Bat Gan Temujin: “Mob Pressure”

 Bat Gan Temujin: “Mob Pressure”

The client was a small freight operator who moved meat and spare parts between Ulaanbaatar and the Chinese border. Three men had visited his yard twice in a week. They had not asked for money yet. They had only stood by the trucks and talked about how expensive tires became when they were cut at night. The client knew the men. They belonged to a group that called itself a trading company and answered to a man who had once been in the city police.

Temujin did not go to the yard. He drove the same road the trucks used and stopped at the last fuel stop before the border. He bought tea and waited. On the second night two of the men arrived in a black Land Cruiser with city plates. They spoke to the station owner the way men speak when they expect the owner to remember their faces. Temujin followed them back at a distance and watched them meet a third man outside a restaurant near the railway. The third man was the former captain who still kept an office in a ministry building that no longer needed him.

Temujin sat with the client the next morning and placed three photographs on the table.

“They have not asked for payment because they are still deciding how much the route is worth,” he said. “The captain wants a percentage. The other two want the trucks themselves. If you pay once, they will come every month. If you do nothing, they will cut the tires and then the brake lines. You have two days before they choose.”

The client looked at the photographs. “What do I do?”

“Tell them you have already spoken to someone who remembers how the steppe settles arguments,” Temujin said. “Then park the trucks in the open for one night and leave the yard lights on. I will be there. They will see me. After that they will decide the route is not worth the trouble.”

The client paid half in advance. Temujin spent the night on the roof of the empty warehouse across the road. The Land Cruiser slowed once, then drove on. The tires stayed whole. By the end of the week the three men had moved their attention to a different operator who had not yet learned that some debts are cheaper to leave unpaid.

James Brogan and the Mob Pressure

 James Brogan and the Mob Pressure

The rain hammered the city like it had a personal grudge. James Brogan sat in his cramped office above the laundromat on 14th, nursing a lukewarm coffee and the last of yesterday’s aspirin. The neon sign outside buzzed and flickered, casting pink shadows across the stack of unpaid bills on his desk.

The door opened without a knock. Two men stepped in, dripping wet and dressed like they’d stepped out of a 1970s gangster movie that never ended. The bigger one had a neck like a fire hydrant and a scar that ran from his ear to his collar. The smaller one smiled like a shark who’d already tasted blood.

“Mr. Brogan,” the smaller one said, voice smooth as olive oil. “Vinnie ‘The Fixer’ sent us. He has a message.”

Brogan leaned back in his creaky chair. “Vinnie and I aren’t pen pals. What’s the message?”

The big one dropped a manila envelope on the desk. Inside were photos: Brogan’s ex-wife’s house, his sister’s flower shop, and a clear shot of his favorite booth at O’Malley’s bar. Subtle.

“Mr. Caruso has a business proposition,” the smaller man continued. “You’ve been asking questions about the waterfront redevelopment. Bad for his blood pressure. He wants you to stop. Tonight.”

Brogan lit a cigarette, the old Zippo clicking shut with finality. “And if I don’t?”

The big man cracked his knuckles. “Accidents happen. Brakes fail. Fires start. People disappear.”

Brogan exhaled smoke toward the ceiling. “Tell Vinnie I don’t work for him. And I don’t scare easy.”

The two men left without another word. Brogan waited thirty seconds, then grabbed his coat and the .38 from his drawer. He knew the type. They’d be back, probably with friends and worse manners.

Two hours later he was down by the docks, collar up against the wind, watching a black Lincoln pull up to a warehouse. Vinnie Caruso stepped out, flanked by four more goons. Brogan slipped behind a stack of shipping containers, close enough to hear.

“…the inspector’s on the take,” Vinnie was saying. “We push the permits through by Friday. Anyone in the way gets handled. Starting with that nosy PI.”

Brogan smiled in the dark. He’d already copied the documents proving Caruso was bribing city officials and had muscle moving in on legitimate dockworkers’ unions. He slipped the thumb drive out of his pocket. Insurance.

A boot scraped behind him.

He turned just in time to catch a fist the size of a ham. The fight was short, brutal, and ended with Brogan’s knee in the goon’s groin and the butt of his revolver against the man’s temple. One down.

Alarms started wailing as Brogan sprinted for the chain-link fence. Gunshots cracked behind him, chewing up the pavement. He vaulted the fence, rolled, and kept running until he hit the street.

By morning, the thumb drive was on the desk of the one honest reporter Brogan still trusted. By afternoon, federal agents were swarming the waterfront.

Vinnie Caruso made bail by evening, but his empire was already cracking. Two of his own captains flipped rather than face RICO charges.

Brogan was back in his office when the phone rang. A familiar smooth voice.

“You made a powerful enemy today, Brogan.”

“Yeah?” Brogan poured himself a real drink this time. “Well, tell your boss powerful enemies are my specialty. And next time he wants to send a message, try email. It’s cheaper than hospital bills.”

He hung up, raised his glass to the rain-streaked window, and allowed himself one rare, tired smile.

The city never slept. Neither did James Brogan. Not while there were still bastards who thought they could own it.

Jacques Guillaume — Missing Wife

 

Jacques Guillaume — Missing Wife

The husband came at ten past nine with a photograph and a story that was already too neat.

Her name was Claire Morel. Thirty-eight. She had left the apartment on Rue Saint-Maur on Tuesday morning with a canvas bag and a coat the color of wet slate, and she had not come back. No note. Phone still ringing in the kitchen drawer, which the husband produced as if that settled something. He said they had not fought. He said she sometimes walked when the city pressed on her. He said the police had taken the report and done nothing, which in Guillaume’s experience meant they had done the ordinary things and found the ordinary nothing.

Guillaume set the photograph face-down.

“When did you last see her money move?”

The husband blinked. “I don’t look at her account.”

“Then we start there.”

By afternoon Guillaume had the movements. Claire had withdrawn four hundred euros on Monday from a branch near République. On Tuesday, twenty minutes after she left the apartment, her Navigo had tapped at Goncourt, then at Châtelet, then not again. No hotel. No train ticket in her name. A florist on Rue de Bretagne remembered a woman in a slate coat buying white lisianthus and paying cash, and saying, almost to herself, that they were for a table that would not be set.

Guillaume walked the route she would have walked if she had not wanted to be followed by a man who knew her habits. He found the café on Rue des Archives where the owner kept a back room for people who needed an hour without being asked. Claire had sat there until four. She had written one letter and torn it up. The owner had swept the pieces into a bin that had not yet gone out.

Guillaume spread them on the zinc.

Not a lover. A sister in Lyon, ill, and a husband who had told Claire the train fare was a waste because the sister had always been dramatic. The last intact line read: I am not asking you. I am telling you I am going.

He called the husband from the café.

“She is on the 18:12 to Lyon,” Guillaume said. “She bought the ticket in another name because she did not want you at the barrier. Her sister’s neighbor confirms she arrived last night. She is not missing. She left.”

There was a silence long enough for the espresso machine to finish a shot.

“You were hired to find her,” the husband said.

“I did.” Guillaume folded the scraps into his notebook. “If you want her back, that is a different job, and it is not mine.”

He paid for the coffee he had not finished and stepped out into the street, where the evening crowd was already thickening, everyone present, no one yet gone.