“You get to play dress-up.”
“And do I get to indiscriminately shoot people and devastate entire city blocks?”
“Probably not,” I said.
I took out my cell and called Sam. “You get rid of Sugar?” I asked after he answered.
“Yeah. Boy, Mikey, he’s pretty torn up. He said his best quality was his car.”
“He was right,” I said.
“What did you get from the kid?”
I told Sam what I knew and what I didn’t.
“So what’s our first move?” he asked.
“Well, your first move is to find out all you can about Brent’s father, Henry Grayson, and then tomorrow, why don’t you join me to meet with Big Lumpy. I have a feeling that might be a challenging conversation.”
4
Tracking down someone who has disappeared of their own accord is never an easy process. In fact, if it was up to him, Sam Axe would prefer to look for someone who’d been abducted. Abductors tend to leave evidence, because if you’re in the business of abductions, you’re probably not very bright, or you’re acting on impulse, or you’re acting on someone else’s impulse, which means you’re strictly doing work for hire and people doing work for hire don’t always pay really close attention to detail.
Which is maybe why, Sam realized, he hadn’t exactly prepared with his usual monastic dedication when Sugar initially called him for help. He was blinded by those Dolphins tickets. Well, he wouldn’t dwell on that. Or, well, he couldn’t if he wanted to, since Sugar had admitted he didn’t really have the tickets and was hoping Sam wouldn’t really ask for payment after all.
But anyway: Someone grabs you, there’s likely going to be some spilled blood, some broken glass, maybe even a witness. You disappear yourself, you’ve got time to clean up, to plan, to leave false trails. Maybe you even kiss your kid good-bye.
Not that Sam thought Henry Grayson was smart enough to do all of that, exactly, but that he left his son to deal with these bookies just made Sam angry. What kind of father does that to a son? Thing was, if Henry was really lucky-which he clearly wasn’t in light of his predicament-he might look upon leaving his son to deal with all of this as the ultimate good luck: The firebomb that destroyed his office had, as Michael had told him, insurance windfall written all over it. Plus, the guy was a notary and notaries were responsible people, right? Sam thought if you couldn’t depend on a notary, the very people put on this earth by God to make sure things got… notarized… well, who could you depend on? Not just everyone gets to use a fancy seal every day.
So Sam drove back over to Henry’s burnt-out husk of a business to do some poking around. When he’d been there earlier in the afternoon, all he saw was fire trucks and hoses and gawking neighborhood onlookers, all of which was to be expected. It wasn’t every day that an entire side of an office park was bombed. A little slice of Fallujah right in the middle of lovely Miami.
Now, however, the street was packed with late-model American sedans: Chryslers. Oldsmobiles. Mercurys. Sam even spied a couple Chevrolets, not an occurrence one usually witnessed in nature. This meant one of two things: insurance companies or federal employees. Homeland Security usually rolled up in SUVs, but lower-level CIA and FBI operatives typically got assigned Impalas and the like. If they were lucky, maybe they got a Chrysler Sebring with a moon roof. Not even spies got Aston Martins.
Judging by the clusters of men drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups, Sam decided that most of the assembled were insurance adjustors. In Sam’s experience, if something big was destroyed in some dramatic fashion, it was only a matter of time before the insurance companies showed up and began to set up their own coffee station. It was good public relations, Sam supposed, and made for good photo opportunities: “The Men of State Farm Pause with a Warm Cup of State Farm Coffee While Inspecting the Total Destruction of Hurricane Katrina. ” Plus, insurance guys preferred short-sleeved shirts with ties, whereas government types tended toward blue suits and Sam counted at least a dozen men with excessively pale forearms poking out of lightly starched white shirts. It was as if they all shopped at the same Marshalls.
Sam pulled up to one of the clusters and rolled down his window.
“Pardon me, boys,” he said, “but I’m looking for the agent in charge.”
The cluster looked at one another in confusion. It was very strange. It was as if once they all got together they couldn’t manage a single thought or action on their own. Maybe that’s what being in the caution business did to you. Finally, one of the men-the only one wearing a Windbreaker, Sam noted-stepped forward. “I guess that would be me,” he said.
“No,” Sam said. “Federal agent.”
“Oh, I don’t think anyone like that is here,” Windbreaker said. “We’ve been working the scene here for the last couple of hours and it’s just been fire and police.”
“Dammit,” Sam said.
This was perfect. He made an exaggerated motion of slamming his car into PARK, even letting it roll a couple of inches in NEUTRAL first, so that the car made a noticeable lurch. He thought about jumping out of the open car window, but decided that might be a touch over the top for the situation and he also wasn’t entirely sure he could get through the window in light of the three-beer lunch he’d had. He fished around in his center console, found the perfect sunglasses among the half dozen pairs he kept there-mirrored aviators-and put them on before he opened his car door and bounded out onto the pavement like he was leading a charge up an enemy beach. Patton could have used mirrored aviators. “All right, all right,” Sam said. “Then I need some answers and I need them fast. Which one of you candy asses was first on the scene?”
Windbreaker took a noticeable step back into the crowd. A born leader knows to let someone else take the fall. It’s what made Nixon so good for so long. And really helped Dick Cheney out. Surrounding yourself with idiots also helped.
“That would be me,” one of the nebulous short-sleeve men said.
“What’s your name, son?” Sam said. The man looked to be about Sam’s age, but Sam always thought calling people “son” immediately gave the air of imperial authority and opened the door for spankings if need be.
“Peter,” he said.
Sam took a pen out of his pocket and wrote the name PETER on the back of his hand. Every man Sam had ever met who was willing to take notes on his flesh was a man who meant business. “Peter what?”
“Handel,” he said. “Like the composer.” Peter had a mop of gray-flecked brown hair and a goatee that was about twenty years too late for his face. Sam thought he sort of looked like Ringo Starr if Ringo Starr had thrown it all away for an exciting career in the insurance field. Sam did admire a guy who had an interesting enough-or, depending upon how one looked at it, boring enough-name that he needed to tell you someone else who had it. Sam wrote HANDEL on his palm.
“Well, Peter Handel, I’m Chuck Finley and I’m like nothing you’ve ever seen,” Sam said. “Give me the stats.”
“Uh,” Peter said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I know what you’re looking for.”
“Peter Handel, let me compose something for you, okay, son? This is the tenth bombing I’ve seen like this in the last month. Des Moines. Five dead. Cupertino. Three dead. Lake Charles. No human deaths, just two very crispy Dobermans. You seeing where this is headed, son?”
“I’m sorry,” Peter said again, “but where did you say you were from?”
Used to be people in the insurance business respected authority but now that they were the authority half the time, well, they were getting a bit on the cocky side. Sam preferred the old world where you could go to whatever doctor you wanted, any repair shop you wanted, and they’d both take a bullet out of your backside without a question. Now, it was all guys like Peter Handel. Mr. Question Man. Sam gave an exasperated sigh that was meant to convey all of that to Windbreaker, since clearly he was a man who would agree with Sam since not just anybody can wear a Windbreaker without irony.