High Lie

by A. J. Stewart

  With more effort than it should have taken three men, we had pulled each of the tranquilized Tongans into the back of Lucas’s pickup, then Ron and I followed him to the warehouse. I for one was glad Lucas didn’t get pulled over on the way. His cargo would have been hard to explain. But we’d gotten there without incident, and it had taken the three of us to unload our human cargo and place them where they now sat.

  Lucas said he had used a quarter-dose tranquilizer, maybe good for an hour of downtime. Where he got his data, I had no idea. The first Tongan started to wake with several hard slaps to the face.

  “Wakey, wakey,” said Lucas with a smile.

  The Tongan didn’t share the emotion. The instant he started to zero in on his situation, he tried to move, but was stopped by the fact he had been hog-tied to a post. He was just as immobile awake as he had been unconscious, but he struggled anyway. His movement roused his partner from his slumber, and he repeated the process, the two of them struggling with all their might, back to back, tied to a pole by a guy who could have held the Titanic together with rope.

  “Okay, boys, when you’re done, we’ll chat,” said Lucas.

  The Tongans must have figured they had fully tested the quality of the bindings, because they settled and glared at Lucas.

  “Right, better. So here’s the sitrep. You fellas turned up tonight, planning to kill a friend of ours. In our books, that’s uncool. So we want to know who sent you.”

  One of the Tongans spat, and the other gave a throaty, mirthless laugh.

  “Now,” continued Lucas, “obviously I don’t expect you fellas to give out that kind of information without an incentive. So I’m going to provide you with one. We could play games all night, drag it out of you slow, but I’ve got to be at work in a couple hours, so I don’t really have that luxury.”

  Lucas paced around in a half circle, and the Tongans’ heads flipped around to follow.

  “I tell you this so you understand my predicament, so you get what I’m doing. Because right now, you think that my timeline gives you the advantage. You think if I have to leave, you just have to hold out for a little while. Please let me dissuade you of that notion.”

  Lucas crouched on his haunches and got in close to the big guys.

  “Worst case, boys? You hold out and I leave. But I leave you here for a day or two. No water; no way out. Then I come back and finish the job. So you see how you don’t have an advantage at all? Your choices are limited to two. Tell me what I need to know, or get nice and comfy with a mother lode of pain.”

  He smiled and stood slowly, then turned to Ron and I and winked. I’d seen Lenny do some pretty crazy stuff, but Lucas made Lenny look like the sanest person in the world. Ron leaned into me.

  “You sure he knows what he’s doing?” he said.

  I shook my head. “I’m sure there’s no stopping him. Beyond that, I know nothing.”

  Lucas turned his attention to the Tongans. “I served with a few fellas from Tonga, you know. Played rugby with a lot of ’em, too. Big guys, tough in the tackle, but nice fellas, to a man. You boys really give your people a bad name, you know that?”

  “You’re no advert for Aussie, bro,” said one of the Tongans.

  Lucas smiled. “So, he talks.”

  “Not to you, bro. Not telling you nothing. So do your worst.”

  Lucas looked at his watch, then at the Tongans. “You’re right. Best get on with it.”

  He took a Zippo lighter from his pocket and flicked the flame on. “You fellas notice what you’re sitting on? That’s a lot of newspaper. And that lumpy stuff you can feel underneath? Those are what we grill masters like to call fire starters.”

  Lucas crouched between the two Tongans and held the Zippo to the paper. It began burning, curling in on itself, more intent on putting itself out than spreading the flame. Lucas lit a couple more spots, then moved to the other side of the pole and repeated the process. I watched the first spot fire, almost out, the edge of the paper glowing orange but curling black. Then the orange touched a fire starter, and for a moment there was nothing. No orange, no flame, no smoke—like the whole thing had gone out. The quiet before the storm was the cliché that bounced into my mind. Then the fire starter flickered and caught, and flames leaped upward and joined the spots next to them, where the other fire starters began catching and joining in the burn.

  It took a moment, but the Tongans caught on eventually. Before any flame touched them they tried wriggling out of their binds once more, and when that failed they tried blowing the flames out. It wasn’t a bonfire, but I figured it was enough to create the sensation of being barbecued alive.

  “You crazy, bro,” said one of the Tongans. I noted the beginnings of fear in his eyes as the flames lapped at his sleeveless arms.

  “Talk to me, mate,” said Lucas. “Who sent you?”

  “No way,” said the Tongan.

  “Burn, baby, burn,” said Lucas, and he edged around the pyre to the other Tongan. “How ’bout you, mate?” he said.

  The flames were lapping higher under this guy, and the side of his shirt caught fire. He was breathing heavy and panicking, and when flame burst up between his legs, he lost it.

  “Okay, bro. Our cousin sent us. Our cousin,” he said, trying to blow out the flames lapping at his groin.

  “Who is your cousin?” said Lucas, as relaxed as a picnicker.

  “Finau, his name is Finau.”

  Lucas looked up at me. “That name mean something to you?” he asked.

  It did. I moved to the other Tongan, the not-so-chatty one, whose jeans were starting to smolder.

  “That true?” I said. “Is Finau your cousin, too?”

  “Yeah, bro, yeah,” he said, suddenly getting more cooperative.

  “Why does Finau want to hurt the jai alai players?” I asked.

  “He don’t, man. He don’t. It’s a scare. Bro, I’m burning up here.”

  “Then talk quick,” I said. “Why is he doing this?”

  “It’s not our cousin, it’s that lady. The lady he works for.”

  “Jenny Almondson?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. She’s doing it. She tells Finau what to do. He says she wants us to dress up like Indians and shake down some guys. That’s all I know. Bro, I’m on fire!”

  And he was. The hairs across his arms glowed like a thousand cigars, and the skin had started to char. I looked at Lucas and nodded, then he wandered casually over to his truck and pulled out an extinguisher, which he used to douse both the flames and the Tongans. Once the area was a sea of foam, we convened at the bed of his truck.

  “Who is this Jenny sheila?” said Lucas.

  “She runs the Jai Alai and Casino,” I said.

  “Everything goes back to that casino,” said Lucas. “Desi, those Boston dudes, this. That place is rancid.”

  “Rotten to the core,” I said.

  “All right, well I gotta get to work,” said Lucas. “You fellas okay?”

  “What about these guys?”

  Lucas seemed to have forgotten the Tongans already. He turned to them.

  “Now, boys, we’re gonna go, and you’re gonna stay here. I want you to think on your sins for a little while, get me? You should be doing your ancestors proud, not carrying on like this.”

  “You can’t leave us, bro. I got burns.”

  “Think of it like a tattoo,” said Lucas. “A reminder of poor choices made. We’ll call your people in a little while, tell them where you are.”

  He turned back to me and fished his keys from his pocket. “Wait until you decide what you wanna do with the casino thing, then call and tell them where these two are.”

  He walked to the cab of his truck and got in.

  “Just try to do it before they start going septic, yeah?” he said. Then he fired up the truck and pulled out.

  Ron and I walked out into the cool night, the dawn still an hour from joining us.

  “That was different,” said Ron.

 
“You could say.”

  “Where do you think he learned that?”

  “I don’t want to know,” I said.

  And I didn’t. I wasn’t sure what things Lucas had seen in his life, but I feared a lot of them were not good. I shuddered at the thought of what Danielle would say about what we had done. We got to the rental car, and Ron looked across the roof at me.

  “They weren’t just going to scare Roto tonight. They were going to kill him,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “It’s gone way beyond scaring,” I said. “Which means they’re panicking. But the question is, why?”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I WAS SITTING on the patio with an orange-berry smoothie, watching the sunrise reflect off the windows in Riviera Beach, when my phone rang. I looked at the screen and saw it was Danielle.

  “Morning,” I said.

  “Hey, you. I didn’t wake you did I?”

  “Nah, I’m on the patio. Couldn’t sleep.”

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “I think we’ve figured out who has been threatening the jai alai guys.” I figured I’d leave out how we had come about that discovery.

  “That’s great,” she said. “Case closed?”

  “Not quite. There’s a little question of why.”

  “Are the jai alai players paying you to find out why?” she said.

  It was a good point. I had been engaged to find out who was making the threats. I wasn’t on the payroll to figure out their motives. But once I started digging a hole, I really wanted to know if there was oil down there.

  “It’s sort of implied that we try to stop it happening, and at the moment I don’t have enough to take to court.”

  “Well, I’m glad you are considering involving the proper authorities.” I could hear the teasing in her voice.

  “Wherever possible, my darling. You know me.”

  “Yeah, I do,” she said, laughing. It was a great sound, one that didn’t fit with the rest of my night, but one that brought a smile to my face nevertheless.

  “So what about you? You’re up early. How’s the conference.”

  “It was great. An eye-opener.”

  “Was great? It’s over?”

  “Yes, it finished Friday night. But the Atlanta PD and the local FBI field office are doing site visits over the weekend, so the boss thought it was worth me staying. Is that okay?”

  “Sure, I guess. I miss you, is all.”

  “I miss you, too. I’ll be back tomorrow at some point, although I might need to go straight into the office.”

  “You’re even starting to sound like a police chief or something,” I said.

  “I’ve got to tell you, MJ, I’ve learned a lot. You hear so much about all this interdepartmental jealousy, jurisdictional lines, and all that. But there was none of that. Everyone is trying to help everyone else do a better job of keeping the streets safe. I was excited by all the cooperative efforts that departments were putting in place. I’ve even got a few ideas to bring home. Hopefully the boss will let me implement some.”

  “He’d be a fool not to.”

  “Thanks, MJ. You know, I also learned a lot about me, too. The chiefs and sheriffs I met all have one thing in common. They don’t sit around waiting for things to happen. I need to be like that, I think, if I want to be one of them.”

  “You are one of them. I’ve seen the uniform.”

  “But you know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  And I did. She was growing. A little bit of water and she had sprouted like the first summer tomatoes.

  “You just can’t sit still in law enforcement,” she said. “There’s no place for complacency. If you’re not moving forward, then you are going backward. I feel like I might have been guilty of that lately, you know what I mean?”

  Again, I did. I just wasn’t sure if she meant professionally or in her life with me, too. Comfortable for one person is complacent for another. I wondered if I had been drifting in happiness, using it as an excuse for not moving forward. When I’d played baseball I always had forward momentum. I was always trying to be better, fitter. To get into the next team, or up into the next league. It drove me, all the way to the majors. And when Oakland let me go, it still drove me, because I had had a taste, and the Mets offered a lifeline. And then, suddenly, one day the desire to keep improving, to keep moving forward was gone. And at the end of that season I hung up my cleats. I wondered if I was losing my drive again. And if I was, what had I been after, anyway? To be a better PI? A better friend? A better partner? Had I kept myself in shape so I could find Danielle, and now that I had her, let the drive in me die away? A guy didn’t stay in the major league by coasting.

  “I think you can be anything you want to be,” I said.

  “Right back at ya,” she said. “But you know what else I learned this week? Teamwork is everything.”

  I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. That was also true in baseball. I hadn’t realized how true it was everywhere else. My mind played through the faces on my team: Danielle, Ron, Lucas. Cassandra, Lenny, Sally Mondavi, Lizzy, Mick. Danielle again. The idea of teamwork stuck in my mind like a burr. And that competitors were not always exactly that. What it meant I wasn’t sure yet, but I knew from experience that those kinds of mental burrs stuck for a reason.

  “You’re a very smart woman, you know that?” I said.

  “Someone has to keep the ledger even with you,” she giggled. “Listen, I have to get going. I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you.”

  “And I you.”

  I put the phone down and looked over the Intracoastal. The cloud cover had eased and the water sparkled like a jewel. I turned to look at the empty lounger beside me, and I suddenly couldn’t wait for tomorrow to come. But first, I had to get through today. And that wasn’t going to happen without some sleep. I leaned back and closed my eyes, looking for rest but finding only Jenny Almondson.

  I still found it hard to believe she was behind the death threats. I liked her. She was smart and self-assured, and all business when business was called for. Thugs and threats just didn’t suit her. I had to concede that my judgment could be faulty when it came to pretty women, but that notwithstanding, there was still that big question hanging in the air. Why? Why would Jenny want jai alai to fail? It was a necessary part of her business, one that the state showed no desire to change. If there was no jai alai, there was no casino. They were symbiotic—one could not exist without the other, at least as long as the law said so. I thought about Jenny, in her New York suits, the face of a New York gaming organization. Images floated through my mind, and a figure appeared from the earlier montage of faces, providing me with a way forward. With momentum. I saw Sally Mondavi’s face again. I had sought out Eric Edwards’s view of the arrangement, but I needed to see it from the other perspective. From a New York point of view. I needed to pay a visit to Sally. And with that momentum in place, I drifted off.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  SALLY MONDAVI’S PAWN and Cash Checking was on Okeechobee Boulevard on the wrong side of the turnpike. I passed Max Stubbs’s office to get there, and realized how close it was, and I wondered how much shady stuff was going on along this road.

  Sal’s store might have sold the flotsam and jetsam of downtrodden life, but it was more a sideline than a career. Sal’s main business ran from out the back of the shop and was based on a lifetime of connections. He, like half of Florida, had come from New Jersey. But unlike most transplants, Sal knew every Shylock, hood and made man from Buffalo to the Keys. So if anyone knew anything about a New York gaming company, it was Sal.

  After a couple hours sleep, and with renewed purpose that had sprung from somewhere I couldn’t pin down, I drove west. I parked the rental car in front of the pawnshop and wandered in. I made a point of wearing a worn New England Patriots T-shirt and khakis, but the girl sitting in the Plexiglas booth near the front of the store wouldn’t have cared if I was naked. I didn’t re
cognize her, but there seemed to be a good deal of turnover in that position. I figured sitting in a plastic box cashing checks was close to cruel and unusual punishment, and even asking would you like fries with that? would be a big step up.

  Sal was leaning on a glass cabinet at the back of the store, looking at something through a one-eyed microscope attached to his glasses. I weaved through the rows of musical instruments and tables of CDs, toward him. He didn’t look up from what I now saw was some kind of gemstone.

  “You got a nerve wearing that T-shirt in here,” he said.

  I smiled. “You haven’t even looked at me yet.”

  “I saw you this morning before you even decided to come here.”

  “How are you, Sal?”

  He finally looked up. One eye was gigantic, until he flicked the microscope thing up. He was an old man, hunched by the years and creased by the events of a long life. He brushed a few wisps of hair across his mostly bald head.

  “I’m better than you,” he said. “You look like something the cat dragged in.”

  “My mother used to say that.”

  “And she would have been right if you were wearing that damned Pats T-shirt.”

  “Back then, chances were I was.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t hold it against you, being brainwashed as a kid like that.”

  “Because supporting Gang Green just comes naturally.”

  “On high from God,” he said. “This is the Jets’ year, I tell you.”

  “Third place in the division. Looking good.”

  “Aach, we’ll come home strong. You come here just to give an old man a stroke?”

  I told him about the casino, about the death threats, about the Tongans telling us Jenny was behind it.

  “That Lucas is a screw loose of a picnic,” he said. “Gets results, though.”