The Staler

Some of Roscoe’s men came to relieve me early the next morning and I headed for my house. I had just finished my shower when Moose showed up. Instead of his biker gear, he had on coveralls that looked like they were half a size too small for his bulky body. He also had a greasy cap was perched on the wild mass of his dark hair. He looked exactly like a mechanic, a huge, ominous mechanic, which was exactly how he was supposed to look.

“What’s the plan for today?” he asked. “Roscoe said what we’re doing today is pretty much your show.”

“We’re going to watch a guy for a little while,” I said, “and I want to get in position to get on him when he leaves for work, so we better get going.”

Moose frowned. “Roscoe promised me coffee,” he said. “He told me you have that gourmet stuff.”

I tossed him one of the two stainless steel vacuum bottles sitting on the kitchen counter. I made the coffee before I got in the shower. “Here,” I said. “If you want milk and sugar in it, the milk’s in the fridge and the sugar’s in that canister there.”

Moose smiled. “I never put shit in my coffee,” he said. “Spoils the taste. Come on, let’s get going.”

Moose was driving another of Roscoe’s fleet of vehicles, a brown van that had no windows in the sides. I had used the van before so I knew the back contained a fairly large quantity of surveillance devices, some assorted items for disguises, and a fairly well-equipped armory, too.

“Where are we going?” Moose asked when we were in the van. I told him and he backed out of my driveway and headed in the direction of our destination. Raymond Gleason’s apartment building.

“We want to be headed downtown so we can follow him when he comes out,” I told Moose when he pulled up in front of Gleason’s building. He made a U-turn and pulled into an empty parking space opposite the access to the building’s underground parking garage.

“What are we looking for?” Moose asked.

I reached back and took a case containing a pair of powerful binoculars off a shelf behind the van’s driver’s seat. “The guy we’re looking for normally drives a red Porcshe,” I said. “But he may have changed cars. I think I may have convinced him the Porsche is a little showy.”

“How’d you do that?” my oversized companion asked.

I explained about the fake bomb, and also mentioned the note I’d stuck on Gleason’s back.

Moose found the stories as funny as Roscoe had. “Damn, man, you got one helluva sense of humor there,” he chortled.

We settled down to wait. I scanned each car that left the building’s parking lot, but didn’t see Gleason. I checked the cabs that pulled up in front of the building, too, along with the people who walked out of the building. There were several very attractive women who lived in the same building. A few minutes after nine a dark gray Ford Taurus pulled out of the garage.

“That’s him,” I said.

Moose sat up and fired up the van’s engine.

“Stay back,” I said. “I know where he’s going, so we don’t have to do a real tight tail. I don’t want him spotting us.”

“No problem,” Moose said.

We followed Gleason to the office building where he worked. Moose drove into the garage after him, staying well back, but continuing to the same level where Gleason was parking.

“I must have spooked him,” I said when I saw that Gleason parked his car in a spot other than the one reserved for him. “That’s not his normal parking space.”

Moose pulled into a parking space across the garage from Gleason’s car and we sat there, waiting for him to get out and head for the elevators. Once he was inside the elevator and the doors closed, we got out of the van. Moose pulled a portable radio out of his pocket and spoke into it.

“Eddie’ll be up in a minute,” he said.

I opened the van’s sliding side door and got out the plastic bottle of brake fluid I’d asked Roscoe to have Moose get me. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

“I’ll put the signs on,” Moose said.

I went over to Gleason’s Taurus, looked around to make sure nobody was watching me. Then I knelt down, unscrewed the cap of the brake fluid bottle, reached under the car, and poured some brake fluid on one of the rear tires and floor. When that was done, I went around to the other side and did the same thing behind one of the front tires.

When I finished doing what I had to do with the brake fluid, I stood up and noticed that Moose had put magnetic signs saying “Universal Garage -- Radio-dispatched Road Service,” on the sides of the van. I walked back over to the van and put the empty brake fluid bottle inside. I turned around again and saw a brown Chevy Caprice approaching us. The car braked to a stop and the driver, a slim, olive-skinned man with a pencil moustache, got out and smiled at Moose and me. He was wearing a dark-blue Italian cut suit and red and white striped tie.

“Hey, Moose,” he said.

“Hey, Eddie,” Moose replied. He introduced me to the new arrival, Eddie LaGuardia, late of the NYPD vice squad, now a member of Roscoe’s crew of ex-cops.

“You know what the drill is, Eddie?” I asked.

He nodded. “Roscoe briefed me,” he said. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah, pull your car in that parking space there,” I said. “Then you can go find security and tell them what we found under this car here.”

Eddie drove the Caprice into the parking space, then he got out and headed off to find someone to report Gleason’s problem to. While he did that, I slipped into a pair of coveralls much like the ones Moose had on and rubbed a little grease on my face and hands to give myself an authentic mechanic look. We took a jack out of the back of the van, jacked up Eddie’s car, and took one of the tires off.

Eddie returned after about ten minutes, with a uniformed security man in tow. “It’s that car, over there,” he said. “The one next to mine. The Taurus.”

“You sure it’s brake fluid?” the security man, a balding, pudgy man in his sixties, asked.

“That’s what the mechanics who’re working on my car said it was,” Eddie replied. “They ought to know.”

The security man walked over to where Moose and I were kneeling, putting the wheel back on Eddie’s car. “This guy right? Did you guys find a lot of brake fluid under this car, here?” he asked. He jerked his head toward Gleason’s Taurus.

I let Moose finish putting the wheel on and stood up. “Yeah,” I said. “Look.” I knelt down next to Gleason’s car, reached behind the wheel, and swept my finger through the puddle of brake fluid. Then I got up and held my finger up for the security guard to see. “That’s what this shit is. There’s a hell of a lot of it under there, and by the front tire, too. You ask me, I think somebody cut this guy’s brake lines. You know who this car belongs to?”

The security guard shook his head. “Never seen it before,” he said. He walked around, looking at it. “Wait a minute, there’s a temporary parking pass in here. Let me call the office, they’ll know who it was issued to.” He tugged a portable radio out of a holder on his belt and spoke into it. He stood there waiting for a few seconds, then his reply came. “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “I don’t believe it!”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Guy who belongs to this car is a big-shot lawyer with one of the firms upstairs. Looks like he musta pissed somebody off big time,” the guard replied.

“How come you’re sayin’ that?” I asked.

“Shit,” the guard said, “somebody stuck a fake bomb under his car yesterday. We had the cops crawling all over this place, the bomb squad and all. Jesus, we hadda clear the garage and the building. What a mess!”

“I’d say this guy ought to find some other line of work,” I said. “Looks to me like being a lawyer’s a lot more dangerous than I thought.”

“I better let him know what’s going on,” the guard said. “Maybe I ought to call the cops, too.”

“Why don’t you let him decide that?” I suggested.

“Yeah, maybe I ought to talk to him first,” the guard replied. He spoke into his radio again. His office replied in a few minutes. “He’ll be right down,” the guard told me.

“Your car’s all done, Mr. LaGuardia,” Moose said. He let the jack down. “The valve stem got busted, happens some times. I had one in the truck so I didn’t have to take the tire back to the shop. Saved you a couple of bucks.”

“Thanks,” Eddie said. He looked at the guard. “Can I go?”

The guard looked uncertain.

“Look,” I said. “He didn’t see nothin’, so he can’t tell you nothin’. I’m the one saw the shit under the car.”

“Yeah, OK, you can take off,” the guard said.

Eddie handed Moose some money, got in his car, started it, backed out of the parking space, and drove off. He was just turning the corner at the end of the aisle when Gleason appeared, looking angry.

“What’s this shit about somebody cutting my brake lines?” he asked.

“My buddy and me, we was fixin’ a flat for a guy,” I said. “I looked unner your car, there, and I saw a puddle of stuff. It’s brake fluid. You wanna see, all you gotta do is kneel down and look. There’s a bunch of it by the back wheel, here, and by the front wheel on the other side. Whoever done this knew what they were doin’…these new cars have them dee-agonal brake setups so you don’t lose all your brakes if one line breaks, you know?”

Gleason looked a little pale. He stood there, lost in thought.

“You want I should call the garage and have them send a wrecker up here to get this thing?” I asked. “We can probably squeeze you in, get it done for you good as new by the time you get off work. We can even arrange to bring it back just before you get off, so whoever done this don’t do it again.”

“You want me to call the police, Mr. Gleason?” the security guard asked.

Gleason looked at the guard, then at me. I tried to look impatient. Moose shuffled around, looking as if he wanted to go, too.

“They’re not going to find anything, any more than they did yesterday, the incompetent fools,” Gleason said finally. He looked at the car, then at me. “You sure you can have it done and back here by three?” he asked.

“No problem, Mr. Gleason,” I said. “Me and Moose, we’ll do the job ourselfs, won’t we, Moose. We’ll tell the boss it’s one ‘a them priority jobs, right?”

“Yeah, we’ll do that,” Moose said.

Gleason looked at the security guard. “File a report on this with the police, but tell them I sent the car to be repaired and they don’t have to come over,” he said. He turned to me. “Go ahead and fix it. If I have the damn lease company fix it, they’ll just charge me extra and they probably wouldn’t get it fixed today.”

“Where do you want me to bring it at, what, three?” I asked.

“Be out front, at three prompt,” Gleason said. “You damn well better have it done, and it better be fixed right.”

“I guarantee it’ll be just as good as it was when you left your house this mornin’,” I told him.

“All right,” he said. He dug the keys out of his pocket and handed them to me, then he turned and stomped off toward the elevators.

“You guys don’t need me for anything, do you?” the guard asked.

I shook my head. “We’re gonna haveta wait for the wrecker, so all we’ll be doin’ is drinkin’ coffee,” I said.

The guard looked relieved. “I’m gonna go back to the office and work on that report,” he said. “It’s lucky for Mr. Gleason that guy got a flat, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yeah, real lucky,” I said. “He’d ‘a got a real thrill the first time he stepped on the brakes.”

“See you guys,” the guard said. He lumbered off down the aisle.

“Now what?” Moose said.

“As soon as our friend there is out of sight, we’ll take this thing to a car wash and clean the brake fluid off the tires,” I said. “Then we wait until three and bring it back.”

After we got Gleason’s car cleaned up, Moose and I drove to a hillside that overlooked Jennifer’s house. The police forensic people did the best they could with the evidence they found after the shots were fired at Jennifer’s house. They managed to place the shooter’s location somewhere on the hillside. It was brush-covered, and they did a search, but they couldn’t come up with a precise spot.

“What are you looking around for?” Moose asked as he followed me while I scoured the hillside.

“The cops figure Gleason was up here somewhere the other night when he fired the shots,” I said. “They didn’t find anything, but I thought I’d look. One of the guys I was in the SEALS with was an Apache. He taught me more about tracking than most people know.” I chuckled. “We used to say he could trail a snake over a flat rock.”

“Yeah, but how can you find something the cops can’t find with all the fancy electronic stuff they have?” Moose asked.

“The electronics are good,” I said, “but machines can’t think and feel. They can’t get into people’s heads and that’s what Johnny used to tell me you had to do to track someone.”

“Yeah, sure, OK,” Moose said. He looked a little doubtful, though.

“Look for things that aren’t quite right,” Johnny Ace used to say. “Be aware of the harmony of nature, and look for small signs that harmony has been disturbed.”

It had been quite a while since I’d done any tracking, but as I wandered through the brush, I felt the attitude coming back to me. I kept looking toward the house, which was some 300 or so yards from where we were, then at the ground in front of me. Then I saw it.

“There,” I said.

“What the hell are you looking at?” Moose asked.

I knelt down and brushed some leaves aside. “This,” I said. I pointed to a small round depression in the ground.

“What the hell is that?” Moose asked.

“Could be a mark left by a tripod that held a telescope,” I said. I looked around carefully and found another similar depression about two feet from the first one. A little more studying and I found the third one. “This is his spot,” I said. It was a bit eerie. Once I’d found Gleason’s spot, I could almost feel his anger, as if he’d left traces of it on the ground he’d touched.

I stood up and looked around. About fifty yards away there was a huge boulder, surrounded by thick brush. It would offer both concealment and a measure of protection. “There,” I said absently, nodding toward the boulder.

“I thought you said this was his spot,” Moose said, shaking his head. “Damn, I still don’t believe you found those damn little holes in the ground.”

“Over there, by that boulder, is where I’m going to be tonight,” I said.

“You think that’s a good idea?” Moose asked. “I mean, what if the guy doesn’t come back here?”

“I’m pretty sure he will,” I said. “He doesn’t know we’ve found his spot, and if I can take him out here, it will be a lot less dangerous for you guys down at the house.”

“Maybe I ought to come out here with you,” Moose suggested.

I shook my head. “It’s better if I do it alone,” I said. “That way I know for sure it’s just Gleason and me and I don’t have to worry about anyone else if he starts shooting. Besides, the people in the house need someone there in case Gleason gets by me.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Moose said.

I checked the area around the boulder, committing it to memory so I could get in position later, then Moose and I left.