George Martin - Lowball

Somebody shouted. The crane lurched back into motion, once again leaving Wally’s stomach behind. The press drew closer. There was another crack, closer this time, followed by the ping of ricochet.

The crane stopped again. Somewhere, a distant voice said, “Wally!”

He thought about that. Oh. That’s me.

“Uh, hello?” His voice sounded weird, like it was full of marbles. The magnet tugged on his jaw, making it hard to shout. “Up here.”

The tingly sensation stopped as abruptly as somebody turning off a light switch. But before he had time to think about what that meant, the ground leaped up to hit him in the face. He belly flopped on the edge of the compactor. He bounced, crashed against a car cube, and skidded to a stop with one arm wrenched under his back.

“Ouch,” he said.

It took a bit of work but eventually he managed to lever himself into a sitting position propped against one of the car cubes. The metal felt sticky, somehow, which was a little weird. The residual effects of the magnet and the goo crammed up his nose left him woozy. His eyelids made a weird clicking sound when he blinked. He was still sitting there, trying to clear his head, when Darcy walked up a few minutes later. She knelt beside him.

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so.” His voice came out slurred. It felt like his teeth were trying to jostle each other out of the way.

Darcy sat with him while his head cleared. When he could think a little better, he asked her what happened.

“They got away,” she said. “ Again. And I’m probably going to be fired.”

“Gaaagghhh-” It was hard to talk because his jaws kept repelling each other. He tried again. “Gosh, I don’t know. I’d be in a real jam if not for you. I bet the Committee could help you out.”

Darcy stood. She stared at the fence gate where they had entered the junkyard on their failed secret errand.

“You found the fight club,” said Wally.

She frowned. “I’m not so sure. We found a few folks and a van. Big deal.” She made a twirling motion with one finger in the air. “And anyway, they’re all gone now. Where the hell did they go?”

“Oh, I saw the whole thing from up there. They drove away through the magic tunnel. Have you seen my hat?”

“I think that magnet scrambled your brain. You should probably see a doctor.”

“Oh.” Well, at least he wasn’t getting smushed into a bloody cube.

She helped him to his feet. He tried not to lean on her, but she was stronger than she looked. “I think I should take you home.”

Wally said, “But my car.”

“No way. You are in no condition to operate heavy machinery. Not even yourself.”

“Oh. Okay.” They stumbled toward the outer gate. The door on the trailer hung wide open, and a pair of tire tracks had cut deep furrows in the dirt. They led straight to a wall of cars, which struck Wally as weird, though his head was too fuzzy to figure out why.

Darcy noticed the tracks, too. She stopped to study them. She stared, unblinking.

Then she said, “When you’re feeling better, I want you to tell me exactly what you saw.”

“Okay,” he said. “Do you like kids?”

She shrugged, which made him wobble. “I guess. Why?”

“Good. I think you should meet Ghost,” he said.

To most people forensic accounting sounded about as exciting and interesting as watching paint dry, but it was actually something Franny enjoyed. Back at the precinct he began by drafting a request for a warrant. He then called over to the courthouse to see who was signing warrants that day.

Turned out it was Samuelson, which was great. He was a decent enough judge, but when he wasn’t hearing cases he got blow jobs from hookers in his office. Which meant he liked to keep his office hours free of work. A stupid man might have solved the problem by refusing everything, but Samuelson wasn’t stupid, and he knew that constant denial would lead to challenges and questions, and have the opposite result of what he wanted. The judge also knew that most warrants did result in lowlifes getting hauled in, and lowlives and their overworked public defenders usually didn’t challenge how a warrant got issued. Which meant he was a good bet to sign off on this rather shaky house of cards that Franny had constructed.

As Franny walked down the hall of the courthouse, warrant tucked into a folder briefcase, he hoped that the judge wasn’t an aficionado of American Hero, and had never heard of Michael Berman. The warrant really was a fishing expedition, but like Jamal, he fully believed that Berman was in this up to his neck.

Franny had timed it so he walked into the back of Samuelson’s courtroom just as the lunch break was called. The judge’s furry caterpillar-like eyebrows drew together in a sharp frown when he saw Franny enter. Spectators, a bored city beat reporter, and the families of the victim and the accused shuffled for the big double doors. Only one person remained seated, a very tall, very leggy woman with hair a shade of red that was found nowhere in nature, black leather miniskirt, blouse with a plunging neckline, and stiletto heels. Yep, the judge was going to want to get Franny and his warrant out the door, and fast.

A sharp gesture, and Franny walked down the aisle and approached the bench. “What have you got, Detective?”

“Warrant for forensic accounting.” Franny slid the paper across the bench.

“Come in my chambers.”

Franny followed the judge through the doors behind the bench. It was a cliché of a judge’s chambers-overstuffed armchairs, bookcases filled with weighty tomes that, judging from the dust, weren’t getting touched. No reason to with every case online and available now. A sack lunch sat on the polished mahogany surface of the desk. The pungent smell of corned beef, kraut, and mustard hit his martini-abused gut, and Franny swallowed nausea.

Samuelson sat down behind his desk and flipped through the warrant. “Nice job,” he said as he scrawled his signature.

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Don’t make a habit of this.”

“No, sir.”

Franny and the leggy redhead exchanged nods as they passed in the doorway.

Back at the precinct Franny put in calls to the IRS and faxed over the warrant. Once he had access to Berman’s tax returns he would be able to bootstrap into Berman’s bank accounts, and payments from those accounts would lead him to the credit cards. “And then we’ll see what you’re made of, Mr. Berman,” Franny said to the fax machine as the final page of the warrant slid through.

“You know, it’s never a good sign when you’re talking to mechanical objects,” Beastie Bester said as he lumbered in, heading for the copy machine.

“Yeah, well, when nobody, including my partner, will talk to me I’m all I’m left with.” Franny hadn’t meant it for it to emerge quite so plaintive.

“You could have turned it down,” Beastie said gently.

“No, I couldn’t have. I have my own traditions to live up to.”

Eventually the material on Berman’s finances landed in his e-mail inbox. Franny got himself a cup of bad precinct coffee. He began to dig into Berman’s life as sketched by the producer’s finances. First Franny looked over the W-2s and W-9s. Hollywood had been very good to Mr. Berman. Next he looked at bank statements for the past six months. Money flowed into the bank account and out just as quickly. There were a lot of overdraft charges.

He went back to the tax returns. The IRS had given him five years. What Franny found were gambling losses claimed as deductions against gambling winnings. That sent him digging into the credit card statements. There were a lot of charges at casinos in Las Vegas, Cannes, Atlantic City, Monaco, and Kazakhstan. Where the murdered Joe Frank, cameraman for Michael Berman, had also traveled. Franny went back to the bank statements and found ATM withdrawals at various gambling venues. Judging from the number of withdrawals, Berman had lost a lot more than he’d won.