Authors: Carsten Stroud
“And …”
“You could shoot me out of hand, right now, tell everybody you just dropped in and found me counting the cash, and then we slapped leather.”
“Slapped leather?”
“You know. Had a gunfight.”
“
Slapped leather
?”
“It’s from the movies, dammit.”
“What was the movie?
Cabaret
?”
“Okay. Forget that,” said Danziger. “Where’s the cash now?”
“It’s not cash anymore. Got it into the Mondex system.”
“How’d you do that?”
“Boxed it up and FedEx’d it to our guy at that limey bank in the Channel Islands.”
“Boxed it up?
Boxed it up
? Are you fucking nuts, Coker? What did you say it was?”
“Tax records. Nothing bores the shit out of people more than tax records.”
“Did it get there?”
Coker reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out two navy blue cards, each with a large gold chip embedded in it. Embossed on the front side, in holograms, were the letters
PNG BANK
. He held the cards out to Danziger.
“Pick a card. Any card.”
Danziger took the one on the left, flipped it over. There was no signature line. Just a small square of dots made for a scanner.
“What’s the PNG Bank?”
“Papua New Guinea. Based in Port Moresby. Our guy says Qadaffi was one of their clients.”
“Well, if they’re good enough for Muhammar … this one of those, what you call ’em …?”
“Used to be called Mondex cards. These are sorta like those, but all the data is triple encrypted. They can be traced, but it’s not easy, especially if they get churned by the holding bank.”
“What’s
churned …
no, never mind. I could give a shit. What’s on them? I mean, how much?”
“Little over a million on each. That includes the money we took from Deitz for giving him back his cosmic Frisbee.”
“That was five hundred thousand. Plus two million one hundred and sixty three thousand from Gracie—”
“Minus the one hundred thousand you stuck in the back of Deitz’s Hummer when you were putting the Frisbee in the glove box.”
Danziger was quiet for a time, doing the math.
“We’re short maybe four hundred thousand.”
“Cost of doing business.”
“With the limey?”
“Yeah. He had to clean a lot of currency. Sixty pounds of it. I say four large for a service like that is dirt cheap. Anybody we could have taken it to in Atlanta or Vegas would have asked for fifty percent.”
Danziger studied the card for a while.
“Is this safe to use?”
“It’s not like a credit card or an ATM card. It’s more like a computer and a cell phone. You can send cash over the phone, you can use any kind of currency, and if the guy you’re dealing with has a Mondex card too, then you can just transfer cash back and forth right there on the street. No bills no coins no receipts. No stores, no banks with security cameras—”
“So it’s just like cash?”
“Yeah. Only it’s all on that computer chip there.”
“What if I lose it?”
“Like I said. It’s cash. You’d be fucked.”
Danziger nodded, slipped the card into his shirt pocket.
“You okay with this?” Coker asked.
“Hell, I’m fine with it. But it kills Plan B.”
“Which was?”
“Plant the cash somewhere where Deitz controls the facility, and then rat him out. Not even Deitz could talk his way out of actually having all the stolen cash in his possession.”
“Wouldn’t have worked.”
“Why not?”
“The Feds went all over everything Deitz owned, home and office and his beach house. Deitz cooperated, because he knew damn well he didn’t have the cash. It turns up later, someplace they already looked, not even the Feds would buy it.”
Danziger had nothing to say to that.
“Besides,” said Coker, pouring himself more wine, “there’s Twyla.”
Twyla Littlebasket was Coker’s girlfriend. She was a Cherokee dental hygienist, formerly employed by Donnie Falcone. She wore tight-fitting powder blue dental hygienist smocks that buttoned all the way down the
front, and white stockings. Her father had been Morgan Littlebasket right up until six months ago, when he flew his plane into the side of Tallulah’s Wall. Twyla had brown eyes and long black hair as shiny as a crow’s wing. A figure that could cause heart palpitations in a yak.
Due to an oversight, Twyla had stumbled on the cash one day shortly after the robbery, mainly because Danziger had left it lying out on the counter at Coker’s place.
They had talked about shooting her but neither of them could bring himself to shoot a sexy dental hygienist in a baby blue dress that buttoned all the way down the front.
So they’d cut her in for a share instead, which she took, smiling sweetly even though it made her part of the conspiracy and therefore as guilty as they were, which didn’t really bother her because, deep down, she had larceny in her the way crocodiles have teeth.
“What about her? She worried about Deitz?”
“She’s fretting. I told her we’d come up with something. She said it was too late for stratagems and schemes. She said there was only one sensible thing to do.”
“What was it?”
“We go find Deitz and kill him.”
“Did she? My, my. Our Twyla continues to amaze. Well, I’m game. The field is going to be a bit crowded. Every law enforcement guy in the state is thinking exactly the same thing. Plus remember that guy, the guy who found out Twyla’s dad was taking pictures of her in the shower, got ahold of them and e-mailed them to Twyla?”
“Tony Bock.”
“Yeah. Him. Remember what he said, when you and Twyla paid him a call?”
“After he pissed himself and fainted, or before?”
“Didn’t he say that Deitz’s IT guy, Andy Chu, was blackmailing Deitz? That he had film of Deitz meeting with the Chinese?”
“Yeah. I put that fact in my back pocket, figured we could use Chu for something, down the line.”
“What was he blackmailing Deitz with?”
Coker turned it around in his mind.
“Chu probably knew about the deal with the Chinese.”
“Wasn’t there something about four guys in Leavenworth?”
“Yeah. You’re right. Mafia guys, if I recall. Heavy hitters. Bock said that Chu found out Deitz had fucked them on an inside job back when he
was with the FBI. When it went south and the Feds were closing in, Deitz cut a deal in exchange for testimony. They let him resign, and the four Mafia guys went to Leavenworth.”
“Where they still are?”
“Far as I know,” said Coker, patting his tunic for a cigarette, pulling out a pack of Camels, offering one to Danziger.
“You figure they got a TV in Leavenworth?”
“Sure.”
“You figure they saw Deitz on it, getting busted for taking down a bank and walking away with a couple of million?”
Coker inhaled on the cigarette, blew it out, grinned through the smoke at Danziger.
“Charlie, I do believe you’re not just a pretty face after all.”
“Thank you.”
“Mafia guys have long memories. If they think Deitz has money—”
“They’ll send somebody.”
“Maybe already have.”
“Could be.”
A silence, while they worked out the angles.
“Okay. Crowded field,” said Coker, “but we gotta do it. Law is one thing, but if a mob enforcer gets to Deitz and puts real voltage through his nuptials—”
“We’ll be next. Guy won’t give a shit about due process or evidence. He’ll come right at us. Come to think of it, that’s probably what Deitz is planning to do right now, wherever he is.”
“Be nice to know who this mob enforcer guy is.”
Another silence. Danziger broke it.
“Who was this guy Edgar Luckinbaugh was going on about?”
Coker took a sip of his Pinot Grigio, silently wished for bourbon, set the glass down.
“The guy who checked into the Marriott?”
“Yeah. Orville Hender-something.”
“Harvill Endicott.”
“Edgar said he had a shitload of heavy metal in his case. A Sig, couple of boxes of ammo. Some gear looks like an interrogation kit. Rented two cars. Caddy and a shit-box rice burner. Think he’s the guy from Leavenworth?”
Coker thought it over.
“Edgar said he looked more like a dying minister on the run with the
poor box. Tall skinny guy, old as dirt, sort of a pale blue-looking guy, according to Edgar. Bloodless. Sound like a Mafia shooter to you?”
“Yes,” said Danziger, with feeling. “He does.”
Coker glanced over at Danziger, nodded.
“Duly noted. We get a moment, let’s go look him over. From a distance. Sound good?”
“No. We get a look at him and maybe he gets a look at us looking at him. If he’s a smart guy, he’ll know why we’re tailing him. I say we put Edgar on him. He used to be an investigator with the county. A pretty good one. He’s got the street smarts, and he’s done surveillance before.”
Coker wasn’t sold.
“Single-man surveillance is a bitch. And what if he gets burned and the guy turns around on him?”
“Better Edgar than us. Besides, he could use the money. Being a bellhop pays poorly.”
Coker thought it over.
“Okay. Works for me. Will you put him on it? Tell him we’ll pay five hundred a day.”
“He’ll have to call in sick at the hotel.”
“Five hundred a day ought to cover that.”
“Okay. I’ll call him today.”
“Tell him to be careful, will you?”
“I will. So Twyla says we gotta kill Deitz?”
Coker nodded absently, watching the horses wander, thinking about Harvill Endicott.
“Twyla have any suggestions on how we were supposed to find Deitz? I mean, everybody in the state is looking for him, but they haven’t got him yet. That means somebody’s helping him.”
They both sat and watched the horses. Danziger was thinking that if there was such a thing as reincarnation, it wouldn’t be so bad to come back as a stud horse.
“I got a theory about how we find Deitz,” said Coker, after a pause. “We wait a while, he’ll come barreling right up that road, guns a-blazing.”
“I thought about that, and we can’t let that happen.”
“Why not? You think we’d lose?”
“Think about it. Deitz gets free, any normal guy in his situation is gonna try for Mexico or Canada. But instead he comes straight at you and me? Even if we kill him, a lot of people are going to wonder why he did a crazy thing like that.”
Coker mulled that over.
“Good point. So what do we do?”
“Somebody’s helping him, right? I mean, hiding him and backing him up. Maybe whoever it is, he’s already dead in his own basement and Deitz is using his car and his money. Otherwise Deitz would already be back in jail. So think about it, Coker. If it’s not Phil Holliman, who basically hates Deitz’s guts, who’s the next logical choice?”
Coker thought about it for a while. Danziger went to dig out another bottle of Santa Margherita. When he came back, Coker was just shutting down his cell phone. He grinned at Danziger, a berserk light in his yellow-flecked eyes that always made Danziger feel like smiling.
“Guess who’s not at work today?”
Like most morgues, the morgue in Lady Grace Hospital was in the sub-subbasement. When the elevator doors slid back, both Boonie and Nick got that smell right away. Bad meat and Lysol and Dustbane and clammy air. Death itself. A long, narrow corridor, badly lit, filled with voices and bustle but nobody visible. As they walked down the hall they passed a couple of autopsy rooms, figures in dark green scrubs bending over something laid out on a steel table, bare feet sticking out, as blue as Indian corn, the figures talking low, heads together, hands working. Blood on their sleeves. That god-awful fluorescent bar hanging low overhead as if these guys were playing poker instead of turning a human body into a meat canoe.
They passed on down without looking in and saying hello and nobody came out to ask them what their business was, if any.
At the far end of the long dark hallway was a set of stainless-steel doors. No windows. When they got close, a short, blocky Hispanic attendant pushing a gurney emerged from a side hall and banged the big steel button that opened the double doors. While they hissed open he noticed Boonie and Nick coming down the hall, and his face opened up in a cheerful grin.
“Special Agent Hackendorff,” he said, in a thick Spanish accent. “You in here again?”
“I am,” said Boonie, as the Hispanic guy looked Nick over, Nick in his hospital gown and paper slippers and big blue bathrobe.
“You brought one that can walk?” said the attendant. “Usually we have to roll them in. Like this one,” he said, tapping the sheet covering the corpse. The dead man’s feet were sticking out. They were still pink.
“Looks new,” said Boonie.
The guy nodded.
“He’s number nine. They just lost him. We’re putting him in cadaver storage with the other eight. Hell of a thing, that Super Gee thing. Niceville gets weirder every year.”
He looked over at Nick, smiled.
“I’m Hector. You look familiar.”
“I’m Nick Kavanaugh.”
“Thought so. Seen you around. You’re with the CID, right?”
Boonie was shaking his head.
“Hector, Nick’s not with the CID. Nick’s not even here. Nick never was here. You follow?”
Hector looked puzzled, and then he brightened.
“Oh yeah. I get it. The Traveling Dude in Drawer Nineteen.”
“That’s right,” said Boonie.
Hector tapped his nose, turned away, and pushed the gurney through the doors and on into a large, harshly lit, and chilly room lined in steel doors, three high and covering both walls.
Waving over his shoulder, he disappeared into what looked like a large meat locker at the far end of the room. Boonie led Nick over to a stack of drawers, the last one on the left. Each drawer had a stainless-steel door on it, marked only by a number. Number 19 was the middle door in the stack.
Boonie stopped in front of it, sighed, and seemed to slump into himself.
“Not sure I’m up to this,” he said, smiling at Nick. “Ever since I ran into this case I haven’t been myself. Now I’m about to do it to you.”
Nick considered Boonie’s face, all the humor gone from it, and the new age lines around his eyes.