The guest brushed his knuckles across the graying line of his chin strap beard then said, “Hey, worth a shot, huh?”
“Why don’t you just tell her what you know about Fabian Beauvais?” said Feller, pushing himself off the wall and looming over the grifter. Heat got a strong manifestation of Randall’s history as a street detective, knowing how to take physical intimidation right up to the line — and effectively.
Fidel scooted his chair an inch away and cowered. “Sure thing, the Haitian. Smart dude, that guy. Rough life, but had the touch, you know?”
“I don’t know,” came back Feller. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Nikki hoped the hustler wasn’t playing them because this was her first real opportunity to get a sense of her victim’s activities. Maybe FiFi would also give her some red meat, too. What that constituted, she would only know through careful listening. This bullshit artist gave her a lot to wade through.
“He had astucia. Cleverness. Some guys grow up getting shit on, and all they get is mean.” He brought his forefinger just close enough to his thumb to make a crack to peek through. “These many, just this much, get clever instead. Fabby was new — maybe off the boat just a coupla months after the big quake. That’s when he joined our, um, enterprise.”
“Picking through trash?” said Feller with a sniff. He took a seat on Figueroa’s side of the table and rested a boot on the man’s chair. This time FiFi didn’t shrink. On the contrary, he gave him a derisive side-glance.
“You don’t know, man, you have no clue. You think we were like these hoboes or some shit? Fuck that, man. We were pickers. But not for cans and bottles.”
This felt like it was heading somewhere. Nikki took the contradictory route, seeing now how conflict opened him up. “Well, what else do you call it, climbing into trash bins? I sure as hell wouldn’t call it an enterprise.”
Rook fell in step. “No shit. An enterprise? That’s usually a business undertaking that calls for slightly more resourcefulness than fishing for empties to recycle.”
“What about scoring hundreds of thousands? Millions. Would you call that an enterprise?”
“I would,” said Heat. There were numerous ways to get a witness to talk. Intimidating, cajoling, inducing, begging. She read FiFi as a man who needed to boast. So she fed the hungry egotist. “And you personally know of such a thing?”
“Know it? Hell, I worked it.” He checked himself in the observation mirror and said, “This may get me busted, but what I’ve seen? Whoo. Mind-boggling.”
“I can be boggled,” said Rook. He asked the others, “Anybody else?”
“I worked on a team for an organization that sent hundreds of us out in the field, day and night, to harvest the good stuff out of the trash.”
Nikki shrugged. “Help me here. The good stuff?”
“ID stuff. Bank stuff. Credit card stuff. God, are you people dense?” Of course not, but playing it sure kept him rolling. “Any piece of paper that goes out in the trash with a name, an address, a birth date, a social, a club or union membership, Christmas card with momma’s maiden on it, preapproved credit lines, computer passwords — I shit you not, people throw away papers with their fucking passwords on it.” He laughed to himself. “We’d go out in the city like a little army every night and find all kinds of stuff.”
Feller asked, “And do what with it?”
“Turn it in, of course. For money.”
“Where?” Heat hoped for an address.
“Different places every time. A box truck would come. We’d trade, they paid.” He laughed again, so smart about life, this one. “They hauled it off to some place to process it, don’t know where.” He read her skepticism. “Honest, I don’t. All I know is it got sorted and used for, you know, fake IDs, credit card fraud, the whole buffet. They bought everything off us. Even shreds.”
Rook asked, “What good are shredded documents?”
“You’re kidding, right? Idiots think they’re safe just ’cause they shred. Guess what? Most machines people use are strip cutters. And then what do they do? Put the neatly cut strips in a handy plastic bag for us to pick up and deliver.”
“But they’re shredded,” he persisted.
“In strips. Clean slices — no security. They’ve got tons of people, you know, illegals and such? Sit in a big room and put that stuff together like jigsaw puzzles for pennies an hour. Worth it, too, because why shred it in the first place if it’s not valuable?” He gave a knowing nod and rocked back in his chair with his arms folded.
Nikki now had a direction forming and followed the path to it. “And that’s where you met Fabian Beauvais?” FiFi gave her a you-bet grin. “And what about him was special, this, this…?”
“…Astucia? The man was a genius. Example. One day he shows up with a cooler on wheels. I say what are you doing, you bring some Bud Lights for the crew? No. It’s empty. He goes into an office building pretending he’s doing sandwich delivery. Every fucking office building in Manhattan has these guys walking the halls, so who notices another immigrant hawking turkey wraps? Nobody. He’d go in with the empty cooler in broad daylight, bust the padlock on the blue recycling bins in the copy room, or wherever, put the papers into his cooler, roll it out the front door, thank you very much, and sort it all out later.”
“That’s bold,” said Feller.
“Worked great, too. Until the bulls caught him boosting some of the docs, you know, keeping a stash for himself. They were ripshit, man. After they moved him up the chain, let him work ATM skims with them, and all.”
After she and Rook and Feller mind-melded over this bit of news, Heat said. “What do you mean, bulls?”
“You know, the ballbusters. The enforcers for the enterprise that kept us pissing our pants if we got greedy. Or talky.”
The door from the observation room opened quietly over Heat’s shoulder and Raley stepped in, handed her some head shots, and left. “FiFi, I am very impressed with how much you know. Really blown away.” She slid the two pictures of Beauvais’s ATM street playahs across the table toward him. He started working his head up and down before they reached him.
“That’s them.”
“The bulls?”
“Yeah. This one’s Mayshon something. And that bad boy’s Earl. Earl Sliney. That dude’s a freak. Laughing one second, and bam, turns on a dime…Scary shit.” He pushed Sliney’s picture away like it carried a curse. “When it went bad with him and Fabby, it got ugly. Said he was going to kill him. Meant it, too.”
“Do you know what documents Fabby — Fabian Beauvais stole?” Nikki held her breath after she asked. So much rode on this.
“No idea.” She tried again, had to. But he still said no.
One more thing and we’re done. “Do you know if Earl Sliney killed Beauvais?”
“Don’t know who killed him. Only what.” He arched a brow. “Astucia.”
Something about Keith Gilbert loved a front page. Heat found his smiling picture filling the bulldog edition of the Ledger on the rack at Andy’s when she waited for her turkey sandwich and bought a copy of the rag to read on her walk back to the precinct. The headline read: KING ME, and the Ledger exclusive announced that the powerful New York ex-governor and former UN ambassador known as “The Kingmaker” was giving his endorsement to Gilbert’s senatorial bid.
Even though the nod virtually ensured him a party nomination and a fat war chest of election funds, the candidate-to-be took the PR high road. “‘This approval means more than anyone can know’ commented Commissioner Gilbert in a written statement. ‘But the time for politics will have to come some other time. Right now I have a job to do keeping the citizens of this region safe from a storm of historic proportions, and that shall be my sole focus.’”