by James Swain
The car stopped halfway down the drive. He looked through the cutout in the door and saw an interior light come on. He squinted and realized it was Gaylord. He opened the closet door, and shoved his suitcase inside. Then he pulled his coat off and threw it on a peg. He heard a knock and pulled the door open. Gaylord stood on the stoop.
“We found the body,” he said.
40
Mabel was ready to nab a cheater, when she heard someone at the front door.
“It’s me,” Yolanda called out.
Mabel glanced at the clock on Tony’s desk. Nearly midnight. Normally she’d be in bed by now, nibbling on licorice and reading a book. But tonight was different. Tonight she was going to nab the invisible chip thief.
Employee theft was a problem in every casino. Perhaps it was the vast amounts of money the employees saw flow by each day. Or maybe it was the long hours and miserable pay. Tony often said that casinos offered the last factory jobs in America.
The Palace in South Africa was getting ripped off by an employee. One hundred dollars was disappearing from the roulette table every night. The casino was sure that it was an inside job. Tony had given her the job a week ago, with the promise of a bonus if she could detect the cheating. So she’d stayed up late and glued herself to the computer.
“I’m coming,” she said, pushing herself out of the chair.
She found Yolanda on the stoop, the baby asleep in her arms.
“Gerry called from Mississippi. He said a man named Huck Dubb is coming to Florida to kill me and my baby.”
“What?” Mabel ushered her inside and shut the door. “Do the police know?”
Yolanda nodded. She looked remarkably composed. “Yes. They don’t think this man will get here until tomorrow. He’s driving, so they’ve set up roadblocks on the highways. They’re sure they’ll get him, but Gerry doesn’t want me taking any chances. Would it be okay if the baby and I stayed with you?”
Mabel put her arms around the younger woman. Yolanda was doing her best to act brave. “Of course you may. You can use the guest bedroom. Did you pack anything?”
“I left the house right away,” Yolanda said. “Gerry told me to.”
“But you said this man wouldn’t get here until tomorrow.”
“Gerry said he has a lot of friends. He might even have friends here in Florida.”
Mabel looked into her face. Yolanda’s eyes were puffy, and she wore no makeup. Had she been sleeping when Gerry had called? She gave her a gentle hug.
“Let me go and shut off Tony’s computer. Then we can head down to my place.”
Sitting at Tony’s desk, Mabel started to shut down the computer, when her eyes froze on the screen. The roulette game at the Palace was in full swing, with a dozen players making bets. So much money was on the layout, it was hard to watch the employees. But Mabel’s eyes had locked onto one. It was the banker, whose job was to collect losing bets and pay out winning ones. He sat in front of a huge tray of colored chips. When he leaned forward to collect a bet, his necktie hung over the tray and his elbow pressed down on it.
“Gotcha!”
She called the Palace and got the general manager on the line. Mabel said, “Mr. Valentine asked me to call you. The banker just stole a black hundred-dollar chip. It’s hidden behind his necktie with a piece of double-sided Scotch tape.”
“Mr. Valentine is sure?” the general manager asked.
“Positive.”
Mabel heard a click on the phone. Yolanda came in and stood beside her. Two men appeared on the screen and lifted the banker cleanly out of his chair. Casino people called this giving someone the jerk. One of them turned the banker’s necktie over and exposed the stolen chip. Mabel clapped her hands in delight.
“Gerry also said that Huck Dubb might come to Tony’s house,” Yolanda said when they were standing on the stoop and Mabel was locking the front door.
“Meaning we shouldn’t come back here until he’s caught,” Mabel said.
“Yes.”
“What kind of person is this Huck Dubb?”
“Gerry said he’s part of the Dixie Mafia. Gerry did something to him, and Huck tried to kill him. He didn’t succeed, so now he’s coming after us.”
Mabel went back inside and got Tony’s Sig Sauer. Then she flipped the security system on. As she relocked the door, she tried to imagine the kind of person they were dealing with. If Huck Dubb was driving here from Mississippi hell-bent on revenge, Gerry must have done something awful to him. Which meant Huck wasn’t going to leave if he discovered Yolanda wasn’t home. The police might catch him, and they might not. Leaving her and Yolanda to fend for themselves.
“That’s not good,” she said. “How about some homemade lentil soup?”
Yolanda smiled. “Sounds great.”
It was a moonlit night, and they walked down the block to Mabel’s place and let themselves in through the front door, the house filled with the heavenly smells of that afternoon’s cooking.
The lentil soup tasted better the second time around. Lois was a little angel and remained asleep in her mother’s arms. Yolanda and Mabel sat in the living room and spooned the soup into their mouths while staring at the window that watched the street. A police cruiser passed by and stopped outside Yolanda’s house. A uniformed cop got out and walked around the property with a flashlight in his hand. He returned to his vehicle and drove away. Several minutes passed.
“I don’t like this,” Yolanda said.
“The soup?”
Yolanda displayed her empty bowl. “Being helpless. Sitting here waiting for something to happen. Acting like unemancipated women.”
“Is that what we’re acting like?”
“Yes. What are we waiting for? We should be doing something to protect ourselves.”
“We are. We’re hiding.”
“That makes us victims, doesn’t it?”
Mabel stared at the Sig Sauer lying on the couch. She supposed Yolanda was right. She refilled their bowls in the kitchen. Coming back to the living room, she said, “What are you suggesting we do? Set a trap for Huck Dubb?”
“That’s what Tony or Gerry would do. They know Huck is coming, so they’d use that to their advantage. They’d think a step ahead and ambush him.”
Mabel stood at the window and spooned hot soup into her mouth. The police cruiser reappeared, and she glanced at her watch. Fifteen minutes had passed since the cruiser’s first visit. A lot of bad things could happen in fifteen minutes.
Yolanda was right. They needed to take precautions, or risk becoming a sound bite on the evening news. That was all murders were good for these days.
She sat down beside the younger woman. Yolanda had a funny look in her eyes, and Mabel realized she had something specific in mind.
“Are you going to tell me what you’re thinking?”
“I think we should call the men we met in Gibsonton,” Yolanda said.
“You mean Brownie and Little Pete?”
“Yes. I think they can help us.”
41
Valentine led Gaylord into the kitchen and fixed a pot of coffee. The sergeant fell into a chair, his body language indicating that the last thing he wanted to be doing on a Sunday night was dealing with a murder. That was the problem with homicides. They always came at the wrong times.
Valentine excused himself, went into the bathroom, and called Mabel’s house on his cell phone. His neighbor answered and, hearing the concern in his voice, quickly assured him that she, Yolanda, and his granddaughter were safe and sound.
“We’re taking precautions,” Mabel said. “Don’t worry.”
“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” he said.
When he returned to the kitchen, the coffee had finished brewing and Gaylord had laid several folded sheets of fax paper out flat on the kitchen table. Valentine saw yellow highlights on every page, along with notes written in meticulous script in the margins. The sergeant waited until he had a steaming mug in his hand before speaking
.
“You mind my asking you a personal question?”
“What’s that?” Valentine said.
“Why go back to work after retiring? The money?”
“My wife died. She used to keep my social calendar.”
The sergeant stared into the depths of his drink. “There’s a message there, isn’t there?”
“It’s nothing you can prepare for,” Valentine said.
Gaylord looked up at him. “The loss of a spouse?”
“Loneliness.”
The sergeant put his mug on the table. He hadn’t even tasted it. Picking up the fax paper, he read from it. “The manager of a 7-Eleven about fifty miles north of here found a body behind his store an hour ago. The victim was a Hispanic male, late thirties, about six feet tall and a hundred and ninety pounds. He’d died from a gunshot to the forehead. The policeman who arrived on the scene said the victim was still warm when he touched him.”
“No ID?”
“No. His pockets were picked clean. And get this. His fingerprints were gone. Burned away with some type of acid.”
“They didn’t take out his teeth, did they?”
“I already figured out who he is.” Something resembling a smile crossed Gaylord’s face. He probably got the opportunity to solve a real crime about once a year. He picked up his mug and sipped his coffee, extending the moment. “I figured the guys who dumped him weren’t driving around with acid in their car. I contacted the major credit-card companies and asked them to pull up any recent purchases of acid at any home improvement or auto-parts stores in the past few hours. I cast a net of a hundred miles from the 7-Eleven.”
And hit pay dirt, Valentine thought. Since 9/11, creditcard companies had become one of law enforcement’s biggest allies. If a cop knew a suspect’s purchasing patterns, he could follow the suspect across town or across the country.
“I got a number of hits,” Gaylord went on, “but one stood out. A man named Angel Fernandez purchased a can of boric acid at a Home Depot about thirty miles from the 7-Eleven a few hours ago. He also bought cleaning fluid. He paid for the items on his Visa card.
“Now here’s the interesting part. The credit card was a corporate card issued to employees of a company called AGM. Stands for Asset Growth Management. They’re out of New York.”
“Sounds like a brokerage house,” Valentine said.
“They are. I got Visa to send me the names of the other AGM employees who have cards.”
Gaylord spun one of the faxes around. It was from Visa and contained the names of fifteen people. One name had been highlighted in yellow: Juan Rodriguez. “You said the guy you shot was named Juan, so I assumed this was him.”
“Did you check to see if he had a record?”
Gaylord handed him another fax. It was a rap sheet for Juan Rodriguez and included a grainy mug shot. It was the same guy Valentine had shot in Ricky’s driveway.
“He’s a drug dealer,” Gaylord said. “Works out of Miami, connected to several cartels in Colombia. You shot a real bad dude.”
Valentine felt the invisible knot in his chest loosen. Gaylord was telling him to forget the rubber bullets; he’d shot a menace to society. He pointed at the remaining faxes on the table. “Can I look at these?”
“Be my guest.”
Valentine read the page with the names of the AGM Visa cardholders. His eyes locked on a name at the top. “Stanley Kessel,” he said. Gaylord read it upside down.
“Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“Was he before your time?”
Gaylord shot him a hurt look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Stanley Kessel is from Slippery Rock. He’s a childhood friend of Ricky Smith’s. Mary Alice Stoker said Stanley once stole money from her purse. Said he was a bad apple.”
Gaylord gave it some thought. Had his brain been an engine, Valentine imagined he would hear the gears shift. “Stan Kessel. Yeah, I remember that little weasel. In his senior year, he got caught stealing the answers to the SAT tests. They had to cancel the tests in the whole state. I heard he moved to New York, made a killing in the stock market.”
“Does he have family here?”
“His parents are long gone.”
“His name is at the top. My guess is, this is his company. Why do you think he sent four thugs to intimidate Ricky Smith?”
“Because Stanley’s involved.”
“Has to be,” Valentine said.
As a kid, Valentine had admired a man in his neighborhood named Ralph Coker. He was a plumbing salesman and always drove nice cars. Coker’s son Eddie and Valentine had played together. One day, Eddie had taken Valentine to his father’s office. There had been a desk and a phone. Nothing else. “Where’s your father’s chair?” Valentine asked.
“They don’t give him one,” Eddie said. “They want him out selling.”
Gaylord’s office at police headquarters reminded him of Ralph Coker’s. A desk, a phone, a computer, and no chair. There was a chair against the wall, and Valentine guessed it was for guests. He sat in it while Gaylord worked his computer. The sergeant’s thick fingers were a blur across the keyboard. The computer responded with beeps and funny noises that, put together, resembled music.
Gaylord went into NCIC, a national registry of criminals that every law enforcement agency in the country could access. He typed in Stanley Kessel’s name and hit enter.
“Don’t you ever sit down?”
“Yeah. In the car and in front of the TV. This is exercise.”
NCIC came up with nothing. Gaylord went to Google and again typed in Kessel’s name. This time, he got a number of hits, and Valentine watched him scroll down the list, then select one and click on it with the mouse.
“You were right,” Gaylord said. “Kessel is the president and founder of AGM. I found a story from the Wall Street Journal about him. Says he’s a self-made millionaire. Specializes in market making, whatever the hell that is.”
“That’s a broker who takes companies public on the stock market.”
“Must be lucrative.”
Valentine leaned back in his chair. He felt the cold from the concrete wall seep into his neck. It cleared his head and let him see the real picture. Stanley Kessel was a smart guy who’d started his own company. Ricky Smith was a loser who stayed home and played loud music. Stanley was running the show, not Ricky.
“How many miles from here did you say they dumped the body?” he asked.
Gaylord lifted his eyes from the computer screen. “Fifty. Why?”
“Can you do a record search of the nearby towns?”
“Sure. What am I looking for?”
A house on the edge of town, or a large apartment. Someplace where the larcenous citizens of Slippery Rock could congregate and practice ripping off a casino. Every gang had one.
“A place in Stanley Kessel’s name,” he said.
42
Stanley Kessel owned a house on a two-acre lot on the outskirts of Slippery Rock. Or rather, his company did. Gaylord knew the place but hadn’t been there in years.
“Can’t believe he’s been right here under my nose and I didn’t know it,” Gaylord said as they drove down a dirt driveway. The house was on a dead-end street with no streetlight. Gaylord killed the engine of his car and sat perfectly still. It was nearly 1:00 A.M. He’d gone to a judge’s house and gotten him to sign a search warrant.
He started to climb out, then glanced sideways at Valentine. “Stay here.”
“You don’t know what you’re looking for,” Valentine said.
“You don’t think I’ll recognize cheating equipment if I see it?”
“You don’t know what cheating equipment is.”
Gaylord’s chin sagged. “So what do you suggest I do?”
“Deputize me. Then I can’t taint the crime scene.”
Valentine could tell that Gaylord wasn’t thrilled with the idea. He raised his right hand, just to goad him. Gaylord shook his head and swore him in.
They got out and stared at the house in the darkness. It was practically falling down, with a patchwork shingle roof and shutters hanging on one hinge. The front porch creaked unhappily as they stepped on it. Gaylord put his face to the glass cutout in the door. Finding it locked, he said, “Step back.”
“You going to kick it in?”
“No, I’m going to blow it down.”
Valentine smiled. It was the first funny thing he’d heard the sergeant say.
“Try the back door,” he suggested.
“Why?”
“It’s obvious no one used the front much.”
Gaylord mumbled under his breath and walked off the porch. He was packing the weight but could put it into high gear when he needed to. As they came around the house, a motion-detector light went off, the bright orange light shining directly in their faces.
It took a moment for Valentine’s eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw that the lawn behind the house was littered with broken refrigerators. Gaylord shook his head.
“The town will pick this stuff up, free of charge.”
Valentine got close to the machines and realized his eyes were playing tricks on him. They were slot and video-poker machines with their guts ripped out. The gang wanted to steal a jackpot but couldn’t figure out how, he thought.
Gaylord tested the back door and found it locked. He punched out a pane of glass with the butt of his automatic and stuck his hand through.
“Hold on,” Valentine said.
“You think there’s something behind the door?”
“You said Kessel was a weasel. You want to put your life in a weasel’s hands?”
Gaylord stepped away from the door. “No.”
Valentine went into the garage behind the house and came out with a piece of rope. He tied the rope around the doorknob, then walked into the yard. He handed Gaylord the end, and the sergeant gave it a sharp tug. The door banged open, followed by a loud thwap! An arrow flew through the back door. Its path took it directly between where Valentine and Gaylord were standing. Both men heard its whistle as it flew by their heads.