Two men walked down a hallway in an upscale apartment building. The men wore suits of an American cut, less than immaculate, but well dressed. Taciturn by nature, the men eschewed polite banter. They kept watch without appearing intrusive to the few people passing by. A tenant in apartment 5b saw them through her peephole and put them down as employees of a corporation requiring the suit and tie, a legal firm perhaps, one with an older gentleman as the CEO. The men did not wear sunglasses inside, because such things made no sense outside of Hollywood or a spy novel.
Glimpses of shoulder harnesses for firearms did not go unnoticed by the pedestrian traffic. The men made little attempt to hide the hardware, but did not advertise either. At the door of the last apartment in the hall, Harris, a black man wearing the grey pinstripe, knocked softly and waited. Burton, the Caucasian of the pair wearing the navy suit, stood patiently but watchfully off to the side.
No answer came in response to the summons. Harris raised an eyebrow and knocked once more. After a few seconds, the men drew their pistols and let themselves into the apartment with a key Harris pulled from a pocket with his off hand. The door opened on a neat apartment with no human occupant in sight.
A search confirmed the unoccupied state.
“What do you think?” Burton produced a ring of keys and small plastic tabs with numbers imprinted on them.
“Unknown, check the usual place.”
Burton unlocked the dial to a small safe embedded in the concrete wall of the lesser bedroom.
The only two-bedroom apartment in the building, the building manager would occupy this space by design. However, the owner hired a manager with a family of six children and in a gesture not in keeping with most building owners in the city, gave them a 4-bedroom suite on the ground floor. This apartment let for half the going rate to the man Burton and Harris expected to find waiting for them at the appointed time. The man had never before missed his meeting.
“Not here. Beginning search procedure.”
“Got it. Gun safe in the bedroom closet.”
“The package is intact?”
“Yes, fully marked and ready for transport.”
“Why the gun safe?”
“We may never know, Mr. Burton. Calling it in.”
Harris pulled a basic cell phone from his suit pocket and pressed a single button. “Subject not present, package recovered. Returning to base,” Harris paused to listen. “Roger that.”
“Cleansing?”
“No, he’s there!” For the first time that afternoon, Harris looked surprised, for him a rare display of emotional pyrotechnics.
“Return home?”
“Yes, with all due speed.”
The man missing his appointment staggered into the bottom level of a classy, but at this time closed, nightclub on the city’s Left Bank, an attempt to capture the cache of the Paris district of the same name. He fell rather than sat into a booth in front of a largish man, a football player a few years out of his retirement from the NFL. He carried a dirty, but otherwise respectable briefcase tightly clasped to his chest.
The big man looked with concern on his colleague.
“I have it all. All of it,” he babbled. “You don’t have to send them. I recovered all of it.”
“Harris and Burton are there now, Carson.”
“You didn’t have to! I’m good to my word. I don’t know what happened to the regular package, but I got all of it back! Every dollar, you can count!” He banged the briefcase on the table. A few corners of the bills inside showed in the crack of the case, as though packed in a great hurry.
The big man opened the case and looked at the disorganized mess of currency inside.
“Mr. Bean! Run this through the counter, please.”
A man walked out of an office a few yards away, took the case without a word and returned to the same office.
“Why did you not wait?”
Carson Keane, the runt-sized, plain looking man now lying in the booth almost fell asleep before he could answer.
“I haven’t slept since last Tuesday. I lost the package, all of it. I don’t know how, but it wasn’t there when I checked. The product was gone and the money too. I went out on my own and made back every dollar. I’ve worked non-stop to make it up to you. My word is all I have and I won’t diminish its value.”
“Carson, are you in some kind of trouble?”
“No, not now, the money is all there!”
Bean returned to the table with a slip of paper.
“Carson, you have almost $6,000 too much here. There is no need for the extra amount.”
“I…I, may have lost count. I’m not even sure what day it is. But, just keep it. Don’t send them to kill me!”
“Carson, we are not the Mafia, and you are not some kind of dope dealer. Why are you acting this way? Harris and Burton meet you each month at the appointed time to escort you here. They are armed to protect you, not to hurt you.”
“But, I lost the package! My word has no value if you cannot trust me.”
“Harris found the package in your gun safe, Carson. Why did you store it there instead of the safe we provide?”
“I don’t know…” and with that admission, Carson Keane did the honorable thing, he passed out on the bench.
Harris and Burton arrived in the nightclub in a more dignified manner. The men brought their package over to the boss.
“What happened to him?” Burton asked.
“Panic. He spent the last week making up for money he never lost. Did you see anything missing in his apartment?”
Harris and Burton looked at each other for a moment, picturing the apartment search in their minds.
“The books, boss. He sold his rare books to make up the package shortfall.”
“We’ll never get those back. Those folks don’t let nothin’ go unless they want to,” the boss craned his neck toward the office. “Bean!”
The requested man appeared once more without a word.
“Take this money to our bank. Invest it for Carson in something he can’t touch for a while, on your way out call Dr. Peetz and ask her to stop by.”
Bean left as silently as he arrived the first two times.
“I’m quiet, but I swear that man has never spoken in his life,” Burton remarked.
“Oh, he talks. I hired him because he does so little of it. I like to talk and I like quiet people around me,” the boss said as he leaned back in the booth.
“May I speak, boss,” Harris asked meekly.
“Of course you can talk! I already got Carson acting like I’m some kind of Don Corleone. Don’t you start!”
“Boss, your theatrics are getting out of hand. You got us going to the sales reps like some kind of duo from Pulp Fiction. Is it any wonder that Carson panicked?”
“He got his money from the bank a little late one evening, and went to the wrong safe. You want them to pay in cash and you pay us to escort them here so no one robs them. We look like some kind of drug dealers,” Burton complained.
“We are drug dealers!” the boss protested. “Just legitimate ones… and I like to put on a show.”
Burton poked Harris and nodded toward the door. A job was a job and these days not a sure thing. If the boss wanted to run his licensed pharmacy like some sort of movie drug kingpin, who were they to complain.
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