Big Money (Austin Carr Mystery) (5 page)

TWELVE

The next day after work I find Luis’s Mexican Grill in the full-boat grip of rigor mortis. Subdued voices, no laughter. The light crowd focuses either on oval plates of Umberto’s semi-famous enchiladas and tacos or CNN’s pretty face actress blaring death estimates for another drone attack in Afghanistan. The air tastes brittle, ready to crack.

A stranger might think America’s war with radical Islam was to blame for this pall, but I can see the cause is much more personal. Armed violence threatens the home front as well. I don’t rec
ognize him as being among Luis’ friends, but another Toltec warrior pins me from under Luis’ caballista sombreros
.
Within reach of the stranger’s big paws, a tall brown package leans against his barstool. Could be a couple of golf clubs. Maybe one of those thin, fungo baseball bats. Then again, the shape reminds me of a single-barrel, pump-action shotgun.

No wonder the joint’s tense.

Luis is busy making drinks. He takes a while to spot me, Luis collecting money and mixing big pitchers of margaritas. Soon as our eyes lock though, my favorite bartender/club owner wipes his hands, slides down the bar my way, Luis jaunty, but tense, too, the swagger contained.

He grabs my handshake.
The restaurant’s atmosphere isn’t the only thing uptight around here. Luis’ shiny black eyes bear the resolute wariness of a big-city cop walking up beside your car. One hand on his holster.

I
’ve decided to file a complaint. “Bluefish threatened my children. He brought that creep-ass giant with him, too, surprised me, Ryan and Beth at the restaurant. Bastard had me roughed up in front of my kids.”

Luis’s eyes briefly shut. A long, slow blink. He says, “Did you agree to do him the favor?”

I nod. “I couldn’t say no with the kids there.”

“What about this new friend of yours,
Tony?”

“I asked for his help. But I haven’t heard from him since the day before yesterday.”

Luis reaches low to his left, draws up a half-full bottle of Herradura Gold and pours us two shots. “It is lucky for me I have not yet fathered children. I have only myself and my restaurant to protect.”

My friend doesn’t know the half of it. Besides Beth and Ryan, my current security responsibilities include Carmela, Shore Securities and Mama Bones. Thanks to my boss and market mentor, Mr.
Vic, I’m sworn to protect his, mine and ours. Where’s my badge? My troops? Where’s Tony?

“I noticed the guy with the shotgun,” I say. “I assume he’s a friend of yours.”

Luis ignores my implied question. He wraps two fingers around his tequila glass, drinks his Herradura and shoots a glance at the front door. Maybe he thinks, I’m guessing, that his armed pal remains obscure.

I throw back my own tequila. Tilt my head in the guard’s direction. “Oh, come on, Luis. He pinned me like an owl watching a field mouse when I walked in. And that brown paper package might as well be transparent. About as subtle as a bazooka.”

He shakes his head. “Then Bluefish’s spy will easily pick him out as well.”

“Count on it.”

He pours us another shot. “I must make my friend less visible.”

I glance at the man beneath the sombreros. “And maybe get a
few more of them.”

I park in the Martha Washington Inn’s side lot, grab my coat and slide out of the Camry. A putrid, river-bottom odor whacks my nose. Branchtown residents have been throwing nasty things in the Navasquan River for more than four
hundred years. The gifts return in spirit every low tide.

I breathe as shallowly as possible walking to the hotel’s main entrance. The Martha Washington Inn perches on a small bluff overlooking the river, the hotel’s whitewashed wooden exterior molting away like feathers from an ancient seagull.

The weather is cool and clear this evening in Central New Jersey. A few clouds glow pink in the west. Not a bad night to roost at the Martha’s upstairs brass and mahogany bar, watch the sun go down. After dark, lights pop on in the big river estates, throwing sparklers onto black water.

Maybe after I meet with the AASD’s
Ann Marie Talbot, I’ll have a Bombay martini and check out the lights.

“Hey, Carr.”

I let go of the Martha’s front glass door and swivel to see who’s called my name. It’s Tony Farascio, all six feet of him, the stubble on his George Clooney cheeks thick and black as coal dust.

“Hey, Tony. What’s up?”

“I decided to help you with that other thing.”

Tony sticks out his hand. He’s wearing tan cotton slacks, new white sneakers and another extra
big, short-sleeve knitted green golf shirt beneath an unzipped Navy blue London Fog windbreaker. I’m familiar with his big hands, that crunching grip, but as he walks toward me I notice Tony also owns exceptionally light feet for a big man. Like a pro football lineman.

We drop the shake. “Carmela told you I was going to be here?” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I don’t need any help with the AASD. But I sure could have used you last night. Bluefish threatened my children.”

Tony slams a forefinger to his lips. “Wait a minute,” he says. He guides me inside the Martha’s lobby, then off to a quiet corner beside a thirty-gallon blue Chinese vase filled with blooming yellow forsythia stalks.

“Sorry, pal,” he says. “But I didn’t think Bluefish would make his move that fast. Plus, I had to get permission. But I’m on it now.”

I nod.

“I heard about the cash he gave you,” Tony says.

“You did? From who?”

“I got friends in Bluefish’s family. All over, in fact. You still have his money?”

“It’s still in my car.”

Tony smiles and wraps a thick arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go have a pop at the bar. You can tell me about this AASD problem.”

“I don’t have time. The AASD woman is waiting for me now. She just came into town today on a fluke and agreed to meet me. So it’s important. I don’t want to be late.”

He shrugs and redirects me toward the elevators. “Okay, let’s go see her. We’ll have a pop later.”

Once again I resist his forward momentum. Like before, my shoes slide on the slick marble. “You can’t go with me,” I say.

“Sure I can. You’re going to need me.”

He plows another few steps toward the elevators, me scuffing along with him, stumbling until he stops both of us with quick freeze. “Wait. I got an idea. Let’s go back to your car, get Bluefish’s money. We might need that, too.”

My heart rate ticks up. “What are you talking about? What’s Bluefish’s money got to do with the AASD? Jesus, Tony. You’ll get Shore closed down letting her see all that cash. Like I’m trying to bribe her.”

“Her name’s Ann Marie Talbot, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“And if she files her report with co-mingling charges included, Shore Securities gets hurt bad?”

“Probably. But
—”

“So trust me, Carr.
Vic told you to ask for my help, right?”

“Yes, but there’s no way Mr.
Vic would want you to try and bribe her. Jesus, Tony.”

Tony tows me back outside through the glass doors. Once more, the gooey, to
ngue-swelling smell of dead organic matter punches me in the nose. Tony’s arm, the odors, fear suddenly pumping up my heart rate...feels like I’m about to faint.

George Clooney’s big brother from Brooklyn checks my face, shakes his head. “You look upset.”

There’s no way I can stop Tony Farascio from doing whatever the hell he wants. If I try to muscle him, I will also end up as rotting goo, reeking like the rest of the Navasquan River bottom.

“When you give me Bluefish’s money, I think I gotta go see this
Ann Marie by myself,” he says. “You’re not right.”

And like my series seven securities license, my Gift of Gab has been temporarily suspended.

I am fucking speechless.

Maximilian Zakowsky

Max stares at Ann Marie on the tiny black and white recording monitor. Look at her, rubbing that silly deodorant under her shaved arms. Pulling those little black panties over her round tight ass.

He completes another set of push-ups and rolls onto his back for sit-ups, but switching positions this time so he can watch
Ann Marie’s TV image finish dressing. She’s hooking a lace bra under her pillow-size breasts. Stuffing her soft flesh into cups. What would she do if he went next door right now, to her hotel room, and gave her a kiss?

He sighs. Maybe
Ann Marie is the woman to take Maximilian Zakowsky away from this life. Endless days of sit-ups and push-ups, arm curls. Exercising until his body groans. And for what? For crazy Bluefish? For a place to live? For Jerry, Max’s one friend in the whole world?

Ann Marie
has been very nice to Max. She has sex with him almost anytime he wants. And why would she get dressed like this, in full view of the camera, unless she knows he’s watching? Ann Marie must be doing this just for Max.

He checks the red light on Bluefish’s recording equipment. Everything is good, working fine. Jerry and the rest of Bluefish’s boys will be lining up to watch this tape,
Ann Marie’s breasts so special to look at.

Max wipes the sweat off his forehead and stands up to catch his breath. Bluefish says
Ann Marie doesn’t know about the camera. But with Ann Marie playing with her breasts inside the bra like this, kneading herself, she has to be putting on a show for Max.

He touches the zipper of
his pants.

THIRTEEN

I extend my tongue full length, French-kissing my third martini. The now-empty conical glass winks back at me, another subtle indicator of full-boat overindulgence. Could this warning blinker—a lighthouse perched above the jagged coastline of reality—suggest my ineligibility for a fourth see-through?

My only hesitation to leaving the bar involves a strawberry
blond. She’s sitting on a nearby stool, upstairs at the Martha, and the lady seems to like my smile. Grinning back at me in a very particular way. I have the feeling if I stay right here drinking, Ms. Strawberry may wander over here and rub me up. She’s got “I do what I want” written across her forehead.

Logic, Shor
e’s business and my children's college education luckily snag hold of my gin rotted brain. Checking the bartender’s watch, I see Brooklyn Tony has been up in Ann Marie Talbot’s room more than an hour. If he’s trying to bribe that woman from the American Association of Securities Dealers, he could put Shore out of business, maybe install my pink ass in a white-collar prison. The U.S. District Attorney here is running for Congress. He loves to make an example of corporate criminals.

I throw down
cash and slide off my stool. I must be nuts letting Tony go up to Talbot’s room, let him represent Shore Securities with the AASD. What was I thinking? At the very least I should have held out as long as physically possible, let the contusions and concussions speak later of my attempt to prevent Tony’s madness.

Besides Carmela, who walked in ten minutes ago, the bar’s packed with lingering sunset gazers and silver-haired seniors ordering early-bird specials from the bar menu. Through the crowd, the strawberry
blond and I find each other again.

Too bad, I have to go.
I only get a glimpse on my way out, but Ms. Strawberry’s wearing a scooped-neck black dress that frames her bosom and drapes her hips like liquid chocolate. A diamond earring twinkles at me, but not as brightly as the lady’s smile. If Johnny Depp as that movie pirate had a blond sister...

I wave and disappear into the elevator lobby.

Figures. Probably the love of my life back there and I’m ditching the bar and a chance to meet her because everything I have, everything my children need, could be sliding down the big financial drain as I speak. Or think. Or whatever the hell it is I’m doing.

Goddamn, I
might as well have gone for the martini
quatro
. The third one buried me anyway.

The elevator doors rattle open before I push the button, and Tony’s
dark-haired wife, Gina the Luscious, rushes out, almost crashing into me. What the hell’s she doing here? Her way-past shoulder length black hair dangles loose and uncombed. Her cashmere sweater sports a torn seam across the right shoulder. And Gina Farascio’s gorgeous face is drawn tight, her mascara smeared by tears.

The instant I catch her shoulders, preventing our collision, the lights go off and the Martha’s fire alarm fills the hall with high
pitched electronic screaming and blinking red light. The piercing, throbbing whine stabs at my ears, the ugly noise somehow louder in the near dark.

Gina’s eyes go wide and wild
, the intense red beacon flashing directly above us from high in the elevator lobby’s corner, the bloody light adds a frightening visual quality to the fire alarm screaming. If I’ve got my bearings right, the crimson bursts signal a location for the stairway. My heart is drumming.

It figures t
hat lives are at stake. I have five or six ounces of Bombay Sapphire in me, not to mention the vermouth. Plus—let’s see if I can put this delicately—my brain’s missing some blood thanks to Gina being so close. My corporal contents have shifted.

A crowd of alarm
driven bar patrons streams into the small elevator lobby, but instead of opening, the elevator doors lock shut. I reach for Gina’s hand as the swelling crowd of panicked seniors herds toward the stairs. I don’t see or smell any smoke, but Gina and I don’t have any choice but to go along. We’re swept up like leaves in a water-filled gutter.

I slip my arm around her waist to keep us together.

Outside in the parking lot, Gina and I huddle with two or three dozen other bar patrons, hotel guests and staff
. Branchtown fire crews unload hoses while others rush inside the Martha Washington. I don’t spot Tony, Ms. Strawberry or Ann Marie Talbot anywhere in the crowd, but Carmela’s out here with Gina and me, Mr. Vic’s daughter talking with three young women and a uniformed cop.