Tribulation House: Reloaded

Chapter 16

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- 16 -

The FBI/Kansas City Police Joint Task Force met in the office of Detective Tom Griggs. The group, still a token unit as far as the higher-ups were concerned, was now back up to a robust four: Griggs and Detective Charlie Pasch representing the KCPD; Special Agent Martin O’Malley and Special Agent Kathie Harper representing the Kansas City division of the FBI.

Griggs flipped open the folder he had been reading since the day he was at the cemetery. He put aside the guilt he felt for coming in early to grab it—there had been no call for that, no reason. Nothing in this file that couldn’t have waited. If only Carla had not pushed his buttons.

Charlie brought in four Styrofoam cups of coffee: black for Griggs; cream, two sugars for O’Malley; black for Harper. His own coffee was heavily flavored with Swiss Miss and Froot Loops. The others had long grown accustomed to it.

Once the meeting came to order, the four compared notes, shared what each side was doing in the war against organized crime.

“One item of new business,” O’Malley said. “An ex-judge is turning state’s evidence.”

Charlie perked up. “Judge Reynolds?”

O’Malley nodded, chomping his gum loudly. “Ex-Judge Reynolds made a deal to get out of prison early. He’s going to rat out on boss Jack Patterson, so we have to babysit him—in case Patterson’s people come after him before it's time for him to testify.”

Griggs grunted. “Need any help?”

“When we get ready to move him, we’ll let you know.”

The team also discussed various cases being pursued by other divisions of both the KCPD and the FBI that suggested a connection to organized crime. A homicide investigation. A cold case that had suddenly turned up new evidence. A missing-persons case. A fraud investigation.

O’Malley was particularly interested in the fraud investigation, a business called Frozen Futures.

“What,” Griggs asked, “fraudulent ice cream?”

Charlie piped up, as he was wont to do. “Frozen Futures claims to put its customers in a state of suspended animation.”

Griggs looked at O’Malley and Harper. Did they understand what the kid was saying? Griggs tried not to feel like the dumbest man in the room. “So they just grab people off the street and, um, freeze them? Put them on ice, as it were?”

“Naw,” O’Malley said, chomping gum like a cowboy. “This is for rich geezers.”

“It is like this,” Charlie said, slipping into his lecture tone. “The clients at Frozen Futures are the sort who are terminally ill. Modern medicine cannot help them. A place like Frozen Futures promises to put them in suspended animation, keeping them alive—or so the claim goes—until such time that the medical community can cure whatever illness they have.”

O’Malley snorted. “It sounds like the kid believes it.” He turned to Harper and murmured. “He’s a Trekkie.”

“My TV-viewing habits aside,” Charlie said, “I don’t know whether I believe in suspended animation.”

Griggs waved the conversation off. “So what? We’re short-handed enough as it is. Why do we even care about—”

O’Malley pointed a finger. Griggs saw a Band-Aid wrapped around it. “You missed something on the sheet there.”

Griggs furrowed his brow. Looked down and skimmed the report, skimmed the description of the business, got to the names of the proprietors.

Ah. There. “Winthrop Parker,” Griggs read aloud. “Businessman. Entrepreneur. Well-known for laundering money through assorted business enterprises.”

“Fronts for the mob,” Charlie said. “If we could ever prove it.”

“Parker usually keeps such a low profile,” Harper said. “We would never have even noticed his connection if not for Mr. Mike.”

Griggs frowned. “Mr. Who?”

“Mikolaczyk.”

“Oh.” Griggs nodded. “Mik.”

“Right.” O’Malley raised an eyebrow. “That’s a guy who could never keep a low profile.” He sat back in the chair and sighed loudly. “So we got a van parked across the street from this Frozen Futures.”

Charlie grinned. “The usual stake-and-bake?”

Harper frowned. “What?”

O’Malley stopped chewing his gum and rolled his eyes. “Nobody calls it that, Charlie-boy.”

“I do.”

O’Malley looked back at Griggs. “Anyway, there is a stakeout across the street. They’re working the fraud angle, but as soon as they spotted Mikolaczyk, they knew our task force would be interested. They promise to keep us posted if anything of interest should happen.”

“In the meantime,” Griggs said, flipping open the file on Massey, “what do we know about Ted Massey?”

“You don’t know?” O’Malley stopped chomping his gum momentarily, flashing a toothy grin. “You had the file all weekend.”

Griggs did not want to admit he had been in no condition to focus. Just shrugged. “I read it thoroughly. It just seems flimsy is all.”

Charlie sat up in his chair. “Massey has kept a low profile until the past few weeks. Suddenly, he started sending goons out to work protection rackets.”

“I heard, I heard.” Griggs put the folder down. Grabbed the autographed baseball off the plastic stand on his desk. “But I heard there was something involving real estate or something. What’s that about?”

Harper spoke up, “Massey is by trade a developer.” She almost sounded like Charlie. “You know, real estate, construction. He bought out the Catalano operation a couple of years ago when it suddenly became—available.”

“Right.” Griggs started rolling the baseball from one hand to the next. Not really paying attention to it, just to keep his hands occupied. “So, why the big question mark? Is he working a protection racket or not?”

“That’s the weird thing,” O’Malley said. “He is actually trying to push people out of their businesses. And homes. It seems like his employees are the ones working the protection racket.”

Charlie was finally confused. “What do you mean?”

“Actually, a guy named Cleaver is the one who got our attention,” Harper said. She consulted a notebook. “He started pressing a couple of store owners for protection money.”

O’Malley took over. “But when we started to listen real closely, we discovered he was not actually ordered to collect protection—he was ordered to push certain parties to pull up tent stakes and move.”

“So Cleaver is actually doing some extra work for himself. Working a protection racket to line his own pockets.”

“That’s what it looks like. The whole thing might have gone unnoticed if Cleaver had not added the extracurricular activity.”

“Greedy bum.” Griggs leaned forward and replaced the baseball in the stand. “How does a guy like Massey hire a guy like Cleaver?”

Charlie snorted. “Have you seen the market out there? Organized crime ain’t what it used to be. Thanks to people like us.”

“Pin on your medal a little later,” Griggs said. “Right now, we got a question—what does Massey want with all that property?”

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There are 70 chapters for Tribulation House. You can purchase the whole eBook from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and more!

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