Big Money (Austin Carr Mystery) (12 page)

THIRTY-TWO

A thin yellow beacon extends into oncoming traffic when I depress the flashlight button. I keep the light on three beats, off for the same, then repeat. Three on, three off.

I couldn’t remembe
r which Parkway exit Gianni used last night—something south of sixty-three—so Luis suggested I blink the flashlight off and on between six o’clock and six-fifteen. If we don’t hook up, I’m to hide...that is,
retreat
again until seven, do the same fifteen-minute drill then.

It’s six-o
h-five. Nothing yet. The headlights zip by me in flourishing numbers, Atlantic City drawing its usual and dedicated contingent of Saturday night gamblers. Imagine focusing all that energy—all those quarters—on some major world problem? Imagine the resources the right organization could muster? Billions. Stop Hunger Instantly Through Slots. Well, maybe S.H.I.T.S. isn’t such a great acronym.

I blin
k the flashlight again. Wish this thought occurred to me earlier, say while Luis and I made our plans, but what if one or more of Bluefish’s men is assigned to make regular trips down this part of the Parkway, too, the guy waiting for just such an obvious signal as my flashlight?

They don’t
know
I have a cell phone, of course, that I can call for help. But why would they rule it out? And lost in the pine barrens, where else would I meet someone, if not just north of the exit I used last night?

I’m worrying too much. No way this baseball team from hell
—the Branchtown Bluefish—is looking for me here. They walked right past me, then must have doubled back because I never saw them again. And if they thought I had a cell phone, wouldn’t they worry I’d call the cops?

Luis will be here any minute anyway.

A tall pair of headlights flash their high beams five minutes later, an answer to my latest signals. The vehicle slows, kicks on its emergency blinkers and searches for parking on the side. The lights are heading right at me, then go dark.

I back
up closer to the fence. A film of sweat breaks out in the hollow of my neck. Nothing is going to make me feel safe except Luis. Sure as hell hope this is him.

I recognize Luis’s Jeep
as it passes. I breathe easy for the first time all day. When the Jeep’s wheels stop rolling, I push off the chain link fence and scramble up the grassy incline. My legs ache with weariness; the skin on my arms and hands stings with scratches. I try to forget my exhaustion and pain, keep focused on safety—Luis and that red Jeep’s back door.

Hey, who’s riding shotgun? That s
ure ain’t Umberto.

I yank at the handle, bend my butt to stuff myself into the back seat. The interior light stays off. I understand the concept, but the darkness starts a shiver. My driver and front passenger show me only outlines.
A certain smell.

“Hurry,” Luis says.

Whew.
For a minute there...wait. Is that a woman next to Luis? Looks like it. And that smell is a recently encountered perfume. In fact, I’m thinking everything about the woman up front is familiar, her hair, the way—

A
tiny, invisible meteor ticks the right shoulder of my jacket and cobwebs the window beside Luis’s head, leaving a hole and a spidered windshield. Popping glass and the sharp crack of gunfire hit my ears a fraction of a second later.

My heart rate doubles. I yank shut the Jeep’s back door.
The meteor was a bullet.

Luis’s
female guest in the front seat leans out her window. She has something in her hand.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Her three, return-fire gunshots light up the woman’s face, the interior of the Jeep, even the edge of the fence. It’s Ms. Strawberry. Her two handed pistol grip and rapid sturdy shooting tell me Walter’s new replacement, Franny Dahler, has fired many a handgun at hostile forces.

Ms. Strawberry
is an experienced shooter?

The Jeep’s engine races when Luis stomps the accelerator. Our ass-end fishtails down
the slope before catching purchase in the grass. We’re out of there.

THIRTY-THREE

I’ve seen her gun, so the badge isn’t much of a surprise. Like love and marriage, the two are
supposed
to go together. What makes me squint, blink, crane and refocus is the curious and voluminous expanse of Ms. Strawberry’s law enforcement specialties, each one clearly detailed on her slick, anchor-weight and permanently laminated government identification card.

Frances Dahler
Chapman
—her real name—not only holds a captain’s rank with the New Jersey State Police, and is therefore automatically the Garden State’s best-looking Jersey trooper, Ms. Strawberry also carries the title of Special Prosecutor for the New Jersey Governor’s Select Task Force on Organized Crime and was graduated
magna cum laude
from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Advanced Weapons Training School in Quantico, Virginia.

I’m
talking to the Queen of New Jersey law enforcement.

“Why did your majesty want an undercover job at Shore Securities?” I ask.

I get a sneer, slightly more contempt in her green eyes than the twisted lower lip, and Ms. Strawberry takes her identification back. She and I face each other in the Viking-hall sized kitchen of what she earlier tonight described as a State Police safe house.

“Why the hell do you think?” she says. “Shore
Securities is the absolute center of this corrupt mess. Where else would I want to be?”

I can’t get over the sudden change. Sexy Ms. Strawberry in the bar becomes big hitter, Walter’s all
business replacement, then becomes a pistol-packing state cop hunting mafia dons. The X-Men have nothing on Franny Dahler. Or Dahler-Chapman. Ms. Strawberry. Whatever the hell her name is.

“What corrupt mess?” I say.

“Illegal gambling, prostitution, fencing stolen goods, counterfeit securities, extortion, burglary, fraud, murder and conspiracy,” she says. “And I’ve barely gotten my roll going. Shall I continue with what I
suspect
?”

I place my hands on the kitchen table where we sit, a swimming pool-size octagon of
thick, hand-pounded copper, spreading my fingers like the polish on my nails needs a quick blow dry. Nonchalant. “You think
Shore’s
involved in all that stuff?”

“Probably.
At the least, about to be involved. The spoils of an ongoing war.”

The
copper table glows like a well-worn gold wedding ring. This is some safe house the Jersey troopers have staked out for themselves. A rock singer’s retreat would be more apt. Twenty giant rooms of English Tudor inside a secluded, secure, five-acre forest, with a dock on the Navasquan River. The raw land has to be worth ten million.

Speaking of
dinero
... “Obviously those commission runs you showed Carmela and me are just bullshit?” I say. “Shore Securities is still missing one a hitter?”

“That’
s right. I’m a cop, not a telephone salesman.”

Did my query sound
stupid? I guess maybe. It’s just that I have certain business responsibilities, certain financial priorities. “And you’re going to
stay with us...
undercover?”

Ms. Strawberry sips her third mug of premium coffee. “Probably not after tonight.” She ordered some
older guy named Stuart to brew the fresh pot fifteen minutes ago, Stuart probably with the Troopers thirty years, forced to search cupboards, grind and measure Colombian beans, satisfy some thirty-year-old cutie with a Trenton State law degree. “Why? You thinking about outing me to your mafia friends?” she says.

“Of course not,” I say. “I’m thrilled you want to put Bluefish away. The bastard threatened my children.”

“My job isn’t to help you, Carr. Although I easily could, and might, if you cooperate with me.”

“For instance?”

“For instance, was anyone else in the Bluefish’s log cabin when you saw Max Zakowsky torturing that Gianni person?”

Pieces of gold sparkle inside Ms. Strawberry’s sea-green eyes. She’s wearing a white blouse tucked inside blue jeans, two-inch black heels and a gray tweed coat
over her tan leather shoulder holster.

“No,” I say.

Hardly Carr-like patter, I know, but I feel lucky to make noise. I’m still stunned by this woman’s previously undisclosed identity and intentions. Like the time my little sister’s new babysitter turned judo-meister while shaking my hand, twisting my thumb until I yelped and flopped onto the carpet.

“Did you see Bluefish at the restaurant last night in Brooklyn?” she says.

“No.”

“What about Mama Bones?”

“No,” I say. Maybe a little too quickly.

Dahler
’s head slowly shakes. Her bright copper hair catches highlights from the chandelier. “I’ve already explained that lying to me is a crime, Carr. But I’m giving you one last chance to tell me the truth. Not sure why. Nobody else gets this opportunity. Maybe I like your gorgeous smile.”

I smell sarcasm. Don’t get me wrong. I have more than a little faith in the full-boat Carr grin. It’s pulled me out of many tight and ugly spo
ts. But, somehow, this time I don’t think the woman means it.

“We already
know
it was Mama Bones in that Escalade,” Dahler says, “so do yourself a favor, don’t tell me you didn’t see her at that restaurant. You saw her plenty. She had to be the one who dragged your skinny ass out of Brooklyn.”

Skinny ass? Now I have a skinny ass?

Over the course of my so-far semi-wasted life—everything but Beth and Ryan has been pretty much a disaster—I’ve found the best way to lie involves using a grain of truth to actually believe your own bullshit. You must make yourself deeply and truly accept the stink icing you are about to spread over simple righteous cake.

“I see Mama Bones all the time,” I say. “Mr.
Vic asked me to keep an eye on his mother while he was in Tuscany. But it wasn’t Mama Bones who pulled me out of that restaurant.”

Invisible fingers tug on
Dahler’s magazine-cover jaw, stretching the skin downward. A threat sparkles in her eyes. “You’re shielding a gang who wants to kill you, Carr...who
will
kill you, or your children, unless you let me protect you. But I cannot arrange your safety if you won’t cooperate.”

She searches my face for signs of intelligence. It’s a long and fruitless journey.

THIRTY-FOUR

Gaunt lines condense Luis’
ancient face, as if the five or so pounds he lost in the hospital pushed his primitive features back further in time. His piercing, roasted coffee colored eyes shine even sharper than normal. Positively hawkish.

“It is my experience that only under the most unusual and extreme circumstances should one say no to the
federales
,” Luis says. “Perhaps only if they ask, ‘Would you like to skip the blindfold?’”

After encouraging me and Luis to talk
among ourselves, Ms. Strawberry—Ace Jersey Trooper—watches us from inside the warm and massive safe house kitchen, her gaze unflinching behind the side door’s glass window. Framed and pretty as a picture.

“Did you just make a joke?” I say to Luis.

“Are we laughing?”

Luis not only
looks
more ancient, I think he’s getting prehistorically mystical on me. I shiver. It’s cold out here on this little side-entrance porch. Too close to the river. I can hear music and women laughing on the water.

“They’re
state-
erales
by the way,” I say, “and I ask you again, Luis, how the hell did the New Jersey Troopers get involved? I requested you and your Jeep, not Franny Dahler. Or Dahler-Chapman. Whatever.”

Trooper/c
offee maker Stuart smokes a cigarette maybe forty yards away from us, snug in his black Northface jacket, pacing east and west along the edge of the budding maple and oak forest that surrounds the compound. Silver vapors rise from his burning tobacco. His rubber soles squish on a thick, soggy blanket of fallen leaves.

“
Cap-i-tan
Dahler wire tapped our telephone conversation,” Luis says. “After you called me, she marched into my hospital room with many men and demanded that she be included in your rescue, to ride with me.”

“She must have been showing off for her troops. Wanting to come along for the potential shootout
.”

“What was I to do? If I had refused, she said I would be arrested, and that no one would come find you.”
His breath materializes as it glides through the yellow porch light. Must be in the low forties. Lucky there’s no wind.

I turn my gaze on Franny inside the house
. Definitely a hard edge to her this night, those green eyes frosty. But the woman is still a knockout, the copper-blond hair fluffy around her chiseled face. I don’t like that she tapped Luis’ phone, though.

“
Remember this,” Luis says. “Without the
cap-i-tan’s
covering fire tonight, the rifleman’s bullets would have found us.”

I nod. I must have been frowning at her. “You’re right. I think both of you saved my life. Thanks for showing up, risking yourself.”

“Thank you for seeing your error. It is one of your most admirable qualities. Now please explain to me why you will not identify Mama Bones.”

So my pal Luis Guer
rero wants me to flip state’s evidence. No wonder Ms. Strawberry let us have this private time together. “One reason, Luis, Mama Bones saved my life barely twenty-four hours ago. Two, she’s Mr. Vic’s mother. A friend.”

Luis’s penetrating gaze seems to have texture as it passes
through my flesh and examines my soul. My gut and eyes itch from his spiritual transmissions, some kind of ancient Toltec penetration of my existence.

Luis saying, “But it is
not better that we let the police arrest Bluefish?”

“Better than what?”

Luis’s careful gaze leaves me and rises to the starlight showing between the roof of the Tudor and the thickly budded forest. “Better than killing him ourselves. There is a reasonable chance that even success, if we are found out, could bring much trouble and sorrow.”

Hard to argue with that.
“I see your point, but I can’t give up Mama Bones. Not after what she did for me.”

Luis gaze finds a star he likes. “Then we kil
l Bluefish. Only your testimony will make the
capitan
arrest him now.”

I don’t like what I’m hearing
. “Why can’t I just hide out for a week or two, hope Captain Franny puts Bluefish away without my help?”

Luis brings his gaze back to earth
, back on me. He nods, understanding, but his gaze and expression stay hopeful of something else. What? Has my favorite bartender thought of something I’ve failed to consider? I sense I am about to once more feel the touch of Luis’s ancient Toltec magic.

“What if you only
pretend
to identify this Mama Bones?” he says.

“What
do you mean, pretend?”

“You’ve made the right move, Carr,”
Captain Franny says. We’re alone in the kitchen an hour later, her pitch and my acceptance already exchanged. “But are you sure you want Detective Mallory to know you’re staying with me until I can assemble a State Grand Jury? I don’t
have
to tell anybody locally that you’re here.”

“No, tell Mallory,” I say. “He’s
the person in touch with my children. He’d never do anything to hurt them. We coached baseball together.”