Death, Taxes, and Hot Pink Leg Warmers (28 page)

Good. We needed some uninterrupted time to talk to Maddie, to convince her to testify against Donald Geils.

We took seats at a picnic table near the pond where we could keep an eye on Karly.

Bernice took Maddie’s hands in hers. “Maddie, these women work for the DEA and the IRS.”

Maddie’s eyes grew wide and flashed with fear.

“It’s all right, honey,” Bernice said. “They just want to talk to you about Donald Geils.”

Maddie shrank back at the mention of the man’s name. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“We can understand why, Madelyn,” Christina said. “The man is greedy and no good. He uses people for his own gain.”

Maddie knew that all too well. She looked past us, as if trying to see beyond what had happened.

“We want to stop him,” Christina said. “To put Guys and Dolls out of business. But we need your help to do it.”

“I … can’t,” Maddie said, giving her head one emphatic shake.

“Here, fissy!” Karly lay on her tummy on the ivy that surrounded the pond and dipped her hand into the water, laughing like only a child can when the fish swam over to nibble gently at her fingertips.

“Careful, Karly,” Maddie called to her daughter before turning back to Bernice. “You know I want nothing more to do with that man or that place.” She sounded more desperate and scared than angry. She gestured to me and Christina. “How could you do this to me? How could you bring them here?”

Bernice grasped both of Maddie’s hands in her own again and leaned toward the young woman. “Because I know you’re a good person, Maddie.”

Maddie turned her head away. “No I’m not.”

Bernice pulled Maddie’s hands upward until she was clutching them in between their chests. “Yes you are. You’re hardworking, you’re a good mother, and you’re smart.”

A tear rolled down Maddie’s cheek. “I’m not smart. Smart people don’t do stupid things like I did.”

I could totally relate to how Maddie was feeling. “You made a mistake, that’s all, Maddie. We’re human. We all have occasional lapses in judgment.” I was saying it as much to convince myself as her.

I told her what happened with me, how I’d trusted someone I shouldn’t have and, like her, ended up in the hospital as a result. I knew what I’d need to restore my faith in myself, and I suspected Maddie needed the same thing.

A chance for redemption.

I looked into her eyes. “If you testify, you’ll help bring down a drug and prostitution ring and put Donald Geils behind bars. This is your chance to make up for your mistakes, Maddie. To wipe the slate clean.”

For the first time since we’d arrived, I saw a glimmer of hope in her eyes. She looked from me to Christina. “Would I get in trouble? For … what I did?”

“No,” Christina said. “You’d receive full immunity.”

Maddie glanced over at her daughter, her eyes squinting slightly as if she were trying to see into the future, to envision their life if and when she regained custody of her daughter, perhaps to envision a world where men like Don Geils were not free to exploit young women. “Can I have some time to think about it?”

We’d been hoping to secure her agreement today, but pushing her any further could backfire.

“Of course.” Christina pulled one of her cards from her purse and handed it to Maddie. “Call me anytime.”

chapter thirty-four

Take a Hike

On Sunday, Nick and I drove his truck out to Cedar Hill State Park. Both of us felt the need to get away from the city for a bit, to take in some fresh air. And as much as I’d have loved to fool around with him, I needed him more for moral support today than a physical release.

The outlying town of Cedar Hill was virtually the only place in the area that wasn’t flat, open prairieland. As a result of its relatively high altitude, its hills were topped with an abundance of monolithic radio and television antenna towers anchored to the earth with huge cables. Nick and I chose to ignore the man-made metal towers and focus instead on the nature-made foliage, much of which sported the brilliant and beautiful reds and oranges of autumn.

We parked his truck in the lot. Though it was extremely unlikely we’d run into anyone from Guys & Dolls out here, we nevertheless took pains to further disguise ourselves. I tied a red bandana over my hair and donned a pair of cheap sunglasses I’d snagged at the dollar store. I’d also worn the pink leg warmers over my jeans, just for fun. Nick wore the white felt cowboy hat I’d bought him weeks ago when he’d first returned to the IRS, along with a dark pair of shades. If worse came to worse and we happened to cross paths with someone from Guys & Dolls, we figured we’d say we met at the club and had taken a liking to each other.

We climbed out of his truck and made our way to the trailhead. As we walked along the easy trail, crunching crisp dead leaves under our boots, I felt the tension that had accumulated in me begin to ease away. Coming out here, getting away from it all, was exactly what I’d needed.

As we walked, we talked about a lot of things. About the farm Nick had grown up on, his glory days as a high school linebacker, his rapidly aging dog’s mounting health problems. I told him about the mortgage-fraud trial, about the defense attorneys attempting to discredit me with my rather lengthy list of internal affairs reviews.

“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” Nick said, reaching out to play with one of my curls. “I doubt the jury will pay it much mind. What’s more important is what the Lobo thinks, and she thinks you’re a damn good agent.”

“She used to,” I said. “I’m not so sure anymore.”

Nick grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop, bending slightly to meet my downturned gaze. “Did that bat knock the sense out of you?” he asked, his words hard but his voice soft. “You are not to blame for what happened at that pawnshop, you hear me? Quit being so hard on yourself. Hell, all of us agents have made a mistake at one time or another.”

“I keep telling myself that,” I told Nick, looking into his amber eyes. “But it doesn’t seem to help.”

“What would help, then?”

“Hold me?”

He stepped forward and wrapped his warm arms around me. I wrapped mine around him, too. It felt so good in his arms, so right. I turned my face and pressed the side of my head against his chest, listening to the reassuring sound of his heartbeat.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
He felt warm and strong and comforting. He also felt increasingly hard.

He stepped back. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

“Men.” I rolled my eyes. “Always got sex on the brain.” The gesture and words were totally hypocritical, though. My nipples had hardened into tight little buds and only a small part of it was due to the cool outdoor temperature. The rest of it was due to Nick.

We began walking again, our conversation shifting to the Guys & Dolls investigation.

“I hate to say it,” I said, though I hated to say it, “but I’m not sure we’ve even got a tax-evasion case against Geils.”

With the tight controls Geils kept on the club’s cash, every cent seemed to be accounted for. I’d reviewed the Guys & Dolls, Incorporated, income tax return earlier that morning. Though the club had been open only a short time last year and the return reflected only three months’ worth of data, the income and expense amounts reported seemed to be proportional to the club’s current earnings and expenses. The wages Geils reported on his individual income tax return also jibed with the payroll data I’d seen the night Merle got sloshed. Geils might be a pimp and a drug lord, but he didn’t seem to be a tax evader as far as I could tell.

Nick reached ahead of me and pushed aside a prickly branch so I could continue safely down the trail. “Even if he’s reported all of the drug and prostitution income,” he said, “he’s still laundered the funds. That’ll earn him some time in the hoosegow.”

Ironically, while the crime of prostitution itself was a mere Class B misdemeanor punishable by a paltry fine of two grand and jail time of no more than 180 days, the potential punishment for laundering the prostitution income was twenty years in prison and a fine of up to half a million dollars. Go figure, huh? Geils would be taking much less risk if he properly reported the income. However, though the tax forms had specific, designated lines to deduct salaries, supplies, and depreciation, there were no lines on the return for hand jobs, blow jobs, and sexual intercourse. To ensure proper disclosure, Geils’s CPA would have to draft an attachment providing the intimate details. I could only imagine the look on the face of the IRS staff member who processed that return.

We hiked for a couple of hours, during which an assortment of crushed leaves attached themselves to my fuzzy leg warmers, making it appear as if the bottom half of my legs wore a ghillie suit. After the hike, we picked leaves off my leg warmers and drove back to my place, listening to
A Prairie Home Companion
on NPR on the way. Although I’d always found the show’s down-home humor and folksy music entertaining, Brett had never much cared for it and had even once deemed the show “hokey.” Nick, on the other hand, chuckled along with me, especially when Dusty and Lefty took the air in “The Lives of the Cowboys” segment.

Back at my place, I took another crack at Mom’s chicken-fried steak recipe. Though my batter seemed a little lumpy this time around, all in all the steaks turned out pretty good. I made mashed potatoes, too, with the skins included. I told Nick the potatoes were more nutritious with the skins on, but truth be told I was just too lazy to peel the suckers. I also made green beans.

I filled a plate for Nick and set it down in front of him. “You can have me whether or not you eat your beans.”

He flashed that sexy, roguish smile. “Good to know.”

chapter thirty-five

Taking a Powder

I stopped by the office early Monday morning to check my voice mails and e-mails. I found a sticky note stuck to my computer screen.
Got some interesting video for you—Josh.

I grabbed the note and went to Josh’s office. “What did you find?”

“Check this out.” Josh maneuvered his mouse, clicked it a few times, and turned his laptop toward me.

The grainy black-and-white footage on the screen showed Don Geils coming out of the administrative offices and walking to the front door of the club. He opened the door to let a tall Caucasian man inside. The man carried a dark duffel bag. Wasting no time, they walked to the nearest table. The man opened the bag and unloaded several guns, including a small pistol, a semiautomatic, and a sawed-off shotgun. To both my surprise and relief, Geils went for the pistol.

He weighed it in his hand for a moment, then held it up and pretended to take aim. When he lowered it, he said something to the man. The man’s back was to the camera so we couldn’t see his face, but it was clear from Geils’s demeanor and gestures that the two were negotiating a price.

Geils left the man at the table while he stepped back to his office, returning with a small wad of cash. The man counted the bills and shoved them into his pocket. After quickly packing up the remaining guns, he exited the club, leaving the pistol with Geils.

Aaron Menger had run a search to see if Geils owned any registered weapons or had a concealed-handgun license. Nothing had shown up. Of course, private sales like the one we’d just witnessed were not subject to the registration and background check requirements, so Geils hadn’t necessarily broken any laws. If I had to hazard a guess, though, I’d say the guns were stolen. Besides, while Geils may not have violated the law, the man who’d brought the guns into the bar had committed a felony. Even those who held a concealed-handgun license were prohibited by state law from taking their guns into any establishment that derived fifty-one percent or more of its income from sales of alcohol to be consumed on the premises. Posted next to the club’s front door was the requisite sign warning gun owners not to carry their weapons inside. The law included an exception for the owner of a bar, an antiquated relic from the days of cowboy saloons, where the bar owner often had to take the law into his own hands and might need a gun to break up a bar fight.

Even though the video gave us nothing more to nail Geils for, it provided us with critical information. We now knew that Geils had at least one firearm on the premises. I could hardly blame him. If I were a drug-dealing pimp running a sleazy strip bar, I suppose I’d feel the need to protect myself, too.

*   *   *

Eddie and I arrived at the courthouse shortly before nine that morning and were halfway through the security screening process when the building’s alarm sounded with a nerve-jarring
whoop-whoop-whoop!

While those in the building plugged their ears with their fingers, the deputies manning the station waved their arms to shoo everyone out the doors.

Ross and Ackerman were being turned back at the front door by a female deputy. “The building’s being evacuated. Please exit in an orderly fashion.”

“What’s going on?” I asked the woman as we passed her.

“We haven’t been given full details yet,” she said.

Outside, police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances pulled up, their sirens wailing. The premium spot closest to the doors was reserved for a specialized hazmat vehicle.

“What the hell?” Eddie said.

“Maybe there’s a fire,” I said, thinking out loud. I sniffed the air but didn’t detect smoke. The air around the building was clear, too, no evidence of dark smoke billowing from windows. The building didn’t appear to be damaged, either.

Eddie must’ve reached the same conclusion about the possibility of fire. “Maybe a gas leak?” he suggested.

“I don’t smell gas,” I said, “but I suppose the gas could be contained in the building, huh?”

Ross and Ackerman stood at the corner, a concerned and confused look on their faces. We walked over and stood with them, watching the first responders.

“You two have any clue what’s going on here?” Ackerman asked.

“None,” Eddie said.

Another possibility popped into my mind. “Do you think someone called in a bomb threat?”