Simple Simon

Chapter Eleven Deep Water

Two taps, timid almost, sounded on Brad Folger’s door.

“Come on in.”

Leo Pedanski pushed the door inward, letting light from Folger’s secretary’s office flood into his own darkened work area. “Mr. Folger?”

A lamp at the end of a short couch came on, revealing Folger stretched out in repose, his hand coming back from the switch to a bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor. He lifted the bottle to his lips and took a short draw of the smoky brown liquid.

Leo Pedanski closed the door and took a few steps toward the assistant deputy director. “Mr. Folger, are you okay?”

Folger pulled himself into more of a sitting position against the arm of the couch and chuckled before taking another quick drink. “You ever make a mistake, Pedanski?”

“A mistake?” Pedanski said, puzzled.

“Yeah, like you do something that was wrong, and you almost get caught, and you wish to God you’d never put yourself in the situation that allowed it to happen. A mistake. You know.”

Pedanski eyed Folger carefully. An odd expression flavored his appearance, like he was afraid, but not afraid. “Sure. A mistake. I’ve made mistakes.”

Folger nodded. The bottle of Jack Daniels hung loose in his hand. A splash of the liquid dribbled out onto the carpet. “My advice, Pedanski, you fess up to them when you make them. Don’t let nobody save your ass.” The bottle came up for a long swallow this time. Folger said nothing for a moment, then pushed himself up on the couch and put the bottle aside. He sniffled and looked to Pedanski, casually, as if the normal course of events was that he should offer some drunken advice to a subordinate. “So, enough about me. What can I do for you?”

Pedanski could only manage a slack-jawed stare for a few seconds, then said, “Um, it’s, uh, Craig.”

“Dean?” Folger asked, eyes squinting in the weak light.

“Yes. Something’s up with him. I mean, we’re all screwed up by what’s going on. The schedule. KIWI. Everything. But he… I don’t know. He’s not himself. This is beating up on him worse than the rest of us, I guess.”

“Ah, well…”

“Maybe he needs a break,” Pedanski suggested.

Folger shook his head. “It’s a nice thought.”

Pedanski understood. He was asking the wrong person. The right person would have said no anyway. “Yeah. Well…” He glanced at the bottle. It was a third gone. “Well, I gotta get back downstairs and fill Vik in before I split.”

Folger looked away and nodded.

“You’re all right…right?” Pedanski checked one more time.

Brad Folger again chuckled. “I can neither confirm nor deny the truthfulness of your inquiry.”

A quizzical cock tilted Pedanski’s head. “What?”

“Nothing,” Folger said, resignation in his voice. “Just practicing.”

It was either very late or very early, depending on one’s nocturnal perspective, when Craig Dean parked his five year old Toyota pickup in a lot at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and jogged across Sixteenth Street to Rock Creek Park. He stayed north of the golf course and followed Rock Creek south, thankful for the lights of the night maintenance workers patching the remnants of winter’s wear on the greens.

He continued south, taking the foot trail past Military Road, where he turned right, lest he end up smack dab in front of the Park Police Headquarters, and followed a branch of the trail toward the horse center, stopping somewhat short of the facility, right where a crumpled beer can lay to the right of the path.

“In here,” a voice said, startling Dean when he knew he shouldn’t be. The fatigue, he told himself. It was getting to him. The hours at work, the time spent setting up this latest endeavor, and the worry.

“Where?” Dean asked the darkness among the trees.

A few branches shook. Dean stepped between the shrubs and followed a man in dark clothing deeper into the foliage. Beneath a barren tree, the Asian man turned to face Dean.

“Your contact is here.”

Dean looked around, surprised to the point of horror. “Here?!”

“Not here, you fool. Here. In the country.”

“Oh. I wrote down the information.”

The Asian man’s expression soured. He held out his hand, waiting for Dean to put the information in it. When he did, the Asian man folded it twice and ripped the paper into slender shreds.

“What…”

The Asian man grabbed Dean by the shirt, bunching the material in one fist, and shaking the remains of the paper in the other. “Never write something down! Never!”

He had a good eight inches on the Asian man, but there was no doubt in Craig Dean’s mind who would win a fight. “Sorry.”

The strips of paper became a wad in the Asian man’s hand, which he dropped in a pocket as he released his grip on Dean. “Saturday morning, ten o’clock. Here. There is a bench on the path by Miller Cabin. Your contact will be there.”

“How will I know him?”

“She will know you,” the Asian man answered with a correction. “You tell her what she wants to know then.”

Dean nodded. “Yeah. Ten. Got it.”

The Asian man gestured with a toss of his head for Dean to leave. He backed toward the path, watching as the Asian man turned and waded into the black foliage with hardly a sound.

“Fucking ninja,” Dean commented. Once on the path he walked faster than he had on the way in.

“Smile,” Georgie said from a hastily chosen position a hundred feet west of the trail, just off the foot path from the planetarium. Through the long lens of his camera, Craig Dean jogged north toward the path along Military Road. The shutter clicked softly, repeatedly, until the film ran out.

Several minutes later, Ralph approached from the south, a small bag in hand. “I stepped in horse shit.”

“Good,” Georgie said. “How close did you get?”

Ralph opened the bag and removed a cassette. “Close enough.”

The respite lasted but a single night.

Art heard it first, around two, restless mumbling now instead of the broken melody, and when he sat up in bed Anne was still out like a light. Someone should sleep, he thought to himself, and gingerly got out of bed and went to the guest room.

The light by the bed was on, and Simon sat on the edge of the mattress, covers folded haphazardly down. The red rocker had been for naught, Art was thinking when he saw something on Simon’s lap. It was a magazine, the one Simon had with him the day Anne and he coaxed him out of the basement.

Art sat next to Simon on the bed. “What are you reading?”

“Simon is reading puzzles.”

“Puzzles,” Art said softly, bending his neck to see under Simon’s mop. As he did he glanced at the page the magazine was open to, then the glance became a look, and the look a stare of near disbelief. The page, covered by a jumble of numbers and letters, was familiar. Shockingly familiar. “Can I look at that?”

A single rock forward, then the magazine slid toward Art. Simon’s head twisted away.

Art lifted the magazine, took a look at the cover to get the title, and then focused on the page in question. As he did he realized it was more than familiar; it was nearly identical to the sheet found on Mike Bell’s body. A twin, except maybe for the specific numbers and letters. The format was the same.

He handed the magazine back to Simon and asked, “Can you do this puzzle?”

Simon blinked several times, in a series of spurts, and said, “If you solve this puzzle call one-eight-zero-zero-five-five-five-one-three-nine-eight and tell the operator that you have solved puzzle ninety-nine you will then be issued a prize.”

What? Art touched the page. “This says all that?”

“The puzzle says all that.”

What the hell kind of puzzle is this? Art asked himself, wondering next if there might be a similar message on the paper recovered from Mike Bell. “Wait here, Simon. I want to show you something.”

Simon watched the big feet walk away. Art was his friend. If Art told him to wait, he would. Simon knew to listen to friends.

Back a minute later, Art leaned his briefcase against the dresser and removed a sheet of paper from the hardcopy of the ROMA file. He sat again next to Simon and laid the paper on the young man’s lap, covering one jumble of numbers and letters with another. “Is this a puzzle, Simon?”

The green eyes played over it, blinking, looking, blinking, until it made sense. Until it became words. Three words.

“Does this puzzle say something?” Art gently pressed.

Simon began to rock. His cheek stung, and he remembered heavy footsteps. And a man with red hair. A stranger.

“What does it say?” Art asked once again, putting a hand on Simon’s back.

Eyes open, and Simon saw it. Just like he had before the man with red hair hit him. “I know kiwi.”

For a few seconds the statement brushed Art, tickling his intellect, and then the connection was made. To an hour spent with Nels in the com room, to one of Bell’s past employers. A time and an entity that should mean little to him, except for their relationship to the kid sitting next to him, and what he had just said.

“Again, Simon. What does it say?”

“I know kiwi,” Simon repeated. A friend had asked him to do so.

Art straightened where he sat and rubbed Simon’s back. Scratch one hole, Art said to himself. But he knew he’d done more than fill a hole. He’d created a mountain.

The time had come to rewrite a small portion of one man’s history, and Rothchild silently thanked Bell and Marconi for making it all possible. Smiling at the computer screen, he reached forward and pressed the ENTER key.

What happened next took less than five minutes, and would have taken less time had not the completion of some changes been required for others to begin. Over phone lines and through the air, from sixty feet beneath the Headquarters-Operations Building, millions of bits of digital instructions flowed to hundreds of computers in several countries.

All of the systems resisted the unexpected intrusion, demanding proper authorization, just as they did with any communication.

It took just milliseconds for their security to be breached.

The first changes, actually creations, were in overseas banks, and here was where Rothchild believed he’d done his best work. Next came alterations to the records in U.S. banks, and then credit bureaus, and phone records, and on, and on, and on. It was all automatic, scripted in advance. All Rothchild had to do was watch the progress meter on his screen climb toward a hundred percent.

Beauty, he thought to himself.

“You nervous?” Calvin Pachetta, behind the wheel of the motionless blue Chrysler, asked the man seated to his right.

Maurice ‘Big Mo’ Tucek shook his head and lit a cigarette, his first in three years.

Calvin looked back out the windshield, toward the black Lincoln parked in front of Mama Josie’s Ristorante. “Who you figure is setting this up?”

Big Mo, a hundred pounds lighter than the last time he saw Calvin, rolled down his window a bit and spit the smoke through the crack. “Somebody with connections.”

A slow nod moved Calvin’s puggish head. “Where they got you?”

“I ain’t supposed to say.”

Another nod. “Me neither. But it’s nice. Good schools, too.” Calvin tapped thick thumbs impatiently on the steering wheel. “I’m Buddy Burns,” he said almost proudly, a smile lifting his cheeks. “What name did they give you?”

“I ain’t supposed to say,” Big Mo said once again.

“Right,” Calvin agreed. “Me neither.”

Someone about Fiorello’s size came out of Mama Josie’s, but then passed the Lincoln and continued on.

“You know, I kinda think it’s the guys who made us rat,” Calvin theorized.

“When did that truck hit you?” Big Mo asked sarcastically. “Of course it’s the feds. Who else would know where we lived, huh?”

“But why didn’t they just say so?” Calvin asked, truly at a loss.

“Look, Calvin, we sold our souls when we ratted. We are owned. They know we’ll do whatever they want ‘cause they know we’re more afraid of our old buddies than them.”

Calvin considered that, then said, “The guy threatened me. Said it would be real easy to let slip where me and Loretta and the kids are now.”

“Yeah, well, we do this and everything is right as rain,” Big Mo said, puffing deeply on his smoke. As he let it out he saw what they’d been waiting for and tossed the cigarette through the crack and into the gutter. “Here he comes.”

“He’s alone.”

“You ever remember Kermit keeping a sidekick?”

“He never needed one,” Calvin recalled, then added with some regret, “Until now.”

“You know how to get to Calumet Harbor?”

“I told you before, yeah.” Calvin started the car.

Big Mo took a gun from an envelope between his legs and screwed a silencer to the threaded muzzle. “This is nuts,” he said quietly, then louder, “Let’s fucking get this done.”

The phone on G. Nicholas Kudrow’s nightstand rang at three. He snatched it up during the first ring. He had not been able to sleep. “Yes.”

“It’s the Giraffe,” Section Chief Willis reported.

“Your people are certain?” Kudrow’s wife stirred, but a gentle hand on her hip stilled her.

“They have a tape. And pictures.”

The expectation that had kept him awake drained suddenly away. Kudrow could feel the tiredness filling the void it left. “Good. I want it tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kudrow laid the handset in its cradle and let his head sink into the soft down pillow. He was asleep in two minutes, eyes dancing in REM sleep not long after that, a smile lasting through it all.

Big Mo, feet wide against the motion of the boat, ripped the duct tape from Kermit Fiorello’s eyes first, then from his mouth. The sun was almost up, blue haze to the east, and the lights of Chicago across the water to the west. The cabin cruiser’s motor was silent after a half hour run into deep water. Calvin was vomiting over the side.

“What in the name of holy fuck is going on!” Fiorello yelled, competing with the cawing of an early flight of gulls on final to the stockyards. More duct tape held his hands and arms together behind, and his legs were similarly bound at the ankles. He sat on a padded bench at the rear of the boat. After a second to orient himself, he looked right at Big Mo. “You look like someone.”

“My hair used to be reddish,” Big Mo said. Calvin, wearing a puffy orange life preserver, finished his heaves and came aft from the pilot deck.

Fiorello squinted, studying the face, his eyes going wide after a minute. “Holy son of bitch! Mo? Big Mo? Is that fucking you?”

Big Mo smiled and confirmed it with a nod. He respectfully crossed his hands in front. One held the silenced pistol.

Fiorello winced suddenly, and rolled his neck. “Shit. My fucking head.”

“Sorry I had to bop you, Mr. Fiorello,” Calvin said.

Fiorello knew that voice without question. “I don’t fucking… Calvin? You, too.” He looked skyward in disbelief. “This boat must be sinking ‘cause the rats are on deck.”

Calvin, offended, stepped back.

“Look,” Big Mo began, “I didn’t have to take the tape off.”

“Then why did you?” Fiorello demanded defiantly. “You wanted to show me your pretty new hair?”

Big Mo glanced down, then back to Fiorello. “No, I wanted to ask you a question, and I thought it rude to do so with you not being able to see who’s doing the asking.”

“A question!” Fiorello blew a breath hard past his lips. “You bring me into the middle of… Where are we?”

“Lake Michigan,” Calvin answered.

“The middle of fucking Lake Michigan to ask me a question. Okay. Ask away.”

Big Mo crossed his arms over his chest, the pistol pointing toward Indiana. “I was wondering if you wanted me to shoot you in the head before we throw you in, or if you just wanted to drown.”

Calvin shuddered when Big Mo said ‘drown’.

Fiorello could say nothing. He looked to his feet. Not only did duct tape circle his ankles, but so did a length of yellow nylon rope, which snaked over the deck to a pair of anchors and a half dozen cinder blocks all tied together. “You’re nuts.”

Big Mo looked to Calvin. “I guess that’s a no on the shooting.”

Calvin nodded and dragged the weighty conglomeration to the side, lifted it over the deck rail, and let go.

“NO!”

The slack on the line was gone before Fiorello could finish his scream. His feet snapped away from the bench and were pulled toward the rail, dragging the rest of his pudgy frame, which stuck on the rail.

Calvin reached down and gave gravity a little help, lifting Fiorello over the edge. He screamed once more before a splash and a sucking WHOOSH drowned him out. Calvin brushed his hands against each other and looked to Big Mo.

“I kinda wanted to shoot him,” Big Mo admitted, then motioned for Calvin to take them back in.