“Oookay,” Lou said, looking down. “Now we’ve hijacked broken beer.”
But Monk had climbed past the lower pallet. Lou saw his rear end in the flickering shadows. “Where is it?” carne a strangled voice. “Where—is—it?” His voice was muffled. “Get up here and help me.”
“With what?”
“Get up here.”
Sighing at the antics of the insane, Lou climbed carefully onto the beer and aided Monk at tugging the plastic wrapped around the next pallet.
“Here,” said Lou. He handed over a pocket knife. Monk took the blade and began slicing through thick plastic. As he exposed each case Monk pulled them down. Pretty soon the truck reeked with warm beer.
Finally, “Ah!”
“Ah?”
Monk had nearly tunneled into a mass of beer bottles. He squirmed out, dragging a wooden box behind him.
“Help me with this.” Together they hauled it to the edge of the truck. Cassidy impatiently shone the light on them. “I’m freezing,” she said. Her arms were wrapped around her own shoulders and she bounced on her feet.
Monk picked up Lou’s shotgun and slammed the butt against the box. Wood splintered and flew, white edged like broken bones, and everyone gasped at the dull green exposed in the flashlight beam.
The box was full of cash.
“What I expected.” Monk said and they all dropped to their knees, eager hands reaching out to touch the money. It was tightly packed and beautiful.
“How...how much?” Cassidy gasped.
“One and a half, maybe two million.”
“Monk, how?”
“The book, Lou. That ledger you got when you decided to take the safe at the jewelry store. It was where Braddock hid it. One of the places anyway. See, he couldn’t keep it at his estate; if he was ever arrested it would ruin him. So, he hid it at a safe distance.”
“The store!”
“Exactly!”
“What was in the book?” Cassidy’s eyes never left the money. She picked up a couple of bundles and leaned back on her thighs, caressing them as if they were babies. She began to whisper to them, soft words of desire.
“It’s the record of a money laundering scheme. Braddock trucks in dirty money from various places and sends them to a Casino in Las Vegas. Clean money comes back from Vegas in these trucks. The beer is just a camouflage.”
Lou and Monk dragged the heavy box to the Packard, went back and moved the truck off the road. They pulled the drivers in and closed the doors. They went back to the Packard where Cassidy was still running her fingers tenderly through the money.
“Maybe,” she said. “We should move somewhere else.”
“I hear California’s nice.”
“California,” she purred.
This was gonna work out just fine.
THE END
SERIOUSLY?
Lou Fleener II
INTRO
“Oh, my God.”
Irina Podalack, a short middle-aged woman in the small kitchen of her tiny house on Canal Street on Chicago’s near South Side, gapes through the crack in the curtains. Her breath seems to catch in her throat.
“A ghost,” she whispers, her voice dry and ragged. “I see a ghost.”
A yellow moving van is parked at the curb of the next house. Four burley men in dark blue coveralls go in and out carrying heavy furniture; chairs and an oak table and a red sofa that makes all four seem to sag as they haul it up the steps.
A tall man stands watching, hands on hips, expression grim as if he’s just waiting for an opportunity to degrade the workers. He’s wearing a brown suit with a snap-brim fedora and holds a cigarette between his thumb and index finger.
Irina watches him snap the butt to the ground and yell something and stride over to one of the large men. He takes a floor lamp from the worker and slaps him across the face, points to the house and yells again. His voice is muffled from the closed windows, sounding like distant thunder, a threatening storm.
Irina remembers that voice.
“It can’t be him,” she whispers. She’s clutching at the tiny Star of David on a gold chain, her fingers absently caressing its worn edges. It’s been with her since her liberation from the camp at Auschwitz. “God, please... don’t let it be him.”
Her other hand is at the lace curtain at the window above the sink where she’s been washing cauliflower from her garden. The water is running and spills over the edge of the sink, soaking her apron. She crocheted it herself, a flower pattern from Family Home magazine, spending nights alone in the orange glow of the floor lamp with the tasseled shade and from the flickering white light from her black and white television.
It can’t be him, she thinks; but she knows that it is.
Erich Klaussner.
The man who killed her family.
The Nazi.
CHAPTER ONE
Venice Beach, California - January, 1960
“I hate California.”
“Cause it’s cold and its damp?”
“Yes, Monk; that’s why.” Out from under the awning over the sidewalk café where they’re drinking Budweiser at six pm, the temperature is a toasty one-oh-five and the humidity is about the same as the Amazon.
“Seriously?” says Monk, a man permanently sarcasm deaf.
Lou skips the reference to the show tune from the movie Pal Joey they saw last year at the Palladium and studies the girls baking on the beach. All of them looked like Kim Novak in that movie, impossibly beautiful and knowing it every moment of every day.
Lou Fleener doesn’t usually look good. Plaid shorts, a Hawaiian floral shirt with green palms and huge red hibiscus flowers, black socks with brown sandals, and a gray fedora don’t help.
In truth, he doesn’t really look too good in any clothes, being only five-foot nine and still carrying two-hundred and forty, despite all of Cassidy’s attempts to “Cut the flab.”
Problem is, for her, that not much of Lou is flab. All her salads, diet foods, macrobiotic or other fads have as little effect on Lou’s frame than a sixteen-ounce T-Bone at Delmonico’s, which is where he and Monk are sitting outdoors, sipping beers and watching the women on the beach do interesting things to sunlight and shadow.
“No Cassidy tonight?” Monk asks the obvious.
“Nah, she’s at one of her classes. Yoga or exercise or whatever.”
“You don’t sound pleased.”
“Eh,” says Lou. “I’m okay with it.” What he doesn’t say is that Cassidy is beautiful without the exercise and yoga hasn’t noticeably mellowed her. She’s still brassy and brazen, as likely to pat your hand as to bite it off. It’s one of the many things he loves about her.
But yoga and exercise classes? Not so much.
Monk says, “Business good?” Knowing in advance that, no; it isn’t.
“No,” says Lou “It isn’t.” He sips some beer, watches some girls who are watching Monk with sidelong glances. They notice Monk because he’s as good-looking as Cary Grant on a good day, and ignore Lou because he... isn’t.
“Yours?”
“As much as you can call it a business,” says Monk. “It’s going great.”
Which, as it turns out, is true.
Monk’s “business” is teaching people the odds of winning at poker. He does this by getting into games, usually at night in garages and basements and other places not frequented by the Venice Beach police, where money in large denominations change hands. Usually from theirs to his.
When this happens, and it happens a lot, people get mad.
His latest game is with a group of men who can be called—charitably—thugs. It’s a Friday night and he’s playing in a converted electrical supply company warehouse. They’ve set up a half dozen poker tables amid the racks of conduits and metal shelves full of metal boxes and light fixtures and whatnot. They have a bar over there by the forklift and girls wandering around have on more clothes than at the beach, but less clothes than at the office.
Mon
k’s at one table, Lou’s at another, and maybe thirty guys are scattered among the rest. There’s no air conditioning and it’s hot in the warehouse. Coats and ties have been removed, shirtsleeves rolled up, armpits stained with perspiration and anger. Guns have been left at the bar to be picked up later.
Monk’s winning bigger than usual tonight, and one of the other players is losing more than usual. The loser is Salvatore Leon, a middle level mobster chain-smoking fat cigars and draining whiskey on ice like they’re going to run out. Handsome once, maybe, in a character actor way, he’s now got jowls that hang like a basset hound and eyelids that sag until he squints out from under them. He’s holding two pair, aces and queens, and the pot has around six grand in it. The other players have dropped out leaving just Salvatore and Monk.
Monk’s wearing his usual brown suit with his jacket draped over the back of his chair. His shirt is white, his suspenders are red, white and blue, as if he’s playing for the Democratic party.
Salvatore looks at his hand, cupping his cards near his vest. They’re playing five card stud and Monk’s already passed the bet. Salvatore pushes some chips into the center.
“Two Gees,” he says around the stogie.
Monk doesn’t even glance at his cards, which are face down on the green felt of the table. Salvatore is annoyed, as usual, by this. Monk’s watching him closely, as if he can read minds and Salvatore’s annoyed by this as well. He’s had a hard day working and his mistress is making noises like she wants to be the new wife and Salvatore’s getting steamed at Monk for delaying the game.
“You in or what?” he snarls.
“In,” says Monk. He shoves some chips around his cards. “See your two and raise you three.”
That makes the pot thirteen with Salvatore needing to put in another three large. This is by far the largest pot of the night and the rest of the tables have stopped playing. A crowd is forming around them, like a wall of wrinkled suits.
Salvatore’s sweating from a lot more than the heat. He looks at his hand again and it’s still pat: two aces, two queens.
Monk’s leaning back in his chair, as relaxed as if he’s at the beach drinking some rum drink with an umbrella. He hasn’t moved his eyes from Salvatore’s once. He’s barely even blinked.
Salvatore starts to push chips, stops, looks at his cards again and hesitates. It’s a lot of dough out there. What the hell hand does Monk have? Finally, not noticing or caring that he’s the one delaying the game, he fondles three thousand-dollar chips, for nearly a minute before grunting a harsh, “Argh,” and throwing his cards.
The crowd sighs and Monk reaches out to corral his chips. Salvatore leans in and grabs Monk’s cards and flips them over. There’s a three, a seven, an eight, a ten, and a four.
“You, fucking cheater!” Bellows Salvatore. He’s beyond enraged and shoves his seat back, getting to his feet, glaring at Monk across the table. Salvatore’s not small. He’s two-fifty at least, all of it squeezed into a tight shirt. As he stands, four really big guys, his bodyguards and crew, gather behind him. Counting Salvatore there’s got to be fifteen hundred pounds of meat and maybe a hundred IQ points.
Monk slowly gathers in the chips, still looking relaxed and calm. “I didn’t cheat you, Sally,” he says.
“Sure fuckin’ did. You had dick cards, Monk. Gimme back my money.”
“Not gonna happen. You folded. The money’s mine.”
“Then you’re gonna be dead,” Salvatore says.
A hand gently touches his arm and Salvatore looks down, follows the arm to Lou Fleener looking up at him.
“You don’t want to do this, Sal,” Lou says.
“Fleener,” says Salvatore. “I know about you. I heard you’re a tough guy.”
“You heard right, Sal. I am a tough guy.” Lou’s speaking softly and doesn’t seem at all concerned about the herd of mastodons glaring at him. “You don’t want to do this.”
“So gimme back my money.”
“No,” say Monk quietly. Lou glances back at him, raises his eyebrows like, Are you sure? It’s not you going to fight these guys.
But Monk just smiles serenely, faith absolute.
Salvatore says, “Take ‘em apart, boys.”
From the crowd somebody yells, “Two gees on Fleener.”
Somebody else, “Against how many?”
“I’ll go eight guys. Any more and the bet’s off.”
“I’m in,” calls a voice at the edge of the crowd. “Fleener can’t be that good.” Soon bets are flying as the four musclemen advance on Lou.
Lou, as always, does the unexpected. Anyone else would either run or hold their ground, maybe roll up sleeves or duck out through the crowd. Lou Fleener attacks.
He starts with Salvatore since he’s both the smallest and the boss. Hired muscle never has any idea what to do when somebody shoves the boss at them. So, Lou shoves the boss at them.
He catches Salvatore by surprise, stiff-arming him under the throat and shoving him back into his own guys. Salvatore says, “Gack!” and begins to choke as Lou pushes him further into the confused crowd.
He whirls to the right, kicks someone in the shin, ducks and spins like an ice skater, striking somebody else behind the knee where all the nerves are exposed. That guy leans to the side and topples into the others and Lou is suddenly behind them.
When they turn, except for the guy with the knee—he’s dry-heaving from the shock—they get a view of Lou picking up a five-foot piece of gray conduit. He spins it like a baton and tucks it under one arm. With his free hand he makes a come here gesture.
Three of them rush forward. Salvatore stays back. Lou clouts one guy on the temple—he goes down—and spins the conduit low to slash at their ankles. Another guy falls from that and Lou jabs the last one in the chest with the pole.
The guy’s confused—this happened so and he backs up with every poke until he’s behind his boss. Salvatore’s looking shocked now and he swivels his head toward the crowd.
“Anybody? A little help?” There are no takers as Lou, casually spinning his conduit like a cane comes forward. Salvatore yells, “Ten grand to anybody who takes down Fleener.”
Now we have takers. Three big guys start forward, and a little man slips under them to get in first. “I got this,” he says.
He goes into a crouch, balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, his hands making circles in the air. He screeches and leaps at Lou, who pivots to the left at the last second. The guy’s foot hits Lou’s conduit and sends it clanking into the crowd. Somebody in the back yells, “Ow!”
The little guy lands lightly and whirls, leg high. His foot hits Lou in the face and Lou’s spun half around. One of the new guys grabs his arm and shoves him back. The small guy leaps in the air and lands both feet against Lou’s chest, casually drops lightly, knees flexing as he lands.
Lou is hurled backwards and crashes into a table, scattering cards and chips across the floor. The little guy is waiting, the crowd is shocked into silence and Lou gets up and grins.
“Nice,” he says happily. “What is that? Karate?”
“A mixture,” says the man, actually bowing. “Some karate, some Judo, a little street fighting.”
“You’ve heard of me, have you?” asks Lou.
“Everyone has heard of you. No one knows how you can be...” he gestures, up and down at Lou’s physique. “Like you are and be so...”
“Yeah,” agrees Lou. “It’s a mystery. You got a name?”
“Everyone does, I assume. Mine is Kiku Hashini.”
“Pleased,” says Lou. “Shall we continue?”
“It would be my honor,” says Kiku. “To take out the formidable Lou Fleener.”
“Sure,” says Lou. “More power to ya.” He and Kiku leap toward each other but Lou, in a lightning fast move, ducks under the other’s slashing foot. He spins like a top and rising, grabs the tie of the biggest muscleman. Bunching it in his fist he throws himself at the guys knees and the big guy falls.
<
br /> “Timber!” Yells Lou as the man topples like an oak—right on top of Kiku. Three hundred-fifty pounds of meat hit the small man like an avalanche of flesh. Lou adds himself to the weight by jumping on the fallen muscle guy’s back, using it as a springboard to dive forward. This time he goes under the table and rises with it on his back.
He throws the table at his attackers and follows the confusion by leaping and hitting and kicking any exposed arm, leg, face or belly he can find. The crowd draws back from the whirlwind, leaving only the battered original four guys, two newcomers and the fallen guy on top of Kiku.
None of them are in good shape or eager to go another round.
Lou’s breathing easily as he relaxes. “Anybody else?” He studies the room. “Nobody?”
“Monk,” he says. “You want to collect the bets?”
“Sure.”
Lou goes over to the mound of flesh laying on the little man. He shoves and the guy falls off and Lou holds out a hand. Kiku takes it and gets heaved to his feet.
“That was nice,” says Lou. “We should do that again sometime.”
“It was good, Mr. Lou Fleener. Next time though, it might not go as well for you.”
Lou shrugs. “Could happen. Anyway, thanks.”
He goes back to Monk who’s slipping into his jacket. Together they leave the very hushed warehouse.
“That was fun,” says Lou.
“Like I said, business is good.”
*
Cassidy Adams, cross legged on the yoga mat, is not feeling into yoga. She is, in truth, bored out of her mind. All around her are women in various contorted poses; the Triangle (Trikonasana), The Cobra (bhujangasana), or the Pigeon Pose (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana), and all she can think about is the cramp in her foot and cheeseburgers.
Cassidy has a monkey on her back as powerful as heroin; In-N-Out burgers. If there is a reason to stay in the Sunshine state, and at this moment Cassidy can’t think of any others, it’s In-N-Out cheeseburgers.
Of course, Chicago has White Castle; it’s sliders might be a fair substitute.
Missing Amanda Page 27