Dead Anyway (32 page)

“I had no idea,” he said. “I’m retired from all that.”

“Do you think retirement conveys immunity?” I said.

“I did the best I could,” he said. “My experience was underwriting and product development. I’d never worked in distribution, much less at an agency. Mistakes might have been made. Nothing intentional. Are you in contact with current management?”

“I will be.”

“Should I be talking to my attorney?” he asked.

“That’s up to you. My clients would prefer a quiet and painless resolution. For all involved.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“We have a meeting. All the issues are put on the table. We propose a solution, you and your counter-parties discuss, modify and agree. A check gets written, and we move on with our lives. People like the insurance commissioner never have to get involved.”

“I still don’t know what I’m being accused of,” he said.

“Do you think I’d be talking to you if there was nothing to discuss?”

“You’re a fixer,” he said. “I’ve heard about you people. I think you’re loathsome.”

I was surprised on two counts. That I wasn’t the only one aware of these mythical characters, and that a man of Bruce Finger’s stature believed in the myth.

“More loathsome than a trusted advisor who mismanages what he’s been entrusted with?”

“What do you propose?” he asked, in the exhausted voice of a person falling reluctantly into bitter old age.

“A meeting,” I said. “Here’s who you need to call.”

I
HARDLY
had a chance to catch my breath when a call came in on the cell number I’d given Jenkins. They were ready to make a transaction.

“Half a mil of merchandise, made up of the following,” he said, then read off a shopping list composed of fifty percent gold and the rest an assortment of exotics.

We arranged a meet for that night in the parking lot behind an abandoned warehouse in an old industrial park in the North End of Hartford.

As soon as I got off the phone, I tore Little Boy away from ESPN and had him pick one of his guys to head over to the warehouse, with luck, ahead of the other party. It was four hours before the meet, plenty of time for a capable stakeout man to dig in.

The rest of us bent to the task of loading the goods into Little Boy’s minivan. Luckily, I had the quantities to cover the order. I’d have to replenish after the next round. I’d sent a partial payment to CMT&M to stay out of arrears, gaining some breathing space. No reason to start stealing until I had to.

After we loaded the van, Little Boy sent another advance man to relieve the first. There was no way to know for sure, but the first guy was fairly certain no one from the other side was skulking about. The warehouse was in a bland industrial park, but well apart from the other buildings, none of which he thought would make for a decent sniper’s nest. That opinion held some authority, given the Bosniaks’ painful familiarity with snipers.

We spent the remaining time hanging around the TV room, the Bosniaks smoking cigarettes and me writing myself notes in the little soft notebook I kept in my back pocket. It was a habit I started in the early days of my recovery, when my memory was re-learning how to function and my imagination was running well ahead of my organizational abilities.

At that moment, it really served no greater purpose than keeping my mind calm and my doubts and fears—always looking for opportunities to assert themselves—at bay. Checklists and to-do lists had that effect on me. They ordered the world, and expressed an implied state of optimism. Why bother making a checklist if you didn’t think any of the items would ever be checked off?

Finally, the moment came for us to leave. I drove with Little Boy in his minivan and the others followed in the Outback, causing transitory damage with their cigarette smoke, though I was hardly in a position to complain.

When we got to the parking lot, Jenkins was there leaning against a rented box truck with sides advertising cheap moves to Hawaii, embellished by painted images of palm trees and hula skirts. Jenkins, like most of his crew, was smoking a cigarette and looking slightly bored with the whole thing.

He gave a languid wave when we pulled up alongside and dropped his cigarette to the ground, raising a tiny plume of red sparks. I climbed out of the van and Little Boy followed, keeping a few paces behind me. The other Bosniaks parked on the street and walked across the parking lot, keeping at least ten feet between them. Jenkins watched all this with a face that exuded either grudging respect or uncontainable contempt.

Little Boy walked up to Jenkins and offered a fist bump, which Jenkins accepted. Everyone else had their hands in their pockets, exhaling steam and shuffling their feet. The harsh light from the parking lot floods turning us all into backlit cutouts. Soon one or two on either side had cigarettes lit, which did nothing to illuminate the setting, though it did calm a few nerves, some by proxy.

“We got the heavy boxes,” said Little Boy to Jenkins. “You got the cash?”

Jenkins swiveled around to show us all a backpack. Then he swiveled back again.

“Even usin’ hundreds, a half million’s a lot of paper, you know?” he said.

“I need to at least take a peak,” said Little Boy, flicking on a small flashlight.

“Dig,” said Jenkins, offering up his back again.

Little Boy unzipped the backpack and peered in. A long minute later he looked at me and stuck up a thumb.

“Okay,” I said, jerking my head at Little Boy’s crew. They proceeded to open up the Outback and off-load the metals into Jenkins’ vehicle. Part way through, Little Boy reached over and grabbed a piece of Jenkins’ backpack.

“Whoa, dude, not too frisky,” said Jenkins.

“We’re delivering,” said Little Boy. “Your turn.”

Jenkins neither gave in, nor moved away. Instead, we all stood and watched the transfer of the little boxes. When the last left the Outback, Little Boy gave the backpack a gentle shake.

That was when Jenkins reached into the inside of his jacket and pulled out a silver revolver.

Little Boy dropped to the ground, and in less time than you can think a thought, had a gigantic, gold-plated automatic in both hands pointed at Jenkins’ head. One of Jenkins’ boys thought this was a good time to stick an elbow in the face of one of the Bosniaks, to which the Bosniak responded predictably, swatting away the elbow with his left arm and planting a right jab directly into the middle of the other guy’s face.

Things went downhill from there.

Jenkins was yelling, “I’m cool, I’m cool,” holding his hands in the air, the only intelligent response to the handheld cannon pointed at his forehead. Though he still held his nasty little gun. His colleagues were not so inclined, even to semi-surrender. At least two all-out fist fights were underway, each evenly paired, the fighters weighing in at around two hundred pounds apiece, experienced and incapable of giving ground, even in the face of sure defeat.

It was a strangely quiet affair. The occasional fist fall yielding barely a wet thud, most of the noise coming from the rustle and frenzy of sloppy physical contact. The grunt and growl of enraged men in mortal conflict.

Little Boy pulled a tiny revolver out of his jacket pocket and tossed it to me. He gestured toward Jenkins.

“If he move, shoot him,” he said.

I’d rarely touched a gun, but I’d watched plenty of TV. I knew how to look like I knew what I was doing.

Little Boy waded into the melee, and threw one ferocious punch into the first face that presented itself. When the guy dropped, he planted another on his own guy.

Two down.

The other combatants, instinctively turning toward this new threat, for some reason dropped their hands, allowing Little Boy to slam another fist into Jenkins’ boy, and in the recoil, crack the edge of his hand into the face of his own man. Thus in less than ten seconds, all the fighters were safely flat on the ground.

That was when Jenkins shot Little Boy.

A little late on the draw, I shot Jenkins, more or less.

“Fuck, man, tha’s just wrong,” said Jenkins, slapping a hand on his thigh, where my bullet had winged him, improbably, dropping him on his ass. He flailed his arms trying to get back on his feet, which he finally did, allowing him to level his gun at my face, though before he could pull the trigger Little Boy shot him again, this time in the middle of the body. He fell back in a heap, frantically holding the bullet wound. I soon saw why, as great waves of red blood flowed over his dark fingers.

“Motherfucker,” he said, looking down at his stomach. “I hate gettin’ shot.”

As last words go, I guess these were as good as any. He twitched a few times, then lay still.

Little Boy was sitting on the ground, gripping his gun in one hand and the fleshy part of his chest near his armpit in the other. Blood covered the front of his jacket, but he was grinning.

“Dope don’t know how to shoot, that’s for sure,” he said.

I walked over to him.

“What the hell just happened?” I asked.

“Just business. Sometimes it get a little rambunctious. Any of our boys dead? Don’t want to move too much to look.”

I looked around at the carnage.

“Not that I can tell,” I said. “Jenkins is done for sure.”

“Idiot bastard. Trying to get the drop on me. What he think, I’m a tourist?”

“How bad are you?” I asked.

“Can’t be that bad if I’m talking to you, right?” he said. He felt around the wound, pulling away a hand holding a puddle of blood. “Maybe should get this plugged up, though. You think?”

I left Little Boy and stripped the backpack off Jenkins, then walked over to the only one of Jenkins’ contingent both still alive and awake. Though not entirely sure he’d stay that way. I stuck the snub nose in his face.

“Consider the transaction complete,” I said to him. “Tell Three Sticks we’d appreciate the next engagement be free of gunfire. You could lie and say we started it, but you know we didn’t. That you get to keep the product is a matter of good faith. Do you understand me?” I asked.

He nodded, tentatively. “Do you understand me?” I repeated, wiggling the gun.

He nodded more enthusiastically.

“I understand,” he said. “Jenkins was being a dumbass.” When we were all back in the minivan I told Little Boy we had to get him to a hospital.

“Not necessary,” he said. “Our guy from Hartford already on the way. He get to your house faster than they check me through ER. Better this way. This thing nothing,” he added, nodding at his own midriff.

Then he passed out. I was tempted to take advantage of that and just drive him to the nearest hospital, but one of his boys, anticipating the impulse, told me to do what Little Boy said, the threat of noncompliance implied. So I complied.

Their doctor was a half hour away when we got there, so we kept Little Boy in the van with the engine running and the heat on. His breathing was steady and firm, and as far as we could tell, the bleeding had stopped. One of his men had Little Boy’s head cradled in his lap, and occasionally brushed back his unruly hair and said something in their native language. None of them seemed all that concerned.

When I asked about that, one said, “People with bullets in them go to sleep. It protects their strength. Anyway, God is deciding what to do,” he said with a shrug. “Why make a big fuss?”

Natsumi brought out blankets to cover Little Boy, and brought water to the men in the van and out on the grounds monitoring the entrance and periphery of the property. She also took over communication with the doctor, who supplied updates every ten minutes on his progress. Each report into the van came with a dose of optimism.

When the doctor finally got there, I was surprised to see a very young Chinese guy in an expensive parka and a duffle bag filled with pharmaceuticals, medical gear and a laptop. The Bosniaks broke away from their defensive positions around Little Boy, and the doc dropped to his knees and began to work. After helping rig brighter lights and providing a tub of warm water and various disinfectants, there wasn’t much else I could do, so I got out of the way and went up to my computer room.

Natsumi lingered behind, just in case.

T
HE FIRST
thing I did was email everyone who was at our fund-raising event, assuming Three Sticks was there somewhere among the guest list:

On behalf of the Bellefonte Gallery, I was truly surprised by your response. So unexpected. However, I hope we can re-engage even more in the not-too-distant future. There is much we can accomplish as trust builds and we get to know each other better.

Then I wrote to Shelly Gross:

Now would be a really good time to get some results from your analyses. Things are warming up around here.

Bruce Finger was next:

Set up that meeting yet? The longer we wait, the worse it gets. For you. All the same to me, I lied.

I went back downstairs and outside to check on Little Boy. An ambulance was in the driveway. Paramedics were in the van working on the Bosniak at the direction of the doctor. I stood there and waited until they had him on the gurney and into the ambulance. Before the doctor could get back in his car, I grabbed him by the shoulder. He turned and looked at me, alarmed.

“Sorry,” I said, dropping my hand. “What’s the prognosis?”

“Good,” he said. “Just a lot of blood loss. He’s on IV now. We’re fine.”

“Where are you taking him?”

The doc shook his head.

“When Mr. Boyanov regains consciousness, we’ll talk about it.”

“Okay, sure,” I said.

Then he drove away, with the ambulance, leaving us with all but one of Little Boy’s crew. Natsumi did the intelligent thing and herded everyone back into the house; and subsequently the mammoth kitchen, where she and the Costellos cooked up a small mountain of food—much of it with a hint of the Balkans—which Boyanov’s crew washed down with a steady supply of American and imported beer.

Luckily, this diplomatic mission didn’t include the two humorless sharpshooters who were still guarding the property. While spirits were still running high, I went out there, and at great risk of life, lured both of them out of their snipers’ nests. When I apprised them of the situation, both agreed to stay on until Little Boy was able to clarify their responsibilities.