As I read that missive over now, the ratio of self-important, superficial bullshit to constructive communication seems way too high. I’d be tempted to leave it out of the story altogether, just on ego grounds, except that sending it turned out to be the stupidest thing I ever did in my life.
But that’s something I found out down the road. Right now we’re coming to the day when the lull in the Thomas Bradshaw murder case ended. Namely, Thursday, January 13, 2011. Three things happened that day.
First, at 7:59 a.m., I was walking from the bus stop to Mendoza’s building when I heard footsteps approaching rapidly behind me. Resisting the urge to look over my shoulder, I tensed a little and grabbed a fistful of purse strap with my right hand. I didn’t really think I was about to be mugged, but I braced myself for a tussle, just in case. Next thing I knew, Deacon Khalid fell into step with me on my right, matching me stride for stride along the sidewalk. I swiveled my head and opened my mouth to say hello. He ignored all that. Without greeting me or so much as glancing at me, he just started talking, his voice barely loud enough for me to hear.
“Keep walking. Don’t look at me. The reverend said to tell you that the person you are concerned about is no longer in danger. He has nothing on this Earth to fear.”
“Thanks, but—”
“Have a blessed day.” And before I could blink he was five yards beyond me.
The rev had said he’d pray about my question, and apparently he had. He’d given me an answer. The only way you can have nothing on this Earth to fear is if you’re dead. So Khalid had told me that someone had approached Tyrell Washington about arranging a hit on Thomas Bradshaw. The Feds seemed to be royally pissed off about it, and doing the Learned search at warp speed told me they thought Learned was the perp. That fit Mendoza’s theory that the G-men had been working with Bradshaw on an investigation aimed at Learned. In other words, I’d thrown my seduced-and-abandoned temper tantrum in the luxury lair of a prime murder suspect.
That seemed like a pretty good morning’s work and I hadn’t booted up my computer yet.
I thought Khalid’s tidbit might be a little hot for an e-mail, so I decided to wait until I could give Mendoza an oral report. I kept checking his office every twenty minutes or so because I was bursting with my high-octane scoop. About three minutes after the 10:30 check he bustled past my cubicle with his coat over his arm and Becky the Techie in his wake.
“My office, right now, Jake,” he said without slowing down. “You’d better hear this.”
As I traipsed in I couldn’t help wondering whether Becky could possibly have anything bigger than what I’d picked up.
Yes, she could.
“They’ve completed the ballistics test on the forty-five automatic seized from Learned’s suite. It’s consistent with the bullet that killed Bradshaw. Not a perfect match, but the only place you get perfect matches is TV. Any ballistics expert will tell you that the murder bullet came from Learned’s gun.”
“How did anyone get a ballistics test out of the State Crime Lab in less than two weeks?” I asked. “I thought the average turnaround for that outfit was closer to two months.”
“Who said anything about the State Crime Lab? The FBI did the ballistics workup itself, in Quantico—and someone with clout obviously hung a ‘Job-One’ tag on it.”
“Have the Feds told the local cops about the ballistics test?” Mendoza asked.
“Yeah. They were apparently in a good mood that day. That’s how I found out about it.”
“So Learned is looking at a murder charge under Pennsylvania law and an indictment for interfering with a federal investigation by killing a witness,” Mendoza said. “The feds and the state cops must be drawing straws to see who gets to talk to him first.”
“Good luck with that,” Becky said. “The FBI hasn’t come up with him. He apparently hasn’t been back to the Hilton New York since his suite was searched. Five to two he’s squatting on a different continent at the moment.”
Becky and Mendoza had reached a lull, so I chipped in my morsel from Khalid. They both nodded sagely, and Mendoza promptly piped up.
“I’ll call Sam Schwartzchild. Jake, you call Caitlin. Find out if she has any idea where Learned is—and tell her that you won’t be the last one to ask her about that.”
“Got it.”
I almost called her on my way back to my cubicle. I was just about to punch Send when I realized that it wouldn’t be cool for Caitlin’s mobile phone to ring in the middle of calculus class. She picked up on the first ring when I eventually called her over the lunch hour.
“No clue about Learned. Haven’t seen him since the thing at our house after Dad died.”
“Good enough. If any cops call with the same question, let us know right away, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Also, if you or your mom do happen to hear from Learned.”
“Right. Thanks. Later.”
By the end of the afternoon, after I’d had a chance to absorb the day’s bombshells, I mentally had the Bradshaw case halfway to the archives. Learned was on the run. As loose ends go, he was world-class. Even if the cops didn’t think he’d killed Bradshaw they couldn’t very well try to pin the murder on Ariane until they’d tied it up. Hence, at least for the moment, no danger of people wondering whether Mendoza had gotten Bradshaw killed by telling Caitlin at our first interview not to go to the cops with the mom-chat. Bradshaw’s murder was still unsolved but no one was paying me to solve it, so who cared? As I walked through the January gloaming to the bus stop that night, it seemed to me that for the next six months Caitlin was going to need a tennis coach more than a lawyer. I climbed on the bus ready for thirty-five minutes of tunes and the New York Times Thursday crossword.
By the fourth stop I was concentrating on two problems. Neither of them was Caitlin. The first was finding a wedge for Dad to use with Pro Tools. The second was sixteen across in the puzzle: “Rupert nattering on?” The question mark meant the answer was a bad pun involving someone whose first name was Rupert. The only Rupert I could think of was Murdoch, the media mogul, and I was coming up with nothing for him.
I closed my eyes as the bus lurched to a stop, then opened them and refocused on the puzzle as we got under way again. A woman’s voice from the aisle beside my seat, drilling right through my earbuds, startled me.
“Babbling Brooke. Mind if I sit here?”
She sat down without waiting for my answer, which was a good thing because I was going to be several seconds getting any coherent words out. I’d just gotten the answer to sixteen across from Vera Sommers.
“Rupert Brooke, the poet,” she said. “‘The sand of the desert is sodden red/Red with the wreck of a square that broke.’ Great stuff for neoimperialists.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
While I was pulling the buds out of my ears I regained a semblance of composure and managed an intelligent question.
“Are you buying or selling?”
“I’m here because Learned asked me to tell you something.”
“That would be selling, then. Shoot.”
“He didn’t kill Bradshaw.”
“I think I’ve heard this one before.” I heard an edge on my voice, and I decided to leave it there. “The version I got was that the night of Bradshaw’s murder Learned was shacked up with Frau Bradshaw at the Monongahela Hotel.”
“I don’t know about shacked up, but they were in the same room until after nine o’clock that night.”
“With the forty-five?”
“Yes,” Sommers said. “I was his first line of defense against nasty people breaking into the room. The forty-five was Plan B.”
“You’ve been working with Learned the whole time? On the Ars Longa organization chart you were bodyguard and vice president in char
ge of smashing noses?”
“You’re a college girl. Figure it out.”
I gave that one a shrug. Sommers quickly filled the silence.
“Learned was trying to work a deal on one piece from the Gardner Museum haul. Don’t kid yourself. That stuff hasn’t been sitting in a warehouse for fifteen years. They’ve moved at least two hundred million dollars worth of it at a dime on the dollar, and some of it has been through two or three buyers.”
“Why did Learned go to all the trouble to get this information to me?”
“I’m not a shrink, but if I had to guess I’d say it’s because he feels guilty about queering things between you and your boyfriend. He beats himself up about it, if that’s any help. Anyway, he kind of likes you and he doesn’t want you to get hurt. I mean ‘hurt’ as in a broken neck, not a broken heart.”
“Ah, the faceless Gardner Museum gang again.”
“You can believe it or not. No skin off my nose either way. But I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve worked with him before and I never saw him with a gun until last fall. For some reason this thing started to break wrong, and he got worried about his own hide. He’s supposed to be way offshore by now, and I hope to hell he is—because now that word of the search has gotten out, if he’s anywhere in the United States he’s a walking dead man.”
I chewed that over for a couple of blocks. I wanted to believe her—but what about the ballistics test? And if the Gardner Museum gang was really part of what was going on, why hadn’t it surfaced yet in this little adventure as anything more than a theory?
Unless it had surfaced. Unless right this minute I was sitting beside some of its hired muscle. Vera Sommers had been ostentatiously hip-deep in this mess since at least the Wednesday after Bradshaw’s murder, but it had never occurred to me that she might be on the thieves’ payroll. Why not? Because she was a woman? Cynthia, you sexist pig. ‘Walking dead man.’ If she was working for the Gardner gang instead of for Learned, then I was being warned off—hard. I shifted my fanny on the seat so that I could turn my whole body toward her.
“Have you heard about the Feds tying Learned’s gun to Bradshaw’s murder?”
“Supposedly tying it. The FBI isn’t above throwing fairy dust at local cops.”
“Okay.” That struck me as way too pat, but what could I say? “Please tell Learned thanks. Tell him I got the message.”
“He had one more message for you.” She stood up and pulled the call-cord. “He said to tell you that Paul isn’t evil, he’s weak. And weakness is human.”
“So is evil,” I said.
“It’s a good thing he put a woman on this job.” She shook her head, smiling mordantly. “A man would have given up on you three blocks ago. This is my stop. Have a good life.”
I didn’t say goodbye or look at her as she moved toward the rear door. I forgot about the crossword and I didn’t bother to rebud my ears. Something was stirring in my gut, and it flat out turned me on. A growing excitement jolted me like a double espresso. I couldn’t wait to get to work tomorrow.
This was not because some not-quite-dead ember of love for Paul was bursting back into a brave little flame. It wasn’t even because I had some more nuggets of information to serve Mendoza. I was getting psyched because I’d just figured out how to solve Vince’s Pro Tools problem.
Chapter Forty
I’ve decided to think of the next Tuesday night as my first closing. The check had five figures instead of eight, and Vince’s kitchen table wouldn’t pass for the mammoth mahogany slab in the average Manhattan conference room, but if I could bring it off it would still be a closing. I’d discussed the concept with Vince on Thursday night, and he and Lainie and I had chatted about it over the weekend, but I could tell he was more than a little shaky with it. Tuesday night was showtime.
I squared the stack of paper that I had spent pretty much every waking hour on since Friday morning. Then I looked at Vince and Lainie.
“Okay, let me just go through these one by one.” I held up a sheaf about a quarter-inch thick. “These are articles of organization and an operating agreement for a company called Jakubek Tools LLC.”
“Incorporating me?” Vince’s eyebrows almost reached his scalp. “Sounds kind of fancy-schmancy.”
“Not exactly, big fella.” I held up the second slab of paper. “Stay with me. This is an agreement selling me twenty-six percent of Jakubek Tools for twenty-thousand dollars. The thing paper-clipped to it is my twenty-thousand-dollar check.”
“What, you’re bailing me out? No way.”
“I’m not ‘bailing you out,’ I’m buying into your company.” I picked up the third chunk of pulp. “This is an agreement selling Lainie twenty-six percent of Jakubek tools for twenty thousand dollars.”
“I don’t have twenty thousand dollars, dear,” Lainie said.
I held up the fourth item.
“That’s why you’ll sign this promissory note for twenty thousand dollars that Vince will accept for your share. It’s non-recourse. That means if you don’t pay he couldn’t come after you for the money. He’d just get your share of the company back.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s all right, then.”
“Wait a minute,” Vince said. “That’s fifty-two percent of my company.”
“Right.” I picked up the fifth sheet. “That makes Jakubek Tools LLC a women-owned business enterprise. Which means that its bid for the Allegheny County Community College starter tool set order will get a ten-point bonus when the bids are graded. And that means that if we submit a bid at your cost from Pro Tools, we’ve got a good shot at winning the order.” All we had to do was put a woman—well, two women—on the job.
“But at cost I won’t be making any money,” Vince pointed out.
“If Pro Tools gives you a twenty-percent commission you’ll make plenty.”
“Why would they give me a commission?”
“Because otherwise they’ll probably lose the order to Cornwell or Matco.”
“That’s right,” Lainie said to Vince. “You’re always telling me that their tools aren’t as good so they buy business by underpricing.”
“That’s true.” Vince nodded emphatically. I have no idea whether it actually was true. What mattered was that Vince thought it was. At that point, Lainie again chimed in helpfully.
“Would a commission that size be a help, dear?”
“Yeah, forty thousand or so straight to the bottom line would be a real big help. But the thing is, I’ve sold out of my own company.”
“Actually, no, you haven’t,” I said.
“That’s right.” Lainie patted Vince’s hand. “You can trust us.”
“Just as important, you don’t have to trust us,” I said. “Lainie’s promissory note is payable on demand. If she and I ganged up against you, all you’d have to do is demand payment from her. She wouldn’t be able to pay, you could take back her shares, and suddenly you’d own seventy-four percent of the company instead of just forty-eight percent.”
“Seems kinda slick.” In Vince-speak, “slick” is not good.
“Well, you wouldn’t want that corporations course I took in law school to go to waste, would you?”
“I think I know what’s really bothering you, dear,” Lainie said. “You don’t like the idea of taking advantage of the government giving women special preference.”
“You’re right. I don’t like that at all.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “But you and I didn’t make the rules.”
“It was the government that stacked the deck, dear,” Lainie said.
“That’s right.” I liked the simile. “We just have to play the cards we’re dealt. Think of it like Schedule C of your tax return. You lead a pretty good life, but year after year you show a net income not too far above poverty level.”
<
br /> “Arnie is good with the numbers,” Vince agreed, referring to his accountant.
“Same thing here. We’re being good with the numbers—they’re just different numbers.”
Vince picked up the pen.
The wall-to-wall work crunch required to turn Vince’s tool business into a WMBE couldn’t have come at a better time. It kept my mind off everything else—including Sommers’ little number on the bus. At 10:02 Wednesday morning, right after I’d filed the Jackubek Tools LLC papers online, the bus chat once again intruded impolitely on my thoughts.
Assuming Learned actually had sent Sommers to me, I just couldn’t figure out his angle. Sommers’ main message was that neither Learned nor Ariane had killed Thomas Bradshaw. Why did Learned care what I thought about who killed Bradshaw? What was I going to do—talk three levels of cops out of going after Learned? Or tell them something about him they didn’t already know? What information did I even have, except maybe some stuff about Paul?
Some stuff about Paul. Oh shit. Paul knows something. And Learned wants to protect him. Hoo boy. This sucks. This really, really sucks. My mind started racing. Finding out that Paul was back living with his brother in Philly would be child’s play for the FBI, so that couldn’t be what Learned was afraid I’d spill. I couldn’t think of anything else offhand. Maybe Learned would be afraid of things Paul could have told me, whether he actually had or not.
It would have been very dramatic and narratively convenient for Paul to call me at that moment, but of course he didn’t, the inconsiderate shit. He called Ken. He called Ken just before 1:30 that afternoon—and an hour later Ken called me.
Chapter Forty-one
“I just finished talking to your ex-fiancé,” Ken said when I answered his call. “And not because he wanted me to hear his confession.”
But Remember Their Names Page 23
