Streeter Box Set

by Michael Stone

  When he pushed the door open and stepped into the living room, he got his answer. There—draped over the couch, half on the floor—was the process server who had given Story her papers at Cooper’s. The left side of his head was matted with blood, and there was a large spray of red over the couch and wall a few feet from him. This must be that Jacky Romp that Carey mentioned.

  Streeter took out his handkerchief and covered his right hand. He walked to the couch and checked Romp for a pulse. There was none, but the skin was still mildly warm, indicating that he hadn’t been dead for long. Streeter noticed that both of the man’s wrists were cut and the marks looked fresh. Romp’s face was twisted in rage, like he had died giving someone serious verbal grief. Judging by where the blood spray ended up on the wall, Streeter guessed that he was shot kneeling down and then sort of thrown onto the couch after he was dead. Streeter backed away from the body. He wiped his prints off the doorknob and left.

  When he got back to the church, he went to Frank’s room. Once again, the bondsman automatically grabbed his Scotch and they headed to his office.

  “It’s getting way out of hand, Street,” Frank said when they sat down at his desk. Then he nodded to the Scotch bottle. “This is getting to be a regular event around here. You got to go to the police.”

  “I called 911 from a phone booth on the way back here.”

  “I assumed that. I mean you got to sit down with them and fill them in on all of this stuff.”

  “That would be nice, except that I think it’s the police who’s doing most of it. This Jacky business wasn’t Cooper’s work. And Soyko wouldn’t do Romp. No motive, and Carey tells me these two guys were closer than brothers.”

  “You think Kovacs did it?”

  “Romp had cuts on his wrists. My guess is handcuffs. Kovacs doesn’t want anyone messing into Doug’s business. This is his way of telling Cooper to back off. He probably figured he’d have to be a little more forceful with Cooper than he was with Story.”

  “So where’s Soyko now?”

  “I wouldn’t mind knowing that myself. I’m meeting Carey tomorrow afternoon to see what I can find out. I also got a call today from Cooper’s secretary. Seems she was attacked last night and she wants to get together with me tomorrow and talk about it. Ronnie Taggert. I may have mentioned her.”

  Frank was puzzled. “Why’d she call you?”

  “I gather she can’t go to the cops, because she’s in over her head. And she doesn’t think Cooper’ll be much help.” Streeter smiled. “I think maybe she’s got a thing for me, too. For whatever reason, she trusts me.”

  “Great. You need to get messed up with someone like that. You got a real knack for hitching up with trouble all of a sudden.”

  “I’m not hitching up with anything,” he said, dropping the smile, “but I’m dying to find out what she knows about all this. We’re meeting first thing in the morning for breakfast.”

  Frank shook his head like he had a stiff neck and poured another drink. “Let me know if you need anything. And watch your ass, huh?”

  TWENTY

  Jacky Romp was one of the most dead-looking bodies Soyko had ever seen, and he’d seen maybe a dozen guys in that precise condition. He’d been standing in the middle of the living room smoking and looking down at Jacky for almost half an hour. It didn’t take an orthopedic surgeon to figure out that Romp’s condition wasn’t brought on by natural causes. One side of his head looked like he’d stuck it in a blender. It had lolled off to his left and rested on the couch back. His legs shot straight out, like he was a puppet thrown down hard. It looked to Soyko like someone had used a cannon on his partner.

  He had known Jacky for nearly ten years and roomed with him for most of that time. Jacky was not only Soyko’s closest friend, he was the only real friend he ever had. But Soyko wasn’t so much sad as puzzled about what to do next. Not about what to do with the killer. That was a definite no-brainer. No, he wondered about what to do in general without Jacky around.

  Suddenly he turned to face the wall, let out a dull wail, and ran his fist through the cheap plaster. He did it twice more, then felt better. Jacky was history, but someone had to pay. Soyko would still leave town tomorrow, as they had planned, but he would be by himself. He knew he’d have to be careful until then. If the cops weren’t on his tail before, this would certainly get them there.

  Life could be very strange at times, he decided sadly.

  He walked into his bedroom and stuffed his clothes into two suitcases. Exactly what happened to Jacky? It wasn’t a burglary, because nothing was missing. It didn’t seem likely the cops did it, either. The name Tom Cooper waltzed slowly through Soyko’s noxious, if sparse, mind. So did the term “payback.” The attack on Ronnie Taggert had to be avenged, so Cooper must have hired a couple of goons to turn Jacky out like that. Easy enough to find out. Go to his office in the morning and don’t leave until you get some answers.

  Forget Doug Shelton’s money and that Moffatt broad, Soyko thought. He could feel pain and uncertainty sprouting around him. Time to take the two actions that always brought him relief: he had to lash out and then he had to split. This McLean beating had turned into one monumentally bad idea. He could see that now. Also taking Ronnie on brought too much heat, and maybe cost Jacky his life. Tomorrow, dealing with Cooper, that had to be done.

  Then he would leave town.

  He went back to the living room. When he reached in and cleaned out Jacky’s wallet he noticed a foul odor. Jacky must have soiled himself as he died. He wondered how many guys Cooper had hired. Tiny Fred, maybe. He’d find out tomorrow. When he got Jacky’s money, he left without saying a word. If Leo Soyko knew one thing for absolute certain, it was that there was no point in talking to a dead man.

  He and Jacky lived in a wood-stained condo project, strictly low-end. It was the kind of prefab place where, when the real estate market goes sour like it did in the early eighties, foreclosure notices sprout on the windows like Christmas wreaths. Their unit opened directly into an outside stairwell that emptied into the parking lot.

  Soyko had just gotten down one flight of stairs when the woman from the unit below came staggering out. She was pushing fifty, which seemed ancient to him, and usually she was either asleep or in the process of drinking herself to sleep. She smelled like the Dumpsters out back and slurred her words into barely recognizable, choppy strings of syllables. And, clearly, she was hot for the two men who lived above her. Just my luck, Leo thought.

  “How we tonight?” she asked. “Taking a little trip, are we?”

  “We ain’t doing nothing, you and me.” He set his bags down and looked at her.

  She made a bitter face and drew her head back. “Why you gotta talk to me like that? All the time. And where’s your roomie?”

  “He’s asleep.”

  “Your other friend leave? Where is he?”

  Soyko perked up. “What friend is that?”

  “The big guy in the Buick.”

  “Who you talking about? I was gone for a while.”

  The drunk, he never did know her name, could see that she had his interest, so she played it to the hilt. “Maybe you could come in and we can talk about it.”

  He didn’t have the time or the patience for that. Even if he had, the idea made him moderately sick. Instead, he reached out with a gnarled right hand and grabbed her by the throat. Then he squeezed hard. Her eyes widened in pain and terror and she let out a thunderous, involuntary belch.

  “Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe I don’t have time for your crap. Now, what big guy you talking about?”

  “Yuh, yech,” escaped from her mouth.

  He loosened his grip slightly. He noticed a series of dried brown stains on the front of her flowered bathrobe, and for a second he felt like gagging. “What did this big guy look like?” He loosened his grip even further.

  “Good-looking. Late thirties maybe.” Her voice was tiny. “Brown hair combed back some. Shoulders a mile wide.” />
  He let the woman go. Then he thought of that muscle-head boyfriend of Moffatt’s. Streeter was the name Cooper mentioned. The bounty hunter who was with her that day at Cooper’s. Against Soyko’s advice, Jacky had made a bunch of hang-up calls to him last week. The guy was supposed to be tight with McLean, Cooper said. Had to be this Streeter that did Jacky, Soyko concluded.

  “What kind of shit is this?” The drunk was rubbing her throat, which was turning red and felt like she’d swallowed a frozen tennis ball. “You’re a regular asshole, you know that?”

  “Relax. You’ll live.” Then, as an afterthought, “If you call what you do living.”

  He picked up his suitcases and headed toward the car. No need to squeeze Cooper about who did Jacky. It was that Streeter. To hell with Cooper. Soyko decided to follow Streeter for a while. Maybe he’d get lucky and the big guy would lead him to Moffatt, so he could take care of both of them. A two-for-one payback. Jacky deserved that much.

  By the time he drove out of the lot, he was in a much better mood.

  The drunk just stood out in front of her door for a long time after Soyko left. Her breathing was starting to get normal again. “Bastard,” she mumbled to no one. She was glad she hadn’t told Soyko about the other guy that went up there, before the big guy. That first visitor was not so nice-looking. He looked sick and ugly. And he had the look of a bully, just like Soyko. He had knocked on her door by mistake, looking for the men upstairs. The guy had to be a cop. Even a drunk could see that. She stood outside her door seething. Then she went inside and made a phone call, to 911.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Streeter was never much for breakfast. Particularly the cooked, restaurant kind. So he just ordered a large milk and looked out onto the half-full parking lot of Rudy’s Ranch Buffet, the diner where he was to meet Ronnie in about ten minutes. The name notwithstanding, Rudy’s was about as country as a subway. It was generic corporate schlock, with the grimly sterile atmosphere of a school cafeteria and Dwight Yokum softly piped in. Streeter figured they named it Ranch Buffet to sucker people into thinking they’d get a huge farm meal and then maybe not notice the glorified airplane food they were actually served.

  Rudy’s was located in the hideous maze of culs-de-sac, shopettes, and rambling streets with names like Briarwood Lane in Littleton, a far-south Denver suburb. With Ronnie staying at a trucker’s motel out in rural Douglas County, about five miles farther south, she suggested Rudy’s to Streeter because it was roughly halfway between her and the church. Also because Soyko would never think of looking for her there.

  “Here’s your milk,” the waitress said, stating the obvious as she stood over his booth.

  “Do you have a nonsmoking section somewhere?” Streeter had just noticed the swirl of cigarette smoke around him.

  “Sure.” The waitress clearly was bored. “Over there. Just sit anywhere you want.” She threw her head listlessly toward a far wall and walked away.

  Streeter worked his way into a booth on the back wall. He could no longer see the parking lot but now had a clear view of the entire restaurant and would be better able to see Ronnie come through the door. He still had a few minutes before she was set to arrive, so he sipped his milk and patiently looked around the room.

  As Ronnie drove north toward Rudy’s, she thought how all her plans of settling down with Cooper in Denver and leading a “normal” life with the attorney were dead. When she escaped Soyko on Monday, she’d headed south and checked into the motel. She finally called Cooper about midnight and told him what happened. The little worm uttered a few cursory words of concern and then went into a selfish tirade about her not caring about him.

  “Did it ever occur to you, Rhonda, that I should have been apprised of this situation?” he’d sputtered indignantly into the phone. She could almost picture the wad of spit forming at each side of his mouth as he worked up his usual head of self-absorbed fear. “All this time with those guys running around out there. It’s just fortunate I’m still in one piece. No thanks to you. What if they had come after me?”

  “You lousy chicken shit,” she’d screamed back. “I almost get killed and all you think about is what might have happened to you. How typical.”

  She wouldn’t tell him where she was. Instead, they decided to meet in a couple of days at a motel just outside of Colorado Springs and leave for Mexico together. They’d get their hands on as much cash as they could before then. Most of that would come from Cooper selling his ’Vette and closing his bank accounts, with another portion from Ronnie taking out “ready cash” from their joint safe-deposit box.

  But the more she thought about it the less thrilled she was. His reaction to her attack and his general inability to protect her made Ronnie reluctant to stay with the man. He wouldn’t have that much money, and his earning power as an attorney probably was shot. And let’s face it, she reasoned, his practical judgment grossly sucks. Look at how he misread that situation with Romp and Soyko. So she picked up just over twenty thousand dollars from their box. Now she had the Tercel, a fair amount of cash, plastic credit, and most of her clothes, which she’d retrieved from her apartment. The police would be after her as a witness against Cooper, and she could be facing charges. Leaving town definitely was the best move. By herself. Before then she wanted to straighten out a few things, and Streeter might help. He had a confidence that drew her to him. Not really showy, but a nice hint of cockiness. And he seemed trustworthy.

  The bounty hunter was about half done with his milk when Ronnie came through Rudy’s front door.

  “I’m glad you made it,” Ronnie said as she approached his booth.

  “I said I’d be here.” He liked the pale-pink summer sweater she had on. Short sleeves, like something a bratty teenage girl would have worn in a 1950s movie. “Eight-thirty Wednesday at Rudy’s. You hungry?”

  “I don’t usually eat before noon. Coffee’ll be fine.”

  The waitress came and took her order and they sat in silence until it came. Streeter spoke first. “This can’t be easy on you. Are you all right?”

  She nodded and stared directly at him. “You know the name Leo Soyko?”

  “Cooper’s flunky? I’ve heard rumors.”

  “Jacky Romp. You ever hear of him?”

  Streeter flashed on Jacky’s body on the couch. “Yeah. He’s dead. Have you seen the morning papers?”

  Ronnie looked stunned. “How? Yesterday?”

  “The Post said his body was found about midnight at his apartment. Shot twice in the head at close range.”

  Ronnie didn’t appear to be experiencing anything close to grief. “Maybe there is a God.” She smiled quickly. “He and Soyko were the two boners that attacked me Monday night. If Romp had his way I’d be dead. Do they have any idea at all who did it?”

  “No arrests, according to the paper. Do you think Soyko might have killed him?”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “Did they have any other enemies?”

  Ronnie smiled and her head jerked in a knowing nod. “Only anyone who ever met either of them. But I can’t think of anyone in particular. Tell me, Mr. Bounty Hunter, what’s your hunch?”

  Streeter’s eyebrows shot up and he took a sip of his milk. “I have someone in mind but I doubt if you know him. Did Cooper have any friends or associates in the Denver Police Department?”

  “Honey, you’re looking at all the friends Thomas Cooper has in the world.”

  Again there was a brief silence.

  “So, Ronnie,” he said deliberately. “Why’d you call this meeting?”

  “A couple of reasons. I’m leaving town soon and I hoped you could help me handle a little unfinished business. This news about Jacky takes care of part of it. Soyko’s another part. Those two were scum and I’d like to see them both buried. Soyko’s looking for that money Doug Shelton supposedly left behind. Cooper’s looking, too, but I have a feeling he’s out of the picture from now on. If you and that Story Moffatt chick are still go
ing after it, you better be careful. I don’t suppose you’d do me one little favor and shoot Soyko?”

  Streeter could see she wasn’t entirely joking. “You don’t suppose right.”

  “Just a thought. If you won’t shoot him, maybe you can help put him away. He killed a witness in a murder case up in Commerce City named Grundy Dopps. Tell the police that. Tell them Cooper paid Soyko to try and get Dopps out of town and then Soyko decided to kill him instead. I’ve been involved with Tom Cooper for more than three years now and I know that whole bunch of jerks. I’m finished with all of them, but I’d hate to see Soyko get Doug’s money. The thought of Leo Soyko getting any reward out of this makes me sick.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I’ll bet ‘you too.’ If I was a gambler I’d say you’re the kind of guy who doesn’t like to lose.”

  “Who does?”

  “Right. Anyhow, I want to tell you what I know before I leave town. What you do with it is up to you.”

  “I’m listening.” Streeter leaned forward.

  “If it was me still looking for that money, I’d head over to wherever they’re keeping what’s left of Doug’s Porsche. I used to date a guy who works at an import garage on South Downing. I ran into Bobby not too long ago and we went out for a few beers. As it turns out, he’d worked on Doug’s car a couple years ago. Bobby told me it was customized special somehow.”

  “I thought the insurance people and Story did that.”

  “They might have, but Bobby led me to believe the car was very special. He was vague about it, but my instincts say check out the car.”

  Streeter nodded. “I was going to do that anyhow. But if my hunch is right, I don’t think what Doug left could be stored in any car.”

  “Do what you want, Streeter. Just so you beat Soyko on this. Another thing. There was some cop that busted Doug on his last coke deal. I can’t remember the guy’s name anymore, but Doug was terrified of him. He beat almost the entire shit out of Doug right after the arrest. You ever come across the cop?”