Dirty Money ARC

by Deforest Day

  Howie joined in. “We put thome in the RoachMobile. I mean, what would you do, you found a pile of money on fire. Thit.”

  “And then Mr. Tomczak showed up, with the Major, Mr. Baer.”

  “Told uth to put it back. Told the Major to make uth.”

  “The Major shot Tomczak. In the face. Man, I seen some shit, but never nothing like that.”

  “What’s this RoachMobile?”

  “ The exterminator truck, in Tomthakth’s garage.”

  “He gave us each fifty grand, few days back, said we’d split the rest in a week.”

  Justice stood over the two men, stared down at them. “So that’s what this is all about. Money.” He shook his head. “How does Davy figure in to it?”

  Howie said, “Davy?”

  Bumpsy said, “Who the hell’s Davy?”

  “The dead man, with the broken neck, and the skin mags.”

  Bumpsy said, “Man, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  Justice smacked him on the knee with the revolver, just hard enough to remind the man of their chain of command. “I think you cracked a rib or two, Bumpsy. It hurts. You want me to show you how bad it hurts? Maybe go join Chick in the bathroom?”

  “No!”

  Howie said, “Bumpsy don’t know nothing about that. He wasn’ there that night. Me and Chick was thootin’ thome eight ball, the guy thaid he recognithed uth from Iraq. We didn’t have no clue who he wath, tho we told Mr. Baer. He wath the one who broke the dude’s neck.” The tongue heals fast, and Howie saw that clear speech could save his life. “Honest, mister; no way we saw he was gonna do that!”

  “And the belt on his neck, the magazines?”

  It had started out as Chick’s idea. And, since he was now dead, it could stay that way. “Chick came up with that. See, Mr. Baer said to throw him off the bridge, at night. But Frikko. We’re right across the street from the police station. So Chick rigged him up, in his bathroom. Please, don’t kill me. I never done nothin’.”

  “Where can I find this Major Bear?”

  “I don’t know where’s he’s livin’.”

  “What’s he driving?”

  “Big Lincoln SUV. Looks like something Darth Vader would have. Chick has his phone number, on his cell phone there, on the dresser.”

  Justice stuck the revolver back in his waistband, covered it with his shirt tail, and dropped the cell phone in his shirt pocket. That’s when he noticed the music box. He picked it up, turned it over in his hand. A Screamin’ Eagles sticker was on the back.

  Baer may have killed him, but this bunch done stooped low enough to rob the dead. Ought to put all three down, right here, right now. Except Davy would say no, and tell you six ways to Sunday why. And Davy was still sittin’ on his shoulder. Don’t matter; they’ll meet up with their karma soon enough, without my help.

  —o—

  Pudge lifted the jug out of the bar fridge, showed the label to the school teacher. “Chablis,” she said.

  “Perfect!”

  Pudge poured the wine into a glass; generic, but stemmed. She’d been in places that had six different kinds of wine glasses, but this wasn’t one of them. “The course on bartending said some wines need to breathe longer than others.” She screwed the top back on the jug. “This one’s been taking the air, on and off, for about two weeks, so it should be real happy.”

  “Back in college my favorite wine was the one somebody else bought.”

  “I’m sorry about your brother. Seemed like a nice guy, what I saw of him. I guess you’re the answer to the mystery of where he went every afternoon.”

  “Uh huh. We hadn’t seen each other for a year, and we had a lot of catching up to do. His buddy, Bob Justice, spent more time with him than I did. Speaking of which, he’s here, isn’t he? He said he was going to talk to a couple of guys about my brother.”

  “Yes, he came in a while ago, leaned on one of our local jerks. About your brother. He thinks there’s a link between them and him. Between here and over there. About what, I don’t know.”

  “Neither do we. That’s what Bob is trying to find out.”

  “You two know each other?”

  Pen raised the glass to her lips, winked at Pudge. “We do now.”

  —o—

  Justice returned his room, and stripped off his shirt. He fished his stethoscope out of his hip pocket, gently pressed the resonator against his side, and drew a deep breath. Like the lawyer joke, the doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient. Yeah, well, I ain’t got time right now to run to the ER for pictures and pills. He palpated the tender area, listening for crepitus. Doctor talk for crunching, grinding sounds. The pain made him nauseous, but the diagnosis was promising. Nothing broken. Just torn intercostal muscles, maybe the costal cartilage. Plenty of rest, plenty of pain killers, in three to six weeks you’ll be right as rain. Here’s a prescription. Next.

  He swallowed two Darvon, was washing dried blood from the side of his face, when his cell rang.

  “Hey, sweetie, you about ready for some dinner? I’m downstairs. The bartender says you’re hot. I told her I already knew that. Better get down here, before we get into the dirty details.”

  —o—

  Justice came through the swinging doors, and stopped dead. Pen stood at the bar, chatting with Pudge, a glass of wine between them. She had pulled her hair back, twisted it into some sort of fanciful configuration in the back, held in place with a pair of ivory chopsticks he recognized from a layover in Taipei. Thin tendrils spiraled down past her ears, past ivory earrings, carved with the Chinese symbol for luck. Or so the street vendor had said. He remembered them, too.

  She wore the green silk brocade dress and matching pumps that went with the jewelry; Davy had spent a month’s pay that night. It was ankle length, mandarin collar, with the slit. Her slender foot was resting on the brass rail, and the opening revealed more thigh than the hotel bar had seen since the Roaring Twenties.

  She'd put on just enough makeup to make it look like she hadn’t. She was a Bangkok fantasy, and way, way above his station. He went to her, softly kissed her cheek, whispered, “Wow”.

  “This old thing?” She laughed with her eyes, and took a sip of wine. “I just threw on whatever the maid laid out for me.” She leaned close enough that her lips were wet on his ear. ”I thought we’d have a romantic candle lit dinner, then go back to my place. All the hooks and eyes this dress has, I’ll need some help taking it off.”

  Justice groaned. “You’re killing me. And doing a better job than those characters upstairs. Only, things are happening a mite too fast for us to take a time out right now.” He picked up her glass, and drained the last of her wine, tasted lipstick on the rim. In a weak voice he asked, “Pudge. Where’s that exterminators’s garage?”

  She waved her hand in a vague direction, then called for help. “Pops! Where’s Tomczak’s?”

  “Fourth Street. Used to be Schmidt’s machine shop. Go up Pine, hang a right on Fourth, three or four blocks. Brick building, on the left.”

  “Thanks.” Justice turned back to Pudge. “You have a Mr. Baer in your register. Any idea where I could find him?”

  She shook her head. “You could ask Cheech and Chong.”

  “Already did. Pen, we have to get a move on.”

  He headed for the door, go-bag in one hand, Pen in the other. “Hey,” Pudge called. “What’s going on?”

  “I wish I knew.” Outside, he tossed his keys to Pen and his bag on the floor of the passenger’s side. “You drive. I’m feeling a little beat.”

  “You look a little beat. As in beat up. What happened to your face?”

  “Hey, you should see the other guy.”

  “Stop trying to change the subject.” She hiked her dress up to her thighs, keyed the ignition, ran her eyes over the controls. Ford trucks and VW bugs belonged to different political parties, but both had wheels and pedals and levers.

  “Motorcycle accident. A big fat biker hit me with hi
s helmet. And kicked the devil out of my ribs. Go up Pine street, and-”

  “Yeah; and turn right on Fourth. I may be dumb, but I’m not deaf. When this is over, I think I’ll send you back to the safety of Afghanistan.”

  Justice laughed, winced. “Ouch. It’s true; it does hurt when you laugh.”

  Pen turned onto Fourth. “Enough with the witty banter. What’s going on?”

  He filled her in, just the basics, while they looked for the garage. When he had finished she stared ahead through the windshield, her knuckles white on the wheel. “So that’s what it’s all about. My brother’s life for a stinkin’ truck full of money. The root of all evil.”

  He considered that. “Naw. People was killin’ each other, way before they invented the stuff. I think money’s just a manifestation.” He felt good, finding a way to use that word, all on his own. Maybe, like she had said, he was smart.

  “You lost me, sweetie. You want to dumb it down for me?”

  But not half as smart as she was. Or as quick. He thought for a moment. “Suppose there’s an old lady, heading for the drugstore with her pension check, to buy her heart pills. And you knock her on the head, take the money, use it to buy a bottle of whisky. What you could call antisocial behavior. Now, suppose there’s a mean ol’ pimp, takin’ money off his girls. And you knock him on the head, give that money to the orphanage. Money’s the same, in both cases. It’s the same crime, too. But the people is different.”

  “Also divergent motivations. One is altruistically driven, the other is a sociopath indulging his ignoble rapacity.”

  “Aw, now you’re just showin’ off!” He spotted the garage. “Slow down,” he said, checking out the building, the roof, the fence, the blacktop lot. “Go around the block.” He rummaged in his go-bag.

  Pen glanced over. “Going to climb the fence?”

  “Uh huh. If it was a machine shop, it most likely had a small fortune in equipment inside. And locks to keep it there. Plus, the door’s right in the open, under a street light that’s liable to come on any minute now. And then there’s the fact that I ain’t got no idea how to pick a lock. In my line of work, we went through them in a more direct way.”

  Chapter 55

  Chick chewed at the tape across his mouth. He could hear voices in the bedroom. His ears still rang from the pistol shot.

  “Hey, mithster. Take the damn money, juth leave us go. I don’t care no more.”

  “He’s gone, asshole. And I care. We busted our hump for that money.”

  “Bumpsy? You still alive?”

  “No, he kilt me, asshole. What’s the matter with you?”

  “I bit my tongue.”

  “Well, get my Leatherman, cut me loose.”

  “I can’t see.”

  “You don’t need to see. You just need to listen.”

  “Hey! What the hell’s goin’ on?”

  “Chick! You ain’t dead?”

  “Do I sound dead? Come get me out of this friggin’ bathtub!”

  “Hold up. We got to get us free, first. Then we got to go find Baer, tell him to open up RoachMobile, or he’s the dead man.”

  “How we gonna do that, Bumpsy? We don’t know where he lives.”

  From the bathroom: “I know where the hell he lives.”

  Chapter 56

  Pen studied the signal stalk, found the wipers, and swept drizzle from the windshield.

  Justice leaned forward, removed the pistol from the small of his back. An obvious choice of useful tool for Step Two, but it was stolen, and if the police caught him breaking into a building, or behind the wheel of a stolen truck. . . He opened his carryall, stuck the weapon and Chick’s cell phone inside.

  She glanced at the gun. “So, what’s the plan, Spider Man?”

  “I’ll break in, disarm the mine, steal the truck, and use it as bait, smoke out this Major Baer. Then truss him up, lay him at the cops’ doorstep. With the money and them Three Stooges as witnesses, they’ll have to do what’s right.”

  “Well, that’s simple enough!”

  “Yes’m, simple is better. Because whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.”

  “I was being facetious, Murphy. Wouldn’t it be easier to just go tell the police about him?”

  “I got a feeling that the police ain’t too interested in charging this man for killing Davy. Not while a mess of money is part of the game.”

  “Yeah. We’re still on that topic. It’s all about the money in that truck, isn’t it? Everybody wants to get at it. The day that little kid brought out a hundred dollar bill in the lunchroom there was a spark. You could feel it; a buzz in the air. Everybody, and I don’t just mean the children, wanted a look.”

  “I guess it’s a powerful draw, all right.” He touched the side of his face, carefully. Looked at his fingers. The bleeding had stopped; his fingertips were wet with clear serum. The pain was still there, but hey, that was just Mother Nature, saying y’ain’t dead yet. “Life is simple in the service. There’s a problem, most likely you can go blast heck out of it. Only here, in your world, it can get complicated, what with all the laws and lawyers, tying you in knots.”

  “What do you mean my world? This is reality. Not that through the looking glass wonderland of yours, where all the rocks are painted white.”

  “You just lost me. White rocks. Is that another manifestation thing?”

  “No. It’s probably a metaphor, but of what I’m not sure. My first impression of Fort Campbell was all the white rocks. Lining the sidewalks, surrounding the flag poles, circling the old cannons. Here, in my world, the only people who paint their rocks white also have plywood cut outs of old ladies bending over in their flower beds and wind spinners made out of Budweiser cans.”

  Justice laughed. “Yes’m, you got us there. Don’t make a lick of sense. My Meemaw used to say that the devil finds work for idle hands, and I believe that the Army subscribes to that notion. Hates to see a bunch of soldiers doin’ nothin’. So you hand them a bucket of paint and some brushes.”

  “That’s funny. You ever hear of Hadrian’s Wall?”

  “Don’t believe so. Like the Great Wall, in China, or the one down in Washington, got my daddy’s name on it?”

  Another new bit of information about Justice; she realized how little she knew, and how much she wanted to learn. “More like the one in China. Hadrian was a Roman, running their occupation of England. He built a wall across the country, to keep the savages up in Scotland out of the civilized south. Except there’s a theory, more like yours. Some historians think he had his troops build it to keep them busy!”

  “Could be; I don’t figure soldiering has changed much, since we started flingin’ rocks at one another.”

  She turned the lights on. “Let’s forget about stealing the truck. We’ll just go find Major Baer, and kill him. Like he killed my brother.”

  “Don’t tempt me. Naw, Pen. That’s a bridge you don’t want to cross.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Taking a life. Them two fellers, showed up at our sweat? If it was me and Davy, ‘stead of me and you, we’d have kilt them without a thought. But no way was I about to take you to that world. You’re why we was out there, jumping out of airplanes in the middle of the night.”

  He stuck what he thought he would need in a small fanny pack, buckled it around his waist. He’d like to take along the whole dang go-bag and cover every contingency. But you jumped with the basics; otherwise you landed like an anvil in bowl of popcorn.

  “Pull over here, let me get in the back of the truck. Run slow past the fence. Then go on back to your apartment, wait till I call, or show up.” He pulled out his wallet, and handed it to her. “Hang on to this for safekeeping. There’s three twenties and a couple of singles in it, so don’t go wild on me.”

  She looked over at him, and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. Complicated, he’d said. Life was sure as hell complicated. “Bob? Be careful. I just lost my brother. I don’t want to lose you.”


  He leaned across and kissed her. “Piece of cake.” He opened the door, tossed his go-bag in the bed, gingerly climbed in after it.

  Chapter 57

  Bumpsy stuck his face under the shower head, tried to make the fire go away. That pepper spray was mean stuff. He’s have to get him some.

  Chick examined at his finger. It was bent and swole. And hurt worse than the time he busted his arm. He opened the medicine cabinet. Nothing but toothpaste and razor blades and a bottle of pink stuff for stomach aches. He took the lid off the toilet tank, fished out a couple of suds, handed one to Bumpsy.

  “Bastard squeezed the shit out of my nuts.” Bumpsy popped the top and drained the can in a long swallow, then used a wet towel to gingerly clean the blood from his cheek.

  “I’ll trade you my finger for your nuts.” Chick handed a second can to Howie. “Open that for me.”

  Howie did, said, “That ain’t shit in your nuts, Bumpsy, that’s cum.”

  “Don’t be an asshole, Howie.” Chick drank, went to the sink, ran cold water on his hand. “I need to strap my finger; hand me some of that tape. And get my phone; I gotta call Baer. I don’t know what that crazy dude has in mind, but I want to get to Baer, before he does.”

  Howie handed Chick a strip of gaffer tape; one without too much hair attached, and said, “That man took your phone, Chick.”

  “Why the hell would he do that?”

  “ ‘cause Howie told him you had Baer on speed dial.”

  “Why the hell did you do that?”

  “Well, Frikko! I thought you was dead.”

  “Bumpsy, go find my gun. I’m gonna kill him.”

  “He took that, too, Chick.”

  In the hallway Bumpsy said, “I’m riding with you boys. No way I’m putting my crotch across my bike tonight.”