Dead Money Run (21 page)

“Mind if I fix myself a drink?”

“Help yourself,” said Stanton.

I had to get us separated somehow instead of bunched
up like quail. As I stepped away, one of the shooters did what I had hoped. He tracked me with his weapon. The other one still had his weapon pointing at Hilary and Crusher, but Crusher had figured out the plan and had walked over to the food area.

“Man, all this tension makes me hungry.”

When I got to the bar, I turned and drew the Python and shot the shooter looking at me. Hilary had dropped to the floor and fished her Airweight out and put a slug just over Sabrina’s left ear. The other shooter still standing holding the MAC-10 didn’t know what to do. I shot him in the head. When I turned back around, Crusher had the Berretta pointing at Stanton and his buddy.

“Missus Hightower, no matter what happens her
e, you’re dead,” said Hilary.

“Well it looks like we are at check my dear,” Sabrina
to no one in particular.

“Yes, but the gun is not pointing at me my dear
,” said Jon Hightower.” It appears the ball is in your court.”

“Not really
, Shorty,” said Crusher. “He had swung the Berretta to point at Jonathon Hightower. Neither Stanton nor Miles had moved a muscle.

I walked over and
picked up one of the MAC-10’s and kicked the other one over to Crusher.

“We would like to sit and chat with you folks, but we r
eally have to go,” I said. “But before I leave Stanton, and it is Stanton isn’t it.” When no one answered, I said, “I thought so.

“For the record, whatever you think we have
, we’re keeping. Let’s go Crusher.”

“Huh? ...Yeah, sure
,” said Crusher. “Well so long everybody and you to ah…Missus … Been swell meeting you folks.”

When we got outside
, Hilary and I broke out in a trot with Crusher falling in behind us. When we reached a couple of castles down the road, I pulled Hilary in behind some hedges and motioned for Crusher to get down. After a few minutes, two figures, all in black, came out of the back of the Hightower house on crotch rockets and shot down the road going the opposite way.

After a few minutes we heard them coming back heading our way. This time they were
moving slowly, deliberately shinning flashlights, first on the left and then on the right. In a few seconds they were going to be upon us. Hilary pulled my arm and said what she planned to do. I just told Crusher to stay loose. When the two Bikes passed our position, Hilary stepped out from behind the thick bushes and held up the front of her blouse, whistling for them to stop. And stop they did. While Hilary was distracting them, Crusher and I put a short burst of fire into each rider’s facemask with the MAC-10’s. Afterwards, Crusher helped me drag them into the hedge near the spot where we had been standing. Climbing on one of the bikes, I motioned Hilary to get on behind me.

“Not me
, Big Boy. If you will recall, I am the one who knows how to ride one of these.”

She had a point
. I got off and gave her the driver’s spot and climbed onto the sissy seat. The bikes were both Kawasaki Ninjas ZX-14’s and were so fast that most cops didn’t even bother to chase them. Crusher took to his Ninja like a baby to candy. We were back at the hotel in less than ten minutes. After ditching the bikes, we made it to our room to pack up while Hilary went downstairs and retrieved Rosemen’s file. I was surprised that there was no welcoming committee when we arrived. Just another indication of Reynolds and Miles not being who they said they were.

When Hilary returned,
she didn’t have the file and was not alone.

When I opened the door, there was a guy standing b
ehind Hilary.

“Mind if we come in,”
he said, and followed Hilary into our room. He was about my height and fit the description of Max Reynolds.

“Do I have a choice Mister Reynolds?” I said.

“Not really,” said Reynolds. “I’m disappointed that my identity is so transparent.”

“Don’t feel so bad,” I said. “
You should be in my shoes.”

“Well, no harm done. I’m not here to arrest you.”

“That’s what the other Reynolds said.”

“So you have met the illustrious Mister Stanton.”

“In the flesh,” I said.

“Yes, well, I don’t have a lot of time and neither do you.

“Mind if we step out onto your balcony for a private talk?”

I
followed Reynolds to our room’s balcony and a chair and waited until Reynolds sat down before saying anything. Hilary and Crusher continued to pack.

“Where is your backup,” I asked.

“Let’s just say I am not alone and you will not get out of this hotel unless I want you to. Now for the reason I am here.”

Reynolds proceeded to tell me about
the reason for his visit and something called CBOTS.

“When you made off with the money, you also, it is b
elieved, made off with the technology to manufacture counterfeit currency or CBOTS.”

“What exactly are CBOTS?” I asked.

“Chicago Board of Trade futures on all types of commodities. However, the key here is the trading of currency futures. The Hightowers, who I am assuming you met by now, control a large position in Euro futures as well as Pesos and Ruble futures through a company called Eclipse. When you took the money fifteen years ago, someone had placed the technology in one of the money bags by mistake. Actually, I have to correct that. You stole the money before it could be taken by the Outfit using their little grab and bag routine. If the Hightowers cannot get their hands on that technology, they will not be able to flood the market with EUROS and the other currency positions that they have. The plan is to drive the value of these currencies down. If they can’t do that, they are going to be out of business.”

“What does that mean to us,” I asked.

“To you, nothing. However, I take it that Stanton has proposed that you hit the casino on Cumberland again.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have my ways. Are you going to do it?”

“What if I said I was?”

“Then, I would support you. I want to put these people out of business. If they get their hands on that technology, we are going to have a serious threat to our economic security, both on a domestic as well as an international level.”

“Why don’t I just give it to you and be done with it?” I said.

“Because the Hightower people have ears in my operation and if they think we already have the stuff they will just try another angle to get what they want.

“No,
I want you to keep it for now, but you now work for me. As far as we are concerned, you can keep the money. We want Stanton and his ilk to make a run at you. By you making an attempt to rob the casino again, they will stay on mission and with luck, we will bring them to their knees, including the Outfit.”

“Sounds like trying to kill three birds with one stone,” I said.

“Maybe even four birds,” said Reynolds.

“So what do you want from us?”

“Keep on mission. We will keep an eye on things. When you get to the casino and take your shot, we will be there to arrest you. They have to think you are going back to jail. That will take the pressure off and then we will set them up for the take down.”

Before Reynolds left, he gave us each a card that basica
lly was the same card that Stanton had given us earlier only this one was the real thing.

“If you get into a jam, use this, but only when there is no other choice in the matter. We do not want your cover to get blown if it can be prevented.”

“What if someone gets killed from the other team?” I asked.

“The card is a license to kill.”

After Reynolds left, Hilary sat in the room and said, “Well that answers one of our questions, it’s not the money.

Wish we
’d waited to find out what it was that we had before we shot up Hightowers party.”

“
I suspect that will come later. Right now we are toxic and we have to get a move on,” I said. “Besides we came out of that with the MAC-10’s and they will come in handy.”

“Man,” said Crusher. “I could get used to one of these.” Crusher was caressing one of the 10’s like it was a new baby.

“Crusher, before we leave Atlanta, take your truck and park it in that long-term parking garage we passed on Spring Street. Book it for about two months. Make sure you take the custom deal where they start the truck once a week to keep the battery up.”

“Okay,” said Crusher.

“We’ll swing by and pick you up on the way out of town.”

Removing the card she had gotten from the phony Rey
nolds, Hilary said, “I guess we can pitch these.”

“Save it. The card may come in handy,” I said.

Chapter 56

Sabrin
a
Hightower smiled and said, “Technology is a wonderful thing, don’t you agree darling?”

“Yes
, my love,” said Hightower. “Everything went as you said it would. Joe, turn on the tracking device. Putting the chip in one of the chicken wings was brilliant. How much time to you think we have before he eliminates it?”

“
A few days,” said Sabrina, “by then we’ll have what we want.”

“Too bad we had to lose
four men to do it,” said Hightower.

“Collateral damage
, Jonathon dear.”

“
But he knows about Eclipse and that Stanton is not the real Reynolds.”

“So what,” said Sabrina. “
He was drawing at straws. Nothing to be concerned about. At this point, we have too much invested in the project to stop now.”

“Sabrina is right,” said Stanton. “His knowing who I am doesn’t change anything. We have spent a fortune in clea
ning up behind Malloy to give him a false sense of security. They’ll all be dead before the end of the week and we will have the technology we need.”

D
rivin
g
out of Atlanta was easier than driving in. For me, that was a good thing. The big Chrysler was a lot more comfortable than riding on the back of one of those Ninjas. Hilary wanted to keep the one she was riding. She said that they were one of the best bikes in the world.

“Zero to sixty
in one point eight seconds. I could feel the power under me.”

“Here I thought I was fast,” I said.

“Lou, you know what I mean. Those bikes had real power.”

“
Maybe,” I said. “But we wouldn’t last five minutes on the road with them. Both those bikes probably had chips in them allowing them to be tracked online.”

“
Still, it would have been nice to have kept them.”

The thought of being tracked started my mind to thin
king. Maybe that is why they didn’t chase us back to the hotel. They have fitted us up with a tracking device. The question is, how would they implant it? One of us would have had to swallow it. The only thing we had in the way of food and drink was the latte from Miles when he picked us up and Crusher eating those chicken wings. That had to be it. What I needed was an all-night drug store and a strong laxative for Crusher.

Chapter 58

I
left Hilary to her dreams and Crusher to his snoring. It was time for me to give some thought to what the hell I was going to do now. Half the State of Georgia was probably looking for us. Since the plan was still to hit the Golden Slipper, I decided to take the back roads to St. Mary’s and stay off the main interstates.

From a commercial standpoint,
for generations most of the people that lived in St. Mary’s had made their livelihood from working the ocean as shrimpers, crabbers and such. When the U.S. Navy built King’s Bay Naval base and put eight Ohio-Class nuclear subs there, that changed everything as far as the local economy.

A
ferry to Cumberland Island left each morning to carry passengers to and from the Island and bring them back each day. Some stayed to gamble and some just spent the day sightseeing. The Casino also had a large boat for people staying at the casino and there was no charge for that. Crusher wanted to know if we were taking the ferry over. I told him, not this time.

At this point I really hadn’t thought of
how we were going to get to the Island except that it was going to be by boat. Crusher seemed pleased at that. He surprised me when he said he knew a lot about boats.

“Yeah, boats are a passion with me. My old man used to fish for a living and I would go and help him with some of the catch he would haul in. Loved being on the water.”

I told him if things played out right he was going to get another shot at it.

Chapter
59

Takin
g
the back roads, it took about an hour longer than it should have, but keeping under the radar was the plan. When we finally got to St. Mary’s, it was almost four in the morning. I hadn’t slept in two days. I was ready to die on my feet. Hilary and Crusher were asleep when we got to the outskirts of the town and I pulled into the parking lot of the first motel I came to after going under I-95. I could see the night clerk sitting behind the front desk. He had his back to the parking lot so I couldn’t tell whether he was asleep or watching something on television. When he heard me walk in, he jumped up and for a few moments, I thought he was going to salute me.

“Easy there
, Pal,” I said. “Just need a couple of connecting rooms for a few days.”

He
was a kid about twenty years old. He wanted to get me checked in and get back to his show.

“Yes
, Sir. You want two kings non-smoking?”

I told him I just needed something
quiet, far away from crowds and on the first floor.

“I got just the
spot.”

I signed the card
using my phony name, handed the kid some money, took the two plastic swipes and went back to the car. The kid didn’t look up after I gave him the money. When I got back to the car, Crusher and Hilary were still asleep. I gave some thought to leaving them there, but then I didn’t want to deal with a cop who thought they were just two people parking to sleep it off.

Opening one of the rooms, I went inside and opened the door to the adjoining room.
Walking back to the car, I opened Hilary’s door and picked her up in my arms and carried her to our side of the setup. She locked her arms around my neck and pressed her lips to the side of my face and told me that she loved me. It was the first time anyone had said that to me ever. I felt like going home and forgetting the whole deal. Buy a house in the burbs. Get the fenced yard and the swing set with the sandbox attachment.

After I put her to bed I went back outside and got Crus
her up and frog-walked him to his room. I unloaded the car. I was so tired I couldn’t sleep so I made a pot of coffee and sat outside in one of the plastic chairs and smoked a cigarette. Next to the chairs was an ash can overflowing with cigarette, cigar butts and gum wrappers.

I
looked at the date calendar on my watch and it was Tuesday, April the twentieth. I had four days to get my hands on a boat and a van. I had three hundred and fifty thousand left out of the five hundred I started with. It was more than enough for most normal people.

Sitting there smoking,
I felt I was close to finding my sister’s killer and wondered what tomorrow would bring. Every day seemed to bring something new. The proposition laid out by Reynolds was a bit of a consolation, but nothing was ever that easy. I now suspected that the reason Susan died was to get information on the whereabouts of the stolen technology. The value of that was probably in the billions and more than enough reason to kill someone.

Stanton
was a rouge agent from the same group as Susan, and now, I knew how things were fitting together. I didn’t want to admit to myself that Susan would have been a criminal, but it fit her profile. I always said she would have made a great crook. The problem it killed her in the process.

Hightower and the Siamese were the real deal
, but I didn’t think they had to same agenda as the Cappoleto’s and the Outfit. While they may have a different agenda than the boys from the Outfit, they had a piece of the deal through this company called Sixty-Six, Partners. So where did they fit in? Were they part of another gang? If so, what could they want? The Hightowers didn’t look like they needed money. It had to be something a lot more important than money. The idea of a counterfeit operation made sense, but where was the technology? If I had it in one of those money bags, then it was news to me.

The company called Eclipse had struck a nerve with Hightower. Whatever
they were up to it involved that company, but I didn’t have time to concern myself with that now.

Stanton
seemed to know a lot about the casino capers the Outfit was running. If it was true that the Outfit insured itself against losses at these casinos to launder money, then maybe Hightower and friends were looking to take over that piece of business. Yet, I didn’t see that happening. The Outfit was too big and too powerful. If the FBI couldn’t bring them to their knees with all the tools at their disposal, then Hightower and his small band weren’t going to do it.

Then there was the Outfit itself. Whatever was going on here was happening at a local level. The head of the Outfit was in Chicago and this had to be a regional issue. Som
ething that Sonny was doing himself. I wondered what would happen to him when we hit the Cumberland Island casino again and the Outfit got wind of it. Standing up, I planned to find out.