by DeLeon, Jana
I had to order the glass for my windows, but that didn’t surprise me. The house was old and the windows were the originals with individual panes. It was pretty but sorta a hassle. If I actually cleaned, I’d probably hate them. As it was, the entire place was in need of a good spring cleaning. I might check into hiring someone as soon as things settled down. Technically, it wasn’t my house as I wasn’t really Marge’s niece, but since I was benefiting from staying there, it only seemed right that I keep the place from falling apart, especially as I’d been the root cause of the recent damage.
We finished up our shopping and carted everything back to Gertie’s car. “I still can’t believe you made me buy this,” Gertie said as she closed the trunk over the new white toilet inside.
“It’s the least you owe the man,” Ida Belle said. “You ought to be buying him new clothes and paying for therapy. In less than a ten-hour span, he tackled a toilet and got sprayed with toilet water, then saw you in your skivvies. When you deliver that, it should be with a big bottle of whiskey.”
Gertie waved a hand in dismissal and I grinned as I climbed into the backseat next to bags from the hardware store.
“So everyone knows what they’re doing, right?” I said.
“I’m sitting in the car,” Gertie said, “waiting for you and Ida Belle to come out, then I drive back home. It’s not like you’ve set me out to solve the Da Vinci Code or something.”
Gertie was still a little perturbed that she hadn’t been tasked with something more important than driving the car, but I’d finally convinced her that getaway driver was an important role. The unfortunate part was, Gertie was scary as hell as the getaway driver, but I was less afraid of her behind the wheel than inside the art gallery.
Ida Belle had borrowed a wig from a friend of hers and pulled it on, checking herself in the mirror. “I’ll enter the art gallery and pretend to shop. I’ll ask about the artists and see if I can determine who owns the gallery and the building. How do I look?” She turned around to look at me.
“It’s amazing what a difference hair style and color makes,” I said. The wig Ida Belle had borrowed was a chin-length bob in a dark glossy brown. It took a good fifteen years off her. “It makes you look younger.”
“Let me see,” Gertie said and looked over at Ida Belle. “You still look old and grouchy to me.”
“You’re just jealous,” Ida Belle said and looked at herself in the mirror. “I suppose I do look a bit younger.”
“Ten years younger than the Walking Dead, maybe,” Gertie groused.
I sighed. Thank God we were only a couple minutes from the art gallery. Gertie’s complaining was getting old. When we got back to Sinful, we were going to have to find something special for her to do, or Ida Belle and I would be listening to her go on like this for days.
Gertie let me out of the car around the corner and then proceeded past the art gallery and parked at the curb a couple buildings down. I headed up the street with my package as Ida Belle exited the car and entered the gallery. Our hope was that the gallery only had one employee working and that Ida Belle’s distracting them with questions would be enough to keep them from focusing on me.
The gallery was a long, fairly narrow room with paintings hanging on both sides of the walls. Long panels divided the room in two and contained more artwork on each side. Ida Belle was the only patron inside, and she was standing in front of a large painting of the swamp and talking to a young man sporting ear gauges and a bunch of facial piercings.
Five feet eight. A hundred forty pounds, including the jewelry. No threat unless he stabbed me with a piercing.
The gallery employee glanced over at the door as I entered and I was happy to note the door didn’t make a sound. No signal for entry or departure worked in my favor.
“Package for Thomas Johnson,” I said, taking on my bored and slightly impatient expression.
“Upstairs,” the young man said and pointed to a staircase at the rear of the building. “It’s the unit on the right, but I haven’t seen him for a couple days. He might not be at home.”
“I don’t need a signature,” I said. “I’ll leave it at the door.”
The young man shrugged, clearly unconcerned with Thomas Johnson or his packages. When he turned back around, I inclined my head to the other side of the room and Ida Belle nodded. Then I headed for the staircase. So far, so good. With Ida Belle moving Piercing Boy to the back side of the panels, he would assume he missed my leaving, if he thought about it at all.
I bounded up the stairs and located the apartment and smiled. No police tape. Either Carter hadn’t had a chance to contact the New Orleans police about Max’s death or more likely, the locals were busy with issues from the storm and hadn’t had a chance to check. After all, Max was already dead, and he hadn’t been murdered in their jurisdiction. With no reason to suspect Max was involved in bigger crimes, his murder wouldn’t be a priority.
A quick inspection of the lock made me even happier. Whoever had renovated the building had followed the general rule of contracting and used cheap locks for the doors. I would have this open in no time. I pulled on my gloves, then went to work. Using nothing but a credit card and a stiff wire, it took only a couple of seconds to get the lock open. I peered inside to make sure it was clear, then stepped into the apartment, closing and locking the door behind me.
The apartment was a studio type, which was another thing on the plus list. Small meant easier to search, and Max had apparently gone for the minimalist look, at least as far as furniture went. The walls were a completely different story. They were littered with paintings—big, medium, small, oils, acrylics, chalk, pencil, landscapes, portraits, fruit in bowls. I felt like I was being suffocated by an art school.
I tossed the package onto an incredibly uncomfortable-looking white modern couch and pulled open a drawer on the end table. Nothing but a television remote inside. I moved into the kitchen and checked the drawers and cabinets, but all I discovered is that Max didn’t cook or clean. He had zero cooking utensils and his refrigerator was disgusting. Things had been growing in there for quite some time.
I moved into the makeshift bedroom, which consisted of a mattress and one nightstand in the far corner of the apartment. The top drawer of the nightstand held a couple of skin magazines and a couple pairs of socks. The bottom drawer held underwear. I shifted them around, glad I was wearing gloves, but didn’t see anything else. I tapped the bottom of the drawers, as I’d done all the others, but there were no false bottoms and nothing was taped underneath.
I moved on to the bathroom, but it held only a toilet, shower, and pedestal sink, so no hiding places available other than a medicine cabinet that contained only basic toiletries and the toilet tank, which was clear. At the back of the bathroom was a skinny door that I figured must be the closet. I pulled it open and saw some jeans and T-shirts and a couple of cheap suits and shoes. I pushed everything around, digging in pockets and inside the shoes, then pressed the walls to make sure no hiding places existed, then closed the closet and headed back into the living room.
I stood in the middle of the room and looked around, feeling completely unsatisfied. This was all wrong. Nothing about this place besides the artwork indicated that Max lived here. Otherwise, the place could have belonged to any single male with questionable hygiene and bad taste in clothes. It was so sterile, it had to be intentional. Not a single checkbook or piece of mail. Not an insurance card, a set of car keys, or a single photo.
If it hadn’t been for the thick layer of dust covering everything, I would have assumed he’d recently moved in and hadn’t finished unpacking. Max may have rented this place, and he probably slept and showered here, but it wasn’t where he conducted business. Everyone had personal papers, even criminals. He must have all of it stored somewhere else.
My cell phone buzzed and I pulled it out, hoping nothing had gone awry. It was Gertie.
You find anything?
I texted back.
No. The entire
place is completely devoid of indication of who occupies it. Not a single personal document.
A couple seconds later, Gertie replied.
He used to hide things behind paintings. Are there any hanging in there?
I glanced around the apartment and groaned.
Are you kidding me? It looks like the Louvre threw up its rejects in here.
I slipped the cell phone back into my pocket and started systematically removing the paintings one at a time and checking the back. At this rate, I’d be here all afternoon. When I finished the first wall, I moved on to the next. I pulled a particularly large and incredibly tacky painting of dogs playing poker off the wall from behind the couch and carefully stepped off the couch with it, making sure I didn’t drop it or take out a lamp. I leaned it against the wall and immediately spotted the pouch on the back.
It was one of those golden mailing envelopes and it was attached to the back of the frame by a Velcro strap. I removed the envelope and checked the contents.
Finally!
The envelope was full of hundred-dollar bills.
I mentally cursed myself for not bringing a magnifying glass, but I wasn’t sure it mattered. As soon as I saw the money, I got that feeling again—my Spidey sense—telling me it was no coincidence.
I took a couple bills out of the envelope and put the rest back. I placed my hands under the crossbar that ran across the middle of the painting and was just about to heft it back on the wall when my fingers brushed against something solid on the back side of the crossbar. I shifted my fingers to the side and felt what appeared to be a solid block of wood attached to the back of the crossbar.
Some sort of bracing, maybe?
Except that after about eight inches, the block ended, which meant it couldn’t be supporting anything. I bent over for a better look and saw a dark block of something that looked like metal attached to the back of the crossbar. I ran my fingers down it again and this time felt a ribbon that ran around it. I traced the ribbon to where it was tied at the bottom of the crossbar and picked it apart with my fingers.
My excitement grew as I worked on the ribbon. Whatever this was, it was important enough that Max had gone to a lot of trouble to hide it. A small box of documents, maybe? Fake IDs, a list of contacts, addresses of businesses?
Finally, I got the ribbon loose and the block slipped from behind the crossbar and into my hand. I pulled it out and stared in surprise.
It was a counterfeit die.
I pulled it in for a closer look and could see it was for a collectible coin, but I couldn’t identify which one.
Part of the mystery fell into place. Max’s disappearance with no visible means of support. His focus on reproductive art rather than creative. The fake bills in his wallet and his apartment. Their appearance in Sinful at the same time he returned.
Max wasn’t part of the arms dealing crew. He was the counterfeiter.
He’d probably started with the coins. They were easier to trade in small amounts and as long as you didn’t take them to a serious collector. He’d probably managed a good living off of that alone. But counterfeiting bills took a serious investment of equipment, if you wanted to do it right. And the hundreds were some of the best I’d ever seen. Printing money for arms dealers was a lucrative business, especially if you were the artist, but it was also a dangerous one. Once the artwork was complete, the artist wasn’t a necessary expense any longer, but he usually wasn’t killed, either. Something must have happened to put Max on a hit list.
Like Ahmad’s discovering the money was fake due to the mistakes.
Max’s not-quite-good-enough artistic ability may be what had bought him two shotgun shells in the chest. But that still didn’t answer the question of what Max was doing in Sinful.
My phone buzzed and I pulled it out to check. It was Gertie again.
Police just pulled up and are on their way inside gallery.
Holy crap!
The inside stairs were the only way out I’d seen, and no way could I get by the police without them seeing me. And if they saw me, they’d stop me for questioning, especially if the art gallery employee told them I was delivering a package to a dead man and should have been gone twenty minutes ago.
I started to lift the painting back on the wall, but stopped. No way I could get it back up and straight before the police broke the door down, and what did it matter anyway? Not like Max was going to sue me for ransacking his property. I placed the dies on the end table and hauled butt for the window at the back of the apartment, praying there was something to use to get out. I was capable of dropping two stories, but it wasn’t preferred.
I lifted the window and looked out. A drainpipe was a foot away from the window, running down the side of the building into the alley. I started to climb out the window when I remembered the fake UPS package. Crap! My fingerprints were all over it.
I ran back to the couch and grabbed the package. I could hear footsteps coming up the stairs. The cops would be here any minute. I ran to the window and tossed the package out, then reached for the drainpipe, and that’s when I saw two men in suits, standing in the alley and looking up at me.
Six feet two and six feet three. Two hundred forty and two hundred sixty pounds. Very little body fat. Armed and deadly as hell.
They weren’t law enforcement. Something about the stance was different. But they were definitely interested in Max’s apartment. Which meant they were probably either Jamison’s men or Ahmad’s. Neither worked out well for me.
I pulled out my phone and texted Gertie.
Police about to open door. Bad guys in alley. Can’t leave through window.
I have no idea what I thought Gertie could do about the situation, but I prayed she came through with one of her plans that didn’t quite work the way she intended but got us all out alive. One of the guys in the alley pointed at me and I could hear them arguing, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying and couldn’t see their lips clearly from my perch on the window.
I was just weighing my options of facing the police and having to return to DC via the New Orleans police or facing the bad guys outside and hoping they didn’t shoot me when I heard tires squealing. I looked down the alley and saw Gertie’s Cadillac barreling toward the two men, knocking trash cans everywhere as she went.
As she got near the building, she veered toward me, forcing the two men to jump to the other side of the alley to avoid being hit. I swung my legs over the window ledge and said a quick prayer as I jumped.
Chapter Eleven
My timing was excellent, because I landed square in the middle on top of the Cadillac. Gertie accelerated again and I heard the men yelling behind me as the first bullet whizzed by my head. I rolled to the side of the car, tucked into the window and dropped into the passenger’s seat. Gertie yanked the wheel to the right and we tore out of the alley. We were halfway down the next street when I heard a car roar to life and looked back to see a black sedan squeal away from the curb.
“They’re following us!” I shouted.
Gertie glanced in the rearview mirror. “Glove box!”
I opened the glove box and found a small arsenal. A nine-millimeter, a .45, a flare gun, and God forbid, a grenade.
I wasn’t about to risk hitting a civilian with the nine, so I grabbed the flare gun and fired it at their hood. The flare screamed out of the gun and landed right in the middle of their windshield.
“Bull’s-eye!” Gertie yelled.
I was just about to fire again when I heard a crash. A second later, the porcelain toilet appeared behind Gertie’s car, rolling down the street. The men’s vision had been compromised by the flare and they didn’t see the toilet until it was too late. They hit it head-on, and the sedan slid sideways and crashed into a Dumpster. Gertie made a hard right onto the next street, then a left on the next as I watched over the seat.
“I think we lost them,” I said and turned around to flop down in the passenger’s seat.
“We lost t
hem and the darn toilet.” Gertie shook her head in dismay.
“I thought you had your trunk bottom fixed.” When I’d first arrived in Sinful, there had been an unfortunate incident during which I’d been required to ride in the trunk. Even more unfortunate had been when the bottom fell out of it, dropping me to the ground right in front of Carter, who was the person I was trying to hide from.
“I sorta fixed it,” Gertie said.
I nodded. Gertie was sorta known for sorta fixing things. “Well, this is one of those rare times when your lack of attention to proper maintenance paid off.”
“Except for the part where we don’t have a toilet for Carter.”
“I’ll tell him the trunk bottom is missing, and it wouldn’t fit in the backseat. That’s all true enough. At least, it is now.” I sat up straight in my seat. “Crap! We left Ida Belle!”
I was just pulling my phone out of my pocket when Gertie’s phone signaled she’d received a text. I grabbed her phone from the center console and checked it.
Did you two get away?
“It’s Ida Belle,” I said and sent a text back.
Barely. Where are you?
I’m taking Uber. Pick me up at the French Market.
I heaved a sigh of relief. “We need to pick her up at the French Market.”
“Good. Since I’ve been weaving up and down streets like a drunk, we’re only a couple blocks away.”
She turned down Governor Nicholls Street and pulled up to the corner and stopped. Ida Belle waved from across the street, then ran across and hopped in the backseat.
“You have no idea how happy I am to see the two of you in one piece and not in the back of a police car,” Ida Belle said as Gertie pulled away from the curb. “When the cops came into the gallery, I almost had a heart attack, but I couldn’t think of any way to distract them. Then all the commotion started and then gunfire. The cops came running back downstairs and that idiot with the piercings locked himself in the bathroom, wailing like a baby. I hauled butt to look out the back door just in time to see you slide off the roof of Gertie’s car. I figured it was a darn good time to get the hell out of there, so I left through the front door, jogged a block away, and called Uber. What happened?”