Even the Wind: A Jonas Brant Thriller

by Phillip Wilson

  ``You two have fun at McGreevy’s?’’ he’d asked when Tate and Gillihar had left the room. Clatterback and Malloy reddened on cue.

  ``Good to see you’re getting along,’’ he said to ease the tension.

  ``What was that about with Gillihar?’’ Malloy asked in an obvious attempt to change the subject.

  ``Gillihar? He likes to pull my chain. Good guy, though. You should get to know him.’’

  ``Looks a bit past it to me,’’ Clatterback said.

  Brant shot the younger man an angry look.

  ``I’d be careful on that one,’’ he said. ``The uniforms may be the grunts around here, but you don’t want to get on their wrong side.’’

  ``And you speak from experience?’’

  ``I do. And not all of it good. Just trust me. The uniforms are your friends. Even when they’re not.’’

  ``What the hell’s that suppose to mean?’’ Clatterback asked.

  Brant shrugged. ``Just as it sounds.’’

  When they had the room to themselves once more, Brant pulled out a stack of documents.

  ``So you had something for me?’’

  ``John and I’ll check out South Shore. With any luck we’ll find someone who remembers Carswell. Maybe they’ll even be able to tell us if she came in with the father.’’

  Brant nodded. ``That makes sense. Keep following that lead. I don’t think it’s wrong.’’

  ``What about you?’’ Clatterback asked. ``What are you doing while we’re knocking on hospital doors?’’

  ``Me? I’m going to follow up on the company Allison Carswell worked for. I want to find out as much about it as I possibly can. What about Meredith Financial, Junior? Did you get anything on it?’’

  Clatterback shook his head. ``I did an EDGAR search and I contacted the state securities regulator. Nothing on EDGAR. I’m still waiting to hear back from the regulator.’’

  ``Good, keep at it.’’

  ``Where shall we meet?’’ Malloy asked. ``I mean after all this detective work?’’

  Brant smiled. ``McGreevy’s is as good a place as any, I suppose. That is unless you two have plans? I mean, I wouldn’t want to get in the way.’’

  Malloy frowned. ``McGreevy’s is fine by me.’’

  ``Me too,’’ Clatterback said almost too eagerly.

  ``And since you’re the senior officer, you can buy the first round,’’ Malloy added.

  ``That’s fair.’’

  ``What about your son?’’

  Brant shook his head. ``Too young. He’d get carded.’’

  ``I mean don’t you have to go home and feed him or something?’’

  ``You have a son? I didn’t know that.’’

  ``He’s four, almost five,’’ Brant answered in response to Malloy’s query. ``And no, I’m okay. My sister’s in town for a few nights. She’s looking after Ben.’’

  ``So it’s boys and girls night out,’’ Clatterback said, holding his fist in the air as an offer for Brant to give him a bump. Brant shot a skeptical look in the detective’s direction and shook his head in mock disgust.

  ``What? I was only having fun,’’ Clatterback said as Malloy grabbed his arm.

  ``Let’s go, Junior.’’

  The two detectives turned to leave.

  ``There is one other thing,’’ Brant said as they made for the door. ``Your father worked in A-7, right Malloy?’’

  He meant District A-7 in East Boston. Malloy’s father was a big wig in the Human Trafficking Unit.

  ``Yes, why?’’ Malloy asked, a cautionary sounding note to her voice.

  ``I’ve got a favor. Matty Luceno. He lives around there, right?’’

  Malloy appraised Brant with a look that spoke volumes.

  ``What do you want Luceno for, sir?’’

  Brant shrugged, perhaps a little too casually. ``I’m trying to do a friend a favor.’’

  ``A friend, huh?’’

  ``Yeah, why the look?’’

  Malloy frowned. ``Luceno’s a powerful man, sir. You don’t want to be messing with him.’’

  ``And why’s that?’’

  ``That’s all I’m saying, sir.’’

  ``But your father knows him?’’

  ``Everyone at East Boston knows Matty Luceno.’’

  Brant sucked air in through his teeth. ``Yeah, that’s what I thought. Thanks.’’

  Malloy turned to leave. Clatterback followed.

  ``You were right about Luceno,’’ Brant said into his cellphone.

  He was standing on the sidewalk outside headquarters. A bus rumbled by, spewing a cloud of black exhaust in its wake. Brant swatted with his hand to clear the air.

  ``So you have something for me?’’

  ``Like I said, you were right about Luceno.’’

  The clatter of a keyboard filled the distance separating Brant from the journalist.

  ``Don’t mind me, I’m just typing notes.’’

  ``You understand you didn’t get this from me.’’

  ``Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say.’’

  ``No, I mean it. Under no circumstance is my name to be associated with this.’’

  Silence filled the void. More tapping at the keyboard.

  ``I get it lieutenant. No one will know. What else do you have?’’

  ``What do you mean what else?’’

  ``I mean if I’m going to use an anonymous source, I’ve gotta get some pretty good stuff. This is just the start.’’

  Brant sighed into his handset.

  ``You wanted confirmation something was up with Luceno. You have your confirmation.’’

  ``So you saw a report?’’

  ``There is no report.’’

  ``There’s no report?’’

  ``That’s what I said. There’s no report.’’

  Now it was Sheila Ritchie’s turn to sigh. Brant watched, bemused, as a cab almost rear-ended a late model Mercedes. The driver of the Merc pulled ahead with seconds to spare, avoiding what could have been a nasty collision.

  ``Are we gonna do this dance all day?’’

  ``I’m going out on a limb here,’’ Brant said, glancing over his shoulder to make sure he wouldn’t be overheard. ``Maybe we should meet. Leon’s?’’

  Leon’s again. Drizzle continued to fall, discouraging some of the workers from the nearby office buildings to venture out.

  Hootie and the Blowfish played on the sound system. He hadn’t heard them in years. He’d taken Maggie to see them play at the Paradise Rock Club before they’d hit it big. He’d been the same age as most of the BU students in the audience, but had nonetheless felt out of place, as if in a foreign land.

  ``I have a couple of minutes,’’ Sheila Ritchie said, settling into the seat across from Brant.

  ``You want anything to eat? How about a coffee?’’

  The journalist waved him away. She’d taken a notebook from her bag.

  ``Mind if I make notes?’’

  ``Yes.’’ Brant watched for a reaction.

  Chastened, Sheila Ritchie returned the notebook to its place among the other tools of her trade. She made a steeple of her fingers as she placed her elbows on the table.

  ``Well then?’’

  ``I spoke to a buddy who worked at A-7 years ago. Retired now but he still keeps in contact with the guys. It’s an open secret that Matty Luceno has friends in high places.’’

  ``I told you, he’s an at-large councillor.’’

  Brant ignored the sharpness of her voice. ``Anyway, Luceno was out boozing one night with some of the boys in the Mayor’s office. Irish pub on Columbus. Seems he had a bit too much and started punching above his weight.’’

  ``Meaning?’’

  ``He was aiming for a fight. Spewing out all kinds of crap about the Mayor being dirty, about how he could bring city hall to its knees, about how he could even blow a hole through the Democratic Party in Washington. He may even have mentioned Bill and Hillary.’’

  ``And this was in the police report?’’

&nb
sp; Brant shook his head. ``Couple uniforms interviewed some students that overheard as they were walking past. Luceno was taken in but a phone call came in from the Mayor’s office and he was let out before any of the paperwork could be entered into the computer system. So, no paperwork, no crime, nothing to report. Move on.’’

  Brant leaned back. He hadn’t realized it, but he’d been leaning over the table speaking in hushed tones.

  ``Interesting. That certainly lines up with what I’ve got.’’

  ``What is it?’’ Brant asked. ``What’s going on?’’

  Ritchie frowned. ``I’m not sure yet. I need to think about this and work on it a bit more. You get a chance to dig into that name at Genepro Molecular that I gave you?’’

  ``I did a quick search but nothing really came up.’’

  ``I’m not surprised. You don’t have any idea what they do, do you?’’

  Brant’s face betrayed him. He’d Googled Markus Schroder, but had come up empty. At least empty in the tradition sense of a police search. The man behind Genepro had no priors. A documents search had pulled up academic papers on a range of subjects, all of which had proved beyond his understanding.

  ``Yeah, I figured,’’ Ritchie said when she saw his face. ``Maybe this’ll be more useful.’’

  She slid a piece of paper across the table. Wide-eyed, Brant took the offering.

  ``Where’d you get this?’’ he asked as his eyes darted over the document.

  ``Thought you might be interested,’’ Ritchie said with a smile.

  Brant scrutinized the paper a second time.

  ``Genepro Molecular rents its office space from a company called Medsync Inc.’’

  ``Never heard of it.’’

  ``No, you wouldn’t have. Medsync Inc. is a shell company based in the Virgin Islands. I did a bit of digging through some regulatory filings to find out more about it. Something caught my eye.’’

  ``Something?’’

  ``Well, a name. It’s right there at the bottom.’’

  Brant’s eyes ran to the final entry on the paper. His mouth dropped as his fingers ran over the name of Medsync’s chief executive officer.

  ``Exactly,’’ Ritchie said when she saw his reaction.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ``When did you last eat?’’

  Sergei Volodin smiled. He was a big man, with a round fleshy face and soft features. His hands were dainty, his skin pink and polished. He had broad shoulders, a sloping forehead and a cap of thin brown hair. An angry red scar marred the left side of his face from his cheek bone down to his chin. He wheezed when he breathed.

  ``One must eat, no?’’ Volodin waved a pair of chopsticks in Brant’s direction. ``You don’t eat, detective? I’m afraid I have a hard time trusting a man who doesn’t like his food.’’

  A thin sheen of sweat marked the big man’s forehead. He was unshaven and wore a shirt unbuttoned at the collar to reveal a patch of graying chest hair. Volodin had loaded his plate from the buffet. The table had been filled with plates of stir-fried rice, breaded chicken balls, deep-fried spring rolls and an unrecognizable soggy mass of green vegetables.

  He speared a chicken ball with the end of a chopstick and smiled. The man was a brute, but in a slightly effeminate way.

  They were in a Chinese restaurant near the corner of Oxford and Beach streets. The dining room was basic. White-washed walls, cheap wooden tables covered with simple white tablecloths, red paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Waitresses dressed in traditional Chinese dress floated throughout the room as they went from table to table.

  ``Well, if you aren’t going to eat, perhaps we should get down to business.’’ Volodin wiped his mouth with a paper napkin as he pushed away a plate of half-eaten rice.

  Katy Malloy sat at the edge of the table, eyeing one of the waitresses dressed in a black dress buttoned tight around the throat. The waitress smiled as she poured tea into a small porcelain cup for the older Chinese man and his wife sitting at a neighboring table.

  ``Who is your lovely associate?’’ Volodin asked when the plates had been cleared.

  ``Detective Malloy is working with me at the moment.’’

  ``Is that so?’’ Volodin’s eyes bugged out of his face as he considered Malloy. ``And what is it that you think I can do for you?’’

  ``You can cut the bullshit for one,’’ Brant said, barely hiding his disdain for the man.

  Volodin frowned in mock disappointment. Not for the first time when they were together, Brant fought the urge to reach over and wring the other’s neck until his eyes popped out.

  But Sergei Volodin was not to be underestimated. He may have looked like an art dealer or an accountant gone to seed, but he was neither. Instead, he was a thug, a crook, a gang leader and a dangerous man. Volodin was a new breed. He’d arrived in Boston penniless, a son of Russian immigrants who’d been driven from the old country at the end of the Cold War. As a young man, Volodin had proven adept at navigating a path between Boston’s warring gangs. He’d started out hawking cheap electronics — mostly stolen — on the streets to unsuspecting tourists. Next came muggings, petty theft and drugstore holdups. He’d hit the big time when he was nominated as a drug runner for a gang in South Boston. Drugs quickly escalated to more sophisticated operations - racketeering, money laundering, cyber fraud. He was a man of many talents.

  The Russian had picked up baggage along the way. There was the deep scar marking his face. His skin was sallow and thinning. His eyes, though sharp and shrewd, betrayed a weariness and caution earned only from years on the street. Volodin had been lucky in his rise to the top, but luck ran only so far.

  ``Genepro Molecular.’’

  Volodin shrugged, a look of bored indifference in his dulled eyes.

  ``Name doesn’t ring a bell?’’

  ``Should it?’’ Volodin signaled to a passing waitress who blushed as she poured a cup of tea. The dainty cup looked child-like in the big gangster’s hand as he lifted it to his lips.

  ``Your shell company, Medsync, owns the building that Genepro operates out of. I have the documentation so no need to act stupid.’’

  ``Can you believe this guy?’’ Volodin directed the comment to Malloy. ``Barges in here to my place of business with wild accusations.’’

  Brant smiled sarcastically as he glanced around the restaurant. With the departure of the elderly Chinese couple, they had the place to themselves. ``Some place of business. Overhead must be low, though.’’

  ``What is the saying? Location is everything?’’

  ``Something like that.’’

  Volodin leaned back in his chair. A waitress approached with a refill of tea but he shooed her away. ``Now, what can Sergei do about this Genepro Molecular? You say it’s part of my real estate portfolio?’’

  ``Rented through Medsync. Only thing is, the ties linking you to Medsync are pretty loose.’’

  Volodin shrugged casually. ``It’s a big portfolio. I guess you might be right. Of course I would never contradict the police. I’m a big supporter of the Boston Police Detectives Benevolent Society. Did you know that?’’

  Brant smiled. ``I had no idea you were so charitable. All the same, you’re not really answering the question.’’

  ``I didn’t know there was a question.’’

  Brant looked Volodin up and down. The big man was unrattled, even casual. If he’d hit a nerve, Volodin wasn’t showing it.

  ``A young woman who worked at Genepro Molecular, an Allison Carswell, was found shot to death in an alleyway near Copley the other day. We did some digging and up pops your name linked to Genepro. A hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?’’

  Volodin’s face broadened as he broke into a smile. ``Officers, this is absurd. Look, I’m a nice guy, right, so I’m not going to get offended. But if I was the kind of person to…what’s the phrase…call a spade a spade, I would say this is harassment.’’

  ``You’re not answering the question.’’

  ``Do I have to?
I mean, when is it a crime in this country to own real estate?’’

  Brant shrugged as Volodin shook his head in mock sadness. The big man sighed.

  ``I suppose poor old Sergei is going to be harassed until I give you whatever it is you want,’’ he said with resign in his voice. ``You have a picture of this woman? What was her name?’’

  ``Allison Carswell.’’

  ``Hmmmmm. Carswell. I’m afraid the name isn’t familiar.’’

  Brant handed Volodin a snapshot of the dead woman that he’d had made from the photos he’d taken with his phone. Volodin quickly scanned the image before handing the print back.

  ``Never seen her. If you don’t mind my saying, she is a rather plain one. Or maybe it’s just the way her face has been beaten to a pulp. Not my kind of work by the way.’’

  Brant ignored the editorial comment on Carswell’s appearance.

  ``That’s not very helpful.’’

  ``She was a molecular biologist,’’ Katy Malloy said.

  ``Is that so? And you say she worked at Genepro?’’

  ``That’s right.’’

  ``Have you spoken to her coworkers? Maybe I do your job for you and help you draw up a list of who to speak with before you come to me. Yes?’’

  ``We’re heading out there now,’’ Brant said a little too quickly.

  Volodin frowned. ``I will admit this one thing. You are right. I know this Genepro Molecular. They came to me and they say, `Sergei, we need a place to do some high-level work on DNA sequencing and genetic testing. What do you have that we can use?’ So I find them a building. That’s it. I don’t know anything about this woman. Full disclosure.’’

  Brant doubted it but didn’t say so. His understanding of Volodin was deep. They’d had past dealings, none of which had turned out well in the end. Volodin played the simpleton with the panache of an actor, but Brant knew better. He knew to tread carefully.

  ``You’ll call us if you think of anything?’’ Brant and Malloy rose to leave. Brant fished a business card from his pocket and handed it to the other man. Volodin inspected the card before placing it in a small leather cardholder.