Big Money (Austin Carr Mystery) (17 page)

FORTY-SEVEN

Carmela hands me a twice folded section of newspaper. I try not to stare at her figure—I understand it’s demeaning—but Vic’s daughter has on a scooped-neck, tight, yellow sweater this morning, and her scoops are bulging. My horny boy eyes require a hard sell to wrap themselves around a newspaper story.

I stand behind Shore’s trading desk, unable to sit
down, let alone focus on printed matter.

“That’
s page ten of today’s
The New York Times
,” Carmela says. “A friend woke me up at five o’clock this morning to read it to me.”

Here’s the thing about guys and breasts: If the FCC would all
ow it, a television channel showing nothing but naked female chests would win every ratings sweep. No male above the age of twelve would watch much else.

“Stop staring at my tits and read,” she says.

“Sorry.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have worn this sweater.”

I read the heading.
Uh, oh.
NJ Shore is mentioned. So are the words “crime boss.” I didn’t have my coffee yet this morning, and now I’m thinking why bother. This headline makes me want bourbon and tequila for starters because I know Carmela wouldn’t show me this story unless Shore Securities is mentioned somewhere within.

Grand Jury Claims Auto Shop

Owner is NJ Shore Crime Boss

The story’s opening paragraph
—that Joseph “Bluefish” Pepperman was indicted and arrested last night following a two-year investigation by FBI and New Jersey State organized crime units—is pretty much all the real news they have.

More like
a feature, most of the story details Bluefish’s alleged illegal operations—gambling, loan sharking, fencing stolen goods—and his colorful past, including murder charges, later dropped because of missing witnesses. There was also a runaway wife and missing girlfriend or two, possible crimes for which he is still under suspicion. Also, according to
The Times
, a much younger Bluefish served eighteen months in Rahway for assaulting two priests while robbing their church.

Nice guy.

Just before jumping to a back page, the story mentions the unsolved murder of Ann Marie Talbot—her identity now confirmed by DNA testing—and her about-to-be-released AASD report, which details the comingling transgressions of one—
Oh, shit!
—Shore Securities of Branchtown, New Jersey.

“I choked there, too,” Carmela says.

I quickly read again that nasty, ugly, make-a-broker-cry word. Co-mingling.

“Talbot’s field summary is a
proposed
report that has to be approved by AASD regional office,” I say.

“I know.”

“And it’s subject to challenge and change. No way her findings are supposed to be made public.”

“It gets worse,” Carmela says. She points to a quote near the end.

I gasp.
The New York Times
quotes “a source familiar with the investigation” as saying Joe Pepperman “effectively controls” Shore Securities of Branchtown, New Jersey.

Franny’s payback rings
in my head like a chime made of spiked steel.

Something about that newspaper story makes me thirsty.

Luis’s Mexican Grill doesn’t officially re-open until eleven o’clock, but having tired of stocks and bonds early today, even before the market opens, I try the back door, pushing inside Luis’s newly, remodeled kitchen around nine-fifteen. Maybe I’ll go back to work later, assess the initial damage from the story. Then—if the account closings are as bad as I expect—I’ll let our three trainees go, call the landlord to see what I can do about breaking the lease. But these are things I do not want to do without significant fortification.

As I enter, Umberto
stops chopping tomatoes on a wooden cutting board. Luis stands beside his cook examining a fresh
pablano
chili. The two men exchange an exaggerated look of surprise at my sudden presence in the kitchen.

Luis
puts the pepper back in a bowl piled high with the big, dark green peppers, then stoops to lift a case of Corona long-necks from the floor. He balances the twenty-four bottle container on his shoulder. “Have you been sleeping again in my parking spaces?” he says.

His thin-lipped grin wouldn’t capture any smile contests, but if you know him, this wry twis
t of Luis’ mouth equates as a belly laugh.

“No, sir. No
more football helmets for me,” I say.

For a brief
period last year, I lived in a truck mounted camper, often parking overnight in my favorite restaurant’s lot. I bought a football helmet to survive my home’s unusually low ceiling.

“Then why have you come here so early?” Umberto asks.

“My investment in Shore Securities just took a serious and probably fatal hit,” I say. “I require the hearty consolation of premium tequila.”

I give Luis
and Umberto the full-boat grin.

Luis can’t spare time to read newspapers or pour
me liquor yet, so I verbalize highlights of
The Times
story while I slice limes for him at the bar.

The faster
he’s ready for business, the quicker I figure to taste Herradura. Like the Congressional writers of American tax code learned long ago, a measure of self-interest strongly increases the population’s appetite for good works.

I’m load
ing two mixing bowls with green wedges, the acidic sting of citrus tickling my nose. Umberto bangs pots in the kitchen. Behind the counter from me, Luis pours ice into a tub full of those bottled Coronas, rattling the air.

“So you are here drinking at nine-thirty in the morning because...you believe this story will badly influence your business?” Luis says.

My elbow on the bar, I extend a forefinger toward the ceiling. “First of all—and this is important, Luis—notice I am
not
drinking. You won’t let me. You have your best customer chopping fruit.”

“You offered to
help,” Luis says.

“Slave labor. I work only for the sustenance you promised. Second, it’s not just
one
story. All the Jersey papers, maybe
The Wall Street Journal
, will publish negative stories. The
Branchtown Sun
probably has Mr. Vic’s picture on the front page under a caption that says ‘Crook.’”

Luis hefts another brown paper bag of ice onto the rim of
the waist-high beer tub. “Sometimes great crisis brings great opportunity.”

Thank you, Yoda.
“I think not in this case, my friend. To your average investor, co-mingling
sounds
like stealing no matter how hard you explain clearing-bank procedures and their overnight help’s frequent mistakes.”

Half my clients will want their accounts transferred. The other half will seek my torture and death.

FORTY-EIGHT

I was wrong about the
Branchtown Sun
. Checking Mike’s Newsstand on my afternoon way to work, I learn our local paper did
not
run Mr. Vic’s photograph on the front page under the caption “CROOK.” In truth, Mr. Vic’s page one, three-column head shot is captioned, “MOB TIES.”

The photo and caption make me
worry about a heart attack, then I read the story and have trouble breathing. Since everybody in this part of New Jersey
knows
Bluefish murdered his wife and that he once robbed churches, the
Sun’s
story buries the bookie’s arrests and convictions. Instead, the local paper plays up Bluefish’s alleged connection to Shore, the unsolved murder of Ann Marie Talbot at the Martha Washington and the dead AASD agent’s allegations of co-mingling at “Bluefish’s operation,” the previously mentioned Shore Securities.

Shoot me
. The facts are bad enough. Why does the media have to spread lies?

I hear telephones r
inging as I walk into Shore off the front sidewalk. Yolanda, our current greeter-slash-phone monkey, is talking, writing and listening as fast as she can, taking messages and punching flashing lights. The pink phone slips pile up in front of her like lawn flamingos after a hurricane.

All of Shore’s clients must be pulling their accounts.

I wave at Yolanda to send my calls through to my office.

“Are you sure?” I say. “I can’t
believe
it.”

Carm
ela grins at me, her shoulders braced against the doorway of my office. Her sweater’s been exchanged for a gray, loose-fitting, high-collar blouse. “Believe it,” she says. “We’ve lost a total of five accounts all day. And the brokers weren’t sorry to see those particular customers leave. Only one had real assets with us.”

“I can’t believe it,” I say. “The newspapers made us sound
like the local mafia’s private investment bank.”

“What do y
ou want me to say, nobody reads the paper? Or people
like
being a little bit connected? I’ll tell you this. Every single person who read the story and called us—at least a dozen, probably fifteen—everyone said they’d known Mr. Vic and Shore Securities for a long time, that the newspaper story had to be crap.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“You’ve
said
that three times now. Are you hungry? Want me to call out for a late lunch?”

I shake my head
, no, my eyes on the stock market tape traveling across my office’s TV screen. The Dow is up big today. The Fed signaled they’re done raising interest rates, and the institutions were buying heavy. Even individual investors jumped in. That’s part of why the phones were so busy.

“How about Chinese?” Carmela says.

“This is fantastic. I can’t believe it.”

“Mexican? I could send somebody to Luis’s?”

Carmela’s smile reminds me of sunshine and hay. Or maybe it’s the freckles and hair on her upper lip.

“Green chili burritos?” she says. “Or did the Chinese sound good?”

Sounds like Carmela’s been dreaming about pork lo mien, although my mind’s suddenly spinning off in another direction entirely.
Whoa.
One of those crazy ideas that come out of nowhere. Or was it that homily Luis threw out there this morning—that concept he tossed at me, an over polished gem about turning crisis into opportunity.

“Hold off on lunch,” I say to Carmela. “If he’s still alive, I want you to find Rags, get his fax number, send him a copy of both
The New York Times
story and the
Branchtown Sun’s
, the picture of Mr. Vic.”

“I’m not talking to that scumbag,” Carmela says. “He tried to kill me, remember?”

“You mean when he pretended to wrap that calculator cord around your neck?”

“Pretended?”

“You know he still loves you, Carm. He probably just did it to scare you...so he could crack that line about recalculating your yield to maturity.”

“You’re an asshole, you know that?”

“Okay, you’re right. It was definitely an act of violence. Plus, I forgot you married the jerk. Can you just find him for me then? Get me a phone number?”

Yes, sir. A gem of an idea, Luis. Thank you. Crisis does indeed offer opportunity.

Carmela will talk to Rags. I know she knows where to find him.

I’ll call Walter myself.

FORTY-NINE

Maximilian Zakowsky

The low, black sky is a comfort to Max, the rain and thunder his oldest friends. It is the stark and glaring white sun that unnerves him. Days like today when the cloudless, blue sky has no depth and no spirit, the wind no taste. The world so still, it is as if all life abandoned the planet.

“Get in here and drive this
goddamned car,” Bluefish says. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

Boss was never a compassionate
man. Much too self-centered, uncaring about others. But the two nights the boss just spent in jail have made him extra cranky, mean like circus animal. Cage crazy. “I am very sick, boss. Very bad stomach. What Jerry call squirtin’ dir—”

“Enough,” Bluefish says. “We’ll stop and buy you some diapers. Now get in the
goddamned car or you’re fired. We have to pick up Jerry. I can’t fucking believe you’re afraid of that spic bartender.”

Max sighs. Big-time asshole is what Bluefish is. Sitting in his gas
sucking Chevy Suburban. Shouting orders at Max, who could break him into little parts and pieces. His boss should know that he isn’t isn’t afraid of that Mexican bartender. The boss should respect Max’s better knowledge of natural forces.

Today, the sky is too pure and empty
for fighting. Today is a day for staying home, not for confronting enemies.

“Okay,” Ma
x says. “But give me one minute.”

“No. Wait!”

Max shuts the door to his room.

Inside a cigar box under his bed, his fingers clutch a sharp, hand-hewn arrowhead of flint attached to a thin
, leather necklace. The familiar rough skin of the stone makes him close his eyes and remember the night his father presented him with this very special gift.

Slowly, using unusual ceremony, his father
had lifted the rock necklace over his head that night and placed the ornament around Max’s neck. “Thousands of years ago,” his father said, “this arrowhead belonged to a wise and experienced hunter. A man with special knowledge. Carry it when you face danger, Maximillian. The rock has a spirit inside that will help protect you.”

Three days after his father gave him the arrowhead, Max’s father was dead. Killed by lions. Did the world’s strongest man die because he gave Max the ancient rock
, his protection? Max will always wonder.

“Max,
goddamnit!”

Bluefish shouts
at him from the hallway. Mean bastard.

Max stuffs the arrowhead in
to the pocket of his jeans. Logic tells him that no rock, even such an old and perfectly carved one, could protect Max from bullets.

But
why would his father lie? Besides, like his friend Jerry says, it can’t hurt.

“Max!”

“Here I come.”

Spooky how a
basically friendly man like me, Austin Carr, can savagely dislike someone on initial eye contact. Their size and shape. Their expression. Don’t know if the feeling’s been natured or nurtured, but when instant aversion kicks me in the ass, the hostility and venom rise from somewhere deep.

My gaze locks onto a tall
, blond man watching the front entrance as I press inside Luis’s Mexican Grill. Surfer Dude’s wearing long, white bathing shorts, flip flops and a blue T-shirt that says “Can I Put My Burrito in Your Taco?” yet he has the balls to sneer at
me
while I dance through five or six people waiting for tables.

This single, nonverbal exchange produces a lizard-brain reaction in me of distrust, fear and animosity. I haven’t wanted to punch a stranger this badly since April Higgins kicked my nuts on the first day of kindergarten. My feelings about this big blond surfer asshole aren’t logical. They must be prehistoric.

“Hi, Austin.”

I’m so busy puffing macho across the noisy restaurant, I’ve failed to notice my bar
area co-occupant, Gina Farascio, her long black hair returned to those wavy curls that I can’t help but imagine spread out on a pillow. Curls-to-straight, then back to wavy curls. Gina the Luscious must spend as much time doing her doo as I do thinking about sex.

Well,
that’s impossible. But almost.

Gina squeezes my shoulder as she leans in to buss my cheek. Her perfume conjures a summer flower garden, and I can’t help it, my hand instinctively reaches for her waist. Her flesh beneath the black cocktail dress electrifies my fingertips.

“I didn’t see you when I came in,” I say.

Gina pulls away, her gaze locked on mine. “No? What
were
you looking at?”

I toss her the famous full-boat Carr grin while I dream up a response. I’m looking for clever, flattering and pithy. Let’s see. How about, “I
don’t know. Now I can’t remember
any
thing before you said hello.”

He
r midnight eyes light up like dawn.

The Gift of Gab has its moments.

I’m on a stool, my back to the front door, when the hubbub level of Luis’s restaurant plunges.

I wrest
le my attention from Gina to glance down the bar. Dozens of faces are expressing concern. Their gazes seem to have focused on the entrance or already lowered themselves in submission. Can’t be zombies or masked gunmen. No one’s screaming. Maybe it’s just the
threat
of violence all these people are worried about.

“Bluefish,” Gina says.

I swivel more, enough to glimpse what most everyone else is glued to like their smart phone. “And Creeper,” I say. “The guy who kidnapped my daughter.”

Beth didn’t have a serious wound on her, the doctor told me. Emotionally or physically. And late last night on the telephone, my daughter told me Creeper mostly behaved like a gentleman, only frightened her when he locked her in the car trunk and drowned some kittens.

The trunk thing pisses me off and murdering kittens is so gruesome I don’t want to think about it. But maybe my anger at the giant creep should have limits. He didn’t hit, rape or kill my daughter. Not much to expect of another human being, I suppose, but Creeper being Creeper, I figure the big oaf basically behaved himself.

Jerry, Mr. Diamond
Earrings, struts and shines between Bluefish and Creeper, the three of them like malevolent cartoon rats—Creeps, Sparkles and Snake, the boss—parading into some kitchen for a really big cheese heist.

“You’d think making bail, Bluefish would head for places unknown,” I say.

“Bluefish is here to see me,” Luis says.

I reverse direction again to check my favorite bartender. Luis has been extremely busy since I came in. Barely had time to wave hello and take my order. Glad the fire did so little damage he’s back raking in the coin. But someone should tell him all the food tastes like smoke. Personally, I don’t have the chilies.

“You and Bluefish have an appointment?” I say.

“Bluefish and I have unfinished business,” Luis says. “I knew only that he would come.”

“Me, too,” Gina says.

Huh? The combined fragrances of green chili, onion, cilantro and warming corn tortillas grows overpowering.

“What the hell is going on?” I say.

The two of them stare at me. Luis solemn and resolute. Gina’s smile sporting an odd twist.

Why
is
Gina here, by the way?