Pawnbroker: A Thriller (5 page)

Chapter 13

At home that night, I wrestled with whether to confront Abby over what I’d seen with Bobby Knight. I decided to sleep on it. The kids were in bed and Abby and I were watching a CSI rerun when a soft knock sounded on the front door. I checked the time. 11:42.

I walked to the door, turned on the porch light, and looked out through the sidelight. Teddy. I unlocked and opened the door, and he barged right in. It’s the Teddy way.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Just checking on y’all.”

I glanced at Abby as he was seating himself, then looked again. She was used to him showing up at strange hours, but she had an odd look on her face. Annoyance? Discomfort? Maybe he’d done something to piss her off. I’d ask later.

“Not my best day,” I said. Abby stood and left the room without a word. I’d definitely have to inquire. “Want something to drink?”

The phone rang, which was very unusual given that our only regular late-night caller was here. I grabbed the cordless. “Hello?”

“Are you understanding how much trouble you’re in now?” RoboVoice said.

There was no chance of me not taking him seriously now, but I was already tired of this cloak-and-dagger routine. “Who are you? And what do you want?”

“It’s unimportant. Just know that I’m a friend. And don’t insult my intelligence.”

“I do not know what you want,” I said.

“You, Mr. Bolton, are trying my patience, but I’ll offer one more bit of advice. Get a copy of the autopsy report.”

“I already know exactly what killed him, believe me.”

“You don’t know nearly as much as you think. Get the report.”

Then he was gone. I punched off the call and stood the phone back in its base.

“Who was that?” Teddy said.

Chapter 14

Abby was unusually quiet over breakfast the next morning.

“What’s wrong with you?” I said, wondering if her bizarre mood that started when Teddy showed up had carried through the night.

“Nothing, it’s just that everybody I bump into, all they want to talk about is this...this...this mess.”

“Like who?”

“People, Gray, just people.” Her tone was irritable, bordering on bitchy.

“Sorry I asked.”

She said something under her breath that I didn’t understand. “What’s that?”

“Nothing. I’m just tired of being asked about this thing everywhere I go.”

“You act like it’s my fault.”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did.”

She stared at me for a moment, then rolled her eyes and said, “Have a great day.”

“Whatever, Abby,” I said on my way out the door. At that moment, I hated her. And loved her. Damn Bobby Knight to hell.

Chapter 15

When I got to work, I called Lucas Benton’s office to tell him about RoboVoice’s autopsy report suggestion. He wasn’t in, so I left a voice mail.

I wondered if Bobby Knight had gotten my voice mail yet. What would he do when he played it? Would he call Abby and tip her off? Would he even recognize my voice? Curiosity got the better of me and I dialed the station.

“Montello P.D.,” the receptionist said.

“Bobby Knight, please.”

“I’m sorry, Detective Knight is in court today in Tupelo. I can connect you to his partner if you like.”

“No, thanks,” I said. I hung up the phone and went back to work in the shop, trying to get my mind off it all.

President Lindsey (yes, President is really his name) hobbled through the door. He’s old enough to be Moses’ first cousin and wears a permanent smile.

“Say, boss man!” he said.

“How you doing today, Prez?”

“Oh, I’s doing all right. Needs to pay on my account.”

“No problem,” I said. President’s a sharp one. He lives in a tiny box of a house, and has no place to safely keep his lawn mower. So he pawns it to me for one dollar, has it stored inside until he needs it, and pays a whopping twenty-five cents per month in interest: cheapest rent in town. I usually turn down these deals, but I like this old man.

President took a squeeze coin purse from his front pocket, removed the four rubber bands that clamped it shut, and carefully removed a quarter and handed it to me. I processed the payment and gave him his receipt.

“Thank you, boss man!” he said. He meticulously folded the receipt and somehow coaxed it into a wallet about three inches thick, then made his way out.

As President was leaving, a nice-looking lady walked in. Make that very nice looking. Tall, sleek, shaped. Shoulder-length hair and stunning chestnut eyes, part black, part goddess. She looked to be around my age, early forties. I knew right away that she wasn’t there on shop business. Pawners present a lot of different images, but rarely one of composure and confidence. The lookers and shoppers have their own looks, too. She carried herself tall and proud, with purpose. She was her own category.

LungFao was haggling with a customer over whether to loan eight dollars or ten on a VCR, and I instinctively looked to be sure it wasn’t Rasheeda Hobart. It wasn’t.

“Can I help you?” I said to the lady.

“I’m Penny Lane.” She extended her hand and I shook it. Firm, perfect. I drew a breath but before I could say anything she said, “No Beatle jokes, please.”

“Gray Bolton. What can I do for you, Ms. Lane?”

“Call me Penny. We’re going to be spending some time together.” She handed me a card that said PENNY LANE, INVESTIGATOR, SHEFFIELD-BENTON LAW FIRM.

“I see.”

“Mr. Benton tells me you questioned the accuracy of my report.”

“Your report is flat wrong. Before now, I’ve never had more than a traffic ticket, and I’ve never even been pulled over in the state of Arkansas.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Hundred percent.”

She looked into my eyes, studying me, looking for subconscious clues that I was lying to her. There were none to find. After about fifteen seconds, she abruptly said, “If you’re telling the truth, and I believe you are, it doesn’t bode well.”

“It doesn’t?”

“I double-checked my research. There was nothing wrong with my work. The incident is right there in the NCIC, Mr. Bolton.”

“Call me Gray. Since we’re going to be spending some time together.”

That drew a smile. “All right. Here’s the problem, Gray.” The smile faded. “Mr. Benton says you were apparently set up—”

“Not ‘apparently.’ I was set up.”

“Calm down. I’m on your team.”

“I’m a little edgy.”

“My point is this: If someone has gone to the trouble, and has the means, to inject false information into a federal law enforcement network, what else have they done? I mean, this thing certainly doesn’t help your case, but they probably won’t even be able to mention it in court, so it’s of dubious value at best.”

“I see your point.”

“Great. You have a small table I can work from? I’ve set up a temporary office in my hotel room, but I’d like to spend this first day here with you.”

“Sure, come on back. We’ll find you a spot.”

Chapter 16

Penny Lane worked from her makeshift office for the next several hours. Mid-afternoon, Xavier “X-Man” Miller walked in. He was even tougher to look at than Bill Berner. X was a happy sort and grinned a lot. All good and fine except for a mouthful of rotten black nubs that always made me queasy. He was one of the customers who had shown up the day after the robbery to pledge their undying loyalty should I ever need anything. X waved at me, then headed toward LungFao. The phone rang and I picked it up.

“Gray’s Green Cash.”

“Listen carefully,” RoboVoice said. “I won’t have time to repeat myself.”

“All right.”

“Go to your bathroom. Cover the motion detector with something; it’s a camera. Look in the tank on the back of the toilet. Flush what you find there.”

“What—” I started to say, but he was gone. I walked to the bathroom, which did double duty as a storage area for pawned guns, and casually glanced up at the motion detector above the door. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that it was not the unit that had been there for years. It was similar enough that I hadn’t noticed the difference, but this one had a tiny black circle right in the center. A camera lens.

I turned around to get something to put over it and jumped when I saw Penny Lane standing there.

“What?” she said.

Not knowing if the camera had audio capability or not, I whispered, “Camera,” and pointed. She arched her eyebrows. Robo had been on the mark thus far, and he—I assumed it was a man—had said to hurry. I grabbed a cap and tried to hang it over the detector, but the plastic detector had round edges and the cap kept falling off.

I walked to the tool table, grabbed a hammer, returned to the bathroom, and beat the camera-cum-motion-detector until shards of plastic rained down. I lifted the lid off the toilet tank and set it aside. Submerged in the bottom of the tank was a cube-shaped object. I reached in and pulled it out. It was wrapped in several layers of plastic, secured with duct tape. I ripped the layers off.

“They’re really out to get you,” Penny said when the last layer of plastic came off and revealed a six-inch cube of densely packed white powder. She stuck her finger in it, then tasted it. “Cocaine. Really good cocaine.”

“Sonofadamnbitch!” I said, as I started dumping it into the toilet. Penny looked on wistfully. “You use this stuff?” I said.

“Not anymore.”

“Good.”

“Yeah. Good.”

Chapter 17

Just as I flushed the toilet, a commotion erupted out in the shop. As soon as I was confident the contraband was safely down the hole I stepped out of the bathroom.

“Hands in the air!” said the leader of a four-man gang of black-clad goons, no doubt Montello’s version of a SWAT team.

I raised my hands. The leader, who was holding a Glock on me with one hand, shoved a piece of paper at me with the other. Unlike the svelte commandos who populate the special-ops police squads of Hollywood, this guy’s belly was doing its best to escape from the bottom of his flak jacket.

“That’s a search warrant, asshole,” he said.

Penny was already on her cell phone. “Put Lucas on right now,” she said.

“For what?” I said to LeaderMan.

“The entire premises.”

“LungFao, get a camcorder and tape every bit of this you can.” His eyes were the size of saucers but he grabbed a camera and had it running within a minute. X-Man was in hasty retreat, headed for the door. Undying loyalty on display.

“Here,” Penny said, shoving the cell phone my way.

I took it. “Hello?”

“Gray, this is Lucas. Stay out of the way and let them do whatever it is they’re going to do. I’ll be there in the morning. Let me speak back to Miss Lane.”

“Roger that,” I said as I passed the phone back to Penny.

“Right...right...no, I’m certain of it...okay, bye.” She punched off.

Not surprisingly, LeaderMan was already in the bathroom, looking in the toilet.

“Why’d you have the lid off the tank?” he said.

“Routine maintenance.” I walked back out and noticed that the other three guys were just standing there, doing nothing. No surprise, I guess. Anything they did would be pure theatrics anyway.

“We’ll be back,” LeaderMan said as he brushed hard against me on the way out of the bathroom.

“I can’t wait.”

He leaned in close and gritted his teeth. “You’re going down, asshole.”

I was nose to nose with him, his breath sour enough to gag a maggot. “If you’re through, get the hell out of my shop, Barney.”

His eyes flamed.

“What’d you say to me, prick?”

“Go polish your bullet, you redneck wannabe.”

One of his colleagues grabbed him and tugged him away. I gave him a big smile.

When they were gone, Penny said, “You might not want to antagonize them.”

“Yeah, the nice-guy approach has worked so well with them.”

“Don’t be glib.”

Chapter 18

In no mood to deal with the public, I flipped the sign to CLOSED and locked the door. “LungFao, take the day off.”

“You sure?” he said.

“Yeah, get out of here.”

I let him out the side door, then sat down on a stool beside the pawn counter.

“What was the point in that,” I said, shaking my head, “when I’m already charged with murder?”

Penny was pacing, up and down the counter line. “They want you in jail. They obviously didn’t think the judge would grant bail. They figure if they can get you on something else, he’ll keep you there.”

“I’m an honest businessman, Penny. You believe that?”

“I do, but to them, you’re a cop-killer, which puts you somewhere between amoeba and cancer cell.”

“What am I going to do?”

“We are going to find the truth.”

“You sound awfully sure of yourself.”

“This is an ugly-ass world, Gray—and you can call me a sentimental goofball—but I still believe in old-fashioned truth and justice. I think you’re innocent and I intend to help you prove it.”

“You’ve known me less than two hours. Why do you believe in me?”

“I’m a good judge of character.”

“And what else?”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something you’re not saying.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I’ve been a pawnbroker for twenty years. I get lied to all day, every day. I have a really good bullshit detector.”

“Fair enough. I knew Johnny Homestead. He was a dirty, low-life, scum-sucking piece of trash. He was also my ex-partner.”

“So, my lawyer’s investigator used to be partners with the ‘cop’ who pulled a gun on me and subsequently got blown away by yours truly? Is this supposed to be the mother of all coincidences or what?”

“It’s no coincidence. I asked for this case.”

“I see. What else have you failed to tell me, Miss Lane?”

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters a damn lot. This is my head on the chopping block, and if you’re here to settle some kind of old score or whatever the hell you’re doing, then I had a right to know.”

“I’m here to help you because you’re in way over your head and you still don’t realize how deep the water is.”

“Then why don’t you tell me?”

“Johnny and I were partners, narcotics, Memphis P.D. Nice things started turning up around him. Too nice. Tailored suits, expensive jewelry, cars.”

“He was on the take?”

“Worse. He was stealing evidence from drug busts and reselling it.”

“And what did you do?”

“I went to Internal Affairs. Turned him in.”

“And?”

“Found myself without a job. I.A. was in on it too.”

“That’s why you’re working as a private investigator?”

“You got it, although I don’t mind this job. Not near so dangerous and the pay’s a hell of a lot better.”

“So nothing happened to Homestead?”

“Not long after that, he quit. Word was he went to work for D.E.A.”

“Geez, a dirty fed, huh?”

“He wouldn’t be the first. Lots of good guys there, but lots the other way, too. Anyway, that was five years ago and I haven’t heard from him or about him since. Until he turns up dead here in your pawn shop.”

“Then when did he make the switch from D.E.A. to working white-collar crimes in Mississippi? That’s the division he was in, you know.”

“A year ago, but I just found that out yesterday.”

“Wonder why he’d make a change like that. Reckon he went straight?”

Penny laughed. “No way. When Johnny Homestead makes a move, there’s a good reason. He had some kind of racket lined up. Bet on it.”

“How do we find out what that racket was?”

“I’m working on that.”

“I have something else for you.” I filled her in on Robo, how he had tipped me off on the cocaine sting, and also relayed his suggestion to get a copy of Homestead’s autopsy report.

She listened, gathered her things, and said, “Okay, I’ll get on that right now. You go home and chill out.”

I said good-bye and she headed out. Just before she stepped through the door, she turned around. “Sure you don’t have any idea what it is the caller wants?”

“None.”

“That’s really bizarre,” she said, as she turned and left.