Midas

by Russell Andrews

  “All right, let’s hear it.”

  He told her about the plane crash. She’d heard some of the details; a memo had been e-mailed with an update saying that any connection to the nearby bombing had been ruled out. Justin didn’t respond to that, just explained to her about Martin Heffernan’s behavior at the crash site. He told her about being denied access to the fingerprint records. He left out the part about the exhaust manifold that had been tampered with. Better to keep some things in reserve.

  “That is definitely strange,” she said. “But, you know, the fingerprint thing—there might simply be nothing there. Some kind of snafu. Maybe because of the proximity to Harper’s. It could have been a precautionary restriction.”

  “That’s probably right, but . . .”

  “But you’re curious.”

  “I’m definitely curious.” When she stayed silent on the other end, Justin said, “Funny that none of your guys came to talk to me about the crash, don’t you think?”

  “They’ve got other things on their minds, Jay.”

  “Still, you’d think they’d want to check this out.”

  “Sounds like the FAA already checked it out. They got word to us about the pilot error, end of story. No need to put in the extra hours if we already know it’s pointless. It doesn’t seem like a big deal.” She thought for a moment, then said, “Of course, with you just about everything’s a big deal, isn’t it?”

  “I just like to be thorough,” he said. “If it wasn’t for me, what would you do for aggravation?”

  She sighed. “All right. Get me a set of the prints. I can’t see any reason not to check ’em out.”

  “I sent them already. They’re probably in your computer.”

  “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you, Jay?” She was certain he was smiling smugly on the other end of the phone line.

  “I’m just sure who my friends are, Wanda, that’s all.” She didn’t say anything. So he said, “Call me when you’ve got something, okay?” And when she still didn’t say anything, he figured it was okay to hang up.

  Forty-five minutes after Justin spoke to Wanda Chinkle, the call came in from Oklahoma City.

  The woman who called was named Cherry Flynn. He asked her to repeat it, but she just said, “You heard it right. Cherry, like the little red fruit.”

  “Thanks for calling back . . . um . . . Cherry.”

  “My pleasure. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I went online looking for some information,” Justin told her. “But I couldn’t log into the public records.”

  “That’s right. In the last month or so, we had to eliminate access for the general public. Security reasons.”

  “Then maybe you should change the name.”

  “What?”

  “You shouldn’t call them public records if the public isn’t allowed to see them anymore.”

  “Oh, I see what you mean.”

  “So, listen, Cherry. Here’s what I need. I’m investigating a murder case . . .”

  “Oh my.”

  “Right. I’ve got the tail number of a plane that I think belongs to the victim. I need to know how to trace the number back to the owner.”

  “Well, that’s what we do.”

  “Good. So if I just give you the number . . .”

  “Well, I’ll need some sort of authorization. Otherwise we might just as well let anyone still go online. If you see what I mean.”

  “Okay, fair enough,” Justin said. “What kind of authorization?”

  “Well, you said you’re from the police?”

  “That’s right. I’m the chief of police for East End Harbor.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Long Island. New York. Right near where the restaurant was bombed the other day.”

  “Oh my. Does this have anything to do with that?”

  For the briefest of moments, Justin thought about lying, thought it might help his cause. Then he realized the possible ramifications, so he quickly said, “No. It’s something completely separate.”

  “Oh. Well . . . why don’t you fax me something on your official police stationery. And include your badge number. I’ll get verification and approval, and then I can call you back with the information.”

  “Do you know approximately how long all that might take?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. It’ll take as long as it takes.”

  “Right. That was always one of my favorite axioms.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Would you like the fax number?”

  He said that he would and then he copied it down. He told her he’d get the request to her momentarily. She said she’d respond as soon as she could. Justin hung up and realized he’d now spent the morning accomplishing absolutely nothing thus far. He’d been stymied using official police channels, the Internet, and the phone. He’d talked to one suspicious friend who was reluctantly trying to help him with something that probably wouldn’t pan out, and one near-idiot woman who might never call him back. He hoped the afternoon would be slightly more productive.

  It wasn’t.

  Cherry Flynn called back around 3 P.M. Her voice was not nearly as friendly and open as it had been six hours earlier.

  “I’m afraid we can’t grant your request, Mr. Westwood. I mean, Chief Westwood.”

  “Can’t grant it because you don’t have the info? Or won’t grant it because you don’t want to give it to me?”

  This threw her for a major loop. She was not used to any response that didn’t retreat in the face of authority. The stammering—intermixed with long silences—went on for so long that even Justin finally felt sorry for her.

  “Cherry, may I ask you a couple of simple questions? Nothing that can possibly get you in trouble, I promise.”

  “Well, okay. I guess.”

  “I understand that you can’t give me the information I want. But just tell me if you have it. This way, I won’t have to bother you anymore and I can go to your supervisor and try to get it. If you don’t even have it, then I won’t pursue it.”

  “We don’t have it.”

  She was lying. He was absolutely positive. He hadn’t counted on that. He’d thought she wasn’t smart enough to lie.

  “Are you sure about that?” he said.

  “Well.” Her voice broke the word into two, maybe three syllables. And she waited a long time before uttering her next sentence. “Could you ask another question?”

  “What?”

  “Ask another question. On that same subject.”

  “What kind of question should I ask?”

  “Oh gosh, I don’t know how to say it. I shouldn’t really help you too much, should I? But this doesn’t seem very fair.”

  “You want me to ask you a question that’ll help you give me a better answer? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I don’t think I should say anything else,” Cherry decided. “Even if this is a murder investigation.”

  “All right, all right, hold it.” Justin closed his eyes. She said she didn’t have the information on the tail number. But she wanted him to ask more about it. What more is there to know? Something similar? A number close to the one I gave her? No, what good would that do? She has it or she doesn’t have it, right? What’s another alternative. You have it, you don’t have it . . . Bingo! “You had the information. You had the file. But you don’t have it anymore, is that right?”

  “That’s very possible,” she breathed. “Uh-huh.”

  “Who took it?”

  “Well, it’s not really paper anymore, you know. So you can’t just take it . . .”

  “Okay. Cherry, who transferred it? Or erased it?”

  “I don’t think I can really tell you that.”

  Justin bit down on his lip until it turned white. She wants to help. She’s trying to help. Think, think, think. “How about this?” he asked. “Who has the authority to remove a file from the computer system? Not this file. Not the fil
e for tail number NOV 6909 Juliet. I don’t want to know who has that file. But who can remove any file? Can you?”

  “Oh no,” Cherry said. “I could get in a lot of trouble for that. I can only do that when someone tells me to.”

  “So your boss can tell you to do that?”

  “Well, not really,” she said now, and her words were very breathy now, as if she were starting to realize that she was getting in too deep. “I mean, he could, I guess, but he would get in trouble, too. We’re not allowed just to alter or delete a file. I think it’s against the law.”

  “Well, how about his boss, then?”

  “Oh, his boss could do that. She’s probably allowed to take any file she wants out. She sure should be, anyway.”

  “And who’s your boss’s boss, Cherry? Can you tell me who that is?”

  “Well, sure. There’s nothing wrong with saying who the chain of command is, is there?”

  “No, there isn’t.” He waited. Silence. “So who is your boss’s boss, Cherry?”

  “Martha Peck.”

  “Uh-huh. And what’s her job exactly?”

  “You don’t know Martha Peck?” Cherry was astonished.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “She’s the head of the FAA.”

  “In Oklahoma City?”

  “No. Uh-uh. She’s all the way in Washington, D.C.”

  Justin let this sink in for a moment. “Someone in Washington told you to get rid of the file?”

  “I never said that, did I?” Cherry sounded extremely worried. “I never said we got rid of that file!”

  “No, you didn’t,” Justin reassured her. “You absolutely didn’t.” He could feel her relax. “I just have one more question, Cherry. That’s it. Then you can go back to work.”

  “What is it?”

  “The file you weren’t told to remove. When was that?”

  “Four days ago.” He could hear her bang something, presumably with her fist. “That was a trick question!” she said. “That wasn’t fair!”

  Four days ago.

  Someone got rid of the pilot’s file the day before his plane crashed.

  Somebody knew what was going to happen.

  No. More than that. Somebody with clout knew what was going to happen.

  “Thank you very much, Cherry. I appreciate all your help.”

  “Damn it!” she said. “And have a nice day.”

  7

  Around six that evening, Justin left his third or fourth message, he couldn’t remember which, for Chuck Billings at the Fisherman Motel. Soon after that, all five members of the East End police force appeared at the station. Gary Jenkins said that they’d decided they should take Justin out for a drink. Maybe even dinner if he was free.

  “Not to celebrate exactly,” Gary said. “’Cause, you know . . . But to kind of celebrate.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a kind of celebration,” Justin said. “But I’ll do the treating. My first official act.”

  Nobody argued, and within fifteen minutes they were a block down from the police station at Duffy’s Tavern. Justin liked Duffy’s because it was the last remaining place in East End—or anywhere in the Hamptons as near as he could tell—that hadn’t gone upscale. For that matter, it seemed not to have changed at all in twenty years. It was a no-frills bar. If you wanted to eat there, you got a tuna fish sandwich wrapped in plastic and a bag of potato chips. Their wine list had two listings: red and white. But Donnie, the bartender, made sensational martinis, and he didn’t stint on the shots of liquor. Duffy’s was dark and quiet. There was often a sports event playing on the TV over the bar. There was a dartboard and some strange game where you tried to swing a piece of string with a metal loop attached to it onto a nail embedded in a wooden beam. That’s what passed for serious entertainment at Duffy’s.

  By 8 P.M. that night, the place was crowded. And the entire East End police force was reasonably bombed.

  They weren’t rowdy, the way they usually were. Duffy’s as a whole was subdued, had been since the bombing. The guys on the force were doing the same thing everyone else in the place was: slowly sipping beer or tequila or scotch or bourbon, talking about life and death and the present and the future, while half listening to Charles Barkley on TNT.

  At some point, Mike Haversham said to Justin, “I think that guy over there knows you.”

  “Of course he knows me,” Justin said. He was feeling a little wobbly. “I’m the police chief. What’s he wanna do, buy me a drink?”

  “I don’t think so,” Haversham said. “He just kinda seems to like starin’ at you.”

  Justin nodded, as if this made perfect sense, then shifted in his seat so he could turn around and look at his admirer. As soon as the man came into his line of sight, Justin’s posture straightened, his eyes hardened, and his lips twisted into a small but distinct smile.

  “You know him?” Gary Jenkins asked.

  Justin nodded. “Yes. I know him.”

  “From around here?”

  “No,” Justin said. “He’s from another life.”

  He stared over at the man, then nodded. One firm nod. Taking his cue, the guy at the other table stood up and came over to the group of cops.

  “Guys,” Justin said. “Say hello to Bruno Pecozzi.”

  There was a murmuring from the five cops and an easy wave in return from the man, who was still standing.

  “You’re a big motherfucker,” Thomas Fronde, the youngest, cockiest, and drunkest cop at the table, said. “What do you go, six-three?”

  “Four,” Bruno Pecozzi said.

  “Two-forty? Two-fifty?”

  “Two-sixty-five. But I’m very sensitive about my weight, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention it again, please.”

  There was something about the man’s tone—it wasn’t just the hoarseness of his voice, a rasping that made it seem as if someone had driven a knife into his vocal cords; it was also that he spoke so quietly you could barely hear him, and said the word “please” like it wasn’t really a request, more like an order—that made the cocky young cop sober up quickly and say, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “Thank you,” Bruno Pecozzi said. Then, turning to Justin, “Can I buy a round?”

  Justin nodded again; Bruno caught the eye of the bartender and signaled for more drinks, then pulled up a chair, and wedged his huge frame in next to Justin.

  “Good to see you, Jay. I was hopin’ I’d bump into you.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Justin asked.

  “Me?” Bruno Pecozzi said. “I’m shootin’ a movie.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. I’m in the fuckin’ movie business now. Can you believe it?”

  Justin couldn’t believe it. But over several more rounds of drinks, Bruno explained his new job.

  “Been doin’ it for almost three years now. It’s a great gig. It started with this picture, Dead to Rights . . .”

  “Hey, I saw that,” Gary Jenkins said.

  “Yeah, it was a good little picture,” Bruno said.

  “What’d you do on it?”

  “I was kind of a facilitator.”

  “What does that mean?” Gary asked.

  “It means,” Justin said, “that Bruno knows a lot of people. He’s very well connected.”

  “Your boss is a smart guy,” Bruno said. “You got it exactly right. We were shootin’ in the city, mostly down in Little Italy. The producers or the director needed to get something done, something, you know, a little out of the ordinary, they’d call on me.”

  “Like what?” That was from Thomas Fronde. It was the first time he’d spoken since Bruno mentioned the weight issue.

  “Well . . . I’ll tell ya. Here’s a good example. The director wanted to shoot somethin’ over by the East River around six o’clock. He wanted the sun to look a certain way, to be settin’. These directors, they’re kinda crazy. Very artistic. Anyway, he had about an hour, hour and a half, to get his shot. Only
these planes kept takin’ off and landing at La Guardia and Kennedy, they kept screwin’ up the shot. So he asked if I could do somethin’ about it.”

  “What’d you do?” Mike Haversham asked.

  “Made a couple of calls. Got ’em to hold off on the flyin’ for about an hour or so.”

  Gary looked at Bruno in amazement. “You got them to stop taking off and landing at the airports?”

  Bruno nodded and shrugged modestly.

  “Who did you call?”

  “Hey, if I told you that, you could get my job, you know what I mean?”

  The cops all laughed. Justin started rubbing his eyes, partly in disbelief at the way Bruno had taken over and changed the mood of the entire table, partly because he was already beginning to anticipate the next day’s hangover. Bruno slapped him on the back and immediately went into a story about the star of Dead to Rights, an actor who usually played tough guys. There was a scene where the actor had to crawl through a swamp and mud to get to the villain. He wouldn’t agree to do it until the director found someone to warm the water—and the mud—to exactly seventy-eight degrees.

  “Not seventy-seven, not seventy-nine. The guy actually checked the thermometer himself and wouldn’t put a toe in until it read exactly seventy-eight.”

  Bruno told stories of his movie experiences for the next hour, and had everyone at the table howling with laughter. He was so huge that his self-deprecating manner was irresistible. It was hard to know exactly how old he was, maybe mid-forties. He had a couple of scars around his eyes, and his nose looked liked it had been broken once or twice. Bruno looked like an ex-fighter, and he had that gentle demeanor that fighters sometimes have out of the ring. It was as if he knew he was scary-looking, so he went out of his way to soften whatever he could about himself—his voice, his eyes, his smile.

  “So are you still a facilitator?” Gary asked, calling for one more round.

  “Nah. Now I’m a technical consultant. I mean, I still do some facilitating if they ask me.”

  “What’s the movie they’re shooting now?”

  “It’s a cop movie. Blue Smoke.”

  “So what kind of technical stuff do you consult on?”