The Bad Beat

by Tod Goldberg

  “Okay,” I said. “So these guys come and demand money or they’re going to kill you, am I correct?”

  “Me,” he said, “and everyone in my family. They gave me MapQuest directions to my aunt Jill’s house in Austin, my cousin Matthew in San Francisco and they even showed me a picture of my mother’s grave. They said they’d dig her up and kill her again. And when they find my dad, they said they’d kill him, too, but they’d do it slowly.”

  “Here’s the thing, Brent,” I said. “If they kill you, they won’t get any more money. Do you understand that?”

  “Yeah. So, great, I’m paralyzed or something instead. I’d rather be dead.”

  “Why didn’t you just go to the police in the first place, Brent?” I said.

  He got up off of the bed and began to pace my loft, much like Sugar had, much like half a dozen other clients had when faced with the one question that should be the easiest to answer. It portended extenuating situations, which I presumed would lead to the Russians.

  “They told me not to,” he said.

  “Right. Of course,” I said. “But was this before or after you contacted the Russians and took their money for a device that doesn’t exist?”

  “How did you know?” Brent asked.

  “Because I’m a spy,” I said. “And because you’re smart and did the only thing you could to save your father’s life. And I don’t know any other way you’d be able to get your hands on sixty-five thousand bucks. That nugget of information didn’t elude me, Brent.”

  “Thanks. For the smart part, I mean.”

  “But being smart is also the one thing that could likely get you killed,” I said. “How much did they send you?”

  “Which time?”

  “Which time? How many times have there been?”

  “Well, they asked to invest in the project and so at first I kept shining them on, just like all the others, until this all happened and I said, okay, they could get in on the Angel level for seventy-five thousand.”

  “And what happened next?” I asked.

  “They asked where they could wire the money,” Brent said.

  That got Fiona interested. Money does that to her. Especially money garnered as an ill-gotten gain. “How long,” she asked, “would it take you to build me a Web site like this one of yours?”

  “Fi,” I said. “Still not helping.”

  “Michael, if Russian gangsters are giving away their money, why shouldn’t we profit from it? We could clearly cover our tracks much better than a dumb college kid. No offense, Brent.”

  “Some taken,” he said. “And anyway, I didn’t know they were gangsters, like I said. I thought I was dealing with an accountant somewhere in the Ural Mountains.”

  “What did you do with that money?” I asked.

  “I paid the bookies and I paid my tuition, or else I was going to get kicked out of school. Dad didn’t pay any of my school stuff for the last six months, which I didn’t realize, of course, until he was gone. They were going to lock me out of the dorms and everything.”

  “Okay,” I said. “How much do you have left?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Or, well, nothing from the first payment. I had them send me another seventy-five thousand two weeks ago, which was supposed to facilitate delivery of the initial specs for the project, which, you know, don’t exist.”

  I was silent for a moment while I tried to figure out all of the mistakes Brent Grayson had made, all of the terrible choices he was forced to make by his father, Henry, and then the likelihood that I could be killed while trying to help him out of this barbed-wire corner.

  “When did the Russians figure out that there was no InterMacron?” I asked.

  “A couple of days ago, I guess,” he said. “After I didn’t deliver the specs, I guess they started to investigate things a little further and that’s when they said they would be at my dad’s office to either get their money or get their information and that’s when I called Sugar. He’s the baddest guy I know, so, you know, I thought he could help me with this.”

  “Except you lied to him,” Fiona said.

  “You know Sugar,” Brent said. “I didn’t want him knowing all that stuff.”

  The kid had a valid point.

  “What time are you supposed to meet Big Lumpy?” I asked.

  “Noon,” he said. “At someplace called the Hair of the Dog. I’ve never been there, because I’m not twenty-one.”

  “You defraud Russian gangsters but you’ve never been to a bar?” Fiona said.

  “This is the first time I’ve broken the law,” Brent said. “I mean, other than buying stuff from Sugar. But that’s just because I have a hard time sleeping.”

  It was no wonder.

  “Tomorrow I’ll go meet with Big Lumpy. I’ll explain the situation to him and I’m sure he’ll understand,” I said. “And then we’ll get to work on the Russians.”

  “What about my father?”

  “We’ll find him, too,” I said.

  “I can pay you with whatever is left after you pay off Big Lumpy,” he said.

  “I’m not going to pay Big Lumpy. And you’re not going to touch the money in that account. Got it?”

  Brent didn’t say anything. Not good.

  “How much have you spent, Brent?”

  “I lent a girl I know some money,” he said. “She wanted a boob job and her parents wouldn’t pay for it.”

  “Noble,” Fiona said.

  “How much?” I said.

  “Five grand,” he said. “And I bought a scooter. To get around campus.”

  “How much?”

  “Another five grand.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I had a small party,” he said. “And I bought another computer.”

  “Why don’t you tell me how much of that $75K is left?”

  “$45K.”

  “Must have been some party,” I said.

  “It was off the chain,” he said. “So, yeah, I can pay you with whatever is left.”

  “You’re not going to pay me,” I said. “Don’t lose any sleep over it. What I need from you is every single piece of information that went back and forth between you and the Russians. Do you have that?”

  “It’s all on my computers,” he said.

  “Good,” I said. “All right. Why don’t you try to take another nap while Fiona and I step outside. Okay?”

  There was a sweetness in my voice that I found nauseating. I made a note to myself never to have children. Or at least not helpless children.

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Then just sit here quietly,” I said.

  Fiona and I got up to walk outside but Brent stopped us. “Look, out of all of this? I just want to find my dad and know he’s okay. He’s made a lot of mistakes in his life, but he’s still my father and I love him. I did this all for him.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I’ll find him. I promise.”

  We left Brent and walked down the stairs and out onto the street in front of my building. It was almost five o’clock and I was still alive. Not bad.

  “What do you make of it, Michael?” Fiona asked.

  “I don’t see Yuri Drubich coming after him that big for $150K,” I said. “That’s a lot of money, but not enough to send ten guys with explosives to Miami.”

  “You think he’s lying?”

  “No,” I said. “I think Drubich probably resold the information he had and now he’s in a serious pinch. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to kidnap Brent so that Brent could stand in front of some very angry men to explain his deception.”

  “And then what?” Fiona said.

  “And then they’d kill him.”

  “Do you believe his father is still alive?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a classic shakedown the bookies are doing on him. If they got access to the bank accounts to make Brent think his father is still alive, well, that’s pretty smart. But I just don’t see these guys going after a
kid. Most bookies, they’ve got a code. A terrible, stupid, dangerous code, but a code no less. Brent’s not in the game, so I can’t see them doing this to him if his dad was dead.”

  “Maybe they’ll tire of him,” Fi said.

  “Maybe when the money runs out.”

  “Or when he runs out of blood,” she said. It was just a matter-of-fact statement, which made it all the more chilling. “Personally, Michael, I find these Russians far more dangerous. They blew up a building in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. What’s stopping them from blowing up your loft tomorrow if they find out Brent is here?”

  “You,” I said.

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” she said. “Please tell me I get to play dress-up.”

  “You get to play dress-up.”

  “And do I get to indiscriminately shoot people and devastate entire city blocks?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  I took out my cell and called Sam. “You get rid of Sugar?” I asked after he answered.

  “Yeah. Boy, Mikey, he’s pretty torn up. He said his best quality was his car.”

  “He was right,” I said.

  “What did you get from the kid?”

  I told Sam what I knew and what I didn’t.

  “So what’s our first move?” he asked.

  “Well, your first move is to find out all you can about Brent’s father, Henry Grayson, and then tomorrow, why don’t you join me to meet with Big Lumpy. I have a feeling that might be a challenging conversation.”

  4

  Tracking down someone who has disappeared of their own accord is never an easy process. In fact, if it was up to him, Sam Axe would prefer to look for someone who’d been abducted. Abductors tend to leave evidence, because if you’re in the business of abductions, you’re probably not very bright, or you’re acting on impulse, or you’re acting on someone else’s impulse, which means you’re strictly doing work for hire and people doing work for hire don’t always pay really close attention to detail.

  Which is maybe why, Sam realized, he hadn’t exactly prepared with his usual monastic dedication when Sugar initially called him for help. He was blinded by those Dolphins tickets. Well, he wouldn’t dwell on that. Or, well, he couldn’t if he wanted to, since Sugar had admitted he didn’t really have the tickets and was hoping Sam wouldn’t really ask for payment after all.

  But anyway: Someone grabs you, there’s likely going to be some spilled blood, some broken glass, maybe even a witness. You disappear yourself, you’ve got time to clean up, to plan, to leave false trails. Maybe you even kiss your kid good-bye.

  Not that Sam thought Henry Grayson was smart enough to do all of that, exactly, but that he left his son to deal with these bookies just made Sam angry. What kind of father does that to a son? Thing was, if Henry was really lucky—which he clearly wasn’t in light of his predicament—he might look upon leaving his son to deal with all of this as the ultimate good luck: The firebomb that destroyed his office had, as Michael had told him, insurance windfall written all over it. Plus, the guy was a notary and notaries were responsible people, right? Sam thought if you couldn’t depend on a notary, the very people put on this earth by God to make sure things got . . . notarized . . . well, who could you depend on? Not just everyone gets to use a fancy seal every day.

  So Sam drove back over to Henry’s burnt-out husk of a business to do some poking around. When he’d been there earlier in the afternoon, all he saw was fire trucks and hoses and gawking neighborhood onlookers, all of which was to be expected. It wasn’t every day that an entire side of an office park was bombed. A little slice of Fallujah right in the middle of lovely Miami.

  Now, however, the street was packed with late-model American sedans: Chryslers. Oldsmobiles. Mercurys. Sam even spied a couple Chevrolets, not an occurrence one usually witnessed in nature. This meant one of two things: insurance companies or federal employees. Homeland Security usually rolled up in SUVs, but lower-level CIA and FBI operatives typically got assigned Impalas and the like. If they were lucky, maybe they got a Chrysler Sebring with a moon roof. Not even spies got Aston Martins.

  Judging by the clusters of men drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups, Sam decided that most of the assembled were insurance adjustors. In Sam’s experience, if something big was destroyed in some dramatic fashion, it was only a matter of time before the insurance companies showed up and began to set up their own coffee station. It was good public relations, Sam supposed, and made for good photo opportunities: “The Men of State Farm Pause with a Warm Cup of State Farm Coffee While Inspecting the Total Destruction of Hurricane Katrina.” Plus, insurance guys preferred short-sleeved shirts with ties, whereas government types tended toward blue suits and Sam counted at least a dozen men with excessively pale forearms poking out of lightly starched white shirts. It was as if they all shopped at the same Marshalls.

  Sam pulled up to one of the clusters and rolled down his window.

  “Pardon me, boys,” he said, “but I’m looking for the agent in charge.”

  The cluster looked at one another in confusion. It was very strange. It was as if once they all got together they couldn’t manage a single thought or action on their own. Maybe that’s what being in the caution business did to you. Finally, one of the men—the only one wearing a Windbreaker, Sam noted—stepped forward. “I guess that would be me,” he said.

  “No,” Sam said. “Federal agent.”

  “Oh, I don’t think anyone like that is here,” Windbreaker said. “We’ve been working the scene here for the last couple of hours and it’s just been fire and police.”

  “Dammit,” Sam said.

  This was perfect. He made an exaggerated motion of slamming his car into PARK, even letting it roll a couple of inches in NEUTRAL first, so that the car made a noticeable lurch. He thought about jumping out of the open car window, but decided that might be a touch over the top for the situation and he also wasn’t entirely sure he could get through the window in light of the three-beer lunch he’d had. He fished around in his center console, found the perfect sunglasses among the half dozen pairs he kept there—mirrored aviators—and put them on before he opened his car door and bounded out onto the pavement like he was leading a charge up an enemy beach. Patton could have used mirrored aviators. “All right, all right,” Sam said. “Then I need some answers and I need them fast. Which one of you candy asses was first on the scene?”

  Windbreaker took a noticeable step back into the crowd. A born leader knows to let someone else take the fall. It’s what made Nixon so good for so long. And really helped Dick Cheney out. Surrounding yourself with idiots also helped.

  “That would be me,” one of the nebulous short-sleeve men said.

  “What’s your name, son?” Sam said. The man looked to be about Sam’s age, but Sam always thought calling people “son” immediately gave the air of imperial authority and opened the door for spankings if need be.

  “Peter,” he said.

  Sam took a pen out of his pocket and wrote the name PETER on the back of his hand. Every man Sam had ever met who was willing to take notes on his flesh was a man who meant business. “Peter what?”

  “Handel,” he said. “Like the composer.” Peter had a mop of gray-flecked brown hair and a goatee that was about twenty years too late for his face. Sam thought he sort of looked like Ringo Starr if Ringo Starr had thrown it all away for an exciting career in the insurance field. Sam did admire a guy who had an interesting enough—or, depending upon how one looked at it, boring enough—name that he needed to tell you someone else who had it. Sam wrote HANDEL on his palm.

  “Well, Peter Handel, I’m Chuck Finley and I’m like nothing you’ve ever seen,” Sam said. “Give me the stats.”

  “Uh,” Peter said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I know what you’re looking for.”

  “Peter Handel, let me compose something for you, okay, son? This is the tenth bombing I’ve seen like this in the last month. Des Moines. Five dead.
Cupertino. Three dead. Lake Charles. No human deaths, just two very crispy Dobermans. You seeing where this is headed, son?”

  “I’m sorry,” Peter said again, “but where did you say you were from?”

  Used to be people in the insurance business respected authority but now that they were the authority half the time, well, they were getting a bit on the cocky side. Sam preferred the old world where you could go to whatever doctor you wanted, any repair shop you wanted, and they’d both take a bullet out of your backside without a question. Now, it was all guys like Peter Handel. Mr. Question Man. Sam gave an exasperated sigh that was meant to convey all of that to Windbreaker, since clearly he was a man who would agree with Sam since not just anybody can wear a Windbreaker without irony.

  Problem was, Sam couldn’t find Windbreaker. In fact, in the short time they’d been speaking, most of the sewing circle of insurance men had stepped away. They were like stealth bombers. Sam would have to deal with Peter Handel-like-the-composer.

  “Where am I from?” Sam said. “I’m from a little town in Virginia called Langley. You heard of it? Or do I need to spell it out for you? Would it help if I called in a black helicopter?”

  “Uh, no, no, sir,” Peter said. “I’m sorry. I just—you understand, protocol is that we don’t provide confidential information to third parties, and as I wasn’t sure who you were, I . . . well, you understand, right? Sir?”

  Sam took out his pen again. “What’s your Social Security number, Handel?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your Social. Give it to me right now.” Peter rattled off nine numbers that Sam made a big show of carving into his palm. “Good. Good. Well. I’ll check you out. If you’ve got no priors, haven’t visited Pakistan in the last month, I’m sure everything will be fine. In the meantime, I need all of the information you’ve gathered here today if you value living in a free society. You value that, don’t you, Peter?”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Peter said. There was a fine sheen of sweat covering the poor guy’s face and for a moment Sam felt sorry for him. He was just doing his job and, actually, doing it according to rule. Well, Sam thought, at least now he’d have a story to tell about the time he worked with the CIA. “I need to get my clipboard from my car. Is that all right?”