by Rex Burns
Kirk knew that Reznick’s picture of himself was as a decisive, take-charge kind of guy. Paid to make the tough choices, he wanted people to know he was willing to stand behind those choices. And once they were made, it was on to the next problem without looking back. That attitude had, apparently, brought him a long way in a short time, and he wasn’t about to slow down now. Still, Kirk wanted Reznick to know the ramifications of this decision before he jumped. “If we do turn up a substantial cocaine ring, and if you do not go to the police at least eventually, Kirk and Associates will have to withdraw from the case.”
Reznick turned from the window. “You’ll what?”
“It’s a felony substance.”
He eyed the man lounging in the padded chair. His long legs stretched out to cross at the ankles like the bastard was in his own living room. “And you have a responsibility to report felonies, that it?”
Not only a responsibility, a legal obligation. All citizens did. But Kirk didn’t bother with his reasons. Reznick wasn’t interested in reasons. “That’s right.”
“I hired you, by God! I hired you for a job!”
“You hired my skills and I’m using them.” He didn’t add that Reznick hadn’t hired his conscience. Despite any truth in it, that sounded pompous and self-righteous—two of the major headings in Kirk’s book of venialities. He gazed back levelly into Reznick’s brown eyes and waited for the man to make up his mind to govern his temper or surrender to it.
“You said ‘eventually.’ “
“All we have right now is a suspicion and a trace. Neither is admissible in court. The police would be interested. They’d take a report, but there’s nothing they could do with that little.”
“I see.” What Reznick saw was Kirk willing to shrug off the case and go his merry way. Leave him dangling with only bits of information to act on, and to act on without guidance. Unless he brought in some other snoop, who would probably tell him the same thing. “All right. Let’s leave your man in there and let him come up with something.” He couldn’t help adding, “I suppose it is all right with you if we don’t report the marijuana right away?”
“Even Supreme Court nominees use a little pot now and then. Besides, if Porter is turned in, the other three will suspect an agent in place. I suggest we continue to keep an eye on him while we develop the others. When the time comes, we can get them all.”
“You think they’re working together?”
“I’m not sure of that. Porter apparently doesn’t hang around with Visser and the others, at least not at the plant. We can find out what he does after work.”
“That scissor lift operator, the one who was so stoned— what’s his name, Montoya. He almost lost his goddamn arm. We can’t afford another round of accidents.”
Reznick meant that literally, Kirk knew. The investigation had been started because the increasing medical claims were nearing the red line. If Advantage Corp. went over it, the premiums would jump dramatically. The union contract required the company to provide full accident coverage for every employee, and insurance companies never took losses. On top of that were the company disability payments to victims who hadn’t been tested for drugs following their accidents. “We’ll work as fast as practicable.”
“Well, I hope so, Kirk.” Reznick smiled. “Otherwise you won’t have to worry about Kirk and Associates withdrawing from the case.”
CHAPTER 4
CHRIS, BUNCH, AND Devlin met at the Silver Spur Lounge to talk it over. The bar was one of those with a lot of Naugahyde and gilded swag lamps. It had live music instead of television sets turned to sports events. The music was country swing, heavy on piano and electric guitar, and featured a man and woman who liked to sing with their heads together in front of one microphone. It was the kind of place Chris’s fellow workers would call “nice” and feel right about dropping in with girlfriends or wives. It wasn’t likely they’d be there just after work.
Bunch was pleased about Reznick’s decision to stay with the surveillance. For one thing, it meant steady income. For another, it gave him more time with Humphries. He’d followed the man through his routines and for two days had seen nothing of the brown car or anyone suspicious. The man had insisted on having security devices installed on his automobile and in his home. Bunch had also placed a mobile telephone in Humphries’ car in case the suspect showed up. His wife, slender and smiling and one very good-looking woman, had seemed less nervous than her husband. Though she made Bunch double-check the home alarm system, it seemed less out of fear than from the practical habit of getting what she paid for.
Now it was a matter of waiting to see what happened, if anything. That, and once more sitting in the goddamn Subaru to keep an eye on Zell and Truman.
Chris, too, was pleased to keep the assignment. He figured it meant he was doing a good job. “You think it might turn into a big case, Dev?”
“It’s possible. But let’s not worry about that now. Let’s just figure a way for you to get closer to them.”
Bunch sipped his beer. “Chris could try the old let’s-sell-them-dope scam.”
“Do what?” asked Chris.
Devlin explained. “Tip them that you’re a seller, not a buyer. Tell them you’ve got some coke for sale.”
“It could be heroin,” said Bunch. “But coke would be better. Direct competition.”
“What about the—ah—I mean, isn’t that illegal?”
“It is if you actually sell them anything. It’s not if you just talk about it,” said Kirk.
“Oh.” Newman thought it over, uneasy at the idea. “What if they want proof? I mean, what happens if they want a sample or something? What do I do then?”
“No problem. You give it to them,” said Bunch. “We can get a few lines for ol’ Chris, can’t we, Dev?”
It wasn’t all that easy, but it could be done. Devlin studied the young man’s face. “It’s up to you, Chris. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
“Hey, that’s all right. It’s just I hadn’t thought about it. And it’s a little different from surveillance.”
“Nah,” said Bunch. “We wouldn’t ask you if we thought you couldn’t handle it. Right, Dev?”
Kirk nodded. “What you do is set me up as your supplier. Just make the initial contact and tell them you can get as much as they want. When they bite, turn them onto me.”
Chris felt a little disappointment. He’d had a vision of himself handling the sale like a big-time dealer. Still, Devlin was right; he’d never done anything like this before. “You really think they’ll believe me?”
“Hey, let’s have a little more enthusiasm,” Bunch said. “All you have to do is make three ugly people think you’re going to take over their dope business.”
“I’m not saying I won’t, Bunch. I think I can do it. I just want to be sure you guys think I can.”
“Aw, yeah!” Bunch wrapped a large hand around the back of the young man’s neck and wagged it gently. “Listen, first time I went on a buy and bust I was scared shitless. And I’d already been a cop on the street three years. All you got to remember is this: They’re just as nervous as you. They’re worried you might be a cop, they’re worried you might rip them off, they’re worried you might be competition. Most of all, they’re worried about how they’re going to save their own ass if something goes wrong. Not about how they’re going to stomp yours.”
“Hey, I said I can do it. I just … well, I just don’t want to screw up the whole case. I mean, it’s my first time, right? You guys know better than I do what I’m getting into. If you think I can do it, fine.”
“Just make them think you’re the middleman. You don’t handle the stuff, see? What you tell them is you drum up customers for a percentage but you don’t sell. Somebody else takes the money and delivers. Tell them the action’s divided up that way for security reasons. They’ll believe you. Dealers are paranoid about security. Besides, they won’t be interested in you. They’ll be after Devlin here.�
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Devlin agreed. “That’s how it will work.”
“No problem then,” said Chris. “But why you?”
“If they’re in the business, they’ll want to protect their territory and they’ll want to go as high up our line of people as they can.”
“Right,” said Bunch. “All you do is tell them you’ve got a pipeline to Colombia. You can get any amount of coke real cheap.” He leaned back and grinned over his beer. “That way they’ll want to find out as much as they can about your operation before they unscrew your head.”
“Thanks a hell of a lot.”
It was finally worked out. Chris would make the offer in the next couple days. Bunch and Devlin would be ready to back him up with a meeting and a sample of goods. In the meantime, since Bunch was tied up protecting Mr. and Mrs. Humphries, Devlin would tail Porter to learn what he could.
“You want some help with that, Dev? I haven’t had much practice tailing people yet.”
Kirk saw Chris’s excitement at his expanded role, and that was healthy. “He might recognize you, Chris. You just concentrate on your end of things. Everything depends on how well you handle that. Bunch and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Yeah.” Bunch added, “Remember, it’s a business and you’re an old hand at it. Just play it straight—no tough act, nothing phony, nothing like the movies. It’s just like selling bubble gum, okay?”
They watched the young man leave the bar ahead of them as they finished their glasses. From the far end of the lounge on the tiny stage came some early twangs of an electric bass warming up as the band began to gather. Bunch watched a long-haired blonde swing past on her way to the ladies’ room. “Old Chris is getting a little cocky about all this, Dev. Did you explain Kirk and Associates’ generous hospitalization plan to the lad?”
“Old Chris hasn’t been in a position where he had to think seriously about it.”
“Ah, he’ll be all right. It’s not that big a deal anyway. And he can handle himself.”
Kirk eyed Bunch. Since the Humphries case started, no more gripes about being bored. And he believed Bunch was right despite a mild twinge of worry about Newman. He hadn’t wanted to show it—no sense making the kid feel any more nervous than he’d be naturally.
But agents do face some danger. Any time you make a living by sticking your nose in other people’s business, you stand a chance of getting it remodeled. Chris understood that, and to his credit it was the excitement of a little danger that had brought him into the game and kept him here. But heretofore he had only been used as a pair of eyes or as backup. And when he’d been planted in the warehouse, it was with the understanding that he would only observe. Any sniff of trouble and he was to pull out. Now Kirk had him doing contact work. And with some characters who seemed to know a lot about what they were into.
But, as Bunch said, Newman was over twenty-one, though not by much. And the stakes on this deal weren’t high enough for anyone to risk a murder rap. If things fell apart, they would try to scare him off with at most a beating. Though something as innocuous as that could rearrange his face, Kirk knew. And sometimes the brain as well.
Bunch glanced at Kirk’s watch and finished his beer. “I got to check in with Humphries. I told him I’d sweep the neighborhood and drop by tonight.”
“Keeping a good record of your time?”
He tapped the vest pocket of his shirt where a small notebook rode. “Every billable minute. Christ only knows how long he’s going to pay for this crap. Me, I think it’s a waste of time and money.”
“You don’t think anyone’s following him?”
“Not from what I’ve seen. It’s only been a couple days, though. Oh yeah, I told him you’d coach him in evasion techniques tomorrow afternoon. Him and the wife both.” He added another item that had puzzled him. “I can’t see a woman like that going for somebody like Humphries. The guy’s a toad, Dev. I bet he croaks when he hops in bed.” Then, “She’s a lot younger than he is, too.”
“Jealous?”
“Me? Naw. But I have to admit Mitsuko-san’s a nice-looking piece. A little shy in the tit department, but it all goes together pretty well. Nice compact Jap model. And even if she’s young, she seems to have been around enough to know what she’s talking about. I just can’t see her going for a fish like Humphries.”
Devlin knew what he meant. Humphries struck him, too, as a cautious and calculating man, one more likely to fall in love with a balance account than a woman. But he was rich, and that made up for a lot. Especially if Mitsuko, like a lot of women, saw marriage as a polite form of prostitution. “No accounting for people’s tastes, Bunch.”
“Ah, the inscrutable Orient.”
“When do I meet with them?”
“Tomorrow after five.”
The two men paid the tab and paused by their cars in the parking lot. Bunch asked, “How do you want to handle this setup with Chris?”
“Think Miller can help us out?” Bunch’s ex-partner from his days on the Denver police was now a detective in Vice and Narcotics. Sometimes he did favors for old times’ sake. As well as the resulting credit for any arrests.
Bunch thought he would. They hadn’t called on him for over a year now. The ill-defined but precise balance of obligation had been left tilted in their favor, and what the hell was that Christmas bottle of Laphroaig for anyway? “I’ll give him a call in the morning.”
On the street beyond the strip of worn grass with its fringe of litter, hot traffic rushed past in a blur of glinting metal and glass. “Reznick wants to keep the police out, remember. He doesn’t want the company to lose face.”
“Miller’ll go along with that—for a while anyway.” Bunch waved goodbye.
CHAPTER 5
THE DAYS WERE moving into one of those routines when a lot went on but little seemed to happen. Devlin drove down to Douglas County and found Humphries’ home—as he expected, large and well appointed. Set far off the unpaved county road, it was, despite its size, invisible among the pine and juniper that covered the rolling hills. Humphries’ wife seemed to be in her early twenties and was as attractive as Bunch had said. She was also very interested in the personal security techniques Devlin explained to the two of them. Humphries, while paying attention and occasionally asking a question, seemed less worried about avoiding attack in his home than on his way to work. “That’s when I’m vulnerable, Kirk—in the car. All he has to do is run me off the road and I’m trapped.”
Which was why Bunch installed a cellular phone in the man’s Mercedes. “Have you noticed anyone following you in the last few days?”
He shook his head and Mrs. Humphries smiled. “Not since Mr. Bunchcroft came. He is so big!”
“That doesn’t mean it’s safe,” said Humphries. “That man could just be waiting.”
Bunch had run quick checks on Stratford, Schmidt, and Liles.
The first two men lived south of Denver in an area of impressive new housing developments that had followed completion of that quadrant of the beltway. Liles had recently sold his large home, apparently to get capital for his new business, and moved to a smaller house in southwest Denver. None of them owned a brown car. That didn’t preclude one of them from hiring someone who did. But under the aegis of Kirk and Associates Loan Company, Devlin had surveyed the printouts of their last three months’ bank statements and found no unusual jump in withdrawals—the size, for instance, of a retainer. Of course, Liles could be paying through the company funds, but they had no access to that account through their credit service. Kirk asked, “Is there anyone who might have a grudge against you? Or any other reason someone might wish you harm?”
Humphries let out a disgusted sigh and looked around the large living room, with its displays of Oriental prints on the walls and its carefully placed carvings. One was a gaunt Buddha in ivory old enough to have turned brown; another had the deep translucent green of fine jade. The prints, too, looked antique, though Devlin couldn’t read the red and black
characters at their borders.
“Mr. Bunchcroft has already asked that question in half a dozen different ways, and I’m getting tired of answering it.”
“He even,” said Mitsuko softly, “asked if someone might wish to harm me.” She made a comically sad face and glided her long fingernails down the curves beneath thin sweater and tight slacks. “Who would want to harm little me?”
Kirk caught a hint of challenge in her black eyes and focused on the printed sheet of tips for personal security that he’d copied for them. Humphries, whether he knew it or not, had his hands full with this young lady. “Can you give me a list of your acquaintances, Mrs. Humphries? We should check out that possibility, too.”
“But I have so few! Our household help—Mr. and Mrs. Lucero. The hairdresser at the A La Mode Salon, the butcher at Safeway, the mechanic at the Texaco station near I1-25 …”
“I meant more personal acquaintances—social friends, for example.”
Humphries broke in. “Mitsuko has the same friends I do. She’s only been in America a couple years, and in this area only a few months.”
“Are you newly wed?”
She laughed. “Very!”
“I thought you were American—you speak English so well.”
“Thank you. I’ve studied the language since elementary school. And,” she added, “been fascinated by things American.”
Kirk stifled a grin. “And now you have an American thing.”
Her laugh was a tiny silver bell that tinkled up an octave in delight. “And Roland, who loves things Japanese, has his Japanese thing!”
