Ogrodnik Interior 2.0c (10 page)

There was an old building on the right side of a large gravel lot. It looked like it might be a truck depot. To the left of the gravel lot was a two-story building with the white van parked in front. Frank turned into a lot on the opposite side of the street and backed his car into a spot that was bounded by a trailer van on one side and a flatbed on the other. It wasn’t ideal because his vehicle was partially exposed, but his car would stick out like a blackened eye if he parked on the empty street. On the upside, the vantage point allowed him a clear view of the van and building. There was an unobtrusive sign on the fence across the street that said, “Eastern Security.”

He texted the name of the company and the address to Rivka and Elliot and settled down into stakeout mode.

“Banik. Yilmaz here.”

“What’s up?”

“We have an issue. The son and his bitch sidekick found Kulas.”

“Damn.”

“They’re having him tailed as we speak.”

“How do you know?”

“From the second-floor window at the compound, I have a view of his vehicle. I sent the plate number to Duval. The guy’s an ex-cop named Frank Girard who does part-time duty for the son’s company. He’s a fat bastard, but he supposedly knows what he’s doing.”

The voice paused for a minute and then came back. “We need to put an end to this. I’ll call Ogrodnik.”

“Let me handle this. I’d rather not have anything to do with that freak.”

“No, it’s better this way. Just stay out of his way. Tell Kulas to take the van out to the old warehouse on the canal in Griffintown and wait there. He’ll know where it is.”

“Ogrodnik?”

“This is he,” an adolescent pitched voice responded.

“I have a job for you. It needs your immediate attention.”

“That will affect the price. Tell me about it.”

“The son found Kulas and is having him tailed."

“Is it the son, or the son’s partner, who is doing the surveilling?” Ogrodnik asked with uncharacteristic enthusiasm.

“Neither, it’s an ex-cop named Frank Girard. We need to make an example of him. Within the hour, the ex-cop will be following Kulas to the old warehouse on the canal in Griffintown. I think you know the place.”

“I do. What about the son?”

“Stay away from the son and his partner. If something happens to them, the press will make the connection with the father, and then not even Doyle will be able to contain it.”

“And Kulas? Now that he’s been found, he’s a liability.”

“Don’t worry about Kulas. I have a plan for him.”

“I’ll dispatch the cop as you require but will charge double my usual fee. And Banik, this is my last job
. T
hus, there will be no need for us to speak again. After today this phone number will no longer be active.”

“Understood.”

The impersonal monotone of Elliot’s Bluetooth voice interrupted his train of thought just as he pulled into the office parking lot.

“Hello.”

“Elliot, Sammy here.”

“Sammy? What’s up?” Sammy didn’t answer for a moment, and Elliot sensed something was amiss.

“Is something wrong?”

“I saw three suits going up to the office like you owed ’em money. I knew you weren’t there, so when I heard them stomping around, I went upstairs to see what they wanted.”

“And, what did they want?”

“They were looking for something. They must have picked the lock, and they were rifling through your files. I confronted them. They beat me up pretty good, and their leader cut off my thumb with a cleaver as a warning.”

“You OK?”

“I’ll live. I’m still at the hospital. They just sewed it back on. They think it’ll take. “

“Did you phone the police?”

“Yeah, I talked to a couple of badges about a half hour ago. They took my statement and will get back to me. They’ll want to talk to you.”

“What did the suits say?“

“They didn’t say anything. These guys were pros, Elliot. They meant business.”

“Damn, I’m sorry, Sammy. Do you need anything? Is there anything I can do?”

“Just be careful.”

“Can you describe them?”

“The leader was a bald headed prick with a toothpick hanging out of his mouth.”

“Yilmaz,” muttered Elliot.

“You knew him? There was also a guy with short hair and a moustache and a big guy with a thick neck.”

“I don’t know them, but I know of them. I’m sorry you got involved, Sammy.”

“Who are they? I got some friends who can handle themselves, if you know what I mean. Should I call ’em?”

“Stay away. These guys were probably involved in my father’s death. Let me handle them.”

Ogrodnik parked in back of an abandoned building in Griffintown next to the warehouse where Kulas had led his tail. Previous visits to this site had supplied him with a lay of the land, so his initial drive-by was used to locate the ex-cop’s stakeout spot.

He parked down the street out of sight and quickly formulated his plan. The big man reached into the backseat to get a small furry bundle that would easily be mistaken for a real dog and proceeded to walk to the canal edge, still out of sight of where he knew the tail was parked. If the intel on the tail was accurate, he would not be caught unawares. A direct approach was required.

His plan was simple. Sometimes simple was best. He would wander along the canal edge, carting his faux dog until he came into the ex-cop’s sightlines. The tail would see him coming into his view from a direction that was not the warehouse and would not be overly suspect. A good tail was always suspicious, so the big man would assume that Girard would be wary but would also be reticent to take any unwarranted action. It was easy for the big man to be mistaken for a halfwit using the usual big man bias to his advantage. Most people saw what they expected to see. Even a trained watcher would be fooled.

Ogrodnik turned away from the canal and ambled alongside an old warehouse toward Girard’s parked car without looking up. He kicked through the windblown garbage that gathered in the eddies at the base of the old building that ran toward Frank's vehicle. When the big man reached the point closest to the vehicle, he looked up feigning curiosity in the car and wandered over with a stunned look on his face and drool on his lip from a partially open mouth.

*****************************************

Frank watched while the large man picked his way along the building wall that ran toward his car. His immediate thoughts were that this was a simpleton who offered no threat, but he had enough experience to tell him that not all things can be taken at face value. He slowly pulled his gun from the holster and placed it on the passenger seat underneath a paper just in case. He kept a watchful eye on the halfwit as he slowly made his way along the wall toward his car.

When the halfwit turned off the wall and took an interest in Frank’s car, Frank intentionally ignored him thinking that if he didn’t establish eye contact, the simpleton would just go away. He did not.

A tap on the window forced Frank to look up into a massive, slack jawed face. He saw what he expected to see—drool on the lip, rheumy eyes, and a general sense of not being all there. He kept the gun out of view and lowered the window.

“Can I help you?” Frank asked with indifference.

It was then he noticed something odd about the dog. Was it asleep or dead?

The hand holding the dog shot forward, and before Frank could react, the spasm of neuron overload took him and swept him away.

Ogrodnik reached into the car, took the ex-cop's head in his hands and gave a violent twist to the right. He liked the popping sound that the vertebrae made when the bones snapped. To him, it sounded like finality.

He leaned further into the car and uncovered the gun on the passenger seat. He had no interest in the gun. A check of the inside jacket pocket found what he was looking for, the phone. A quick scan of recent activity showed him the correspondences with the son and his partner. The last text identified Kulas’s location in Griffintown and was sent to Elliot Forsman and Rivka Goldstein.

“Fate is a beautiful thing,” he mumbled as he sent a text to Goldstein alone stating that something had come up, and he needed to be relieved for a short while.

Rivka’s first pass-by showed her where Frank was parked. She parked down the street and texted Frank that she was close by and ready to take over and waited for a response. None came.

She was reluctant to phone him in case he was in the middle of a delicate situation: a situation that demanded total silence, a situation where even the buzzing of a muted cell phone might be too loud. It was time to take a walk.

She eyed his car upon approach and could clearly see his silhouette in the driver’s seat.
Could he be asleep
? she thought. Rivka threw caution to the wind and approached the car, her hand resting on her hip just above her .38. Frank certainly looked to be sleeping as she walked up to the open driver’s side window. She called his name and reached in to shake his shoulder. Rivka whipped around to meet a rustle from behind but was too late. The Taser had already found its mark, and she was taken.

She woke up with a gasp. Pain racked her body as she opened her eyes to see the leering face of an ogre not inches from her own. Waves of pain coursed through her body when she tried to reposition herself only to realize that her arms were behind her back and pinned underneath her body. The enormous beast held her in place using a knee across her thighs and a hand pushing her shoulder into the ground. She was hopelessly pinned down.

“Hello, my little star of David,” he hissed into her face. “I’m so pleased we finally got to meet face to face. It’s been much too long. “

Riv gasped as he applied more weight to her shoulder.

“As much as I’d like to stay here and play with you, my employer would rather you and your man-friend be spared. I wasn’t supposed to engage you at all, but after dispatching your fat lackey, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to say hello, in my own way.”

Ogrodnik halted for a second as a thought crossed his mind. “How rude of me. I have not properly introduced myself. You can call me Ogrodnik. Everyone else does. When my employer approached me to dispatch your corpulent comrade, I decided to take the job on the off chance we would meet, and...” said the big man as he paused for effect. “...now we have. Had I brought my torch, I’d be tempted to finish my job here and now and to hell with my spineless associate. But alas, there will be no release for me today.“

The effects of the Taser were wearing off and through the pain, Rivka wondered at the incongruity of what her senses were telling her. The man above her was a giant. The sheer size of his features was disorienting to be near. His nose, the size of a man’s fist, the gnarled teeth beneath, like yellowed piano keys crammed into an orifice. The stench of rotting meat and sour milk pouring from his mouth when he spoke sickened her. Most confusing of all was his voice. It had the same soprano pitched tone one would expect from an adolescent boy, and his speech flowed with a melodious sing-song quality that might be considered beautiful if one could discount the repulsive nature of its source. On top of that, his vocabulary would have rivaled that of any English professor, which only underscored the monstrous intelligence of the beast on top of her.

Rivka was hard as nails when she needed to be, but fear had taken hold of her this day. 

“Until we meet again, Officer Goldstein,” he said, and with that he moved his face close to Rivka’s as if to kiss her. Instead, he extended a tongue like a skin mitten and slowly licked her face from chin to forehead while an unseen hand re-applied the Taser. During the subsequent convulsion, Rivka slid down a gun barrel until the void caught her and swept her away.

The pain bit into her when she opened her eyes. Even the slightest movement sent spikes of agony up through her body and into her skull. An immense exhaustion enveloped her, so she lay still, eyes closed, letting the Taser-induced miasma disperse until she could muster enough resources to reach into her pocket and get her phone. She considered calling 911 but instead dialed Elliot.

“Riv. How goes?“

The trauma of the events was catching up to Rivka. The adrenalin that got her safely through the ordeal was now receding, and when she reached for the boost that kept her strong and thinking straight, it was no longer there. Rivka had every intention of re-telling Elliot in a straightforward and factual manner what had happened. All that came from her mouth was a hollow moan. 

She heard Elliot’s frantic discourse over the phone and in time gained enough composure to tell him where she was and, no, she was not hurt. 

By the time Elliot arrived, the emergency teams were already on site. The first thing he saw when running toward the scene was Rivka sitting in the back of the ambulance being administered to by a paramedic.

He slowed as he approached and was hesitant to interrupt the medic/patient process. When Rivka saw him, she brushed the paramedic aside, stood up stiffly and gave him a hug. Elliot knew Rivka and understood that this was not a hug of affection but an appeal for support. Whatever happened to her had shaken her to the core. Rivka put on a brave face and tried to act normally, but all Elliot saw before him was a frightened little girl. The brashness was gone, replaced by fragility that he didn’t even know existed in her. He sensed her battle to maintain composure while in their clutch, against his every want, he did not question her. He held her tight and gave her the time to get past the moment.