Mim’s laughter broke into a bark, her rheumy wet eyes twinkling at me. “See if you can guess, Morty.”
It was suddenly feeling very warm in the bar, and I finished my drink in a gulp. “Why do you ask me, Mim?”
“He lived . . .” Mim surveyed the others, then came back to me: “On Vanderhoosen.”
It took a second or two—or was it hours?—for me to realize what she was suggesting.
“So?” I said, my voice cracking.
“Ooo!” Slim Jim thumped the bar. “Didn’t you clean out a house on Vanderhoosen Street, Morty? Wasn’t that . . .”
My compatriots were all fingering the little white cards with the phone number on them.
“Look, this money, it is a rumor . . .” My protest was feeble.
Oscar leaned both forearms on the bar and brought his granite head close to mine. “Morty, you found the money from the Atlas armored car heist.”
“And that cop was lookin’ for it.” Buddy jerked his thumb at the empty doorway.
Mim was laughing so hard she loosed the queen of all farts, a sound roughly equivalent to a foghorn sounding from within a vat of pudding.
“And so is Danny Kessel,” she roared.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
WHAT GOES THROUGH A MAN’S mind when he realizes all at once that there are three hard cases out to get him?
Panic.
First, as we know, I had Pete the Prick breathing down my neck.
Then there was the furry cop. I use the word “cop” loosely indeed. If he were real police, he would have badged us. Nothing a detective or undercover cop likes more than flashing his badge and watching people’s eyes bug out. He was some independent operator. A dick, perhaps, or bounty hunter.
Then there was the ex-con, Danny. I knew nothing of this man, except that he had been a part of an armored car holdup. Well, I certainly did not imagine he accomplished that with a feather duster, which meant he was likely armed and dangerous.
Then there were my peeps at Oscar’s. I did not care for the way they were looking at those white cards with the furry cop’s phone number. As soon as I had left, I had little doubt that they were all clawing their cell phones to see who could call first. And for a measly Ben, a C-note. Bastards.
What goes through a man’s mind when, out of nowhere, everyone seems to be against him? For me, the flight instinct was the first thing to enter my mind.
I left Oscar’s as casually as possible, laughing off Mim’s theories and the speculative mood of the rest of them, and walked calmly to my car. Once behind the wheel, it was a challenge to contain my panic. It is difficult for a man to admit that he is almost overcome with fear. I did not sob, but tears fell from my eyes.
I am not an idiot. It was unlikely that Mr. Trux managed to save eight hundred thousand dollars. Do the math, Father Gomez—you would have to save almost thirty dollars a day for eighty years to sock that much away, and without dividends or interest. So I suspected this quantity of cash must come from someplace not entirely legal. Even so, I still had it, and it was secure. The problem was the word was out about what I’d found. It wouldn’t be long before the cop and this Danny person found out about it.
Specifically, what did I have to fear from them?
The cop would lean on me, tell me I’d better cough it up or he’d make trouble for me. Who knows? He might get physical.
This Danny person was probably capable of anything. Anybody who spends a considerable time in prison has lost all subtlety. After menacing me, he would probably move to Plan B pretty quickly, which would involve physical coercion. Torture. Then he might kill me once I told him.
When a man panics, he is reduced to one of his most primal states, and perhaps the most primal of all instincts is that of flight. Yes, even more so than the act of mating. After all, what man, caught in bed with another man’s woman, does not immediately put wings to his feet? He does not stay and keep mating.
My mind raced with the images.
Of me at the storage locker, stuffing the backseat of the Camaro with the Scottish suitcase.
Of me on the highway, headed for the Throgs Neck. No, wait, south on the Belt Parkway, toward the Verrazano Bridge, Staten Island. From there I could either head toward Florida on I-95 or toward California, and La Paz, on I-78.
Of me by the dashboard light, big green highway signs passing over me, the barrage of white stripes slipping past, the red taillights ahead, pulling me onward.
Of the sun rising, of gas stations, of fast food, of sleeping in rest stops. I would go and go and go and go until I was so far away I could not be found. I could access the rest of my money in the bank from wherever I ended up.
Ah.
But where were those Balkan Boys? I scanned the surrounding cars—they could be in any of them. To drive to the storage lockers would probably be to hand the money to Pete the Prick. You have to understand, he’s an extremely competitive person and will do anything to win. Going home would be dangerous. Who knew who would be waiting for me there? I couldn’t go to Fanny’s—I did not know exactly where she lived, and I did not even know her last name. Well, maybe she told me and I forgot between the champagne and the cold duck. Besides, any woman can tell you that men edit what women say, tuning out what sounds to us to be unimportant. Last night her name wasn’t very important.
I decided to indulge my first instinct, at least partially. I needed distance, and room to think without looking over my shoulder. If I took to the highway, I should be able to spot the Balkan Boys tailing me, maybe give the idiots the slip in a rest area on the turnpike, and then find a motel for the night.
So I began, down the commercial avenue of two-story brick buildings, shuttered shops and stoplights, toward the parkway and the highway.
As I did, I saw police cars ahead, their flashing rollers lighting up the house fronts like the disco dance floor at Octavio.
Cop cars were in front of Upscale Realty, just around the corner from the avenue.
I slowed as I passed, trying to see what the trouble was. I hoped Mary was all right.
“Officer?”
A uniform cop pacing next to his car waved me away. “Keep moving.”
I saw where another cop was stringing yellow plastic tape across the sidewalk, telling a small crowd to move back. Pulling ahead, I parked at a hydrant on the avenue and jogged toward the store.
“Officer, what has happened? Is Mary all right?”
This was the officer who had been stringing crime scene tape, and he was equally as testy as the first cop and kept scratching his mustache and adjusting his hat.
“Who are you?”
“I am Mary’s friend.”
“What’s your name?”
I hesitated. See? Give a cop two seconds and he will start the interrogation. “It is me, Bob, I am her friend.”
There were more sirens coming down the avenue. That wasn’t good. The more cops, the more serious something like this was. The itchy cop was chewing hard on his gum, his hands moving from mustache to hat, clearly agitated.
“Sir, I’ll need you to wait to talk to the detectives.”
My veins were iced with dread, mostly about Mary’s fate but also the prospect of being scrutinized by the police.
“They want to talk to me? But why?”
“You were her friend, you said, right?”
Were.
“Mary is dead?”
He squinted at me. “How did you know that?”
“You said ‘were,’ indicating she is now in the past, yes?”
“Did I?”
“My God . . . how did she die?” You know someone is really a friend when their troubles can suddenly replace your own. What had she said to me, the last thing, about bad things happening to good people? Eerie.
A flock of other cop cars—some unmarked—and an ambulance stuffed themselves into the side street off the avenue. Any hope I had that the itchy officer was mistaken about Mary was fading. You don’t g
et this many cops showing up to a heart failure or slip in the bathtub. Besides, I knew there was no bathtub at Upscale Realty. Then again, maybe there was a tub under all that mess.
The itchy officer was being called over to where the new arrivals were assembled. You could tell the detectives right away. One was thick and Hispanic, the other slouchy and probably with an Irish name. The officer pointed a commanding finger at me.
“Wait right there.” He ducked under the tape and trotted over to his superiors and the EMS people. A reporter was in the mix, a man named Dexter Lewis. I went to high school with him. He was always recognizable at a distance by his Panama hat as much as by his clubfoot. Dexter lurched around like Juan Valdez with one giant honking black hobnail platform shoe and one small black ballerina slipper. He was teased and tormented relentlessly back then by the other kids. I was always nice enough to him, and when we ran into each other on the street these days we said hello and exchanged pleasantries. He worked for the local paper, the Brooklyn Gazette, and was often the first on a neighborhood crime scene.
I had told the itchy cop my name was Bob. It seemed essential to slink away. If Dexter looked my direction, though, he would recognize me, and when I had vanished, and the cops got upset, he might ID me.
Wasn’t it just hours ago I was worrying about grapes? Wasn’t I considering French cheeses and fancy crackers and blender drinks and shelf cleaning? And do not imagine that I had forgotten about the thong and high heels.
Slowly, like a ghost, I drifted back from all the light and hubbub, seeking the corner of the building and a clear shot at my Camaro on the avenue. It was maybe fifty feet to the corner, and I kept my eyes trained on the fuzz and Dexter. Gawkers straggled around me toward the crime scene. I continued to back slowly toward the corner, toward the avenue, away from the police tape. Now if the authorities and a certain reporter would only keep their attention away from me.
I was next to the building, my hand dragging along the bricks, feeling for the corner.
My fingers danced along the brick, touching the cracks, the mortar, anticipating the sharp edge that would be the corner. I dared not take my eyes from the police and the Panama hat.
At last.
I spun around the building corner. Directly into Speedy, my foreman, knocking the tiny brown man to the ground.
“Speedy!” I knew it was him immediately by the little straw cowboy hat he wore, the brim rolled tightly on the sides. I moved to the other side of him, away from the police, and helped him to stand.
Speedy scrambled to his feet, hat in hand, cursing in Spanish. “Morty, what the hell is wrong with you? Jesus Christ, you about ran me over.”
“Come on.” I grabbed him by the elbow and led him to the hulk of my rusty white Camaro at the hydrant.
He shook free of my grip.
“Dios mio! What the hell is going on? Where are we going?”
“Mary is dead, killed.” It was then that I could smell the sweet peachy Thunderbird on his thick black mustache. He was a little drunk, and he was always irascible when drunk. “We have to get out of here.”
“We? Why do I have to get out of here? I want to go look.”
I put my hands way down there on his shoulders, trying to remain calm, trying to be fatherly. “Speedy, have I ever lied to you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I am telling you that it is very important that you get in the car, we move away from here and the police in particular, and that we have a little talk. The cops will not let you see anything anyway, and in fact, they might want to take you down to the station and ask you questions all night long.”
“Your car is better. Mine isn’t running too good. Questions? Me? The police?” This notion seemed to make him teeter slightly, as if he were losing his balance or about to pass out. I took the opportunity to open the passenger door and guide him into the seat. I trotted around the car, got in, and moved us away from the hydrant and the police.
“Morty, are we in trouble with the police?” Speedy chewed on his mustache nervously. I could see he was wearing what he always wore: plaid shirt, jeans, work boots, and of course his little cowboy hat. He couldn’t have looked more like a migrant worker if he tried. In fact, I think he did try. It was his way of gaining the trust of the laborers. But you would think when off duty he would wear something else. A tracksuit, maybe, and loafers.
“Not yet.”
“Not yet? We will be? But I have not done anything?”
I checked my rearview mirror. There were a couple cars behind me, and so I made a turn into an alley to see if any followed me. One did, what looked like an SUV of some kind. The headlights were higher than a sedan.
“Speedy, remember all those tight ones?”
I saw the white of his eyes expand. “Yes, of course.”
“You have any idea how much money was there?”
“I try not to think of it. It is not mine.”
“Well, it was a shitload, and I think there are people who want it.” I checked my mirror again as the alley came to an end and I made a left at the cemetery. The SUV had drifted back, but I saw its headlights swing slowly into line behind me. “You got some of it, and if people want it back, they will take mine and yours.”
“Who are these people that want to take our money, Morty?”
“Let’s just say the person who stole it, and someone who probably wants to steal it from him.”
“Dios mio. So what do we do?”
“The first thing we have to do is shake the Balkan Boys.”
“Balkan Boys?” He seemed alarmed. As he should have.
“Pete the Prick is trying to steal the tight ones from me and has the Balkan Boys shadowing me. They are following us now—don’t turn around!”
Of course he did turn around, briefly.
“We need to go someplace for the night where they can’t get us, where maybe we can sneak out the back after a while. Know any place?”
“Dios mio. The Balkan Boys are after us. And the police. Are there others? It sounded like there were others, the ones who own the money.”
“Speedy, we own the money. Nobody else. A long time ago, it was legitimately owned by someone else, then it was stolen. Think, Speedy, where can we go?” I glanced at the headlights in the rearview. “We cannot go to my place, or yours . . . a barrio bar or something? After-hours place?”
Speedy sank his face into his hands, as if weeping, but I know this was the posture of thought for my friend. He seemed to need the darkness of his hands for the process of contemplation to be successful. It did not take long before he raised his face and showed me his big white teeth. It was a smile, of course, but a particular wolfish kind of smile men recognize.
“Chica bar!”
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
AS SPEEDY AND I DROVE to the chica bar, the police examined the scene of the crime at Upscale Realty.
So did Dexter. As a star reporter, he was well connected and sort of had special privileges other reporters sometimes did not. That is to say, he had influence with local politicians and elected offcials, which I guess are the same thing if you think about it. Anyway, the cops trusted him not to use information and circumstances against them and had always championed their causes in his editorials. He did this almost purely out of a desire for the kind of access he was enjoying at Upscale Realty. He was allowed to put on the plastic shoe covers and roam the crime scene while the forensics people put things in Baggies and took photographs.
There was a lot to look at because the place was a mess, and the forensics people were rolling their eyes and shaking their heads at the task before them. It was like looking for a pin in a pile of grass clippings.
Dexter prided himself on being highly observant of things that were out of the ordinary, that were out of place. He stood in front of the desk where Mary had been killed. Her body had been photographed and removed, but there was blood on the desk and much clutter. Dexter’s eyes came to rest on the flyer o
n Mary’s desk, the one of Danny that Charlie had dropped off.
How had this flyer come to be here among her house listings, lien searches, and applications? The paper it was copied onto was still very white, unlike copy paper that has been exposed to light for a few weeks, and it was near the top of the pile of blood-spattered papers on her desk. So he knew it was recent.
Dexter did not want to draw attention to the flyer. If the police found it and thought that this was important evidence, well . . . they were the experts, not him. At the same time, he felt it was important, so he leaned down for a quick look at what little of the flyer he could see. Yes, it was a mug shot. It did not look like there was a name on the flyer.
So how would a real estate broker come to possess this flyer? Unlikely she made it herself unless she moonlighted as a private detective. More likely that someone would have given it to her. Would someone have just given it to her, just given it to a single real estate broker? It was clear to Dexter that whoever made this flyer was looking for this person and had given it to Mary as part of the search. This person would be canvassing the neighborhood, and thus there were probably other people out there with this same poster. So even as Dexter could not touch anything at the crime scene, much less take this flyer, he determined to ask around to see if anybody else had found it.
Dexter glanced down again at the flyer. Perhaps this was nothing. Then again, perhaps this was the face of the killer staring right back at all these police. Would they think to notice it? A picture of the killer was not the sort of thing they usually expected to find at a crime scene, so Dexter figured it might take them a while.
Detective Ruez was suddenly standing next to him in front of the desk. He was a barrel-chested Hispanic man in his forties with a cleft chin and nervous but dull eyes.
“Notice the blood spatter?” Ruez pointed with his cleft chin. “She was sitting down. Which is why he got her in the eye, not the gut or chest.”
“Wow, I didn’t notice that.” Dexter adjusted his Panama hat and smiled admiringly at Ruez’s cunning detective work. Ruez was probably right. Of course, her body was next to the toppled chair, so Dexter did not consider this a novel observation.
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