Blood Money (Joe Dillard Series No. 6) (16 page)

“Brace yourself,” she said. “You’re not going to believe this.”

Chapter 26

THE
machine filled the room, and the room wasn’t small. It was a quiet monster, given to hums and clicks instead of roars and growls. It was a diagnostic, bone-scanning, imaging machine, one that would tell us whether Caroline’s cancer had spread over the past three months. We were at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, engaging in the same ritual we’d been engaging in every three months for the past year, since her breast cancer had metastasized to her bones. We would avoid talking about it until a day or two before the next test. We’d talk about it briefly, express hope that the results would be good. We’d load up in the car, make the four-hour drive largely in silence.
 

“Don’t try to interpret what you see on the screen,” the heavy-set, male nurse said to me just before he disappeared into an anteroom filled with computer screens.

“I know what the lights mean,” I said. “We’ve been through this before.”

“All I’m saying is that you’re not a doctor. Let the doctors worry about it.”

“Right,” I said, and he closed the door behind him. I watched through the large, glass panel as he sat down and started pushing buttons.

“You okay?” I said to Caroline. She was lying on her back on a long table that was attached to the machine.
 

“I’m good.”

The table began to slide toward a large tube as a steel panel began to lower itself toward her head. Within seconds, I couldn’t see her face. The bone scan would take thirty minutes. Three hours earlier, Caroline had been given a drink that was filled with radioactive isotopes. Those isotopes had attached themselves to the cancer cells inside her body, and when the machine sent electromagnetic waves through her, the isotopes lit up on a computer monitor that was mounted on the wall across from where I was sitting. Less than five minutes into the scan, I saw the first, faint glow in her skull. It was still there. The cancer was still there. Then another in her shoulder near her right clavicle. Then two more, one in each humerus. A brighter glow in her spine where the tumors had already caused three vertebrae to fracture. Two more in her legs.

“How does it look?” It was Caroline’s voice from beneath the panel.

“Looks good, baby. Hasn’t spread. At least I don’t think it has.”

“So that’s a good thing.”

“Yes. Yes. That’s a good thing.”

“But it’s still there.”

“It is.”

“That’s a bad thing.”

“Could be worse. It could be a whole lot worse.”

“I love you, Joe.”

“I love you, too, baby.”

Chapter 27

MORE
than a week had passed since Johnny and Carlo’s meeting with Big Legs Mucci. Tommy Maldonado had lit up both of their cell phones looking for the weekly tribute, but they’d ignored the calls. It was 1:15 a.m. on Monday morning when they walked out of Quattro’s bar on South Thirteenth Street, a place they’d been going every Sunday night for the past two months. It was a bar frequented by locals around their age, mostly blue collar types. The beer was cold, the music loud, the girls hot, and, for the most part, friendly. The Sunday crowd wasn’t as big as Saturday’s, but Johnny and Carlo were always busy with the drug trade on Saturday night. Sunday was the best day to party, even though the bar shut down at one. Both of them were drunk, especially Carlo, who had started a little early had knocked back fifteen beers.

Their apartment on Passyunk was just over a mile away, so when the weather wasn’t bad, they walked home, past Methodist Hospital and South Philadelphia High School. They’d just crossed West Moyamensing, less than a block from the bar, when four men stepped out onto the sidewalk from a parking lot on their right. The night was cloudy and there was only one streetlight at the corner behind them, so Johnny didn’t recognize any of the men until he got closer. Tommy Maldonado was flanked by three bruisers Johnny had never seen. He and Carlo stopped about five feet from them.
 

“Been trying to get ahold of you guys,” Maldonado said.

“Yeah? What do you want?” Carlo spoke. Johnny could practically feel him seething.
 

“You forgot to pay me yesterday.”

Johnny heard footsteps behind him. He turned. Four more men approached, one of them Big Legs Mucci.

“We ain’t paying,” Carlo said.

“That’s what I heard,” Maldonado said. “Yo Bobby, what else did they say? Something about soft? People don’t respect us no more? What was that other thing?”

“Welfare gangsters,” Mucci said as he and the three men with him fanned out around Johnny and Carlo. “They called us welfare gangsters.”

Johnny looked around quickly. They could probably break through the men and run, but there was no point. The same thing would eventually happen again, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. This was inevitable after the insults he and Carlo had hurled at Mucci. The way Johnny saw it, they could either start asking for forgiveness and pony up, or they could stand their ground and fight

“So it’s like this?” Carlo said. “Eight of you against the two of us?”

“Yeah,” Maldonado said, “it’s like this. You need to learn to respect your elders. Some manners, you know?”

“You’re about to find out how much respect I got for you.”

Johnny and Carlo instinctively put their backs to the fence. They’d been in many fights, even a few involving knives and chains, but they’d never faced so many guys. And these guys were big, all of them older. He eyed them, looking for weapons, waiting for somebody to make the first move. His fingers were tingling, his vision narrowing as the adrenaline began to pump. He decided he’d go straight at the guy directly to his left, try to knock him out, and then see what happened from there. The group of men had backed up a couple of steps and formed a semi-circle with Mucci and Maldonado in the center. Johnny noticed that both of them had their right hands behind their backs. He wondered briefly whether he was about to be shot, but if they intended to shoot him and Carlo, why would they bring eight guys?

It happened quickly. Mucci and Maldonado pulled their hands from behind their backs simultaneously. Yeah, they had guns. But instead of gunshots, Johnny heard two clicks. His body exploded with pain, his muscles tightened into knots, and he felt himself falling forward onto his face. He realized he’d been tasered. Time seemed to drag from that moment forward. He was helpless on the sidewalk, became conscious of more pain, this of a different kind. He tried to move but couldn’t. They were kicking him now, stomping, cursing. He felt a rib crack, saw a flash as one of them caught him flush in the temple. At some point he was able to control his body again, but by that time all he could do was draw his knees up to his chest, try to cover his head with his arms, and wait for it to be over. He could hear men close by doing the same thing to Carlo that these men were doing to him. The blows kept coming and coming and coming. There was another flash, and then, mercifully, darkness.

But the darkness didn’t last. Johnny floated back into consciousness. The taste of blood was on his tongue, pain like fire stung his back, his jaw, his arms and legs. Someone was pulling his hair, lifting his face. He opened his eyes. A blurry image appeared, Maldonado’s face. Johnny smelled stale beer, tobacco.

“You do business here, you pay the money.” The voiced hissed like a poisonous snake. “You don’t pay, you’re gonna end up like your old man.”

Chapter 28

ON
Monday, Charlie put the map and the letter that had accompanied Roscoe’s will in a safety deposit box at Elizabethton Federal Bank. Then she drove to Jonesborough to Joe Dillard’s office, which was now also her office. Joe and Jack had set her up with a nice little desk, a personal computer and a land line phone that she doubted she would ever use.
 

She and Jack had talked for hours, deep into the night. Jack was torn between following his father’s advice to turn the gold over to the court and smuggling it out of the cave and converting it to cash, or at least some of it. Both of them were planning on spending the morning doing research on setting up off shore businesses and bank accounts. Although she didn’t believe anyone would ever find the gold, Charlie still wanted to get it out of the cave, converted to cash, and then get the cash out of the country into an off shore account. She believed she would be far better off than having the gold in a place where someone might be able to take it from her, legally or otherwise, although she just didn’t see how anyone else could have a legitimate legal claim. She had Roscoe’s will, it made her the sole heir to his estate, and his estate included the gold. She also had the letter and the map, both of which proved that Roscoe intended for her to have the gold. Why should she allow Zane Barnes and his lawyer to drag her through the court system for years, maybe even a decade? It wasn’t fair. It just didn’t make any sense to her.

Jack had agreed with her, to a point, but he’d been more cautious. He had suggested that she leave the gold right where it was. It had been there for decades, he said, it wasn’t going anywhere. He had suggested that Charlie at least wait until she learned what Zane Barnes and his lawyer were going to do before she made any decisions about the gold. From what Charlie had described about where the gold was located, Jack believed she couldn’t find a better hiding place. Why not just leave it there for a while? Let things calm down, see what happens with Zane, and then figure out what to do. Charlie had reluctantly agreed to wait before removing any more bars from the cave, but she had insisted on figuring out a way to cash in the bar she had already removed. It was worth more than half-a-million dollars. With that money, she could hire the best probate lawyer in the state to fight Zane Barnes and Nathaniel Mitchell, if that was what she ultimately decided to do.
 

There was a diner just around the corner from the office called “Granny’s.” Mr. Dillard had told her it was owned and operated by his sister, Sarah, and that the food was good, so Charlie decided to stop in to get some breakfast. She parked her battered Ford Ranger pick-up truck in front of the office and walked around the corner. She sat at a table near the far wall and ordered blueberry pancakes, bacon and milk from a college-age black girl who introduced herself as Rosemary. A pretty, dark-eyed brunette was collecting money at the cash register, and Charlie heard one of the other waitresses call her Sarah from across the room. Charlie got up and walked over.

“Are you Joe Dillard’s sister?” Charlie said.

“Depends on what he’s done to you,” the woman said.

“I’m Charlie Story.” Charlie offered her hand. “I’m working with him now.”

“Ah, so you’re the one Caroline told me about. The one that sets little Jack’s heart all a flutter. She was certainly right about you being pretty.”

Charlie felt herself blushing. “I don’t know about—”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Sarah said. “Joe was in here a couple of days ago. He told me about you, too. He said nice things.”

There was another person waiting behind Charlie to pay so she walked back to her table. She settled into the comfortable buzz around her and opened the
Quarter Horse Journal
that was folded in her purse. She read an article about training and ate slowly. When she was finished, Rosemary the waitress surprised her by telling her that her bill had already been paid.
 

“Who paid it?” Charlie asked.
 

“That guy at the end of the counter.” Rosemary pointed, then shrugged. “He’s gone. Don’t know who he was. Never seen him before.”

“What did he look like?”

“Creepy lookin’. Shaved head.”

Charlie had been engrossed in her magazine and hadn’t noticed him. She folded her magazine and was walking past her truck toward the office when she noticed a standard-sized, white envelope stuck under a wiper blade on the windshield. On the front of the envelope, handwritten in red ink, was “cHarlEston sTorY.” There was no address, no return address, no postage, only her name. She picked the envelope up and opened it. There was one sheet of paper, torn from a yellow legal pad.
 

“dear mIss charleston Story you take my breath aWay. I have
admired
you for so long from afaR. I want to be with YOU alone and forever we will be
TOGEtHER
. just YOU and mE!!!!! this moRninG i was looking at the sun RisE and it made me Think of how you SmiLe and how
pretty you are in the morning and at night
!!! i can NOT get YOU ouT of my Head even if i trY to do IT does not work.
 

DiE SLut!!!

i did not mean that you KNOW because all i Can tHink about is you. i am fine and how are YOU????
you are the prettiest girl i HAVe EvEr seen
there i SAID IT!!!
 
and i am wishing we will bE ToGether so SOON it can make my
heAD Spin
!
   
and I will MaKe you SpIN toooo…!!! so gOOdBye for now ta ta i wiLL SEe you…...
SLuT
not really before you Know it!!!!”

Charlie looked around the parking lot and out to the street, scanning in every direction. She re-read the note as a feeling of terror crept through her limbs like a rising tide. She thought about going back into the diner but decided to go on to the office, which was only a short distance away. She stuffed the note in her purse and felt her hands shaking as she turned the key in the lock of the front door of the office. Joe wasn’t there yet, and neither was Jack. She looked over her shoulder and scanned the lot again.
 

Clyde Dalton, the paranoid schizophrenic client she’d been appointed to represent, was the first person that had entered her mind as she read the note. Could it be him? She hadn’t seen Clyde since she had appeared in court with him. Mr. Dillard had helped her make the arrangements for Clyde’s mental evaluation, which was to have taken place the day after his court appearance at a mental hospital in Johnson City. Was he focusing on her now? Obsessed with her?