Cooler Than Blood

by Robert Lane

  “I’m good.” I settled in next to PC. “What’ve you got?”

  “They’ve been in and out, loading up the car,” PC said. “But about thirty minutes ago, they went in the house and haven’t emerged.”

  Garrett asked, “Any trips to the garage?”

  “Just one,” PC replied. “Didn’t take anything in or out.”

  “Water,” Boyd said without lifting his eyes off his phone.

  “Water?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Curly walked out with a bottle of water in his pocket. Not there when he went in.”

  “Okay.” I glanced at Garrett. “Drive straight up? Say we’re lost?”

  “Let’s go.”

  I instructed PC and Boyd to stay. Boyd brought his head out of his electronic world and said, “Roger.” Garrett and I got into my truck and approached the house for the second time that day, but this time by road, not by bush. We came up the long gravel drive and past the single-car garage. Twenty feet from the back door, I killed the engine. The screen door flung open, and Randall Coleman tumbled out. His shoulders were as wide as the door, but his legs were thin, like his gym membership only included from the waist up. He had a dimple on his chin that matched a deep V between his eyes. He wore black jeans and a size-too-small T-shirt.

  “Excuse me,” I said as I got out of the truck. “I was looking for Franklin Dixon’s place, and I heard—”

  “Off my property, chum.” Randall took a few steps toward the truck. “Can’t you read? No trespassing.”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “I can’t read.”

  I glanced at Garrett, but Garrett’s eyes were locked on the house. I had Randall. I was deciding on whether to engage him in Hardy Boy trivia—Dixon was a pen name used by the numerous authors who wrote the series—when Garrett sprinted toward the house and took one leap over the three wooden steps that led to the back porch. He rocketed past Randall before Randall registered that Garrett had even moved. I covered the distance that separated Randall and me in two strides and hit him high. My momentum carried us off the porch, and I landed on top of him on the ground. The gravel embedded in his right cheek. My mouth was in his left ear. The Boone position.

  “Where’s Jenny? Do not tell me you don’t know. I know you had her in the garage.”

  “Kiss my—”

  “No, no, no,” I interrupted. “You don’t understand.” I brought his right arm up behind his back. He winced and kicked. “Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll snap your arm like a dead twig.” He started to speak, but I closed the door. “I won’t ask twice. Jenny Spencer. Where is she?”

  “Don’t know.”

  I raised his arm. His upper lip curled up in an involuntary spasm; his eye tightened as he grunted.

  “I don’t know. They took her.”

  “They? You think I’m that simple? Listen to me: breaking your arm is my appetizer. Where is she?”

  “Okay, man. Let me breathe. We owed money, and I think they got to her. She was just gone. Key’s missing from the hook, and your girlfriend wasn’t—”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “I’m just sayin’—”

  “Who has her?”

  “Let me up so I can at least talk.”

  Garrett sprang out of the back door and shoved a younger man down the steps. He had bushy, curly hair and blushed, high cheekbones. Zach Coleman was a Ken doll with flesh. That made him an incongruity in his world. Not that violence and crime have a face, but they have a distinct look—an odor—and it wasn’t Zach Coleman. I released the pressure on Randall’s arm and grabbed the back of his T-shirt to yank him up. His shirt ripped, and his face smashed back down into the gravel before his stout arms had time to break his fall. I blew my breath out and took a step back. Zach dissolved into a ball on the ground and buried his head in his hands.

  “Tell me why and how you abducted her and who you think has her.”

  Randall rolled over and stood up. He glanced at Garrett. “Why do you give two shits?”

  “Friends of the family. Give it to us straight, and we won’t call Wyatt Earp on your chemistry operation.”

  “Go ahead.” He let out a huff. “Ain’t nobody gonna come after us.” He cut Garrett another look. Gauging his odds.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said.

  Randall came back to me and took a moment.

  “Just tell him.” It came from Zach as he raised his head out of his hands. I was surprised at the strength of his voice. “If you don’t, I will. It was wrong. I told you. I told you then that it was wrong.” Zach’s eyes pierced his brother.

  I was going to say something but decided to let them get their thoughts in order. I saw blood on the gravel and realized it was dripping from my right elbow. Two white plastic chairs were on the concrete pad by the side of the porch. I tossed the dirtiest one to Randall and sat in the other. Randall took a seat, paused for a few seconds, and then said, “What do we get?”

  “A life free from me.”

  It was Zach who told the story. They were no more than half a day behind their younger brother, Billy Ray. They raced after him as soon as they’d realized he had vanished.

  “What made you think,” I asked, “that he’d go straight to a motel in Florida just because he’d been there before?”

  Zach answered, “He was too dumb to know or care. I doubt Billy Ray even thought of another place.”

  “Me and Zach,” Randall cut in, “always scored in Florida. Know what I mean? Billy Ray—his battery was missing a few cells. He’d wander around the parking lot, chanting some song after we kicked him out of the room. Last spring, said he had it. Said it was time to get himself some sunshine tail. Soon as he went missing, I knew where he was going and what he was going to do.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Then what?”

  Zach explained that they drove through the night. When they didn’t see Billy Ray’s car at the Buccaneer, they drove down Estero Boulevard and checked other motels. They found their brother’s red Honda partially hidden from the street in the public parking area McGlashan had described to me at Susan’s. “We found him a little farther down the beach.”

  “He was all reversed,” Randall added. “His insides were on the outside.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Dunno. Early, still kind of dark.”

  “I found Jenny’s T-shirt,” Zach said. It shot out like a confession. “It had her first and last name on it. I knew her. Spent a day with her on a boat last summer. I didn’t know she was in Florida.”

  “Why did you hightail it after Billy Ray? Skip the part where you tell me you were concerned.”

  “We just wanted to—” Randall started.

  “The money was gone,” Zach said. “We figured maybe she knew something about it.”

  “What money?” I took a step toward Zach, but he was looking at his brother.

  Randall said, “They don’t need to—”

  “Two hundred eighty-four thousand dollars,” Zach said.

  “He had that on him?”

  “Score from our largest deal,” Randall said, as if now that the money was on the table, he might as well stake his claim. I turned to face him. “Takes a big kitchen to house that much dough,” he continued. “Had to be in the trunk. We had a big blowup with Billy Ray night before he ditched—told him he was out of the family business. Figured he took the money to get back at us. That’s why we jumped on the saddle after he left. Otherwise, we wouldn’t give a flying fuck. But when we found him on the beach, his talkin’ days was done. We headed back to his car, and it was locked. I needed a crowbar. By the time we got to Home Depot and back, police tape was around the car, and the trunk was open. We slowed down, like everybody else, but kept going.”

  Garrett asked, “Why didn’t you take the lug wrench out of the trunk of your car, break the window, and release the trunk lid?” I realized I hadn’t told Garrett what McGlashan had said at Susan’s house
—the trunk release lever inside the car was broken.

  “Well, now,” Randall said, “that would have been—”

  “It was busted,” Zach said. “Stud face here ripped it off a year ago—lost his patience with it. Only way in the trunk was with a key. Damn thing was…’bout halfway back from Home Depot, I realized I had the extra set on me. I don’t know…I just wasn’t thinking straight. Seeing him there like that. I mean, Billy Ray wasn’t right and all, but he was still my brother.”

  “What time was that?” I wanted to return to the money but decided to cover the specifics first. I thought it odd that Zach referred to Billy Ray as “my brother” and not “our brother.”

  “Dunno. Seven thirty. Give or take.”

  “Someone beat you to it.” I realized I’d spoken the exact line to McGlashan. It seemed that everyone connected to Jenny, like characters in a play, were a step behind to an offstage presence that no one had seen. “Someone knew the money was in the car and where the car was,” I said.

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Randall said.

  “You check his motel room?”

  “Whaddya think?” Randall asked. “Zach talked some babe with a thick rope of midnight hair to let him in the room, but it didn’t look like he was ever there. We was just covering the bases, though, ‘cause once we saw that trunk open, we figured that was where Billy Ray had stashed the cash.”

  Thick rope of hair. Allison had lied to me about not recognizing Zach. She had hesitated when I’d shown her Zach’s picture at Grouper’s place, the Matanzas Bar and Grill. I should have picked up on that.

  “Who beat you to it?” I asked.

  Randall said, “Like we’d be here bullshittin’ with you if we knew?”

  “It wasn’t all our money,” Zach cut in. “We owed half of it to our partners. We were trying to break into the Tampa market, you know. We met these guys once, and they said they could use some supply. We—”

  Randall cut him off. “They don’t care about that.”

  “Pretend I do.” I took a step toward Randall. “Tell me how a pair of Bobbsey Twins like you ended up with that much money.”

  He hesitated before he came in. “We’d done work with them before. This was our first time collecting the money, keeping the books, so to say. They supplied the material, set us up to do more quantity. We moved the product both here and up north.”

  “Who are ‘they?’”

  “A group out of Tampa. We were told they were tied-in to an operation up north, but we just dealt with the guys at our level.”

  “Up north?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Chicago, I think.”

  In a dormant section of my brain, a warning light flickered on, like a soldier gently aroused from a long sleep. “I don’t think any organized crime in Tampa is under a Chicago umbrella,” I said. “The Trafficantes are long gone, and they had ties to New York, not Chicago. I don’t think there’s anything based out of Tampa.”

  “Yeah?” Randall held his sneer. “I’m sure they run their plans past you.”

  I swatted a gnat away from my face. “You think they were on to Billy Ray, and they took the—”

  “No way, man. They don’t know shit about him.”

  “You thought Jenny would lead you to the money,” Garrett cut in.

  Randall eyed him. “She was the last to see Billy Ray alive. We figured she even did him in. Maybe he told her about the money, and she decided to help herself, you know?”

  “With a crowbar?” Garrett asked. “You think she had one in her beach bag?”

  “Told you,” Zach said to his brother.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Randall said. “For all we knew, she got someone to help her. We just wanted to question her. That’s all.” He sounded conciliatory. It was dawning on him that with Zach’s altar-boy, confessional demeanor, he was the prime bad guy.

  “How did you know where to find her?” I asked.

  “Tell him, Curly,” Randall bossed his younger brother.

  Zach gave him a look then came back to me. “She mentioned, the one time I saw her, that she had an aunt down here. I told her we came down as well, you know, to the same area, and—”

  “You pussy ass,” Randall cut him off. “Just get to it. Little bro here is all country—likes Blake Shelton; ain’t that so, Curly?—so when we found her T-shirt, he recalled that her aunt’s last name was Blake. It wasn’t too hard to find her street after that.”

  “How did you lure her out?” I asked Zach.

  Randall came in before Zach had a chance. “That was Zach’s move. He attracts chicks like flies on shit. He had her number from last year, along with the number of every other babe south of Columbus. Called her and said to come quick—said he had something to give her but was waiting on the corner for a ride he didn’t want to miss. That girl ran down the street without even putting her shoes on. She trusted you, didn’t she, Curly?”

  “Eat shit.”

  “Why didn’t you drive up to her house?” I asked.

  “Because,” Zach said, “dickhead here didn’t want anybody on the street to see us. Guess that didn’t work out, did it, bro?”

  Before Randall fired off another retort and we all entered family counseling, I said, “Tell me about the money.”

  Randall shrugged. “Two hundred eighty-four thousand. Half was ours. The other hundred forty-four we owed our partners.”

  “Hundred forty-two, numb nuts,” Zach said.

  “Did Jenny know about the money?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Randall said. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair. He was top-heavy, and the chair fell over backward. He scrambled to his feet.

  “You’re one sorry motherfucker,” his brother observed.

  Randall ignored him and landed a hard stare on me. “She knew. She said Billy Ray told her that he had two hundred eighty-four big ones in the car, something like that, and—”

  “She didn’t know anything else about it,” Zach said. “She said he mentioned something about money, but she wasn’t listening.”

  “What’s your dream, little man?” Randall asked. “Knock her up with your pygmy stick and waltz her down the aisle?”

  “You can go—”

  Garrett took a step forward. “Enough.”

  I made a note to call Rutledge and let him know Jenny might have left something out of the interview. It wouldn’t be unusual, which is why multiple interviews are preferred. Often the story changes, or the witness—in this case Jenny—simply can’t recall with certainty what happened or what was said. Memory, after all, is largely fiction.

  “What were you birdbrains thinking?” I asked Randall. “She could finger you and Zach for kidnapping.”

  “She never knew we was brothers and never saw me,” Randall said. “I kept a mask on. We figured she’d never press charges against Zach. Isn’t that what you said, Zach? That you could charm her out of running to the cops? That she’d never do anything to put you in the big house?”

  Zach brought his knees up in front of him, wrapped his arms around them, and clamped them in front. “Like she wouldn’t know your voice if she heard you later? You were just too chickenshit to show your sorry face.”

  “That ain’t chickenshit, Curly. That’s being smart.” Randall turned to me. “We eventually would’ve let her go.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have,” Garrett said.

  “Well, we’ll just never know, will we?” Randall shot back. I was growing impatient with the remaining Coleman brothers. Were these the best criminals we could come up with? This was our best effort? Talk about American competiveness. No wonder the Mexicans and Columbians own the drug trade.

  I took two steps toward Zach, got on my knees, and stuck my face in his. “When did she disappear?”

  Our eyes locked. On a good day, Mrs. Coleman might have had one son she could be proud of. “Last twenty-four hours. They called us down to Tampa yesterday to try to smooth things over. We stayed and partied a night, and when w
e came back, our place was trashed. We figured they searched the house for cash and then took her.”

  “Who has her, Zach?”

  “I dunno.”

  “She’s suffering, Zach. And you did this to her.”

  He whimpered.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Randall said.

  Zach blew out some air, and his shoulders settled. “You got to believe me, man. I’m not sure. Randall had told them that we had her and that she knew about the money but didn’t have it. If we didn’t have her, they would have come after us. But the fact that we took her reinforced to them that we didn’t have the money—that we too were looking for it. You gotta realize, man, we figured they was looking at us like we double-crossed them.”

  “I don’t get it,” I interjected. “Did you give her up?”

  “No. No, nothing like that,” Zach said as he regained his composure and straightened his back. “Like I said, we’d told them that we had her. We wanted more time with—”

  “Had they been here before?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, and that’s just it, man. We had some of them up here a few months ago. You know, trying to get to know who we were doing business with.”

  “And you think they got impatient and came after her?”

  “What else? They call us down for a night and then slip up here and grab her. We figured they either thought we cut them out and took her as a cover—proof that we didn’t take the cash—or she had it. Randall figured better her than us. No one believed me when I said neither Jenny or us had the money. Then Randall told them she was a runaway to start with.” He shot his brother a look. It was the first time he’d broken eye contact with me since I’d gotten on my knees. “Ain’t that right, Randall?” I got up and marched over to Randall. Zach’s voice came from behind me. “They said when we was done with her, they had a whole line of operations that needed homeless girls to staff. But Jenny wasn’t like that. I told them she—”

  “You told them she was a runaway?” I was two feet from Randall.

  “Teenage bait, man. Chicks like her can—”

  My punch caught him square in the jaw and stung my hand. Randall Coleman wasn’t worth cracking my knuckles over. I stepped back and was preparing a high kick when he tumbled over from the force of my punch. I kicked him in the stomach. I was bringing my foot back when Garrett’s hands grabbed my shoulders and jerked me back.