Private Investigation - A Serialized Novella
Chapter Two: Scuttlebutt
Read Chapter One.
After I was finished at the station, I went home to take the rest of my holiday. On Monday, I took a stroll down to the bank to talk to the manager. He was a short guy, mildly obese. I didn’t know him. He didn’t seem to want to talk to me, but I finally convinced him I knew it was his employer who was paying me. I let him confirm that in a face-saving way, so as not to get on his bad side. I just said it and watched his reaction and that was all I needed.
I told him he’d need to cooperate with me a little if he wanted me to get anywhere. He let me poke around, but I didn’t find anything of interest. I talked to the clerk who was robbed and a couple other employees who were there that day. They didn’t know anything. One of them said she was traumatized by having a gun stuck in her face during the robbery. She didn’t want to talk about it. I forget that that bothers people, but it seems quite natural – you’d have to be pretty screwed up to like getting a gun stuck in your face the first time it happens. But I’d forgotten it shakes people so bad – that first time. You lose that once you’ve stared down enough gun-barrels.
Another guy seemed overly scared too. He wasn’t even there that day but he said he figured it was a criminal syndicate and he didn’t want to get caught up in anything. Said he didn’t want goons with blowtorches to show up at his house. I told him that he didn’t have to say anything at all to me. Unlike the police, I don’t have to tell people they have the right to remain silent. Then again, since I’m not the police, people usually already assume that – a lot of them like to exercise that right without my ever mentioning it.
After I left the bank, I went down to the first place I always go when investigating a new case: Fredo’s. Fredo’s is a bar in the bad part of town, and it’s run by a guy who’s probably had people killed – or done it himself. He spent ten years in prison and when he got out he said he was going clean and he was done with the mob. So, he called his place “Fredo’s” as a bit of a joke.
If anything, the joke’s on us law-abiding citizens – or mostly law-abiding, as the case may be. I doubt Ricky – the guy who owns Fredo’s – ever really left the mob. Ninety percent of the guys in there on any given day have a criminal record, or they’re wanted for something. It’s become a haven of sorts – almost no-man’s-land. It’s also the best place to go to get the scuttlebutt. I’m tight with a number of the regulars, and the owner himself, which is probably part of the reason Chief Jervis doesn’t trust me. Of course, it’s a love-hate relationship. To all my friends at Fredo’s, I’m the guy on the other side. I may be a pal one day, but if they stay in their line of work, I’ll probably be their enemy some other day. But long as that day’s not today, they’re friendly with me.
Still, unlike the police, I get to pick and choose my cases. I don’t like to go after old friends, unless they did something they deserve to get slammed for. Two years ago, an old buddy of mine sold coke to a teenager. He swears he didn’t know it had a lethal dose of fentanyl laced in it, and I believe him. Still, when those kid’s parents showed up at my door, I knew I had to take him in. He came quietly actually. Said he deserved it. I still go to see him sometimes up at the maximum-security prison. He says the food’s bad there, but the gym’s pretty good – but I coulda told you that just looking at him.
The other benefit of not being the police is that I get to ignore anything that isn’t related to a case I’m working on. And my friends at Fredo’s know they can count on my cold-hearted, profit-maximizing personality to keep a secret. As long as I’m not working on anything they’re involved in, they can trust me. Besides, I pay them to tell me things, or at least I buy them drinks.
It was just before noon when I showed up at Fredo’s. Ricky looked glad to see me.
“The usual?” he asked me.
“You bet,” I said. “How’s business?”
“It’s fine.”
“Hear any good stories lately?” I asked. The traffic on the road that morning had put me in a bad mood and I didn’t feel like playing games.
“Like what?” he asked, pouring a cup of coffee and putting in the order for the sandwich.
“Ricky, I’m going to cut to the chase. I got rousted out of bed on New Year’s Day and I’m not in the mood this morning for our usual dance. I was just at the bank. You know which one. It’s about that job that just went down. Seems to me like it wasn’t locals, maybe some out-of-staters. If I had to guess, we’re talking RICO kind of stuff. The bank’s hired me but they want to maintain some aura of dignity, so they’re making Chief Jervis and his boys work with me – and they’re makin’ him tell me that I’ve been hired as an auxiliary to the police, instead of what I have been hired as, which is as a private investigator. You know I don’t like working with the cops, but they don’t like me either, so it’s mutual. Hell, the Chief probably broke a phone over having to pretend to me that he hired me.”
“You bring the cops down to my place and you’ll never eat a sandwich in here again,” Ricky said coolly.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You know me.”
“Trust but verify,” he said with a grin. Ricky was older than he looked.
“Anyway, I didn’t mean to talk that long. All I wanted to say was, ‘you got any dirt on this bank job? Know anyone who might?’”
Ricky stuck a finger in my face. “It’s only because I like you so much,” he said, “that I’m willing to help you even after you threaten to bring the cops down on me.”
“I never…”
He smiled. I shut up and smiled back. Couldn’t help myself from adding, “You’re right. Chief Jervis asks me, I’ll tell him I don’t know anything about illegal gambling going on at any classic joints in the shady part of town.”
Ricky nodded and winked. Then he got serious. “I don’t know much,” he said. “But everyone’s kinda spooked. They was definitely out-of-town guys. This is above my paygrade, though. Jose was scared. Jose. If I had to bet money, ten times outta ten I’d say they was more than just some random-ass gang.”
I nodded. The sandwich came out. “Anybody around here know anything?” I asked.
Ricky jerked his head. “Jose’s in the back,” he said. I thanked him and took my sandwich. Ricky started wiping down the bar and I noticed he was carrying. Usually, I think he kept his gun in a lockbox behind the bar. He must have been scared. I went into the back room.
They say there’s no honor among thieves. The opposite might be closer to the truth. In a low-trust society like a criminal underground, honor – or reputation, that is – is all you’ve got. The fellas that gather in the back room in Fredo’s may be the scummiest collection of dirty, rotten, no-good, ornery, crooked, rascally thieves and gangsters you’ve ever met – the kind of guys who’d kill you as soon as look at you (or rob you at least), the kind who’d think nothing of jimmying a car door open to steal the wallet out of the front seat, the kind who could rob a bank and pass a polygraph the next day saying they had an alibi – but if they gave you their word on something, man to man, you didn’t have to ask them twice.
By that definition, Jose was an honorable man among honorable men. He had a reputation for being rough – in a society of people who were generally known as being rough. He’d killed three men in a barfight after they insulted his family, and he did eight years for it. Never once gave up any of his friends, not even when the defense attorney tried to convince him to go for a plea bargain. Jose had a lot of friends, but he never ratted them out. And if a friend of his ever needed a favor – especially if it involved beating up someone who deserved beating up – Jose would be there.
Prison had been good for Jose. He’d gone in a lean man and come out a leaner man with a good forty extra pounds of muscle. He’d also come out with a few scars. Said some guys had tried to jump him a few times.
I’m not sure how he got out actually. I think he’d appealed his case and new evidence came to light that those three men had all had weapons, but Jose had been unarmed. That fact must’ve made the appellate trial turn in his favor somehow.
Anyway, Jose was drinking already when I got into the back room. That surprised me. Jose was a serious guy. He didn’t drink vodka in the morning for no reason.
After shaking a half a dozen hands and slapping a few backs, I sat down across from Jose.
“Roberto,” he said. This was his little joke.
“Joseph,” I replied. “Good to see you.”
We could say these kinds of things to each other. Any other man who called him Joseph probably would’ve been lucky to walk away with a black eye, but Jose liked me. Besides, if any other man called me Roberto, I’d probably break a glass over his head. Then again, Jose’s a big guy and I probably wouldn’t’ve done anything even if I didn’t get to call him Joseph.
He nodded. He knew why I was here. He was just going to wait to make me say it.
“How’s your brother?” I asked. His brother was finishing up a five-year sentence.
“He’s good.”
“Ready to be out?”
“Nah. He says he got used to life inside. Said it’s not so bad.”
“What do you think?”
“He’s full of shit.”
I smiled and looked around. Several of the other gentlemen in the room were watching us, some less discreetly than others. I knew all of them, though, even the short guy in the corner whose name I didn’t remember. They were alright.
“I think you know why I’m here,” I said. He nodded and I went on. “Ricky told me you might know something about the guys that just got broke out of jail after that bank job. He didn’t say why. But…” I searched around for the right turn of phrase, “he said you were concerned about it.”
Jose’s face darkened. “Yeah,” he said after a pause.
“So, what do you know?”
“Not much.”
He was going to make me ask the questions.
“They’re from out of town,” I said, which wasn’t a question, but it was a statement that implied a response.
“Yes.”
“Where from?”
“Dunno exactly.”
“Are we talking a big operation?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you give me a name?”
“No.”
“How do you know…” I began, but Jose cut me off.
“Look, man,” he said, “it ain’t one of the cartels – least not one I’ve heard of.”
This was a deceptively simple statement that said a lot. Jose acted like a big guy who wasn’t big on the brains, but he spoke twelve languages and had perfect recall for numbers. He knew the names of almost every organized criminal outfit larger than ten guys in all of North America. He’d made a lot of connections in prison and he was a well-traveled man. I never asked him what he’d traveled for and he never told me.
“It ain’t a city gang, neither. These guys are new. Think they’ve got a presence in a few states, but the only one I can say for certain is Arizona. Supposedly, they just pull bank jobs but don’t sell drugs or nothin’ else.”
“How’d you come to know about them?”
His face darkened even more and he shifted around. His eyes scanned the room again, just to make sure – even though he’d already vetted every man in the place a couple dozen times.
“They killed my cousin. He told me a bit about them before they got to him. He said they were new. Didn’t know what they were called.”
“Your cousin down in Phoenix?”
“Yeah.”
“When was this?”
“Last month.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
Jose’s cousin had been a detective in the Phoenix police department. Apparently, he knew a great deal about Jose’s criminal activity, but they had some kind of blood-relative agreement where Jose wouldn’t break a single law – not even a speed limit – in his cousin’s jurisdiction and his cousin wouldn’t pass on anything he knew to anyone in anyplace where Jose did. As far as I know, Jose’s cousin was as straight as an arrow and never dirtied his hands or did anything corrupt or profited from the connection. He just didn’t ask Jose any questions he didn’t want to know the answer to.
The two did give each other warnings whenever there was anything headed the other’s way that might be dangerous. Apparently, that’s what this exchange had been. Jose’s cousin had called him up to tell him about this new criminal syndicate – maybe that’s why they’d bumped him off, but I doubt it.
I proposed a toast to his brother’s memory and, even though it was early, we went up to the bar and raised a glass of bourbon to his memory. One glass turned into a few, but that was good because it got Jose to relax – even as it made me get more wary.
Jose told me everything he knew.
Read Chapter Three.