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.”
CHAPTER XXXIV
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.