He locked his brakes up, narrowly avoiding my Crown Vic. He waved his arms around and started honking.
I grabbed the brass knuckles that hung from the shifter and stuck my fist out the window. I wasn’t sure how long I’d sat at that light, but I needed to piss, and I knew the mini-fridge was running dangerously low on alcohol. The Vic could use some gas while I was at it.
I pulled into the first station I saw and took a piss behind the car wash. I finished the rest of the Scotch I must have taken with me from the bar, then threw the empty glass up against a vacuum cleaner that ripped me off the one and only time I tried to clean the Vic.
With all the foresight a drunk in my position could manufacture, I decided to forgo gas. However, I did go inside and fulfill my commitment for more drink.
I walked out with a fifth of Southern Comfort, a bottle of rum, a frozen pizza, and two six packs of Corona. I climbed behind the wheel, set my bag into the seat, and pulled a stick of beef jerky from my pocket that I couldn’t remember if I paid for. I thought about an ice-cold beer. I put the window up and out of nowhere started thinking about the credit union job.
Suddenly it all made sense and I was able to see it unfold in my mind with the absolute clarity that only an afternoon drunk at a strip joint can provide. Chief Caraway’d said all he knew about Norman Russo was that he managed a bank, but what if it was the credit union? Whatever assholes hit that credit union must have gone to Russo’s house the night before. They pumped him for information and they killed him. Then they staged that suicide with a lack of professionalism unlike anything I’d ever seen.
I pulled the Vic onto the road and drove a few miles back to the office while I ran the scenario through my head. They used a crew of two or three guys. I was leaning toward a two-man crew. There’d only been one guy inside the credit union. There was no reason to have two getaway drivers unless they used a crash car, a driver in a second vehicle who could block the road just in case a cruiser arrived. But if that’d been the case, the crash car would’ve taken out the Neon.
Still, it was a pretty sophisticated job for just a few guys to pull off by themselves. And anybody smart enough to set this up and pull it off, would have to be smart enough to spell correctly.
When I climbed to the top step of my office I found a late notice taped to my door, across where it said Private Detective. I wadded up the note, slipped the key into the lock then kicked the bottom of the door open with my foot.
Frank was there waiting. Snorting, sneezing, and turning circles.
“Hey Frank.” I stepped through the doorway carrying two bags. My arms were full. Frank was going crazy, jumping all around. He yelped when I stepped on his foot.
“Sorry.” I went on to explain how this could easily have been avoided and was clearly his fault. I set both bags on the cardboard box I used for a table and carried both sixers over to the mini and loaded that bastard up. Frank started barking, giving me hell. I asked him if he had to shit.
“Aaarp.”
I grabbed the cordless from my office and took Frank outside so he could make his logs. There was a little area between the alleys with some grass. While Frank was busy, I put a call to the Chief but he wasn’t in the office. I wasn’t surprised, but I felt like I was working this whole damn case by myself. Maybe Big Tony’d come through. You never knew with him, but he was a guy I knew I could trust. He’d done hard time in the can and I respected that. Between Tony and his partner Doyle, they had their ears close to the street. They were plugged in.
Frank was sniffing everything and trying to saturate as many foreign objects as possible with his Yorkshire piss. He pissed on an old newspaper that was covered with other dogs’ piss. He pissed on the handle of a shovel. He pissed on a brick. He pissed on top of another dog’s old turd or perhaps it was his own. He even pissed on the seat of a little kid’s Big Wheel. I would’ve told him to stop but I knew he wouldn’t listen. Frank was just expressing himself and that was an idea I could get behind.
“Let’s go.” I whistled. Frank brushed past me in hurry to climb the stairs. If there was one true pleasure in Frank’s life it was stair climbing. His favorites were the stairs to my office/apartment. And Frank’s goal was to conquer them with as much speed and enthusiasm as his legs were capable of producing. He was a master of ascension, but coming back down had always been a problem. I coaxed him every chance I got, but Frank did things his own way. Generally I just carried the little guy.
The drunk I’d put on earlier was all but a distant memory. As I took each step, I tried to wrap my head around this case.
Frank waited by the door. Tail wagging. Snorting. If he could talk he’d tell me to hurry up, so I could throw a beer can full of kibble on the floor next to my desk.
“I’m comin’,” I told him. He barked twice, snorted once, peeled out. Frank was ready and willing to take on the whole world if he didn’t get food.
We entered my muddled office and I stared at its dismal state. I never had time to clean. As I succumbed to the comfort of my chair behind the desk, I knew I wouldn’t have time today either.
Frank barked, told me he was waiting.
I said, “Yeah, I hear you already.” I flipped on the little radio at the edge of my desk and we listened to some jazz.
I crossed the room and poured a beer can full of food in his Converse. Frank jumped, ran two complete circles around both me and the shoe, then he bit the end of my pants leg and gave it a dominant tug.
“Calm down you little shit.”
I kicked at him, nudged him away with my foot, something he didn’t like, and he bit my shoe about as hard as he could. Snorted then peeled out. Frank took one good spring and landed on the Converse. He fought me for it, driving his snout deep into the cavernous depths of the shoe, giving it the business. He snatched a piece of kibble then ran to his place in front of my desk and dropped it. He looked up at me, growled, daring me to take it. Then he turned when I came near him and ate the kibble with his back toward me.
“You’re a cantankerous little son-of-bitch.” I dropped to one knee and stroked his back but he turned with swift reflexes, barked twice, and told me not to fuck with him while he was eating.
I saw a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream while I was down there, half full, sprawled on a bed of cigarette butts and ashes that’d been ground into carpet.
“Well, looky here,” I said to Frank, but he was too busy eating.
I stood tall, held the bottle to the light and gave it a shake. I unscrewed the lid and knocked back a series of vigorous chugs.
•••••
Montgomery’s was a steakhouse in South County where the cheapest steak cost thirty dollars. As bad as Sid craved a porterhouse, he didn’t have the time to go inside. Mr. Parker was livid and he cursed the tweaker. He wanted to kill Telly, regardless of the outcome. That’d been Parker’s plan all along. Use him as the driver and then shoot him; leave his body in the back of the truck.
Now there was a different asshole in the back of the truck. They were roaming down a thoroughfare of unknown possibilities and too many roads led back to Mr. Parker.
Joe Parker was a businessman, thief, and gambler. If anything went down in St. Louis, he knew about it. Probably had a hand in it. The credit union job should have been a cakewalk. Instead, it was a clusterfuck. The wrong man was dead not to mention the unfortunate civilian casualty. Mr. Parker needed to cut the loose ends, starting with Telly. But first they had to ask him a few questions and see if he had the money.
It was Sid’s job to ask him and he was going to ask him hard.
No Nuts pulled up beside Sid and they talked about what they’d heard on the street. There was no mention of the amount stolen, but the whole city was on alert. The cops were looking for a killer in the stolen bread truck. At least that’s what the news said.
Telly was an hour late for the meeting when he finally pulled up in the Buick. No Nuts and Sid were surprised to see him at all. Telly parked, got out of
the car and walked uneasily toward them.
No Nuts started in on him. “Where the fuck you been, cocksucker?”
Johnny was short. He wore a short suit and he always talked fast. He’d never had anyone to boss around and took full advantage of the situation now.
No Nuts slapped Telly on the top of his head to get his attention. “Where’s the fuckin’ money, ya prick?”
“Settle down, Johnny.” Sid said calmly.
No Nuts looked around. He had the tweaker scared, had him right where he wanted him.
“Fuck this clown, Sid. I been waitin’ out here in these cold weather conditions all fucking day for this guy.”
“Hey, this is bullshit!” Telly argued. “I fucking got shot at man! Shot at! And I watched my buddy die right in front of me.”
“Bruiser? It ain’t like he was your pal. Ain’t like you guys pitched horseshoes together or went bowlin’.”
Telly shook his head and said that wasn’t true at all.
“You’re glad he’s dead you cocksucker! Now, where’s that goddamn money?” No Nuts hit Telly with a solid uppercut under the ribs and Telly went to the ground.
“Okay, Johnny calm down, boy.” Sid stuck his arm out the window and tapped on the side of the door by Telly’s head. “C’mon, Telly, jump in.”
Telly looked up. Sid motioned with his hand. “Get in, Telly. We gotta take a little ride. Talk about this in the car.”
Telly didn’t want to.
“C’mon, get in.” It was freezing. Sid put the window up and looked at Telly through the glass.
Telly knew he didn’t have a choice. His best chance of not getting shot in the head was just to play along. They couldn’t kill him, at least not until they knew if he had the money. By then he’d think of something.
No Nuts opened the back door and grabbed Telly by the arm. He pulled him off balance and patted him down. Checked him for weapons then shoved him headfirst into the back seat.
Sid laughed. Johnny was a big shot. Just the slightest hint of power went straight to his head.
He dropped into the passenger side and Sid turned the radio up. 80’s music on satellite radio and No Nuts couldn’t stand it.
The breeze pushed the smell of Montgomery’s sizzling meat through the car and No Nuts said, “I gotta eat somethin’ Sid.”
Sid turned the radio down with the steering wheel control. “I thought you ate, Johnny? I told you to hit the Burger House.”
Johnny said he hadn’t eaten. “The fucking line went around the block, Sid. Sides, I don’t wanna burger. I’m tired of burgers. We eat burgers every day.”
“I like burgers, Johnny.”
“I like ‘em too, Sid. But not every fucking day.”
Sid shrugged. He asked No Nuts what he wanted.
“There’s a great Mexican buffet down the road. I could use a chalupa.”
Mexican sounded good to Sid but they had this piece of business first. The kind of business handled best on an empty stomach.
“I’m dyin’ over here.”
“Later, Johnny,” Sid reminded him.
“I could eat too,” Telly piped up from the back.
No Nuts turned around and stuck his finger in Telly’s face. “You shut the fuck up asshole! Nobody asked you.”
Sid cranked up the radio and sang “We Built This City”, while he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. No Nuts thought it sounded pretty gay with that accent.
•••••
I picked up the phone on the first ring, just because I was close. I expected Chief Caraway to greet me on the other end, but it was Big Tony. He said we should meet.
“Hey, you know that tweaker who runs with Bruno and those guys? Telly?”
I watched Frank drag his shoe across the room by the tongue. I couldn’t picture anyone named Telly. Or Bruno for that matter. I told Big Tony I didn’t know him.
“Yeah you do, Valentine. He works for Joe Parker. Big guy. Italian. ‘Cept I dunno he’s actually Italian.”
I had no idea who he meant.
“Y’know, greasy lookin’ hair. He’s got this New York accent, but it sounds like shit. I hear he’s from Kansas. He thinks nobody knows.”
Suddenly I could see his face. It was the bad accent I remembered, like he’d spent years practicing it in front of the mirror.
“It’s Bruiser.” I said. “They call him Bruiser.”
“That’s it.”
“What about him?” I wanted to know.
“Not him, that tweaker he runs with.”
“Tweaker?”
“Yeah, Telly,” he said. “You practically ran the guy over when you left Cowboy Roy’s.”
I thought about it, but it was really no use. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t recall leaving Cowboy Roy’s.
“You know who I’m talkin’ about?”
“Yeah, sure.” I lied. “What about him?”
Big Tony told me what happened after I left. The tweaker was in a tight spot. He was looking for crank; he wanted Big Tony to hook him up.
Big Tony said Telly was into something heavy, it could’ve been the credit union by the sounds of it.
“What’d you say?”
“I told him I’d see what I could do. Supposed to meet him here in a minute.”
I slid my feet into my shoes and looked around for the keys to the Vic. I stuck a bottle of Corona in each pocket of my suit jacket and grabbed a yellow plastic cup from my cardboard table. I filled it with the four remaining cubes from my useless little ice tray. Then I grabbed a half-empty bottle of flat Mountain Dew from the mini and the bottle of Southern Comfort from my desk.
I made a drink, then said good-bye to Frank, who was crashed out in the corner with his chin on his Converse. I hurried to the Vic.
•••••
I met Big Tony at Crestwood Bowl. Doyle was sitting in the passenger seat of the Town Car. They were in the middle of a deep conversation when I climbed into the back.
“Okay boys, what’s good?”
Doyle turned sideways in the seat. He had the look of a salesman to him, which he was. His rusty hair was turning gray at the edges and his smile spread wide over pudgy jowls. His brown suit looked stiff enough to stand on its own without a hanger, like the victim of a dry cleaning experiment gone wrong. He had the abrupt look of a guy you’d never want for a neighbor.
Doyle was a con man, a jewel thief, and a burglar. And he was good at what he did, connected with all the right people. The one guy you could count on to always be setting up scores.
I asked Doyle how he’d been and I took a drink from my yellow plastic cup.
“Jesus, Valentine,” he said. “You smell like a goddamn brewery.”
I swallowed a mouthful of poison and told him I was out of cologne.
Then I told him what I thought. It looked to me like he should lay off the chilidogs. “Maybe you should ride a bike. Climb a few stairs.” I thought about Frank when I said it.
Big Tony tried to turn sideways in his seat but he was bigger than Doyle. He grunted, hung his tongue from the side of his mouth like he was concentrating, but failed to actually rotate as far as I could tell. Defeated, he turned back toward the windshield and watched me through the rear-view mirror as he talked. He said they had some news.
“Sounds like Joe Parker’s crew,” Doyle said.
“Word is that dead guy in the middle of Peacock was that greasy fuck, Bruno,” Big Tony added.
“Bruiser?” I asked.
“Yeah, him.”
“That fuck with the goofy accent?”
“That fuck with the goofy accent.”
I thought about this news and what it meant. A tweaker with that much cash wasn’t long for this world. Somebody’d see to that.
“How much cash did that asshole Telly get?”
Big Tony threw up his hands. He didn’t know. Doyle shook his head too.
I took another drink of Southern Comfort and Mountain Dew and thought about my next move. The pic
ture was beginning to form in my head. Everything was coming together. Bruiser and Telly paid a visit to Norman Russo and they beat him to death with a baseball bat. Then they did a piss poor job of making it look like he’d killed himself. Telly probably wrote the suicide note.
“Well?” Big Tony asked.
I needed time to think. It was all happening fast and any money recovered from the heist would be split three ways instead of one—something I didn’t like, but accepted. I took the last mouthful of booze and the last two ice cubes shifted, sloshing drink on my face. I wiped my lip clean with my sleeve.
Doyle looked at me and I could tell they were going after the money with or without my help. My options were limited—work together or by myself. Three sets of eyes on the street were better than one. I shook the cubes together in my glass.
“Okay,” I said. “I assume you have a plan?”
Doyle and Big Tony’d been putting their heads together. The plan they came up with was simple.
They’d show up at the meeting spot without the drugs and they’d rob him.
“That’s the plan?” I asked.
Big Tony shrugged. “Works for me.”
“Works for me too,” Doyle agreed.
I pulled a Corona from the pocket of my sport coat and told Big Tony to turn up the heat.
•••••
The basement of the old church was bitter cold. A thick veneer of ice crusted the stained glass windows as each breath they took filled the room with heat for a moment. Telly’s naked body was strapped to the metal chair. His feet were submerged in metal buckets of ice water that were nearly frozen solid around each foot.
“Lean him back,” Sid ordered.
Telly was sickly pale white and shaking so badly his teeth crashed together when he tried for words.
Sid kicked the buckets out of the way when No Nuts tilted him back and water washed over the floor. Mr. Parker had picked the building up at auction for a song. Now they just used it for storage or a place to cut up bodies.
“Hey dickhole!” No Nuts barked. He slapped Telly in the face to wake him up.
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