On the Street Where You Die (Stanley Bentworth mysteries Book 1)

by Al Stevens

  One of those off-again periods had given me a low time in my life. I tried marriage. A failed experiment. I was not cut out for wedlock. Neither was my wife. It came to an end when she ran off with my best friend. I sure do miss him.

  When the divorce was final, I got back with Bunny, which lasted less than a year, ending when she met the man of her dreams, which was how it usually ended. That was six months ago. As usual, we remained friends, a necessity because of Ray’s cooking.

  I figured Bunny would go easy on a guy in a divorce, a hell of a criterion for choosing a girlfriend, but with experience comes wisdom. And caution.

  Bunny had been the perfect girlfriend. She didn’t spend our times together saying what an asshole her ex-husband was. Or what she’d do when she won the lottery. Or snore.

  I took a seat in a booth and looked out the window at the run-down building that housed my office across the street. The building hadn’t aged well.

  Then I looked at Bunny. She had aged well. She still looked good for an old broad. Sexy women who take care of themselves stay sexy as time passes. Bunny had taken care of herself. A little wider in the middle and at the hips and a few lines on her face, but it was only a matter of perspective. I’d been without female companionship since we broke up. A couple more months of that and Grandma Walton would have looked good.

  She leaned against the booth and crossed one ankle over the other. Her skirt was just above the knees. Her knees had aged well.

  “Hi, Stan. You look like shit.”

  “Good to see you too.”

  “Maybe if you’d shave. Or change your shirt.”

  “Or blow my brains out.”

  “What happened? The usual?”

  “Yep. Hangover. Chronic.”

  She poured me a cup of coffee and scribbled on her order pad without asking what I wanted. Bunny knew I’d eat whatever she brought. Like being married but without the baggage. Ham or bacon and eggs, usually. Eggs cooked however it fancied her. Eggs didn’t sound so good this morning. I figured I might be able to get down a feather soufflé if I took it slow.

  Bunny put the order through the window to Ray in the kitchen, came back, sat across from me, and handed me a mint. Subtle, but effective.

  “So, what’s new?” she asked.

  “Same ol’, same ol’,” I said.

  “What were you celebrating?”

  “Got a new client.”

  “So, did you have to drink up the whole fee in one night.”

  “He helped. I don’t drink alone. Unless there’s nobody around.”

  “Another husband with a cheating wife?”

  “No, a financier.” I lowered my voice. I could trust Bunny. Well, to a point. “Guy named Overbee.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” she said. “He’s been in some kind of deep shit for hustling hedge funds.”

  Was I the only person who never heard of my client?

  “What’s a hedge fund?” I asked.

  “Beats me,” she said. “But apparently they can get you in deep shit. The TV news people are all over each other trying to get him on camera. Nobody knows what he looks like.”

  “I do.”

  “So? What’s he look like?”

  “Big guy. Good looking in a rough kind of way. You’d like him. Reminds me of that jerk you dumped me for last time. B-B-B-Barry, the body builder. He still around?”

  “No. It didn’t last. Barry was too much into himself. Muscle shirts and never met a mirror he didn’t love. If we weren’t talking about Barry, he’d change the subject. And I couldn’t stand the stutter.”

  She wiped the table with her cloth. It didn’t need it, but it gave her something to look busy with while we talked.

  “So Overbee looks like Barry?” she said.

  She sounded interested. “Some. But older. Don’t get your hopes up. He has a twenty-two year old wife.”

  “Don’t they all?”

  I looked at her some more. The hangover got in the way, but I still found her attractive. I always felt like she found me convenient rather than attractive.

  “So you’re available again?” I said.

  “Who said I’m available?”

  “Just guessing. B-B-B-Barry’s out of the picture, and your body language has an allure to it, that unmistakable seductive, sensuous come-hither quality. That’s usually a good sign.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Neither do I, but it worked the last time I used it.”

  She laughed, got up, refilled my coffee, and went to see about my breakfast.

  While I waited, Rodney came in and sat down.

  “I thought you’d be here,” he said. “Here’s the name and address you wanted.”

  He handed me a sheet of paper with the name Mario Vitole scrawled on it along with a phone number and an address in a residential section on the south side of town.

  “Vitole. Sounds like a wise guy. Good work, Rodney. Didn’t take that long.”

  “Yeah, it was easy. The guy’s mail server is local. Here in town. It runs under an old version of Linux. I got in by downloading the password file and decrypting—”

  “That’s okay. You want breakfast?”

  “No, I had a Hershey Bar and a Coke.”

  “Don’t talk like that when I’m hung over. Here’s your next assignment.”

  I took out Buford’s card, took a napkin from the dispenser, and copied down Buford’s cell phone number.

  “Can you find out where the owner of this cell phone lives based on the number? It’s our client’s cell.”

  “You don’t know where your client lives?”

  “No. He keeps a lot to himself. Can you get his address?”

  Rodney shrugged and put the napkin in his pocket. “I can do better than that. If he’s got the GPS turned on, I can find out where he is at any time.”

  “That works. Wherever he spends his nights is probably his house. It’ll be in the Heights. But how can you do that? Without too much geek-speak, please. Can anyone do it?”

  I was thinking about my own cell phone and whether I could be tracked too.

  “No. You need software. The FBI has it on their main server.”

  “And of course you can get into the FBI’s server.” Nothing about Rodney’s computer skills surprised me any more.

  “Easy. I’ve done it a bunch of times. You start by—”

  “Can I turn off the GPS in my own phone?”

  “Yes. In the Settings app.”

  He took my phone and showed me how to disable the GPS.

  “And that prevents the FBI and geeks like you from tracking me?”

  “Sure does.”

  “Good to know. Okay, try to get this guy’s home address. Get back to me when you got it.”

  Rodney got up to leave. I said, “Sit down. There’s one more thing.”

  He sat.

  “Our client is being blackmailed. The owner of that e-mail address you hacked is the blackmailer. He uses an OnlinePay account for the payoffs. You know what that is?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can you hack into that account?”

  “Yep. I just need to—”

  “What can you do once you’ve hacked in there?”

  “I can do anything he can do. Get the balance, send money to someone, transfer money to another account, and like that. You see, the service’s main server—”

  “Don’t do it yet. But we might need to later. I’ll be back in the office after breakfast.”

  Speaking of breakfast, Bunny brought it. She sat it down in front of me, looked at Rodney, and read the inscription on his taco shirt. She almost choked and snorted to keep from laughing, turned, and hurried back into the kitchen.

  After Rodney left, I looked carefully at my breakfast. The sight and smell of bacon and eggs probably would have made me hurl right there in the diner, but Bunny had been gentle. Oatmeal, cantaloupe, and a slice of unbuttered wheat toast.

  Why do we call it “unbuttered?
” It makes it sound like the toast was previously buttered and someone removed the butter. It should be “non-buttered.” Same with “unsweetened.” I worry about shit like that.

  Bunny came out of the kitchen and sat down across from me.

  “Enjoy. You want to talk?”

  “You talk,” I said, my mouth full of non-buttered toast. “I’ll chew.”

  She pushed forward so that her tits rested on the tabletop. I kind of choked on a swallow of oatmeal. She knew what she was doing.

  “About me being available. I guess I am. You interested?”

  Here we go again. I swallowed the oatmeal, washed it down with coffee, wiped my mouth with a napkin, and looked her in the face, not easy to do when her boobs were rubbing back and forth on the table and showing their cleavage inside her non-buttoned blouse. She had that doe-eyed look that always made me wilt. She knew it too.

  “You know, Bunny, we’ve been down this road before.”

  “Yeah, and maybe we’ll go down it again. And maybe not.” She pulled away from the table, looked around the diner and ran her hand through her hair. “I’m getting a little long in the tooth, Stan. I’m not the hottie I used to be. You got a better chance of hanging on to me now.”

  Bunny had given me a picture of herself in a two-piece bathing suit. I kept it in my desk drawer. With the onset of middle age, she had gone down a few notches on the Bo Derrick scale and had to lower her standards and go out with guys like me. Until she found better, that is. Then it would turn into the old maybe-we-should-see-other-people, let’s-stay-friends routine. What could you do?

  I shook my head. “It sure flatters a guy when a woman wants him only because she’s too old to attract younger men.”

  “I thought you’d feel that way. I’m sorry. You want to go out for a drink tonight?”

  “I quit drinking?”

  “Bullshit. When?”

  “About a half hour ago when I realized that a fried egg would decorate the linoleum. So I’m off the sauce. It’s easier to give up than eating.”

  “We’ve been down that road too.”

  “Yes, we have.”

  “Well, think about it. Stop by at quitting time if you’re willing. Since you’re on the wagon, maybe you can come by my place for a taco.”

  She laughed again and returned to the kitchen.

  Chapter 4

  I finished my breakfast, left money on the table, and headed back across the street to the office. I felt better already. Must have been the healthy breakfast.

  The day looked like a nice one for late autumn. It was chilly, and I pulled my trench coat around me, but the sun was shining, and the wind was down. I went in the building and climbed the stairs, an easier climb than this morning’s. I went in and took off my trench coat.

  “Any messages, Willa?”

  “Your sister called. Not urgent.”

  “Anything left from that thousand?”

  “No.”

  “We still in debt?”

  “Yes.”

  I sounded out Willa on the Bunny situation.

  “I got news. Bunny’s back on the market,” I said.

  “So?”

  “She wants me back.”

  Willa sniffed. “That’s not news. For how long this time?”

  I couldn’t answer that.

  “You know how this is going to turn out,” she said. “Just like always.”

  I didn’t want that debate so I changed the subject. “You think I’d be more attractive to women if I took up body building?”

  “Maybe if you built one from scratch. Not much to work with there.” She laughed.

  “Thanks a lot. I just don’t know how to hang onto a woman. Particularly one who goes for younger men.”

  “Rogaine, a face lift, liposuction, and AA might help. Not in that order.”

  Willa didn’t approve of my drinking. I didn’t want to get into that one either, so I went into my office.

  Rodney was at my desk, his face in the laptop, his fingers tapping the keys faster than the notes in a Kenny G solo.

  I sat in the guest chair, took out my phone, and called my sister.

  “Hi, Mandy, what’s up?”

  “Is Rodney there?” she asked.

  “Yes. He’s here working on a problem for me.”

  “He ought to be in school.”

  “He graduated, remember?”

  “I mean in college. Smart kid like that. Can he hear us?”

  “No. Did you buy him that shirt?”

  “What shirt?”

  “The one with the taco on it.”

  She giggled. “I bought that for me to wear to aerobics. He keeps taking it.”

  “Burn it. What do you need, Mandy?”

  “I’ve been seeing a guy, an Army Captain assigned to where I work. We’ve been out a few times to the Officer’s Club and out on his boat. A real nice river cruiser. He’s got my phone number, but when I ask for his, he changes the subject.”

  “What’s his name? Where’s he live?”

  “Jeremy Pugh. Somewhere around here. I don’t know exactly where.”

  “I’ll call you back,” I said and clicked off the phone.

  I couldn’t blame the guy for liking Amanda. She was in her early thirties, a pretty, single mom with only Rodney to worry about. She got all the beauty genes in our family. She did not, however, get the brainy genes, and she counted on me to solve most of life’s problems.

  “Rodney,” I said.

  He stopped typing and looked up.

  “Look up Captain Jeremy Pugh somewhere in the Metro area, and get me his home number.”

  “Is that the prick Mom’s been going out with?”

  “That’s the prick.”

  After some rapid-fire keystrokes, Rodney read off a phone number.

  I keyed the number on my phone and waited. A woman’s voice answered.

  “Mrs. Pugh?”

  “Yes?” She was a young woman. Not the Captain’s mother, I’d bet.

  “Is Captain Pugh there?”

  “Why no. He’s at work.”

  “Okay. I must have missed him. Is this the Captain’s wife?”

  “Yes, this is Bernadine Pugh.”

  “Okay, ma’am. Sorry to have troubled you.”

  I rang off and called Amanda again.

  “He’s married, Mandy.”

  Silence. Then, “I was afraid of that. My usual luck. What do I do now? I’m supposed to go out with him again on Friday. Meeting him at the O club.”

  “Stand him up. His wife’s name is Bernadine. If he troubles you again, tell him you’ll call her. Or his Commanding Officer. Or me.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “Good, solid police work. Comes from years of experience. I looked him up in the phone book and called. His wife answered.”

  “Thanks, Stanley.”

  I rang off and put the phone on the desk. Rodney looked up.

  “What was all that about,” he asked.

  “Your Mom. Made another bad choice.”

  “The Captain?”

  “That’s the one. What’s he like?”

  “Average guy. You know.”

  “Seem to be the combat type? Like maybe a Ranger? Afghanistan or something?”

  “Him? No. What’s Mom going to do?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “She’ll never learn,” Rodney said.

  “She never will,” I said.

  He pointed to the laptop. “Okay, Uncle Stanley. Look at this.”

  I rolled the chair around to see the screen. It displayed a page with the FBI logo and a street map, crosshairs on the map, and some text in an adjacent box.

  “This is where the client’s cell phone is right now,” Rodney said, indicating the crosshairs. “It’s in the Heights just like you said.”

  “I wonder if that’s his residence or an office.”

  “Wait.”

  Rodney clicked and typed. A big picture of the earth displayed. It spu
n and zoomed in and stopped with an overhead view of a street and some houses. More clicks and the monitor showed the front of the house, a large mansion with a circular, tree-lined driveway.

  “Nice place,” I said. “I’ll have to pay a visit to my old drinking buddy Buford.”

  “Can I go?” Rodney asked.

  “Not dressed like that, you can’t. That’s a gated community. One look at that shirt and hairdo, and the security guard slams the gate down and calls the cops.”

  “You don’t look all that spiffy yourself, Uncle Stanley.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m going home soon. A nap, shower and shave, and a change of clothes will get me past the guard. I think it would take more of a major overhaul for you. No offense.”

  “None taken. I like how I dress.”

  “I don’t mind it all that much, but if you want to get on the client side of this business, you have to conform.”

  “Some day.”

  I pointed at the laptop. “See if you can get into the U.S. Marshals Service witness protection database.”

  “Let’s see.”

  More clicking and typing.

  “There,” he said. “What do you need?”

  “Buford Overbee. That would be the witness’s new identity.”

  Click, click, tap, tap. “This the guy? I found him in the archives.”

  The screen showed front and side mug shots of Buford from about ten years ago accompanied by his description, rap sheet, and notes about his case. The physical description was about right. His hair in the photos was darker with touches of gray, and his name had been Anthony Curro. His street name was “Collector.”

  His rap sheet had countless minor offenses: extortion, assault, witness tampering, and the like. No convictions, though. The last charge was the big one. Murder. One dead drug dealer to account for. He had made a deal to roll on his bosses for the feds, and they lowered the charges.

  The notes said that they had had an open-and-shut case with possible death penalty implications. But because the victim had been a drug dealer, they pled it down to a charge that drew time served and put Buford in witness protection.

  A final notation said that Anthony Curro aka Buford Overbee aka “Collector” was no longer an active case. He had opted out of witness protection about five years ago.