by Ben Rehder
“Well, cute guys can get away with all kinds of nonsense, so I’m impressed that you don’t.”
“That’s nice of you to say. What time of day did it happen?”
“The cheating?” she asked. “Just kidding. You mean the burglary. Sometime between eleven in the morning and eight that evening. Probably before sundown, because the scumbag hadn’t turned any lights on, or at least they didn’t leave any of the switches in the on position. If it had happened after dark, he probably would’ve turned on some lights and left them on.”
“That’s what the cops said?”
“No,” she replied, showing a little faux offense. “I figured that out all by myself. I’m clever that way.”
“I’m sure you are,” I said. “Most people don’t think of things like that.”
“I guess he could’ve used a flashlight, but from what I understand, most burglaries happen in the daytime. Or a lot of them, anyway.”
“That’s true,” I said. “Was your routine fairly regular, or did you work different shifts at different times?”
She laughed. “You’re asking more questions than they did, and you actually sound like you know what you’re doing.”
“The cops didn’t?” I asked.
“No, it wasn’t that. It was just obvious that there wasn’t much they could do about it. They’d open the case and that’s about it, unless somehow I got lucky. Which is what happened, huh? I never expected to get my gun back at this point. Anyway, yeah, my hours changed pretty regularly on that job. Some morning shifts, some afternoon, and some evening.”
“Where did you work?”
“A bakery on Congress Avenue. It closed down last year. They had the best baklava, but that wasn’t enough to keep them going.”
“Hard to beat a good baklava,” I said.
“Isn’t it?” she said.
“If only I knew exactly what baklava was.”
“Oh, come on. You’ve never had baklava?”
“Not intentionally,” I said.
“It’s a dessert,” she said. “Did you know that?”
“I did not. You must have quite the metabolism.”
“Fortunately, yeah, I do. Can’t put weight on if I try. Anyway, baklava is basically a pastry filled with chopped nuts and then soaked in honey.”
“Okay, I’ll admit that does sound good.”
“Everything is better soaked in honey,” she said. “And I mean everything.”
She raised an eyebrow at me.
“I’ll have to remember that,” I said.
“Tell your woman,” she said. “She’ll appreciate the suggestion.”
What were we talking about? I wasn’t sure at this point.
I said, “How much did Chang tell you about my case?”
“The cop? Almost nothing. Just that someone pulled a gun on you and it turned out to be mine. Did the guy drop the gun or what?”
“I managed to take it away from him.”
“Jeez, really? How?”
“I got lucky with a roundhouse elbow,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “Seriously? You clobbered the guy?”
“Well, I don’t want to sound like some sort of bad-ass street-fighting machine, but that pretty much sums it up. Knocked one of his teeth out.”
“That’s pretty amazing,” she said.
“I didn’t have a lot of options.”
“So, why was this guy holding a gun on you?”
I told her what I did for a living and how that occasionally irritated some people. I didn’t mention anything I had learned about Damon Tate or his connection to Joe Jankowski. I was saving that.
“That sounds like a pretty exciting job,” she said.
“It can be, at times,” I said. “But mostly it’s just following people around and waiting for them to do something stupid.”
“Ever see anyone do anything really weird?” she asked.
I had learned by now that Claudia was great at taking conversations off on tangents. It was a price I was willing to pay to ask her questions.
“Oh, sure. One time I was following a guy and he stopped at a bank for a roll of dimes. Then he went into a Taco Bell and ordered four burritos, and as he ate them, he swallowed the dimes with his food, one by one. And I could tell that part of the thrill for him was doing it out in public, and trying to be secretive, so nobody would notice what was going on.”
Claudia stared at me for a long moment, confusion on her face. Then she said, “I could see one or two dimes, uh, working their way through your system, but an entire roll? Wouldn’t that kill you?”
“Apparently not, because he did the same thing two days later.”
“Wow. Please tell me it wasn’t the same dimes.”
I laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that. I hope not.”
She tore off another small bite of her croissant and held my eyes for a long moment as she nibbled it. Then she smiled. A couple of years ago, when my social circumstances were different, I might’ve tried to decipher the meaning of that smile.
I said, “Hey, let me ask you something. Do you know a woman named Brandi Sloan?”
“I don’t think so. Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“How about Joe Jankowski?”
“Nope.”
Now the big one.
“Damon Tate?”
“Sorry, no,” she said. “Who are these people?”
How much to tell her? How much could I trust her?
“I’m not positive about this—not yet—but I think Damon Tate was the man who threatened me the other night. The man with your gun. I was hoping his name would be familiar.”
“Damon Tate,” she repeated. “If I’ve ever met him, I don’t remember that name at all. Who is he?”
“He works at Joe Jankowski’s construction company,” I said.
“In addition to being an asshole burglar who steals stuff that isn’t his?” she said.
“Well, we don’t know for sure that he burglarized your place,” I said. “Maybe he bought the gun from whoever stole it. He might not have even known it was hot.”
“What did he tell the cops?” she asked.
“About possessing your stolen gun?”
“Yeah, and coming after you with it. What was he trying to accomplish?”
“Well, here’s the deal,” I said. “The cops don’t know about Tate yet. This is stuff I’ve dug up myself.”
“Ooh, so I’m privy to top-secret information. Are you going to tell the cops about him?”
“Maybe later. Right now, no.”
“Why not?”
Partly because they would tell me to stay away from him. They’d warn that I was interfering with an investigation. She didn’t need to know that.
“Still piecing things together,” I said. “Besides, would you rather have me working on the case, or them?”
“Okay, that’s a good point. But if this Damon Tate is the dude who ripped me off, I want him nailed for it. Can you promise me that?”
“I can promise to do my best,” I said.
“I want my laptop back. And my jewelry.”
“Understandable,” I said. “But don’t hold your breath.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I had one more long shot—one more name associated with this case. “Ever hear of anyone named Lennox Armbruster?”
Her expression changed quickly to surprise.
“Oh, that idiot,” she said.
“You know him?”
“He was my next-door neighbor back then. Is he somehow involved in all this?”
11
That was one of the many questions I needed to answer.
How did Damon Tate end up wi
th a forty-caliber Ruger stolen from one of Lennox Armbruster’s former neighbors? Was there a connection between Armbruster and Jankowski that I was somehow missing? Or maybe a connection between Armbruster and Tate? Frankly, that made more sense, what with both of them having criminal backgrounds. Maybe they’d met in prison.
And, of course, the central question remained: What was Jankowski trying to hide? He’d sent Tate after me for a reason, but what was it? What was so serious that Jankowski would hire an armed man to attempt to abduct me?
I was home again, sitting quietly on the back porch. An ice-cold bottle of Lone Star was resting on the top of the handrail. It was 3:38 in the afternoon.
Lennox Armbruster’s Alfa Romeo was currently on the move, heading north on MoPac, but I didn’t see any value in keeping him under surveillance anymore. Not right now. This case had grown much larger than his alleged injuries, which seemed to be real. It appeared there was some sort of conspiracy going on involving Joe Jankowski, Damon Tate, and possibly Lennox Armbruster and Brandi Sloan, and I needed to focus on unraveling it.
Claudia Klein had told me she’d lived next door to Lennox in a duplex for roughly a year. Didn’t know him well, and that was by choice, because he was a rough type of guy, and she quickly suspected he was dealing drugs. This was based on lots of people coming and going from his place, staying for just a few minutes, and from snippets of conversations overheard through walls and fences. He was a meth user, at a minimum, she thought. He and his friends were often awake at all hours of the night. Sometimes they partied. Sometimes they got into heated arguments.
One time he tried to sell her a high-end stereo system at a huge discount, and that’s when she wondered if he was fencing stolen goods. She’d mentioned Lennox’s name to the deputy who’d written the report about the burglary of her residence, but if Lennox was ever questioned, she was unaware of it.
She noticed that Lennox seemed to avoid her after the burglary. Maybe he wasn’t good at keeping secrets. Or maybe it was one of his friends or customers who had ripped her off, and he was embarrassed about it. Honestly, she said, she didn’t know if Lennox had anything to do with it, but it was difficult to dismiss the suspicions. Drug users usually resorted to burglary, right?
After I’d given her some additional details of the case, she’d said, “Does this guy Damon Tate know Lennox?”
I said, “So far, I haven’t been able to make a connection.”
“But it seems weird that my gun got stolen, and it was later used against you, and you’ve got Lennox under surveillance, and Lennox lived next door to me.”
“That sums it up,” I said.
“How did Damon Tate end up with the gun if he doesn’t know Lennox?”
“I’m working on that.”
“No way that’s a coincidence,” she said.
“Probably not,” I said.
I could tell she was enjoying the process of playing detective and trying to figure out the details of the case—enough that she might want to tell her friends about the excitement she was having.
So I said, “I would also consider it a big favor if you wouldn’t discuss this with anyone else.”
“I won’t.”
“Are you good at keeping secrets?”
“Pretty good, yeah.”
“I don’t need word to get back to anyone—Lennox or Damon Tate, especially—about what we’ve discussed. I can’t afford to let them know what I know.”
“No problem,” she assured me.
Before we left the bistro, I promised to keep her posted, mostly because she deserved to know what was happening.
As much as I’d learned today, I felt like I’d hit a roadblock at the moment, which always made me restless, so I texted Mia.
Having fun?
I took a long drink of the Lone Star and enjoyed the way it cooled my throat. It was a nice moment out here on the patio, with doves cooing in the trees—but my mood was dampened when I remembered the secret I still needed to share with Mia. Maybe I was blowing it out of proportion. Maybe it wouldn’t matter at all.
Mia sent back a photo of a plate of Cuban-style shredded beef, with yellow rice and plantains on the side. Looked pretty damn tasty.
Early dinner? I asked.
Late lunch, she said. How are you?
Making headway, I said. Will fill you in later. So to speak.
She sent me the emoji of a face with shocked, wide-open eyes.
Right then I received an alert that the tracker on Lennox Armbruster’s Alfa Romeo had stopped sending a signal. I waited a full minute—hoping the car was simply in a dead spot—but it didn’t come back online.
Could the battery have died already? Seemed doubtful, but it was possible. I knew that at least half the charge remained yesterday. Could be defective. Batteries only lived through so many recharge cycles.
Another possibility was that Armbruster, or someone else, had discovered the tracker and disabled it. Crushed it with a hammer. Dropped it into a toilet. Whatever. But I’d hidden it well.
I opened the app and checked the recent activity. Armbruster had still been on MoPac, up north near Parmer Lane, moving along at 77 miles per hour, when the tracker had stopped working. That ruled out anyone finding it.
Had to be the battery or some type of electronic malfunction.
I went inside and grabbed another Lone Star out of the refrigerator. I’d decided I was done for the day.
But I stood in the kitchen with the capped bottle dangling from my hand, unsure of what I wanted to do next. Still restless. I could see out the window above the sink to the street in front of the house. Craned my neck and saw that the mailbox I’d installed that morning was still standing. Imagine that. Maybe I should be hosting one of those trendy home-improvement shows.
I looked in the other direction. Didn’t see any bad guys parked at the curb, watching the house. Then again, I didn’t expect any.
I was fidgety.
I knew what was bothering me. The tracker. I couldn’t remember the last time one had simply stopped working abruptly. Sure, I’d seen the battery power slowly dwindle, but they didn’t drop from a 50% charge to nothing in a matter of 24 hours.
I set the bottle of beer on the counter and opened the Waze traffic app on my phone. It’s a handy navigation system that also shows user-reported wrecks, traffic jams, speed traps, and so on, all in real time.
Sure enough, there was a wreck at MoPac and Parmer Lane.
I closed Waze and opened a police scanner app. Tuned in to the Austin Police Department frequency. Immediately heard a tense voice saying extraction was going to be required. Several units were on the scene. Two vehicles involved. EMS was en route. All northbound lanes were closed. Never a good sign when all lanes were closed. Obviously a major wreck.
At this point I assumed Lennox Armbruster was involved, and the crash was severe enough that the GPS tracker had been destroyed.
I listened to more chatter back and forth, but I didn’t learn anything else.
It was almost two hours later before any video from the scene made it on to the local news channels. But when it did, the footage included various shots from the wreck itself. Cops directing traffic. Long lines of cars backed up as far as the camera could see. Witnesses standing on the median, waiting, arms crossed, anxious. An ambulance rushing to the hospital.
A Ford Excursion with a damaged front end.
And a crumpled Alfa Romeo.
I was tempted to call Mia and tell her what had happened. Get a fresh perspective on the entire case. But she didn’t need me bugging her.
I continued checking news reports, social media, and various online sources, and it wasn’t long before I had a more complete picture of the wreck, although they weren’t naming the victims yet.
According
to witnesses, a dark-colored truck—which was possibly a Chevy or a GMC or even a Toyota—had swerved into the Alfa Romeo’s lane, as if the truck driver hadn’t seen the much smaller vehicle, and that caused the driver of the Alfa Romeo to swerve, too. He lost control and careened to the right, and then back to the left, and ended up perpendicular to the lanes of traffic, and was then T-boned by the Excursion, which was moving at roughly 75 miles per hour.
The driver of the truck hadn’t stopped.
Interesting.
Maybe he hadn’t seen the wreck he’d caused. Maybe he thought he’d be charged with something. Maybe he was drunk or stoned or texting. Maybe he simply hadn’t had a chance to stop because of the traffic coming up behind him.
I’m saying “him,” but I don’t even know if that’s accurate, because nobody had gotten a look at the driver. One witness said the truck had some writing on the passenger-side door, possibly a business logo and phone number. Other witnesses said it did not. A different witness said the truck had a dented rear fender, but, again, nobody else could corroborate that.
A reporter said one driver was transported to Brackenridge Hospital with life-threatening injuries. The other suffered minor injuries. Which was which?
I spent another hour pondering ways to proceed, and I got nowhere. Sometimes you can’t just wait around. Sometimes you have to rattle the bushes and make things happen.
So I came up with a plan.
12
A plan? Sure.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. That’s a quote from Mike Tyson, and I’m sure it applies in the boxing ring, but it also applies figuratively, to life itself.
I took a punch to the mouth the next morning when I walked into the offices of JMJ Construction for the third time.
My plan—wise or not—was to confront Joe Jankowksi and see what I could get him to say in response. Tell him I knew he’d sent Damon Tate after me and that I’d seen them together yesterday. Tell him I knew he’d had a dash cam in his SUV when he’d hit Lennox Armbruster. Prod him about the fact he didn’t stop right away after the accident, until he noticed there was a witness nearby. Try to piss him off. Make him blurt something out.
