by Tom Rich
“The movie star girlfriend.”
“Exactamundo. What do you think? Did I do good about that part? You know, reading the perp’s face.”
“Alleged perp, since we have no artifacts to go on.”
“Oh, he’s perp all right. Because then I mentioned how Arby and I had gotten real close while we were down there and that he promised to stay in touch. And that I hadn’t heard from him in so long that I was worried because of some scary looking people hanging around making vague threats having to do with foreigners messing with their ancient heritage. Something like that. Then I said, ‘And there’s that Guatemalan dude.’ I said ‘dude’ because I didn’t want him to think I’d planned this out because I don’t think he’d think I’m the kind of girl to say ‘dude’ if I was being careful about what I was saying because, uhh… Then I said, ‘Then the Guatemalan dude turns up murdered right here in Indy and it might all have something to do with smuggling.’ And he said—Shit! Tell me if I’m going too fast. If. I’m going. Too. Fast. It’s easier for me to get it all out this way. Not miss anything.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“Really? First time, you know. With murder, that is.”
“Heightens the senses, don’t it?”
“Uhh, you know…?” Aly tapped the dashboard. “Anyway, I tell Franz that there’s for sure one dead guy, and that possibly Dr. Arbanian is dead. I used doctor that time, I’m positive. And I didn’t mention the two boys with the phones who drowned because you told me not to, you have your own plan there, I guess. Anyway, I said that, given the fact that, and I didn’t say this in any threatening way but in a way that showed I was only concerned, because, given my involvement with Arby and the whole project and that I might even be doing him a favor, I said, ‘It sure looks like somebody might come along and try to pin those murders on you.’ And do you know what he said? Do you know what that arrogant bastard had the nerve to say?”
“Knowing what I know of Kurtwood Franz, I can only—”
“I’m going to quote to you exactly what he said because it’s something I will never ever forget. He said, and I quote, quote, ‘Accusations of murder could be fun just now. There are some slow spots in my autobiography that need juicing up. You think it could go so far as to get to trial? Make them forget all about OJ, I could.’ Unquote. Imagine, ‘Make them forget about OJ.’ Like there’s no doubt his money would produce the same results.”
“I told you going in you were facing a cool customer.”
“Did you catch the pun about ‘juicing up’ the autobiography in reference to OJ?”
“Missed it. Good job.”
“These guys probably all go to the same school together. Well, I guess I blew the whole thing. He’s on to us now. Think he’ll ditch the artifacts?”
“What about security?
“Like did he have bodyguards?”
“Sure, bodyguards.”
“I didn’t see any. Nothing, except it’d be hard to find his office if you weren’t given directions, its such a maze up there.”
“But you could draw a map.”
“Uhh, look, the artifacts weren’t where he was. So what’s the point of going back?”
Pelfry turned his head. He stared to Aly’s right.
Aly almost leaned slightly to be in his vision, almost said something like, “Hey. Hey, Jones, you there?” But his sudden silence unnerved her.
Finally, in just above a whisper, “What you said last night.”
Aly barely heard. “What?”
“Your said cars killing the planet.”
“Jones, I—”
“Our ideas are different.”
“I’ll say. In more ways than—”
“How about I get you back to Cincinnati? Get you away from all this.”
“Uhh… Well?”
Pelfry started the car. He eased out of the parking slot.
Tires squealed. The Mustang fishtailed, shot forward, swerved to miss clipping a car backing from a slot.
Aly slammed against the door. She braced her hands against the dash. “Shit, Jones, what are you doing?” She fumbled for her seatbelt as the car accelerated the short distance to the long, curving drive. “Hey! Hey! If you’re trying to impress me with fancy driving you’ve got the wrong girl!”
Pelfry swerved off the pavement. The tires slipped half a second, shooting grass high before catching and sending the Mustang onto the drive. Pelfry hit third gear, didn’t break for a delivery truck resting at a stop sign, downshifting instead to skid sideways around the truck and onto the access road. Pelfry straightened the Mustang and floored the accelerator.
Aly still hadn’t got her seatbelt on. “God dammit!” she screamed. “What are you doing?”
Pelfry said nothing.
“What is this? You’re mad because I’m more concerned about justice for Arby than bringing down Franz?”
Pelfry frowned.
“There are other places to look,” said Aly. “There’s a gift shop back there. In the lobby. Nothing but Guatemalan imports. Maybe he—”
Pelfry silenced Aly with a cold glare. “Self operating guillotine makes the perfect Mother’s Day surprise.”
“Shit! Fuck! Watch the road. Okay, okay, I’ll draw you a map to Franz’s office. Just slow down. Let’s go someplace and talk about this and I’ll draw you a map. Your place. Let’s go back to your place. Hello?”
“Not worried I’ll sic the Four Beers of the Apocalypse on you?”
“Funny. Real funny.” Aly eased back as the car slowed. “Shew, talk about smartass.”
~ ~ ~
Antony Phillips was leaning against the guardhouse when Lydell Wade pulled up in his gold Cadillac.
“How’s business, Antony?” said Lydell.
Antony passed the ten bills through the window.
Lydell counted. “This a down payment, right? We said twelve hundred.”
“I get you the rest,” said Antony.
“Yeah, I know you good for it.” Lydell got out of his car. “Day-yem, boy. That uniform gives you the perfect cover.” He looked around the parking lot, at the building. “You might be wasting your time dealing at that school. How much money you think goes in and out of this place every day? You been keeping your eyes open? I told you about stepping up when the time is right. I’d say the time is right now.”
“This only my second day.”
“Man with a plan learn a lot in two days.” Lydell looked at the chain hanging from Antony’s. “Looks to me like you got access to important places.”
“Just the one key card, man. The garage under the building.”
“Uh huh. And going down in the garage is part of your rounds?”
“Just cars down there is all.”
“Why don’t you take me on down. Give me a chance to show what I mean about keeping your eyes open for the golden opportunity.”
“Pistol Pete said I ain’t supposed to let no one down there.”
“There, see what I mean? Them telling you what you ain’t supposed to do should be the guidelines telling you exactly what you should do.”
“I get fired two days in? Ain’t no guideline.”
“We go in, look around a minute, come right back out.”
“Can’t do it, Lydell.”
“Aw, man, why you drawing lines? What do you owe these people? How much they paying you, minimum wage? You know that uniform makes you a target? You getting hazard pay?”
“Mr. Franz ah-ight. He set me up good.”
“Tell you what.” Lydell put his hands in his back pockets and paced. “I’m going to knock two hundred off what you owe. Think about what you could do with that extra money. You got a lady you trying to impress? Damn, boy, this is like me paying you to give you a valuable lesson. Now what would your momma think if she knew you weren’t letting me help you like I think best?”
Antony bounced the key card in his hand. He looked around the lot, then at the door on the side of the building that went down
to the garage. “We go down for one minute, come right back out.”
“Stepping up, Antony. Stepping up like L. T.”
Antony led Lydell to the door. He inserted the card and punched in the code. The door popped open. They went down a flight of stairs to a small landing. The next flight went the other direction. Eight flights in all until they came to another door. They pushed through.
“Dark in here,” said Lydell.
Antony took a deep breath. “Ain’t much to see.”
“What about that dim light?” Lydell pointed. “Looks like cars over there.”
“Just cars, man. Nothing else.”
“All right, let’s take a look. No harm in looking.” Lydell looked at Antony. “Why you shaking? You afraid of the dark?”
Antony moved toward the light.
When they got close Lydell said, “Day-yem. These all belong to Mr. Gold Plate Franz?”
“What Pistol Pete said.”
“Aston Martin. Looks like the one James Bond drove in Goldfinger.”
Antony turned and looked the way they came.
“Shaken, not stirred, Moneypenny,” said Lydell in a surprisingly deep, Scottish brogue. “That’s my Sean Connery Bond. He the only one.”
“What I know about white people’s movies?” snapped Antony. “It don’t got Denzel or Wesley, I don’t see it.”
“Yeah. Probably not. Look, that one’s Italian. Probably cost half a million.”
“I guess.”
“And look at that ride. Looks like some kind of 1920s pimp-mobile.”
“Pistol Pete called it a Dusenberg. Said it was some king’s ride, then he wasn’t king no more.”
“So Mr. Gold Plate Franz repoed it.”
“I guess.”
“What the hell is that ratty old Ford doing down here with all this prime automobile?” Lydell approached Franz’s Ford station wagon. “Boy, you got any idea why this car down here?”
“Pistol Pete never said.”
“Uh huh, and you never paid it no mind, did you?”
“What of it.”
“What of it? What you think I been talking about? You never even gave it a thought what this dirty old thing is for?”
“You looked around. We’re getting out.” Antony was shivering.
“A dirty car for dirty business, that’s what. A man rich as Mr. Gold Plate Franz bound to have dirty business going on. You find something out about this car and you got something on him. Watch for this car coming out of the garage. See who drives it, how long it’s gone, things like that. You got to step up, Antony. What you think made Lawrence Taylor the best football player there ever was. Because L. T. stepped up like no other player stepped up when the time was right.” Lydell pressed his face against a window of the Ford. “Look at that jacket in there. How yellow it is. I look good in yellow. And with winter—”
“I didn’t steal nothing!” screamed Antony. “Is this why you put me down here?” He bent at the knees hugging himself.
“What? Easy, boy. This got to do with your school suspension? Shit, I ain’t the one to be getting on your case.”
“I didn’t do it!”
“All right, you said.”
Antony was turning like he didn’t know which way to run.
“Be cool, boy. What you do, take the fall for someone else?”
Antony didn’t answer. He bent and grabbed his knees like all his spinning was about to make him vomit.
“Real noble, boy. But you can’t be stepping up for others when you got to be stepping up for yourself. Even if they do confess on down the line, you still be branded for life. Yeah, you leave that noble shit to the—”
Several ceiling lights illuminated the auto corral. A second later a metal door clanged against a concrete wall.
“Get down,” said Lydell. He pulled Antony’s arm, then dragged him under the station wagon.
“Too crowded,” whispered Antony. He started to crawl out.
“No.” Lydell grabbed Antony’s wrist.
Two pair of footsteps approached.
“The Gomez Brothers want you to know how grateful they are for accepting their offer,” said a man.
“Once you told me they were interested, I didn’t even contact my usual people,” said a second man. “I’m taking much less than if I started a bidding war.”
“Smart man,” said the first man.
“Oh, I know what those boys are capable of,” said the second.
“Just make sure you stress the fact that I set up the negotiation. This could get that gang off my neck once and for all.”
“And that farfetched frame up scheme to get Franz off your neck?”
“I told you about that detective, speaking of farfetched. Didn’t even have to put out any bait, the doofus was so accommodating. I just nodded and smiled and laid on the flattery. Next day I pulled the rug out.”
“By the way, you know your artifacts? Quite an impressive piece. Very sinister.”
“King Z won’t give me access to his treasure room. All the work I’m doing on his biopic and he won’t even let me see his throne.”
“King Z?”
“His name in his notes for the script. The whole thing is beyond belief.”
“I had to ask.” After a pause, “Take the Porsche. He never drives it.”
Antony and Lydell heard keys jangling.
“Postponing production of my picture was probably his plan all along,” said the first man.
“You really thought Penance was going to get made?” said the second.
“You don’t know the half of it. Thing is, I think he really believes he’s ascending some ancient throne.”
“Little Sylvie’s making him crazy.”
“Don’t I know what that’s like.”
“This going to be too much car for you?”
The Porsche’s door slammed. The engine leapt to life. Exhaust fumes wafted beneath the station wagon.
“Too much car, my friend? One benefit of my association with the Gomez Brothers: they taught me so much about driving fast cars I could make the annual go round in this town look like a Roman chariot race.”
“Do it one handed, no doubt.”
“And without the aid of mirrors.”
“Ouch, that’s cold. Even for you. Hey, you steal ideas for your movies like you steal song lyrics?”
The Porsche eased away. A minute later the lights went out. The metal door clanged shut.
“Think they out?” said Lydell. He crawled out from under the car.
A moment later Antony was standing next to him. “We’re getting out.”
“Wait,” said Lydell. “You learn something just then?”
“I learned I can’t be listening to you all the time.”
“Naw, man. You just learned Mr. Gold Plate Franz is hooked up with the Gomez Brothers. Way those two talking, the Gomez Brothers some badass motherfuckers.”
“Mr. Franz don’t introduce me to his business associates.”
“Boy, look where you at. You got the chance to see everyone who goes in and out this building. You just got to keep your eyes open for some Mexican looking dudes.”
“Then what?”
“Then watch. Watch and learn, son. You learn enough, a plan presents itself.”
“I guess.”
“You hear that movie talk? I don’t suppose you know nothing about that?”
“I heard some talk about a movie being made around here.”
“But you didn’t think nothing about it, right? Yeah, never mind that for now. You got enough chicken on your plate finding out about the Gomez Brothers.”
“I guess.”
“I’m taking that coat.” Lydell pulled open a door of the station wagon.
Antony put his hand on the door. “Leave it,” he said.
“Ain’t no one gonna miss it.”
Antony pushed the door closed.
“Yeah. Yeah, you gonna be all right,” said Lydell. “Thinking all the time. I didn
’t know if you knew that was a trap to test your loyalty to your job. But you gonna be all right, Antony. Your mamma wouldn’t have to worry none.”
37: Ulysses
Aly spent the evening after her meeting with Franz drinking beer in Jones Pelfry’s apartment. She drew him a map of the floor where she’d met with Kurtwood Franz. But Jones didn’t look at it. He was too busy spouting off on a variety of subjects; ranting about psychology, philosophy, science, literature, television, movies and just about anything else while talking a mile a minute. Aly couldn’t keep up, but didn’t mind. At least he wasn’t the same creepy Jones from the night before. Like the previous night, Jones took the couch and gave Aly his bed. They got into his Mustang early the next morning for the drive to Cincinnati.
“It’s almost scary what a direct shot it is from your place to here,” Pelfry said a mile from his apartment. “Except for one little anomaly.”
Aly braced herself as they joined the morning rush shooting the onramp onto Interstate 465. “Anomaly? You mean like a rift in the space/time continuum?”
“Not quite that anomalous.”
“Hey, man, some of that stuff you came up with last night was right out of Kirk’s logbook.”
“Spock’s logbook. Kirk was captain. Spock was the science officer.”
“Excuse me. My mind must be clouded from all that Romulan Ale we had last night.”
Pelfry gave her a sideways leer. “You seem to know enough about it.”
Aly winced. At least she had the Jones Pelfry she wanted.
“Anyway, I’ve been in and out of Northside a few times now,” continued Pelfry. “Why is it there’s an exit ramp from Eastbound I 74 directly into Northside, but no converse entrance ramp onto 74 West?”