by Al Stevens
“It? You mean I’ll never see you again? We can’t stay friends like before?”
“Oh, you’ll see me. Ray makes too good a burger. I’m cutting you out, not Ray. From now on, Bunny, you’re just the waitress. Bring my food, take my money, and just don’t talk to me. I can’t do this anymore.”
I left her crying, went back to the office, and gave my notebook to Rodney.
“Copy these notes to the whiteboard,” I said. “I take good notes, so you shouldn’t need much translation. If you don’t understand something, mark it and ask me about it tomorrow.”
I got the bottle from the desk drawer and left without saying anything more to Willa or Rodney. She knew better than to ask what was wrong. She’d seen me through the same thing enough times before.
I threw the bottle in my car for later and went to Oliver’s for now. Sammy was on duty, my friend, my shoulder to cry on, my ear to bend. There were a few customers there. I limped up to the bar and hoisted my broken body onto a barstool.
“What the hell happened to you?” Sammy asked. He pushed a tumbler of a double Jack neat in front of me.
“Got beat up by two guys.”
“On a case?” he asked. He was drying glasses from the washer and putting them on a glass shelf behind the bar.
“Yeah. A couple mokes playing soldier.”
“You sure do look like shit.”
“I get that all the time.”
“You charge extra for getting beat up?”
“Pro bono. Helping my sister.”
“Ain’t that always the way?”
I knocked back the double and pushed the glass across to him.
“You need some pain killers, Stan? I got some good stuff. Muscle relaxers.”
“Pour.”
He filled the glass. Sammy’s doubles were more like triples, and it didn’t take long for them to take a guy down.
“Drinking heavy tonight?”
“Yeah. Got problems.”
“With the beat-down?”
“No.”
“The problem named Bunny?” Sammy had helped me through this mess a couple times before. He knew the signs.
“It is. Just when you think everything’s kosher, she yanks the rug.”
“Why do you put up with it, Stan?”
“I don’t know. Best blow job in town might be a good reason.”
He finished drying his last tumbler and went down the bar to refill a draft beer for another customer. Then he came back.
“How do you know she’s the best blow job in town? Have you had all the blow jobs in town?”
“Had my share,” I said. “Bunny’s the best. Of course, the worst one I ever had was wonderful.”
I pushed the tumbler across again, he poured.
“So what are you telling me?” Sammy asked. “You fell in love with a blow job?”
“You would too. Bunny’s nickname is ‘the Spoiler.’”
“How’s that?”
“Once she’s waxed your carrot, you’re spoiled for anyone else.”
“The Spoiler. That’s pretty good. But you’ve had some nice ladies. What happened to that wife you had? She wasn’t around very long either.”
“That was Brenda. Divorce. I met her when we were both on the rebound. We only knew each other about two months.”
“She sure was easy on the eyes.”
“She was. I couldn’t believe such a lovely peach would have me.”
“You’re always hard on yourself,” Sammy said.
“She didn’t stay lovely for long. Turns out she had a split personality, and both of them gave me shit every day of the week.”
He laughed. “That’s a joke, right?”
“Nothing funny about it. One night she broke a whiskey bottle on the sink and threw it at me. Twenty stitches in my arm. The scar’s under this cast or I’d show it to you. Anyway, that did it. Some things cannot be forgiven. That was expensive whiskey.”
Sammy laughed at my portrayal of love gone awry.
“She took everything we had,” I said, “which wasn’t much, leaving me only this watch.”
“Quite the heirloom.”
“Yeah, a real collector’s item. She told the judge I should have done better by her, should’ve made sure we’d have more assets that she could take.”
“Didn’t you have any defense at all?”
“I used my P.I. skills and made candid videos of her in flagrante delicto.”
“What’s that?”
“Fucking another guy. I tell you, Sammy, she had talent between the sheets. Those videos would have been too hardcore for the Internet. The judge gave her everything she wanted.”
“What happened to the videos?”
“The judge kept them.”
Sammy laughed so hard he started coughing.
“Don’t get married, Sammy,” I said when he quieted down. “Don’t set yourself up for that divorce shit. Just find a woman who hates you and buy her a house.”
“I’ve heard that one.”
“I’ve lived it.” I emptied the glass and pushed it over.
“You driving?” Sammy asked.
“I am.”
“This is the last one, then,” he said. “Unless you want me to call you a cab.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
Sammy leaned on the bar. “You don’t want to get pulled over.”
“That’s okay. With these crutches I couldn’t walk a straight line anyway. Put this on the tab. How much is it?”
“National debt,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll have Willa get square with you. We got a windfall.”
“Some advice, Stan. Don’t be so quick to take the Spoiler back. She knows you’re always there for her. Let her find out what it’s like to not have you in reserve.”
“Easier said than done.” I leaned back and sighed. “The Spoiler.”
“Well then, pal, ignore my advice. It’s better for my business. You quit drowning your sorrows, and I go on Food Stamps.”
He moved to another part of the bar to talk to a couple of customers. I took my time drinking the last drink.
A fellow I didn’t know came in and sat next to me at the bar. I hoped he wasn’t looking to pick me up. I wasn’t that desperate.
“Mr. Bentworth?” he said.
I turned and looked at him. He was bigger than me—who wasn’t—and well-dressed. His nose was bent. Uh-oh.
“Who wants to know?” I said. That’s what they always say in cowboy movies.
“My name is not important.”
Nobody wants to tell me their name.
“Maybe you should get an important name. Might help with your self-esteem issues.”
He was not moved by my humor. He continued. “My sources tell me you might know the whereabouts of an old friend.”
“I don’t have any old friends. Or any young ones.”
“My old friend,” he said. “I’m looking for him, and I have reason to believe he might be living around here under an assumed name.”
“Is that better than an unimportant name?”
No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get a laugh out of this guy.
“His name used to be Tony Curro. You know him?”
“Nope. Never heard of him.”
“I figured that’s what you’d say. How did you hurt yourself?”
“Discount bungee jumping.”
He lowered his voice. “Well, you understand, if you know my friend and don’t tell me, your next jump will be without the bungee.”
“Why do you think I know him?”
“No reason I shouldn’t tell you. We got an anonymous tip saying I should look you up. That’s all he’d tell me.”
That could only have been Vitole after I visited him. I hadn’t given him my name. He must’ve gotten my license number and had it traced.
Now I understood why Vitole had ignored my warning and demanded that Buford put the twenty grand back. If he got rid of me without outing Buford
, his money train would keep rolling. Assuming I didn’t cave in and give Buford up.
All I could do for this fellow was lie. “I can’t help you. I really don’t know the guy you’re looking for.”
“Well, my family gave me the job of finding Curro. This is as far as I’ve gotten, and all I found is you. Here’s a card with my cell phone. If you think of anything, call. If I don’t hear from you soon, I might have to come calling again.”
He got up and went out the front door.
Buford got it right when he said my ass would be in the crosshairs if the mob found out we were connected. I wondered how many of his relatives this guy had told about me.
I called Rodney.
“Get your laptop going and find the GPS for this number,” I said. I read the number to him and then said, "When you find where it is, call Overbee. I’ll let him know to expect your call.”
“You got it, Uncle Stanley.”
“No, I don’t yet, but I expect to.”
I called Buford.
“Remember when you told me the mob would be on me?”
“Yes. What happened?”
“I just had a visit. I got his cell phone number. Rodney will be calling you with his location.”
“Not to worry, Stan. We’ll take care of it.”
My crutches and I limped out to the car. It was almost suppertime, but I wasn’t hungry, I wasn’t up for seeing Bunny, and I sure wasn’t going to eat anything I cooked myself. Not in this shape.
I drove home, took the bottle into the apartment, and drank myself to sleep.
Chapter 23
The next morning I was in the office, back to normal, which was needing a shave, bleary-eyed, with a star-spangled hangover and yet another resolve to quit drinking. I sent Willa out for some V8 and vodka, Buford’s hangover cure. I sat staring at the wall until she came back, whereupon I drank two coffee cups full of the potion. Drinking a hangover cure isn’t the same as drinking, I told myself.
I told Willa to call Oliver’s for a total on my tab and to send them a check.
“And no lectures on what I’m spending, either,” I told her. “Some guys collect cars, others play golf. I count cigarette burns on the bar at Oliver’s.”
“How many are there?” she asked.
“Several more as of last night.”
“Get to work,” she said. “Earn your keep.”
I went into my office. Rodney was already there.
“I located that cell phone at an Italian restaurant in town, Uncle Stanley.”
“Did you call Overbee?”
“Yep. He called this morning and said to tell you the problem has been taken care of. Who’s Sanford?”
“The guy who takes care of problems. Let’s get to work.”
Rodney’s transcriptions of my notes onto the whiteboard were good. I had to make a couple of corrections, and they were due to my crappy handwriting.
“Here’s things to add,” I said to Rodney when he came in. “From memory. Put all this wherever it fits on the board.”
Rodney listened and transcribed my summary with dates and events posted on the timeline.
“Willa,” I called out to the outer office. “Would you go across the street and get me some breakfast? The V8 is starting to work.”
“Sure,” she called back.
Willa left, and I continued to recite things for Rodney to post on the whiteboard.
My cell phone rang. It was the pay phone at Ray’s Diner on the caller ID. Had to be Bunny.
“What?” I said.
“Stan, I’m sorry.” She was still kind of weepy.
“Apology noted. Have a good time on your date.”
I hung up the cell phone.
Willa came in with breakfast. “Was that what I thought it was?” she asked.
“Depends on what you thought it was,” I said.
“Sounded like you blowing off Bunny. That’s long overdue.”
“Willa, I don’t need Dear Abby just now.”
“Yes, you do,” she said with a firm tone. “You don’t want my advice, but here it is for what it’s worth.”
I started to interrupt, but she said, “Shut up and listen. She’ll beg you to take her back but don’t do it. Not right away. That’s what she’s counting on. Good old Stan, always there when she needs him, always in reserve. She’s keeping you in the bank for when times are slow.”
That was what Sammy had said.
“Willa—”
“She needs to learn that you never know what you have until you’ve lost it. I never appreciated my husband while he was here.”
Willa’s husband had died a while back.
“And quit getting drunk over it. That doesn’t get a woman back. It sure doesn’t keep her. As you should know by now.”
“End of lecture?” I asked.
“For now,” she said.
I shook my head and turned back to the whiteboard.
“What’s left?” I asked Rodney.
“I think that covers it, Uncle Stanley. What are you going to do next?”
“I’m going to see if I can question the four suspects that live with Buford.”
“Can I go along and observe?”
“No. That doesn’t work. An interrogation team works in sync. We know by instinct from working together what questions each other will ask and when. We know when one should step down and the other take over. We complement each other.”
“Sure. Good cop, bad cop. I know how that works. I watch TV.”
“You aren’t ready for that, and private investigation rarely uses those techniques anyway. We don’t work murder cases. The only reason we have this one is the cops think they got it closed, and we think they got it wrong.”
“What can I do?”
“Stay here at your computer and collect everything you can find on Sanford, Ramon, Missy, and Serena. I got no background on any of them except that Sanford used to be a lawyer with the mob, and Ramon is an illegal alien.”
Rodney was typing on his laptop, making notes.
“One more thing. Vitole was shaking down other guys in witness protection. Maybe one of them bumped him off. Get into the Marshals site, and do a search. Pull the names of witness protection clients who have relocated somewhere around here and are still alive. If we can point suspicion at any upstanding citizens like that, maybe we can create reasonable doubt for Buford.”
Chapter 24
I went again to Buford’s residence for the hard part, interrogating the client’s friends and family. Buford was on the patio in his bathing trunks. The ankle bracelet had chafed the skin on his shin just above his foot as he’d said. His ankle was big like the rest of him. The bracelet was in its largest buckle setting and, even so, pinched his skin.
“Your nephew seems to be good at hacking into shit,” he said. “You think he can get this thing off me?”
“Maybe. One time he took the boot off his car’s wheel that the cops had put on.”
“That’s good. What did he do with it?”
“He changed the pins in the tumbler lock so they couldn’t open it. Then he put the boot on a police cruiser parked in front of a doughnut shop.”
“Man, that kid has balls. What kind of trouble did that get him in?”
“I intervened. He got community service and no record.”
“You’re a good uncle.”
“I am.”
“So, what about this bracelet?”
“I’ll ask him.”
I doubted that Rodney could do much about the bracelet. They go out of their way to make them tamper-proof.
“Thanks for taking care of that wise guy,” I said.
“Thank Sanford.”
“You think I’ll get more visits?”
“Not likely. He probably didn’t tell anyone about you. They usually wait until the job is done. Don’t bother the bosses with details. Just results.”
That was a huge relief. It wasn’t a guarantee, but if anyone knew how the mob o
perated, Buford did.
“I need a private place to talk to your people,” I said.
“How about my study? If they don’t cooperate, you can take a gun off the wall and shoot them.”
I went into the study and sat at the giant desk. While I waited for my first interrogation subject, I called Rodney.
“You think you can remove a house arrest ankle bracelet without triggering its alarm?”
“I don’t know, Uncle Stanley. I’d have to look at it.”
“Next chance you get, make an appointment to come see Mr. Overbee. If you can do it, there’ll be a bonus.”
Buford sent Ramon in first.
“Ramon,” I said. “Sit down.” He did. “I am collecting information related to where everyone was when Mr. Vitole got shot. Where were you that morning?”
“I was here all day, Señor. Sanford and I were playing pool.”
“Who won?”
“Sanford did. It is advisable to let Sanford win.”
“Mr. Overbee says you play chess. Can you beat Sanford at that?”
“He will not play me.”
“You’re very loyal to Mr. Overbee.”
“Si, Señor. He is my benefactor. He is trying to get me a green card and eventually citizenship.”
“So you’d do anything to protect him.”
“Anything.”
“Did you know he was having problems with Mr. Vitole?”
“No, I did not. I knew he was having problems with someone.”
“Weren’t you here the day I told him about Mr. Vitole?”
“Si, Señor, I was here, but I do not listen when Señor Overbee discusses business.”
“Thank you, Ramon. That’s all I have for now. Bring me black coffee, please.”
Ramon left and Missy came in.
“Dad’s got us lined up out there like in a doctor’s waiting room.”
“Miss Curro, where were you the morning Mr. Vitole was shot?”
“Serena and I were shopping.”
“Okay. I don’t need you to prove it to me, but if the cops ask, is there anyway you can substantiate where you were?”
“They can ask Serena.”
“Yeah, but you are each other’s alibi. They’d want corroborating evidence.”
“Easy. Look at my Dad’s credit card account. Serena practically bought out Belksdales.”