Big Money (Austin Carr Mystery) (13 page)

THIRTY-FIVE

A metallic
click-click
pulls open my eyes.

Paranoid imagination?
Maybe I’m still dreaming. My brains holds the image of a giant robot grasshopper in the hall. Like on that episode of
Star Trek Voyager
; Species 8472, the one that even scares the Borg.

Why don’t these aliens just knock?

Wait. Or could that
click-click
have been the latching apparatus on my Trooper assigned bedroom door? Thick blackout curtains keep the midday sun at bay, the darkness thick, slowing my herky-jerky rise to consciousness.

But I can’t help waking up entirely when
something or someone
slides inside my room and gently seals the door. Fear gooses my heart.

A
fter the briefest shaft of hall light, darkness again hugs me close. I breathe without making a sound. Clothes rustle nearby. Soon I hear the soft intimate whisper of a woman’s breathing. I smell that familiar lilac perfume.

Captain Franny
Dahler’s weight on the edge of the bed draws me to her, and her simmering body heat toasts me through the sheet and thick cotton blanket. Slowly, she slides an arm and a leg over me and tugs at the fabric between us.

“Don’t say a word,” she says.

While
El Capitan
nibbles my chest, rubbing her breasts across my stomach, I consider this naked Trooper’s potential motivations.

Hmm. Let’s see. Hmm.

Well, after admittedly incomplete deliberations, I figure either Franny fell in love with the full-boat Carr grin or this is one of those top-secret super special police interrogation techniques they can’t show you on
Law & Order
.

A method too effective to make public.

Despite being in my utmost glory—I’ve spent twenty odd years waiting for an uninvited woman to sneak into my bedroom for a hump—I must say Franny is definitely taking her time getting down to the nitty gritty. If I get any
more
excited, in fact, we could be looking at early departure. An unscheduled culmination.

I try to steer her hips into a more favorable position, but she pulls away, quickly and completely.

Hey.

I’m left with the scent of lilac, the whisper of cloth on skin as she dresses.

“Franny?”

“We’ll finish this after your State Grand Jury testimony,” she says. “I believe in carrots as well as sticks.”

I have my fork stuck in a three-layer stack of Stuart’s blueberry pancakes when I see Franny three hours later. These State Troopers sure know how to make a guy feel welcome. Pouring the syrup makes me wonder what Stuart did to draw duty as Franny’s personal chef. I think his transgression must have been awesomely bad.

El Capitan
, as Luis now calls her, looks undeniably scary this afternoon, storming into the gray stone and black tile kitchen like dark clouds and rain.

“What’s the matter?” I ask. I’m hoping her
mood involves her self-denied encounter with Big Daddy. The chance may never come again, babe.

El Capitan
glances at Stuart, then looks me straight in the eye. “My men monitored Mallory tipping off Bluefish to your children’s location,” she says.

My fork tumbles in slow motion, pancakes and syrup flying.
My right hand balls into a fist. I know she’s a woman, but Franny Dahler just let me sell out my own children.

“If you had Mallory under surveillance, his phone tapped,
” I say, “then you
knew
he was crooked,
knew
he might give Bluefish the location of my kids. Basically, you allowed me to use my family as your bait.”

“You picked Mallory
,” Franny says. “You trusted him.”

“You
knew it was a terrible idea if you’ve been watching him. You could have told me not to.”

“Why? I didn’t know you. I still don’t. I didn’t start worrying about your kids until you told us Mallory knew where they were. We’ve worked hard to find them since.”

Can I believe anything this woman says? “Where are they?”

“Staying with a friend of your ex-wife’s an hour outside of Philadelphia.”

“Give me the phone number.”

“We’ve already called. There’s no answer...yet.”

An odd dizziness hits me, like I jumped up fast after sitting too long. My eyes see faded images. Shadows in a yellowish glow. “But you’re still trying?” My voice sounds unfamiliar.

“Of course,” Franny says. “And I have two detectives and eight State Troopers already on their way. Fifteen minutes out.”

THIRTY-SIX

Her round backside pointed my way, the top hal
f covered by gray tweed business coat, Franny listens and whispers to someone on the kitchen wall phone. My body feels weightless. Floating in a shallow pool.

Luis saying, “
Capitan
Chapman is hearing now from her detectives.”

Luis rests his hand on my shoulder. Now and then he squeezes
the tense muscles beneath my dress shirt. The sturdy weight of his grip lets me breathe slower and more deeply, like a swimmer attached to a harbor buoy. But I am so damn angry. I want to scream out the window.

“My men are inside the house,” Franny says.

I push away from the table and stand. Again, dizziness whacks me. I bend forward at the waist, trying to stabilize my spinning head, but extra blood doesn’t help. My sickness comes from the heart. What the hell would I do if something happened to Beth or Ryan? I can’t even think about it.

Outside, birds squawk. Telling me. Like the crows and jays know something I don’t.

Franny glances at me. “Someone’s been inside.”

“Are Beth and Ryan safe?” I almost scream it
.

Franny points her palm at my chest like a traffic cop, telling me to back off. Screw you, honey. I’m not waiting my turn while Beth and Ryan get run over by a bus.

“Yes. But I’m staying on,” she says to the telephone.

“What?” I say.

“They’re going downstairs,” she says to me. “They hear...noises.”

“What kind of noises?”

She holds up her palm again. My jaw grinds. I might yet decide to flatten that statuesque nose of hers. I take tiny steps in her direction. My fingers curl against my palms.

“Yes?” she says to the phone.

I stop close enough to smell lilac, then lean in and try to hear the mumbled voice on the other end of the phone. Franny’s purple flower perfume brings back the taste and feel of her breasts rubbing against me. Unfortunately, it’s an image that doesn’t last more than a split second. Having children is a real pain.

Franny covers the mouthpiece to speak to me. “Ryan and your wife’s friend are safe. They were tied up in the basement, but they aren’t injured.”

My heart skips. “What about Beth?”

Franny touches my arm. The concern
in her eyes cuts me into tiny square sections. A hundred slices vertical, a hundred slices horizontal. I begin to disassemble like digital TV on a stormy, electrical night.

“The man who tied them up
took your daughter,” Franny says.

My gut makes a fist. The sound my throat issues is part howl, part growl.

“Did they identify the perp?” Franny says to the telephone.

Her sea-green eyes find me as she listens. They turn dull as her slender fingers slowly cover the phone’s mouthpiece.

“It s
ounds like our friend Max,” she says.

Maximilian Zakowsky

He likes driving the big Lincoln so much, surging up and down these green hills, Max spots the hand-painted sign only as he’s whizzing by. Too late to stop. He must drive half-a-mile past, to a turnout, then go back to where three children have set up a table and their chairs.

It’s
a nice day in the Pennsylvania country. Cool, but with a bright blue sky and pine-washed air Jerry says comes from Canada. The budding crooked oak trees and the rolling hills remind Max of the semi-wooded land around Budapest. With the car windows down, the clean air blowing, even the fresh green-grass smell is the same.

Max stops the car on the
dirt pull-off with the kids. He squeezes from the driver’s seat, then stands a moment to cough at a dust cloud before approaching the children and their sign. The kids’ eyes get bigger and bigger as Max walks toward them.

The boy with crew
cut hair and big hands is the oldest. The two girls might be his sisters. All of the kids are blond with blue eyes, all staring at Max like he was their Papa come to hit them with a stick. Kids are the same everywhere.

“You want a kitten, mister?” the boy says.

The boy with crew cut stands up to face Max. His younger sisters stay in their beach chairs, beat-up aluminum frames with green and white plastic strips as cushion. Lawn chairs, Jerry calls them. It’s springtime, but still pretty cold for beach chairs.

“How many cats you have?” Max says.

“Six. All of them two weeks old.”

“Fluffy had babies,” the youngest girl says.

The crew cut boy looks very worried about Max’s size and strange accent, scared maybe he’ll have to protect his sisters if Max turns out to be a creepy sex pervert. Max is used to this reaction, especially from children. He stretches his mouth and cheeks into a maximum smile. Showing his crooked front teeth.

“Is lucky day for Max,” he says. “I have exactly six nieces and nephews. They’re waiting now for presents from Uncle Max. I need a cat for each.”

“You want them all?” the boy says.

“Yes. You are smart boy. Is exactly what I want. Six kittens for six nieces and nephew
s.”

The boy glances at his sisters, then down at the black-and-white spotted smelly little cats. Squirming
together like a swarm of cockroaches.

“Six kittens might be too much for one person, mister,” the boy says. “We want them to have happy homes.”

Max pulls from his pocket the Timberland wallet Jerry gave him last year for Christmas and slips out a one hundred dollar bill. Max knows he could just grab the box of cats and walk away, but he sees no reason to upset these children. Not his job, like the other thing.

Max sticks out the hundred
dollar bill for the boy to take. “Is cold day, and children like you must have happier things for doing than to stand here. Let me make my nieces and nephews happy. They like kittens, will take home to four different houses.”

The crew
cut boy is finally interested in something other than Max’s size and shape. His gaze focuses on the money. One hundred is many dollars for a child so young.

“You’re sure they’ll have a good home?” the boy says.

“Nieces and nephews love little cats,” Max says. “They take very good care.”

Max
walks back and opens the Lincoln’s trunk, blocking the children’s line of sight. He dumps the stinking cats into an empty burlap bag. Lucky thing he brought an extra bag, although for the first time in an hour, the girl in the first burlap bag is completely quiet and still. He could probably put the cats with her.

Max pokes her leg
through the burlap, checking to see if she’s still alive. A low whimper gives Max his answer.

Miles away
from where he bought the little cats, Max can see the river and the bridge he’s approaching will be a very good place.

Max steers the Lincoln off the highway when he can, works the big car down dirt roads
and trails to the base of the steel and cement bridge. The river is fast and smooth on this side, right away deep.

Plus there are lots of heavy round stones to put in the burlap bag.

He parks, oozes himself out into the chilly river air. The sky is orange and gold with setting sun of evening. The water smells dirty, like rotting mud and old car tires. Birds squawking somewhere. Crows maybe. Or jays.

Max opens the trunk.

THIRTY-SEVEN

The spring grass tastes cold and wet. I know this for a fact because I’ve been wrestled to the ground, my stomach, nose and mouth buried deep in the shady green turf.

“Where do you think you’re going, Carr?” Franny says.

El Capitan
Franny Dahler seems to be the only living thing
not
latched on, pinning me to the lawn. Bet Luis and Stuart total three-fifty, three hundred and seventy-five pounds, easy, plus Stuart’s bomb-sniffing German Shepherd, Doris—who smells like ear cheese—has a sharp-clawed paw on my neck. I guess
every
body wants credit for my arrest and detention.

I
did
get a little lathered up. All I could think of was wrapping my hands around Bluefish’s throat. I started running.

“I asked where you were going, Carr?”
Franny says.

“Bluefimmsh’s.”
My face being squashed in the grass makes the ever mellow Carr tones ring slightly out of tune.

“Bluefish’s? Good. I’m glad,” Franny says. “But instead of storming over there, getting yourself killed, how about working with me? When you go see Bluefish, my guys could have you wired up to broadcast like
ESPN. You get him to say the right thing, give me the right evidence, maybe you don’t have to pick out Mama Bones for the Grand Jury.”

I stop struggling against Stuart, Luis and Doris. Not that I was getting anywhere. The three of them were too much for me, although I do believe that damn dog’s paralyzing
cheese odor was the margin of victory. “Bluefish would be certain to check me for a wire, wouldn’t he?”

“Presumably,” Franny says. “But he won’t find the transmitter
my
people place in you.”

I stand up. Luis and Stuart let me dust off a few dozen chunks of chocolate brown mud. “
In
me?”

“Nano technology,” Franny says. “You won’t feel a thing.”

My stomach’s reaction seems somewhat negative. In fact, mulling over possible venous inserts and trans-dermal implantations, my gaze starts scanning for a place to barf. “Are you sure Bluefish will get in touch with me?”

“He already has
,” Franny
says. “A couple of hours ago. I was going to tell you when you pulled this macho jailbreak thing.”

Franny hands me a telegram with a lawyer’s signature. It says Mr. Joseph Pepperman may have information of import to one Austin Carr, who is believed to be in the custody of New Jersey State Police. A private golf round and meeting is proposed for tomorrow a
t the Branch Oaks Country Club.

“Bluefish wants me to play golf?” I say.

“It has to be about your daughter,” Franny says, “but this is the damnedest kidnapping I’ve ever seen.”

Maximilian Zakowsky

The little girl is not so little. She asks Max to call her Elizabeth, not Beth like her Daddy and Mommy call her. And the girl has things growing under her shirt, although not a woman yet. Max knows that. He’s no pervert. But Elizabeth is not a little girl either.

“Why are you mad at cats, Max?”

Max pushes the edge of his shovel into the soft ground. Wishing he didn’t have to dig a hole, but glad the rain made his job easier. “Not
mad
at cats. I don’t like them, and there is big difference.”

“How is it different?” Elizabeth asks
.

Max smiles
but keeps digging. He’s running out of time. “Mad at cats is an emotional thing. No thinking. Me, I know cats all my life and do not like them for many good reasons, reasons opposite of emotional. Logical facts.”

“For instance.”

“Cats are mean and selfish. If they need or decide for fun, they kill and eat things.”

“Those little cats you drowned couldn’t eat anybody.”

“Little cats grow up, eat pretty birds. Lions and tigers eat people.”

“Everything has to eat.”

“Cats torture their prey. Do not even eat what they kill sometimes. Cats are very mean.”

Elizabeth gazes at Max like she knows more than him. Superior airs, Max’s mother used to say. Women
have looked at Max this way all his life.

“My freshman psychology book would say you might have another, even bigger reason for not liking cats, Max. Something that happened when you were a kid?”

Max stops his digging. He leans on his shovel. “Is true what you say, Elizabeth. Did your father tell you I used to be in circus? Travel all over Europe with animals and fun crazy peoples?”

“He said you’d been in the circus.”

“When I was little boy, lions got out of their cage and killed my father. Ate most of him before we find.”

Her face stretches
, a longer chin and forehead. “Oh, my God, Max. That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

“Lion tamer Frederic said
it was accident that the cages got open, but that lion tamer Frederic married my mother the next month in Budapest. Then lion tamer start acting like my Daddy. Make me sleep outside with his smelly lions.”

“The same ones that ate your real father?”

“Same ones.”

“Oh, my God. That’s the worst thing I ever heard.”

Max smiles. “I got even.”

Elizabeth look at him a long time before she ask. “What did you do?”

“I tell you later. First, you tell
me
something.” Max start digging again, but slower than before. Maybe hole not needed. “Tell me a story about your mother and father.”

“My mother and father? Why?”

“Max like stories about love and sex. You ever see them do it?”