Deal Gone Bad - A Thriller (Frank Morrison Thriller Series Book 1) (9 page)

Morrison got back to his
Navigator and left downtown going straight up north. He was all alone. No nanny
to trail him anymore. The driver of the gray Impala actually took his advice.
He stayed behind and walked into Elena’s.

It took Morrison ten
minutes to get to Harris’s place on Chambers Road, at the northern edge of town.
As far as he could see, nothing had changed there in the last three years. The same
standalone building occupied the front portion of a large rectangular lot. A
simple structure, maybe one hundred feet by one hundred fifty. One story only but
with a high roof and a large garage door on the side. Covered with fabricated
steel panels, light gray and blue faded to a dull hue by years of exposure to the
harsh elements. Strictly utilitarian. Nothing flashy. Harris had been in
business there for a long time. And what a great cover it was.

Harris Corporation amounted
to a diversified trucking and contracting operation. It owned half a dozen
eighteen-wheelers complete with trailers, four or five dump trucks and a
variety of tractors and diggers. A perfectly legitimate business but a cyclical
one. In its good years, it provided real solid income of its own. But in the
bad ones, it could also turn up big fat ugly losses. Like when the fuel prices
went up real fast. That never allowed Harris—or anybody else in the trucking
business for that matter—to increase his prices fast enough to absorb the hike.
Besides, it was those wild fluctuations that had made Harris explore shadier
territory. Early on in the life of his company, it had been a matter of
survival. Either he got creative and managed to find large influxes of cash to
weather the storm, or he would just lose it all to the bank. In a typically Darwinian
response to a challenging set of circumstances, he had started walking off the
beaten path. Then, like everyone else Morrison knew in the business, he had
caught on to it. Developed a healthy appreciation for easy money. Bought a
Ferrari. A bit flashy, but totally plausible given his cover. Then a winter
home in the Bermudas. Then another one in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson. Then
a Cessna with floats for his fishing expeditions up north in Canada. Compared with
Morrison, Harris was an old-timer. And contrary to him, he had always lived in
Acton. Knew all the local big dogs. Played golf with them. Ate rubber chicken
with them at the Chamber of Commerce events. If any of his friends learned what
he did on the side, they would probably choke and swear that’s nothing like
Roger at all. Morrison was pretty sure even Harris’s wife didn’t know a thing
about his extracurricular activities.

Yep,
that’s a hell of a
good cover,
Morrison thought before leaving the big Navigator in the front
parking lot and walking up to the reception.

He had never been into
that building. Under normal circumstances, Harris wouldn’t meet with him there.
Not that he was paranoid. But he just wanted to keep a reasonable degree of
separation between his legit business and his other dealings. Quite
understandable. But on this occasion, Morrison thought it was better to force
his hand and have the meeting there. A good way to gain some clout over him.

After Morrison presented
himself, the receptionist pointed a crooked thumb at a door behind her. “You
can go ahead, Mr. Harris is waiting for you,” she said.

Morrison went ahead and pushed
through a dark gray metallic door into a nondescript office. Clearly, this was
a place to work and nothing else. Harris sat behind a large glass table. He seemed
genuinely pleased to see him. And if he wasn’t, at least he played the part very
well. He rose from his chair to greet him. “Morrison,” he said. “It’s so great
to see you.”

They shook hands. Harris
offered him a drink.

“Want a scotch? Bourbon?” Harris
said.

“No thanks,” Morrison said.
“Never during the day.”

Harris smiled. “That’s
right, I’d forgotten.”

“But please, go ahead.
Help yourself.”

Harris aimed for the bar
in the corner of the room. Morrison watched him pour two generous fingers of
bourbon in a whisky glass. Harris hadn’t changed much. The only difference was
the gray streaks now more pervasive in his black hair and old-fashioned mustache.
Even if it was still only spring, he had the weathered tan of the snowbird who
spends the bulk of his winters under clement skies. It was true that with
houses in the Bermudas and Arizona, he had the choice. Otherwise, he still
looked like some solid rancher in his early fifties, ready and able to kick the
living shit out of anyone who’d dare stand in his way.

Harris brought back his
glass along with some water for Morrison. They clicked them and sat down in
deep leather seats.

“When did you get out?” Harris
asked.

“Yesterday,” Morrison said.

Harris took a sip of
bourbon. “By the way, thanks a lot for your discretion,” he said. “That was
just too bad you got busted. Believe me, we’re all very grateful that you kept
your mouth shut.”

Morrison bowed his head
slightly like it was only natural. “You don’t rat on your friends,” he said. “Ever.”
He took a sip of water. Then added, “But can you spy on them?”

A wide smile came across
Harris’s face. “Straight to the point,” he said. “You haven’t changed one bit,
Morrison.”

“Time is of the essence. I
know that more than ever now.”

“So you want to know why I
had a car checking on Junior’s property.”

“Mike. He wants us to call
him Mike now, not Junior.”

Harris scoffed. “Well, he
shouldn’t hold his breath. He’s still Junior to me.”

Morrison shared a
complicit smile and said, “I see where you come from. But why do you send some
poor jerk out there to trail him and his crew?”

Harris arched back in his
seat and said, “There have been rumors recently that Junior was getting pretty
busy. Started to hire some hands here and there, you know. Probably working on
some new deal or other. At first, I didn’t think too much about it. He can
bloody hell do what he wants, don’t make a difference to me. But then I heard
about Sheriff Sanford busting all these ATMs last night, and you know what? It
sounded just too much like our deal that went bad three years ago and landed
you in the can. I wondered if Junior had anything to do with it, so I decided
to put some tails on him and his guys, you know, just to dig a little bit. No
harm done.”

That’s good,
Morrison thought,
that’s
a good spin. You wily old son of a bitch. But there are still weak points in
it.

Morrison looked Harris in
the eye. Wanted to make sure he’d catch his reaction to what he was about to
say.

“Sorry, but from what I
heard about that bust,” Morrison said, “it had nothing to do with our setup.
You’re talking crude ATM skimming here, actually stealing people’s codes one by
one to empty their accounts. That’s junior stuff. Our deal, three years ago,
that was a major-leagues operation.”

Harris’s face remained
pretty contained, but a flash of anger burned through his eyes.
Too much of
a personal reaction not to have a personal involvement in this
, Morrison
thought.

He kept prodding. “With
the number of skimmers there was and the payoff you can expect, you’re talking
about a deal that can get you back what, a hundred K, maybe two? That’s good
money but nowhere near what we were going to make three years ago.”

He paused for a beat, then
added, “Personally, I would never embarrass myself with such a slimy deal.”

Another flash passed
through Harris’s eyes. But once again he managed to keep a tight lid on his
facial expression.

You’re the one behind
this,
Morrison
thought.
What you wonder about Junior is if he’s the one who tipped off Sheriff
Sanford, not if he put that setup in place, because you know you did
.

Morrison remained silent, forcing
Harris to utter the next words. The businessman was behind that deal, but he
couldn’t admit it to him, could he? That would be way too embarrassing, admitting
responsibility for a ramshackle operation, and a failure on top of that.
Morrison knew Harris would have to chip in and denigrate the deal. And of
course denigrate himself in the process just to save face.

Harris waved his hand and said,
“Yeah, of course, that’s a rotten deal. That’s why I thought Junior might have
something to do with it, you know.”

Then he took another sip
of bourbon.

Morrison flashed an inner
smile. “I can tell you for sure he’s got nothing to do with it,” he said. Then
he decided to rib him some more. In a lighthearted way, he added, “Hell, you
wouldn’t have anything to do with it, would you?”

Harris made a face. “Are
you crazy? I’m retired from that life.”

Morrison let out a short burst
of laughter. “You’re gonna have to explain this one to me. You, retired? That’s
why you send some poor jerk to trail Mike’s crew?”

Harris cracked a wide
smile and chuckled. “OK, maybe that wasn’t my best one,” he said. “I’m not
retired yet. But I’m winding down, that’s for damn sure. Seeing you do all that
time got me thinking, you know.”

They paused for a beat.
Then Harris said, “And you? You wouldn’t have anything to do with this, right?”

“You overestimate me,” Morrison
said. “I just got out yesterday.”

“I’m not talking about
setting this deal up. I know you wouldn’t have anyway. But blowing the whistle
on it. You seemed pretty hyped up about it.”

“Again,” Morrison said, “you
overestimate me. I just got out yesterday.”

Harris waved his hand. “I
know, I know,” he said. ”Just asking.”

Morrison took another sip
of water and looked at his old partner. He believed him when he said he was
winding down. Only somebody looking for easy money and not willing to put on
too much effort would be setting up such a basic ATM-skimming operation. It
wouldn’t come from a sharp professional at the top of his game, looking to
maximize his profit. But for a man of Harris’s means, the crumbling of such a
small deal shouldn’t bother him that much. His livelihood didn’t depend on it. If
he had decided to put a tail on Mike’s crew, there must have been another
reason. Morrison looked at the wily old bastard again. He was enjoying his
glass of bourbon, an air of quiet contentment oozing from his relaxed, friendly
mustachioed face. Morrison thought he knew why. “It’s not last night’s ATM
skimming thing that got under your skin, right? It’s the collapse of our big
deal three years ago that you’re still not over with. That’s what’s rattling
your cage.”

Harris shrugged.

“We were supposed to make
a killing with it. Aren’t you pissed that it all went sour?”

“I am,” Morrison said. “But
it’s you that’s got some tails on Mike’s compound.”

Harris drained the
remainder of his bourbon and got up to go fix himself another one. From the
other end of the room, he said, “Junior bought a freaking big property, didn’t
he? You don’t buy that with peanuts. In the back of my mind, I’ve always
wondered if something fishy didn’t go down at the time of your arrest. Not from
you, of course, you took a pretty serious blow yourself. But I’ve always
thought there was something we didn’t know about all that went down. We
should’ve made ten million dollars. Split in five, that’s two million each.
Something worth scheming for, no?”

Harris came back with his
glass. Three generous fingers deep this time. Morrison interpreted it as a message
that Harris had all the time in the world and some willingness to talk. Whether
this was conscious or not, Morrison didn’t know. With Harris, both were possible.

“We only had time to
extract two million dollars before I was arrested,” Morrison said. “And all
that money was seized by Sheriff Sanford. There was nothing left. Besides, Mike
bought the property with Tommy’s money. He’s kind of minding the store while
Tommy’s doing his time.”

Harris squinted.

“Hum,” he said. “You sure?
I didn’t know that. Junior and Tommy?”

“Positive. Mike never had
that kind of money himself.”

Harris had a pensive look.
“You don’t need to convince me of that,” he said. “But even for Tommy, that
could be a stretch. Unless he was able to hit the jackpot in some other way, of
course.”

“And you think that might
have something to do with our deal three years ago.”

“I’ve always thought there
was something funny about it. I haven’t changed my mind yet.”

“And what about Cowgirl?
That deal was me, you, Tommy, Mike and Cowgirl. What do you make of her?”

Harris gestured with a
dismissive wave of the hand. “No, she’s clean. You know her. If she had put her
hand on a big stash, she would’ve flashed it big time some way or other.”

Morrison smiled. Couldn’t
agree more with the assertion. As succinct and accurate a description of Cowgirl
as anybody could come up with. Morrison’s pause enabled Harris to come back at
him with a question of his own.

“Why do you stay at
Junior’s place?” he said. “I didn’t think you two were particularly close.”