“I won’t beat around the bush, Mr. Brenner, the Vigilance Initiative can use your services. You would be amply compensated.”
He smiled at her. “Is that right?”
“Tell you what, let’s have lunch and discuss my proposition.”
Outside the chain link fence was a hot dog cart vendor. Brenner nodded toward him. “Since we’ll probably not be kissing on our first date, I’ll have onions on mine.”
It was her turn to smile, thinly. “I was thinking of somewhere a bit more relaxing, say, the Ratskeller.”
In cargo shorts, sweat stained t-shirt, and tennis shoes, Brenner said, “I’m hardly dressed for that place.”
“True,” she answered, turning to walk away, “but there is the quite funky Carlos and Jane’s where you’ll fit right in.”
“There is that.” Brenner followed her onto the street where her double-parked Benz sports car had received a parking ticket. She picked this from beneath the windshield wiper, and the two drove from Rucker Park in Harlem to the restaurant in the Village.
There, Brenner had a microbrew beer and ordered seared Ahi tuna tacos. Ella Navarro asked for a faux Cobb salad made with tofu. She chewed as precisely as she talked.
“You know who Max Damakas is?” she said.
“That’s what this is about? I didn’t help his son expecting a payday.”
“Yes, we know. I’m sure it doesn’t surprise you after the incident at the poker game; we had all the people in attendance checked out.” She regarded him coolly. “You gave us interest.”
“Us, this Vigilance bit?”
She held up a hand, larger than he would have imagined. “A brief explanation is in order.” She had some of her fizzy water. “Many know that when Max was twelve years old, his mother and father were killed by mafia hoods.”
Brenner nodded. The couple had been green grocers with a neighborhood shop in Hoboken. “They came forward and testified about a shooting that went down outside their store one night.”
“That’s right,” Navarro said. “It was Don Madraga who knew them from way back and sought to punish them by burning down their store. But he didn’t order a hit on them.”
“However, the underboss was the Don’s son, and he wanted to show he was tough and had the two of them killed.” Brenner added, sipping more of his beer. “But the son eventually tried to take out the father and got whacked instead.”
Navarro spoke. “That horrible fate befalling his parents defined Max. The cruel death of his parents drove him on and on to succeed in school, to become the engineer his mother had always wanted him to be despite a raft of illnesses that beset him.”
“He did more than that,” Brenner observed. Damakas’ company, Xtar, was consistently ranked among the Fortune 500.
Their food arrived, and Brenner took the measure of his lunch companion. He wondered how much of the Damakas Kool-Aid had she drank? Max Damakas was one of the world’s richest men due to his and his early partners’ innovations in the personal computer and software field. He gave generously to such entities as food banks, job programs, and education efforts. He was also now a near hermit, said to be suffering from mysophobia, a fierce fear of germs. His various homes and offices were said to contain doors that could be hermetically sealed and so on.
“And the Vigilance Initiative?” he said after they’d each took in a forkful and swallowed.
“It was started,” but Ella Navarro’s practiced reserved demeanor dissipated as she stared blankly and muttered, “Trouble…masks.”
Several long seconds later, there was activity past Brenner’s right shoulder. From where they sat, they were both at an angle to the front door. Through the entrance, the glass door creaking slightly on its hinges and three men stepped hurriedly into the restaurant. Their intent was clear as they wore face masks and wielded handguns. The masks were of the Three Stooges – Moe, Larry, and Curly.
Moe took the lead and the three moved more into the space. Patrons stared and swallowed hard. Moe said, “Let’s have no panic ladies and gentlemen, and me and my companions won’t panic. But get those wallets and purses on the tables like a minute ago.”
As the patrons complied, Brenner noted the three hadn’t fanned out to scoop up loose items like phones. The trio remained close together, walking in line to where Brenner and Navarro sat. Their guns were raised and steady in their gloved hands.
Brenner was out of his chair and throwing the salt shaker at one of the men. It was a heavy cut glass container and he planted it precisely at a spot on Moe’s temple, right above where his plastic face mask ended. Stunned, the leader of the Stooges went over onto a table, his body falling sideways like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The couple who’d been sitting at the table jumped up in panic, wanting to flee but fearful of being cut down by gunfire. Larry and Curly calmly clubbed them out of the way, using their weapons as cudgels.
Brenner deftly maneuvered past the falling couple and locked his hand on Curly’s wrist. Simultaneously, he had a foot up and used it to shove Larry backward. Brenner then twisted his hand, resulting in an audible crack.
“Jezus,” Curly yelped as he took a swing at Brenner. But after a blur of hand and arm movements by Brenner, a semi-conscious Curly was face-up on the floor, his gun arm broken at the elbow.
Larry was taken care of by a limping senior citizen in a floppy hat who shot him with a pen. That is, the tip flew from the barrel and embedded itself in the last Stooge’s neck. His eyes fluttered and closed behind the eyeholes of his face mask. He too joined his fellow supposed robbers on the floor – asleep and snoring.
“We better get out of here,” the older man said. He was no longer stooped over as if infirmed with arthritis. He also sounded younger than he seemed.
“Yes,” Navarro agreed. She had a throwing star in her hand and quickly slipped this back behind her wide buckle.
Brenner grinned at them. “If you wanted to get my attention, you did.”
“That’s good. Now all of you pay close attention to me,” a new voice said.
The three looked over at several NYPD police officers crowding the front of the restaurant. They had handguns and shotguns up and aimed at their suspects.
“And they say response time is down in the city,” the senior citizen quipped. He was slightly stooped again, and the timbre in his voice was no longer youthful. The three put up their hands. Given there were two female officers among the cops, all were patted down, cuffed, and placed in squad cars. The officers also took statements from the staff and customers of Carlos and Jane’s. The Three Stooges were marched out in handcuffs, sans masks, and placed together in a paddy wagon.
Later, at the precinct, a detective named Sirocco questioned Brenner in the interrogation room.
“You keep an apartment here?”
“In Brooklyn, yes.”
“But you’re not a fulltime resident,” the detective observed.
“No I’m not.”
Sirocco read more of a file he had before him. “You bounce around a lot.” He looked down to read something. Then looked up again. “What exactly do you do for a living, Mr. Brenner?”
He hunched a shoulder. “Bust suds at times in diners, get freight hauling jobs, that kind of stuff.”
“Yet you manage to keep an apartment here and elsewhere it seems,” Sirocco said, tapping a finger on the papers in the open file.
“It’s rent controlled.” He won the