are not as bright as Kelly. “I told you there are things you have to do in Mexico.”
The champagne is dwindling. So are my inhibitions. We’re
leaning against the dining room table and I’m staring at
Kelly’s breasts, the gentle curve of her sculptured thigh. My left hand feels the parchment, the rough texture. I have an
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idea brewing and the mental image just produced a bicycle
pump in my pants.
“Explain,” she says.
I brush the bicycle pump against Kelly’s leg. Show her how
I feel. “From Vera Cruz, or wherever you end up, you fly to
Mexico City and put the bonds up as collateral for a loan. Use the subsidiary of an American bank. It’s easier. You’ll only get about sixty-five, seventy percent of the current value, but that loan money you can hide, make clean as a whistle.”
“How?”
“I’ll do some checking for you. Probably through a
numbered bank account in Caymans, or Panama. They’ve got
more secrecy now than the Swiss.”
I touch her shoulders, she yields, and I ease her down on
top of the bonds. Can’t take it anymore. I yank at her panty hose. The bicycle pump will not wait.
“But I need two million,” Kelly says, “not less than one-
point-five.”
Quick with numbers, this redhead. She did the seventy
percent of two-point-three million in her head.
“You have all that jewelry, the cash you gave me but never
invested.”
I’m losing interest in small talk. I mean, wow, what a meal
has been placed on my table. Everything I ever wanted—a
fortune in bonds and a willing, half-naked redheaded
woman—spread out before me.
The symbolism is staggering, distracting even. On one level
I feel so shallow. Yet my body and mind’s reaction is
undeniable. Instinctive. Sex and abundant sustenance is what nature taught men to seek and acquire.
Kelly groans as I push inside her.
And look, there’s that Renoir she loves, the sunny summer
street scene, Pont Neuf, hanging on the wall behind her. All those rich happy people, strolling in the sunshine. The essence of light on a summer day.
114
THIRTY-SEVEN
I wake up in bed, my body aching. Each ring of a
telephone stings my champagne ravaged head like a swarm of
angry hornets. But I’m not answering. Ain’t my job.
The redhead picks up. “This is Kelly Burns.”
I open my eyes. An orange sky blossoms outside Kelly’s
bedroom window. She’s sitting on the bed, tying a black silk dressing gown at her waist. The place smells like a Nevada
whorehouse. Sex, sweat, and perfume.
“Who?” she says.
Her fingers tickle the air between us, a goofy little wave to welcome me to the land of the living, or maybe get my
attention. I guess the person on the phone is telling her
something I’d find interesting.
“They didn’t let him inside, did they?” She listens and
nods. “That’s good. Can you hold on one second? What? No,
wait, I’ll be right back.”
She cups the receiver with her free palm. “Your sales
manager Tom Ragsdale tried to visit Gerry at the hospice this evening.”
Rags? On the loose? I thought Vic sent him to the
Hamptons. “Ragsdale is crazy suspicious of the bond
transfer,” I say. “He probably wants to ask Gerry if he
actually signed a form to give you two million in bonds. They didn’t let Ragsdale in to see him, did they?”
Kelly’s not listening to me anymore.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “could you repeat that? You were
talking about that man, Ragsdale, how he—”
She’s hearing more disturbing news. Her chin slides from
grim to slack. Her shoulders droop with a hundred pounds of
new luggage.
“Oh,” she says. Her bottom lip quivers like strawberry
Jell-O. “You’re sure? I don’t understand why you would tell
me about a visitor before—”
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She sniffs. “All right. Okay. Shall I come by there now?
Tomorrow? Fine.”
She slips the telephone receiver back in its ergonomic
cradle. Staring at her hand, she sighs.
“It’s over,” she says. “Gerry died twenty minutes ago.”
It takes hours, more sex and another nap, but eventually I
convince Kelly we need food and drink. A Clooney’s martini
lunch may be just the thing for our champagne hangovers.
We’re on Broad Street, maybe two, three miles from the
condo, when I realize the same car followed us through
successive left turns. It’s not an impossible coincidence, but I don’t like taking chances. The memory of Psycho Sam’s
manual spinal tap is forever imprinted on my brain stem.
I make a quick right, another right, then another and
another right back onto Broad. I pull over, wait to see if the same car—an old Chevy—shows up following us.
I count one, two, three...the same car swings around the
corner. I was right. Kelly and I are being followed by an
antique Chevy Impala. A ’61 or ’62, I think. God, I always
wanted one of those.
When the old Impala passes, I gun Kelly’s Mercedes away
from the curb, hang a U-turn. Four blocks down the next side street is the Branchtown police department.
I pull in, ignore the empty parking spaces, and screech to a sliding stop near the big cement planter protecting the
station’s
glass
facade.
Branchtown
P.D.
thinks
their
headquarters ranks high on the target list for terrorists.
My quick move into the cop station makes the old Chevy
disappear, but not before I get a good look at the driver. It’s Branchtown Blackie’s friend, the guy in gold chains and a
goatee who held Luis’s arm that night in the restaurant’s
parking lot. This time he’s all by himself. Wonder if he knows what happened to his pal Blackie. More important, why the
hell is he following me?
The cops in the station house think I’m drunk. They
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consider charging me with illegal parking and reckless driving, impounding Kelly’s Mercedes. I offer to take a sobriety test, and while we’re waiting for a decision on that, I use Kelly’s cellphone to call Luis’s Mexican Grill.
“Hola,” an unfamiliar voice says.
“Is Luis there? This is Austin Carr.”
“No Luis today. The restaurant is not open.”
“Could I leave a message? He needs to call Austin Carr as
soon as possible.”
“No habla English.”
“Sure you do. Go get a pencil. Write down my name and
phone number.”
“Okay.”
There’s some rummaging in the background. A drawer
opens and shuts. I hear a piece of paper being torn.
“Shoot,” he says.
“A-U-S-T-I-N. 732-555-4345. Got it?”
“Si. Nombre es Austeen. Numero, seite, tres—”
I gave him my work number. The only number I’ve got.
“Have Luis call me, right?”
“Si. Luis call when he comes back from Mexico.”
“Mexico? When’s he going to Mexico?”
“He
leave yesterday.”
I hear laughing and the line goes dead. Was that a joke?
Luis with some fake accent? A friend of his? I call back but no one picks up this time. I let it ring twenty-two times, but the dick won’t answer.
Walking back to the police station bench, I wonder again
why Blackie’s bearded friend is following me. How did he
find me to follow me?
I hope Luis isn’t really in Mexico. I need his help.
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THIRTY-EIGHT
Early the next morning, splintering wood tugs my mind
from a heavy sleep. I open my eyes in Kelly’s bed, heart
thumping, the calm gray light a sharp contrast to the
demolition noises coming from the condo’s entrance.
I throw off Kelly’s flowered comforter. What the hell is
chasing me now? The bearded guy who followed us last night
in the classic Impala? Rags’ one-man hit squad? The
Werewolf of London?
The redhead stirs and groans, stretches her arms. Where
the hell are my shorts? If this is Psycho Sam, I’m burnt toast. I bunny hop toward the bedroom doorway still pulling on my
plaid cotton boxers, then freeze at the big noise rushing me in the dark. A buffalo stampede?
Whack. I’m flattened by an army of dark-clad soldiers in
helmets, bullet-proof vests, and plastic windbreakers. The first men through the doorway have their guns drawn. Maybe I’m
double-parked.
Lights snap on. As the horde stomps over, around, and
directly through me, I see the backs of their windbreakers
have the words TREASURY AGENT or FBI or U.S.
MARSHALL stenciled in yellow.
What the hell is happening?
One of the buffaloes sits on my chest, pokes a gun in my
eye. “Don’t move, asshole.”
The hotel bedroom smells of cigarettes and freshly starched
sheets. The furniture’s new but flimsy, all materials coarse to the touch. The landscapes on the off-white walls were painted with sponges on an assembly line.
Unfamiliar voices drift in from the next room. I sit up on
the edge of the bed when a man walks in, shows me his badge
and federal identification.
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Jack Getze
“Special Agent Tomlin, U.S. Treasury,” he says.
I keep my gaze focused on Tomlin’s slow gray eyes. He’s a
short, squat kind of fifty-something cop. Looks more like a
part-time chef. Both eyelids droop toward the lobes of his
softball-sized ears. I have to hear a few sentences come out of his mouth before concluding he isn’t a half-wit.
“So your name’s Carr, huh?” he says.
“Austin Carr. I’m Gerry and Kelly’s stockbroker.”
After an hour of sitting side-by-side with Kelly on her sofa while they tore up her condo, bagged all kinds of stuff
including the fake Renoir, the redhead and I were separated. I haven’t seen her since. All I know for sure, they threw me in a car, brought me to this hotel room.
Tomlin seems to be in charge of several different squads of
law enforcement personnel. Some kind of federal task force?
Tomlin saying, “Gerry’s stockbroker, huh? That’s the
extent of your relationship? That’s all you are?”
I shrug. “I’m a father with two kids. A three handicap
golfer.”
Tomlin grunts. “Bully for you. How long have you been
Burns’ broker?”
“Four or five years.”
“How long have you known he’s a crook?”
“I don’t.”
“Aiding and abetting criminals makes you an accessory, a
felon like him.”
“I’m not a felon, and as far as I know, Gerry’s not either.
As a matter of fact, Gerry’s not much of anything anymore.”
Tomlin’s forehead sprouts horizontal lines. “What do you
mean?”
“Gerry died last night.”
Special Agent Tomlin stands up and moves purposefully to
the bedroom doorway. He motions for someone down the
hall to come to him. While he’s waiting, he turns again to me.
“Who told you Burns is dead?”
“Kelly. I was with her when the hospice called.”
“His wife?”
“The redhead. But they’re not married. She’s just his
girlfriend.”
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Tomlin stares at me until he’s joined in the doorway by a
very tanned young man with a blond mane, square shoulders,
two bright red pimples on his protruding chin. Looks like the college surfing champion of southern California.
“Remember the name of that hospice?” Tomlin says.
“No. But I’ve been there,” I say. “It’s one of those old
English Tudor apartment houses on West Ridge Road in
Branchtown, the ones they fix up as office buildings, dentists offices. I remember the hospice’s address was in the two-hundred block.”
Kelly’s sitting, waiting for me in the motel lobby. I can tell from her streaked makeup she’s been crying. Can’t say I
blame her. Held and questioned for six hours. If she got the same treatment as me, nothing to eat or drink except
Branchtown’s sulfuric tap water.
“I called a cab,” she says. “I have to go back to the
condo.” She sniffs. “You don’t have to come if you don’t
want to.”
I drop beside her, slip my arm around her shoulders.
Feeling more for Kelly than I expected. I hope it’s just
compassion and sympathy. Have to stay focused on getting
my kids back. “I’m sticking with you, Toots.”
Kelly leans against my shoulder. “They’re giving me one
hour at the condo to pack a suitcase. Just clothes and
toiletries. None of my jewelry or pretty clothes. The
artwork.”
“Jesus. Did they tell you what’s going on? I mean what the
hell did Gerry do?”
“They said he’s a wild dog or something. A smuggler of
illegal immigrants.”
“A coyote?”
“That’s it. They also said none of his businesses have paid
any withholding taxes for two years, that he embezzled
money from every one of them.”
Uh, oh. That means IRS liens on everything.
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Jack Getze
In case there are mikes around I don’t see, I whisper in
Kelly’s ear. “Where are your new bonds? Did they confiscate
them?”
She forces a smile. “I don’t think so. Not unless they
impounded your camper.”
121
THIRTY-NINE
The shade under this two-hundred-year-old oak tree offers
cool relief from late September’s emergent sun. Eight or nine stories high, the monstrous pin oak’s blazing yellowing
canopy dominates Holy Trinity’s graveyard, stretching
seventy-five feet from the stone chapel to the white picket
fence that runs north and south along the church’s pre-Civil War property line.
I’ve heard of the tree’s legend, including the story of a
wrongly accused horse thief, hanged from one of the oak’s
sturdy branches, whose ghostly rides are still reported in the local press.
And personally, now that I’ve actually wandered in close,
let the tree’s long, craggy arms embrace me, I have to say this sucker gives me the creeps. All these graves feeding the tree’s roots for two hundred years? No wonder th
e monster’s fat
and happy.
Kelly’s been chatting up the Episcopal priest, Father Paul,
but she joins me and two dozen other guests now under
Branchtown’s infamous oak, Kelly’s two-inch black heels
clicking on the cemetery’s brick walkway.
The redhead looks nifty as the widow. She’s wearing a silk-
trimmed black skirt with matching coat, and a string of
natural pearls inside a scooped-neck, charcoal silk blouse.
Took Kelly three hours to bathe and dress in our hotel this
morning. Took one hour alone to pin the saucer-shaped black
felt hat on her head.
“Father Paul said the ceremony will start in five minutes,”
she says.
I kiss her cheek. Oh, boy. Five more minutes, we can get
started, get finished, get the hell out of here. I hate graveyards anyway, but this one’s something special because of the oak. I can damn near feel the bastard waiting for Gerry’s body, the 122
Jack Getze
blood-sucker’s roots tingling with anticipation for the supply of fresh meat.
Hell, I can feel this flesh eater waiting for all of us.
Father Paul coughs to silence the crowd, then begins his
readings. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid.”
I’d be afraid of this oak tree, if I were you, Father, priests having to walk around this graveyard every day, your feet and legs exposed to those gnarly underground siphons. Blood
suckers waiting for their chance.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff thy comfort me.”
The valley of the shadow of death? Isn’t that where I was
standing before, under the sinister branches of that monster oak?
Kelly squeezes my hand. She touches a forefinger to her
lips, telling me to hush. Wow. Was I mumbling out loud?
Sweet Jesus. All this craziness is rubbing off on my normally rational thought processes.
Well, almost rational. Forging Gerry’s name on that
transfer form, going for Kelly’s fifty-eight thousand dollar bribe probably wasn’t my brightest moment. Depends if I get
away with it, I guess.
Father Paul is hurrying through his service. “Surely
goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Since Gerry’s about to become the latest entree on this
oak’s churchyard buffet, I’m not sure about the house of the Lord getting any, Father. A much bigger piece of the pie, so to speak, will be dwelling in the bark, leaves, and branches of this non-vegetarian vegetable.
Big Numbers (Austin Carr Mystery Book 1) Page 12