The Last Kind Words (36 page)

“Well, you’re a Rand, I know that much,” he said. “Not sure of the breed, though.”

“Terrier.”

He nodded. “Okay, I think we’ve met before.”

“A couple times when I was a kid, helping my father unload laptops and stereo systems.”

“Not so loud. The boys up front don’t know I was ever a part of the bent life.” He got up and closed the door, sat again and steepled his fingers. “Heard about Malamute. Saw it on the TV. Hell of a waste, him going out like that. Hell of a card player. Hell of a finger man.”

“Right. Can we talk?”

“I don’t move your kind of product anymore,” he said.

“What kind would that be?”

“The illegal kind.”

“Oh, you’ve gone straight. Good, glad to hear it.” I raised my voice and projected toward the door. “Then you’re not going to try moving any ice you might get from a five-man crew that’s taking down a family jewelry store and expecting to get paid mid-six figures—”

“Christ, not so loud,” he hissed.

It was probably true that he’d gone mostly legit. But like every other fence in the world, he’d never turn down a good heist when he was going to pull in a major percentage and do almost no work for it.

“What’s their score?” I asked.

He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Stan, you do know. I know you know. Just tell me and I’m out of here. What is it?”

“I don’t rat. I don’t do that.”

“It’s ratting if you go to the cops. I’m not a cop. Besides, you’re already going to rob them blind. You lied about the payout and they’re only going in because they think they’re about to be rich. Even if they pull it off, they have to kick up to the Thompson crew. They’re going to walk away with peanuts and they won’t be happy. They might even try to take it out of your ass.”

“Jesus.” He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and my stomach tightened. I got in much closer and watched him carefully. He pulled out a bottle of J&B and poured himself two fingers in a dirty glass. “Why do you care?”

“That’s my business, Stan. Your business of the moment is to tell me who’s running the string.”

“You Rands, you used to be a good family to work with.” He threw back half the glass and made a face. “But now you’re all sick in the head, you know that?”

I leaned on his desk. “Yeah, I know it. Now, who bosses the string?”

“Some kid.”

“Which kid? Use names, Stan. Butch?”

“No, not that one. He’s a moron. He only goes by Butch because his last name is Cassidy, can you believe it? Fucking idiot. No, the boss is another guy. Young, like Butch, but smarter, you know? His name is Harsh. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Is it his score? Did he put it together?”

Stan finished his drink, put the bottle back in the drawer, pushed the glass away from him. “I think so.”

“Is it a tight string?”

“Who knows? I can’t be sure with this new kind of punk.”

“Contact info.”

He tried to stand, but I blocked him and he dropped back heavily into his seat. “You can’t foul the juke, Terrier. If you do and it traces back to me—”

“I’m not going to foul it. I’m going to make sure it goes off without a hitch. Give me an address.”

“I don’t have one, but I can give you a number.”

He pulled it up off his computer. “Password protected and encrypted. Better than a floor safe in the corner.”

He read the number off. I memorized it and said, “They’re packing.”

“So far as I know, yeah.”

“So what happens when they find out you’re not going to give them anything more than a dime on the dollar, Stan?”

His eyes danced with amusement. “It’ll work out.”

“A guy named Harsh might be eager to use his piece. You shouldn’t have lied to them on what you were going to be able to move.” I got up and opened the door. “Hey, you have any piano babies or Toby mugs?”

“What? Porcelain?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I don’t deal with that kind of crap.”

“Who does?”

He thought about it for a second. “Try Rocko Milligan.”

I left, got in my car, and headed north on Route 231. I called Harsh’s
number. When he answered I said, “This is Butch. Meet me at the Rail Cross Diner on Commack Road.”

“This doesn’t sound like Butch.”

“I’ve got a cold. Twenty minutes.”

“Who is this?” Harsh asked.

“Come find out.”

“How will I know you?”

“I’ll be the one calling out, ‘Harsh, you asshole, your jewelry-store score is on the fucking skids.’ Twenty minutes, right?”

Harsh
showed up on time. I was having a cup of coffee and relaxing in a back booth. It wasn’t hard for him to guess I was the one who’d called him. It was a small joint and I was the only one sitting alone.

He was a little older than Butch, maybe twenty-three or -four. Buzz-cut blondie wearing a tight white T-shirt under a loose jean jacket. He had wraparound shades on. Everybody and their shades. It must be a retro thing, guys falling back on what was hip in the seventies. They were all watching too many DVDs, trying to pick up on classic style. He scanned the place, spotted me, and took his time stepping over.

It looked like he was carrying a .38 in his jacket pocket. Right off, that meant he wasn’t a pro. I could’ve been a cop. He could get a couple of years just for having a piece on him. You never packed unless you knew what you were packing for.

He stood before me and I said, “I’m Terrier Rand.”

“I’ve heard of you. Your people have been in the news. I don’t like that.”

“You don’t like that?”

“I don’t like being seen with guys who might have reporters following them.”

That was actually pretty smart of him. I reassessed Harsh a bit. He sat and the waitress zipped over and he waved her away. He took off his shades. His eyes were youthful but he was trying to keep them mean. I guessed that he’d been in the game since he was young, had pulled a couple of jobs that had gone well, and then he’d impatiently struck off on his own. That’s the only reason I could imagine that he’d taken on a punk like Butch.

“You know my sister?” I asked.

“Yeah, I know her.”

“How well?”

“Not too well. I never touched her if that’s what you mean.”

It wasn’t, but I decided to take it at face value. I pulled an envelope out of my pocket and put it in front of him.

He didn’t make any move toward it. That was another good sign that he wasn’t a complete moron.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Three grand. You’re going to pay off Butch and cut him out of this jewelry-store score. Take a thousand for yourself and give him the rest. Tell him it’s his cut for helping out as much as he did and that you’ll hire him on for the next job.”

He studied me coldly. “Why would I do any of that?” he said, neither affirming nor denying anything.

“Because he’s going to be unable to assist you. Find another man.”

Harsh let out a slow grin. There was more than a hint of cultivated savagery to it. “You, I suppose?”

“No. I don’t want in. I don’t want to know anything about it. I already know too much. Because Butch talked out of turn. He approached me thinking I’d jump on board. It was a mistake. Not an unforgivable one, but bad enough. He also wrote Stan Herbert’s name on a pizza box and left it out in the open for anybody to see.”

“And you know Stan.”

I nodded. “And I know Stan. Whatever he promised you, you won’t get more than ten percent of the ice’s worth in cash.”

“He said twenty-five.”

“It’ll never happen.”

Harsh started running other schemes in his head. His eyes flashed with possibilities, trying to find a way to squeeze more money out of the deal. I could see he already had other scores in the works as he started mentally shuffling through them, wondering about other fences, other people he could talk with.

“Why were you working Butch’s place?” he asked.

“Finding out what I could. Is it your heist? You put it together?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you wind up with Butch on your string?”

Harsh wasn’t sure how much he should tell me. I drank my coffee. I looked out the window onto Commack Road. He would either trust me a little further or not. There was nothing I could do to force his hand.

Finally he decided he didn’t have much to lose by discussing things with me. “I asked Mr. Thompson for a man who might be willing to help out on a job here and there.”

“And he actually suggested Butch?”

“Yeah.”

Danny should’ve either stepped up and offered one of his own men or kept out of the score altogether. But he wanted to have a thumb in every pie without putting in any time or effort, even if it only ruined the pie. “You should have known better right off.”

“I did, but I didn’t know how plugged in Butch might be with the Thompson crew.”

“He picks them up from the airport.”

“I know that now. I wasn’t comfortable kicking him off the job. He’s good enough to do what I need him to do.”

“You hope. What’s Danny’s cut of the action?”

Harsh looked away, a little bothered having to talk numbers. “Mr. Thompson gets fifteen percent of our net.”

“His father used to take ten.”

“His father is dead. And there’s no time to find another man.”

“You’ve still got a couple days,” I said. “I can even provide you with some names if you like. Either way, you’ve got no choice.”

“I don’t like being braced.”

“Nobody does.”

He put his shades back on and ran a hand over his buzz cut. “You’re not going to ice Butch?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Just hurt him a little.”

“Less than a little, but it’ll be enough.”

“Right. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“What would I gain by lying? Like you said, you know who I am.”

He squared his shoulders. I didn’t need to see his eyes to know he was thinking about it. “Okay, you’re paying me a wad of cash. You’ve got to have a reason.”

“I do.”

“Your sister.”

“That’s right. I want her unconnected.”

“She’s as connected as they come. She’s from a family of thieves. One’s on death row and due for the needle, and another just bought the farm.” He pushed away from the table and stood. “You people are bad news. You think you’re doing her a favor? You’re doing me one.”

Butch’s
door was open again. He was inside, smoking a joint, listening to his iPod with his earplugs in. His eyes were closed and he was singing loudly and badly along with music I couldn’t hear.

I still had Higgins’s blackjack. I stepped up behind Butch and caught him on the sweet spot. He slumped over without a sound. I took off his right shoe and tapped his ankle once. He made a little noise in his sleep like a colicky newborn. His foot began to swell.

There was nothing in his freezer except a half tray of ice. There were no dish towels in the kitchen. I walked the apartment. There were no towels on the rack in the bathroom. Butch certainly led the life. I found a dirty T-shirt on the floor of the bedroom and wrapped the ice cubes in it, then pressed it to his ankle. He’d be off his feet with a minor fracture for two weeks. The score would go down without him. If it went bad and Harsh and his crew wound up in the bin, Butch would be in the clear, and so would Dale.

I searched the place again. I looked for signs of my sister. I found nothing. Before I left, I dumped the melting ice cubes in his sink and threw the dirty shirt back on the floor.

When I got home, my parents were sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in black again. They’d just gotten back from the cemetery. I put my chin to my chest. The funeral had been yesterday and already they were visiting the wet grave again. My mother looked at me like she knew it was too much but she had to do it for my father’s sake.

He grinned at me without any humor and said, “You okay?”

“Sure.”

“That’s good.”

I wondered if he was going to ask me again if I knew who had killed
Mal. He got up and walked out the door, headed to the garage, still in his suit.

I followed him. I thought I should stick close.

He said, “Four months until the stone is ready, can you believe it?”