Crooked Numbers

by Tim O'Mara

  I wasn’t quite sure how to process all the new information that had come my way over the past few days: the threat to Allison to stop writing about Dougie; the drugs in Dougie’s closet; the fact that one of those drugs was more than likely under the FDA’s radar. How did those capsules end up in Dougie’s closet? How did Jack Quinn’s father, a head guy over at Ward Fullerton, play into all this? I should just take everything I knew—or thought I knew—to Murcer and let him sort it out. Allison and I had not told him about Saturday night’s attack yet, so he was already going to be pissed. Would he agree that the similarities between Allison’s and Dougie’s wounds were a connection? Or would he take me for the wounded ex-cop I was and tell me to stay the hell out of his sandbox?

  Just as my head was beginning to spin, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but answered it anyway. Maybe the caller would have all the answers I was searching for.

  “Ray,” the voice on the other end said. “This is Elliot.”

  “Hey. What’s up?”

  “I hope I am not interrupting something important.”

  “I’m just walking and thinking, Elliot. What’s going on?”

  “I wanted to share with you a few postings that appeared on Finch’s Landing the past few days. They appear to be in response to Jack’s posting from the other night about canceling his trip to Beijing.”

  “I thought we had agreed his posting didn’t make sense.”

  “We had,” he said. “But now that others are responding, I have realized that, just because we did not understand something, does not mean it did not make sense.”

  This kid was good. “Okay, Elliot. Shoot.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Share them with me.”

  “One says, ‘Too bad about the trip to Hong Kong getting nixed. Anyone have suggestions for other travel plans?’”

  “Hong Kong?” I said. “Jack said he was going to Beijing.”

  “I know. That is why I said they ‘appeared’ to be in response to Jack’s posting.”

  “Right.”

  “Another one says, ‘I knew Jack would come out of the hospital disoriented, but why do we have to suffer?’ Do you think the pun was intended, Ray? Disoriented?”

  “Yes, Elliot. I believe it was.”

  “Because Beijing and Hong Kong are both in the Orient—”

  “I get it, Elliot. I just don’t know what it means.”

  “I do not enjoy puns very much. Especially when used in crossword puzzles.”

  Different strokes, I thought.

  “Who posted those responses, Elliot?”

  “It is my policy, Ray, not to identify any of the members of Finch’s Landing. I can tell you, however, one of the members attends Upper West, and the other attends another private school. Why is that important?”

  “It may not be. I’m still at the stage where I’m asking a lot of questions. You ever get to that place, Elliot?”

  “I believe it is one of the most effective methods of learning, Ray. I have also found it useful to understand what questions need to be asked.”

  Like a jigsaw puzzle, Edgar had said. With too many pieces.

  “You’d make a good teacher, Elliot.”

  “Thank you, Ray,” he said. “You did mean that as a compliment?”

  “Absolutely. Listen, if there’s nothing else…”

  “That was the only reason I called. There is nothing else at this time.”

  “I appreciate your calling.”

  “And I appreciate your answering. Good-bye, Ray.”

  “Good-bye, Elliot.”

  Before I put my phone away, I saw the little icon that told me I had a voice mail waiting for me. It was Allison.

  “Hey, Ray. It’s Allison. No word back from Murcer. I’m going out with some friends tonight. I’ve had these plans for a while and kinda spaced on them until today. I’m gonna stay over at a girlfriend’s, so don’t wait for me to eat or come by your place tonight. Call me if you want, or I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”

  Back to the bachelor life. So, I wouldn’t be stopping off at the fish place or the liquor store. I tried to think about what I had in the fridge and came up with a big zero. I could go shopping. Or I could have another in a long line of dinners at The LineUp. And just so the evening wouldn’t be a complete waste, I decided to call Edgar.

  “Raymond,” he said. “What’s the haps, man?”

  “Edgar,” I said. “How’d you like me to buy you dinner?”

  “Whoa. Sure thing. Just tell me where and when.”

  “The LineUp. Tonight at six thirty. But I need a favor.”

  “You mean,” he said, “I hafta earn my dinner?”

  “Don’t think of it like that, Edgar. Think of it as two friends doing a solid for each other. Quid pro quo.”

  “I failed French,” he said. “What’s the favor?”

  “I need you to find out anything you can about Ward Fullerton.”

  “The pharmaceutical company?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “What kind of information am I looking for?”

  I thought about that. “Any of the legal stuff. The stuff we touched on the other day, but more in-depth. Licenses, lawsuits, clinical trials. Stuff like that.”

  “Okay, Ray. That may take some time.”

  “Then make it seven o’clock.”

  “Sounds like a plan, man.”

  This time after closing up my phone, I kept it closed. I had a couple of hours before meeting with Edgar, so I decided to spend some of them at Muscles’s.

  *

  Muscles wasn’t there, the young girl with the big blue eyes working the front desk informed me as I signed in. He was doing a rare—and presumably very profitable—home visit. “Make sure you tell Muscles I was here,” I said.

  She looked down at the sheet. “You got it, Mr. Donne.” Only she pronounced it like it rhymed with “bone.”

  I went through the same routine I had gone through with Muscles on Saturday. I should have come by yesterday, but even with the extra day off between workouts it felt pretty good. Muscles was right: I needed to come at least three times a week if I wanted to keep seeing progress. Now, if he could get me into that clinical trial and it showed results, I could realistically get back to my pre-accident self. Who said there are no second chances? With a little work and the proper pharmaceutical assistance, you could probably even squeeze out a third or fourth chance.

  I finished the workout and took a quick shower. As I passed the front desk, I thanked the receptionist and reminded her to make sure Muscles knew I’d been by. She said, “Sure thing,” gave me a smile, a wink, and an adorable finger-wave good-bye. Then she ruined the whole thing by calling me “sir.”

  *

  I got to The LineUp half an hour early. I figured I’d grab a quick, relaxing beer before dealing with all of the questions I expected from Edgar. I figured wrong.

  There he was, sitting in his usual spot, clicking away at his laptop. On the seat next to him was his computer bag, which he removed when he saw me enter the bar. “Saved you a seat,” he said. “And I waited to order since, you know…”

  “Since I’m buying?”

  “Yeah. That’s it.”

  Mikey came over.

  “Edgar will have his regular,” I said. “And I’ll have the Brooklyn Pennant.”

  “No pilsner tonight?” Mikey asked, hand at his chest, pretending to be shocked.

  “I’ve been jonesing for baseball for a while, so Pennant is as close as I’m gonna get. Go on ahead and put in a couple of burgers for us, too. And a big plate of o-rings.”

  “Ketchup and Tabasco?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, and Mikey went away.

  “Okay,” Edgar said. “Ward Fullerton. Corporate offices and labs are over in New Jersey. We knew that. Not much happening on the legal front for the past few years besides the boring stuff. Renewing licenses, some patent work, wrapping up and settling an old class-action suit
for a drug they took off the market three years ago. The only thing of recent interest on this side of the Atlantic is their stock has been steadily declining in value over the past twelve months. Nothing catastrophic, mind you, but I imagine the shareholders are not a bunch of happy campers.”

  Mikey came by with our drinks, silverware, ketchup, and Tabasco sauce.

  “What did you mean,” I said, “‘this side of the Atlantic?’”

  “I didn’t find enough info in the U.S. papers to feel I’d earned this fancy meal,” he said as he took a sip of his Bass, then poured in some tomato juice. “So I checked out some of the major overseas media outlets. The London Times had a little tidbit about six months ago about a drug trial in Nigeria that didn’t go so well for our friends at WFP.”

  “They get into any details?”

  “See, that’s where the lawyers and PR guys really earn their money, Ray. The less news that hits the papers, the less the news hits the stock price.”

  I sipped some ale. “But they must have said something.”

  “Not much,” he said. “But I found a press release from one of those sites that swears Coca-Cola is plotting world domination. They ‘reported’ Ward Fullerton had been conducting trials in some orphanages in Nigeria. The tests had to be terminated due to, and I quote, ‘unforeseen and harmful side effects.’”

  “What were the side effects?”

  “Didn’t say. Just that some of the kids involved—all kids, by the way, in their mid-teens—had to be hospitalized, and Ward Fullerton subsequently made substantial donations to the orphanages.”

  “Payoffs?”

  “If you read between the lines, yeah.”

  “What were the drugs designed for?”

  “Good one, Ray. Then you can ask me what the Colonel’s secret blend of seven herbs and spices is.”

  “So,” I said. “Bad, mysterious drug causes bad, mysterious side effects—but money makes it all go away.”

  “Welcome to Big Business 101. This shit’s been going on since we were using rocks and seashells for currency. As long as you keep putting up those crooked numbers, everything’s fine.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But if these CEOs ever tried to sell pot or crack in the projects, then they’d be looking at some real time.”

  “If they had more melanin than money? Absolutely.”

  Our food came at the exact moment my appetite went away. I downed the rest of my ale and asked for another. While I waited, I thought about the bag of drugs in Dougie’s closet. Wherever it had come from, I’d bet a shitload of money it had made a stopover in Nigeria.

  Did Dougie steal the drugs from Jack Quinn’s father? Did Jack steal the drugs and ask Dougie to hide them? For what? Who the hell kept non-approved pharmaceuticals where teenagers could get their hands on them? Now I was starting to feel the puzzle didn’t have enough pieces.

  No, Uncle Ray would have said. The pieces are there, probably in plain sight.

  There was something in the back of my brain, tapping its fingers on the door to my memory. I poured some ketchup on my plate and mixed in some Tabasco sauce while I waited for the door to open. I dipped in an onion ring and took a bite.

  “The break-ins,” I said, loud enough to grab the attention of a few people across the bar.

  “What?” Edgar asked.

  “The break-ins,” I repeated. “Up in Rhinebeck.”

  “What about them?”

  “The deputy told me none of the victims reported anything stolen.”

  “Right.”

  “All the car trunks were popped and left open. So we all just wrote it off as a prank—most likely pulled by Dougie, Paulie, and Jack. Boys being boys.”

  “What does that have to do with Ward Fullerton?”

  I figured it was time I shared the story with Edgar.

  “If I tell you something,” I said just above a whisper, “you promise not to tell a soul. Not even an online soul.”

  He moved his stool closer to mine. “Yes, Ray. Of course not.”

  I proceeded to tell him about the bag of drugs Mrs. Lee had found in her son’s closet. Then I told him about my trip to Warren, the pharmacist, the results of the lab tests on the drugs, and that Warren had said he’d never heard of that combination before.

  “Smart drugs, huh?” Edgar asked.

  “Super smart drugs. That’s what Warren called them.”

  “So,” Edgar said as I finished. “You think those drugs Dougie had are the ones Ward Fullerton was testing in Nigeria?”

  “I do,” I said. “And what if Mr. Quinn thought hiding the drugs in a locked trunk in a locked garage up in Rhinebeck was a decent temporary solution, but the boys somehow found out and wanted to get their hands on them? These are smart kids, remember. It would be too obvious if they just broke into the Quinns’ garage…”

  “So they break into five garages, figuring there’d be less suspicion on them. But don’t you think he would have figured out his kid stole the drugs?”

  “You’re right. There’s no way he wouldn’t have.”

  “But why the hell would he want to hold on to a bunch of drugs that were causing negative side effects?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They had to cost millions to produce. Maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to get rid of them. Could be, the company didn’t know he still had some. Maybe he wanted to use the old ones to help with research on the next?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe that’s why we’re not pharmaceutical executives, Edgar.”

  “Okay. Then what reason would the boys have for stealing the drugs?”

  “That,” I said, “is a piece of the puzzle we haven’t found yet.” I watched as a grin slowly took over Edgar’s face. “What?” I asked.

  “You said ‘we.’”

  “I guess I did, didn’t I?” I gestured with my head toward his laptop. “Anything else you can think of that might help us out?”

  “Not at the moment. No.” He clicked some of the keys, then turned the laptop around to give me a better view. “But I was looking at Elliot’s website today and noticed something a bit odd.”

  “Odd how?”

  “Jack’s first post after he gets out of the hospital is about some trip to Beijing.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Elliot told me about that and the other two. One about Hong Kong and another about Jack being ‘disoriented.’”

  “Was he really planning a trip to China?”

  “If he were, it would have meant missing two weeks of school … When did he say the trip was scheduled?”

  Edgar scrolled back to Jack’s post. “Tuesday night. Well, after one A.M. Technically, that’s Wednesday morning. Hey, that’s tonight.”

  “And Elliot told me their school doesn’t break for the holidays until—Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Beijing and Hong Kong are both cities in China.”

  “I knew that.”

  “Jack wasn’t planning to go to China, he was planning on going to see Chee-nah. It’s spelled the same as China.”

  “You lost me, Ray.”

  “China is the leader of the Royal Family on the other side of the bridge. The one who dug her nails into me after my meeting with Tio. She told me they’d seen me over at the tennis courts where Dougie was killed when I first met with Murcer and Allison. She warned me to stay away.”

  “You think she mighta killed Dougie?”

  “I don’t know. That is her turf.”

  “What’s she got to do with Jack Quinn?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “So,” Edgar said, “according to this, he won’t be showing up tonight.”

  “That’s what he says.” Then my ex-cop’s lightbulb went off. “I wonder if China knows that.”

  Chapter 34

  JUST LIKE DOUGIE, I also had a shoebox in my closet. I didn’t want anyone to know about mine, either.

  I took the shoebox out of the closet and brought it over to th
e coffee table. I placed it down gently and removed the lid. An old T-shirt was wrapped around something I’d sometimes forget I had. I unwrapped it and picked it up. It seemed heavier than I remembered and felt awkward in my hand. I guessed that’s what happens when you don’t hold something for so many years. Like an old baseball glove or a newborn baby.

  My off-duty gun.

  There was no practical reason for me to still have it. I certainly hadn’t foreseen a time when I’d need it again. It was part of my past, given to me by my uncle upon my graduation from the Police Academy. Getting rid of the gun would have meant giving up a physical link to my past life. Some people hold on to pictures of ex-lovers, favorite pairs of worn-out sneakers, college drinking mugs. I held on to my old off-duty gun. Most ex-cops do.

  Like many cops, my off-duty gun was a .38, snub-nosed revolver. Some cops chose an automatic, but, as Uncle Ray explained to me years ago, they can jam or misfire. Revolvers don’t. It was—big surprise—made by Smith & Wesson, was black, and held five bullets at a time, which made it easier to carry than the ones that held six.

  “Black’s the color you want,” my uncle had said. “If I had my way, I wouldn’t allow any cop to carry the silver ones. All they do is give the bad guys a nice and shiny target to aim at.”

  I went into my bedroom and opened up the top drawer. Behind my socks and underwear were three more mementos: a box of bullets, my ankle holster, and my speed loader. I always stored the gun in one room and the ammunition in another. It was safer that way. Too many gun owners kept their guns loaded, making them much more likely to shoot someone in their own family. I had no family to worry about, but gun safety is drilled into you as a cop. Some habits are hard to break.

  I left the speed loader where it was, brought the bullets and the holster into the living room, and sat down on the couch. I opened up the gun and looked at the five empty chambers. The thought of bringing an unloaded gun with me crossed my mind, but then I remembered something else Uncle Ray used to say: “If you bring a gun into a situation, you’d better be prepared to use it.” I opened the box of bullets, took out five, and slid them into the chambers. I closed up the gun, made sure the safety was on, and placed the gun in the holster.