Duke City Split (17 page)

“Yes, Ms. Hutchins, what can I do for you?”

“You told me to call if anything unusual happened?”

“Right.”

Hector flipped a switch on the phone to put the call over the speaker. Pam looked up from her papers at the sound of the banker’s voice.

“Our guard didn’t show up again this morning. Diego Ramirez? And he didn’t call in sick or anything. I’ve phoned his home a couple of times, but there’s no answer.”

“That’s unusual for him?”

“He’s never done it before. He’s always right on time.”

“Okay, Ms. Hutchins, we’ll look into it. Thanks for the call.”

“Will you call me back? If you find out where he is? I’m worried about him.”

“You bet.”

He punched the button to ring off and met Pam’s gaze.

“I knew something was wrong with that guard,” she said. “The way he acted when we went to his house. Calling in sick, claiming he was emotionally shook up, when he clearly was fine.”

“Weird that he didn’t even call in today, though.”

“We’d better go check his house.”

Hector sighed. “Couldn’t we get APD to send a cruiser by? It’s all the way across town, and we’ve got to get these reports to the boss.”

“No, let’s do it ourselves. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Mick Wyman’s hangover was subsiding as he reached Johnny’s apartment building on the north end of the city. He’d taken some Tylenol, washed down with copious amounts of coffee. A hot shower helped, too. His black hair was still damp. He kept pushing it back off his forehead as he drove across town.

The apartment building looked the same as usual from the front. The parking lot was mostly empty. Everybody at work already. Johnny’s Jeep was parked crookedly in its space, as if he’d left it there in a hurry.

Mick let the Charger creep through the lot while he checked for surveillance. No sign the cops were on to Johnny, but Mick didn’t want to get out of the car until he was sure.

He drove around the end of the two-story building to where a littered patch of asphalt held the garbage bins. The ten downstairs apartments had little fenced-off patios back here. Upstairs were balconies, and each apartment had sliding glass doors that faced southwest, overlooking a sandy field of cactus and chamisa. Probably a nice view at night, the valley filled with the city lights.

Mick counted off balconies until he figured out which one belonged to Johnny’s apartment. The glass door was open, its long white drape flapping in the breeze.

Uh-oh.

He backed the Charger around the building and parked out front, facing the street in case he needed to leave in a hurry. He tucked one of his big Colts in his waistband at the back, under the hem of the denim jacket he wore today. He missed the gray windbreaker he’d tossed into a trash bin the night before. It had been longer and hid the gun better, but there was no getting the blood off the sleeve.

Mick crossed the parking lot and climbed the concrete stairs to the second floor. No answer when he knocked, so he tried the knob. The door opened an inch.

“Aw, hell,” Mick muttered.

He slipped the gun out of his belt and held it close to his body as he pushed the door open. Someone had given the apartment the once-over, though they hadn’t been as destructive as at his place. The patio door wasn’t just open, it was off its track altogether,
the big pane leaning against the wall.

Johnny Muller was on the gray sofa, lying on his side, bent over at an awkward angle, his feet still on the floor. Careful not to leave any fingerprints, Mick quickly checked the rest of the apartment before coming back to Johnny. The kid’s eyes were rolled back in his head, showing only white, and his neck bulged in an unnatural way.

Mick could picture how he was killed. Somebody behind the sofa, which stood in the middle of the room, facing the TV. A quick twist, snapping Johnny’s neck. Took a lot of strength to kill someone that way, and an element of surprise. Mick wondered whether Johnny had even a second to realize what was coming.

Mick slipped the gun back into his belt and looked around the living room. Shouldn’t have been anything here to lead these bozos to him or Bud, but there was no way to be certain. If they’d found a phone number or a note or something like that, they would’ve taken it with them. No point in his checking behind them.

He looked again at Johnny’s body, wondering how long he’d been dead. He didn’t touch him, though, didn’t want to leave a fingerprint on him. The kid was dead, and that was that.

Couldn’t very well carry the corpse out of here in broad daylight. He decided to leave him on the couch. Be another day or two before anyone found the body, if Mick locked the door on his way out.

He stepped over to the balcony, but he couldn’t see any way to put that door back on its track without making noise. It was a two-man job. Best to just leave it.

Mick locked the doorknob, then pulled loose his shirttail so he could wipe the knob for prints. He closed the door and wiped the outside doorknob as well.

He went downstairs, not hurrying, and got back into the Charger. He was a mile away from Johnny’s place before he phoned Bud.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Where are you?”

“At the girls’ school. Just met with Angela’s teacher.”

“How’d she do?”

“Aw, the teacher loves her. You know Angela. So eager to please.”

“She’s a good kid.”

“You didn’t call to ask about the teacher conference.”

“We need to meet. Right away.”

“Trouble?”

“The worst kind.”

“Uh-oh. The kid?”

“Let’s talk about it in person.”

“Sounds bad.”

“Depends on how you look at it. Our shares just got a lot bigger.”

Sam’s Diner was near the school, so Bud arrived first. It was that quiet time between the breakfast and lunch rushes, and he chose a chrome-edged table in a corner by the windows, as far as possible from the few other customers.

The waitress was a sour-faced older woman who walked as if her feet hurt. She brought him a cup of coffee without asking first and left him with a laminated menu the size of the Ten Commandments. Bud held the menu in front of him, peering over it at the other customers.

Heads swiveled as Mick came through the door a minute later. Big men always get attention when they arrive, but one look is usually enough. Mick’s steely gaze sent a signal that most men read correctly as “mind your own business.”

Bud wondered what it must be like to always have eyes turn your way, to always have to claim your territory as alpha male in any room. A pudgy, bland guy like himself could come and go all day without anyone noticing. He thought he might be better off.

Mick sat across the table from him. Bud handed him the big menu.

“I know you don’t like to sit with your back to the room,” he said, “but I thought this would be better since you’re the one who’ll be doing the talking.”

Mick nodded. His eyes roamed the menu, and he was ready when the waitress limped up a few seconds later. They both ordered pancake breakfasts, and she went away.

“So?” Bud said when she was out of earshot.

“The kid’s dead,” Mick said, his voice low. “Somebody snapped his neck.”

“Holy shit.”

“I had to leave him in his apartment. I locked the place up, but it won’t be long until the neighbors notice the smell.”

Bud swallowed heavily. Leave it to Mick to focus on the practicalities.

“Any idea who did it?”

Mick shook his head. “They’d gone through his place, though. Just like somebody went through my apartment. I think it’s probably the same people.”

“Who?”

“Not the guard and his girlfriend, that’s for sure. They were already out of the
picture. We’ve got a third party hunting for us. Looking for the money. Probably the same people who wasted Sid Harris. Bad boys. Willing to kill people to get what they want.”

“More than one?”

“I think two at least. One to hold a gun on Johnny while the other moved around behind him. Otherwise the kid wouldn’t have stood still for it.”

Bud nodded. He didn’t need any more help picturing Johnny’s final moments.

“They probably milked him for information first,” Mick said, “but I’m guessing they didn’t learn much. They couldn’t afford to make much noise in that apartment building.”

“He didn’t know much anyway,” Bud said. “Not the important stuff.”

“Like where we stashed the money,” Mick said.

Bud gave him a shushing look. The waitress hobbled up with their pancakes. She set the plates before them and said she’d bring more coffee. Bud poured syrup over the pancakes and took a tentative bite. Pretty damned good.

Once the waitress had come and gone again, Mick said, “It’s a good thing we didn’t include him when we relocated that merchandise.”

“Even if we had, they wouldn’t have been able to get at it. It’s locked up.”

Mick’s voice was barely above a whisper. “If these guys are willing to kill for it, they wouldn’t let a few padlocks stand in the way.”

Bud nodded, chewing. “So what do we do now?”

“I was thinking about that on the way over here,” Mick said. “We need to track these guys down and get rid of them, quick.”

“I don’t know, Mick.”

Mick stifled a burp and said, “Look, we don’t have a lot of choices here. Soon as somebody finds Johnny’s body, things get tense. If we were someplace else, I’d say we take the money and run. But we can’t run this time.”

“You could,” Bud said.

“You can’t. You’ve got Linda’s job to think about. And the girls are in school.”

“I know, but—”

“We’ve got to take matters into our own hands,” Mick said. “Clean up this mess. And fast.”

Vincent Caro tried the door, but it was locked. Simple lock-in-the-knob arrangement, no real hindrance. He pulled his wallet from the inside pocket of his olive-green suit and removed a thin strip of aluminum the size of a credit card. He slipped the card between the door and the jamb and wiggled it until the lock gave way.

Caro stepped to the side, dropping the card into his pocket and pulling out the compact Beretta he carried under his arm. He pushed open the door, gun ready, but no one was inside.

The place had been trashed, and it reeked of stale urine. Caro closed the door behind him and went from room to room, picking his way among the slashed furniture and shattered glass.

Caro had been told that Mick Wyman might know something about the bank robbery. Wyman had been seen at Silvio’s a few days before the holdup, whispering with the bartender who was later murdered. Silvio, the old man who owned the saloon, quizzed several of his regulars to come up with that tidbit of information. Caro hadn’t expected it to pan out, given the nature of Silvio and his place of business, but this ransacked apartment gave credence to the rumor. Someone else clearly thought this Wyman fellow might know something about the missing millions. They’d been very thorough, dumping every kitchen drawer and emptying every food container into the sink. The urine indicated frustration. Near the door, on the way out.

Caro checked the usual places—in the freezer and behind the toilet—in case something had been overlooked, but he didn’t really expect to find anything. If Wyman was smart, he’d blown town immediately after the holdup. At minimum, he would not have kept the money or anything pointing to its hiding place here at his apartment.

Wyman could be anywhere by now, but Caro had the feeling he remained someplace close by. He needed to find him before the FBI heard the same rumors. If Wyman got arrested, it would be very difficult to get to him. He needed first crack at him.

Last stop was the bedroom, where Caro checked a wastebasket and a few dresser drawers but found nothing to help. He was headed back down the short hall when someone knocked on the front door.

Caro pressed against the nearest wall as he listened to another
rap-rap
on the door. He slipped around the corner into the living room and edged along the wall to a front window, which was covered by a thick curtain. He pressed his face to the wall next to the window and peered through the gap.

An elderly man, his hair as silver as chrome, was turning away from Wyman’s door. Caro watched the old man hobble down the sidewalk to an apartment at the far end of the building and disappear inside.

Probably the manager
, Caro thought. Had the old man seen him enter Wyman’s apartment? Or was he searching for Wyman himself? It was nearly the first of May. Maybe the man was looking for his rent check.

Caro waited another minute, then slipped out the door. He crossed the narrow parking lot, expecting the old man to shout behind him any second. But no one accosted him before he reached the bland rental car he’d left at the curb. He slipped behind the wheel and started the engine before he let his gaze drift back to the manager’s apartment.

If the old man was peeking out, Caro couldn’t see him. He drove away quickly to keep anyone from getting a good look at the license plate number or the Enterprise Rent-A-Car sticker on the bumper.

That was a little too close for comfort, he thought as he turned at the next corner. Someone already had trashed Wyman’s place. Would’ve been a shame to get the old man’s blood all over it, too.

Dwight Shelby and Rex Cutler sat in Rex’s truck across the street from the diner, watching through the windows as Wyman and the other man paid their tabs and headed for the door.

“Here they come,” Dwight said. “Just like you said.”

“Smartest call I’ve made yet,” Rex brayed. “I knew if we kept an eye on that kid Johnny’s apartment, it would lead us to these guys.”

Dwight didn’t point out that they’d almost missed the opportunity. If Rex had dawdled at home a few minutes more, they would’ve missed the big man with the mustache. He’d been coming out of the kid’s upstairs apartment just as they arrived. Rex hadn’t seen him, would’ve driven right up to him if Dwight hadn’t shouted to drive on past.

They’d gone up the road toward the Indian casino and turned around, getting back to the apartment building just in time to follow the dark blue Charger to this diner.