Tod Goldberg - The Bad Beat

“No.”

“Why did you think you could handle these guys?”

“Man, I got five bullets in me,” Sugar said. He stood up and pounded on his chest. “I’m hard to kill. You think I was scared of some guys who play fantasy football?”

“Six,” I said.

“Six?”

“Bullets,” I said. “I shot you once, too.”

“See? I survived Michael Westen, boy.”

“Sugar,” I said, “those guys who showed up today were not just guys who run a book for giggles. They would have killed you. And if your friend is smart, he and his father will go to the police. This is not any kind of ‘game’ he wants to be involved in.”

“That’s the thing,” Sugar said. “His dad boned out, like I said. Brent doesn’t know where he is, but these guys want their money. I thought I could explain to them, businessman to businessman, that Brent didn’t have nothing to do with his daddy’s debt. But I guess they weren’t gonna hear that, if I get you right.”

“You get me right,” I said.

Sugar thought for a moment. “You said they surrounded my car?”

“I’m sure it was just a coincidence,” I said. “It was the only car in the lot.”

“You think I could be in danger?”

“No more than usual, Sugar,” I said. “You are hard to kill, after all.”

“And now I can’t get my boy on the phone,” Sugar said. “You think maybe they got to him?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Do they know where he lives?”

“They might have hit his dad’s house,” Sugar said. “But Brent lives in a secure facility, you could say.”

“He’s in prison?”

“Naw,” Sugar said. “The dorms.”

“In English,” I said again.

“That was English. Homey lives on campus at the U. You can’t get into the dorms without, like, CIA clearance.”

My cell rang then. It was Sam. “What do you have?” I said.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Sam said.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Those Denalis aren’t registered to members of the Russian Mafia.”

“No,” Sam said, “that’s exactly who they’re registered to. All three come up as being owned by a guy named Yuri Drubich. He’s a Ukrainian businessman. Ex-KGB. Now works in the import and export business.”

“Heroin?”

“Technology,” Sam said. “He’s legit in America, or at least his shell company is. They move technology from America into Russia and the former Soviet states. Microprocessors. Cell phone tech. Russians are about three years behind on most of this stuff, so he’s bringing in the latest tech and probably selling it at a ten thousand percent markup.”

“Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just move it out of China?” I said.

“Probably,” Sam said, “but then you gotta deal with the Chinese Mafia, too. In America, he’s just buying from geeks. Not quite as dangerous. He’s probably also moving product to Iraq, Libya, wherever.”

“What does he import?”

“Women, arms, whatever makes money,” Sam said.

This didn’t make sense. I told Sam what Sugar had told me about his friend Ben’s problems. It just didn’t line up. Yuri Drubich wasn’t in the numbers business, that was certain. It was too small fry for a guy like him. If they were hitting him, it was for something much larger.

“What does a guy like Drubich need with a notary?” I said.

“Maybe he had a legit business reason. Every couple years, don’t you need something notarized?”

“Sure,” I said, “but I rarely bring ten armed men with me.”

“Man probably can’t be too careful,” Sam said.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Drive back by the office park and see what kind of damage they did.” I looked over at Sugar. He was back at the window, staring pensively outside. “And check on Sugar’s car.”

“Where are you going to be?” Sam said.

“I’m going to go meet our client,” I said.

When attempting to infiltrate a secure government facility, you have to assume that smart people have created the devices meant to keep you out. These smart people are usually a lot like you. They’ve been trained by the best minds the government has access to. They’ve been given state-of-the-art machinery to play with. If given the choice between spending one dollar and one billion dollars, the smart people will spend the one billion dollars. They will overprepare. They will train for the one day they get to fight you.

If these people are exceptionally smart, they will arm the most vital entry point with the world’s best tactical weapon: a person with a clipboard. If you have a clipboard, you don’t need a gun. You don’t need to know five different martial arts. All you need is the ability to look down at your clipboard, examine the names on it, and say a single word: no. “No” is a difficult word to get beyond, even for a spy, since it is both an answer and a threat. No, it says, you are not allowed in. But it also says, No, you are not allowed in and if you attempt to get in, proper authorities will be called, since this clipboard tells me that’s the next step. When you don’t have a gun, the authority you possess is the conviction of your beliefs.

So when I saw two twentysomething University of Miami students-a young woman and a young man, each with a clipboard, and each with so many Greek letters on their clothing you’d think they were guarding the Parthenon-sitting behind a small desk in front of the doors to one of the two Hecht Residential College towers, a Soviet-looking dorm complex consisting of two 12-story towers (except that the Soviets were never big on adorning their buildings’ green space with lush palm trees, deer grass and well-maintained topiary), I knew I had my work cut out for me if I wanted to go up to see Sugar’s friend Brent Grayson.

They were the first line of defense, but the building also looked to have a key-card system in place and it was surrounded by security cameras. This was good. If anyone came here with the intent to hurt Brent, it would be easy to identify them and it would also be at least somewhat difficult for them to get inside to do the hurting.

“Try calling your friend again,” I said to Sugar. We were only twenty yards or so from the tower and I could see that the sentries were doing their job fairly well, steadily turning away visitors at a nice clip. They both looked awfully perky. It’s hard to deal with perky people. They don’t take offense as easily as muscle-bound bouncer types do, which means there’s less opportunity to punch them in the mouth or break their wrists.

Sugar pulled out his phone and dialed, but after about a minute he clicked it off. “Still nothing, bro,” he said. “What if he’s on a dirt nap?”

“It’s unlikely,” I said. “He’s not worth anything dead to the bookies. And I can’t imagine the Russian Mob would need to kill him for any reason, can you?”

“Man, people kill one another every day for no reason, you know?”

I guess I did. “Okay,” I said. “Just follow my moves here and don’t say a word, all right?”

“Cool,” Sugar said.

“I mean it. Don’t speak.”

“I get it. Silent and deadly.”

“No,” I said, “just silent.”

We walked up to the desk and waited patiently behind a kid named Zach while he tried to convince both the young man and the young woman that he needed to get up to the computer lab, even though he didn’t live in the building. He had a skateboard under one arm and with his other free hand he kept nervously pulling at his long goatee.

“Zach,” the woman said, “if I let you in, I could lose my job. So it’s not about doing you a favor. I need the priority registration if I’m going to graduate on time.”

“I totally appreciate that,” Zach said, “but I’d just run up and run right back down. If she’s up there, cool. If she’s not, I know she’s lying to me. And that’s not cool. I should know that, don’t you think? Ben?”