In It for the Money

by David Burnsworth

  “I want to rattle his cage a little bit too.”

  It was what Blu waited to hear—Crome usually had an ulterior motive. “If he’s there, so are his goons. And they don’t pack squirt guns.”

  “I’m not going to shoot him. Just give him something to think about.”

  Blu finished his breakfast and he and Crome left their vehicles in the McDonald’s parking lot and walked across the highway to the dealership.

  One of the salesmen stepped out of the office when Blu paused next to a decent black Nissan Xterra. The new truck he’d been driving, he finally had to admit, had a lot of niceties his old Land Cruiser didn’t, the main one being working air conditioning.

  The salesman said, “How can I help you gentlemen?”

  Crome said, “Jimmy around?”

  The happy, professional demeanor of the salesman waned just a tad, from what Blu could tell.

  “He’s in the office. Can I tell him who’s here?”

  Another man stepped out of the building and said, “Mick Crome. You old bastard.”

  It had to be Jimmy. His graying hair stuck up about an inch on top of his head and tapered down the sides. Jimmy was tan but not exactly lean and wore a pink silk polo, nice khaki trousers, and brown loafers. He was at least a decade older than Blu and Crome who were within six months of each other.

  Crome said, “How’s it going, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy smiled and made a waving gesture as if to show off his car lot. “Business is good. Your friend interested in the Nissan? It just came in. Good truck.”

  “Maybe,” Crome said. “Is there some place we can talk?”

  He said, “I didn’t see you pull in. You guys walk?”

  Crome said, “Yeah. It’s good to get exercise.”

  Jimmy smiled again, his disposition like someone confident nothing could go wrong for them. That must have been what being connected felt like.

  Blu had a similar situation. Some of his previous clients were very powerful men. He had made sure they were completely satisfied with the work he’d done for them, because he never knew when he might need a favor.

  With a wave, Jimmy said, “Come on inside out of the heat. Y’all want some coffee?”

  “Sure.” Crome went in after him, with Blu trailing behind.

  Inside, Jimmy spoke to a tan, brunette receptionist, who was attractive in a successful plastic surgery kind of way, about getting some coffee. He led them to a small room in the back of the fairly tidy office. Jimmy might be a lot of things, pimp and drug lord came to mind, but he ran a tight ship. Blu thought about his home office and how shabby it had looked when Cynthia Rhodes first came to see him and decided he could learn something from Jimmy.

  Crome said, “This is my partner, Blu Carraway.”

  Jimmy shook his hand. “I’ve heard of you. You and Crome got Kincaid’s daughter back, didn’t you?”

  Blu said, “We can’t discuss our previous clients, Mr. Zoluchi.”

  “Call me Jimmy. And I get it.” Jimmy sat in a captain’s chair behind a small desk and put a sockless loafer up. “What can I do for you two? And you can smoke if you want.”

  “Thanks, but I quit smoking.” Crome removed a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “We’re tracking down this minivan. Can you tell us if you sold it and to who?”

  Jimmy looked at the description and partial tag number but didn’t pick it up. “I probably could, but my business is just like your business. I’ve got to respect my customers’ privacy.”

  Crome said, “Here’s the thing, Jimmy. We’re not just here by accident. I mean it’s not like we’re going to visit every lot until we find the right one, if that makes any sense.”

  “You mean you already know I sold it,” Jimmy said, nodding. “So why are we talking?”

  Blu said, “What we’re really looking for at this point is how the purchaser paid for the van and if he left a current address. That sort of thing.”

  Jimmy put his hands behind his head and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “I hear what you’re saying. I just don’t see how this is my place to help.”

  Crome said, “You’re right, Jimmy. We don’t have any favors to cash in with you. And we’re not going to offer any in return. I just thought you might want to have your name spoken of in a positive light among those groups of people Blu and I serve.”

  The chair squeaked as Jimmy leaned forward. “Now that’s blackmail, Crome. I don’t do business with blackmailers.”

  Crome spread his hands on the desk. “You’ve got the wrong idea, Jimmy. We’re not going to trash you or your name if things don’t go our way here. What I’m saying is we’ll make sure it’s known if you do help us. There’s a difference. You know me better than that.”

  “I thought I did, Crome. But now I’m not so sure.” Jimmy’s sunny disposition took on some shade.

  “Ji-mmy,” Crome said, “we go back a long way.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “You ever known me to be anything but a straight shooter?”

  Scratching his chin, Jimmy said, “No, I guess not.”

  “Why would I change now? I’m too damn old to start on a new personality. I’m stuck with who I am—who you know me to be. And I’m telling you we’re not here to force your hand. We’re here to offer you a window of opportunity.”

  Jimmy said, “I thought you quit smoking.”

  Crome said, “I did.”

  “Then why do I smell smoke crawling up my ass when you speak?”

  With that, Crome stood.

  “We came here to make an offer in good faith, and you’re treating us like some holy roller ringing your doorbell you want to sweep off your porch. We’re outta here.”

  Blu followed his friend through the office and outside.

  Crome walked slowly across the lot, pulling out his vaporizer and taking a few pulls.

  Blu stopped beside the Nissan truck that caught his eye earlier. His insurance was most likely going to total his relic of a vehicle anyway. With the settlement money for his truck and what he cleared from the Rhodes job, he thought he might have enough to swing another truck now since his taxes were paid up.

  The salesman who’d greeted them earlier came back out. “It’s got a clean title and low miles, V-6 engine, four-wheel drive, and a stick shift. A lot of fun to drive.”

  Blu said, “We’re on our way out.”

  The salesman handed him a business card. “You change you’re mind, ask for Manny. That’s me.”

  “Thanks, Manny.”

  Crome was already across the street. Blu looked one last time at the shiny truck and then jogged over to meet him.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  They both went back inside the McDonald’s, ordered large drinks to cool off, and sat at the same booth where they ate breakfast.

  Blu decided to let Crome speak what was on his mind.

  Crome said, “I think I rattled his cage pretty good.”

  “I think you’re right.” And Blu wasn’t lying. Jimmy did not like how the conversation had ended. “What’s the plan now?”

  “I’m going to sit here and enjoy my large Coke while Jimmy sits in his office over there trying to work out all the angles in his head.”

  Blu took a swig of sweet tea. “The funny thing is there aren’t any angles. We’re not going to trash Jimmy’s name. There’s no incentive in it for us. You are one hundred percent correct. But at the same time, if he helps us, he can only come out ahead.”

  “Yeah,” Crome said. “Maybe he’s been in the life too long. Has trust issues.”

  “He definitely has trust issues. But he’s street smart. He should come to the same conclusion that helping us helps him. There’s no downside here for him.”

  Crome said, “Well, except for the whole confidential information thing he brought up. B
ut I’ll bet he’s got ways around that.”

  Blu fingered the salesman’s card.

  Crome asked, “You really like that truck over there, don’t you?”

  “What I like is working air conditioning.” And it was his favorite color.

  “Gettin’ soft in your old age, huh?”

  Blu could only smile. Because while he didn’t think he was old, and he wasn’t sure he was losing his edge, he did like the air conditioning and satellite radio.

  With no leads at the moment, Blu and Crome spent the afternoon pitching a game of horseshoes in the front yard. Dink, Doofus, and a mare Crome had named Mustang Sally after the song munched on a bundle of old carrots the local grocery store was going to discard. Crome had done his thing, spoken with the store manager, and was able to talk him into taking some of the expired produce off his hands.

  Blu sighed in relief he now had another, much cheaper avenue to feed his spoiled brats—er—horses.

  Halfway through their third game, at almost dusk, the sound of tires on the crushed shell drive sent Sally running across the back lot to join the rest of the herd while the two watchdog horses clomped over to see what was going on.

  A black Escalade pulled to a stop beside Blu’s rental SUV, and a man Blu hadn’t seen before got out of the driver’s side. Dark tinted windows prevented him from seeing if anyone else was in the car, possibly pointing guns at him and Crome.

  Blu approached the man. “Can I help you?”

  The man, a white guy with sunglasses, a white short-sleeved silk shirt, and ironed khakis, spoke while he chewed gum. “You Blu Carraway?” He had a document-sized envelope in his hand.

  “Who’s asking?”

  The man handed the envelope to Blu. “Jimmy Zoluchi sends his regards.”

  Blu accepted the envelope and watched the man walk back to his truck, taking a few extra steps to the left to avoid the two curious horses nosing in for a closer look, and drive away. He turned to Crome who puffed on his vaporizer, a smile peeking out from underneath his mustache.

  “Hot damn.”

  Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper, a copy of a receipt for a 2010 Dodge Caravan purchased by one Jeremy Rhodes. It gave an address that wasn’t his mother’s South Battery mansion. Handwritten at the bottom of the sheet was a sixteen-digit number, which Blu guessed was a credit card used for the purchase. Most people didn’t charge car purchases, but Jeremy wasn’t most people.

  Since it was Sunday, they decided to hit the street first thing in the morning after crashing early.

  The next morning, they ate breakfast at the small wood table in Blu’s kitchen—bacon and eggs fried in the bacon grease with lots of salt and pepper, Crome’s specialty. As they ate, Crome said he’d check out the address on the receipt.

  Blu drove to the news office of the Palmetto Pulse. When he walked in, Miss Dell, the receptionist, nearly toppled her desk over on her way to greet him with a bear of a hug, her being a solid two hundred and fifty pounds of desire for him.

  He struggled to say, “Good to see you too, Miss Dell.”

  She finally let him go after a much-too-long-for-social-norms embrace. “I’m so glad you came in here today, sugar.” She gave him a peck on the cheek and then took his hand and led him to Patricia’s office.

  Patricia, who’d been on the phone, looked up, saw him, and smiled. “Mr. Carraway. So nice to see you again.”

  Miss Dell squeezed his hand one more time before departing.

  Blu sat in one of the chairs facing Patricia’s desk and laid the invoice down. “You think Harmony and Tess could do some account snooping?”

  She sat back and folded her arms across her chest. “That’s not exactly legal, you know.”

  “The thing is,” he said, “they already have and have given me all of the accounts Jeremy Rhodes had.” He pointed to the numbers on the sheet. “This isn’t one of them.”

  “Hmm,” she said, tapping her lip with a finger. “They are usually very thorough. I’m not condoning all of their methods, but their sources would not hold back.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” he said. “So either this is a new account, it’s someone else’s account, or none of the above.”

  “I’m not going to make any promises,” she said, “but let me see what we can do with this.”

  Blu stood. “Thanks.”

  Patricia looked at him. “I’m curious. Why didn’t you call Harmony and Tess direct? You’ve been doing that up until this point.”

  “This information came from Jimmy Zoluchi. I don’t owe him for it except to make it known that he’s helping me out of the goodness of his heart.”

  Her face lit up with laughter. “That’s a new one. Jimmy doesn’t do anything without considering all the angles. How’d you get him to play along?”

  “Let’s just say Crome appealed to his charitable side.”

  “Your partner certainly has a unique way of handling the world.” She gave him one last smile and then turned back to her computer monitor.

  On his way out, Blu said goodbye to Miss Dell, catching her while she was on the phone and getting away with a quick hand squeeze and a wave before exiting into the Charleston heat.

  Monday, nine a.m.

  Crome rode his bike to the address listed on the invoice. He knew his way around Charleston County and didn’t need GPS or a map to guide him. What he found was an abandoned home some might call a crack house.

  Either the kid lied about his address or he really lived in the gutter. And then there was the whole minivan thing. What twenty-something spoiled brat bought a minivan?

  The street had more homes like the one Jeremy had put down as his address. All were single-story run-down mill houses. Most had boarded-up windows. Some had abandoned cars parked in the drives.

  Crome dropped the kickstand and leaned his bike onto it before dismounting. He looked around again, didn’t see anyone, and went to the front door—well, the piece of plywood covering the front door anyway.

  He knocked on the door a few times but got no answer.

  The board was loose. He gave it a good yank and it came off without much effort.

  He said, “Anybody home?”

  No answer.

  The home was dark and smelled like an uncleaned dog kennel.

  Crome removed a small LED flashlight from a vest pocket, clicked it on, and shined it through the opening.

  A small set of green, beady eyes stared back at him for a moment before scurrying away.

  He stepped inside to find rotted flooring and crumbling walls.

  The home was obviously abandoned. He didn’t need to see anything else.

  He turned to leave in time to see a two-by-four being swung at his face.

  He ducked. The board missed. And Crome dropped the flashlight and drove a hard upper cut into the diaphragm of his assailant.

  The man grunted and the board fell to the ground.

  The darkness of the room mixed with the bright sunlight shining through the door kept Crome from being able to identify whoever it was. But that didn’t stop him from taking another swing, this time punching the man in the face while he’d been doubled over from the first blow. The man fell to the floor, out cold.

  A little voice in the back of his head, the one that had gotten him out of every scrape and gunfight so far, told him to be ready for a second attacker.

  Instead of charging outside, Crome pulled his weapon, crouched down low, his back toward the wall next to the open doorway.

  The first assailant was knocked out on the floor.

  A voice outside said, “You get him?”

  In a muffled voice, Crome said, “Yeah. Help me tie him up.”

  Crome heard footsteps on the wooden front porch, waited until a figure darkened the entrance, waited until the figure stepped in and slight
ly past him, and then stuck the barrel of his pistol to the back of the man’s head.

  “Bang, you’re dead.”

  The man hesitated in mid stride.

  Crome said, “If I was you I wouldn’t do anything that would make me want to pull this trigger the rest of the way.”

  The man raised his hands in surrender slowly. “What do you want?”

  “World peace,” he said. “But I’ll settle for what you two are doing here and why your friend down there on the floor swung a two-by-four at my head.”

  The man kept silent.

  Crome jammed the pistol harder into the man’s head. “Hands on the wall. Now!”

  The man tried to step away and turn.

  Crome caught him with a hard kidney punch, which made him yip, double over sideways, and hold onto his side.

  “Both hands on the wall or I start drilling nine millimeter holes in you.”

  The man managed to get one hand on the wall.

  “I said both hands on the wall.” He fired a warning shot between the man’s feet.

  The man yelped, shuffled his feet and hands, fell, and tried to get up again, something in one of his hands.

  Crome fired, shooting the arm with the object, knocking a small pistol out of his hand.

  The man screamed and fell backward, holding his wounded arm with his good hand.

  Crome got a better look at the guy. Dark skin, but not from the sun, dark hair, yellow button-down shirt, shiny leather shoes. Mustache.

  “Last chance or I shoot your legs.”

  The man struggled to get to his feet, his good hand brushing against a pocket.

  Crome saw the ruse and shot the man again. The bullet went through his hand and into his thigh.

  Another scream.

  None of the wounds were fatal. If the man hadn’t been so stubborn, he could have walked out of this. But some people asked to be shot.

  Crome said, “I told you what I was going to do. Now, why don’t you tell me who sent you?”