Across the street from the BP Station was a low square cinder-block building painted bright yellow. The facing wall of the building announced on the side that it was the State Street Grill and that it was open twenty-four hours a day. A list of items offered inside were painted on the side of the bricks:
T-BONE & EGGS $9.95
JERK CHICKEN WINGS
BBQ RIBS
BREAKFAST SERVED ALL DAY
The neighborhood just seemed right for what he was after. It was old, dark (except for the BP station), run-down, urban. The buildings weren’t packed together tightly so there were plenty of places to gather, hide, or run. It would be hard to pin someone down here because of all the exits, and it would take someone in a car less than a minute to shoot down the off-ramp and join the stream of traffic going north toward the shining city center.
He was looking out at the street and the grill when he saw a flash of movement in his rearview mirror. They were coming up behind him on both sides of the car.
The passenger window suddenly filled with a pair of dull white eyes in a black round face. He said, “What-choo-doin?” as if it were a single word. Nate guessed he was fourteen or fifteen years old, maybe younger. A scout. He had close-cropped hair and big cheeks and a mouth that showed no expression. He was wearing big clothes under a down coat that was so enormous it reminded Nate of a frontier buffalo robe.
From inches away, at the driver’s window, a girl said, “What-choo-lookin-for, mister man?”
Nate looked from one to the other. They’d approached his car in a rehearsed, cautious way—like cops. The girl was lighter-skinned, hair pulled back with beads in it, not unattractive despite her put-on street scowl.
“Wha-choo-doin here?” the boy asked, high-pitched, as if astonished by Nate’s naïveté.
“I like that,” Nate said to the girl. “Mister man.”
“What about it?”
“I’m hoping you can help me,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I’m looking for some protection. I was hoping you could steer me in the right direction.”
“Pro-tection?” the boy said, still shrill and high-pitched and mocking. “Like rubbers? They inside.” He thumbed over his shoulder toward the outside wall of the BP station. He laughed at his own joke and looked over at the girl, hoping she would laugh, too.
“You know what I mean,” Nate said.
“Are you po-lice?” the girl asked. “You gotta tell me if you are. You look like po-lice.” She said it poh-lease.
“No,” he said.
“You lyin’,” she said. “You a lyin’ motherfucker, mister man.”
Nate sighed. “Such language. Look, I need to buy a gun. If you two can’t help me out, I’ll find someone who can. I’ve got cash and I’m starting to lose my sunny outlook on life.” He thought briefly of shooting his arms out and grabbing both of them by the ear and pulling them inside to make his point. He’d done worse.
The girl looked him over, her face as hostile as she could make it. He felt sorry for her, because her eyes told him she wasn’t lost yet but was working on it. She said, “Wait here a minute,” and was gone.
The boy shook his head at him, condescending, and started to say something and Nate gritted his teeth and whispered, “Don’t.”
The word struck home and the boy was gone.
Ten minutes later, Nate Romanowski steered his rental down the State Street off-ramp. The gangbanger the two had sent over had a thing for nines like most gangbangers, plenty of used pieces in stock, but Nate bought the only revolver he had: a five-shot .44 stainless steel double-action Taurus Bulldog with a two-and-a-half-inch barrel.
“That ’un ’ill make a big mother-fuckin’ hole,” the gangbanger cackled when Nate chose it.
“You don’t need to tell me about guns,” Nate said, and handed over eight one-hundred-dollar bills. The gangbanger threw in a half box of cartridges in the deal. Nate didn’t spend much time speculating what the missing ten bullets had been used for.
As Nate cruised toward the city on the five-lane, he thought: Simple things.
Like how simple it was to buy an unregistered handgun in a city that tried its damndest to ban them. It meant he could pick one up just about anywhere—at any time. No hassle with gun stores, hours of operations, dealers, forms, ID, or criminal record checks.
As long as he had the desire, a purpose, and a brick of one-hundred-dollar bills, he was in business.
Twenty minutes on the computer in the business center of his hotel would give him the rest of what he needed.
Instinctively, he reached over and felt the heavy steel outline of the .44 in his overnight bag. He thought of Sun Tzu.
And he thought about going hunting in the morning.
SEPTEMBER 7
For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
—HOSEA 8:7
31
Smith said, “What is it you want to know about Rope the Wind?”
As had happened many times when Joe interrogated people with a high opinion of themselves, it didn’t take long for Orin Smith to open up. He explained how he’d come to own so many companies, and how he’d acquired them. While he explained the strategy and growth of his former enterprise, Joe nodded his head in appreciation, sometimes saying, “Wow—you’re kidding?” and “What a smart idea,” which prompted Smith to tell him even more.
Orin Smith was proud of his business accomplishments, and was grateful someone finally wanted to hear about them.
Smith explained how he’d—legally—taken advantage of a Wyoming initiative to encourage business development during the last energy bust of the 1990s. The state legislature had passed laws that made it very simple and inexpensive to incorporate in the state as a limited liability company. The idea, Smith explained, was not only to encourage new enterprises to start up in Wyoming but also to get existing firms to possibly move their headquarters for the advantage of low taxes and slight regulation. He said he learned the ins and outs of the process, and for a while served as a kind of broker between those wishing to incorporate and the state government entities that processed the applications and granted LLC status.
“I placed ads in newspapers and business journals all over the world,” Smith said. “‘Incorporate your company in Wyoming: it’s cheap, easy, and hassle-free! ’ For a fee, I’d make sure my clients did their paperwork correctly and I’d even walk the applications to the secretary of state’s office on their behalf. You’d be surprised how many people out there took advantage of the new regulations.”
But after serving as a facilitator for a few years, Smith said, he began to encounter more and more competition in the field. He realized there was a new market for turnkey companies that had already been created and were “established”—at least on paper.
“Think about it,” Smith said. “Let’s say you’re an entrepreneur or you just came into some cash. What makes more sense—to put the money in a bank and declare the income so it can be taxed, or to ‘invest’ it into the ownership of a company with all the benefits a small business owner had at the time? Like expense accounts, travel, tax credits, and the like?”
Joe nodded and said, “Exactly.” He’d learned over the years in interrogations that using the word exactly seemed to encourage his subjects to keep talking.