“Thirty years ago, I screwed up.”
“I don’t want your apology for abandoning us.”
“That’s not it. I took something by accident. I was going to give it back, but then things spun out of control and it was too late, so I kept it.”
“What did you do?”
Duke scratched at his wrist, and Julia noticed the raised pink scars on his flesh as the shirtsleeve of his baby-blue shirt retracted up his arm slightly.
“I took a painting. An original Vincent van Gogh. It’s worth five million dollars. At least.”
CHAPTER 19
Julia scrambled to come up with her flight strategy as her eyes darted to the locked passenger door of her father’s car and then shot over to the steering wheel.
“Don’t bother,” Duke said, as if reading Julia’s mind. “You try to run the car off the road, we’ll both get killed. You’ve got two kids. Boys, right? That’s your something to hold on to. They always say boys will do anything for their moms. But girls can be loyal to their daddies, too. Do you remember that game we used to play? I’d give you a quarter if you could answer a line we rehearsed and impress one of my clients.”
“I was part of your show. Nice parenting, exploiting your own kid. You stole the van Gogh from Max Mueller?”
Duke turned toward Julia with a look of surprise.
“You know about Mueller? You’re something, I’ll give you that. Okay. Here’s how we’re going to play this. I’ll tell you what you want to know if you follow a few simple rules. Rule number one, crouch down on the seat so your head is facing the floor.”
“You don’t want me to know where you’re taking me,” Julia said.
“Smart and pretty my girl is. If you’d followed my career path, I think you could’ve made some real good money. Down on the seat, like I told you.”
The one-mile exit signs for I-75 North and South appeared on the horizon, and Julia tried to wait to give in to her father’s directive until she could figure out which route he was going to take.
“You want to know what happened to your brother, this is the only way you’ll ever know. You give me information, and I’ll give you some. Down on the seat. Now.”
“I swear, I’m going to get you for this,” Julia said as she folded her body and put her arms over her knees as she looked down at the gray car carpet. Julia’s eyes flicked to her left and she saw her father’s gun jutting out just slightly from the rear waistband of his pants.
Julia kept her eyes on her watch to try and figure out their location based on the time elapsed until she felt the Explorer decelerate. She shot a look at Duke, who pulled his cell phone from the dashboard and hit a number.
“Two minutes out. Open the garage like I told you. No, I didn’t bring food. Set the alarm again as soon as we drive in. I mean the instant.”
“Who’s that?” Julia asked.
Duke ignored Julia as his eyes moved to the right and left of the road in a constant motion, and then swung over to the rearview mirror in a steady rhythm.
“Twenty seconds out. Count to twelve and then open it,” Duke said, and then paused a beat. “Because I said so.”
Duke slid his dark glasses back on and sighed with annoyance. “God.”
Julia started to get up in the seat, but Duke pushed her back down. “Not yet. I’ll tell you when we’re clear.”
The Explorer barely slowed as Julia heard the sound of an industrial-sized door crank open. She looked up to see the top of the SUV barely clear the opening before it zoomed to a stop.
“Don’t move. Not yet.” Duke’s eyes stayed riveted on the rearview mirror until Julia heard the sound of the metal door connect with concrete as it came to a stop. “Okay. Get up.”
The muscles in Julia’s back felt like twisted coiled springs as she stretched back into an upright position. She quickly scanned the scene and saw they were in a garage that had a wall of exposed red brick and a single door with a security keypad next to it.
“Let’s go,” Duke said.
Julia got out of the car and trailed her father to the door, where he hit a quick six-digit combination of numbers and an almost-inaudible beep sounded as a security system deactivated and the door opened, revealing Duke’s accomplice. Julia felt like she got sucker punched in the gut when she instantly recognized the person on the other side of the door.
“What is this?” Julia asked. “You two are working together? I should’ve known. Two cons.”
“No, Julia. I swear,” Sarah said. “Duke showed up at my work out of the blue. He told me I was in danger and pulled a gun on me. He made me get into his car.”
“Sounds familiar,” Julia said.
“Enough talk. Let’s go,” Duke said. He motioned with his head for his daughters to walk in front of him as they entered the place.
Julia followed behind Sarah and could feel Duke right behind her. She tried not to fixate on the idea that she had a red bull’s-eye target Duke had placed on the back of her head while he kept his finger on the trigger, ready to fire.
The trio climbed three flights of stairs until they reached the main floor, which looked like an urban loft. The majority of the walls were comprised of expensive-looking cork and the floors were a burgundy polished bamboo. The place looked expensive and modern, like one of the upscale models Julia had seen advertised as hip, new urban housing in downtown Detroit, built by developers to keep the yuppies in, instead of making a mass exodus to better zip codes. Julia took one more look around and saw that the ceilings had silver exposed ducts piping through the place and the kitchen’s walls were made up of distressed red brick, enough details for the location to click.
“Nice place. From the distance we drove, we’re somewhere in downtown Detroit. And by the look of this place, I’m betting we’re in one of the new loft housing developments in the city, so either the Regis, the Hampshire, or D Street.”
“Very good,” Duke said. He took off his tie and rolled up both of his shirtsleeves.
Julia stared down at her father’s exposed right arm, which was nettled with a nasty map of scarring that ran from his wrist up to his elbow.
“A man I work for hooked me up. I told him I was in a jam, and I’d make it up to him.”
Julia walked over to a black curtain that covered a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows and tried to look outside, but Duke pulled her back.
“Sit down,” Duke said, and pointed to a table in the corner of the kitchen. Duke stood as his daughters took a seat across from each other.
“I’m tired of you making the rules. I need to know if Ben is alive,” Julia said.
Duke looked past his daughter at the black curtain and a veil seemed to pass over his face.
“I don’t see how he could be,” Duke said. “Tell me how you wound up in the park.”
“How did you know I was there?” Julia asked.
“I put a tracker on your car. I needed to figure out the game Max Mueller’s guys were playing. I knew they would start circling around you and Sarah to get to me.”
“I got a call from someone who said he was Ben and I was supposed to come alone and to meet him at Stinson Trail.”
“You fell for that?” Sarah asked.
“I’m not gullible, but the caller knew specific details of our lives that only Ben and I knew about.”
Duke’s eyes hung on Julia like a lock and wouldn’t let go.
“When I got to the park, I saw another car leaving in a hurry. It was a blue sedan driven by a younger man, maybe late thirties, with dark hair. It fits Ben’s age. But I don’t buy for a minute that it was Ben. The guy in the car could’ve been a decoy or just a random person driving through the park. You let yourself get suckered,” Duke said.
“All I know is that I need to figure this out, and you’re going to help me. Liam Mueller is after you, right?” Julia asked. “His father dies, and you think it’s safe to finally come back to Detroit to pick up the van Gogh, but you set off some kind of trip wire that alerted
Liam when you did.”
“Good reasoning, except I’m not sure if Liam is calling the shots, now that Max is dead. There’s another guy in St. Louis who could have taken over,” Duke said. “The FBI talked to you. What did you tell them?”
“That you were a selfish man who abandoned his family. I also told the agent that to my knowledge, you were dead and that you never contacted me after you took off when I was seven.”
“Good move. Thanks for that.”
“I didn’t do it for you. I lied to protect my family.”
“Who’s the agent?” Duke asked.
“Terry McKenzie.”
“Never heard of him,” Duke said.
“He goes by ‘Agent Kenny.’ He knows you’re alive,” Julia said. “Your version of twenty questions is over. I want answers now.”
“You toughened up, didn’t you, kid? I don’t know everything, but I’ll tell you what I can.”
“Will it be the truth?” Julia asked.
Duke sat down in a chair at the head of the table and flashed his daughter his brilliant smile.
“The truth is simply a juxtaposition of facts and lies. One man’s truth is another man’s falsehood,” Duke said as his eyes ticked back and forth between Julia and Sarah, the audience members for his show. “Some men are hardwired to be providers. They’re born to be alpha dogs, taking care of the wife and kids, but I never liked being tied down. You hate me now. I get that. But you would’ve hated me a lot more if I stuck around. I would’ve been miserable, and eventually I would’ve died inside.”
Duke jumped up from his seat and walked over to Julia. He got down on one knee so he was staring directly into her eyes. Julia wanted to look away, but felt a strange pull to Duke, as if he were luring her under his spell.
“It would’ve been terrible for you kids to live with me, a man depleted of his true nature. And I would’ve probably taken it out on you kids. I’ve seen men like that, weighed down by resentment that niggles underneath their skin like an eternal itch they can never scratch. What I did, it was the best for everyone,” Duke said. He stood back to his full height and rapped his knuckles against the table. “The world is one incredible big top, something truly marvelous to behold. I’m an ambitious, glorious bastard who was never able to get away from the pull of the circus. And I have no regrets about that.”
“You talk a steaming pile of shit,” Sarah said. “You think what you did was best for everyone? What you did ruined me. Kids whose parents don’t love them enough to take care of them get tossed around to people who don’t really want them either, or what they do want from them kills the kids a little bit more, each time they take it away, until the last piece of hope they have gets dried up for good. And then the kid is all gone, but they still have to keep on living in their shitty life.”
“Remember, I just saved both you girls,” Duke said.
“You brought this to us, asshole,” Sarah said.
“You want to lay into me, too, Julia? This is your chance,” Duke said.
“What you did, taking that painting, that’s why Ben was kidnapped? Why didn’t you go to the police?” Julia lunged up from her seat, wanting to grab Duke by the neck and choke him, but she steadied herself, knowing she had to stay calm if she was going to get what she needed out of him.
“I never meant for anything to happen. If you want to call me a bad man, well, I guess I am. But bad men, we come in many varieties, but I’m not of that particular ilk. I’d never hurt a kid, let alone my own.”
“I don’t want to hear about you anymore,” Julia said.
“Fine. You want the story, here it is. I met Max Mueller at a coffee shop outside the Detroit Institute of Arts about two weeks before I left Sparrow.”
“You mean left your kids,” Sarah said.
“A business associate I was with knew him,” Duke continued. “Max was an odd little man, walked with this strange, bent black cane that he didn’t need. The cane was just for show. Max and me, we hit it off. He needed a courier, and I knew he had a lot of cash, so I took the job. At first, it was easy pickups and drop-offs. I’d meet Max at his consignment store up in Birmingham and pick up a briefcase that was filled with cash. Max would give me an address and I’d drive there. Then I’d exchange the money for whatever it was Max was buying, mostly paintings and strange collectibles. That man had eclectic tastes that ran to the deviant. I almost quit when Max told me one lamp I picked up for him was made out of the skin of a concentration camp victim. Turned my stomach, but Max gave me a raise, so I stayed on. I realized pretty quick all the stuff Max was buying was hot, but it wasn’t my business and he paid me well.”
“That painting you stole, it cost me everything,” Julia said. “Tell me the truth. And don’t you dare lie to me. What happened?”
Duke’s eyes formed into half slits as he looked back into the deep abyss of his sins. And for the very first time in a very long time, he told the truth.
Thirty-seven-year-old Duke Gooden eased the seat back of the leased deep-red Cadillac and heard his neck crack as he twisted it from side to side to get the blood flowing again after the eight-hour car ride from St. Louis back home to Detroit. The pickup had gone without a hitch. The man he met, Louis Lemming, escorted him in like a high roller into the back of his bar and into the black leather booth reserved for back of his bar and into the black leather booth reserved for the VIPs. Louis and Duke smoked a Cuban cigar each, and Duke tried not to reveal his disgust when a girl, who was probably just a few years older than his fourteen-year-old daughter, Sarah, came into the back room to deliver the drinks wearing a face full of heavy makeup, a skimpy dress that barely hung past her thighs, and a worn look of a hard-lived life for a girl her age.
As Duke drove on through the early evening, he cringed as he remembered how Lemming had cocked his head toward the teenage girl and gave Duke a lewd smile. Duke figured Lemming to be about his age, but on appearance, they were quite different. Lemming was a fat man with a large, bulbous nose that was topped off with a dark mole on one side. He wore an expensive dark blue pin-striped suit, but everything about Lemming screamed cheap to Duke, like Lemming grew up on rough streets where hardened single mothers living in trailers raised their kids on food stamps and government-issued cheese. No amount of spit or polish could remove the stain of dirty redneck from him.
Duke passed the Michigan/Ohio border and thought about his meeting with Lemming to pass the remainder of the drive.
“You like what you see?” Lemming asked Duke as he gave the underage girl a lecherous stare.
Duke politely declined the offer and reached around the briefcase, which was handcuffed to his wrist, for his wallet as he tipped the waitress a fifty because he felt sorry for her.
When Lemming slipped to his back office to pick up what Duke had come for, Max’s latest painting or weird artifact he’d just purchased, Duke leaned into the teenage girl and gave her a piece of advice.
“Go home, young lady,” Duke said. “You don’t belong in a place like this.”
The girl looked back at Duke and then turned her face away. “I wish I could.”
Duke decided not to push the matter further and spotted Lemming coming out of the back room. Lemming gestured with his head toward the rear exit and the street and slipped out of the bar. Duke took his cue and picked up the briefcase gingerly, because it felt much heavier than the usual load, and made his way out to the street and his Cadillac. He laid the briefcase down on the seat, looking forward to the moment when he could untether the damn thing from his wrist, and pulled into the side street that led to a loading dock and the back of the bar.
This wasn’t the first time Duke had dealt with Lemming. Lemming and Mueller had some sort of ongoing business transactions that Duke wasn’t fully primed about, since he was relegated to just being the pickup/drop-off guy. For now anyway, but Duke had big dreams and he was sure if he stayed on with Max, they would happen.
Duke was new, but still savvy enough not to trust
Lemming. As he looked at the broken beer bottles lying underneath the loading dock, he quickly came up with a strategy in his head if things went bad.
Duke exited the car with the briefcase and eyed Lemming, who came out the rear exit empty-handed.
“Give me the briefcase,” Lemming said.
“No exchange until I see what my boss ordered.”
Lemming gave him a mean smile with small, square teeth and ducked back behind the rear exit door. Duke counted in his head to thirty when Lemming returned with a long, narrow box.
“That’s it?” Duke asked.
“Doesn’t look like much, but it’s a beauty. And it’s got a hidden surprise. How much cash you got in the briefcase?”
Duke shrugged his shoulders because he truly didn’t know. Duke would’ve looked if he could have; in fact, he was dying to, and would have likely been more than tempted to lift some, but Max had specific rules. Duke wasn’t given the combination to the lock that opened the briefcase. The way the deals went down, Duke delivered a briefcase full of cash handcuffed to his wrist in exchange for whatever Max decided to buy on the black market. Once the deal was complete, Duke unlocked the handcuffs, and Lemming made a phone call directly to Max, who would give him the code to unlock the briefcase and access the cash.
Lemming began to snatch at the briefcase, which made the handcuffs cut into Duke’s wrist. Duke started to reach in his pocket with his free hand for the straight-edge razor he kept as protection for moments like this one. A gun would’ve been better, but Duke was scared to death of the things.
“Now, now, Louis. We’re all friends here,” Duke said, and smiled so wide, he could feel the muscles in his face ache.
“Okay. Give me the briefcase,” Lemming answered, and took a step back from Duke and the money.
Duke unclasped the handcuff from his wrist and then did the same for the twin metal snap that was still attached to the briefcase.
“All yours,” Duke said. “Have a nice night.”
Duke reached for the painting that was propped up against the wall next to the loading dock, when Lemming motioned for his bodyguard. “Not until I call your boss with the combination and I count the cash.”
Worth Killing For Page 20