Black Cat Weekly #80

Chapter 5-2

“I didn’t realize you lived here, Mr. Gardner. You hurt yourself?”

“Total hip replacement.” He patted his side. “Too bad you can’t put shocks on a walker, because this thing can’t take turns.” He looked past me and waved to someone. “Ray? Look who’s come to visit. It’s Richter the Rifle in the flesh.”

The second man who approached was all of six-foot seven inches tall. Age had whittled him down a peg or two, but I recognized him immediately. Ray Stanton was the superintendent of Booker Area School District when I was in school. He ran the district as a relatively young man and would be in his mid-eighties now. He reminded me of a wizened stork.

“Well now, Klaus,” Stanton drawled. “You got a hall pass to be out between classes?”

“No, sir. I was always bad at that.”

He clapped me on the back. “What brings you here, son?”

“Jim Marano. They said his apartment was the down the hall.”

The two men exchanged glances. I asked if I needed to know something about the guy. They shrugged their shoulders as if the topic was somehow uncomfortable, but Matt asked me to stay for lunch. He said half the residents would remember me from high school.

“Maybe some other time,” I said. “Good seeing you both.”

Jim Marano stood in his open doorway as I approached, having been alerted to my visit. After we shook hands, he shuffled to a comfy chair and popped the footrest. I picked the couch while his blue eyes examined me from head to toe.

“You were in the military, Klaus,” he said. “I can tell by how you carry yourself.”

“Yes, sir. The Marines. I served twenty-five years. Ended up in Bosnia in the early Nineties. Then I worked for a security contractor for another twenty before returning to Booker. It’s always been home. How about you?”

“I’m from the Midwest, but I trained in this part of Virginia and chose this area to retire. Been here a couple of months.”

“Where did you train?”

“Camp Peary.”

Camp Peary was north of Colonial Williamsburg, off Interstate 64. Its location wasn’t a secret, but the locals never made it inside the gate. The sprawling facility included what the CIA called The Farm. Their agents trained there. Marano waited for a reaction, then chuckled.

“Yes, I worked for the agency,” he said. “I’m supposed to kill you now, but I’d have to get out of this comfy chair, so you’re off the hook.”

“I’m forever grateful.”

“People always ask what the CIA was like,” he said. “For me, I looked at lots of pictures. Most taken from satellites, some a bit closer. Some very close. We were all about the Communist bloc during my first few years. Then the Berlin Wall fell, but we managed to keep busy.”

“I bet you did. Who at Dead—I mean, who at Red Bend knows you worked for the CIA?”

“Everyone and their brother. They have something called career night here. People give a talk about what they did for a living. I volunteered for two reasons. Number one, it was best to be up front. I don’t want to be Mister Mystery. Number two, the CIA has a generic presentation for job fairs and college recruiting functions. It’s non-classified, enough to pique interest. I was a big hit, although some people keep me at arm’s length.”

I thought of how Stanton and Gardner reacted when I mentioned Marano’s name. “You had a theft of twenty dollars from your room,” I said. “Did it take place after your presentation?”

He blinked. “Why are you asking?”

“A woman lost her job over it, and she’s very upset. Says she didn’t take a penny from you. Her name is Cher Downey. Short, dark hair and a bit heavyset. She was the head housekeeper.”

Jim Marano closed his eyes and went quiet, if holding his breath. Then he popped out of his trance. His expression turned blank, as if he flipped a switch. “Yes, I do know Cher Downey was accused of taking money from my room. Everyone saw her being escorted out. And I did report the missing twenty dollars. I keep my wallet and keys just inside the front door. But I don’t think she took it.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve become good at sizing up people over the years, Mr. Richter. She’s not the type. But I couldn’t prove she was innocent, so I let it go. I figured the people who run the place know best. Are you investigating this?”

“Informally,” I said. “I’m not bad at sizing up people myself, and I suspect you’re not telling me something. That pause was a big tell. Not that you have to spill your guts. I realize we just met.”

“Yes,” he said carefully. “We just met.”

Silence settled between us. Marano was stiff-arming me, but the guy struck me as solid. I handed him a Richter Repair Service business card and he promised to call me if something came up. I had no idea what that might be, but Cher’s warning niggled at the back of my brain. Red Bend is trouble. I’m sure it’s too much for you to handle.

Red Bend is trouble. I’m sure it’s too much for you to handle.“I’d love to see that presentation,” I said. “I did some intelligence work myself as a contractor and considered the agency as a career at one point.”

Mr. Marano slowly pushed up from his chair. “I’ll have to find it on my laptop. Might take a while.”

“No problem. Mind if I use your bathroom?”

From the main room, a short hallway led to two doors, bathroom and bedroom. I peeked in the bathroom, where towels hung straight from the rack. In the bedroom, a blanket lay in a perfect triangle across the bed. His shoes lined up like Army men. In the far corner, a whiteboard stood on an easel with black scribblings. One circle was labeled Red Bend. An arrow led from there to a second circle named Vlad, Russia. In the middle was a square with the words MedTek, followed by a question mark. A business card for MedTek was taped to the whiteboard. I carefully removed it.

The MedTek logo looked like an EKG squiggle with the name printed underneath. On the back, someone had written If you must call, keep it on the down low. SC. According to the card, MedTek was headquartered in Norfolk with a branch in the Russian port city of Vladivostok. Taking out my phone, I snapped a photo of the card and replaced it. Darting back into the bathroom, I closed the door, flushed the toilet and ran the faucet. When I returned to the living room, Marano waited for me, arms crossed.

If you must call, keep it on the down low. SC. “Did you enjoy the tour of my bedroom?” He asked.

Before I could answer, he held up his hand.

“I don’t know why you’re asking questions, Mr. Richter, but you should leave. In another life, we might have been friends. Hell, we might be friends in this life if I get to know you better. But I’m not there yet. Something is going on in this place. I want to make sure you’re not part of it.”

I left without another word.

Walking to my car, I resolved to do some homework and try Jim Marano when I was smarter about current events. He was right. We might be friends one day, but right now he wasn’t trusting me. I couldn’t blame him, seeing as how I blundered around his bedroom.

Back home, web searches told me plenty about MedTek. When American businesses pulled out of Russia in protest of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, MedTek not only stayed, it expanded its Vladivostok facility. Company officials said it would benefit American patients who needed hospital beds, stairway lifts, powered easy chairs and other company products so disabled people could live better lives. Quite the patriots, these folks.

More recently:

—MedTek was fined $300,000 for purchasing hospital bed components from a company with ties to Syria, which is banned from doing business with American firms.

—A MedTek financial officer was charged with providing kickbacks to a supply company owned by men with ties to the Russian Mafia.

—Workers fired from the Vladivostok facility told Der Spiegel that MedTek-Vladivostok is a money-laundering hub for organized crime, and the hospital business is a front. The workers were granted anonymity to speak on the record.

Der SpiegelBy the time I made printouts and read everything again, it was six o’clock and I needed a beer, maybe two, but my brain kept churning. Sam Cox ran Red Bend and someone with the initials “SC” invited these gangster-loving jackasses to call “on the down low.” Was Marano investigating Sam Cox for cavorting with the Russian mob? That seemed odd. Number one, Marano was not an active CIA agent. Number two, he wasn’t exactly undercover.

And where did Cher Downey fit in? Marano didn’t accuse her of stealing, so why did Sam Cox give her the bum’s rush?

I finally drank those beers, fell asleep on the couch and woke up at sunrise. Sam Cox was next on my research list, and that required coffee, because the guy was as exciting as watching paint dry. After graduating from Booker High School in 2004 and Randolph-Macon College four years later, he returned to his hometown and worked in the hardware store owned by his father, Ron Cox. I found a brief story on the business page about the son joining the family business. Ron and I played football together. He was a big, brawling offensive lineman who never raised his voice, but you didn’t want to cross him. He died while I was overseas, and I regretted missing the funeral.

Two years ago, Sam was named administrator of Red Bend. The story said he’d already been at the nursing home for ten years. I did the math: He must have started at Red Bend in 2009 to get a decade of experience, so he didn’t work for his daddy very long.

Sam also popped up in community news. He served as announcer for the Booker Christmas Parade and emceed the annual July 4th Telethon that raised money for a regional medical center. An all-around good guy.

I waited until after eight that morning and called Red Bend while brewing a second pot of coffee. I wanted to apologize to Jim Marano and see if we could start over. The woman who answered seemed confused when I asked for his room phone A few minutes later, a man’s voice came on and asked if I was a member of Marano’s immediate family.

A chill ran up my spine.

“I’m just a friend,” I said.

“Who are you, friend?”

I placed the voice: Jake Sterling, a sheriff’s deputy. “Jake, this Klaus Richter. I put shocks on your wife’s minivan a while back.”

“Hey, Klaus. Geez, I’m sorry. Jim Marano died this morning. Terrible accident. He was volunteering in the gift shop and fell off a step ladder, trying to stock shelves. Fell with a pair of scissors and stabbed himself in the neck. Bled out on the floor. I gotta go.”

I stifled a scream and stormed out of the house, replaying every second of my visit to Red Bend. I told Matt Gardner and Ray Stanton where I was headed. Rebecca the friendly senior communications associate knew as well. They seemed like good people, but nursing home residents trade in gossip as much as bingo, and word about my visit to Jim Marano could have easily spread.