Deal Gone Bad - A Thriller (Frank Morrison Thriller Series Book 1) (23 page)

Cowgirl was skeptical.

“Why do you want all of us
to meet at Mike’s place?” she asked.

“Mike’s a lot more
dangerous than he used to be,” Morrison said. “I still don’t know exactly what
he’s into. But these last years, he took a turn for the worse.”

He told her about the
casual way Mike and his associates flaunted their guns. Told her how Mike had
ordered the blond guy to kill the slicked-back hair guy because he thought he
was responsible for the death of a rival they were keeping prisoner in their shed.
When in reality the blond guy himself had killed the poor man and put his spin
on the events to save his own neck.

There was now a hard edge to
Mike. An atmosphere where problems weren’t thought out thoroughly but solved
with quick fixes. Where violence sped up the process. Very different from the way
he and Cowgirl and the others had always operated in the past.

“Mike has become very
volatile,” he said. “I don’t feel totally safe around him. But if we tell him
that we’ve just confirmed the eight million dollars we were targeting have been
stolen, he will instantly focus on recovering that money. I know him. He will
want to get all of that money back. Down to the last dollar. And for that, he
needs my help. He needs your help. Even Harris’s help. That should calm him
down and distract him from making stupid, impulsive decisions. Once he understands
that, we can resume our efforts on Sanford right away without having to watch
our back.”

Cowgirl nodded. “I see
where you’re going,” she said. “The money as the carrot to force him to look beyond
the tip of his nose.”

“Exactly. Use his greed to
curb his irrationality.”

She tilted her head. “But
don’t you think it’s only going to defer things?” she said. “If we end up recovering
the money, he could decide to use his muscles to get it all.”

“That’s a risk,” he said,
“but we’re going to deal with it when we get there. For the time being, we need
to stabilize this situation. My arrest by Sheriff Sanford has clearly rattled
him. I don’t want him to think of me as a problem.”

Cowgirl shrugged. “Funny
how the old saying is true,” she said.

“Which one?” he asked.

“That the trouble starts
when you have to split the money. We never used to have that kind of trouble.
The other operations we did together all went down smoothly, all the way to the
split.”

He sighed. “We were all on
the same page then. No guns. No violence. Too bad Mike doesn’t think like that
anymore.”

Cowgirl went to the coffee
machine to refill her cup. “Want some more?” she offered, raising the pot in
her right hand.

He shook his head. “No
thanks, I’ve still got about half left.”

He took out his mobile
phone and punched in Harris’s number. The wily old fox picked up almost
instantly. He was an early bird.

“Harris, it’s Morrison,”
he said. “Listen, we have to meet with Mike and Cowgirl. It’s important.”

“Meet with Junior and
Cowgirl?” Harris said. “Why would I want to meet with them?”

“I’ve got good reasons,
Harris. Eight million good reasons.”

There was a slight pause.

“OK, you’ve got my
attention,” Harris said. “When do you want to do that?”

“In a half-hour. At Mike’s
place.”

Laura’s cute little white SUV
was parked in Mike’s driveway along with the two other big black Navigators.
Morrison and Cowgirl had debated whether they would each drive their own car to
the meeting, but in the end they decided to ride together in Cowgirl’s discreet
white van.

They pulled up behind one
of the twin SUVs. Morrison got out in time to see a cloud of dust emerge from
the bottom of the hill. Harris was rolling up the long path in his car. Seemed
to be doing good speed. As the wily old fox pulled up to them, Morrison saw the
look of anticipation painted on his face: he couldn’t wait to hear the rest of
the story.

But to Morrison’s
surprise, Harris didn’t first inquire about the eight million dollars. The
question he fired off at him concerned the previous night’s events.

“Can you tell me what the
hell happened down at Flanagan’s?” Harris said.

“What? You didn’t ask your
employee?” he said.

“My employee?” Harris
tried to pretend Angry Eyes was not related to him, but Morrison stopped him
dead in his tracks.

“Don’t try to bullshit me,
Harris,” he said. “I know all about your guy. He just very stupidly tried to
get back at me. Call him and ask him why. You’ll see. And while you’re at it, make
sure you tell him to leave me alone. I’ve got enough on my plate right now
without having to worry about that big ape swinging his fists at me.”

Harris nodded. Decided not
to pursue the matter further. Then he looked at Cowgirl and greeted her
cheerfully. “Long time no see. You look great.”

Before Cowgirl could reply
at all, the front door of the house opened with a creaking sound. Morrison,
Cowgirl and Harris turned toward Mike, who now stood on the porch. His face was
closed, his eyes like narrow slits.

“Looks like everybody’s
here,” he said. “Why don’t you all come in?”

*

It was the first time the
four partners had stood together in the same room since Morrison’s bust and the
collapse of the operation.

Obviously, nobody had
brought any balloons or flowers to celebrate the occasion. Success had many fathers,
and failure was an orphan. With the magnitude of that failure, Morrison figured
that orphan could have come straight from Dickens.

Mike had led the small
group through the hallway to his office. In passing, Morrison had caught a
glimpse of the blond guy, slumped on a sofa in the living room, watching some
TV. He hadn’t seen Laura and her baby.

They all shook hands and
greeted each other with a certain reserve. When Harris came up to Mike, he
couldn’t resist a dig. “Hey, Junior,” he said. “Long time no see.”

This didn’t please Mike,
but Morrison observed that their host was not so prompt to correct Harris as he
had been with himself.

“Call me Mike, will you?”
he said in a neutral tone.

Harris grinned. The wily old
fox had reaffirmed his ascendency.

“Sure, Mike, sure.” Harris
looked at everybody and said, “All of us together again. We should snap a
picture for poor old Tommy. That would make his day up there in Ogdensburg,
don’t you all think?”

Mike ignored Harris. He nodded
toward Morrison.

“Mind telling us what
happened between you and Sheriff Sanford last night?” he said. Then he nodded
toward Cowgirl. “Since you came up here with her, I assume she’s already up to
speed, but I sure ain’t and I don’t think Harris is either.”

“That was nothing,” Morrison
said with a dismissive wave. “Some stupid brawl with one of Harris’s guys. That
won’t happen again, right, Harris?”

Harris nodded in acknowledgement.
“My guy was just out to have a bit of fun. He didn’t know Morrison, that’s all,”
he said.

Mike arched his eyebrow. “So
you got Sanford off your back then?”

“She let me go, didn’t
she?” Morrison said.

Mike nodded. “Good. I
don’t need these bloody deputies sniffing around my place anymore.”

Harris took the floor next
to address Morrison. “Now that that item is settled, why don’t you put us up to
speed, if everybody’s fine with that?”

Morrison cleared his
throat and began to speak. “We needed to meet because I have some important
news for all of you concerning our operation. I’ve just completed an audit this
morning with the last confirmation I was waiting for.”

Cowgirl had already heard
the speech, but Mike and Harris were all ears.

“In the days following my
bust, eight million dollars were withdrawn from the four other banks,” Morrison
started, and he told them everything. How the money had been withdrawn
according to his plan. Two million dollars per bank. Four hundred accounts in each
bank. Everything.

As they took in all of
this, Mike and Harris started looking at the other partners. Morrison grinned. “You
can relax,” he said. “None of us in this room has stolen the money. I made
bloody sure of that.”

Mike and Harris jumped in
unison.

“Then who did?” they asked.

Morrison made a small
pause for effect.

“Sheriff Sanford,” he
said. “Bloody Sheriff Sanford.”

Harris’s eyes widened. Mike
cursed between his teeth.

“I knew it,” Mike said. “I
knew it. She’s not clean, that bitch. I knew there was something wrong with
her.”

For his part, Harris
seemed more skeptical.

“Mind telling us how you
came to that conclusion?” he asked.

Morrison retold the whole
story up to and including his arrest at Flanagan’s and the realization that
Sanford herself had pocketed his USB flash drive when she had arrested him
three years before. Morrison took his time. Spared no detail. Linked all the
items of that narrative in a tight, logical chain. As he was laying all this out,
he could see Mike and Harris’s surprise at these developments. But in the end,
both shared Morrison’s conclusion without the slightest hesitation.

“OK,” Harris said, “Sanford
stole our money. So how do we get it back?”

“We need to learn as much
as we can about her,” Morrison said. “She didn’t act alone. Couldn’t have, it’s
impossible. Cowgirl has already figured out where she lives, but we need to
know if she’s married, who her friends are. We have to look into her circle to
find her accomplices and pin her down.”

Harris shook his head. “I
can tell you that she’s single,” he said. “I see her often at public functions.
I know her a bit. Socially, you know. We make small talk here and there. She’s
never been married and there’s no boyfriend anybody knows anything about.”

“What about her friends?” Morrison
asked.

“No idea,” Harris said.
“But I can definitely inquire. I can start right this morning.”

“You do that,” Morrison
said. “For our part, Cowgirl and I will trail her a bit. See what she’s up to.”

Mike had been silent for a
while but he was shifting in his chair. Getting agitated. “This is all very
nice,” he said, “but if we know it’s her, why don’t we just corner her straight
away and make her cough up the money? Hell, I’ll be happy to do it.”

Morrison shook his head.
“No way,” he said. “We can’t just barge in like that. We need more details on
how she did it. Then we can squeeze her. Otherwise, she’ll just deny everything
and you’ll have exposed yourself for nothing. She’s a sheriff. She’s got the
law on her side.”

Harris immediately backed
Morrison. “That’s right. And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get
involved directly in this, Mike.”

“Why not?” Mike said. “I’m
as much a part of this as you are.”

“I’m not disputing your
claim of the pot,” Harris said. “But you shouldn’t be involved in direct
actions to recover it, that’s all. You should remain in the shadows on this.”

“I’ve bankrolled this
whole thing alone,” Mike said. “I’ve already fronted more than fifty K to
Morrison.”

Harris was very firm.
“We’ll pay you back,” he said. “With interest if you insist. Quote your rate.
But there’s enough heat on you as it is.”

“Bullshit,” Mike said.

“Oh yeah?” Harris said.

Morrison then realized
that Harris probably knew a lot more about Mike’s activities than he had let
on.

“There’s all sorts of
rumors going on about you,” Harris continued. “We already have enough of a
personal angle with Morrison and Sanford as it is. What’s keeping you busy
these days, Mike? Why don’t you tell the others what you are dealing in?”

Mike closed up. “None of
your business,” he said.

“As long as the eight
million dollars were not in the picture, you were right. It was none of our
business. But now they are, so it
is
our business,” Harris said.

Morrison looked at Mike.
“You’re involved in drugs, right? The guy who died on the motorcycle was one of
your dealers?” he said.

Mike didn’t say anything.
But his silence only confirmed Morrison’s suspicions.

Morrison shook his head. He
had always shunned drugs. They could make you a lot of money very fast. That’s
why so many dealt in them. But they also attracted a lot of heat, from the law
and from the street. All in all, if you were in it for the long term, trafficking
drugs was no good. It always ended with you dead or gone for twenty-five years.
Hell, if he had been busted for drug trafficking instead of skimming some ATMs,
Morrison knew he would still be behind bars. No question about it.

There was a lot to do.

They were now racing the
clock.

Morrison figured they had
to build a strong case against Sanford before she could do the same against
him. She had released him from jail only because she didn’t have anything solid
on him. But it could change soon. Maybe they were still running some analysis
on the crime scene. They could be only hours away from identifying one of his
prints out there.

Or maybe he was really off
the hook. He just didn’t know.

But one thing he knew was that
he had no time to waste. So he decided to end the meeting right there so they
could all get back to work.

“We were five partners to
get this operation going,” he summed up. “A lot has happened since, but this
hasn’t changed. When we get our money back, we will split it in five equal
parts, just like we had planned, and then we will go our separate ways. That
includes you, Mike, but you need to stay in the shadows. Everybody agrees?”

Cowgirl and Harris nodded.

Mike seemed pissed. He
nodded, but he did so somewhat reluctantly.

Like someone who was only
biding his time.

*

After the meeting was over,
Morrison walked up the creaky front staircase alone to his blue room. He opened
the drawers, picked up the few clothes he had in there and dropped them in one
of the shopping bags he had kept. No way was he spending one more night at
Mike’s place. Not with the dark shadow cast by his drugs business. The last
thing he needed was to be associated with it. And anyway, Morrison figured it
was better to steer clear of Mike now that he had Harris and Cowgirl on his
side.

Morrison left the blue room
with his bag, anxious to join Cowgirl in the white van and get going.

As soon as he set foot in
the hallway, a crack opened in the door opposite his. Two haunted eyes peered quickly
at him. Then the door opened swiftly.

What Morrison saw shocked
him.

It was Laura.

Obviously, she had timed
her move to make contact with him. And she had been very careful.

Looking at her, he could
understand why.

Her cheeks were red and swollen.
Deep marks circled her throat as if someone had violently grabbed her and tried
to strangle her. To top it all, her eyes had never seemed more distressed than they
did now.

She looked at the bag he
was holding, with all his clothes inside.

Her eyes widened. “What, are
you leaving?” she whispered.

Morrison nodded. “I have
to,” he said.

She looked even more
desperate.

“Please, you have to help
me,” she whispered. “You have to help me. He’s gonna kill me.”

He looked over her
shoulder into the room. Her baby stood against the far wall, staring vacantly
into space. Like she was still in shock. Completely shut off. He felt his blood
boil.
Mike, you son of a bitch. You slimy piece of shit.
He immediately
thought back to the full glass of milk she had left on the kitchen counter when
they had talked. Mike had picked up on this, and he had responded by giving her
a beating. Simply for having the nerve to talk with him.

Morrison shook his head.
It struck something deep in him. Very deep.

Bloody Mike. Bloody scumbag.

There was some shuffling downstairs
in the hall. Laura peered nervously in that direction.

“Please, help me,” she
whispered again, “you’ve got to help me.”