Free Saving Jason by Michael Sears Page A

sure that if he ever caught me in some blatantly illegal act, he would cart me off to the Metropolitan Correctional Center and feel that he had done a good day’s work. But my assistance had served his career. And he had done the same for me. It was a loveless marriage of convenience that often worked out much better for both sides than the buddy-buddy bromances you see in most cop movies.
    He wrote:
Barstow & Co. We need to talk.
    Barstow? The name meant nothing to me.
    I texted back:
Buzzy. Will call in am.
    I thought I had turned off autocorrect.
    Sorry. Busy.
    Besides, it was Sunday night. What couldn’t wait until morning? My phone chirped again.
    Be home 9 am.

10
    T he next morning the Kid and I were back to what I had learned to think of as normal. All troubles forgiven or forgotten. I could never be sure which system was the operative one in moments like this. The Kid had hung up the phone abruptly when our dinner was delivered, eaten every bite, and gone to bed almost immediately with no hint of a hangover to our drama. I took the reprieve as a gift from the parenting fates and privately vowed never to burn his grilled cheese again.
    I dropped the Kid at school, and I made it back to the apartment with plenty of time to shave and shower before Brady’s deadline. He surprised me by showing up with two other agents.
    “I inserted myself in their case, Jason, because of our past relationship. I told them that if I were here you’d be more willing to cooperate.”
    Sirens were going off in my head like a three-alarm fire. “Do I say ‘Thank you’? I’d like to know where this is going, Agent Brady.” I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he had called me by my given name. I didn’t want to play.
    “May I?” The agent who had introduced himself as Brown indicated the couch.
    “Sit, please,” I said.
    “Thank you.” Brady and the other agent—I hadn’t caught the name—stepped back and gave us a bit of room. I took a seat on my ancient broken-spring armchair. The room expanded again, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were all poised to grab me if I made a run for the door.
    As he lowered himself onto the couch, Brown plucked his suit pants an inch or so higher, so as to maintain the perfect crease. He wasboth careful and vain. Ex-military, I guessed. I could imagine him making the same gesture in full dress uniform. “Mr. Stafford, you recently made a request to the SEC for information on a certain stock. As it turns out, the U.S. Attorney has also had an interest in that stock. That is the kind of coincidence that makes people in our line of work uncomfortable.”
    I wanted to throw all three of them out, with an especial kick in the seat of the pants of Special Agent Brady. He had sandbagged me. My lawyer, the wonder-worker Larry, would have cut this guy off before he sat down. That was the smart move. On the other hand, if I called in a lawyer, I would learn nothing about what they knew. I decided to play the game for a bit longer.
    “I work for Virgil Becker at Becker Financial. In my line of work, I often find it necessary to request public information from various government agencies.”
    “Yes, but not very often in these kinds of microstocks.”
    “‘These’? More than one?”
    “Right now we are focusing on only one stock. If there are others that happen to overlap, we would see that as more than coincidence, wouldn’t you agree? Suspicious, possibly.”
    Initial public offerings in microstocks don’t have to file with the SEC the same way as larger companies. A week earlier, I had requested information on the penny stocks I was concerned about. Only one, I found, had any substantial documentation available. Researching the rest had taken me days.
    “I guess it’s time for you to open up a bit,” I said. “I’m not supposed to guess at which stock we’re talking about, right? Maybe you could act it out. How many syllables?”
    He favored me with