'How about you? Were you worried about me?'
'I always worry about you.'
'We didn't get anything out of Dickie’s house,' I told Ranger, 'so I decided to look at his office. Didn't think there'd be much activity on a Saturday. Figured I could fly under the radar.'
Ranger peeled the Richter Security label off my jacket. 'And?'
'Dickie s office is a normal, working office. It looked like everything was still intact… at least until I got there.' I unbuttoned my jacket, removed the files, and handed them to Ranger.
We were sitting there watching the building when the big blond goon stumbled out the front door. He was doubled over, holding himself. He inched his way to the lot, crawled into a silver Camry, and slowly drove down the street.
Ranger looked over at me, eyebrows raised in question.
'It turned out I wasn't entirely under the radar,' I told Ranger. 'And I had to staple his nuts.'
'Babe.'
'He said he worked for Petiak. I'm not sure what he was doing there on a Saturday because the desk guard said Petiak never comes into the office. And Petiak's office looked unused. For that matter, all the partners' offices looked unused, excluding Dickie's.'
Ranger skimmed the current folder. 'These are all one-page summaries for quick reference, and at first glance they all look like normal low-grade cases. A couple property damage cases. A criminal case against Norman Wolecky for assault. Litigation against a landscaper. More property damage. I could be missing something, but it doesn't look to me like any of these cases would bring in big money.'
'So we have three partners with empty file cabinets, a fourth partner who chased ambulances, forty million dollars withdrawn from a Smith Barney account, a dead accountant, and a missing Dickie.'
'I talked to Zip about his brother. He said Ziggy did high-volume accounts. He was under the impression Petiak, Smullen, Gorvich, and Orr represented power.'
'Apparently not Dickie. Dickie represented Norman Wolecky.'
Ranger looked at the second folder. 'Nuts and Stalkers.' He flipped it open. 'There are only two summaries in here.'
'Am I one of them?'
'No. I imagine you would be filed under BITCH EX-WIFE. The first summary is for Harry Slesnik. According to this, Slesnik is a self-described separatist who seceded from the United States and declared his town house a sovereign country. He was arrested when he tried to annex his neighbor's garage. Dickie quit the case after being paid in Slesnik dollars. The last piece of paper attached to this is a formal declaration of war against Dickie.
'The second nut is Bernard Gross.'
'I know him,' I told Ranger. 'He's a Worlds Strongest Man wannabe. Vinnie bonded him out on a domestic violence charge, and he went FTA. I found him in a gym, and when I got him outside he freaked and wrecked my car. He got his hands under the frame and flipped it over like a turtle.'
'Dickie represented him in his divorce… at least initially,' Ranger said. 'While deposing Gross, the subject of gynecomastia came up. Dickie made the fatal mistake of referring to them as man boobs, and Gross destroyed the conference room in a fit of steroid-induced rage. Apparently, Gross is sensitive about his… gynecomastia.'
'Something to remember. Do you think either of these guys is crazy enough to steal Dickie?'
Ranger handed the file back to me. 'I can see them stealing him. I can't see them keeping him.'
'The office next to Petiak was occupied by someone who actually did work there. Probably the firm's finance officer. I downloaded a bunch of files onto a flash drive, but I'm not sure I have the software on my computer to read them. Spreadsheets and things. I was hoping you could open it.'
Ranger turned the key in the ignition and gave the Cayenne some gas. 'What should we do with your hitchhiker? Do you want to let her tag along, or do you want me to get rid of her?'
I turned and looked out the rear window. Joyce was behind us in a white Taurus. No doubt a rental.
'She must have picked me up when I left my apartment. You can let her follow. It'll kill her when we drive into the Range Man garage.'
We were in Rangers office, which was attached to the RangeMan control room. Ranger was relaxed in his chair with a stack of reports in front of him.
'When Ziggy Zabar went missing, I ran Dickie and his partners through the system,' Ranger said. 'Credit reports, real estate, personal history, litigation. They look clean on the surface, but you put them together and it feels off. Smullen spends a lot of time out of country. Gorvich is a Russian immigrant. Petiak was military. Did a couple tours and got out. Smullen, Gorvich, and Petiak all look like they bought their law degrees a couple years ago. And they all lived in Sheepshead Bay before moving here.'
'So maybe they were getting together for
'Yeah,' Ranger said. 'That would work.'
'Here's something weird. It's been four days since Dickie was dragged out of his house, leaving a trail of blood. Ordinarily, the chances of death increase with length of disappearance, but for some reason, the longer this goes on, the more I believe Dickie is alive. Probably just wishful thinking since I'm the prime murder suspect.'
'I think Dickie and his partners were involved in bad business and something happened that made the deal start to unravel. Ziggy Zabar seems to be the first victim. Dickie appears to be the second. And now houses are getting tossed, and Smullen has contacted you and Joyce. We don't really know what happened at Dickie's house. We have gunshots fired and evidence indicating someone was dragged out of the house. DNA testing on the blood hasn't come back yet, so we aren't sure who got shot. It's possible Dickie is in the wind, and someone is scrambling to find him. It's also possible he's dead, and he had something that wasn't recovered before he died.'
'Like the forty million,' I said.
'Yes.'
'What else do we know about the partners?'
'All three partners are in their early fifties. Petiak moved into the area five years ago, and Gorvich and Smullen followed. Petiak owns a modest house in Mercerville. Gorvich and Smullen are renting in a large apartment complex off Klockner Boulevard. Before moving to Trenton, Smullen owned a car wash in Sheepshead, Gorvich had part ownership in a restaurant, and Petiak owned a limo service consisting of one car. Somehow, the three men found Dickie, and between them they managed to buy an office building downtown, an apartment building that sits on the edge of public housing, and a warehouse on Stark Street. No litigation against any of them. Smullen is married, with a wife and children in South America. Gorvich is currently unmarried and has been divorced three times. And Petiak has never married.'
Ranger plugged the flash drive into his computer, opened a spreadsheet, and broke into a smile. 'You downloaded the firm's financial records. Clients. Fees for service. Services provided. There's a separate spreadsheet for each partner.'
I dragged my chair next to his so I could see the screen as he scrolled down.
'Dickie has normal clients and is pulling in around two hundred thousand,' Ranger said after a half hour of reading. 'Smullen, Petiak, and Gorvich have client lists that read like Who's Who in Hell. South American drug lords, gunrunners, mercenaries, and some local thugs. And they're billing big money.'
I'd been taking notes and doing a tally in my head as we moved from one partner to the next, and I had a grip on how much money we were talking about.
'Forty million and change,' I said.
'Now we know who owned the Smith Barney money. We just don't know where it went.' Ranger gathered the reports together, slid them into a large envelope, and handed them over to me. 'This is your copy. I'll have my financial guy go over the material on the flash drive and summarize it for us.' He looked at his watch. 'I have to get to the airport. I'm flying to Miami to escort a high-bond FTA back to Jersey. I should be home tomorrow night. I'll call when I get in. Tank will be available if you have problems.'
NINE
