The Flower Man Page 7

  “Not for nothin’,” he says over his shoulder, “but this looks like a bullet hole.” He stands, uses his fingertips to feel his way around a second hole in the pane of glass above the lower one. The hole that came from the bullet that must have grazed Terry. “This one too.” He turns around, eyes me, not without a smirk. “Maybe the cops should see this.”

  “Says on the side of the van, Gary the Glass Man.”

  “I’m Gary,” he says, smiling.

  “Good, because if I don’t recall making a phone call to Gary, the lawyer.”

  He snorts. “Another good one. You’re on a roll, pal.”

  “I do my best.”

  “I’ll get my tools,” he says.

  Gary heads back out to his truck. Janice enters the vestibule.

  “Everything going smoothly?” she inquires.

  “Seems like it,” I say. “I’ll oversee this while you go upstairs, take a nap with your husband.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “You’re wired,” I say. “You just don’t know how tired you are.”

  She heads upstairs, dare I say it, obediently. Gary comes back in carrying two new panes of glass to repair the ones wrecked by bullets.

  Gary the Glass Man tells me it’s going to take thirty minutes, give or take, to destroy what’s left of the bad glass and to install the new. While he’s working, and the McGovern’s are out of sight, I decide to do some snooping. I head back into the kitchen, go to a small space situated between the giant stainless-steel refrigerator and the floor-to-ceiling wood cabinets that contain a narrow desk which is covered in bills, junk mail, and an odd assortment of handwritten Post-a-Notes.

  A wireless landline extension is set on the desk. Looking over one shoulder, then the other, I pick up the phone, locate the previous calls option. Pressing my thumb on the button, I get a list of outgoing calls. The last one is to an individual named Megan Barker, Esq. Terry never mentioned the name of his lawyer, but Miller did back in Henry’s office earlier. I make a mental note to speak with the tall brunette ASAP. Grabbing a pen, I write down her name and number on a Post-It-Note, peel it off the stack, shove it into my pocket.

  Scrolling further down the phone calls, I see a name that shoots out among all others. The caller ID is The Flower Man. The name takes me by surprise. Not only is Terry suing his daughter, but there’s terrific evidence that points to The Flower Man as the person behind the death threats. He’s the one who followed me and delivered a severed rose head. He’s the one who doubled back, shot out the living room window, grazed Terry’s arm. The Russian mobster means business.

  I listen to my gut. Maybe Terry or Janice has been calling Anatoly to plead with him to stop his threats. What all this means is, it’s time to call in Miller. But not quite yet. There’s something more here going on than just an angry Russian who insists on delivering threats and shooting out living room windows.

  I stare down at all the bills. Setting down the phone, I pick one up off the desk. It’s the cable and internet bill. I slide the bill out of the envelope. Overdue is written on it in big bold black letters. I’m no stranger to the same notice myself. The balance isn’t pretty. The McGovern’s owe six hundred and change. One more unpaid bill and bye-bye cable TV and internet. My God, how would anyone survive?

  Noise coming from out in the living room. The breaking of existing glass. A power vac cleaning up the shards. Footsteps from lug-sole boots. I return the bill to its envelope and open another. It’s from the mortgage company. Terry owes six months of back payments. Foreclosure is no longer a threat, but imminent. Returning the bill to the envelope, I sit back in the chair.

  “The news anchor desperately needs that fifty mil,” I whisper.

  Standing from the desk, I push in the chair, take a last look at the desktop to make sure everything is laid out exactly the way it was before I started snooping. Something grabs my attention. A folded document mixed with a stack of old bills held together with a rubber band. I pick up the stack, pull out the document. Turns out, it’s a map. Not a map, necessarily. Rather directions. Google directions printed off a computer. The directions lead a driver from this house, across one of the several bridges that span the Hudson River into Troy, and from there out into the countryside on the border of New York and Massachusetts. A red circle has been drawn around the destination point which according to the directions is just a plain plot of land. Refolding the directions, I stuff them back into the stack of bills and set them in the place I originally found them. Then, grabbing my computer, I head back into the living room.

  “What’s the status, Gary?” I ask.

  Already, he’s installed the two new panes of glass, and now he’s caulking them in place.

  “Be out of your hair in a jiff,” he says, shooting me a look over his shoulder. “The piece stuffed in your pants. That a 9mm?”

  I instinctively glance down at my midsection where both the tails of my button-down shirt and my blue jacket are supposed to be concealing the short-barreled gun.

  “Thought you were a glass man?” I repeat.

  He looks at me with scrunched brow and slanted eyes. “That’s what it says on the van, don’t it? We’ve established that already.”

  Like the van is his diploma or something.

  “You must be a gun guy,” I say. “Because only a gun guy would make out a very well concealed weapon. Or maybe an ex-cop.”

  He cracks a smile, bearing gray-brown teeth.

  “Nah, I’m just a jerk trying to make a living same as you. That is, you don’t own this joint. Which I’m assuming you don’t.”

  “Wow, you are the most perceptive glass man I ever did meet, Gary,” I say. “How about you finish up and be on your way.”

  But Gary the Glass Man is right. I am a jerk trying to make a living. I might not be rich, but I have learned a few things over the years. One of which is to listen to your gut. And right now, my gut is telling me to keep an eye on Gary while he finishes up the job. It’s exactly what I do. Stand four-square in the living room while he finishes the caulking and cleans up the mess.

  When it’s all done, he goes back out into his van, works up a bill, brings it back to the front door.

  “Five hundred fifty,” he says, handing me the bill. “Including tax on materials.”

  I sense someone standing over my shoulder. It’s Terry. He’s looking down at us from up on the staircase.

  “You can leave the bill, young man,” he says. “I’ll forward you a check.”

  Gary’s face lights up.

  “Hey, you’re that guy,” he says.

  My eyes, going from Gary to Terry, not sure what’s about to transpire.

  “I’m the newsman, Terry McGovern,” Terry says having instantly donned his TV face. “If that’s what you’re referring to, my friend.”

  “Wow, a real celebrity right here in Albany. This house . . . it makes perfect sense now. Didn’t think it belonged to the short guy here.” He laughs.

  “You’re shorter than me,” I point out.

  “Yeah, but I act taller.” Then, his focus goes back to Terry. “I’m sorry, Mr. McGovern. I’m going to have to insist you pay right now. Company rules.”

  “And who owns the company?”

  “I do,” Gary says proudly.

  I know damn well Terry doesn’t have a dime in his checking account. For a split second, I consider paying the bill for him, just to get this guy out of the house and the front door closed on a frigid day. But suddenly Terry comes down the stairs, holding his hands up as if to say, hold on, I’ll take care of this.

  He heads into the kitchen, comes back out with a checkbook in one hand, a pen in the other.

  “Who shall I write the check out to again?” Terry asks.

  “Gary the Glass Man,” Gary says, stuffing his hands into his overalls to shield them from the cold. “That’s not to be confused with Gary Glassman, the Jewish accountant down on State Street.”

  “Very funny,” Terry says.
“You have quite the wit. And for how much?”

  Gary tells him again.

  Terry fills out the check, signs it like he’s signing a copy of his new autobiography, hands it over to me. I, in turn, hand it over to Gary who, by now, is shivering in the cold. He glances at the check and nods.

  “Terry freakin’ McGovern,” he says. “Mr. TV. Who knew? Well, I’ll be seeing you.”

  He turns, makes his way back to the van. I close the door on him, lock it, knowing the check he’s got stuffed in his overalls’ pocket is made of rubber.

  Terry slips the checkbook into his jeans pocket. He gives me a look like he knows that I know he’s just penned a bad check. But naturally, he says nothing to indicate he’s onto me. Maybe he suspects I’ve been snooping around, or maybe he’s got a sixth sense about these things. As a newsman, it’s probably the latter. I’m here as a sort of bodyguard (which admittedly, hasn’t been going all that well so far), not a detective. But there’s a reason Miller called me in on this shit show, and I’m beginning to believe that it doesn’t have a thing to do with bodyguarding, and everything to do with finding out just what the hell the McGovern’s are up to.

  Speaking of Miller, it’s time I check in once more, pull some info out of the old detective. I glance at my watch. It’s mid-afternoon already.

  “I’m gonna head back to my cottage for few minutes, Terry,” I reveal. “I need to check in with Detective Miller. You’ll be seeing me walking the property from time to time. Sometimes you won’t see me at all, but rest assured I’ll be here. In fact, I’ll be moving my Mustang to a new location, so I don’t give my presence away to the bad guys.”

  It’s a bit of a lie since I plan not only on meeting up with Henry at Lanie’s for a beer later, but my inquiring mind wants to make a few stops along the way. As for my job of keeping an eye on the McGovern property, I think I have that one figured out. It’s the perfect solution. A solution that will allow me to be in two places at once.

  “Sounds very cloak and dagger,” Terry says. “Dinner’s at seven, if you’re interested. Janice was thinking of making steaks. Porterhouses. You do like steak, don’t you, Jobz?”

  “Love red meat, Terry,” I say. “From now on, keep away from the windows. Go catch more of that catnap.”

  I head back into the kitchen, grab my computer, head back out the French doors to the guest cottage.

  Setting the computer on the bed, I sneak back out the cottage door and follow the wooded perimeter of the property to my Mustang. Slipping inside, I fire up the engine, throw it in drive and slowly pull away from the property. Then, digging for my smartphone, I speed-dial Miller.

  He answers after two rings.

  “We gotta talk,” I say.

  “Uh oh,” he says.

  “Uh oh,” I repeat. “What the hell is uh oh supposed to mean?”

  “When you don’t start a phone call with a polite, how are you doing today, Chief Detective Miller? but instead begin it with we gotta talk, I know I’m in trouble.”

  “What if it’s me who’s in trouble?”

  “Uh oh,” he says.

  “Listen,” I say, “if you don’t mind cutting the bullshit for maybe just a moment, it might interest you to know the lead has started to fly at the McGovern’s.”

  “Gunshots, you mean.”

  “We’re on a roll, you and me.”

  “And when did this happen, Jobz?”

  This is the part where I have to admit I sort of fucked up since I wasn’t around when it happened.

  “About an hour ago, give or take.”

  An exhale so strong I can smell his Listerine-cleansed breath over the phone.

  “Happened when you weren’t around, right?” he correctly surmises. “When you were out getting your toothbrush.”

  “Be that as it may, the same asshole in the black sedan who followed me to my houseboat, doubled back, and blew a couple rounds through the McGovern’s window and nearly took out Terry.”

  “He’s not shot.” A question.

  “He took a graze on the left arm. I wanted to call it in right away. But here’s the thing, Miller. He insisted, no cops. Why would Mr. TV do a thing like that? Especially since a representative of the cops is already serving and protecting him.”

  “Does sound strange doesn’t it?”

  “There’s a guy named Anatoly. He’s a florist. The Flower Man, they call him. He’s the perp. He’s the one calling in the death threats. He’s the one threatened me with the rose head. He’s the one who took the shots at Terry. Or his men did anyway. His goons.”

  “So, what’s your point, Jobz?”

  “So, that’s it. Job over. Go nail the son of a bitch.”

  Dead air. Followed by, “Ummm, Jobz, it’s not that simple.”

  “Whaddaya mean it’s not that simple, Miller? We got witnesses, ballistics. Fuck, I even have the rose head.”

  “Why do you think I called you in on this in the first place?” he poses. “Why do you think I’m not going the traditional route with real cops?”

  My instincts were balls on correct. I hate it when I’m right sometimes.

  “Because this never was about finding out who’s sending death threats to Terry McGovern,” I say. “If that’s all it was, you would have told him to hire his own private security firm instead of wasting APD resources.”

  “Bingo, we have a winner ladies and gentlemen.”

  “So, what is this about exactly, Miller?”

  “I want you to spy on the McGovern’s for a little while. Something’s not adding up in TV land, as they say, and I’d like to find out precisely what it is.”

  I thought about the bank account info Kate relayed to me earlier.

  “You realize he’s broke right?” I say.

  “Who, Terry?” Miller asks.

  “That’s right.”

  “No, I wasn’t. How do you know?”

  “I’m UI Fraud, I can find out the color jockey shorts you’re wearing right now if I want. Not that I’d want to.”

  “State government overreach, you ask me,” he says. “But I likey.”

  “Plus, he just dropped five hundred bouncy bouncy on a window repair today, which tells me he might be spreading bad checks all over town.”

  “Thank God he’s a local celebrity.” Then, “Aside from spying, I’ll still need you to look out for them, make sure Anatoly doesn’t take another shot at them. But poke around a little, see what you come up with.”

  “Well, I can’t be in two places at one time. If I’m gonna snoop, I need to do a little face to face with a select group of people, Terry’s lawyer being one of them. Natalia too. And even Anatoly.”

  “You best watch your step, Jobz. Those Moscow boys play for keeps and certainly not by the rules. American rules anyway.”

  “They’re still pissed off we spanked them in the 1980 Olympics,” I add.

  “You’re dating yourself.”

  “I’m younger than you, pal. And I’ve got the problem of being in two places at once solved. It will all work out.”

  “I’ll just have to have a little faith in you,” Miller admits.

  “Faith. What’s that?”

  “It’s when you believe in something you can’t see, hear, or feel, but you know it’s there anyway.”

  “Like my love life,” I say.

  “That might be pushing it,” he says.

  I hang up.

  Placing the phone back in my pocket, I turn the heat up as high as it will go. These old Mustangs might be built for speed, but they are most definitely not engineered for an upstate New York winter. They were built for perpetual Southern California sunshine. I head to the nearest Lowe’s builders supply, pull in, and park the car. Inside the massive concrete and metal store, I head straight to the information desk, inquire about a home surveillance system I saw advertised on TV the other day called RING.

  The nerdy kid dressed in the blue Lowe’s sweatshirt looks at me with a frown on his narrow peach fuzz-
covered face. Not exactly overly enthusiastic to make a sale.

  “Follow me,” he says.

  Whatever happened to: follow me please, sir?

  “Gladly,” I lie.

  Peach Fuzz leads me down a long aisle bookended by huge racks containing metal bins. The bins are filled with nuts and bolts of all sizes and shapes. We turn right at the end of the long aisle and enter the home goods area. A big plastic sign mounted to the ceiling toward the back of the space reads: Home Security.

  “You’ll find what you’re looking for over there,” the kid informs.

  “You’ve been very helpful,” I say. Then, “You should smile. Life is short.”

  He just snickers, rolls his eyes, and walks away. The millennial generation. You can’t kill ‘em, and you can’t kill ‘em.

  I go to the security systems and begin looking them over. Some of them are expensive and require an electrician to install. But I’m just looking for a system you attach to the front door that will provide a decent bird’s eye view of not only the front yard but the driveway and the neighborhood road directly in front of the house and do so by broadcasting it all to your smartphone. It also alarms you to the presence of someone prowling the property.