He arrived just a few minutes later, driving a white Buick LeSabre down one of the many roads leading into the Hollow. He stopped about thirty feet from me and got out of the car, pulling Rachel out behind him on the driver’s side. He held her close to him, with his gun pointed at her temple. She looked scared to death, and I didn’t blame her.
“Okay, asshole,” Manny said to me. “Walk over here and hand me the disc.
About twenty-five feet beyond the spot where I’d parked was a dense stand of trees, and out of the middle of them stepped Denny, wearing a beautiful brown two-piece suit, gun in hand.
“Manny,” he said, “I’m Detective Dennis Wilcox, and at this minute, there’s a gun sighted on your head. Release your weapon, let it drop right down to the ground. Do it now.”
Manny looked at me and shouted, “You was supposed to come alone. You lied!”
I shrugged and said, “What can I say? I’m just a dickhead private eye, remember?”
“Do it now, Manny,” Denny said again.
Manny’s eyes looked wild and were darting all over the place.
“I ain’t gonna go to jail,” he said. “I been there, and I ain’t goin’ again. And I don’t believe you about that gun, and even if I did, it wouldn’t matter. I tole you, I ain’t goin’ back to jail.”
“Officer Ramirez,” shouted Denny, “are you in position?”
“Yes, sir,” came a female voice from the woods on the hillside behind Dennis.
“A cunt?” screamed Manny. “You think some cunt’s gonna shoot me? Fuck that!” And he moved his gun from Rachel’s temple and pointed it at me and the left side of his head exploded as I was reaching for the .38 on my right hip.
Denny and I got to Manny’s body at the same time. While Denny took the gun out of Manny’s hand and felt for the pulse that wasn’t there, I turned to Rachel Pendleton. One side of her face was splattered with blood, and she was shaking and sobbing. I put my arm around her and led her a few feet away. A tall, slender, very attractive black woman wearing a cocktail dress and tennis shoes walked out of the woods carrying a long-barreled pistol with a scope. She went over and stood looking down at Manny for a minute.
“Cunt, huh?” she said, and then turned and walked over to where Rachel and I were standing. She took Rachel’s arm and walked her towards my car, talking softly to her all the while.
I went over and stood next to Denny.
“Juanita’s the best shooter on the force,” he said.
“How’d you get her here so fast?” I asked.
“We happened to be together when you called.”
That explained the suit and the cocktail dress.
“She always go for the casual look as far as footwear is concerned?” I asked.
Denny grinned and said, “Lucky for you she keeps a pair of Nikes in the trunk of her car.” Then he glanced at the body lying on the ground between us.
“Guess that’s the last bit of residual stupidity old Manny’ll be leaving behind,” he said.
Chapter 46
“And this thing all began a few years ago when Chaney and Cox decided to move their offices downtown?”
It was a warm Sunday evening in the middle of May, and Laura and I were sitting on the sofa in my living room. The next day was some sort of school holiday, so she’d told me she could stay up late for a change on a Sunday night. We’d celebrated the occasion by having dinner at a local pub, and now we were eating our desserts, which we’d picked up at the Ice Cream Shoppe on the way back to my place.
“Yeah,” I told her. “When Elias talked William into making the move, they overextended themselves to pay for the new digs. Eventually, they got involved with a loan shark, and when they missed a few payments to him, he brought in his boss, a guy named Timmy O’Rourke, who used to sort of run things in the criminal world in this area.”
Laura took another scoop of ice cream out of her sundae and asked, “Why did the loan shark bring in this O’Rourke? To make Chaney and Cox pay up?”
“Un-uh,” I said. “To get them in deeper. He offered to let them work off their debt, as it were, by laundering some money for him. They jumped at the chance, and when they’d paid back what they owed, Timmy informed them the arrangement would be continuing on an indefinite basis. He set up phony companies, which paid Chaney and Cox large annual retainers, way too large for any supposed legal work the firm did, and at the end of the year, the companies all got nice refund checks for the overages. Voila! Clean bucks.”
“And Elias and William couldn’t go to the police because they would be implicating themselves,” Laura said.
“Uh-huh. Although at some point, both guys seemed to develop an appreciation for the easy money that was flowing their way.”
“So why did Terry Pendleton get shot?”
“Bad luck,” I said. “In the extreme. First, Timmy got sent to prison on a racketeering charge. That paved the way for Manny to take over most of Timmy’s action, primarily by eliminating the opposition. Then Terry stumbled across the whole scheme while doing some work on William’s computer one day. Terry’s office was being painted, and he needed a computer for a while, so William told him to use his. Apparently, William had been a little sloppy about where he kept his records, and Terry just happened to find them. He realized almost immediately what was going on, and within a day or two, he braced his bosses, threatening to reveal all if they didn’t make him a partner.”
“And they had him killed?”
“No. They panicked and told Manny. He killed Terry. Waited for him outside that morning, and as soon as Terry walked down the sidewalk, Manny just stepped out of his car and shot him. Then he made sure to let Elias and William know exactly what had happened. Manny wasn’t as smooth an operator as Timmy had been, and I suspect that at some point, he simply started to lose control of things. Apparently, Chaney and Cox had begun making noises about severing their relationship. So Manny killed Terry as an object lesson for Elias and William.”
We’d both finished our sundaes now, and Laura was leaning her head against my shoulder.
“And we know all this now because . . .?”
“Because it took the cops about seven seconds to convince William it would be in his best interests to cop a plea and testify against his partner. William will still go away for a while, but not as long as Elias. He was much more involved in the whole thing than William was.”
Laura moved a little closer to me.
“When you get right down to it,” she said, “Terry Pendleton died because of all those small bytes of information on that disc and what they represented, Elias and William’s greed and arrogance, Manny’s cruelty.”
She stopped and looked up at me.
“Even though Elias and William were at the opposite end of the social spectrum from Manny, all three of them inhabited a world where the lives of ordinary people had no value at all. In your line of work, you spend a lot of time in that world. How do you manage to stay so positive about, well, everything?”
I put my arm around her and gave her shoulders a squeeze.
“That’s easy,” I said. “At the end of the day, I come back to this world.”
Neither of us spoke for a minute. Then Laura said, “How’s Rachel?”
“She’s going to need some time,” I said, “but I think she’ll make it. She’s gone through a lot these past few weeks, but she’s a lot tougher than most people give her credit for. I saw her again last week. She’s gonna come out of all this all right.”
“Good. By the way, Angie told me that you watched the kids for them yesterday.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “She and Simon went up to see Tommy. He’ll be coming home next month.”
We were quiet again for a few minutes. Then Laura leaned up and whispered in my ear.
“When I said I could stay up late tonight, I didn’t necessarily mean I couldn’t be in bed at the usual time, which, incidentally, is right about now.”
* * *
Late
r, we sat out on the deck off my bedroom and looked at the stars.
“Are you familiar with the Big Bang theory?” I asked her.
She laughed and said, “Are you referring to what transpired in your bedroom a few minutes ago?”
“No,” I said. “It’s just that . . .”
She put her hand on my arm and said, softly, “What is it, Jeremy?”
And I looked deep into those eyes.
“I think I know where we both were a few billion years ago.”
About the Author
Robert Germaux and his wife, Cynthia, live outside of Pittsburgh. After three decades as a high school English teacher, and now a good many years into retirement, Bob is beginning to have serious doubts about his lifelong dream of pitching for the Pirates. In addition to Small Bytes, Bob has several other books available on Amazon, including two other Jeremy Barnes mysteries (Hard Court and In the Eye), two books about former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher-turned-police detective Daniel Hayes (Small Talk and One by One), a love story (The Backup Husband) and two collections of humorous essays: Grammar Sex (and other stuff) and More Grammar Sex. You can find links to all of Bob’s books (and download free samples) at his Amazon Author Page.
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