Ten seconds later Jergens got on. “Rogan, you
fucking asshole scumbag.”
“Good evening, Mr. Jergens,” I said. “It’s
always a pleasure to hear your voice.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Rogan.” His voice
blasted out of the speakerphone and reverberated through my office.
“Get your ass over here right away.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“Don’t mess with me. I’m warning you. Get
over here or I’ll send my boys over with an engraved invitation.
And it won’t say RSVP.”
“First I’ll have to consult Miss Manners on
the etiquette of all this.”
“You watch your step, Rogan or…”
I had him. “Or I’ll end up like Alicia and
Laura?”
His voice level dropped a couple of thousand
decibels. “Listen, I’m asking you to come and see me. I’m asking
you in a nice way, you fucking scumbag.”
“I accept your invitation. Where will I find
you?”
He gave off a grunt that was a half-laugh.
“I’ll be in the usual place. You know where it is. I think you were
here before and tied up one of my men.”
“Oh, you mean the hotel. I’ll be there in
fifteen.”
I grabbed a cab just off the ramp downstairs
and told the cabby to drive up Park. He was an Indian or a
Pakistani and the car smelled of chana batura with a hint of curry.
When we hit Forty-ninth we got stuck in some kind of motorcade and
slowed to a crawl. The cabby turned his head and motioned in the
direction of Third.
“We go up Third, Boss? Faster that way. Less
traffic.”
I waved toward Madison. “Naw, go up Madison.
It’s closer.”
He nodded vigorously three or four times.
“Your city, Boss. You know better. Not my city, you know.”
It took a half hour to get to Jergens’ hotel.
This time I walked straight through the lobby like I owned the
first mortgage on the place and headed for his private elevator.
The guy on duty saw me coming and his eyes widened in recognition.
It was the sumo wrestler, only this time he was wearing a wrinkled
light blue suit that was two sizes too small for him and looked
like it came from the bargain basement at Wal-Mart.
“Back for some more golf?” he grinned.
“Not till you improve your stroke. You’re
supposed to hit the ball, remember?”
“I kinda forgot. Your head looked so
tempting.”
I smiled at him. “Enough of this pleasant
repartee. Take me to see your master.”
“I want to see you again, fuckface. I enjoyed
beating up on you.” He opened the elevator door and motioned me
inside. He followed me into the car and stood facing me as the door
slid shut behind him. It wasn’t a big elevator and he took up
ninety-five percent of the available space. His BO expanded to fill
about ninety-nine percent of the available air.
“Ever think about going on a
quick-weight-loss diet?” I asked him.
He glared at me. “Listen, wiseguy…” he
started.
“Well at least suck up your gut and hold your
breath until we get to the penthouse. There’s no air left in here
for me to breathe.”
His blood pressure looked like it was ready
to go off the chart. His cheeks, which were ruddy to begin with,
were starting to turn the color of overripe plums. It was a good
thing we got to the top floor before his blood vessels
ruptured.
Two guys stood there blocking the view as the
door slid open. One was the second golfing buddy. I didn’t
recognize the other. He was a big guy too, but more muscular than
Mr. Sumo. His shoulders looked like the flight deck of an aircraft
carrier.
“Shakedown time, Rogan,” he said
unpleasantly.
“Pleased to meet you, Tiny. This is my
Filipino houseboy, Kato,” I said as I jerked my thumb back at Mr.
Sumo.
“Never mind the fucking jokes, Rogan,” he
said. “Assume the position.”
I sighed, stepped out of the elevator and
raised my arms over my head. My bad arm hurt when I held it up.
They patted me down and then grunted as a sign of satisfaction.
Tiny motioned to me to follow him and started down the corridor.
The golf player walked behind me. Mr. Sumo got into the elevator
and went back down.
The corridor was furnished more expensively
than most mansions. The furniture pieces were antiques in Louis XIV
style. The floor was inlaid hardwood patterns covered by Persian
carpets that were worth approximately the budget of the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It was incongruous
to see these low-life thugs in such an opulent setting. The place
could have been an exhibition gallery in the Morgan museum.
Two heavy wooden doors stood at the end of
the corridor. Above the doors were two security cameras. Tiny
pressed a buzzer. The right door opened. Tiny grabbed my arm and
pulled me into a large anteroom. It was furnished as expensively as
the corridor, but there was no daylight. The windows were covered
with thick damask drapes and behind the drapes were heavy gauge
opaque sheets of plastic blocking any outside light from filtering
in.
Three men sat in the room. Two were playing
gin and the third was the turkey I’d left tied up the last time I
was here. He was still reading the same X-Men comic book, or maybe
I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and say he was re-reading
it.
The men looked like figures in a wax museum.
They didn’t move, didn’t look up, except for my friend, who shot a
dirty look in my direction and went back to scrutinizing his
literature.
Across the room was another set of heavy
wooden doors with another set of security cameras. The golf player
came around from behind me and pressed the buzzer next to the
doors.
There was a loud click and Tiny shoved both
doors open, then pointed his finger for me to go in.
It was a big room and it looked like a
combination office and living room. It was decorated even more
elegantly than the other room. There were four medieval unicorn
tapestries covering the walls and I didn’t have to look long to
know that they were originals. The drapes, tapestries and carpets
combined to give the room a real somber air. The lighting was dim
and came mostly from a huge chandelier.
In the center of the room was a massive
darkwood antique desk. Jergens sat at the desk, leaning back, his
hands locked behind his head.
“Rogan,” he said. “Anybody ever tell you that
you have an extraordinarily large set of brass balls?”
“Standard issue in my line of work,” I told
him.
He nodded. “Come over here and sit down.”
I made myself comfortable in a wing back
chair.
He opened an intricately carved cigar box and
shoved it across the desk in my direction.
“Care for one?”
I picked up a cigar and examined it. It was
an H. Upmann.
“Only if you promise it won’t explode.”
He tossed me a well-worn Zippo. On it was the
anchor, globe and eagle. I raised my eyebrows and looked at
him.
“Fifth marines,” he said.
“The hell you say.”
“Fuckin’ A.”
I lit up, took a deep puff, and digested that
one.
Then I took another puff and said, “Why did
you kill Alicia?”
“I didn’t kill anybody.”
“She was blackmailing you.”
“Big fucking deal,” he said. “So what?”
“That’s a good reason to kill somebody.”
“Not in my book.” He stuck his jaw out, like
he was daring me to contradict him.
“You were paying her off.”
He smiled for the first time. “Yeah, her and
ten thousand other freeloaders.” He stopped and squinted at me. “I
pay people for what they can do for me.”
“Yeah. And what was that?”
His grin took on the look of one of those
evil clown masks. “She was a sexy bitch. I wanted to ream her
out.”
I took another puff and let the smoke out
slowly. The cigar was starting to taste foul. “And what
happened?”
Jergens laughed. “Exactly fucking nothing.
The bitch had principles in her own way, you know. She would fuck
me, but she wouldn’t fuck me.”
I stared back at him. “She had the goods on
you—falsified financials, fraudulent 10K’s. She was going to knock
your whole operation down like a stack of toy blocks. That’s why
you killed her—to shut her up before she could. Only you didn’t
count on one thing. She sent a duplicate set of documents to her
sister, so you had to whack her sister too.”
He looked at me for a long time, then he
said, “Rogan, you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
“What do you mean?”
He leaned across the desk, picked up the
Zippo and started toying with it. “You didn’t do your fucking
homework,” he said.
I let him continue. He fiddled with the Zippo
until it gave off a light as big as a flame thrower. Then he
stopped playing with the lighter and put it down on the dark
polished desktop.
“She didn’t have to shoot me down,” he said
finally. “I was finished before she came along.” He looked me
square in the face. “Didn’t you check the short interest in my
stock?”
“No,” I said. I was starting to get an uneasy
feeling in my liver.
“Go and scope it out. It’s been getting
bigger every month for the last few months. The word is out on the
street. Every cocksucker and his brother knows about the scam. The
only thing that kept the stock from collapsing was that there was a
small float and I kept buying back shares to squeeze the shit out
of the shorts. Only now I’m tapped out, so the stock’s gonna drop
like a rock. Then the fucking SEC’s gonna come poking around and
I’m going up the fucking river.”
He reached over and lit up a cigar. The
lighter shook as he tried to steady the flame.
“They’ll send me to Club Fed for two to
three. Then I’ll be back, bigger and badder than before.” He sucked
on the cigar and blew out a large cloud of smoke that hung in the
air over his head.
“Why did you send those two clowns to nail me
in my garage?” I said.
He shook his head. “I don’t know what the
fuck you’re talking about. I didn’t send anybody after anybody. You
were the one who came after me, remember? I didn’t even know who
you were until you started showing up in my face.”
I got up. “If you drop the soap, don’t bend
over to pick it up,” I told him.
“Thanks for the advice.”
“Always glad to help out a fellow
jarhead.”
“Semper fi,” he said as I walked out.
“Yeah,” I said. “Whatever.”
It was one of those early summer
thunderstorms that come down fast and hard and leave the city
cleaner and cooler in its wake. The only problem was that it took
ten minutes to flag down a cab. I was soaked to my skivvies as I
climbed in and headed South back to my office. When I got there, I
took off my jacket, tossed it over the back of a chair and slung my
holster over it. The suit needed to go to the cleaners anyway.
I logged onto Dow Jones online and called up
the short interest history on Jergens’ company. Sure enough, it
looked like the guy was telling the truth.
Starting back in February, there had been an
exponential increase in the short interest each reporting period.
To double check, I called a buddy who ran a hedge fund
downtown.
Without missing a beat he said, “You got it,
bucko. Company’s got a ten million share float. Out of that,
there’s four million short. There’s no way in hell Jergens can keep
it afloat. He’s going down with the ship.”
“How did you get wind of this play?”
His answer didn’t come back for a couple of
seconds. “I can’t talk about that now, bucko. I’m on a cell phone.
You know how those boys in D.C. are about this kind of thing.”
“OK. I get your drift. Catch you later.” I
hung up.
I noodled around with the figures for a
while, then turned and watched the rain sheeting on the windows as
the sky began to lighten in the distance.
Laura’s face kept coming back into my
thoughts, dark and painful. Then it finally hit me and it hurt like
hell. I’d never seen a dead woman before. I wanted to see her
again. I wanted to see her more than anything.
Never again. Never again. There was a heavy
rock sitting right on my heart.
And the rain kept on falling.
I didn’t turn around when I sensed someone in
the outer office. There wasn’t a sound. Just a sort of presence. At
first, I thought it was one of those invisible cleaning ladies in
their light blue smocks who appear after dark to clean up all the
mistakes of the day.
Then there was the hint of a squish, like a
wet shoe on the floor.
A chill went up the back of my neck. It was
like the half-second that hangs suspended in the air for what seems
like forever between the time the wire is tripped and the flare
goes off.
I dove for the deck. Before I hit it, a slug
shattered the frosted glass between the offices. I rolled over and
grabbed the Glock from the back of the chair and pumped two shots
through the hole where the glass had been.
It was enough to scare the hell out of
whoever it was. The outer door slammed and then there was
silence.
Silence except for the rain hitting the
window.
I got up and went into the other room. There
was nothing but a couple of wet footprints on the carpeting. I
poked around on my hands and knees until I found the shell casing.
It was a .38 Remington rimfire. I went back into my office and dug
the round out of the wall. The slug was a hollow-nose and it had
left a nice size hole.
Whoever the shooter was, he wasn’t very good.
He hadn’t come within a country mile of where I was sitting.
That made me feel much better.
Was this turkey just a bad shot?
Or was he trying to send me a candygram?
The Linxweiler House was a dilapidated
two-story frame structure on the Post Road in Westport, located
between a McDonald’s and a pool and patio shop. The lawn, if you
could charitably call it that, had long ago gone to weed. It looked
like whoever tended the grass had given up in despair and gone on
to take care of lawns that would actually respond to his efforts.
The grass was long and spotted with weeds and brown patches. The
house looked like it hadn’t been painted in decades. It was covered
in worn dull gray shingles that were separating from the insulation
beneath. The gutters sagged under the weight of years of
accumulated debris and neglect. It was one of those houses that
gave the impression of always having been there, at least in the
memory of those still living.