In It for the Money

by David Burnsworth

  Crome said, “I think I screwed up.”

  Here it comes, Blu thought. “What happened?”

  “There’s that window of opportunity ya got with a woman before she turns into a friend and all bets are off.”

  Where’s he going with this? “Yeah?”

  “Harmony and Tess gave me kisses on the cheek this morning and thanked me for being their big brother.”

  Blu choked on a glass of water he was drinking from and had to set it down.

  Crome took out his vaporizer. “So now we’re family.”

  “Could be worse,” Blu said.

  Crome took a hit on his vaporizer. “How’s that?”

  “They could be calling you ‘daddy.’”

  “That’s not even funny, Blu. That’s just not even funny.”

  Blu’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He didn’t recognize the number but answered it since he’d given his card out to a lot of people lately.

  The caller, a woman, said, “Is this Blu Carraway?”

  “It is.”

  “I work at Grind It Out. You gave me your card and said to call if I saw the guy with the purple hair.”

  “He’s there?”

  “He was this morning, but he didn’t stick around. Got his coffee and bagel and left. I only just now got my break to call.”

  “Did you see what he was driving or where he headed next?”

  “You still going to give me the hundred dollars?”

  “Tell you what,” Blu said, “I’m on my way to you. You give me what you’ve got when I get there and I’ll give you the money.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Blu was getting used to the comforts of the new SUV. The ride was certainly better than his old truck and Sirius XM had some cool stations. None of this was good because he didn’t need any extra expenses in his life. It was hard enough making sure he had money for the tax man, much less extravagances like a car payment and satellite radio.

  The day was hot, ninety in the shade as they say, but he kept the windows down. No sense getting spoiled on AC and then having to get back into his old truck without it. At least he hoped he’d be getting his old truck back. But a little voice in the back of his head told him it was a goner.

  He pulled into the parking lot of the coffee shop. The barista he had the business arrangement with waited outside next to a door marked Employee Entrance. She smoked a cigarette with a coworker, a young man with dark hair, a trimmed beard, and those hoops expanding his earlobes, another trend Blu couldn’t relate to.

  Blu got out of his vehicle and approached her.

  She said, “This is Val. He’s going to stand here in case you’re a pervert or something.”

  Blu said, “Val have a personal interest in perverts?”

  Val said, “Is this guy for real?”

  The young man was six feet tall but only weighed one-sixty, one-seventy tops. Nothing but a big head with those ear hoops on a stick frame. The poor guy definitely hadn’t seen a gym from up close, much less from inside.

  Speaking to his contact, the female barista, Blu asked, “I’m sorry, I never got your name. First name is good enough.”

  “Shara,” she said.

  “Shara,” Blu said, “I don’t work this way. If you want to go someplace public and sit down, that’s fine. But Val here is not part of the arrangement.”

  She said, “Then you won’t hear what I have to say.”

  “And you won’t get your money,” Blu said.

  Shara looked at Val, and then Blu, and then at Val again. Finally, she said, “Okay. Val drives me to Chili’s. You follow. You and I go inside. Val waits outside. You buy me takeout lunch while I tell you what I know. How’s that?”

  “Works for me,” Blu said.

  Val said, “I don’t like it.”

  But Val was Shara’s problem so Blu stayed quiet. She was smart and had a good plan that didn’t expose her to anything. Val was just getting in the way now.

  To Val, Shara said, “I’ll be fine. It’s not like he’s going to grope me in the middle of the restaurant.”

  “If he does, I’ll kick his ass.”

  Blu was a trained killer, and Val was, well, Val.

  To Blu, she said, “Ready?”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  They walked to their cars, Blu to his SUV and Val and Shara to a ten-year-old Ford Focus, and drove to a Chili’s two lights away.

  Shara could have avoided all this by spilling the beans back at the coffee shop without dear friend Val, but Blu understood her concern. Only God knew how many actual perverts and sexual predators there were lurking about. Better safe than sorry. But Val was about as useful as a wet noodle, even down to the physical similarities. Maybe he was the boyfriend, or boyfriend wannabe. That was probably it. This was his way of showing her how well he could protect her. Hopefully it wouldn’t come down to him ever having to demonstrate.

  They found parking spots next to each other. Blu got out and walked with Shara to the entrance.

  She gave Val a wave and mouthed, “I’ll be okay.”

  Blu caught Val glaring at him and remembered at the last minute not to give him a wave or do anything that might agitate him. He didn’t need to have to answer to an aggravated assault charge right now on top of everything else. And since Val would be on the ground and bleeding, Blu would most likely be the one with his hands zip-tied behind his back. Again.

  Inside the restaurant, he and Shara took stools at the bar. Blu ordered a sweet tea and she got a draft beer and ordered a grilled chicken salad and a rack of ribs to go.

  He wanted to ask if Val was getting the salad, but said, “So what have you got?”

  She waited for the bartender to place their drinks down in front of them and leave before saying, “I got a good look at the van the purple-haired guy drove away in. Even managed to get a few numbers from his license plate.”

  He had to stop himself again, this time from hugging Shara. That was the best intel he’d gotten on Jeremy so far. He removed the folded stack of bills out of his front pocket, counted out five twenties, and handed them to her.

  Taking the money, she said, “This makes me look like a hooker.”

  He didn’t have the heart to tell her she didn’t look much like a hooker in her coffee house garb. He said, “Sorry about that.”

  She handed him a small piece of paper with three numbers and Xs on it. “This was the best I could do. The Xs are for the digits I couldn’t get.”

  He folded the paper and stuck it in the front pocket of his black jeans. “Can you tell me anything about the van? Color, make, anything?”

  Shara smiled, then with a slightly bolder attitude said, “What’s it worth to you?”

  “We agreed on a hundred dollars. Are you now renegotiating?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Twenty bucks.”

  “Is that all?”

  The way she said it made him think she’d take it.

  “Yeah, that’s all.” He took a long pull on his sweet tea and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Look, I haven’t got all day and I’m not going to start feeding you twenties for every little scrap of information. If you have something as good as the partial plate, we can talk. But all the make and model details are going to do is help narrow the search window.”

  “Fine,” she said. “It was a minivan, Dodge I think. Painted flat black and not very well. Like with spray cans or something.”

  He handed her the twenty. “That’s real good. Anything else? I’m guessing it had dark tinted windows.”

  “It did, but it was the cheap tint with air bubbles.”

  “So we’re talking an older minivan, say ten or fifteen years, maybe?”

  “At least. I couldn’t tell if it spewed smoke or not, but it was rough looking. Had mismatched whe
els on it too.”

  He wrote the information down on another bar napkin. “Anything else you want to share, maybe unrelated to the van?”

  “The guy you’re after used a debit card.”

  “Not a credit card?”

  “Nope.” She handed him another piece of paper. “He didn’t take his receipt.”

  “That’s worth another twenty,” he said. “You’re good at this, you know?”

  “Honestly,” she said, her eyes wide and bright, “this is the most fun I’ve had all week.”

  Poor Val.

  Blu watched Shara and Val drive away with the hundred and forty dollars and lunches he’d bill his client for and didn’t regret it. Shara had come through. The partial plate and van description were great as well as the bank card receipt. He called Gladys first and had her get to work on identifying the van. Then he called Tess.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Tess answered. “I was just about to call you. The lipstick is a dead end.”

  “No hits?”

  “Oh,” she said, “it hit all right. A Miss Jacquelin Modano, age nineteen. And now dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Found strangled this morning.”

  These guys were a few steps ahead of him. “That’s terrible.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Well, not to sound like a cold-hearted bastard,” he said, “but we’ve got to move on. Do you have any way to track activity on a bank card?”

  “You got a number?”

  “Not really,” he said, and explained what he had.

  “If it’s Jeremy’s, we already have his accounts. Let me see if the last four digits on the receipt match one of the cards we know about. If not, he’s got another account we’re not aware of.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me know what you find.”

  Next, he called Billie.

  Saturday evening

  The phone call with Billie went well—she agreed to have another date night. Even though Jeremy Rhodes was still missing in action, at least he knew the kid was alive and taking care of himself inasmuch as he had money to buy food.

  Blu drove home, showered and shaved, and put on his nicest linen slacks and silk shirt and a decent pair of sandals. He got to Billie’s house with a few minutes to spare and spent the time in the truck with the engine idling and, after telling himself he didn’t want to be all sweaty on his date, the air blowing cold while he did something he should have thought of earlier. He looked for Jeremy Rhodes on social media but couldn’t find anything.

  A rap on the window jolted his attention from the phone’s display.

  Billie smiled.

  Blu got out and walked around the truck to open the door for her.

  She was all done up in a very sexy dark purple dress showing off her figure. “I saw you out here being a good boy by not coming to call too early, so I thought I’d surprise you.” She kissed him.

  He kissed back. They nearly didn’t make it out of the driveway.

  She pushed him off. With a glint in her eye, she said, “You asked me to dinner, so that’s where we’re going.”

  He saluted and opened the door for her. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She got in. “Air conditioning. You have the air conditioning running.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You’re going to either have to fix the system in your old truck or get a newer one. You are now officially spoiled.”

  He looked at her and thought, in more ways than one.

  He said, “I know.”

  She said, “Well, let’s get going so we can get back.”

  He didn’t need any more prompting. He closed her door and nearly ran around the front of the vehicle to his side.

  After a nice lowcountry dinner of shrimp and grits, they relaxed on her back balcony snuggling together on a large outdoor couch, a ceiling fan clicking softly overhead to break the summer evening heat.

  Blu said, “Thanks for coming out with me tonight.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “I can’t have Harmony and Tess taking up all my man’s time now.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, panic hitting him hard.

  She put a finger over his lips. “I know you haven’t done anything wrong except hang out with your friends. Brack’s wife swung by the store today and mentioned the sleepover.”

  Panic crept up on him again, but he knew the less he said, the better.

  She said, “I really like that woman. Didn’t think too much of Brack when he came to the store the first time. But he sure married right. And she and I agree both you and Brack are special, because you don’t try to go out catting around, being all sneaky like. I don’t have time for that, and I appreciate all you do, or should I say all you don’t do, in that regard.”

  Blu said, “Brack saved Hope.”

  She said. “That’s why he will always be welcome around me. How’s Crome?”

  “Crome’s Crome,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me he’s trying for the two news reporters?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?” she asked. “He is, isn’t he?”

  “You just told me not to tell you.”

  She sipped her wine, the whole time looking at Blu with her deep brown eyes.

  God, he loved this woman.

  She said, “Let’s go to bed.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Sunday morning

  Blu’s cell phone buzzed.

  He fumbled for it, saw Crome’s name on the display, dropped it, cursed, and finally got it picked up and answered. “Yo.”

  “Get your pants on. We gotta roll.”

  Blu tried to clear his head. “Where are you?”

  “The question is, where are we going? And the answer, my friend, ain’t blowin’ in the wind. It’s at Ted’s Used Cars in West Ashley.”

  “Is that where the kid bought the van?”

  “You got it,” Crome said.

  Blu sat up in bed. “How’d you find it?”

  “I didn’t,” Crome said. “Gladys did.”

  “Why didn’t she call?”

  “She did.” Crome coughed and then said, “Your cell went straight to voicemail. I called her because I knew you were busy with your girlfriend.”

  Blu remembered he’d shut his cell phone off at dinner but had turned it back on afterward. He slid out of bed, noticing Billie watching him. He leaned over and kissed her.

  Crome said, “No time for that. Say hi to Billie for me and then say goodbye to her.”

  “What’s the hurry?” Blu asked. “It’s Sunday.”

  “I don’t like to sit on my ass.”

  “Get a hobby.”

  “Chasing women is my hobby.”

  Blu laughed. “Struck out again, huh?”

  “In your dreams. See you at the McDonald’s across the street from the car lot.” Crome ended the call.

  After a quick shower, Blu dressed in work clothes he’d brought with him and kissed Billie goodbye before heading out.

  In less than twenty minutes, he found the car dealership and the McDonald’s across the street. He parked at the restaurant and surveyed the lot.

  Ted’s Used Cars was a few steps up from being a bottom-feeder. And actually open on a Sunday. The lot was presentable and most of the cars were in the five-to-ten-year-old range. A blue office building with white windows and a white front door perched in the middle.

  Blu spotted Crome’s bike a few spots down from where he’d parked. He went inside and found Crome already seated and eating a Big Breakfast. Blu ordered the same with coffee and sat in the booth opposite Crome.

  “What’s your take?” he asked.

  Crome wore a black t-shirt advertising a Harley dealership in Germany. His sunglasses were on top of
his head, holding back his hair from getting in the way while he ate. He said, “Looks respectable enough.”

  “Why do you think both of us need to handle it?” Blu asked.

  Crome shoveled a forkful of eggs and sausage and washed it down with a soft drink. “Harmony did a little research on the place. Guess what?”

  Blu was about to take a sip of his large black coffee and hesitated. “It’s a front.”

  “You’ve got some real promise, there, I tell you what.” Crome split his biscuit and added butter and jelly to it. “Jimmy Z owns it.”

  Jimmy Z was a mid-level wiseguy in Charleston County. Blu, like Crome, had run across Jimmy’s name before because of the sometimes low-end circles their profession took them to. Jimmy ran drugs and prostitution out of a run-down bar in North Charleston. The car dealership was most likely his money Laundromat.

  Blu asked, “How do you want to play it?”

  Crome finished off the last bite of biscuit, licked jelly off his fingers, and said, “Straight up the middle.”

  “Walk in there and ask for Jimmy?”

  “Yep.”

  Blu said, “You think he’ll tell us anything?”

  “Maybe,” Crome said.

  “What if we called him instead?”

  Crome pushed his tray forward a few inches and sat back in his seat. “You mean like set up an appointment?”

  “No. I mean call him up and ask him what he knows about the van.”

  “The thing with men like Jimmy is,” Crome started, and Blu knew exactly what he was going to say next and was proven right when he said, “they like feeling like you’re respecting them. Look him in the eye, acknowledge he’s the king of his turf and you’re just a guest. And let him know he’s an important man with important information. It works a lot better than a quickie phone call that’s only going to piss him off.”

  Blu squirted ketchup packets over his hashbrown, shook some pepper on it, and cut the crispy delight with the plastic knife. “Okay. I can buy that. But he still might not tell us anything.”