CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Horseshoe Café had been in tiny downtown Southport for almost a hundred years and took its name from the blacksmith shop it replaced. The moment Benny stepped inside the Shoe—as locals called it—he was transported to the great dive bars of his youth—dark, cluttered, filled with random wall hangings, including, in this one, many, many horseshoes. As he paused and took a connoisseur’s deep breath, he recognized Laslo Reiner watching the door from a high-top table in one of the Shoe’s vintage Windsor swivel spindle stools. Laslo stepped off the stool to greet him and appeared to shrink. He was a squat, muscular block of a man, handsome, with thick dark hair kept short and parted on the left side of his head. He looked as if one or both of his parents were Asian. “First one’s on me,” he said, gesturing to the bar. “They got the usual suspects on draft. What’ll you have?”

“Somethin’ dark and meaty,” Benny answered, taking the empty chair.

Laslo returned with two pints of Guinness and mounted the stool, which raised him almost to eye-level with Benny, who lifted his glass. “Slainte.”

“Here’s mud in your eye,” Laslo replied as they clinked glasses.

“So you’re former law enforcement?”

“Yup,” Laslo answered. “How’d you know?”

“This bar, your seat facing the door, that toast,” Benny said, before adding with a smile, “Plus Nora told me you did your twenty with the Bureau before coming to Saugatuck.”

“Your detective skills are impressive,” Laslo said, grinning. “Out of Quantico I got sent to New York and escaped to New Haven Division five years later and stayed until retirement, which I took as soon as I hit fifty.”

“What’d you work?” Benny asked.

“New York runs everybody through the applicant squad first—doing backgrounds, as you probably know—then I got sent to a major theft squad. Was fun chasing thieves and fences. But my wife was up here in graduate school at Yale and no way she was moving into the city. I actually got a hardship transfer to New Haven. Really did save me a lot of hardship, including a divorce.”

“So what’d you work up here?”

“Public corruption, mostly. This seems like a nice little state, but we have a proud tradition of crooked state and local pols, and some bad cops. We were busy.”

“Then why’d you jump when you hit your twenty?”

“Money,” Laslo said. “Saugatuck was looking to build a real security operation for the first time and I heard through a buddy of mine that they would pay a ridiculous amount for the right guy. Put my hat in. Turned out I was the right guy—I’m still not sure why—and my friend was right about the money. Now I got a place on the water just above New Haven and a boat, so I’m a happy camper—boater, actually. And still married.”

“Sweet,” Benny said. “Hey, let me ask you a question. You ever run across a thief in New York named Daniel Albert Joseph, nickname ‘Frenchie’? Did some big jobs on the Upper East Side, including a monster heist at the Valnaghi. Also had a hard-on for Persian rugs.”

“Huh. Name actually rings a bell, but that’s about all. I do remember the Valnaghi job, though. Bunch of Old Masters taken from a place that thought it was burglarproof. We had all kinds of people on that, along with NYPD. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious is all. He became a witness for me, flipped on some really bad mob people. So how was New Haven FBI compared to New York?”

“Less arrogant, honestly. Only an hour away, but we were so small up here—I think we were the FBI’s second smallest field office, after Anchorage—that we needed to get along with the locals and the other feds. The New York office is so big it has a tendency to tell everyone to go fuck themselves—which New Yorkers like to do anyway. We played better with others up here, is the bottom line.”

“Good to hear,” Benny said, “ ’cause I’ve had my bumps with the New York office’s attitude, to be honest.”

“I heard,” Laslo said. “Hope you don’t mind; I put out some feelers. Word back was that you know your job and don’t bullshit, which may explain why you didn’t get invited to a lot of FBI Secret-Santa parties.”

“Fair enough,” Benny said, lifting his glass. After taking a long drink of Guinness, he set the glass down and changed the subject.

“Okay, lemme level with you. I’m worried somebody is settin’ Nora up to take the fall on Helen and I’m gonna try to figure out who that is and stop it. I need to know where you are on the whole thing, whether you’ll help. Normally—and I’m sure you’re the same—I take my time to get a fix on whether someone is a standup guy. I don’t have that time here. So where are you?”

Laslo didn’t answer right away. He lifted his own glass, took a drink, then set it down and looked at Benny. “I thought very highly of Helen. I feel the same about Nora. No way she did this. That’s the easy part.”

As Laslo paused to take another drink, Benny said, “Good to hear.”

“Yeah,” Laslo sighed, “but the answer to your ‘where are you?’ is harder. Saugatuck, our little bastion of truth and transparency, is a dangerous place. Old man Jepson is strange in all kinds of ways, but he’s a good guy, and straight as an arrow. He really believes all the stuff he preaches. His problem is he thinks everybody else believes it. Now don’t get me wrong—the young people eat it up and live it, wearing my ass out with their endless pursuit of truth and whatever. But they’re good kids, in the main. The people at the MC level? Not a single one of them believes it the way Jepson does, including his own children. But they’re also a complicated bunch, different mixtures of good and bad, like all people. I trust—well, trusted—Helen. I trust Nora. I trust Rob Arslan, the guy in the wheelchair. The rest, I can’t say I trust any of them in that way and some of them I wouldn’t let behind me, if you take my meaning.”

Benny nodded. “I do. And I appreciate you being straight with me. I promise you the same.”

Laslo exhaled. “Honestly, with what I just said, you’re already holding the keys to my boat. Jepson ever found out I talked to you this way, I’m done. I wanted to meet here because Saugatuck people never come here; too blue collar.”

Laslo paused and Benny let the silence be, staring into his glass, waiting. C’mon bud. Do the right thing.

Finally Laslo spoke. “But for Nora, for Helen, and ’cause of what I’ve heard about you, I’ll help you the best I can. I can’t promise I’ll light myself on fire in front of the MC for you, but I’ll help.”

Benny lifted his nearly empty glass and tapped the bottom edge against Laslo’s. “Appreciate it. And I won’t burn you. You have my word.”

Laslo pulled his lips into a tight smile. “Counting on it. Okay, so what do you need?”

“First,” Benny said, “more Guinness, which I’m takin’ care of. And you good with wings?”

They were settled with the next round and a plate of spicy chicken wings. Benny wiped his mouth. “So what’s it like working security stuff inside Saugatuck?”

“I think most of it is what you would deal with at any company. Thefts, fraud, harassment, that kind of stuff. The big difference here is that the culture is my partner, in a way. What I mean is that, whenever I do an internal investigation—trying to find out who stole supplies or some shit like that, or who might be talking about company stuff in places they shouldn’t be—the whole truth and transparency thing is a major advantage. First of all, they’re used to being taped, so I get to record my interviews if I want. And I’ve also got tapes of nearly all their meetings and phone calls, and cameras everywhere, which makes it easier to make a case.”

Laslo took a bite and washed it down before continuing. “But the best thing is that people here don’t lie, or most of them don’t, for a couple reasons. They know that if they bullshit me—even a little bit—their ass is out the door. And on top of that, most of them really believe it’s a major betrayal of the culture to lie. It runs through their veins.”

“Amazing,” Benny said.

“So, for people who do what we do? Pretty great. Imagine how many more cases would be made on the outside if the real world worked that way.”

Benny laughed. “Don’t know how I would handle it if everybody I interviewed didn’t lie at least a little.”

Laslo ate another wing before continuing. “I think we could work this thing for Nora together, if we do it right.”

“Whataya thinkin’?” Benny asked through a full mouth.

“I mean we partner on this, but on the down-low. When you have to speak to someone at the company, I set it up, and be there when you do it. I got enough background on the place and the people that I think I can be useful to you, and to Nora. ’Course we need David Jepson’s blessing to do it, but I think if he sees it as a search for truth, he’ll be up for it.”

He took a drink before adding, “Although I gotta be the good cop. I can’t be breaking balls if I’m going to keep riding this sweet gig.”

Benny laughed. “I hear ya, I hear ya. No worries. I got the bad cop thing covered, don’t you worry. Let me pitch my legal team on the idea.”

Laslo grinned tightly. “And I suppose we should get the height jokes out of the way at the start.”

Benny kept a poker face. “Don’t know what you mean.”

Now Laslo smiled widely. “You fucker. You know exactly what I mean. You’re a giant. I’m”—he swept one hand up and down his torso—“less so.”

Benny couldn’t hide his smile any longer. “Hey, worked in all those movies for Kevin Hart and The Rock.”

Laslo chortled. “Yeah, keep that in your pocket, big man. Last I checked, neither of us resembles either of those guys and nothin’ but problems lie down the comparison road.”

Benny began to speak, but Laslo help up a finger to silence him. “Nope, nope, don’t. I know the next words out of your mouth are gonna be some Jackie Chan shit and I’m gonna have to go to HR. Let’s just agree you aren’t Chris Tucker or The Rock and no sense ruining this partnership at the jump. You be Benny. I’ll be Laslo.”

“Got it,” Benny laughed, “but the Rush Hour movies were pretty great, am I right?”

“No comment,” Laslo said, stepping down off the stool. “Thanks for the wings.”