Dead East

by Steve Winshel

  Back home he watched half an hour of late news, then played some online chess while Conan chattered with a girl Jarvis didn’t recognize who was starring in a film he hadn’t heard of. It was close to 1:00 a.m. when the first pangs of tiredness emerged, but not enough to be a distraction. He thought about Brin and how different life would have been if things in Afghanistan hadn’t gone sideways that day. The bond wouldn’t have been created and there were probably half a dozen times in the last ten years Jarvis would have come out on the wrong side in a fight or tough situation without his friend being there. It was time to return the favor, even if Brin felt he was still in debt.

  Jarvis went into the bedroom and packed a light overnight bag. Mostly gym clothes and clean underwear. He didn’t want to be in Wisconsin any longer than necessary. The clock flipped over to 2:15 a.m. and he stripped down to boxers and lay on top of the bedcover. He pulled out the journal and perched it on his stomach, clicked open the pen, and flipped to the page held by the bookmark. Jotting down the time, he closed his eyes and pictured Brin, pale and weak as he’d never seen him. He wrote out the night’s prose.

  Fuck Racine.

  Jarvis put the journal on the other side of the bed and killed the light. When he opened his eyes the green illumination from the clock read 3:47 a.m. and he rolled out of bed, refreshed, rejuvenated, and ready for revenge.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jerry’s Deli in Venice was open 24 hours. In a row. It was one of half a dozen places that met Jarvis’ unique needs. He drank his second cup of coffee and broke the yolk on an over-medium egg, mopping it up with lightly toasted sourdough bread. It was too early to call Rayford, barely past 5 a.m. as he dialed.

  “Hey, I’ll be out of town for a day or so.”

  The cop’s voice was heavy with sleep. “Jesus. Are you a vampire?”

  Jarvis chewed egg and toast in his ear. “I thought cops got up early.”

  “I’ve got a three-month old and he’s got about two-hour naps going at best.” A couple of deep breaths came over the phone. “Besides, no one sane is up at this hour, cop or not.”

  “I might have a lead on where the dead kid got the poison.”

  There was a long silence that wasn’t Rayford pulling himself together. “I’ve got a dead woman that might be a murder, a guy in a coma who was probably poisoned, and a young man who may have blown himself up along with most of his house. You want to tell me how you’re tying all that together?”

  “Brin was following Hekmatier. I’m not sure why yet. That got him poisoned. When you get the tox report later this week it’ll be the same thing that killed the woman. And it’ll be the stuff you find in the case from the kid’s house, if there’s any trace.” He paused. He could hear Rayford walking into another room and the crying of a baby starting up.

  “Piece of work. Wanna tell me now what you’ve done the in just 18 hours to put this all together?” Irritation was present but Jarvis assumed it was grating nerves from an infant crying incessantly.

  “I had a few leads from Brin. It doesn’t really matter – you’ve got a murder investigation to deal with and I’m handing you the murderer and the evidence. You sure you want more?” Jarvis took a long sip of coffee and got up. He walked past the waiter’s station on his way to the men’s room and saw the woman who’d been filling his cup every few minutes for the last half hour. Covering the speaker on the phone, he gave her a heads-up “Back in a minute.” She nodded without looking up and grabbed her coffee pot. She filled his mug before he’d made it as far as the urinal.

  Rayford mulled it over. “What I want is to make sure you’re not interfering with an investigation or tampering with evidence, and I don’t want to get caught up in something that’s none of my goddamn business.” It was a fair set of goals. “And if it ties up nicely with the murderer killing himself, then that’s great too.” The sound of rushing water didn’t bother him. “I’ve gotta change a diaper. Fly safe.”

  “If I find anything that helps you tie up the loose ends, it’s all yours. Anything that’ll make your life difficult…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  Jarvis closed the phone and washed up. In the restaurant, a young man who might have passed as Azad Hekmatier’s cousin walked slowly by Jarvis’ empty table. He paused for a moment, as if to look at his cell phone and peck out a text message. With his body blocking anyone’s view of the table, he took a small vial out of his pocket and pulled off the top. Without looking around, he spilled its contents into Jarvis’ coffee cup and then sauntered further into the restaurant. As he circled past the tables to head out towards the door, he brushed by Jarvis emerging from the bathroom. The young man looked away and Jarvis passed without a glance. He was in his pickup truck and pulling out of the lot as Jarvis sat at the table, fingering the coffee cup. Instead of taking another pull and having to swing by the bathroom again, he put a twenty on the table and headed out. Jarvis walked through the nearly empty parking lot as dawn began to awake.

  Twenty minutes later he was at the United terminal, overnight bag in hand.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Racine, Wisconsin is not the armpit of the world – Trenton, NJ holds the honor. Racine is more like the left earlobe; nobody pays attention to it, but if it were gone you’d probably notice even if it didn’t affect anything in any way that mattered. After a brief layover in Denver, Jarvis rented a car and was at the Racine Post-It Postal Service Center by 3:30 pm. Despite the name of the strip-mall store, no flock of attorney’s from 3M huddled around plotting an infringement suit. Jarvis parked the Ford Escort, which was a mid-sized sedan according to Hertz, and unfolded himself from the front seat. He had planned out a clever ploy for getting the proprietor to divulge the information regarding the identity of the owner for Suite 129. Suite 129 was a 4X6 inch metal plate among a hundred others that looked the exact same on the left side of the store where people used almost identical little keys to open them up and collect their mail. The store was neat and clean. Mail was in the boxes by 7:30 a.m. and the last drop-off time was 5:00 pm, said the beautifully printed signs on the wall above the boxes and taped to the counter straight ahead. Another sign hanging from the ceiling said “Beautifully Printed Signs – Custom Made.”

  The owner/manager of the franchise was pulling on an overhead handle to release plastic peanuts into a box he was filling for a middle-aged man in overalls drumming his fingers on the counter. The packing material filled a ten-foot wide swath of netting suspended from the ceiling and a fat hose funneled it straight down when the handle was pulled. The old guy filling the box had half a dozen of the white ovals clinging to his plaid shirt and one on his hair.

  “Be there in a sec, buddy.” He looked from Jarvis to the customer. “Harry, you don’t worry about this. I’ll get it all taped up and sent. Bill you next month.” Harry tipped his cap and grunted, heading out undoubtedly to one of the eleven pickup trucks in the lot.

  Todd – that was the name on his badge – interrupted his peanut dispensing and walked over to Jarvis, dusting off the bits of plastic. “Help you with something you wanna send?”

  Jarvis made his first move, like in a chess game. It was an opening and if everything went right, he’d be able to get the name of the box owner before too long. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve kind of got a problem. I got something in the mail, and it isn’t mine, and I want to return it – but it could be kind of expensive so I thought it would be better to return it in person.” He looked around. “The address was for here, but I kind of thought it was going to be a store or something.”

  Todd kept smiling and Jarvis shifted the small plastic bag he carried from one hand to the other, feeling the weight of the silver cufflinks he’d bought as cover to show the owner that he was serious. There was also a fake return address stamp in the bag, to prove he’d actually received the item from here. It was going to take a little bit of fancy footwork. “It was Suite 129. No name on it.”

  “That’d be Hector Gallego. He wa
s just here ‘bout fifteen minutes ago. Here…” Todd pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and jotted something down on a piece of discarded junk mail. “He probably won’t be back ‘til tomorrow, so there’s his address and phone number. Just give him a call and swing by.”

  Jarvis refrained from gasping or laughing. He took the envelope and shook Todd’s hand. “Well, thanks very much. I’ll do that – and give him this myself.” He raised the other hand holding the junk he’d bought at the Racine airport and turned to the door before Todd could come to his senses and act like someone from LA. Jarvis was in his car and driving toward the hotel he’d book before he turned around to see if Todd was running after him. Nothing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The house was less modest than the one that exploded in Tarzana. The term “McMansion” leapt to mind. Jarvis cruised by the two-story modern stone residence. A wrought-iron fence protected a semi-circular drive, but more from nosy neighbors than anyone with havoc in mind – this was a home, not a fortress. An almost new Mini Cooper rested on the near side of the driveway. The gate was open. It wasn’t the biggest house on the street, nor the smallest. Jarvis pictured Goldilocks sitting in the kitchen. He drove a block past and made a u-turn at the stop sign, parking half a block from the house. The direct approach seemed unwise this time. His shoulder still ached from hitting the ground a split second before the blast a day earlier. Repeating that scene would give him a monstrous headache. He settled down in the rental as best he could and watched the house. Dusk settled and began to be replaced by night.

  Three hours later a blue Jaguar pulled up and turned crisply in. The driver emerged after gathering some things from the passenger seat. Jarvis easily watched from fifty feet away. The overlapping beams from the automatic floodlights were brighter than the afternoon sun. The man wore a tailored gray suit that cost more than Jarvis’ entire wardrobe. He stood with his back to Jarvis, shifting a leather briefcase from one hand to another and putting a winter coat over his arm. The frost on Jarvis’ windshield proved he wasn’t in LA. As the man turned and shouldered the car door shut, he pulled from the front seat another case. This one glinted rays from the floodlights and Jarvis admired the clean metallic surface. He didn’t need to send a picture to Rayford and the forensics lab to be reasonably confident the case was similar to tangled remnants found in Azad’s charred living room. Jarvis quelled the urge to drive up onto the front lawn and pin the guy against the door and pepper him with questions. He decided a more subtle approach would be better. He took the five shot Beretta he’d bought earlier from the Gun ‘n Smoke Shop out of the glove compartment and tucked it into his back. The guy with the briefcases turned briefly in his direction, reflexively but without seeing anything, and Jarvis took a mental snapshot. No recognition, nothing at all. Jarvis had never seen the man. Generic olive-complexioned, 55-year-old successful businessman. Or dentist, or terrorist. No way to know, except he was probably carrying a valise containing a poison that had killed at least one person, put Brin near death’s door, and led to a young man immolating himself in front of Jarvis. Jarvis slowed his heart a few beats and waited until the man fumbled around with his armloads and keys, finally getting the front door open and slipping inside. Fifteen seconds later, Jarvis was at the window on the East side of the house, furthest from the floodlights and heaviest with shadow.

  He was looking into a corridor that ran along the side of the house. The front foyer was straight ahead and a staircase a little to the right. Not that it resembled his modest, relatively shack-like home, but he figured the kitchen was down the corridor, a living room on the other side of the house from where he stood, and bedrooms upstairs. Too big for one person to live in, so there must be a family. Except the hallway was almost devoid of personal effects. No kids’ shoes or overcoats, a dearth of women’s clutter. Just slightly expensive artwork on the walls within view, nice carpet in the distance, and a distinctively man’s touch even in the little he could see. Jarvis started to try the window, but stopped. Not because there was an alarm. Because he wanted to see if the man would blow up the house when he saw Jarvis. Better the direct approach. He went back to the front and knocked loudly on the door. He rang the bell a couple of times, just for good measure. It only took about twenty seconds for the handle to begin to turn.

  The man must have been expecting someone. He opened the door willingly and without the hesitation. He held a drink in his hand, heavy glass and ice cubes surrounded by amber liquid. But whoever he was expecting, it wasn’t Jarvis. The man’s face froze, but did not scream out recognition. More mature and composed – and in control – than the kid in Tarzana. But Jarvis had no doubt the man knew his face as well as the kid had.

  “May…may I help you?” He covered well enough to be an actor or excellent liar.

  “Yeah, you could, thanks. My car broke down and my cell phone died. Can I use your land line to call triple A?” It was so clichéd Jarvis almost laughed out loud but suppressed it with a smile. The two men looked at one another and both played along despite the absolute transparency with which each knew the surface chatter was hiding some dangerous agenda. Only neither knew what the other was thinking – Jarvis hadn’t a clue why this man knew him and had probably sent poison to be used to kill his friend Brin, and the man was unable to fathom how and why Jarvis had appeared at this door.

  “Of course, please come in. There is a phone in the living room.” Slight accent, Middle Eastern, could be metropolitan Tehran or something in Pakistan. Jarvis’ ear was not sufficiently discerning. The guy could have been an Egyptian Pharaoh. “Let me get a phone book so you can get the number.” He opened the door wider. Jarvis stepped through but didn’t walk far enough ahead that he lost sight of the man.

  “Thanks, you’re very kind. I’ll be just a minute and then get out of your hair.” No one commented on the man’s baldness.

  They walked almost abreast past the staircase and into an enormous living room. The man indicated a chair on one side facing the window that gave a nice view of a rosebush shrouded in light and the hint of a large yard out back. “Just a moment, please. And may I get you some tea? They will undoubtedly take some time to get here.”

  Jarvis sat and put up a hand. “That would be too much, thank you, I couldn’t impose.”

  “Tut, tut, it is nothing. I will be back in a moment.” He stepped behind Jarvis and his footsteps moving away indicated he was not about to impale Jarvis with a knife. Two minutes passed and the footsteps came toward him. Jarvis turned with enough time to counter a blow if it came, but needed only to accept the cordless phone and a slip of paper with an 800 number on it. “Here, my friend, please call and I will be back in a moment with the tea.”

  Jarvis nodded and hit the Call button for a dial tone. He rang the number and gave his location to the operator along with a detailed description of the nonexistent problem. A truck would be there in 30 – 40 minutes. He hung up as the man returned with a silver tray holding two cups, a large glass samovar, and enough sugar to give most of Wisconsin diabetes. Definitely Persian or Afghani.

  “My name is Mr. Marzani. Please, you must call me Zeb.” He poured the tea and handed one of the cups to Jarvis.

  “Thank you, Zeb. My name is Jarvis.” He refrained from adding “as you know.” He pretended to take a sip of the tea.

  “So tell me, Mr. Jarvis, you are not from Wisconsin?” The accent was melodic. Zeb looked at Jarvis, then off to his right, then above, and then down at the ground. His question seemed rhetorical and it worried Jarvis. Zeb should have been far more curious.

  “No, just visiting. I was looking for an old friend.” Jarvis had a strategy in mind. He needn’t have bothered. There was a flash of movement to his left, the spot Zeb had meticulously avoided looking. Before Jarvis could resolve the image as being of a hand holding something, he felt a tightening around his throat. The wire immediately cut into his neck, but instead of slicing through his windpipe and carotid artery, it just held him in place. He cou
ld feel the presence of a large body behind him, one that apparently moved as silently as a cat but had the heft of a gorilla. The man’s forearms held Jarvis against the chair and the wire kept him from struggling. The instantaneous and instinctive realization that he was being held for the moment, not yet murdered, kept him from clawing at the hands and scraping backwards to relieve the pressure.

  Zeb remained seated and sipped his tea, which apparently contained no poison. “Why are you here, Mr. Jarvis? Did young Mr. Hekmatier tell you something before he martyred himself? I think not.” Zeb was full of rhetorical questions.

  Jarvis was pretty sure the questions would eventually require answers, and after that he would be killed. Racine was not where he wanted to die. Jarvis brought the hand holding the steaming cup of tea up and over his head, aiming for where his large captor’s head probably was. The yelp of pain and release of pressure around his throat suggested success, though the man did not let go completely. Jarvis pushed backward with his legs, tilting the chair hard into the man’s chest. There was a momentary relapse of pain as the wire tightened again with the backward momentum of the bodyguard but it ended as one of the guard’s hands released so he could regain his balance. Jarvis assumed the discomfort from the scalding would not last and the man was already reaching for a weapon. Jarvis came out of the chair in a crouch, pulling at his lower back with his right hand. In one continuous move he brought the gun forward and fired three times into the back of the chair. It was mostly upholstery and all three bullets tore through the fabric losing little speed. He’d intended to catch the man in the torso or legs, but when Jarvis had pushed back with the chair it had knocked his attacker onto his backside. He was just getting up as Jarvis fired. One bullet tore into his left eye, another glanced off his forehead leaving just a scratch and the third plunged into this throat. Jarvis stood and was impressed with all the blood pouring out of him. He even admired the Glock in the dead guard’s left hand. It was the new model, more expensive than the one Jarvis had at home.