Caruso 01 - Boom Town (24 page)

Panzer’s ears stuck straight up and his nose twitched.

Tony eased his way inside and stopped in his tracks as the
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lights clicked on.

Panzer growled but waited at Tony’s side.

“About time you got your ass home,” said Shabato as he made a move toward Tony from across the room. Sitting in a chair was a rather bruised Frank Peroni. Standing behind him was the other Portland cop, Reese, his droopy eyes adjusting to the new bright-ness.

Shabato patted Tony down for weapons.

“Hey, any closer and you have to buy me dinner.”

“You’re a funny guy, Tony,” Shabato said, his task of feeling him up complete.

“Frank. You all right?”

Peroni shifted his head as he hunched his shoulders. Tony had a feeling he would have said something if his mouth hadn’t been swollen.

Casting a critical gaze on the two cops as Tony made his way across the room to the refrigerator, he said, “I suppose you guys wiped out my beer supply?” Tony glanced inside the fridge, wast-ing time as he tried to figure out what in the hell was going on.

“We got a couple a questions for you.” It was Reese this time.

Tony ran the items in the kitchen drawers through his mind.

Knives on the right of the dishwasher. Big bastard of a butcher knife, if he remembered correctly. These guys weren’t here for questions. There must have been some loose ends to clear up, and beating Frank until he gave up Tony’s location was one of them.

Followed closely by both of them ending up as coyote bait out on the high desert.

“Hopefully I can give you some answers,” Tony said, moving back into the living room. He had a better idea than the knife.

“Although I’m pretty much of an ignorant bastard when it comes to details. So you’ll have to bear with me.”

Frank mumbled something and Reese smacked him across the side of the head.

“What the hell was that for?” Frank whined as he rubbed his head.

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“For being a dumb ass,” Reese yelled at him.

“Listen,” Tony said. “Let’s stop right here. As of this moment, I don’t know shit for shit. I’m working on the murder of Barb and Dan Humphrey. If you two super cops have something to do with that, then we can talk. Otherwise the three of you can just leave me alone. I sure as fuck don’t need any more headaches.”

Shabato flipped his red ponytail over his shoulder and took a step toward Tony. He stopped when Panzer growled and took a few steps in the cop’s direction.

“You better control that beast,” Shabato said. “What the hell is it a giant poodle?” He laughed.

The dog growled again.

“Now you’ve pissed him off,” Tony said. “He’s a Giant Schnauzer. A German-trained police dog. Being a cop, you should know that.”

“Fuck you!”

Shabato was trying his best to be intimidating, but it was hard for Tony to take serious threat from a guy with a ponytail. Maybe the Highlander. Regardless, the cop still had a 9mm strapped to his right hip. The only consolation so far was his reluctance to pull it on Tony.

Shabato said, “Tell us about your case.” His eyes were still focused on Tony’s dog.

Tony shifted his eyes intentionally toward his thick briefcase leaning against the wall next to the sliding glass door. Reese took the bait. He shoved his foot into the hard aluminum case.

Tony took a step toward him, but was stopped by Shabato’s outstretched hand.

“What the fuck you got in there?” Reese asked, looking at the case with great scrutiny.

“There’s nothing in there,” Tony said, trying to be as casual as possible.

Shabato went over to the case now. “What do you think’s in there?” he asked his partner.

“Shit if I know,” Reese said, playing with one of the latches.

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“Maybe what we’re looking for. Maybe the two of them are together on this.”

Shabato glanced Tony’s way. “Is that right, Caruso? You got what we want in here?”

“Only if you want my dirty skivvies.” Tony made a move toward the two of them and Shabato finally drew his gun and pointed it directly at Tony’s gut.

Now Panzer bared his teeth and stretched his broad chest toward the cop with the gun. “Panzer,
sitzen
.” The dog did just that.

“Hold it right there,” Shabato said, and then glanced back at his partner. “Open it up.”

“No!” Tony yelled a little too dramatically. “Never mind. Go ahead.”

Now Shabato looked confused. So did Reese, only in his case confusion required some sort of higher thought patterns that seemed to escape him. Perhaps his mother had dropped him one too many times on his head as a baby, Tony thought.

Reese’s perplexed expression came out as, “Huh?”

“Don’t you see, Reese,” Shabato said, his gun waving haphaz-ardly about. “He wants us to open the case. Why is that, Caruso?”

Tony shrugged. “Maybe my dirty underwear will knock you out.”

“Yeah, right.”

Shabato looked back at his partner and Tony took that as a sign to make his move, pulling his cell phone from inside his pocket.

“Something’s in there. And it’s not your damn jockeys.”

Shabato turned to see Tony with his cell phone flipped open and his finger next to a button.

“What’s that?” Reese asked.

“It’s his fuckin’ cell phone you idiot,” Shabato said, moving a step closer to Tony.

“Hold it there,” Tony said. For some reason the man stopped.

“Think about it, boys. Until a short while ago, what did I do for a living?”

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Reese and Shabato looked at each other, unsure what to think.

Shabato took a stab at the answer. “Crazy motherfuckin’ bomb jock. What—”

“Think about it, Shabato. You’re a smart guy. We gotta build

‘em to understand them, and those who try to blow the shit out of perfectly good bodies.”

Eyes shifted about the room. Uncertainty. That’s all it could have been.

Shabato looked back at the box. “You’re saying you got a bomb in there?”

“Damn, you are smart. And the phone is?”

The synaptic connections were starting to work overtime in Shabato’s head, yet that was nothing compared to Reese, who was now moving a couple feet from the case.

“Fuckin’ A,” Frank said, rising up from the chair.

“Motherfucker’s got you by the short and curlies. He hits his fuckin’ speed dial, the number sets off a switch in the god damn case, and the crazy bastard blows us all to hell.”

Tony smiled as if to thank Frank for filling in the blanks.

“That’s about it. Although I could give you a long, drawn out schematic, with details of each device. But I’d hate to bore you with details in the last few minutes of your life.”

“You’re bluffin’,” Shabato said. He wasn’t a convincing liar.

Tony could tell that he was just as scared as his partner, who was now across the room near the door. Like that would somehow spare him.

“Are you willing to take that chance?” Tony asked him.

Shabato thought it over, his gun down at his side. “Let’s go, Frank.” He pointed his 9mm at Frank now.

“He stays here,” Tony yelled. “I need him as a witness for the local murder.”

Reluctantly, Shabato holstered his gun and went to the door. He let his partner scurry through the door and then started out himself before stopping and pointing at Tony. “This isn’t the end of this, pal. And I’m sending you a bill for those tires you slit. Crazy
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bastard,” he mumbled under his breath as he left.

Tony went and locked the door behind them. When he turned around, Frank was up to his waist in the refrigerator.

“You want one of these?” he asked Tony, holding one of the microbrews over the top of the door.

“Yeah, what the hell.”

Tony accepted a beer from him and shoved his phone back into his jacket and then threw the jacket onto the sofa.

“Hey, easy,” Frank said.

“What?”

“The phone.”

They both took seats. “You bought that?”

“Hey, you’re the one who threw me into an ice-cold river in a pitch-black blizzard. Anything’s possible.” He took a drink of beer and then pointed a finger at Tony. Frank tried to clear his voice. “I think I’m catchin’ a bit of a cold from that. Should I send my doctor’s bill to you?” He hesitated and laughed under his breath. “What is in the case?”

“My camera equipment.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Sure. Is that a piss stain on your pants?”

Frank looked down at his crotch. “The beer’s sweating. I set it on there.”

“Sure. So, what did those two beat you for?”

“How do you know it wasn’t your good friend the sheriff?”

Tony didn’t even give that one a thought.

“Those two don’t need a reason to beat someone,” Frank said.

“You gonna tell me the story? Never mind.” Tony laid out his version of what he thought the three of them had been up to, including Frank’s considerable skill at either re-keying locks or saving the records of those potential robbery victims. When he was done, Frank sat dumbfounded across from Tony.

“Son of a bitch,” he finally said. “How—”

“That’s not important,” Tony said. “But you’ve got something that’s theirs; I’m guessing money laundered from some of your
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escapades, and they don’t seem like the type to give up until they’ve got what they want. So, your hiding out at the cabin had a dual reason. You saw someone run out of the Humphrey house, but you had also decided to take a little extra from the robberies.

Stop me when I make a mistake. You see these two at your Portland house and you bolt. But they weren’t looking for a robber, they were looking for a double-crossing partner.”

He sat there drinking Tony’s beer and shaking his head.

“Where’s the money?” Tony said.

“It’s around. I’m not giving shit to those two.”

“They will kill you, Frank. And then they’ll blame the whole thing on you.”

He mulled it over, his eyes shifting with various thoughts.

Finally, he pointed a finger at Tony and said, “Not without the money. That’s what drives them, man. The money.”

“Eventually you’ll give in,” Tony assured him. “They’ll wrap an electrode to your balls and start zapping you until your dick sinks so far up into your body you’ll think you swallowed a hot-dog whole.”

He shuddered with that. “Jesus Christ. Sounds like you know that from experience.”

“You need to go to the sheriff and tell him everything. Say you’ll testify against the cops. You could get off with a slap on the wrist, especially if you also give up the name or at least a decent description of the guy you saw running from the Humphrey house that night. You give Sheriff Green something to go on?”

He hesitated way too long as he finished his beer.

“Well?”

“I told you. I didn’t get a good look.”

“Then why’d you run and hide?”

“Think about it. He saw me. There’s lights in the Jacuzzi. And, he could have gotten my license plate before he took off.”

That’s right. But there was something else bothering Tony about that whole mess. It was coming to him now in a hurry.

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“You said the guy ran around the side of the house. Which side?”

Frank closed his eyes as he visualized that night. “The right side,” he said.

“Toward the basketball player’s house?”

“No. The other way.”

“Did you hear a car take off?”

He was in deep thought again. “Don’t think so. But it could have. The damn house blew all to hell. I was asshole and elbows around the other side of the house, trying my best to get the hell out of there.”

“What about the sliding glass door? Did you have to unlock it when you came downstairs after your romp with Barb?”

Slipping back in his chair, he cocked his head to one side. “No.

That’s weird. I didn’t think about it until you just brought it up.

At the time I noticed the door was open wide enough for someone to step through, but I figured either Barb or Dan must have left it that way. Yeah, that’s what must have happened.”

“What about the screen?”

“There was no screen.” Frank got up and headed toward the kitchen with the empty beer. “You want another one?”

Tony got up and went after him. “No. And neither do you. I gotta get you somewhere safe.”

“But—”

“Shut the fuck up. You’re coming with me.”

Tony hauled Frank down to the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, handed him over to Sheriff Green, who listened to the story patiently, and then handed him over to some of his men to throw into a lock up.

When they were gone, the sheriff sat back in his chair and gazed at Tony seriously. “Something’s up with you,” the sheriff said. “You gonna let me in on the secret?”

“Quite the intuition on you,” Tony said.

“Women have intuition. I got a gut feeling you aren’t telling me everything.”

“I’m still looking into a few things. Maybe that’s what your gut
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is telling you.”

“It’s more than that. You’re holding out on me.”

Checking his watch, Tony saw it was a quarter to three. He got up and started to go. Humphrey would be waiting for him at the condo.

“Hold it,” the sheriff yelled after Tony, as he got up from his chair and caught him at the door. “We got a murderer out there.

You start poking your nose around and who knows what might happen. It’s not a great leap from two murders to three. And besides, I’m now investigating this case.”

“Sheriff. I didn’t think you cared.”

“Well. It’s just more paperwork for my people. And it doesn’t look good for the tourism.”

“You’re quite the Rotarian, sheriff.” Tony opened the door and started to go but then stopped. “If you can get a hold of Shabato and Reese, I can handle myself. Besides, I think most of my work will be in front of a computer screen tonight. But, just in case, give me your cell number and I’ll update you later.”