rafters.
There was a desk across the room, with a polished stone top. There were two flat-screened monitors on it, and two keyboards, and some neat stacks of paper next to an open metal briefcase. Bregman stood behind it.
He was a tall, skinny guy of about fifty who looked like a vulture. He had rounded shoulders and a long curved neck with lots of extra skin around his large Adam’s apple. His head was narrow and topped with wiry black hair. His brows were black and wiry too, and his dark eyes were set deep and close to his bony nose. The shadow of a heavy beard darkened his sallow skin. His mouth was small and mean and lipless. He wore tan trousers, a green sweater over a blue shirt, and brown loafers. He sat, and eyed the inside of his briefcase as if it were a carcass.
Bregman didn’t look up as I crossed the room, or offer me his hand to shake or a place to sit, either. I sat anyway, in one of the two yellow leather chairs that faced his desk.
“You said you had some questions. Go ahead and ask them. But make it quick; I’m pressed for time.” He spoke fast and didn’t look at me.
“I’ll get to it, then,” I said. “You know Gerard Nassouli?” Bregman was silent. He kept picking through his briefcase, and after a while I thought he hadn’t heard me. I was about to repeat the question when he responded.
“Am I supposed to?” he said. He managed to make it sound bored, distracted, and snide, all at once. He was annoying me.
“Well, I suppose you do-that’s why I’m here. But I wanted to hear you say it.” He glanced up at me.
“Your tone’s kind of arrogant for someone who’s sitting in my house, asking for my time,” he said, but there wasn’t much force to it, and he seemed more interested in his briefcase. I didn’t say anything. “Where am I supposed to know this guy from?” he asked.
“He ran MWB in New York, and maybe you did some business with him fifteen years ago or so.” Bregman glanced over at me again, still distracted, and nodded a little-I wasn’t sure at what.
“And if I did know the guy, so what?” he asked, his eyes flicking back to me again.
“Then I’ve got other things to talk to you about,” I said.
“Other things like what?”
“Other things like blackmail.”
He nodded to himself some more. He took a small stack of business cards from his briefcase, squared the edges, and put them next to a stack of papers on the desk. His long, pale hands were shaking a little. He pulled a few more papers from his case, put a few others in, closed the case, and stood it on the floor. Then he opened a drawer in the desk, and took out a slim, black semiautomatic pistol and pointed it at me.
“You greedy bastard,” he said. His voice was quavering with rage and fear and a rush of adrenaline. “What’s the matter, motherfucker, you didn’t bleed me enough the first time? You want more?” His thin lips were white, and so were his nostrils and the fingers of his right hand around the pistol grip. It didn’t look like he’d had a lot of experience shooting, but that didn’t matter much. I’d be awfully hard to miss at this range. He was swallowing a lot and his big Adam’s apple was jumping up and down. His hands shook more. Mine might too if I moved them, but I didn’t. I kept them, and the rest of me, perfectly still.
“You’ve got the wrong guy, Bregman,” I said slowly, but Bregman cut me off.
“ I got the wrong guy? You got the wrong guy, motherfucker. You got the wrong guy.” His voice was tight, like he was trying to yell but couldn’t get enough air to do it. He got up and came around the desk. His movements were stiff and jerky, but he kept the gun on me the whole time, pointed mostly at my head. He stood in front of me.
“You think I’m going to take this shit? Get up, you cocksucker,” he said. I started to rise, slowly, and as I did he backhanded me across the face with the gun. At least, he tried to. But I don’t think he’d ever hit anyone before, and he didn’t do it well or quickly. I sat back down as he pushed the gun at me. I drew my head back a little and with my left hand grabbed his wrist and the gun as they passed by my face. I twisted hard and felt something snap and Bregman screamed. I stood up and as I did I brought my right knee into his crotch. I got him dead on and with a lot of momentum behind me, and his scream turned into a weird bellow, like his intestines were going to come out of his mouth. He went down on his hands and knees, and then screamed again and collapsed on his right elbow, with his right hand out at an odd angle. Then he threw up.
My chair had tipped over, and Bregman’s gun was underneath it. I righted the chair and picked up the gun. It was a Beretta. The new ones have this cool automatic safety that engages if you drop them, and it had worked as advertised. I set the manual safety too and slid the clip out. There was nothing in the chamber. I put the clip in my pocket and stuck the gun in my belt behind my back. My hands and knees were shaking now. I took some slow, deep breaths.
Bregman was in a fetal position and still retching. He was crying too. Shit. I got a glass of water from the wet bar and drank it. Then I drank another. I filled it again and got some ice from the little fridge and wrapped it in a bar towel and brought it and the water and some more bar towels to Bregman.
I got him into one of the yellow chairs and helped him clean himself up a little. When I was sure he wouldn’t retch anymore, I gave him some water and wrapped his wrist in the bar towel with the ice. Then I pulled the other yellow chair over and sat down facing him.
“Now, would you care to tell me just what the fuck your problem is?” I asked.
Chapter Sixteen
I fished in my pockets for exact change, but all I had were bullets. They don’t like ammo in the toll baskets at the Triboro Bridge, so I slowed and steered the Taurus into the single lane reserved for unfortunates with only paper money.
The bullets were from Steven Bregman’s Beretta. I’d given the gun back to him, minus the clip, when we’d concluded our little chat. I’d left the empty clip in the mailbox at the top of his driveway, and kept the bullets. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the guy… or maybe it was.
A sprained wrist and a kick in the balls had temporarily drained Bregman of his violence and galloping paranoia, but had left him by turns self-pitying, self-justifying, and conspiratorial. It was an unattractive mix. Still, Bregman was my pot of gold. When I’d got him calmed down, and explained why I was there-and convinced him that it wasn’t to stick him up-he’d told all. Almost all, anyway.
The first fax had come to his office about a year ago, with a cover sheet that read: “We’ll talk soon.” The documents in it, according to Bregman, were a trumped-up, out-of-context misrepresentation of dealings he’d had with Nassouli, a long time before. The second fax had arrived a few days later. It had the same cover sheet as the first, but its contents were even more toxic. Bregman wouldn’t tell me anything about his business with Nassouli, or anything specific about what had been sent to him in the faxes, but whatever it was had shaken him badly. And, he’d told me, it would’ve sent his investors running for the hills. So when the third one showed up, he’d been inclined to follow instructions.
It had come two weeks later, and it was short, just a single page. It named an amount-Bregman wouldn’t say how much-that he was to have available in a week’s time. He would receive transfer instructions then, and he would have to act on them immediately. Bregman did as he was told. A week later, in the early morning, the last fax came. It gave him four hours to wire the money to a numbered account at a bank in Luxembourg. Bregman had met the deadline, and hadn’t heard a word since.
But from then on, he’d been brooding over what had happened, and been waiting for the other shoe to drop. It had driven him nuts. A few months after making the payment, Bregman’s anger and fear had reached the boiling point. He couldn’t take it anymore; he couldn’t just sit there; he had to do something. What he did was hire himself a PI-he wouldn’t tell me who-to identify the blackmailer. Though he never said, I got the feeling that for Bregman this was the first step in some dark revenge fantasy he’d been nurturing.
Bregman had hobbled his own efforts from the start, however. He hadn’t told his investigator anything about the first two faxes, or given him any background on Nassouli or MWB, which had left the guy with nothing to go on besides the delivery instructions. After two months in Luxembourg, his investigator had mainly found out how seriously they take their banking secrecy over there. The funds had been transferred out moments after they’d
