Dead Money Run (16 page)

W
e
booked a suite at the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Atlanta to rest our nerves and catch up on some sleep. I knew some of the events of the last week had taken their toll on Hilary. For the first time in fifteen years I cared about someone other than myself. While I welcomed the feeling, it brought a vulnerability I wasn’t sure about.

I didn’t consider myself a killer.
Shooting someone in my view was just another form of protection. If you didn’t eliminate the bad guys, they would soon be in a position to eliminate you.

When we checked into the hotel, I told Hilary to
register in the name she got from Eddie’s. I gave her a roll of cash and told her not to use a credit card for anything. At this point, I did not think anyone looking for us was aware of Hilary’s connection to the insurance company. While that would not last forever, I wanted to ride it as long as we could.

In the morning, b
efore leaving the hotel to meet Crusher, I put all of our cash into the room safe. In addition to her pistol, I left the little twenty-two I picked up in South Carolina and gave it to Hilary in case she needed to do any target practice. I left my Glock too. Hilary seemed happy that I would not have the means to shoot anyone this morning. I showed her how to work the combination on the safe and left. Hilary didn’t know about the Colt Python or the PPK I left in the car and I saw no point in telling her.

The Hyatt Regency Hotel, like a lot of Atlanta downtown hotels, had large parking areas underneath the hotels.
People who stayed in hotels like the Hyatt Regency tended to park as close to the elevators as possible to shorten the walking distance to the Hotel’s entrance. I parked on the bottom where there were little or no cars. I did it because if there was someone of interest, they would be down there with me.

When I pulled into the parking lot
at Roseman’s gym at eight o’clock in the morning, Crusher was sitting there in a red pickup truck. I pulled in next to him and rolled down my car window. Crusher was eating a breakfast burrito and drinking a cup of coffee.

“Anyone inside?” I said.

“Just Roseman.”

“How do you know? We are the only cars here.”

“He takes MARTA, if you can believe it. A hood who rides public transportation. What will they come up with next?”

“Can
you get inside?” I said.

“
Can a cat lick his ass? Of course I can. Front door is open.”

Getting out of his car,
Crusher balled the burrito wrapper up and tossed it in a waste barrel resting next to the gym’s front door. Opening the front door to the gym, Crusher held it for me and I walked inside. There were no lights on except for a little light coming from under Roseman’s office door in back of the building. After stepping inside, I locked the front door. I didn’t want any visitors.

“Where is everybody,” said Crusher. “Usually this time
of day the place is buzzing.”

I didn’t say anything. Walking straight to
Roseman’s office door, I put my ear to the door. I heard Roseman talking on the telephone.

“Yeah. That’s right. I don’t have any information on
him yet. Yeah, I had Carl try and tail him, but Carl couldn’t find his ass with his hands glued to it. When he talked to Baker, Baker said he told Malloy that he couldn’t help them. How do I know how the lawyer got hit? Well, I’m telling you, Malloy doesn’t leave any witnesses. Yeah, I know you’re tough too. It just may be that Malloy is tougher.”

When I heard the phone being hung up, I turned the doorknob and st
epped through the door. Roseman just looked up like he was expecting me.

“What can I do for you
, Malloy?”

“Tell me how I can find Sonny Cap for starters.”

Roseman barked out a laugh. “You know Malloy, you’re really something. You think Sonny Cap is sitting around waiting for you? Don’t worry, he’ll be in touch.”

“What do you know about a lawyer named Al Baker up in a place called Ellijay?”

“What’s to know? I heard he got charbroiled in the house he lived in when it burned down. Why you asking?”

I wasn’t surprised that someone was working
cleanup for me. Burning Baker’s place was a good way to keep people from snooping around for evidence. If I had thought of it I might have done the same thing.

“
When I last saw him he was alive and well,” I said.

Waving his hand as if he was swatting a
t a fly, Roseman said, “Well, he probably isn’t doing too well now.

“
Where’s Crusher? You meet up with that asshole yet?”

“As a matter of fact I did
. He’s right here. You can ask him yourself.”

Rosem
an’s eyes doubled in size when Crusher walked in.

“
I always thought you had a big mouth, Roseman. Time someone shut it for you.”

“Crusher,
my man. I didn’t mean any disrespect. Just using a figure of speech.”

Reaching toward Roseman’s chair, Crusher wrapped his left hand around
Roseman’s neck and said, “I’m going to have my friend Lou count to ten and if you don’t tell us where we can find Sonny and his band of merry men, I’m going to crush your windpipe and then start on your balls.”

Roseman was no
fool. He gave up Sonny’s place with his next breath.

“
He doesn’t live in Buckhead anymore. He lost it to an ex-wife and three kids. Now he lives on top of a building on Lucky Street, if you can believe that. I don’t know the address, but there’s a hamburger joint on the bottom. Can’t miss it. Lucky Street is about a half block long.”

“Lou, what do you think?”
said Crusher.

I told Crusher to put him to sleep, but no
t kill him. I wanted to look around Roseman’s office. In about two seconds Roseman was out like a light slumped in his chair asleep. In searching his office, I found a lot of files on wrestlers. Even found one on Crusher. I opened it. Crusher’s full name was Harold Barnes. I handed him the file and told him to stick with the name, Crusher.

After about ten minutes I found something that had the name
‘Cumberland Island’ on the outside of the jacket. It contained newspaper clippings about the robbery. I started to read the file. My name, along with the names of Henry Lowe and Benny Star were in there as well. As I read the file, my mind took me back to the night of the robbery.

Chapter
44

Henr
y
Lowe had been on the inside as a maintenance man, giving him access to every room in the Casino. Benny Star was a counter in the cash room. He had the longest fingers I ever saw on a person. He could palm a card faster than anyone in the business. Benny always said that to be a good counter, you had to be a good cheater. Benny was the one that knew about the money being transferred to someplace offshore. I had been the outside man. My job was to drive the boat that would get us and the money off the island. Looking at the names, it brought me back to that night.

Benny
’s job was to toss the thirty duffle bags of money into Beach Creek that ran along the back of the casino. I was to fish them out of the Creek as they floated out on the outgoing tide. That night the bags made it to the boat and I was able to get the bags in the boat, but Benny got caught by one of the security people. They had him on camera tossing the money out the window into the creek. Benny always said he wasn’t going to prison. Before they could do anything he ate his gun.

Lowe
was found dead in the electrical control room. The cops claimed he died of an electrical shock. I suspected later that someone had hit him with an electrical shock weapon or ESW and his heart stopped.

Either way, I was on my own.
Running at about forty knots I had to watch the time and guess on the distance. The boat sounded like a big hemi engine with no muffler. Benny told me to watch for the third lighthouse as I headed north. When I saw the lighthouse marking my turn, I angled the boat in at about sixty degrees and split the big opening like Benny had said to do.

When
I saw the light on the old boat dock on Turtle Point a half mile from the cut inside the bay, I wasn’t sure how far north I had gone. I tried to gauge my speed with the time as I headed north. When I turned to head toward Turtle Point, I saw a pair of helicopters heading my way. I turned the boat and tucked it under an old loading dock from back in the days when the area was one of the largest exporters of hardwood in the world. The two birds that were looking for me had split up when they got to the bay. One went up the Intracoastal Waterway toward Savannah and the other went south, toward Brunswick.

I
t had taken me an hour and forty-five minutes to get to the bay cutoff. It would be another hour or two before they could get boats in the water. I never saw the helicopters again. They probably figured I turned in somewhere around Saint Mary’s or went south to Fernandina Beach. The East Coast was a big place. With so many places to hide, more smuggled goods came ashore between New Jersey and Miami than any place on earth. That’s probably why Blackbeard liked the place so much.

For the next three hours I dragged and pulled until I got
all the bags offloaded and near the gator hole. Looking around I found the three old fifty gallon drums that Henry had left earlier in the week. After another hour, I had all the money in the drums and shoved in the hole. Walking back to the boat I untied it from the dock, started the engine and headed back toward Brunswick in the Intracoastal. I wasn’t in a hurry. I knew I didn’t stand much of a chance getting away. I just didn’t want to get killed. At the time I thought I had been pretty lucky. As it turned out, luck had nothing to do with it.

Chapter 45

“He
y
, Lou. You in there?”

Turning
, I shook my head clear and came back to earth.

“I’m fine. Just some things in this file brought back some memories.”

“You sorry you did it?”

“No
, Crush. Just like all the other crooks. Sorry I got caught.”

I was surprised to see my sister’s name in the
file. Someone had done a complete history on both her and me. There was even information on my brother, Sam. The file contained information on where we were born and the places where we lived over the years. There was a full section on me and my arrest and conviction. There was even a section on my mother and father in there. An investigator named Lance Smyth signed off on the report. He worked for the Casino in Jacksonville Beach. Then it hit me. This was from my sister’s personnel records. As I looked over the file, something caught my eye. My sister had a top secret clearance. I didn’t know the total implications, but I knew one thing for sure. The government didn’t pass those out to hookers.

Putting th
e file back into the jacket, I laid it on a chair. I needed some more information from Roseman.

“Crush
er, see if there is any smelling salts or water. I need Roseman awake.”

After about five minutes, Crusher came back with some smelling salts and I stuck it under Roseman’s nose.
When he got a whiff, he shook himself awake.

“What the hell happened?”

“I have a few questions.”

“Why should I talk to you?” he said.

“Self-interest,” I said. “Besides if you don’t, I’m going to let Crusher squeeze your neck until you pop. Your choice.”

Roseman’s eyes darted toward Crusher
. Crusher just shrugged.

“If I tell you
, they’ll kill me,” he said.

“Worry about me,” I said. “Think about what I’m going to do if you don’t.”

He didn’t say anything. Just nodded his head. I laid the file on his desk and said, “What were you doing with this?”

Turning the file around
, Roseman looked at it. “Someone from Sonny’s operation gave this to me. Said that I had to find you and let them know when I did?”

“
Why did you need my sister’s personnel file from the casino where she worked?”

Roseman started laughing and said, “She didn’t work
there. You sister worked for the Department of Homeland Security. She was a cop, you stupid ass. I thought you of all people would have known that.”

I didn’t react when he said that. “She wasn’t a cop,” I said.

“Whatever you say, smart guy, but she was a cop all the same. One of Sonny’s men found her going through some files at the Casino. That was her first mistake.”

“What was her second
, Roseman?”

“Denying it.
Would have gone easier on her if she hadn’t. She was in over her head. You think this is all about money? You’re going to find out that it is more than that. People in high places are in on this and they are going to squash you like a bug.”

As Roseman talked I
felt my anger starting to get the best of me. He kept telling me how they tortured Susan. He should have quit while he was ahead.

“
I heard she sung like a bird. Let me tell you, Malloy, I heard she worked hard to stay alive.”

Finally
, I had enough. What I needed was to find this Sonny.

“Well
, Roseman, I want to thank you,” I said.

“For what?” he said.

“That’s just the point, nothing.” Then I pulled out the business end of the Python and splattered his brains all over the wall behind where he was sitting. I wanted to say that I felt better afterwards, but I didn’t. All I wanted to do was get out of the place. Reaching over Roseman’s desk, I took the file, tucked it under my arm and left.

I put the file in the car and stood for a few seconds
by my car. I felt like throwing up. I had always known that my sister suffered a very hard death. No one should be made to suffer that way. Apparently they had kept her alive for three days while they did her. I wasn’t sure who was worse, me or the animals that killed her. Over the last week I was responsible for the deaths of a lot of people. Maybe in a way I wasn’t any better than some of the people I killed. Hilary would have a few things to say about that.

Hilary, what the hell was I going to do with her at the end of this road? Would she stay with me? Would she try and change me? Crush was standing next to my car waiting for me to do something.

“I’m sorry, Lou. That was not a pretty story in there. I would have done the same thing you just did or maybe worse. Let’s go find these assholes.”

“I don’t think it is going to be that easy Crush.
The possibility of my sister being a Fed throws a whole new wrinkle into the deal. If she was with Homeland Security, then she wasn’t interested in just the money.”

Crusher wrinkled up his forehead and for a
few moments he reminded me of one of those kids from Our Gang. I wondered what Alfalfa would have to say about this.

“Where to
, Boss?” said Crusher.

I didn’t know. I got in my car and told Crush
er to follow me. I wanted to get back to the hotel and come up with something. So far nothing I was doing was working out the way I wanted it to.