Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle (29 page)

A break. Finally. I thought of Mort again. About his lesson on persistence.
Good detective work doesn’t mean having all the answers. It means pushing until you trip over the answer you’re looking for.

I gave Angie a nod. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t even remember you.”

“That would be a neat trick.”

“I’m full of tricks. You won’t see him again.”

Chapter 29

That night, I felt too wired to sit still, especially in the back booth of a karaoke bar on a Monday. I wouldn’t even have many voice-crackers to keep me entertained. But I went anyway, because I had a favor to ask.

“I know I told you I wanted to keep you out of trouble,” I said.

Paul was organizing the liquor on the shelf behind the bar. He stopped and turned when he heard me.

I sat at the bar, something I rarely do during operating hours. I tried to read Paul without much success. “I need your help.”

“Wouldn’t have offered if I hadn’t meant it. What do you need?”

I told him.

Next morning, I sat in my car one block over from Angie’s trailer. On the seat beside me I had one of a pair of two-way radios lying next to my gun. I listened to Sarah MacLauchlan on the satellite radio, her soft voice soothing, but not quite soothing enough to straighten my curled nerves.

The radio crackled and Paul’s voice came through. “I’m where you told me.”

I scooped the radio off the seat and pressed the button to answer. “Okay, keep me posted.”

I glanced at my gun, but it didn’t perk up and give me comforting advice. It looked to me like a coiled snake, ready to strike with its venomous fangs at any moment. But wasn’t that the point of a gun?

The time on the clock in the dash read six fifteen. Paul and I had first met in the
High Note’s
parking lot, then drove over to the trailer park at five-thirty. Angie had promised to try keeping him until at least eight. After that, I was on my own.

But I didn’t take any chances. Getting up at four that morning was a lot easier than getting to bed the night before. Coffee and adrenaline kept me awake now. I was ready to end this. All I had to do was wait.

Paul’s signal came just after seven.

“Guy’s coming out now.” Pause. “He matches the picture. I’m out.”

I jammed my car into drive and mashed the gas pedal. My tires spun on the icy street for a moment before gaining traction. Then I was barreling around the block, heart racing, hands gripping the wheel as if I meant to tear it loose.

When I cleared the corner onto Angie’s street I saw Paul kneeling in the snow in front of her trailer. As I sped closer, I noticed the form underneath him. I slid to a stop, grabbed my, gun and flew out of the car.

The body under Paul lay face down in the snow. Paul held a hand on the back of the guy’s head, but his face was turned toward me and I recognized him immediately. I held my gun in a two-handed grip and aimed at Bobby’s face.

“Let his head up,” I said.

Paul removed his hand and Bobby arched his back and looked up at me. He grinned. “No fucking way.”

“Looks like I win the race,” I said.

“Are you kidding? I told you, I already crossed the finish line. I found her, Rid. I know right where she is. And I can take you to her, if you want.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Nothing yet. But she got me so horny, I had to take up Angie’s offer for a good time.” He shook his head. “Coke and sex. Should have figured my two addictions would get me into trouble.”

“Is she here in Hawthorne?”

“No way, man. She’s up north. Get your ape off of me and we can go visit.”

I took a quick glance around. We couldn’t stay out here for long without attracting attention. I pulled a set of handcuffs from my pocket and tossed them to Paul. Without a word, he clamped the cuffs around Bobby’s wrists behind his back.

“You’re fucking yourself treating me this way, Rid. You get ugly, I won’t tell you how to find her.”

I jerked by head to one side. “Take him.”

Paul stood and easily lifted Bobby off the ground. Snow covered the front of him and powdered his hair like a bad case of dandruff. As Paul jerked him toward his truck, Bobby glared at me. “What would Dad say about you doing this?”

“He’d say you deserved it.”

We blindfolded him and took him to my house, put him down in the wine cellar—which was loaded with bottles I had never thought to look at when I moved back into the house—and let him stew for a while. Paul and I sat upstairs in the kitchen.

“Doesn’t seem like the talkative type,” Paul said.

“No,” I said. “He’ll put up a fight.”

“So you’re gonna get rough?”

“He knows where my daughter is. And he has Hal somewhere, too.”

“Wasn’t asking you to justify yourself. Just making sure I understand what I’m into.”

“No. You’ve done your part. And I appreciate it.”

He tilted his chin up. “You want this to work, you’re gonna need back up.”

“I can’t ask you to do this.”

“He knows where your daughter is. And he has Hal.”

I couldn’t deny Paul’s help would make this a lot easier. He was tougher than I was. Colder. And would probably be more convincing for Bobby than I could. This overstepped the boundary I was willing to drag Paul across, though. “You can’t.”

“Don’t you think I can make my own decisions about what I can or can’t?”

“That’s not the point. You—”

“Owe you for keeping me around, paying me well, and staying loyal when I’ve needed you to.” He scooted his chair away from the table and stood. “You ready to do this or what?”

He had this look in his eye that made me feel like he might get aggressive with me if I tried to deny his help. Trying to protect him was an insult to him. “Okay. Let’s talk to him.”

We had Bobby cuffed to a pipe running along the cellar ceiling. His arms stretched up like a ref calling a field goal, one cuff on each hand, the chain over the top of the pipe. The set up looked a little medieval. I hoped it was enough to intimidate Bobby into talking without having to provide much more motivation.

He still wore the blindfold, but he heard us come down and grinned big. “I’m impressed, Rid. You never took things to this level in the old days.”

“A lot’s changed,” I said. “Don’t test to find out how much.”

“Oh, hell no. I’m gonna make you reach your limit. I gotta see how badass you’ve become.”

Paul snorted. “You want to see how much of a badass I am? Want to test me?”

Bobby titled his head at the sound of Paul’s voice. “It’s the gorilla goomba. You former mob? I can smell the WOP sweat on ya.”

Paul gave me a glance, asking permission to jam a fist somewhere into Bobby.

I shook my head. Not yet. I circled around to Bobby’s left.

He turned his head, following the sound of my footsteps.

“Let’s start easy,” I said. “What did you do to Hal?”

Bobby cracked up, chortling as if sitting at a table in a comedy club instead of chained to a pipe in my wine cellar. “That’s awesome.”

“Where is he?”

“You care more about that old dude than you do your daughter?”

“I’m asking you a question you’re more inclined to answer. We’ll get to her in a minute.”

He threw his head back and laughed some more. “Man, you are a goof. One minute I think you’re a hell of a detective, then next you’re so stupid it hurts.”

His tone. That mirth. Bobby had always had a pocket full of sarcasm to spread around. This was darker. Mean. “I’m not interested in your critique. I want to know what you did with Hal.”

He let his laughter peter out. The smile cracking his face remained, looking demented with his eyes covered by the blindfold. “Nothing,” he said.

Paul’s scuffed along the cement floor when he stepped forward, the sound like a
hush
. “I can make brushing your teeth a lot faster in the morning if you don’t stop with the games.”

“It’s all a game. That’s the point.” He turned his head from side to side as if he could see through the blindfold to scan his surroundings. His head stopped with his covered gaze aimed a mere foot to the right of my face. “I never did a thing to the old dude. He presented an opportunity I took advantage of.”

I moved in close, put my ear a handful of inches from his ear. “I figured I’d have to save the rough stuff for getting you to talk about my daughter. But if you—”

“Lisa.”

“Who?”

“If you’re going to keep talking about her, you might as well call her by her name.”

Hot needles prickled up my neck and across my face. I had him cuffed to a pipe over his head, blindfolded, and under threat of physical harm if he didn’t cooperate, and somehow he had wrested control of the conversation. My hand took on a mind of its own and smacked Bobby’s cheek, leaving behind a red mark.

Bobby smiled. “That tickled.”

I slapped him harder on the same cheek.

“There. That’s a little better.”

“How much of your story is bullshit, Bobby? Everything? You say you didn’t do anything to Hal? Did you really find my daughter? Do you really expect me to believe you know her name?”

“You should be worried about your old guy friend.”

“Stop. You don’t have control here. Start talking straight or get used as a heavy bag for me and Paul here to work out some frustration.”

“You’re all talk, Rid. You’ve always been a soft touch. Always let yourself get wrapped up in your emotions life a fucking woman.”

I stepped back. Enough. I turned to Paul.

It was all the invitation he needed. He stepped forward and went to work on Bobby’s kidneys, throwing low hooks, lefts and rights, back and forth. Bobby laughed at the abuse at first. But Paul kept at it until the laughs turned to hollow grunts and eventually drew tears.

Paul backed off.

Bobby swung a moment like a wind chime in a soft breeze. When he stilled, he said, “Wow. That was pretty good.” He tried to make it sound light, but I could hear the pinch in his voice

The cellar grew filled with the smell of sweat and anger. I buzzed like a recluse required to give a speech in front of millions—totally out of my element and certain I’d fail. But I couldn’t fail. I had to end this, whether he was telling the truth or not. “Start with Hal,” I said.

“He’s in the hospital. Had a heart attack. Jeeze, Rid, this is easy stuff to find out. Did you even bother checking?”

I hadn’t, because Bobby had driven me to conclusions with his hints and taunts—the medallion, the note planted in Hal’s house. Just enough to draw my scent off the true path—a prime example of the proverbial red herring.

“Why should we believe you?” Paul asked.

“Because, King Kong, it’s really easy to check. Call Rosemoor Hospital. He’s out of ICU now, so you should be able to talk to him.”

It drove me bats that he could know all of this, that his investigative skills had trumped mine four times over. It was small comfort to have managed to trap him like we had. He still knew more than I did.

“So you faked the whole thing with Hal,” I said. “Are you faking this stuff about my daughter?”

“Please call her Lisa. ‘My daughter’ this and ‘my daughter’ that is more of a mouthful than any straight man likes to have.”