Al backhanded him. “No. Fuck you, Robbie. You aren’t being very polite, but I’ll forgive you and still give you my counter-offer. You take Dom and as much shit from your doubtlessly shitty apartment as you can fit in your car and you get the fuck out of Chicago.”
“Out of Chicago? You’re high.”
“Nope. I’m not high. And out of Chicago wasn’t really that clear. I want you out of the upper Midwest. I’m going back to the West Coast, so I don’t want your ass there. You can’t go back to Jersey.” Robbie’s head whipped toward Al. “Yeah, I know all about you, you little tin-pot asshole. So that leaves…not a lot of places. I think you should go to Arkansas. I don’t think anyone will come to get you there. But listen well, my little friend. I talked with some people…some of the real people from the real families. You weren’t supposed to pull this shit again. Someone asked me if I wanted you killed. Are you hearing this, Robbie? Someone asked me if I wanted you killed.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, don’t make me regret being a nice guy. I want you gone by tomorrow at ten a.m. I’ll have people start looking then. If you’re found, I’ll make a call and take those people up on their kind offer.”
“What about all my shit here? I can’t get it moved by then.”
“You don’t understand the gravity of your situation.” Bud chirped in happily. He was sitting in a chair with his gun trained on Dom. Dom was beginning to stir a little, but Bud had definitely rung the man’s bell.
Al pulled out his Marshal’s badge. He showed it to Robbie. “You know what that is?”
“Oh, Jesus, fuck! You’re a Marshal?”
“Actually just a deputy Marshal. Technically, all Marshals are deputies. Do you know what the Marshals do? What their purview is?”
“Great word, Al.”
“Thanks, Bud. Well?”
“No. Not exactly. Just that the Marshals are a bunch of heavy-duty motherfuckers.”
“Well, you can Google it if you want, but one of the things we take care of is property that has been attained in an illegal fashion. I could push and take all of your assets, but I’m not interested in doing that. I’ll keep everything in this office. You can keep everything you have stashed elsewhere that you can pack up and have out of town by ten a.m. If you’re around at ten, I’ll have you killed.”
“You can’t do this.” Robbie said this as if to convince himself more than anyone else.
Bud said, “Actually, he can. I’m a detective with the CPD, and if I file charges against you for illegal activity, then we get the ATF involved, then Al confiscates your stuff…well, how long do you think you’ll stay alive in general population after making the mob, the real mob, look like a bunch of assholes…again.”
Robbie thought about it then finally slumped down in his chair. “No use arguing, huh?”
“Nope. Just remember, this is what a favor from me feels like. You’ll probably be pissing pink for a few days as a direct result of an Al McNair favor.”
“I get it. Let me get Dom, and we’ll get out.”
“Office keys and the concession keys to the theatre. All of the theatre keys. You won’t need them because you’re never coming back here again. Anything I should know about before you turn into a ghost?”
“No. How did you know? I thought I was playing this cool, ya know? Like super chill.”
“You were. You know that guy Dirk? The guy that fell on a sword. The guy I replaced?”
“Yeah?” Al could see Robbie’s gears turning, like he was trying to remember if he’d told Dirk something incriminating.
“Well, I got here and things didn’t feel right, so I started looking into what I thought could be a murder. I was asking a question to Frieda when you were having your meeting with Marty. I got a bad feeling about it. It wasn’t like a danger feeling, it was more like biting into a rotten peanut. So I made you an offer to slow you down, did some research, and found out what was what. You need to go legit. I don’t think you’re capable of keeping a low profile. You’re just smart enough to be really fuckin’ dumb, Robbie.”
“Story of my life. I’ll get Dom.”
“You can grab a couple things from here as you leave, but not much, and once you leave here, this place is mine.”
“What if I come back with muscle?” Robbie was trying one last tactic before going down with his ship. Apparently, his ship was going to sink to Arkansas.
“You don’t have any. If you hire junkies to come back here, you’ll be dead before sunset tomorrow. So will Dom. If other prospects I’m working on are frustrating me at the time, I’ll hunt down your extended family and have them killed.”
“How, man? You’re a fucking Marshal.”
“Deputy Marshal,” said Bud, cheerfully.
“Robbie, it’s complicated. There are people I love I haven’t even told about it yet. I do a lot of moving between the lines.”
“Well, thanks for not killing me, I guess. Can I get something out of the desk?”
“Sure. If it’s a weapon, I’ll stuff it up your ass.”
Robbie opened the top drawer, grabbed a wad of keys with a tag that said “Majestic,” another smaller bunch that had a tag that said “office,” and a manila envelope with no markings on it at all.
“What’s in the envelope?”
“Come on, man. It’s cash. We have to split and get set up somewhere else. We need walking-around money.”
Al thought for a second. He wanted to take the money just to be an asshole, but in a small flash of inspiration, he realized that letting them leave with the dough would make them more enthusiastic about pulling up stakes and leaving town. “OK. You can have the envelope. In exchange, I want the address of the place where you’ve been living. I’ll send a crew in after you leave and clean the place out. I’ll keep what I find and make sure there are no prints or anything left behind. We’ll clean it real good.” He was thinking about the janitor at the Majestic. Maybe Lenny could use a little side work. “Write the address and leave one set of keys. Forget the security deposit. Turn off your utilities over the phone in the next day or two. I’ll make sure the rental people are OK voiding your rental contract.”
“Thanks. That’s nice of you.”
“You’ve been such a shit, I just want you to be a perfect shit. I want you to be fast, painless, and as little of a problem to clean up after before I flush you and forget you.”
Robbie made a face. “That was gross, man. I can dig it.” He had scrawled his address on a piece of paper and had put two keys off of his key ring on top of the paper. “If that’s all, I need to collect Dom and leave. We’re short on time.”
“That you are,” said Bud. He taken a small cloth wrapped glass capsule out of his jacket pocket. He held the little package under Dom’s nose and broke the glass. The old-school smelling salts worked their magic, and soon Dominic was working into a standing position. Robbie had taken it upon himself to explain things to Dom. He didn’t want the big guy doing anything rash. Dom just nodded.
Bud opened the door for the two of them. “Hey, man. It may not feel like it right now, but Al just did you a favor, a big favor. You have some cash, and Dom looks strong as an ox. Go down to the coast. Get some legit work in the fishing industry down there. You won’t get rich, but you can live well if you’re willing to work hard. You may even find it’s less work that what you’ve been doing here. Less pussy, but also less risk. Think about it. The world is what you make of it. Now get the fuck out of my city and don’t come back, or I’ll shoot you myself.”
Robbie and Dom slunk staggering out of the office and closed the door behind them. Bud stood and watched the door for a few moments before looking at Al. “You think that’ll work?”
“Yes. I’d bet a large amount of money on it working as planned. The people this guy fucked over in Jersey are seriously bad news. He’s scared of them. I mean, sure, he’s scared of us now, too, I suppose. But the fear of the people from Atlantic City probably trumps his fear o
f us, and it should. Those guys are sharks.”
“What’s the plan now?”
“We find you a bottle of Pinch for your buddy and a bottle of whatever you want for you. Tomorrow, I’ll have people come over here and move all the booze over to the theatre. I’ll drop the keys off first thing tomorrow morning. You still going to that parole meeting tomorrow?”
Bud sighed. “Yeah. I have to. I already called, but that’s not why. I need to see what this Eric fellow is like. Get a feel for him and decide if he is on the inside of this thing or just another patsy. To be honest, Al? This is the most interesting case I’ve worked in years.”
“And if this mess gets solved, you get to take all the credit. I don’t want credit or publicity, so you get to look like super cop. I just have a bad feeling…” he trailed off.
“Bad feeling about what?”
“It just doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a happy ending. That’s all. I’d like a happy ending. Something neat, clean, and tied up in an easy little package. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
“You can always ask. You should always ask. A closed mouth doesn’t get fed.”
“Couldn’t have said that better myself. Now grab your booze, and lets all go find our respective women. I think we’ve earned some quality time relaxing. Things are going to speed up, Bud. I can feel it. I just hope this little storm doesn’t turn into a tornado. I’ve always hated that about the Midwest.”
“Asshole serial killers?”
“No. Twisters. If you aren’t careful, your house ends up squishing some innocent witch.”
They took a cursory look around, grabbed the bottles of booze for Bud and his friend, and then locked up the place. The night was young, and Al wanted to do some important snuggling. He also wanted to talk with Edith about the recently deceased Lance Henderson.
49
Eric sat with his back against the wall and his head below the lower sill of the office’s window. The telescoping mirror he had been using to spy on Robbie’s place was resting on his knees. Eric’s eyes were fixed on a point in front of him. At first glance, one would think he was staring at the off-white wall, but his eyes were focused miles off into the distance and at the same time scanning the inside of his own mind. He used to do this on long nights in Joliet. He would focus on the cot’s springs that were a mere three feet from his eyes, but in his mind he was out of his body, out of his cell, and off in some mysterious place where only he could go.
He was in that place now, floating, hoping for some flash of inspiration that would make sense out of what he had seen tonight. So far, the only thing this little mental exercise had done for him was to convince him he was in way over his head and things were going to get worse, a lot worse, before they made any miniscule movement back to something that resembled normal.
Robbie and Dom had been expecting Al and whoever Al was with to show up at the office. Robbie was in his “this is business” suit of clothes. Things were cleaned up a little. The fucking drink trolley with the offensive little ice tongs was present and accounted for. Drinks were offered. Apparently, the guy with Al didn’t merit a drink. Eric had heard scuttlebutt at the theatre about how Al didn’t drink alcohol. True to rumor, Al was having a club soda. Robbie was having a rum and Coke. Dom was playing bartender. All was going smoothly for the four of them in their little meeting, whatever that might have been about.
Then Al and Robbie got up and looked in the room where all the booze was stored. Eric had thought a couple of times about coming over and setting the room on fire, but he had been waiting for a better time. Right after checking the storage room, shit got weird. Al and his friend were bracing Robbie and Dom for some reason. They’d quickly and effectively subdued the two of them, then they started a bunch of talking. Eric had no way of knowing what was being discussed. He had almost bugged the place a few weeks back, but figured if he ever had serious questions about old Robbie, he’d just come over and kill him. He’d kill his idiot cousin and burn them both in the office together.
So, Eric couldn’t hear anything, but he saw something that made his blood run cold. Al drew a little leather wallet and opened it. There was a badge inside. Eric couldn’t see any detail from this distance in his extension mirror. He acted on instinct. He grabbed his personal cell phone. It as a Galaxy with a 10x zoom and a 20.8 mega pixel camera. He had bought it for this reason exactly. If he needed to snap a picture at a distance with any kind of picture quality to speak of, he could do it with this camera. He turned it on, made sure the flash was off, and zoomed in on the little badge. He clicked seven shots then ducked back down and finished his spying with the mirror on a stick.
In the end, Al and his buddy had let the two go. Before leaving, they had left Al a bunch of keys and even scribbled down an address to go with one set of keys. Robbie and Dom only took one fat envelope with them. Eric guessed it had money in it. After the two of them left, Al and his friend talked a little, laughed a little, grabbed a couple of bottles of booze from the storage room, and left. Eric watched them leave the office, and a few moments later they left the building together, talking and laughing like old friends. They seemed like they were in a good mood. They seemed like friends. Eric felt a small butterfly of jealously and rage unfurl and flap its wings in his belly before going back to its uneasy slumber.
When he was sure they were gone and not coming back, Eric looked at the pictures on his phone. The first three pictures were blurry. His plan was to zoom the display in on the picture that had been taken with a zoom. With a high resolution camera, you could get a 10x zoom on a picture that was zoomed in 10x. With 20.8 megapixels, he could see if a gnat was a boy or a girl at 300 yards. The problem was, if the original picture was blurry, zooming in on the image would make the blur worse. He tried zooming in briefly on pictures one, two, and three. They were all too blurry.
Then he looked at picture number four. It was clear as a bell. Being zoomed in at maximum zoom in less-than-perfect lighting conditions and getting a picture that was so crystal clear was a miracle beyond imagining, but sometimes even non-existent gods smile at mere mortals.
Once you zoomed in on the image, you had to touch the screen and drag the zoomed image around. Only a part of the picture would fit on your screen when it was “super zoomed in.” He zoomed in one click, re-centered on the object in Al’s hand, zoomed again and re-centered. By the fifth time he zoomed, he was pretty sure; by the seventh time, there was no doubt in his mind. He didn’t even look at it in 8x, 9x, or 10x. Eric could very clearly make out the cut-out of a star sitting on a circle. The circle said Special Deputy on the top. Al’s hand obscured part of the bottom, but Eric knew it said United States Marshal. There was an eagle in the middle of the star. The picture quality was so good, Eric thought on 10x he’d be able to count the arrows in the quiver the eagle had clutched in its great talon.
Now he was sitting and trying to think. Nothing was coming. Al was either a deputy US Marshal or he wasn’t. Eric had snuck in and seen Al do some acting and he was really quite good--excellent, in fact. So if he was a US Marshal, he was an actor as well. He was also good at stage combat. None of the research Eric had done had pointed anything at the idea of Al being an officer of the law in any official sense. He was just a PI from some shitty little town in California. OK. Not shitty little town. It was the state capitol after all. Shitty big town. Eric thought petulantly. It was neither amusing nor was it helpful. He banished the thought.
He also didn’t know who the guy with Al was. He struck Eric as a cop. He’d been around them long enough to recognize one of the ranks. He had that cop look, whatever that meant. But the two of them had just rousted two criminals and seemed to have run them out of town. There was a deeper meaning here, but Eric didn’t have the information he needed, nor would he be getting it tomorrow, because he had to go fuck around in Rockford. He could call in sick, but his PO might just decide to drive by the little farm Eric had rented. He’d come by twice in the beginn
ing, and Eric was at home both times. It was before he’d set up a base of operations in Chicago. He had dropped by the farm one other time and Eric was out, which wasn’t strictly what he was supposed to have been doing. He told the guy he could zip home, but his PO didn’t really give a fuck. Eric was about as much danger as a kitten in his opinion. He was wrong.
Eric was going to have to stick to his plan. He’d finish the floors back at the Majestic, drop his shit at his apartment, drive to Rockford, drop off his van where his shitty little Toyota pickup was stored, drive the pickup to the farm, and sleep. The next day he’d go to his eleven o’clock appointment, then come back to the house and do his chores. He needed to mow and generally get the outside of the house looking nice. In the Midwest, looks weren’t everything, but they were a lot.
Eric got up, packed his stuff in his little work bag, checked to make sure he’d left no signs of being there, and exited down the stairs and out into the cool night. He had much to accomplish before he slept tonight, but he’d use the time to think about the problem and try to figure out if he needed to change or augment his hunting list. Al was being an inconvenient addition to this exercise, and Eric thought he might just have to simplify the problem.
He kept thinking as he was driving back to the theatre and as he was finishing the carpets. If he got rid of Al, it would surely stop the production at the Majestic. He’d thought of offing Gill and Sheena in the same night, preferably in the same place. He wanted to make it look like a murder/suicide. He’d save Marty for last. Marty had always wanted to be in charge and have all the power. It was like the lesson Spiderman had learned (the hard way): with great power came great responsibility. He was going to put a small cut in Marty’s jugular then hang him from his feet above the bathtub. It would take a couple of hours to bleed out like that. Eric had planned on watching the whole thing. Now, if he had to fit Al into the matrix, he’d have to change everything. He might have to kill them all together in a fire in the Majestic. As much as he hated the idea of “going off script” for this, burning the place down did have a certain allure. He could turn off the water mains, lock the doors, and make sure the fire was really rolling by the time the firemen were even alerted.
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