Corridor Man Volumes 1, 2, 3,4 5

by Nick James

  Just before the service began Bobby caught Sergeant Sharkey slipping into a back pew on the far side of the church. If Detective Woodley was around he couldn’t see him. He did spot his brother Andrew and sister-in-law Fern up toward the front of the church and made a mental note to stay clear.

  The service began exactly at eleven. The pastor gave a six minute eulogy, three minutes for each of the deceased, at the fifty minute mark the coffins were wheeled back down the center aisle and out of the church as the choir started up with some out-of-tune dirge. Fran’s sister, Mary Beth seemed the only one capable of any tears. The coffins were loaded into the back of two hearses and the crowd quickly disappeared into the church basement for a luncheon.

  “What do you say to some lunch?” Bobby asked.

  “God you and funerals.”

  “Well, it is where we met, sort of.”

  “How about we stay for a cup of coffee and then we go to my place for something a little more special than church basement food?”

  “Much better idea,” Bobby said.

  They skirted the food line and entered the church basement via a side door. Now, quite a few heads turned and they didn’t seem to be looking at Bobby. “Let me get the coffee, you can just stand here and remain on display.”

  “I kinda like that,” Emily said and angled her hips in a way that turned a few more heads.

  “Well, Mr. Custer, imagine seeing you under these circumstances,” a voice said from behind.

  Bobby had just finished filling two cups of steaming coffee and grabbed two chocolate chip cookies when he heard the voice. For some reason it brought a smile to his face and he said, “Detective Sharkey, how very nice to see you again,” before he’d even turned around.

  Sharkey smiled and said, “It’s Sergeant.”

  “Still nice to see you. Looking for suspects?”

  “No one’s come up and confessed to me if that’s what you mean.”

  “Well, since you’re here I’m guessing you’re not ready to rule this as an unfortunate accident.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, just like to be thorough is all. You’ve a lovely lady with you, today. I guess it’s like they say, right?”

  “How’s that?”

  “You can fool some of the people some of the time,” Sharkey said then smiled, but the smile didn’t match his cold eyes.

  “Nice chatting, Sergeant. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Catch you later,” Sharkey said as Bobby walked away.

  “See anyone you know?” Bobby asked as he handed a coffee mug to Emily, then caught sight of his brother and sister-in-law in the food line.

  “Not really,” she said, took a sip then whispered, “Jesus, is this stuff ever strong.”

  “Well, Lutheran church, they like their coffee. Hey, I’ve seen about enough. Any chance that luncheon invitation is still open?”

  “Oh it is, and I still plan on holding you to dinner. There might be a nap in there this afternoon if you can make time.” At the word nap she raised her eyebrows.

  “I’d love to, but I have to get back to the office for a two o’clock. If I had any brains I would have cancelled it yesterday, but the guy is flying in from Chicago and I can’t miss it.”

  “You want to just drop me off?”

  He thought about that for a moment then said, “Would you mind? Actually I’m feeling a little stretched for time.”

  “No, I guess not, but I’m not kidding, you had better rest up for tonight.”

  “How ‘bout I drop you off at home and pick you up at seven for dinner?”

  “Works for me,” Emily said then leaned forward, kissed him and gave him the slightest rub with her hand.

  “You really are something,” he smiled.

  “A lot more where that came from,” she said then set her coffee down and strutted out of the room, Bobby followed like a puppy on a leash.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As he sat at his desk Bobby tried to put Fran, and by extension Jonathan out of his mind and just concentrate on the solitaire game on his computer screen. It wasn’t working. It was bad enough he’d seen his brother Andrew and his eternally unpleasant wife, Fran, but Sharkey’s appearance at the funeral and Bobby’s knowledge that Jonathan and Fran had been too intoxicated to drive home the night they’d been asphyxiated kept nagging at him. He wasn’t sure what, if anything, he should do about it when his phone rang.

  “Bobby Custer.”

  “I’ve missed you, Custer,” agent Stan Drake said and Bobby felt a throbbing pain rush up his neck and explode in his brain.

  “Agent Drake, nice to hear from you.”

  “Sure it is, that’s why you’ve been trying to reach me so often.”

  “I believe our agreement was I would contact you if and when I had something to report. Thus far I haven’t really had anything. Mr. Denton had a fall and injured himself, apparently hit his head in the fall, tore a plate or something in his hip. I’ve checked in on him every day, but he’s been in bed and medicated. His recovery time has been extended probably another month or two. I’m continuing to review the Montcreff files, thus far everything appears to be in perfect order on that end. Nothing I’m aware of happening with the other senior partners, Allan, Sawyer and Hinz. Just what exactly did you want me to report on?”

  “Our agreement was you would remain in constant contact.”

  “I suppose I could call you and tell you nothing was happening, would that have been better?”

  “Possibly. Maybe during one of those calls you might have mentioned Camila Morales or for that matter the untimely passing of your former wife and her husband shortly after entering into a contract with Morris Montcreff.”

  The throbbing in Bobby’s head was suddenly nonstop. “I, I don’t know anything about an agreement between Montcreff and Bannon Dynamics.”

  “You’re probably right, you don’t know, which tells me you’re not doing your damn job. And anyone with half a brain knows the Morales woman isn’t setting up a bed and breakfast in Goddamn Frogtown. There have been four shootings down there in as many nights. Don’t you find that even the least bit coincidental.”

  “I spoke to one of the cops investigating that and…”

  “Who the hell was it?”

  “A Sergeant Carrick.”

  “Carrick? Bald guy always wearing a bad suit?”

  “Yeah, that sounds like him.”

  “Watch out, he doesn’t miss much. I think it might be a good idea if we got together, you and I, just for old times sake.”

  “I’ll have to check my…”

  “Shut the hell up, Custer, you don’t have to check a damn thing. You just be available, I’ll call you with a time and place. Nice chatting,” Drake said and hung up.

  Bobby listened to the dial tone for a long moment while the throbbing in his head continued. He thought for a minute or two then picked up his phone and dialed the number he now knew by heart.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hello, Mr. Montcreff it’s Bobby Custer.”

  “What do you have for me?”

  “I just got off the phone with Agent Drake, of…”

  “The FBI, that prick, what the hell did he want?”

  “He was unhappy I hadn’t been in touch, said he missed me.”

  Montcreff didn’t react to Bobby’s attempt at humor. “That bastard never calls unless he wants something.”

  “He somehow knows about Ms. Morales.”

  “Knows?”

  “That she’s in the house, sort of renting from me.”

  “How in the hell did he…”

  “I didn’t tell him, honest. I was just as surprised as you when he mentioned it. Asked me if I didn’t think it was strange there had been all the shootings down there once she arrived.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “And there was something else, he…”

  “Now what?”

  “He mentioned you had entered into an agreement with Jonathan Bannon and didn’t
I think it was strange the guy is dead after dealing with you.”

  “Christ. You meeting with him? That’s usually his style.”

  “He just told me he’d call with a time and a place.”

  “It’ll be sometime tomorrow. You know Meyers?”

  “That bar, the one where you have breakfast?”

  “Join me tomorrow morning at nine.”

  “What if agent Drake calls before that?”

  “Drake? He won’t. He’ll make it at lunch time and then stick you with the check or he’ll call in the middle of the afternoon when you’re in a meeting, something inconvenient and then he’ll expect you to drop everything and be there in ten or fifteen minutes. He’s an asshole, it’s his style.”

  “I’ll call you if I hear from him.”

  “You just plan on joining me for breakfast, and don’t be late.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Bobby picked up Emily promptly at seven although his heart wasn’t really in it. He proceeded to cautiously sip from the same glass of wine through dinner and replied to virtually all of her questions with one word answers.

  “Isn’t this sort of backwards, shouldn’t you be the one trying to get me drunk? What the hell happened? What’s wrong?” she asked. “It’s like your best friend was just sentenced to death or something.”

  “Sorry, just work stuff, I’ve got some tough sledding ahead and I’m trying to figure it out.”

  “Anything I can help with? I gotta tell you, if this is your idea of a romantic dinner, it’s leaving a little something to be desired.”

  “Sorry,” Bobby said then went back to staring at his wineglass, the same wine he’d been nursing for the better part of an hour.

  “Oh, Jesus,” she said then waved a waiter over to the table. “I’ll have a double martini, Bombay Sapphire, two olives.”

  The waiter nodded and asked, “Sir?”

  “Nothing for Mr. Boring, he’s got to drive and take care of me,” Emily said.

  The waiter gave a quick glance toward Bobby then quickly left. Bobby looked at Emily and sort of shrugged.

  “God,” she said and rolled her eyes. “I need that martini, now.”

  She was finishing her third, giggling and talking nonstop. Bobby sipped some coffee and signaled the waiter to bring her another.

  “… and suddenly there they were, these wolves. We’ve had more sightings of them this year than ever before.”

  “At the lake?” he asked, paying close attention.

  “Yes, at the lake, where in the hell do you think I’m talking about?”

  “Just one wolf?”

  “No, dopey,” she said and drained her glass just as the waiter placed a fresh drink in front of her. “Perfect timing, thank you.”

  “The wolf?”

  “Wolves, if you bothered to listen. We’ve seen as many as four, but at night it sounds like there’s a dozen, they’re all howling back on that trail. You remember, the one we took on the ATV’s.”

  “Yeah, it was a nice ride, we’ll have to do it again sometime. Have you been back there since?”

  “On the trail? Yeah, a couple of times, but now with all this additional wolf activity I’ve been sort of staying away. They must have killed a couple of deer or something back there.”

  Bobby nodded and thought of Angie and her brother then laughed to himself thinking about Nate Anderson telling him his wife would be on the phone looking for him.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh, just thinking about how I plan to tie you up tonight.”

  “Finally, you’re alive, welcome back to earth. Where in the hell did you go?” she asked then took a big sip.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  He had been wide awake for the past hour and the sun wasn’t even up. He wasn’t due to meet Morris Montcreff for breakfast for another three hours. He cautiously turned on his side and looked at Emily snoring with a pink sleeping mask over her eyes. They’d had a brief sexual interlude and she’d gotten as far as taking some leather straps and battery operated toys out of the antique chest at the end of her bed before she passed out. Bobby had pulled her into bed, fitted the sleeping mask over her eyes then tied the leather straps to the four carved posts on the bed. Hoping she’d think they’d had an adventurous night once she saw them.

  He grabbed a quick shower in the guest bathroom down the hall, then very quietly dressed and tiptoed out of the room while she continued to snore. He left her a note on the kitchen counter explaining that he’d received an emergency page from the office and had to go.

  He drove through the Frogtown neighborhood giving a wide berth to the two SUV’s parked at either end of Camila’s block. He noted two different police cars cruising the area in just the three or four minutes he was down there, obviously they’d stepped up their patrols.

  He arrived at Meyers bar a good half hour early. After knocking on the door he was questioned by a stocky bald guy then let in. Chairs were still stacked on the tables and the bar stools were on top of the bar. Bobby was shown to a back booth draped with a white table cloth, the only tablecloth in the place. Silverware and linen napkins for two were already arranged in the booth. The bartender, another bald guy, but with a black mustache, poured a steaming mug of coffee and delivered it to Bobby telling him, “Mr. Montcreff should be here shortly.”

  The kitchen door burst open twenty minutes later and one of Montcreff’s thugs walked in and perused the barroom. He looked behind the bar, checked out both restrooms and then walked back into the kitchen.

  A minute later he held the door open as Montcreff emerged through a cloud of steam and stepped into the barroom. Never attractive, his acne scarred face appeared even more flushed than usual this morning. His nose, the size of a baked potato and sporting a decided ’S’ curve looked almost purple.

  “You see this bullshit?” Montcreff growled and tossed a folded newspaper across the table nearly knocking Bobby’s coffee over in the process.

  Bobby gave a demur, “Good morning, sir,” then picked up the newspaper and read the front page headline, Recent Shootings Connected.

  “God damn it,” Montcreff growled as he slid into the booth, his stomach jerked the table an inch or two toward Bobby, he placed both heavy hands on the edge of the table and pushed it over a couple of more inches pinning Bobby to the back of the booth.

  The bartender was suddenly there with a coffee mug and a shot glass of brown liquid, most likely whiskey. He set them both down in front of Montcreff who emptied the shot into his coffee mug, handed the empty back and said, “We’ll both have the usual, Tony.” He waited until the bartender was out of earshot. “This shit is bad for business,” Montcreff said indicating the newspaper headline with his coffee mug, sloshing coffee across the tablecloth in the process.

  “I really tried to warn Ms. Morales about the neighborhood,” Bobby said.

  “How far up your ass is that head of yours? Warn her, Christ on a bike, she’s doing the city a favor, no one else seems to have the balls. Bunch of freeloading bastards, I can only hope the cops back off and let her do what needs to be done.”

  “I mentioned I met Sergeant Carrick down there after the shootings the other day and then he came to see me at the office on Monday.”

  “Yeah, you already told me that.”

  Tony the bartender delivered a plate of toast, placing it next to Montcreff and just out of Bobby’s reach. There were four pieces on the plate and Bobby noticed the crusts had been cut off so the pieces appeared perfectly square. Montcreff proceeded to slather the top piece with cherry jelly. He folded the toast in half and crammed the entire piece into his mouth. “Mmm-mmm, you said he wanted information on Morales?”

  “Yeah, wanted to know about visas, names, well, anything and everything actually.”

  “What’d you tell him?” he said and attacked the second piece of toast.

  “The only thing I told him was we have a privacy act in this country and I couldn’t in good conscience say
much more.”

  “Bet he loved that,” Montcreff smiled, then repeated his toast procedure, after cramming the piece into his mouth he stared across the table.

  “He didn’t seem too happy. He was curious about the improvements to the property, they’re putting up a garage, new fence, the porch was…”

  “I seen it. Much improved from the mess it was a couple of weeks back, plus they got rid of those bums camping out in the place. City oughta give her a medal. She told me you gave her a rent receipt.”

  “Well, yes I did, but…”

  “But what? I don’t think you want anyone looking too closely at how you come to get that joint, right?” he said and crammed another piece of toast into his mouth. A glaze of cherry jelly coated his upper lip.

  “Well no, but…”

  “And the place is a lot better than when you left it to the dogs, literally, right?” Montcreff half shouted and sprayed a mouthful of cherry and toast crumbs across the table in Bobby’s direction.

  “Yes, sir, all the improvements, they’ve done a very nice job, but…”

  “But nothing, you give her a receipt every damn month, you hear? She ever decides to leave you get it back in a lot better condition, and it didn’t cost you one damn cent.”

  “But I’m paying insurance, the taxes and…”

  Montcreff shot a withering glance across the table then crammed the last piece of toast into his mouth. “Custer, you paying any rent in that condo you’re in right now?”

  “Well, no sir, I mean it’s part of my compensation plan with the firm.”

  “You can’t possibly be that damn stupid. You’re living there for free until I say you’re out. The Morales broad is in there for free until I tell you differently, got it.” Montcreff made his point by jabbing his finger halfway across the table. Then he sat back as Tony the bartender delivered a plate stacked with a half-dozen blueberry pancakes. He sort of side tossed a plate with just two pancakes in Bobby’s general direction and placed a platter piled high with crisp bacon next to Montcreff, almost daring Bobby to try and take a piece.