Cap's Place: A Jack Nolan Novel (The Cap's Place Series Book 1)

by Robert Tarrant

  Marge reached to open the office door and said, “I better get back out there. No telling what those characters will do without adult supervision.” She turned, looked me directly in the eyes and said, “You take care of Sissy. Take care of yourself, too. We don’t want anything to happen to either of you. Don’t worry about Cap’s. Everything is under control here. If there’s anything anyone here can do to help you, just let us know. Captain Bob and Justin must have each asked me a dozen times today if I had heard from you. Every time the phone rings Moe just happens to wander close enough to overhear the conversation. Anyone here would do anything you need to help you and Sissy. You remember that.”

  Before I could respond, Marge was out the door. I sat back down in the chair and reflected on our conversation. A kind of community existed here at Cap’s. What troubled me was that I was neither aware of its existence nor a part of it. Somehow, I didn’t think that was the case with Mickey. Once Sissy and I get this threat on her life behind us I need to sit down and have a chat with myself about my focus in life.

  My thoughts were rudely interrupted by the ringing of the phone on my desk. I knew that if I let it ring Marge would pick it up behind the bar but I felt guilty knowing how busy she was so I picked it up. As it turned out is was for me. It was Tim Donovan.

  “Hello Detective. I was just about to call PJ, I mean Detective Johnson. Any luck on finding the guy trying to kill Sissy?”

  “We have made some progress, but the reason I’ve been trying to reach you is to assure that Sissy is safe. Detective Johnson asked me to check in with you and make certain that everything is okay. We don’t want any more debacles like we had at the Pinnacle.”

  “We’re fine. Any luck in finding out how that guy found Sissy at the Pinnacle?”

  “Well, yes and no. Nothing concrete but I have to tell you that the security guys that work for those casinos are not always the most trustworthy. I’m betting that when we track it down we’ll find that one of the security guys tipped Muskof’s people. No telling how many of them he has on his payroll.”

  Reflecting back on a number of cases I had prosecuted involving organized crime in the Detroit area and the reach they had into all types of businesses I said, “I guess that doesn’t surprise me, but Detective Johnson seemed to really trust Jeff Spencer.”

  “Oh, I don’t think Spencer is in anyway dirty. It’s that they don’t pay those security officers enough to get people who can’t be bought. In fact, Spencer rooted out a number of bad apples when he first took over there. By the way, is Sissy there with you?”

  “No.”

  There was a long pause and than Donovan asked, “If she’s not with you, where is she, and who’s watching over her?”

  “She’s safe. I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone where she is,” that was a lie but a small one, “she’s still shook up from last night and doesn’t want anyone knowing where she is now.”

  There was another long pause, “I understand her concern but surely you understand that if something happens we won’t be able to help her if we don’t know where she is.”

  “I understand completely, but I promised Sissy. If she finds out I broke that promise she’ll no longer trust me and she needs to trust someone.” I didn’t know why I didn’t want to tell him where Sissy was, but I didn’t. It seemed like the easiest course was to blame it on her paranoia. Maybe I didn’t want to tell him because I didn’t know who might be listening to our conversation, or maybe it was because once I told him I no longer controlled the information. One cop tells another who tells another and eventually the wrong ears hear it. That’s probably what happened at the Pinnacle with the security officers. Maybe, if I was absolutely honest with myself, I didn’t want to tell him because I didn’t want any help. I wanted to take care of Sissy on my own. If it was PJ asking maybe I would feel differently. I just don’t want another guy protecting Sissy. I want to be the guy that protects her. Now that’s adult Jack!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  I spent the next forty-five minutes opening the mail and, since I had no idea when I’d be back again, I paid a couple of bills that were in jeopardy of falling past due. When I finished everything I could think of to tide the office end of Cap’s over for a few days, I sat back in my chair and tried to go over the present situation in my mind. I ran over the past couple of days the way I would examine a case brought to me by investigators when I was a prosecutor. Trying to decide what was fact and what was supposition. Yet, this was more than a cluster of elements in some unemotional narrative police report. This was a dynamic and volatile situation with Sissy’s life in the balance. The one fact I couldn’t deny was that Sissy was counting on me.

  My solitude was interrupted by a solid rap on the office door. I stood, opened the door and was surprised to find Justin standing there. “Hi Justin. What can I do for you?”

  Justin was dressed in his usual attire of well worn deck shoes, stained cargo shorts, and a tee shirt. On this day his shirt proclaimed support of the Miami Dolphins. Justin is 6 feet 2 inches, about 180 pounds of lean muscle, and usually wears his hair buzzed tight to his scalp with a three-day growth of beard. My guess is he is about thirty years old but I’m not a great judge of age. Especially not of guys. Never really saw any need.

  “You got a minute Jack? Can I come in and chat?”

  I stepped back to my desk chair and indicated he could take a seat on the small couch. “Sure. What can I do for you?”

  Justin sat on the front edge of the couch and leaned forward. His voice was low but strong, like a man comfortable discussing difficult matters. Not what I might expect from a hard drinking, fishing boat, deck hand.

  “I wanted to ask you directly how Sissy is doing. Marge says that everything is under control but I wanted to hear it from you. Anything I can do to help you?”

  In the cramped confines of the office we were only a few feet apart but I didn’t smell beer on his breath. I don’t know why I was surprised that Justin hadn’t been drinking with the rest of the hurricane party revelers. After all, I had seldom seen him drink more than one or two beers at a time and that was rare indeed. Most of the time it was iced tea or coffee. Still, Captain Bob had confided in me once that Justin struggled with a drinking problem and that was why sometimes we wouldn’t see him for weeks at a time. He’d be off somewhere on a bender. Bob would find him, dry him out, and get him back to work on the boat.

  I met his intent gaze and replied, “I really believe everything that can be done is being done. I have Sissy hidden away and the authorities are doing everything they can to find the guy who attacked her. I don’t know what else could be done, but thanks for your offer.”

  Justin leaned a couple of inches forward and his eyes bore into mine, “In a situation like this there is always more that can be done. Are the cops squeezing this guy who put out the hit on Sissy? Some lowlife Russian mobster isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, he’s a Russian hood by the name of Yuri Muskof, but he’s already in prison so I don’t know how the cops can put much pressure on him.”

  “Everyone has pressure points. You just have to find them and have the balls to apply pressure. Tell me, anyone know where you have Sissy hidden besides you?”

  Justin’s eyes never wavered and the tone of his voice seemed to lower and deepen with each statement. I set back in my chair, swallowed hard, and replied, “No. No one else. Everybody keeps pressing me, but I think it’s best at this point if no one knows.”

  “You’re absolutely correct. Every person who knows is a potential leak. Yet, you still need to take precautions. First, you can’t let yourself be followed or let your calls be tracked to her location. Second, you need to make certain that these people do not get their hands on you and make you tell them where she is.”

  I was not encouraged by what I was hearing. I had thought about being followed but I hadn’t thought of somebody forcing me to tell them where Sissy was. He made sense. If I had missed that significant consideration
what else was I missing. I couldn’t help but think that I really am in over my head. Damn. Even an alcoholic deck hand knows more about these things than I do.

  “You make sense Justin, which means I probably shouldn’t be hanging around places where people expect to find me.”

  “Exactly. You need to stay away from here. From anywhere you usually go. Considering what I heard from Marge I would say that these guys are capable of anything.”

  I asked, “Why do you say guys? Only one guy attacked Sissy at the Pinnacle. Why would you say guys?”

  Justin looked at me as he might regard a small child who didn’t understand the relationship between the sun and the earth, “These type of people. Mobsters. Russian mobsters. These type of people do not work alone. They work in packs.”

  “You sound like a man with experience in this sort of thing.”

  Justin replied casually, “You can’t travel around the ports of the world as much a I have without bumping into an undesirable character or two.”

  There was a quiet confidence in the tone of his voice. I couldn’t help but take what he said seriously, but I didn’t really know him so I didn’t know if I really trusted him. After all, for all I knew he could get drunk tomorrow and tell everything he knows to one of Muskof’s goons. Yet, he didn’t know where Sissy was and he was not asking. At least not yet. I decided to see what Justin really had on his mind. “How, exactly, did you think you might help Justin?”

  Justin set back slightly as if affronted just a bit, but not enough to make a point of it. “There are a number of ways I might be able to help you Jack.” His tone was firm and his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. I felt that I was inches from a man with raging emotions that were totally under control. Like looking at the core of a volcano through a thick window. Feeling no heat nor hearing any sound, but knowing all of that destructive force is just on the other side of the window. “I have a number of friends. I could locate a truly safe place for Sissy to stay. I could make inquiries regarding the guy who attacked her at the Pinnacle. I could probably even exercise some pressure on this Yuri Muskof’s people. You tell me what you need and I will tell you if I can provide it.”

  Now I understood. This guy had pickled his brain and was living in some type of fantasy world where he thought he was Jack Bauer. I can play along with the best. “Great Justin. Give me a number where I can reach you. I’ll certainly call if there’s anything I need.”

  Justin’s eyes narrowed even more and he straightened up, sitting back as if withdrawing from an unpleasant odor. Not suddenly or dramatically, but certainly noticeably. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Now there was an iceberg between us. I had blown his offer of assistance off and he clearly knew it.

  Justin reached over to my desk and picked up a small note pad and pen. As he wrote a telephone number on the notepad he said with a tone frozen by the iceberg, “You call this number anytime. Remember Jack, you’re not the only one who cares for Sissy and you may be in over your head in this situation.” Before I could respond he had tossed the pad with the number on my desk, risen, and exited the office closing the door firmly behind him.

  I leaned back in the desk chair and let out a deep breath. Only then realizing that I had been holding my breath. What the hell had just happened. This guy is nothing but a fishing boat deck hand who drinks too much. Yet his “offer to help” had left me shaken. I didn’t know if it was his demeanor or the truth of his words. Before I could work things out in my head and get my feet back under me the world took another violent spin!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The phone on the desk rang again. To my surprise it was Sissy. Her voice was weak and she was sobbing between words, “Jack. They found Allison’s car. There’s a body in the trunk. Sh . . . she . . . . she must be dead.” It took several minutes, but I got the story out of Sissy. She’d been watching television to occupy her time while I was gone. The local news came on with a special report about a car being towed from a canal on Alligator Alley. While the Broward County Sheriff’s Office wasn’t releasing any details, an aerial shot taken by the news crew from a helicopter had shown the license plate, and the enterprising young reporter had checked with the motor vehicle registration database that the station periodically purchased from the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles. To make matters worse, the news footage had shown what appeared to be a body being removed from the trunk. The reporter led the story off by stating, “While authorities are not releasing any details, it appears that the case of the beautiful young woman last seen two days ago at a local Hollywood bar has taken a tragic turn.” She went on to explain that the car with the body in the trunk that had been towed from the canal was registered to Allison.

  My head was spinning as I tried to assimilate everything Sissy was spilling out when it dawned on me that she shouldn’t be on the phone at all and especially not on a call to Cap’s. “Sissy, are you on your cell?”

  There was a pause as Sissy brought her sobs under control, ‘No, I’m at the main house with Maria using the house phone. I just had to talk to you. Jack, they killed Allison trying to get to me.”

  “Sissy, there’s nothing you could’ve done. We don’t even know that Allison is dead.” The second statement sounded so lame that not even I believed it.

  “Jack, you know as well as I do that it must be Allison. She’s missing and now a body is discovered in the trunk of her car. Get real!”

  Of course I knew that she was right, but I needed to get her off of the phone. “We’ll talk about it when I get there. Now let’s get off the phone and I’ll leave right now. You go back to the guest house and wait for me. I’ll be right there.” Besides getting back to Sissy, I knew that it would only be a matter of time before the news crews were here at Cap’s to shoot B-roll and interview someone, anyone, about Allison and the unfolding events. Vultures. As the owner of Cap’s I would be a prime target and I didn’t want to be here when they arrived.

  “Jack, please hurry.”

  “I will. Now hang up. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Bye Jack. See you soon.”

  I heard the line go dead and I hung up the phone.

  I was stunned by the fact that Allison had been killed, probably in a case of mistaken identity. I had just talked to Donovan and he hadn’t mentioned Allison’s death to me. My shock quickly morphed into anger. I found PJ’s card in my wallet and literally punched the number into the phone.

  On the second ring, “Hello, this is Detective Johnson.”

  “I thought you people were trying to help? How does it help when you don’t even tell us that Allison has been killed?”

  “Jack? Is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Who the hell did you think it was? After all, I’m the only one watching over Sissy. I just got off the phone with your partner and he never even bothered to mention Allison to me. Sissy saw it on the news. She’s a basket case. Whose side are you guys on?”

  There was a long pause before, in a measured tone, PJ replied, “Jack, we just got the information about Allison a few minutes ago ourselves. The media got way out in front on this. No way it should have been released yet. Tim is on his way to meet with the Broward County detectives right now. When he talked to you he didn’t even know himself yet. The call came to me and by the time I got to him he had already talked to you. Please understand that we’re moving as fast as we can to determine if Allison’s death is related to the threat against Sissy. We are on your side. On Sissy’s side.”

  Now the long pause was on my end. I was processing what PJ had said while attempting to get my temper under control. Before I responded PJ went on, “Jack, this is just another reason why you need to let us help you protect Sissy.”

  Just before I slammed the phone down, “The hell I do. Things didn’t go so damn well at Pinnacle last night and now another screwup on your side of the table has put Sissy in another emotional tailspin. I think we’ll just go it alone for now.” So much for getting my temper under co
ntrol.

  Now I needed to explain to Marge what was going on and what to expect and I needed to do it quickly and get out of here.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I explained to Marge what Sissy told me on the phone. Marge said that they had the televisions in the bar on the Weather Channel to enhance the hype of the “Hurricane Party” and hadn’t seen the local news report. We agreed that the news crews could shoot their exterior footage, we couldn’t really think of a way to stop them, and they could interview patrons outside but we wouldn’t let them interview people inside the bar. Marge would tell them that the owner was not there and she would decline to be interviewed. In the world of business there are those who think that any publicity is good publicity, but I was just not confident that this type of publicity would be good for business. Doubt it would help business to have people thinking that you might get abducted and killed if you came to Cap’s.

  I told Marge that I would find a way to check in with her later, but that there was really no way she could reach me. As always, Marge was a rock. She told me to take care of Sissy and she would take care of Cap’s. I never doubted it!

  The “Hurricane Party” was really starting to roll as I made my way to the back door. The thought crossed my mind that there would be a lot more black ink in the books during the time of my absence, and Marge’s management, than most times. I looked around but didn’t see Justin anywhere. All of the windows were shuttered with their plywood covers and the earlier frenzy of activity seemed to be totally focused on partying. Maybe Justin decided that he was better off to avoid the free flowing booze. I couldn’t get our little chat out of my mind. Something very different about him. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.