The Dark Circle, page 13
Later, I placed a call to Diana Larrimore at the Maxwell Agency in Kinderhook. She answered on the second ring and seemed thrilled to hear my voice. I reminded her of the visit Deborah had made to New York City and gave her the dates for that weekend, again asking if she knew where Deborah might have gone. She said she had no idea. I asked her if she had helped to arrange any bookings for Deborah at Stoneberry.
“That would have been unethical without a contract,” she said.
”When she recovers, the sky will be the limit with that dear child. Is she doing well?”
“She’s recovering at home,” I said. “The sky is the limit.”
“Please give her my best,” she said before hanging up.
It was nearing noon when a man with a scraggly goatee came out of the casino, wearing a 1970s-style leisure suit and smoking a big cigar. He walked into my lot and began looking around for his car, getting increasingly agitated. He walked over to the nearest security kiosk and began screaming at the guard.
Frank’s Porsche came back and lay shimmering in the sun after being detailed by the service station team. The first exodus from the casino began at around three in the afternoon, with the same gamblers I had seen going in so charged with excitement, now trudging back to their cars like Lee’s survivors after Gettysburg.
At around four, Frank Bull emerged from the casino again, this time wearing a formfitting, fawn-colored bodysuit. After checking his car from stem to stern, he got in and drove off.
Stiff from sitting in one place for ten hours straight, I followed him out of the complex and onto the local highway. Ten minutes later we were on the thruway, heading west. Thankfully, he didn’t push the speed limit past eighty, and I was able to keep him in sight a quarter mile ahead.
Five exits later, he pulled off the thruway, and I followed him to the entrance of a private golf club. From outside its low brick walls, I watched him park the car, remove a set of clubs from the trunk, and walk across the lot. I got out and stretched, continuing to observe him as he stopped at the driving range, bought a couple buckets of balls, and walked to one of the club tees.
For almost an hour I watched him hit the balls with his driver and fairway woods. As powerful a guy as he was, he was no golfer. He produced mighty swings, but the drives rarely went a couple hundred yards, and they flew in every direction.
It was dinnertime, and I was out of food supplies when he returned to his Porsche, tossed the clubs in the trunk, and headed out of the entrance. I waited until he was nearly out of sight before following him again.
The day’s journey ended less than two miles later when he pulled into a tree-lined road leading into an exclusive housing development. Each house was perched on at least five acres, and the plantings were lush combinations of mature rhododendrons, azaleas, dogwood, and old ivy.
The homes were all around ten thousand square feet, although in different styles, ranging from the Kennedy compound at Hyannis Port to Mexican haciendas. I drove slowly past the house with the red Porsche parked in the driveway. Frank’s place was mostly steel and glass.
I parked in the driveway of a still unfinished house farther down the same side of the road. The construction crew had gone home, and it was starting to get dark when I walked into the woods behind it and began working my way toward Frank’s property.
At the edge of his land, I trained the binoculars toward the back of his house. From that angle, I could see an expansive terrace with a built-in barbecue pit leading to an in-ground swimming pool.
A pert woman in her thirties, in a revealing bathing suit, was putting out plates and glassware on a stone-topped picnic table. In the yard near the pool, Frank was tossing a baseball around with two boys, both of them under ten and wearing Yankees jerseys.
“Throw it here, Daddy,” one of them called out, and he caught Frank’s toss with a loud yelp of triumph.
I was wondering if I had stumbled on a rerun of Leave It to Beaver, and Frank Bull was really Ward Cleaver. I walked back through the woods to my rental car and drove back to Groton.
After fifteen hours of stakeout duty, I had at least learned Frank’s home address.
28
When I got up the next morning, I walked down to the edge of the lake with my coffee and sat by the dock, watching some grackles dive-bomb the insects hovering above the marsh grass. A solitary goose was beating its wings as it crossed the lake with a sad, honking cry.
It was time to take stock, time for the fog to clear in my brain so I could plan what to do next. The problem was I didn’t know what to do next. Lauren had hired me to find a golden girl named Deborah Chapman. Together we had done it, but by then she was no longer golden. With the brain damage, she couldn’t remember anything that had been done to her and had regressed to early childhood.
The man who had sold her to the crib in Binghamton had obviously been murdered for failing to kill her. But even though he worked at Stoneberry, there was no proof that the people there were responsible. Frank Bull was almost certainly dirty, but so was the management in half the casinos in the country. If they’d killed George, how would I go about finding out why?
And was what happened to Deborah related to the new opioid drug being circulated at rock concerts and other events across upstate New York? A lot of questions and no answers. I was out of my league.
I had two choices. I could wait for more leads and information based on the feelers we had put out, or I could shove a stick into the hornet’s nest. That led me back to Frank Bull.
I decided to keep staking him out. If he was Ward Cleaver, I’d find out. If he wasn’t, I’d find out. There seemed no point in trying to do it surreptitiously. Why not make it clear I was following him and see if I could get him to blink?
He didn’t seem to bristle at my presence the next morning. When he came out of the house to go to work, I was waiting for him in my rental car next to his mailbox. He looked over and appeared to recognize me.
I waved at him and grinned, but he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he got into the Porsche and drove at legal speed along the county roads leading to the thruway. As soon as he reached the entrance, he gunned his engine and left me behind, disappearing into the distance at about a hundred and twenty miles an hour. His car was waiting in the parking lot at Stoneberry. I parked in the same nearby lot, and no one came over to hassle me.
For the next three days, I followed him from his house to the casino, from the casino to various restaurants and then back to his house, and twice to the golf course. Together we watched his kids’ Little League games and attended one of his wife’s charity events, and I openly spied on him from the woods behind his house. I left off at midnight after the family was asleep, and was on the job at six each morning.
By then, I had to believe he knew who I was and what my role had been in finding Deborah Chapman. He and the casino security people would have an in with the cops at various levels, and he probably knew I had also tracked down George Washington before he was murdered. The unanswered question was whether he was involved.
He eluded me numerous times by turning his Porsche into a Le Mans contender, but never for more than a couple hours at a time. Nothing I saw over the course of the days was remotely suspicious.
I reported several times a day to Lauren at the Journal offices that my plan wasn’t generating any response. She alleviated my boredom by bringing me food packages from the Heights Café that were a lot more appetizing than the sandwiches I made each morning for the hamper.
When Frank Bull came out of his house at eight in the morning on the fourth day, I had pretty much decided to end the stakeout. Not only wasn’t I getting anywhere, but I hated following a pig and living in his shadow.
He went straight to the Porsche and rubbed the dew off the windshield with a chamois cloth. Then he did something I hadn’t seen before. Before getting into the car, he pointed his index finger at me, cocked his thumb, and pulled a figurative trigger.
He grinned, got in the car, and drove off. I wondered if it was a real threat. Either way, he felt invincible and wanted me to know it. Sipping my coffee, I decided to give him another day. I followed him to the casino and back to his home at about seven in the evening.
He went inside and came back out thirty minutes later with his wife. They were both dressed in formal attire, Frank in a tuxedo and his wife in a long strapless gown. Without acknowledging me, he drove off.
There seemed no point in following the two of them to another evening social event. I assumed his wife wasn’t part of his professional life. Before leaving, I checked in with Lauren, and she told me that Bob Fabbricatore had dropped off a thick envelope at her office and said it was what I was looking for. It had to be the missing persons files.
I checked the food hamper. Aside from an overripe banana, it was empty. The sun was gone, but it wasn’t dark yet when I stopped at a service area on the thruway to hit the bathroom and indulge the guilty pleasure of a Big Mac and fries.
Walking out of the service plaza, I noticed an array of wooden picnic tables and chairs sitting under mature oaks and maples at the edge of the service area. I drove over and parked.
There was no one else at the tables when I sat down and opened the paper bag. As I took my first bite of fries, an orange Pontiac GTO rolled in next to my car. Three men got out and began walking toward me. They didn’t look like tourists or travelers looking to relax in the rest area. They walked cocky and breathed cocky.
Two of the three were in their mid- to late twenties. The one in front was wearing a sleeveless yellow muscle shirt over skintight spandex pants. He was about my height, and with his blond, shoulder-length hair, he looked like an Alpine ski instructor on steroids. Thick bands of muscle pulped his shoulders, and he moved light on his feet.
The second one was tall and skinny, with a cadaverous face and a tank top over knee-length, baggy shorts. Even though the sun was gone, he was wearing sunglasses. His skin was dead white and blanketed with hair. Strapped horizontally to his side was a leather sheath holding a knife big enough to thrill Jim Bowie. He had a lot of reach in his long arms.
The third guy was closer to fifty, with small eyes and a bald head reddened by the sun. He looked like he was wearing a barrel under his sweatshirt, and the knuckles on his big fists were scarred and pulpy.
“Welcome to Planet Hollywood,” I said. “Do you have reservations?”
“We’re here to teach you a lesson and to tell you to stay out of it,” said the blond guy, stopping a few feet from my table. The eyes were unwavering and hostile.
“Stay out of what, Goldilocks?” I said.
“You know what.”
“Okay, who’s on first?” I asked.
He obviously had no idea what I was talking about. I tried to help.
“Abbott and Costello.”
He still didn’t say anything, but anger was building in his eyes. I felt my own anger building, unreasoned and raw. I imagined them taking turns with Deborah Chapman at the orgy.
“Stop fucking around,” said the skinny one. “Get it done, Eddy.
“You’re lucky we’re not here to ace you,” said Eddy. “Otherwise, you’d be floating in the Susquehanna River.”
I was ready to ignite.
“That’s the thing,” I said. “If you’re not here to ace me, then I’m free to kick your three asses back to Frank Bull.” That reached him.
“Get up, asshole.”
I took a sip of my peach iced tea.
Stepping forward, he leaned down, grabbed my jacket lapels and dragged me up off the bench. Going with him, I drove my elbow into his Adam’s apple. He let out a frog-like bleat and began gasping for air. I hit him in the stomach with a short left hook that had all of me in it. He staggered back two steps before falling to the ground.
The skinny one was already coming. In a smooth motion, he drew the Bowie knife from its leather sheath. A few feet away from me, he feinted to the left and swung the knife toward my midsection in a tight arc. I felt the tip of the blade skirt my abdomen as it swept past me.
I stepped behind him and hit him with a right hook that smashed the sunglasses into his eyes. Squealing in pain, he grabbed at his face, and I dropped him with a knee to the groin as the bald guy came toward me in a fighting crouch.
“Lesson number three?” I asked. He just grunted.
“Let me save you some pain,” I said, and pulled the .32 automatic out of my shoulder holster. He stopped short.
Goldilocks was still on his back and breathing with difficulty. I took the cell phone out of his hip pocket and smashed it with the gun butt. The skinny one was rubbing his eyes and whining that he couldn’t see. I smashed his phone, too, and picked up his knife from the ground.
“Give me your phone,” I said to the bald one.
“I don’t got one,” he said, and I believed him. He probably had a tough time finding the small keys with those sausage fingers.
“How are you getting back to Stoneberry?” I asked.
He looked in the direction of the Pontiac GTO. More importantly, he didn’t deny that the casino was where they had come from.
“I think you might have a problem,” I said.
Motioning him forward with the gun, we walked back to the car.
“Get inside,” I said, and he got into the driver’s seat, leaving the door open.
It was a beautifully restored GTO from the late 1970s. I popped the hood. In the engine compartment, there wasn’t a hint of grime or oil. It was in concours condition, completely immaculate.
“Just look at the corrosion on those spark plug wires,” I said, slashing through every one of them with the razor-sharp blade of the Bowie knife. “You definitely need a good mechanic for this piece of junk.”
The bald one sat in the driver’s side and waited. I looked back and saw the skinny guy crawling toward us like a turtle. Goldilocks was where I had left him, still trying to breathe normally.
“Here’s my lesson plan,” I said. “You tell Frank Bull that I don’t scare easy, and definitely not from losers like you. Can you remember that?”
He nodded at me dumbly. I went back to my rental car and drove out.
I felt better for hurting them, which probably wasn’t good.
29
I went online the next morning and found the contact information for the security outfit started by my old friend Billy Spellman. It was called Impregnable Private Security Services and was based in Boston. Billy was identified as the founder. I called the number, and a skeptical female voice put me on hold for five minutes. The next voice I heard was Billy’s.
“Can this be the immortal Tank Cantrell?” he said.
“The impregnable Tank Cantrell,” I came back. Billy laughed.
“Good name, huh? We’re protecting half the CEOs in the northeast. Everybody seems to think they’re a target.”
“Add me to the list, Sergeant,” I said. “I’m looking into some things that might be getting a bit too big for me.”
“Like what?”
“Murder and sex trafficking, among other good deeds, and I seem to be getting close.”
“Sounds like when we were back in Kandahar. Well, we always ask for a retainer, Captain,” he came back. “Basic protection starts at twenty-five thousand a month. That doesn’t include helicopter gunships.”
I wasn’t sure if he was serious, and the silence extended for several seconds.
“But for the guy who pulled my ass out of that burning bunker a million years ago? I’ll settle for a bottle of Jack. Hell, I’ll even share it with you.”
“I’m off the Jack right now, and I’m not sure I need anything at this point, Billy. But it’s good to know you’re there if I need you for support.”
“We’ve got people all over in different capacities and our own version of 911 if you need to call. Hold on, I’ll give you the emergency contact number and your own password to reach me personally.”
An hour later, I met Lauren at the Groton Journal offices. We sat in her uncluttered office and sampled the coffee I had brought her from the new bakery next door.
“Interesting owners,” I said. “They’re Afghan refugees.”
I told her about my other Afghan connection that morning with the call to Billy Spellman, and she seemed relieved.
“We can afford him,” she said, “whatever it costs.”
“Fortunately, we go way back and he sort of owes me a favor.”
She was wearing an ivory linen pants suit with a navy silk shirt and her Bean walking shoes, what she would probably wear to the Rotary Club to pass the pig. I could almost count the golden glints in her chestnut hair. When she leaned over, the silky heaviness of it swirled forward. She looked terrific.
“Did you speak to them in their own language?”
“I tried but they didn’t understand me. The husband then said ‘no prollem … spick you.’
“I thought they were all tea drinkers.”
“They are. This is the new coffee addition to the menu. They call it Kabulatte.”
“Delicious,” she said, laughing.
I gave her an account of what happened after I left Frank Bull’s house and headed home, leaving out the grimmer details of the confrontation with Goldilocks and his two friends at the rest stop.
She grinned and said, “I thought you were going to poke that hornet’s nest with a stick, Cantrell. You went ahead and shoved your hand in it.”
“And to what end?” I said.
“Indeed, to what end?” she said, picking up a thick brown mailing envelope and tossing it over to me. “This was dropped off by your friend Fab. Interesting guy.”
I opened the envelope and removed the stack of papers inside, about thirty pages of printouts related to all the young women between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four who had gone missing in the previous two years across upstate New York. I was surprised to see there were more than two hundred names, many of whom had been found safe and unharmed, which wouldn’t serve our purposes.
