AHMM, January-February 2007 Read online

  Mr. Bar Harbor had brightened, thinking he'd got Leo to see reason. He had a fashionable two-day beard, and his sudden grin made individual bristles stand out. A good-looking man. A wiry man. Probably jogged a couple of miles a day, worked out at a gym, did some martial arts. A guy with a stomach you could crack walnuts on. He looked comfortable in his twilled suit, a rich blue serge with an inch of brilliantly white shirt at his wrists. Leo wondered how many tables the guy had sat at, making offers like this to guys like him. Not many, he was willing to bet. The guy was too green. Too glib. He came across like a financial advisor.

  From a secure inside pocket, the guy drew out some kind of fancy calculator, it looked like a calculator, which he switched on and set down in front of him with exaggerated care and precision.

  "Okay, Mr. Skorzeny,” he said, “we can talk numbers. You have a small operation here. Pretty much a one-man show. I'm going to guess you have a few hundred grand out on the street."

  Leo sniffed; he had close to three million.

  "Ordinarily,” Mr. Bar Harbor said, “we wouldn't concern ourselves with an operation of this size. But like I said, we're expanding.” He had picked the calculator up and moved it around delicately as he spoke. “What the brothers are trying to do is fill some gaps in their portfolio."

  Leo, having a sip of whiskey, practically swallowed wrong. Portfolio! The guy had actually said portfolio!

  "So they're buying in, up and down the coast. Large or small. Size doesn't matter. Sure, we could move in with direct competition, but then there'd be trouble. We know that. And we don't want trouble, it's bad for business. We prefer to keep things on the up-and-up so that everyone's happy, and no one gets hurt."

  He let the veiled threat hang in the air a moment.

  "Numbers,” Leo prompted.

  Mr. Bar Harbor put down his fancy calculator. He straightened his shirt cuffs.

  "I was coming to that. We'd like to suggest a figure of, say...” He tapped the tiny keys of the gadget. “Say three hundred for the bones of the business, two hundred for the goodwill, for a total of five hundred thousand dollars.” For this he needed a calculator? It was ludicrous. “We buy up what's on the street, so you're not out anything, and we take on the collection of any and all related bad debts."

  He sat there beaming.

  "That's it?” Leo said.

  "Well, yes. You get the consulting fees, if you want to go that route, you get cash back for what's on the street, and you walk away with an extra five hundred grand, nontaxable. Easy money."

  Leo put down his glass. He folded his heavy arms. “And you'll walk away, if you can walk at all, with a broken nose and your teeth in a cup. Get outta here."

  For a moment Mr. Bar Harbor seemed not to have heard him. He blinked a couple of times. He'd been crowding the table with that syrupy smirk of his, and now his grin soured. He leaned slowly back and drew in a very strained breath.

  "Mr. Skorzeny?"

  "Don't even bother,” Leo said.

  "Mr. Skorzeny, I came here in good faith. If the offer isn't rich enough, then I'm sure we can talk about it."

  "We're all finished talking. Get your sorry butt outta here."

  The guy opened his mouth, then closed it. He took the calculator in his hand. In a final attempt to make Leo see reason, he tried another left-handed threat.

  "I'll have to report this to the brothers, you know."

  "Big Toot and Little Toot. I know all about them. Tell them what they can do with their five hundred grand, and tell them next time they send someone to visit me, they better make it a real person, not a store window dummy."

  Mr. Bar Harbor went pale. Something ugly flickered in his eyes, and his manicured hands tightened. He was a formidable guy. No fat on him. A guy who could jump a fence without breathing hard. Leo, on the other hand, was short, fat, and feeling lousy, and his fence-jumping days were over. But his upper-body strength hadn't left him, and he reached out with the speed of a cobra and clamped his thick stubby fingers over Bar Harbor's hand.

  "You're not thinking of taking a shot at me, are you?” Leo said. “'Cause if you are, that would be a mistake.” He squeezed and saw the handsome face tighten. Squeezed some more and saw the sweat bead up on the unblemished brow. “If I throw you out of here,” Leo told him, “I guarantee you, you'll leave by that window. You'll be asking the Tuitte brothers to cough up the scratch for a new face, not to mention a suit."

  He gave the fist another squeeze, then let go of it, and Mr. Bar Harbor leaped back out of his chair, stumbled, and dropped the calculator. It made a harsh clatter on the worn linoleum, beside the table leg at Leo's feet.

  "My Blackberry!” Bar Harbor looked horror-struck.

  "Your what?"

  "My Blackberry."

  "You mean this thing?"

  Leo stepped on it.

  Bar Harbor made an odd sort of strangling sound. He pointed a trembling finger. “You ... You..."

  "This piece of junk?” Leo said.

  "I paid four hundred bucks for that machine!” Bar Harbor had found his voice, his rage shifting into second gear.

  "More fool you, then,” Leo told him, “I wouldn't give you a nickel for it.” He stood up, stomped on the thing a couple more times, and kicked the remains into a corner.

  Mr. Bar Harbor let out a feral snarl. His face twisted into a look of pure hatred. He brought his leg up like a kickboxer, pivoted, and lashed out at Leo with the edge of his foot. Leo saw the blow coming, grabbed the glossy black oxford in both hands, and gave it a sharp wrench to one side. At the same time, he gave a hard shove and then let go of Bar Harbor's shoe. Bar Harbor howled and lurched backward, almost ripping the phone off the wall with his arm.

  He staggered to the door, fumbled it open somehow, and staggered backward out onto the stoop.

  "You're crazy!” he yelled. “Crazy in the head!"

  Then he was gone. Leo heard a car come to life in the side lot, with an aggressive, burbling exhaust, just the sort of car you'd expect a guy like that to drive. The engine revved wildly as the guy missed a shift, and then the tires dug in, the engine roared, and a spatter of gravel raked the side of the building.

  Leo poured another whiskey and chuckled. He laughed, croaked, and wheezed until the pain in his gut made him stop.

  * * * *

  Moody finally located the place. It stood on a corner in the first block of Railway Avenue, and now that he was here he wondered if he had got his directions wrong. Under the dreary orange light of a streetlamp, it looked like a real dump. More than that, it looked totally strange. Not somewhere a normal person would choose to live, never mind a guy who raked in mittfuls of cash. It appeared it might once have been an old filling station, with the pumps hauled away and the signs taken down. It even had the big roll-up door on the front of it, there at one end.

  At a corner of the lot was a short stretch of fencing, heavy wooden posts with splinters jutting at odd angles, chain link bagging out between them. The rest of the lot was wide open to the street. A sparsely distributed spread of crushed rock, muddy potholes where the gas pumps might have been, weeds crowding in at the edges in the few places they could put down roots. The structure had a gray stucco facing. Tar paper showed through at one spot, as if a car had backed into it.

  He had expected something more imposing.

  His original idea, before talking to Blue at the Rob Roy, had been to find a shy, borrow some cash money—a few grand if he could get it—then jump a ship down there in the harbor and never look back at this part of the world. But learning from the guy that this particular shy was old and sick and alone changed everything. Since then, Moody had been rethinking things.

  A shy would have a stash on his premises. That went without saying. He needed a bundle of ready cash on hand from which he could dole out loans to customers right there on the spot. How much he would have, there was no way of knowing. But a sizable amount, Moody was certain of that.

  And where would he keep it? We
ll, that was another question. Probably a cashbox, a wall safe, or some such obvious hidey-hole. The shy would tell him.

  Easy money.

  With the plan taking on a whole new scope in his mind, Moody gave the dump one more lingering appraisal, then stepped off the sidewalk and began moving purposefully toward it.

  * * * *

  Erwin Jakes had to use the hotel phone, since his Blackberry had been smashed all to hell back there. He was fuming as he limped back and forth in his room, brought up annoyingly by the telephone curly cord everytime he took a few steps. The Tuitte brothers had him on their speakerphones, down there in Bar Harbor, which made their voices sound as if they were speaking with their hands cupped around their mouths.

  "You're telling us,” Meryll Tuitte was shouting at him, “you let that five-and-dime chiseler throw you out?"

  "I didn't exactly—"

  "You go up there to speak for us, represent us, get results, and you let him treat you like that? It should'a been easy money. What's the matter with you?"

  "Yeah, what's the matter with you?” The second voice on the line was the younger brother, Daryll—Little Toot tossing in his unwelcome two cents.

  "It wasn't like that. Not exactly.” Erwin hated to be on the defensive.

  "Well then, what was it like?” Meryll Tuitte demanded.

  "We talked. I gave him the whole spiel. I gave him your message exactly like you told me. Explained the buyout, the options, even did the math for him to make it simple."

  "Easy money."

  "That's what I told him."

  "And you let him throw you out,” Meryll said.

  "The way it happened, he got the jump on me,” Erwin explained. He knew how pathetic that sounded and added, “Besides, I didn't know how far I should go with him before I talked to you two guys about it."

  "He didn't know how far he should go,” Meryll said, this time clearly addressing the remark to his brother. The two had offices side-by-side in the Ritchie Building in downtown Bar Harbor: architects, chartered accountants, even a lawyer or two down the plush corridor. Erwin had never seen the brothers outside of their offices, had never even seen them together, or heard them talk to each other face-to-face. Meryll said, “Why don't we tell him how far he should go."

  "He should go all the way,” Daryll said. “And keep walking."

  "Keep walking,” Meryll agreed, “and not come back. He should be fired!"

  "He is fired,” said Daryll.

  "You hear that, you loser? You're fired!” Meryll said.

  They broke the connection.

  Erwin Jakes looked at the hotel phone in his hand. Lowered it slowly to his side. He raised his head and stared out the window. Before him lay the city of Halifax, all lit up in a splash of white light. Lamps glowed in the windows of nearby buildings, red and green flashers winked out on the channel buoys, and there was a radiant glow from the streets of Dartmouth against the hills on the far side of the harbor. He closed his eyes and kept them shut for several long, painful moments. He had been humiliated by that fat old slob out there, a rare experience for him. And if that wasn't bad enough, he had now been canned. A thousand dollars, he had been promised, for expenses, and a three grand bonus for getting Skorzeny to play along. He was out four hundred bucks for the Blackberry, and his right leg felt as if it had been ripped off by a lumberjack and then reconnected by a diesel mechanic.

  All that cash. He had been depending on it. And now nothing—nada!

  The phone was making an annoying beep. Erwin Jakes put the receiver in its cradle. He crossed to the luggage table, opened a small padded bag, and slid a serious-looking snub-nosed pistol out of an inner pocket into his hand. He popped the clip, inspected it, and snapped it back into place.

  However he looked at it, somebody owed him. Owed him big time, and that was a fact. He'd pay another visit to Leo Skorzeny, only this time he wouldn't be blindsided. He'd collect what had been coming to him, and while he was at it, maybe award himself a nice, big fat bonus.

  * * * *

  Leo Skorzeny was exhausted. He sat in his big, floral-patterned easy chair with the stuffing coming out of it, his face buried in his hands. He massaged his temples slowly and methodically with large, blunted fingertips. He had been sitting that way for several minutes. The TV was on, the sound down low, and from time to time he would peer blearily at it from between the spread of his fingers. An anchorwoman dressed like a Barbie doll was describing a six-car pileup on a Boston freeway. That's what life was, he thought. A succession of pileups. Big ones and little ones. They could happen at any time.

  Another thing about life, it kept on coming. You got knocked down by it, and you got up again. You did what you had to do. You kept on going.

  He shook another pill out of the plastic bottle on the table by his chair and swallowed it dry.

  Mr. Bar Harbor would be coming back. Leo had no doubts whatsoever about that. Very likely he would come tonight, with a boot in the backside from Big Toot and Little Toot. He would come for any number of reasons, but mostly because he had lost serious face today, and to guys like the Tuittes and him, face was everything.

  Leo switched off the TV. He reached for his whiskey glass. Found it empty and stopped himself from filling it again.

  He had to eat something. He knew that. He hadn't had one bite since he'd got out of bed that morning. Hadn't even thought about it till now.

  Maybe he'd wait till Bar Harbor arrived, and the two of them could order in pizza. He grinned at the wall.

  At the kitchen table, he toyed with a plate of reheated macaroni and cheese. Best deal going. One box good for two meals, and he always bought the no-name brand. He didn't force himself to eat it; he liked it. In Leo's opinion, most food was overrated. Steaks, chops, who needed them? People could say he was cheap, it didn't bother him. He denied himself nothing. He simply wasn't interested in material things, unlike that dope the Tuittes had sent around, the big business poster boy, with his suit and his calculator.

  Leo knew the value of a dollar. Apparently, no one else did nowadays.

  He forced down another mouthful of macaroni, then got up and dumped the rest in the trash. It was a waste, and he regretted that. But he had no appetite these days. He'd go in and finish what he'd been working on when Bar Harbor arrived and disrupted him, then find some sports on the TV and fall asleep in his chair.

  He left the kitchen, crossed a narrow corridor, and entered his tiny office, a room with no decoration except for a Derby's Food Mart calendar on the wall. There was an old beat-up wooden desk, a threadbare office chair, and a gray, four-door, steel filing cabinet with a shallow dent in one side. The filing cabinet was on wheels, and he gripped it by the top corners and pulled it toward him, exposing a tall, narrow door built into the wall. A security insert, the experts called it. Leo had installed this one himself.

  It had a unique and interesting feature.

  Reaching under the desk, he flipped a switch. Near the desk lamp, a tiny green indicator lit up. Only then did Leo remove a key from his pocket, fit it into the lock on the door, and give it a cautious turn.

  The door came open with a hollow click.

  As always, he felt a tingle at the back of his neck at the sound.

  The open door exposed a wall cavity ten inches wide by three feet high. In the top of the cavity a steel box was mounted, containing just under forty thousand dollars in hundreds, fifties, and twenties. But it was something below the box that made Leo's neck tingle. A sawed-off shotgun aimed right at him, fastened rigidly upright between the wall studs. A Marlin 410 lever action, with one in the breech, all ready to go. An ingenious arrangement of small pulleys guided a thin cable from the trigger to a stubby lever at the end of an electric solenoid. Open the box without first using the desk switch, the solenoid plunger jumped, and ... boom.

  You would not do that again.

  Leo next took two bundles of notes in various denominations from a drawer in the desk—cash that had come in that d
ay—and counted it. Forty-two hundred dollars. Satisfied, he removed a ledger from the kneehole drawer and spread it open on his lap. He was reaching for a pen to ink the new numbers in when there was a bang at the kitchen door.

  Leo swore, closed the ledger, and put it back in the kneehole drawer. He put the cash back into the bottom drawer and slammed both drawers shut. He closed the wall insert, locked it, and rolled the filing cabinet back into place. Lastly, he flipped the switch again, and the little green light went out.

  Who was bothering him at this hour? Mr. Bar Harbor? He would see.

  Leo trudged across the hall and through the kitchen.

  He stepped to the kitchen window and peered sideways through the grimy glass, pressing his cheek against the flaking casement to get an angle on the outside stoop.

  It wasn't Bar Harbor. It was some other guy. Some goof out there he didn't recognize. Another messenger from the Tuittes? It was certainly possible. Maybe they'd yanked their poodle boy back and put a rottweiler on him.

  To be on the safe side, Leo opened the dishwasher door—the machine had broken down years ago—lifted an upside-down, purple Tupperware bowl, and took a handgun out of the cutlery tray: a 9 x 19 Glock. He hadn't shot anybody in a long time, and didn't want to do it now, but he knew he had to be ready. You never could tell what the Tuittes might do. He worked the slider of the gun a few times, then went and stood to one side of the door.

  "Who is it?"

  "Mr. Skorzeny? I need to talk to you."

  A thin voice. Kind of wheedling.

  "Go away."

  "My name's Dan Moody. I need some money."

  Leo ran his big left hand over his hair. Jeez, how long had it been since he'd gotten a haircut? He was getting bad at remembering things like that. In his right hand, the gun slowly settled until it pointed at the bottom panel of the door.

  "Put your hands against the glass and leave them there."

  There was a narrow window beside the heavy unglazed door, and when he saw a pair of hands appear there, nothing in them, Leo dropped the Glock into one baggy pocket. Then, keeping his eye on the hands, he unlatched the door and eased it open.