too.

  Ruben slowed and floated closer silently.

  Chunk was wearing a two-hundred-dollar cop suit, and the ground under his feet was littered with butts. Smoking lounge for dummies. His bulbous nose looked worse fo
r wear after its close encounter with Andy’s fire extinguisher. Ruben wondered if he’d bothered to fix his teeth.

  Ruben kept to the shadows and glided forward.

  At the last possible minute, Chunk must’ve heard a twig or a gurgle, and he turned… but not soon enough.

  Ruben wrapped one arm around his throat and squeezed. The lit cigarette arced into the grass.

  He knew this trick from Miami bars. Cut off air supply for a few seconds and everybody went night-night. No alarms, no corpses. He’d grab Andy and split before he made any noise.

  Ruben squeezed the stout neck harder, flexing his bicep, and the round face turned salmon pink.

  Chunk spluttered and snotwhistled, but his hands were trapped and his eyes started to roll back.

  Ruben closed his eyes and held firm. He didn’t want to kill anyone, but some brain damage sounded fine.

  The guy’s knees went, and Ruben lowered him to the ground silently to pat him down.

  No firearm. The wallet had a driver’s license and a Visa, which meant both were fake and these guys were amateurs.

  Ruben zip-tied the fat wrists and ankles and duct-taped his mouth to keep him on mute. He tipped the stocky body into the back hedge and prayed for spiders. Big ones.

  “Phil?” A low whine across the yard as Walrus came out of the dark house, tugging at his mustache.

  Ruben breathed. In four, hold four, out four.

  Taking one last long sip of breath, Ruben rolled his shoulders and, for better or worse, put his foot in it. Time to make the donuts.

  As Walrus stepped past his hiding place, Ruben emerged and set the screwdriver against the skinny spine.

  Ruben wasn’t a murderer, but he could certainly play one for an hour. After all, Andy had hired him to play a thug. Looking like a villain had a couple advantages.

  Walrus blanched. “Sh—”

  “No.” The low word almost a grunt. Headshake and the screwdriver dug into the meat of the skinny man’s back. “Not a word. Don’t you say nothing.”

  Walrus choked and nodded. He smelled like spearmint.

  Out four, hold four, in four. “No killing,” Ruben muttered into the hot air as he yanked the zip tie tight around the bony wrists.

  Still no sound from the dark house. The pool glowed beyond.