Stiffed (10 page)

Oh fuck.

Sally Krebs.

For fuck’s sake!  That’s all we need.  I can imagine that Annabelle might have wanted to call a friend to keep her company given what’s happened in the last few hours, but Sally freaking Krebs!  We’re going to need to find Annabelle some new friends.  I mean, I know Jason’s no great shakes in the human being stakes, but he’s a few rungs up the ‘what makes a good friend’ ladder than Sally ‘the Schizo’ Krebs.

I should know; I dated
her for six months back when I was nineteen, naïve, and anything in a skirt held unbeknownst promises, even if the wearer was a fruit loop. 

She’s the original psycho-bitch. 

The first in an illustrious line.

Her eyes widen in surprise
and her body relaxes with recognition.

I remove my hand from h
er mouth and ask: ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Good to see you too
, Tiger,’ she says, trying to wriggle out from under me as if offended by the bodily contact.  ‘Are you trying to scare me half to death?’

S
ally is kind of dopey and conservative in a Meg Ryan, You’ve Got Mail kind of way, but without the film star looks, the natural charisma, and the wherewithal to run a business.  A flattering way of describing her would be cuddly.  In other words, she’s about fifty pounds overweight and has no ankles.  She was the shy, goofy, odd-looking kid in class and somehow she latched onto the four of us then never let go.  Annabelle took her under her wing, though she treated her with the same kind of contempt she did all of us.

She’s
also the most frigid woman on the planet.  She practically freezes solid if you try to kiss her, even in private.  That is, unless she’s drunk – which was a damn rare occasion back then – in which case she transforms into a whoring bitch.

It’s l
ike a switch.  Three glasses of wine and she’s as cold as ice, half way into the fourth and she turns into an outrageous flirt, by the fifth glass she has your trousers undone and her hand in your underpants.  Our brief relationship came to an end when I caught her upstairs at a party being screwed from behind by a guy twice her age.  Rather than stopping when I asked her what the hell was going on, she asked if I wanted to join in.  Talk about a personality inversion.

Of course, she was fifty pounds lighter and
a dozen years younger at the time and she’s since matured from ugly duckling to lovely swan before later mutating into haggard goose.  Okay, well maybe not haggard.  Fattened goose.  After Jason, she’s Annabelle’s best customer.  She’s addicted to chocolate caramels.

For a few years in her early twenties she kind of went off the rails.  Got hooked on vodka limes and became a bit of a lush.
She’s now a signed up member of AA and is frostier than a blizzard in a Siberian winter.  Two years ago she married a divorced insurance broker and inherited his two brat kids, whom Jason has lovingly christened ‘Little Fucker One’ and ‘Little Fucker Two’, the reasons for which are obvious within thirty seconds of meeting them.  Their real names are Storm and Cyclone.  I joke not.  You can imagine what the father is like. Total asshole would be a compliment.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not bitter or anything.  I
mean I’ve totally moved on.  I now go for psycho-bitches who steal a million dollars and attract mad men like flies round a dead goat.

‘Where’
s Annabelle?’ I ask.

‘I’m
fine, thanks for asking,’ Sally says, rising to her feet, brushing down her dress.

Jason has appeared at the backdoor
gasping for breath, placing his hands on his knees.  If the bullets had been flying he’d have only got five yards before he died of a coronary.  He takes in the scene, recognition dawning.

‘Sally?’

She looks at him as if he should have known all along.

‘Why
’d you run away?’

‘Why do you think
?’ She answers, her hands on her hips.

‘Annabelle and Redneck are gone
,’ he says to me.

‘Where’s Paavo?’ I ask
, still lying on the grass, trying to decide if it’s possible for bruises to get bruises.

‘Going r
oom to room like a TV cop.’

That figures.  At least som
eone seems to know what the hell they’re doing. 

‘You look like you ran into a barn door and you
stink of smoke,’ Sally observes.

I
ignore her observation and slowly get to my feet.  I make my way back into the bushes to my hiding place, retrieve the Uzi and step back out onto a crazy paving path.

Sally’s eyes widen at the sight of the gun.  ‘Would somebody like to tell me what the heck is going on?’ she asks in her best strict mother voice.

‘Shit,’ I mutter.  ‘Shit is what is going on.’

‘I mean it, Tiger.  If I don’t get some straight answers I’m going to the police.’

‘Stop calling me Tiger,’ I reply, heading for the backdoor, ignoring her threat.  ‘I’m not
your Goddamn pet cat.’

‘You used to purr for me once,’ she countered.

‘Once being the operative word.  Once in six months.  Now, are you going to tell us what the hell happened to Annabelle or not?’ 

I push Jason to one side and enter the kitchen.
  All the cupboards are open, foodstuffs scattered everywhere.  It looks like a mini-tornado has swept through.

A few moments later Sally bursts into the room behind me. 
‘Once?  It was more than once!’

‘Okay twice
,’ I say, moving through to the front room.  ‘And it was never as contented a purr as when you were being screwed from behind by that old fucker.’

The wooden chair is still in the middle of the room,
the washing line swirling around it.  The rest of the room looks like a bomb’s hit it.

‘Jesus, Tadhg!’ Sally yells
. ‘You’re never gonna let me forget that are you?  I was young and drunk.  Paralytic.  I could barely stand up.  I didn’t know what was going on.  You should have been protecting me.’

‘Protecting you?’ I say, the red mist descending. 
‘From what?  You were the one who went wandering off, dropped your panties of your own free will.  Played hide the trouser snake with some total stranger.  You looked like you knew exactly what you were doing to me.’

‘From myself!
  Protecting me from myself!’  Sally drops down onto a cushion-less sofa, seeming to calm somewhat, her face covered in tears.  ‘Jesus, Tadhg, you can be such a prick sometimes.’

‘You asked me
whether I …’

‘That’s enough,’ Jason interve
nes.  ‘She’s right, Tadhg, you’re being a prick.  Jesus, man, that was years ago.  There’s more important shit happening right now.  Like Annabelle being kidnapped.’

They’re right, I
am being a prick.  How the hell did we get onto Sally’s indiscretion in any case?  I mean, I was over that five minutes after it happened.  Seriously. 

This whole madness is screwing with my perspective.  I don’t know whether I’m coming or going; what I think about anything.  I sit down in Redneck’s chair.

Paavo enters the room, his face set in a determined pose, the Raptor hanging by his side.  ‘You need to tell us what you know,’ he says to Sally.

‘I don’t KNOW anything,’
she says, upset still in her voice.

‘What happened?’ Paavo persists.

‘I don’t know!  Annabelle rang me.  Asked me to come over and keep her company.  When I got here she was holding a gun and there was an unconscious man tied to the chair.  I’d only been here thirty seconds when this car pulled up outside.  She told me to go to the kitchen and flee if there was any trouble.  To try and find the three of you, but not to go to the police.  We started to argue, but she insisted, pushed me down the hall.  Then there was a lot of shouting and she screamed and I ran.  I left her behind.’

‘Did you see who they were?’  I ask.

‘No!  How could I?  I was in the kitchen with the door closed.  When the shouting started I ran out the back door.  Went to Jason’s house.’

‘What kind of car was it?’ Paavo asks.

‘I don’t know.  A black one.’

‘Y
ou didn’t see who was driving it?’ I ask.

‘NO!  Look, what the hell is going on?  Shouldn’t we be talking to the police?’

‘No,’ Jason and I say together.

‘What did they sound like?’ Paavo asks.

‘Sound like?’

‘Yeah, you
know, their accents?’ I ask.  ‘What were the men’s accents?’

‘I … I don’t know.’

‘Did one of them sound like Barry White?’ I prompt.

‘Barry White?’

‘Yeah, you know, deep and bassy,’ I mimic.

‘I … I …’

So that’s either a yes or a no.  Sally’s not proving to be a great witness.  I can see why the cops get frustrated when investigating cases; a person is present when two people are abducted but witnessed nothing of any use.  I drop my head into my hands.  As I see it there are five possible kidnappers: Barry White and Denise; friends of Redneck; Aldo Pirelli and Co; Kate and Juan – I’m assuming that Kate sweet-talked Juan into letting her go for a share of the million bucks – or some other group that we don’t yet know about.

‘It’s not my fault,’
Sally says.  ‘I was scared.  I ran away.  When I came back she was gone and the house was a mess.  I waited for a little while.  I was just about to call the police when you three turned up and I … well, I panicked … so I … well, you know the rest.’  She bursts into tears again.

Great, just what we need right now:
hysterics.

Based on
Sally’s timeline, I must have tried ringing Annabelle just after whomever it was that abducted Annabelle had shown up.  A few minutes earlier and we’d have been here.

Damn
.

‘We need to leave and get rid of the van,’ Paavo says.

I nod my head.

‘Look, Sally, why don’t we take you home?  Pretend that this never happened?  We’ll find Annabelle.’

‘I’m … I’m not … going home,’ she gasps between sobs.  ‘I’m … I’m staying with you.’

‘
Sally …’

‘I lost
her, I need to find her again.’

Jesus.  We should have never have left Annabelle on her own to guard Redneck.  What the hell were we thinking?  There’s a whole bunch of mad men running around and we left her on her own.  What kind of friends are we? 

Fucking lousy ones.

I hope to heaven that she’s okay.  She’s strong and tough, but
God knows what those bastards will do to her.  Whichever bastards they are.

5

A bad plan is better than no plan

There doesn’t seem to be anything missing from the house, although it’s difficult to know for sure.  Whoever went through the place enjoyed throwing things around and ripping stuff up.  The
outline of a dead body made with shaving foam, sketched in the middle of my bedroom floor where my bed used to be, is a particularly fetching touch.

I grab a fresh set of clothes
, stuffing them into a plastic bag, and head back downstairs.  Paavo is waiting for me in the hall, looking edgy, wanting to get away from the house, afraid that the police or somebody worse will turn up at any minute.  I can’t say I blame him; it’s hardly been a sanctuary over the past few hours.

Jason and Sally have already headed to
his basement lair with the Uzi.  I walk through to the kitchen and lock the back door, though it hardly seems worthwhile – the kind of people we’re dealing with are likely to kick it off its hinges should the lock prove meddlesome.  I take a pack of frozen peas from the freezer then we let ourselves out the front and make our way to the Choi’s residence.

Jason and Sally are sittin
g in silence amongst his assorted junk, lost in their thoughts.  Jason has changed his t-shirt.  Clearly he’s decided the last one was a crock of crap.  The new one is little better.  It reads: ‘I’m too sexy for this shirt.’ Yeah, right.  It should read: ‘This t-shirt is too sexy for the XXXL schmuck wearing it.’

‘We need to go,’ Paavo says.

‘Go where?’ I ask. 

We’re running around like headless chickens; we need a plan.
  Any kind of plan, but preferably one that disposes of two bodies, rescues Annabelle, and gives us our old lives back.

‘To swap vans.
  The police will be looking for this one.’

‘The police?’
Sally says, looking up.

‘It’s a long story,’ I say
, sitting down, placing the pack of frozen peas on my crotch.  ‘What are you going to do with Marino and Junior?’ I ask Paavo.

‘Put them back in the garage.’

I nod my head.  If the van gets pulled over the last thing we want is for the police to find two dead bodies in the back. 

The cold
from the peas has started to work its way through my jeans, soothing in a frost bite kind of way.  I place the bag on my face and move it around.  What I need right now is an ice bath.

‘No, no, no,’ Jason protests.  ‘They’re not going in the garage.’

‘What’s wrong with in here?’ Sally says.  ‘Surely they’ll be more comfortable in here?’

‘NO!’ Jason snaps.  ‘NO WAY are they staying here!’

‘Why not?  It’ll be cooler than the garage.  We can put one on the bed, one on the sofa.’

‘NO!’ Jason shouts.  ‘Put them in your bed!’

‘What exactly do you know about Marino and Junior, Sally?’ I ask, sensing that she doesn’t really understand who they are.

‘Annabelle mentioned something about a kidnap.
I assume they’re your hostages?’

Oh boy.
  Annabelle probably meant Redneck.

‘We need to go,’
Paavo says, starting to get agitated.     

Sally looks
quizzically between the three of us.

‘I really think
it would be for the best if you went home, Sally.  This whole thing is fucked up.  You need to stay out of it.  You’ve got kids.’

‘I’ve got two little shits who take after their
idiot father.’ 

Well, I guess things are not so hot on the home front.

‘We’ve been through this already,’ Sally continues, ‘whatever the hell is going on, I’m part of it.  I’m not going to be able to live with myself if something happens to Annabelle and I did nothing to help.’

I let out a deep sigh.  This is hopeless.  There’s no point maintaining t
he pretence that we can keep this morning’s events secret.  The main thing now is to rescue Annabelle and try and extricate ourselves from this disaster as best as possible.  I imagine we’re all going to spend some time in prison for something: obstruction of justice, dangerous driving, kidnap, discharge of a lethal weapon, hit and run, attempted murder, fleeing a crime scene.  Who knows what else?   

‘Wel
l, don’t say we didn’t warn you,’ I say slowly.  ‘Marino and Junior are dead.’

‘You killed two people!’ Sally says, her voice rising in pitch.

Shit.  I knew we should have got rid of her whether she liked it or not.  I must be going soft in the head.

‘No,’ Jason says.  ‘We
inherited
two dead bodies.  Two gangsters.’

‘You’v
e been driving around with two dead bodies?’

‘We’ve
been trying to get rid of them,’ I say.  ‘It’s been surprisingly difficult.’

‘Especially when you’re not allowed to burn them,’ Jason says.

‘Burn them?’ Sally repeats.

‘Can we please go
?’ Paavo interjects, glaring at his watch.

‘We need a plan,’ I say
, ignoring Jason’s jibe.  ‘We’re just running around aimlessly.’

‘We’ll get a plan later.  First
, we get rid of the van.  Then we find Annabelle.’  With that bombshell of three whole sentences, Paavo climbs out of the basement.

I guess that’s a plan. 
Of sorts.

‘You can’t put them in our garage,’ Jason says.  ‘What if my parents find them?’

‘That’s a chance we’ll have to take,’ I say, heading after Paavo, still holding the bag of peas to my crotch.  ‘It’s going to be bad enough explaining why the cab roof is full of bullet holes without the police finding two dead bodies in the back.’

* * *

It had been nice and toasty in the back of the van and Marino and Junior were starting to reek.  A hint of a kind of sickly sweet smell of rotting meat mixed with diarrhea that catches in the back of the throat like wet tar. 

To be fair to
Sally, she got stuck in and helped us move the bodies.  Not actually doing any lifting or moving, but giving instructions.  Anyone would have thought she’d been appointed foreman.  I hoped she wasn’t getting notions about her role in this malarkey.  Bizarrely, she seemed to think the best way of hiding and preserving the bodies was to pour tins of paint over them.  As I said, she can be kind of dopey sometimes.  Jason vetoed the idea.  He’d be the one cleaning it up.  We definitely need to get rid of them as soon as possible, however; they’re twenty years and a potential death sentence hanging round our necks.

We
’re now back on the road again: Paavo and myself in the van, Jason and Sally following in her Toyota Sienna.  They’ve been given strict instructions to keep driving if we’re pulled over.  Paavo is taking a back street route, weaving across town. 

‘Where are we going?’ I ask Paavo for about the sixth time
in two streets.

This time he decides to answer. 
‘Annabelle’s.’

‘Her house is back that way.’

‘The factory.’

‘Why
in God’s name are we going to her factory?’

‘To get a new van.’

That makes sense; Paavo occasionally does deliveries for Annabelle when she’s short staffed.  Her company has a fleet of vans for distributing her chocolate delights to her network of shops.  Over the past seven years she’s built a chain of thirty five stores across three states.  As well as selling high-end chocolates, the stores act as coffee shops, selling Viennese chocolate pastries made fresh daily.  The latest addition to the range is a suite of creamy, chocolate ice creams; a dozen flavors but all with a chocolate twist. 

She’s tapping into a truism – everyone loves chocolate, but rather than giving them
emulsified supermarket candy, she’s offering high-end, scrumptious, velvety choco-goodness at reasonable prices.  It seems people can’t get enough.  She’s the new darling of the entrepreneurial business community.  Her plan is to open eight more stores in the next year.  Fifteen the year after. 

Assuming she’s either alive or has her freedom.

There’s the sound of siren whooping a couple of blocks over.  I hold my breath, but it’s heading the other way.

Shit.

‘Where are we dumping this one?’

‘At the factory.’

‘Don’t you think someone will report it being left there?’

Paavo shrugs.

‘Is there no lock-up we can use?’

‘Only my own.
  They will look there.  I know a place.’

My
cell phone rings.  I dig it out of my pocket wondering whether it might be Annabelle’s kidnapper making contact.  The number on the screen is that of my editor.  I’ve already avoided answering three of his calls this morning.  I sigh and press answer.  When all this madness ends, I’m still going to need my job.

‘Hello, Tadhg Maguire speaking.’

‘Tad?  Where the hell are you, son?’ Charles King says in his dulcet tones.  ‘You were meant to be covering the Somerfield’s christening.’

The story of my working life - weddings, christenings and funerals.
  Occasionally I’m thrown a community event or a retirement party. It’s all pretty mundane: lots of smiles or tears and tables full of finger food.  The nearest I get to danger is being caught in the crossfire of drunken, bickering relatives and witnessing stressed out catering managers berate their staff. 

‘I’m … I’m investigating something else.’

‘This something else wouldn’t happen to involve the police would it?’

Oh shit.

‘I … Well … I can’t really say at the minute.’

‘I’ve just had the police onto me, Tad.  They wanted to know where you were.  They seemed concerned for your safety.  I gave them your cell number.’

Wonderful.

‘You’re not in some kind of trouble are you, Tad?’

‘No, no, Mr King.  Everything’s fine.  I’m … I’m investigating this … scandal.’

‘And what scandal would that be, Tad?’  His even tone hasn’t altered one bit during the conversation.  ‘We’re a family newspaper, remember, not the investigative kind.’

‘I’m not … I can’t say right now, Mr King.’  My phone is beeping to tell me I have another in-coming call.

‘I want you to drop whatever it is you’re doing Tad and come into the office.  We need to talk.’

‘I …’

‘That wasn’t a request, Tad.’  He ends the call.
 

Shit.

The phone rings immediately.  I don’t recognize the number, but answer anyway.

‘Yes?’

‘Tad?’ Joe Gerlach says.

‘Yes?’

‘Tad, we need to talk.’

‘I’m busy right now.’

‘I know.  We’ve been clearing up after you all morning.  A fight in John Philips’ place, a major pile-up on the Telegraph Road, a bonfire at Malachy’s Mill, an assault at Jeannie’s Motel.’

So much for getting rid of the bodies discretely.

‘I think you might have got me mixed up with somebody else.’

‘I don’t think so, Tad.  I’m at your house.  It’s been turned over and it looks like someone has been tied to a chair.’

‘What?’

‘Don’t try and play stupid with me, Tad. 
I knew you were acting suspiciously this morning.  I should have brought you in then.  I have an all points alert out for you.  It would make everybody’s life a hell of a lot easier, including your own, if you just gave yourself up.’

‘But I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘We’ll let the law be the judge of that.’

I terminate the call and switch the phone off.
  We’re doomed.

‘The
police are looking for us,’ I mutter.

Paavo nods his he
ad.  ‘We need to get rid of our phones.  Take the battery out of yours.’

‘Maybe we should just give ourselves up?  Try and
explain everything.’

‘NO!
  The battery.  Now!’  He slams his hand on the steering wheel and pulls over to the side of the street.  Paavo’s cracked, gone Rambo.  What we need right now is a drive-through; get some comfort food into his system.

I struggle with the back of the phone. 

‘If you were going to ring someone to help us, Paavo,’ I ask out of curiosity, ‘who would it be?’

‘
75
th
Ranger Regiment,’ he says, getting out of the van.

Good choice, I think to myself, finally popping open the back of the phone.

* * *

‘Throw it in the river,’ Paavo orders.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Paavo,’ I answer.  ‘Without the battery the phone’s dead.  We might need it later.  I might need to check my messages to see if Annabelle’s kidnappers rang.  We might need to ring for help.’

‘Help?
  From whom? The police?’