Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (177 page)

Had been
following her since her visit to the parole officer earlier this morning. What was his name, Cruz something-or-other? She’d driven circuitously around the city, trying to determine if someone was actually tailing her.

Her first clue to being stalked was the car, distinctive because of its non-monochromatic paint job. As if someone had begun the task with a bright metallic red and finished up with a dull gray – or stopped painting altogether. The car’s muffler was noisy and distinctive.

She’d caught a good look at the two men inside the car. She’d been around felons long enough to recognize them easily. From their look, they were gang bangers, which explained the noisy muffler and incomplete paint job.

After a few more twists and turns, she’d pulled into a Walmart parking lot and idled her Toyota’s engine. She didn’t see the car. Ten minutes later, she pulled out of the lot and into a McDonald’s drive through. When she arrived at her motel, however, she spied the same car driving past on Vernon Street.

Damn!
She unsuccessfully tried to convince herself she was being paranoid, but her practical mind wasn’t buying it.

Instead of entering her first-floor motel room, she’d driven to the police station, eating her dinner while sitting indecisively behind the wheel. She could think of only one sensible, safe thing to do if she didn’t go into the precinct and file a claim.

“Walt,” she said when he picked up his phone. “It’s Frankie.”

“Couldn’t wait to have lunch with me tomorrow, huh?” he joked, his voice sounding tinny over the connection.

She paused and took a sip of soda. “I have a problem with tomorrow. Sorry, but I had to go to – ”

“What’s wrong?” He interrupted her, hearing the fear and uncertainty in her voice.

She blew out a heavy breath of frustration. “Uh, nothing, I just need to cancel lunch tomorrow.”

“What’s wrong?” Walt repeated, harsher this time. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Frankie looked around at the police parking lot, nearly empty of cars. “Maybe,” she ventured. “I had to drive to – ”

“Not on the phone,” Walt interrupted again. “Get to a
safe house.
You know what I mean,” he emphasized assuredly. His voice sounded calm and steady, and her nerves settled. “A safe house. I’ll come to you,” he promised.

The connection went dead.

Twenty minutes later Frankie pulled into the driveway of her old house on Bridgeford Avenue in Rosedale. The security pad code on the garage door still worked and she drove inside, parking her Toyota beside the old family car, a 1983 Impala, a classic now, she supposed. The door from the garage into the laundry room was unlocked, same as always.

The house had the musty scent of unused linen and stale air. Even though she had a cleaning service come twice a month, and a lawn service weekly, she couldn’t believe vandals or teenagers hadn’t broken in to camp out or party in the abandoned house. Or that her aunt hadn’t tried to sell it for the equity. But, no, it looked much like it had the fateful night of her Homecoming Dance fifteen years ago.

Rummaging through her bag, she found sweats and a tee shirt to change into. She made up a bed on the couch. She couldn’t stand sleeping in either her old bedroom or her parents’ room. Opening a package of Top Ramen she’d brought with her, she settled into a family room arm chair, worrying what to do next.

She wouldn’t sit helplessly and wait for Walt to swoop in and save her. Again. She would stay here tonight and tomorrow she’d go back to see that parole officer – the Cruz guy. Insist that he give her information about Cole Hansen. Or help her find him. That was his job, wasn’t it?

Cole had answers to her questions. All the trouble had started with him.

Going back to Crescent City without knowing what the note he’d given her meant, or why he’d given it to her, was an admission of defeat. He considered himself in danger. Had he involved her in the same danger just by passing her the indecipherable note?

And what in hell did it all mean?

Chapter 24

Feet propped on the coffee table in front of him, a whiskey shot glass in his right hand, he tried to remember how he’d gotten himself in so deep. If he’d known it would come to this when he started, he’d have – have what? Not started? He didn’t think so.

Didn’t every man gamble a little here and there? Golf rounds, football pools.

Give it up completely? Maybe. He sipped at the whiskey and stared at the muted television screen. That wouldn’t help the dilemma he was in `now, though.

The Moktu Indian Gaming Casino, he decided. That’s where the real trouble had begun.

It was fun and games at first, playing the dollar machines, swilling booze, getting a little high. Then he’d moved up to the five-dollar slots. Roulette and poker next.

He’d worked his way into the private poker games in a flash. The buy-in was a thousand bucks. He remembered thinking vaguely what a big chunk of change that was for a man in his profession, but he’d gotten this primo condominium from his parents. He’d shrugged off caution and taken out a large mortgage on the property.

The condo paid off, he figured he could handle a second mortgage.

Later, he cashed out his 401K.

Most of the time he’d won big at gambling, and the temptation sucked him in like an industrial vacuum. The casino opened a line of credit for him, long before he’d needed to use it. A temptation he couldn’t resist. Five thousand, then twenty, then a hundred grand. By the time his head had cleared, he owed Moktu Casino nearly two-hundred fifty thousand dollars.

Even then he hadn’t panicked. Not until the reality of owing over a quarter million G’s to a bunch of Indians, probably backed by mobsters, hit him like a ton of bricks.

Holy fuck!

Another mortgage on the condo, now almost under water, 401K depleted, his finances a ruin. No way he could afford to live in this ritzy neighborhood on his salary. He was in debt to the casino so deep he didn’t know how to get out, and he knew it would only get worse. The only solution was to run, a sure way to get killed.

So what had he done instead?

He’d laid low, making piddly-ass payments once in a while, just enough to keep the bone-breakers away from the door. All the time knowing a huge day of reckoning was just around the corner.

Like a little kid, he pretended that if he ignored them long enough, they’d go away. They hadn’t, of course. The long arm of retribution had finally reached out.

They came to him brutally – three of them, although the ugly giant would’ve been threat enough – and the knowledge of his vulnerability washed over him like a summer monsoon – without warning and very lethal. A drenching flood of dread that could only end in him dead and lying at the bottom of the ocean.

Not to worry, though, they had a proposition for him.

“A mutually beneficial proposition,” the ham-fisted brute with the broken nose and squinty eyes explained happily. The thug was a walking cliché, but it fit him like a glove, a brass-knuckles-encased glove.

After the debt-ridden man had sworn off gambling forever, explained he’d never enter the doors of Moktu again – cajoled, begged, almost cried – the giant continued calmly, “You want to make this right.”

You
need
to make this right, the brute had emphasized, unnerstand? He jabbed a thick finger in the air.

“My Boss is the debtor, you’re the debtee.” He leaned close and grinned as if he’d said something clever.

The man was pretty sure those weren’t the right words, but he had no intention of arguing with a six-foot-six gargantuan with a nasty face and even nastier breath. Plus, the giant had explained, the debtee was in a unique position to give them what they wanted in lieu of the cash owed.

Maybe take a year or two, but it could be done. An acceptable arrangement for both sides. Wasn’t he lucky the Boss was so accommodating?

Just to be sure the gambler understood their plans for him and the repercussions if he reneged on the deal, the thug had calmly explained what would happen to his body if he didn’t cooperate. Every bloody slice and specific blow to his weak flesh and puny muscles. It ain’t pretty, the thug declared with a wry smile but ... He lifted both muscled shoulders and let the threat hang ominously.

Fingers or thumbs, they’d said – you’ll get a choice what to lose when the time comes – if you screw us over.

But first ... a little something so you don’t forget.

The man swirled the whiskey around in his glass, calm now that the slick, smooth liquor and the oxys had taken off the edge of fear and pain. Briefly contemplated how costly disappearing would be – just getting the hell out of Dodge.

But where to? With the 401K wiped out and the condo mortgaged to the hilt, did it really matter what the cost was? He didn’t have any of it.

However, the situation wasn’t intolerable. He was perfectly capable of doing what Moktu Casino – and the mobsters supporting it – asked of him. He had the knowledge, the skill, and certainly the guts for it.

He scratched his jaw, thinking about the how and the who and the where of such a project. It was risky, but doable.

Placing the whiskey glass on the end table, he held up his left hand, palm inward and wiggled the splint on his broken ring finger, their reminder of his debt.

Chapter 25

Cruz waited another day before driving to Rosedale and talking to Angie Hunt at
Jesus Saves
about his recently-paroled client. Predictably, Cole Hansen hadn’t reached out to Angie, and no one had seen him hanging around the Washington Street area. It was early, though. He had almost a week before his parole could be violated.

Angie didn’t look well. Her flesh was a dusty gray color, like a burlap bag filled with potatoes and clinging with the dirt from harvest. Cruz knew she worried about her “boys,” as she called them. She was one of those people who’d been through hell, come out the other side, and wanted to pass what she’d learned to others.

Cruz tapped on the office door and slung his long frame into a wooden chair in front of her desk. “What’s up, Angie?” Misunderstanding her depression, he tried to assure her. “You don’t need to worry about the backpack. The police won’t hassle you about it. Sergei, now that might be another matter.”

“He didn’t mean anything by taking it. He was just worried about his friend.”

Cruz held up a hand. “I know. He won’t get into any serious trouble. No one figures a person like Sergei was involved in Dickey’s murder.”

“It’s definitely murder?”

“I’m sorry. Dickey was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was standing outside the office door, and lowered his voice. “What do you think, Angie? Did Dickey have any enemies? Someone have a grudge against him?”

“Nah, nothing like that. He was just a harmless old bum.” Her eyes misted at the memory.

“Did he owe any money? Steal someone’s stash?”

Fire danced in her expression, giving her face the life it lacked. “No, I told you. Dickey wasn’t like that. Everybody liked him. He got along with all types. Real low profile, you know?” She stared sharply at him. “At least you’d know if you kept up with your clients.”

Cruz flushed at the accusation, but lowered his voice further and rested his elbows on his knees. He was close enough to smell the faint tang of body odor covered by the scent of Angie’s cheap cologne. “What about the police? Did any particular officer hassle Dickey?”

Angie hesitated, worrying her bottom lip with a thumb and forefinger. “Well, you know, don’t none of the cops like these fellas, and the feeling’s mutual, but ... ” Her voice trailed off as her brow furrowed and she searched her memory.

“But what, Angie?” Cruz tried to keep the eagerness out of his voice. No matter what Angie said about a grudge against the homeless by a police officer, he couldn’t let his mind travel that road.
Christ,
they were all on the same side, weren’t they?

“Some of the cops – detectives, too – had a hard-on for my boys. Winston and Braun, Rawley, Flood – shit, even that sweet-faced gal cop, name of Summers – they was always rousting Dickey from the park.” She reached idly for her pack of cigarettes lying on the desk, remembered where she was, and pushed them away.

“Confiscating his cigarettes, hassling him about leaving trash lyin’ ‘round,” she continued, irritated without her nicotine rush.

She shook her head. “But they did that with all the street people. They really hate the homeless. It’s kinda scary, but, nah, they cops. Bluster and talk trash to us, but what somebody did to Dickey? That’s just plain sick.”

Cruz stood, wondering if he should’ve kept his mouth shut. It was a crazy notion anyway, and he didn’t want any rumors running around the street. “Let’s keep this between ourselves, okay, Angie? Dickey’s death was likely just a random snatch and grab gone wrong.”

“Yeah,” she replied with no conviction in her voice. “Yeah,” she repeated, “but what’d Dickey have worth snatching anyhow?”

In the afternoon Cruz visited Cole Hansen’s parents. The address was on file from several years ago and still current. The father was a stronger and more fit replica of his son, the mother red-eyed and weepy.

“We’ll have nothing to do with him,” the father exclaimed. “He’s been nothing but trouble from the day he was born. Rubbage and good riddance!”

They slammed the door in his face.

The older sister, his next stop, lived in an upscale condominium in Rocklin, and was more compassionate, teary-eyed and soft spoken. “Poor Cole, he never had a chance in this world.”