Deal Gone Bad - A Thriller (Frank Morrison Thriller Series Book 1) (27 page)

Morrison didn’t waste
time. He went to the desk, picked up his belongings from a bemused deputy and
stormed out of the station.

Now that this little
interlude was over, he needed to get back to business. He drove over to Cowgirl’s
house and shared the latest developments with her.

“Christ, there’s never a
dull moment with you, Morrison,” she said when he was finished.

He grinned. “Talk about an
understatement,” he said.

“But are you sure Sanford’s
not gonna do anything silly?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. That
would be suicidal. She must be pissed as hell but she’s not dumb. She knows she
has to bite the bullet.”

“Right. That’s the logical
way to see this. The rational way. But what about her emotions?” She drew a
blank stare from him. She pushed on. “She’s not just a sheriff. There’s a woman
behind that badge. And she’s just been hurt by the man she loves. Hurt like
hell. That could make her do something irrational.”

“She’s just released me,
no?”

“She could have a change
of heart and still get back at you. Honestly, if I were in her place, I’m not
sure what I would do. But I’m sure I’d hurt like crazy.”

He pondered this for a
moment. Cowgirl was right. He was still vulnerable. For sure, he didn’t expect
anything fishy from Perkins. The businessman was definitely guilty of something.
By paying Morrison back, he was getting rid of a big problem. For the
businessman, now, it was only a matter of money, and he had plenty of it. So Morrison
didn’t fear him in the least. But Sanford’s case was different. She had done
nothing wrong. Nothing illegal, at least. She had just been careless. If that
ordeal started to weigh too much on her, she could still decide to make it
right. Arrest him once again and accept that Perkins would also be exposed. Of
course, that would mean the end of her own career. But she could do it. She
even had the financial means to lose her career, unlike most people.

“You’re right,” he said.
“I should try to mitigate that risk.”

But how?

Cowgirl made some coffee.
They settled into comfortable chairs in the living room and started to think
about this.

People responded to
incentives. Always had. Always would.

In the current situation,
Sanford was not gaining anything. She was just avoiding a big, messy, catastrophic
loss—that of her own reputation and her career.

But she was not gaining
anything.

If he wanted to truly
neutralize her, he needed to give her something more so she could come out of
it with a real satisfaction. Not just the shameful impression that she had narrowly
averted disaster.

This was not simple.

He had other problems to
worry about. Not least among them, his partner Mike and his crazy blond
sidekick. How would he handle them? Tomorrow, he would put his hands on a big
pile of money. Then he would have to give his partner his share. That could prompt
Mike to make a move on him. He looked at Cowgirl. He knew he could trust her
one hundred percent. But Mike? No way. He had turned into a slimy snake. A
nasty bastard. Just look at what he did to Laura.

He continued to think hard.

His mind going from one
idea to the other.

Then he got a flash.

He closed his eyes to pore
over it.

The idea was appealing.

The more he thought about
it, the more he could see it working. Even if it was tricky.

After a long time, he
reopened his eyes.

Maybe, if he played his
cards well, there was a way to placate Sheriff Sanford after all.

He ran his idea by
Cowgirl.

She stayed silent for a
long time after he was finished. Mulling over what he’d just said with a
dubious expression on her face. “Morrison, you’re half-mad and half-genius. I
just can’t decide where this one fits.”

He smiled. “I know it’s
not a slam dunk,” he said. “But I see no better way to put this whole affair to
rest once and for all. And I also get to kill two birds with one stone.”

She tilted her head and
grimaced. “It can work,” she said. “It can work. But I’m not convinced.”

In the middle of the
afternoon, Morrison drove over to a redneck bar, the Thirsty Boot.

There was a thin crowd in
there. A dozen or so of the usual losers, sitting in clusters around a few
tables or by themselves at the bar. Drifters and professional bums. Downing
mugs of cheap watery beer and yakking at the big screens blaring out the
previous night’s sports highlights in an infinite loop.

He had not been there
often. Not his kind of place at all. But he knew he could find what he was
looking for there. Actually, you could find lots of things that were difficult
to find there.

He sat on a stool and
ordered a Genesee on tap. While the barman poured his suds, he fished a small piece
of paper from his pocket. Dropped it on the counter in front of him and
half-covered it with a crisp new one-hundred-dollar bill so that the one
written line would be visible.

The barman came back with
his mug and frowned as he took in the slip of paper. But the money did the
trick. The guy palmed both of them and gave a discreet nod toward the other end
of the room.

Morrison turned his head. A
man was sitting alone at a table, near the bathroom. An old guy, well into his
sixties.

Morrison took a sip of
beer. Then he rose and walked over there. The old guy had the
New York Post
opened on a double page spread mocking the Mets for yet another mediocre start
to the season.

As if on cue, the old guy
raised his head from the paper. Morrison gave a small nod toward the bathroom.
The old guy acknowledged and followed him.

They were alone in there.
Morrison told him what he needed.

The request didn’t take
the old guy by surprise. “It’s gonna be a thousand bucks,” he said. “Give it to
me right now. I’ll come back in ten minutes.”

“Not in here,” Morrison
said. “I’m gonna finish my beer at the bar. Leave them in my ride, under the
driver’s seat. The black Navigator. It’s not locked.”

The old guy nodded.

Then Morrison gave him his
money.

The Mets deserved all the flak
they’d taken from the
Post
. Morrison watched them commit blunder after
blunder on the big screen recap while he quietly drank his beer at the bar. Some
things never changed. That was one of them.

After he finished his beer,
Morrison went back to the Navigator. He sat behind the wheel. Bent over to rummage
under the seat. His hand bumped on something. Two objects, actually. He picked them
up. Looked at them. Good. The old guy hadn’t shafted him. His thousand bucks
had materialized into what he needed.

He could now take care of
the following item on his list.

Sheriff Sanford.

He punched in her number
on his prepaid.

The sheriff picked up on
the first ring. Of course, she knew who it was. He had already called her
before with that phone.

“Morrison,” she said. “Is
this some kind of joke?”

“Please don’t hang up,” he
said. “Listen to me. I’m holding a white flag here. I’ve got something for you.
Please just listen to me …”

The next morning, Morrison
and Cowgirl didn’t linger too long in bed.

This was the big day.

They got up, fixed
themselves some breakfast and reviewed their plan for the next few hours.

Cowgirl still had some
misgivings about what he had planned for Sanford. But she trusted him enough to
go along.

When they were done, he called
Steve Perkins on his cell phone.

“You’ve got the money?” he
asked.

“I do,” Perkins said. “Where
do you want to meet?” His voice was tense.

Morrison gave him the
directions to Cowgirl’s house. Told him to show up in fifteen minutes. They
would leave the garage door open for him. “I’m not expecting you to do
something silly,” Morrison said. “But still, do know that I will not be alone
and that your behavior will be carefully monitored. Don’t feel threatened.
Those are simple precautions.”

“When do we tell the
others?” Cowgirl asked after he hung up.

“When we have the money,”
he said. “Not before.”

*

People expected a million
dollars to be some monstrous overflowing pile of money. But it really wasn’t.
Once you’d seen it two or three times in the flesh, so to speak, it even appeared
quite banal. After all, a million dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills weighed a
mere twenty-two pounds. It easily fit into a plastic grocery bag. So much for an
avalanche of Treasury notes.

Now what Morrison was
staring at was different.

Eleven point two million
dollars was a totally different beast. A whole two hundred and fifty pounds
worth of one-hundred-dollar bills. It made three big duffel bags look really
stuffed and ready to burst at the seams.

Morrison privately allowed
himself to feel a tinge of excitement as he stared at all this money. Perkins
had just opened the hatch of his big Audi in the seclusion of Cowgirl’s garage.
The man seemed just nervous enough. Eager to put this whole episode behind him.

Cowgirl opened the duffel
bags and started to perform random checks on the bundles of money. Just to make
sure those weren’t stacks of worthless paper bookended by a few genuine dollar
bills.

A couple of minutes later,
she gave the thumbs up.

This was the real deal.

Of course, when you had that
much money, you couldn’t start counting it. You just weighed it. So Morrison
took the duffel bags one by one and climbed with them onto Cowgirl’s bathroom
scale. They added the total weight, did some simple math and came up with a
figure of two hundred and forty-five pounds.

“Good enough,” Morrison
said. He extended his arm to Perkins. “Pleasure doing business with you, Steve.”

The businessman shook his
hand. And then Cowgirl’s.

“You know,” Perkins told
her, “I would never have guessed you were in that line of business too. Not in
a million years.”

Perkins and Cowgirl knew each
other on the surface. The businessman had bought two horses from her for his
kids a couple of years before.

She shrugged and returned
the comment. “I never thought we’d do that kind of business together either,
but here we are.”

Perkins smiled a thin
smile and shook his head. “Isn’t life strange sometimes?” he said.

Morrison looked at him. Above
all, Perkins seemed relieved. This transaction was unorthodox, but it had gone
down well. Just like any other business transaction.

“We’re crooks,” Morrison said
with a wink, “but we’re straight crooks.”

Perkins laughed, then he slammed
the hatch shut on his Audi and drove out of Cowgirl’s garage.

As the heavy door rolled
down in a metallic clatter, Morrison glanced at the three stuffed duffel bags
again. Then he exchanged a knowing smile with Cowgirl.

At last, after three long
years of prison and a big pile of trouble, he had gotten their money back.

Morrison and Cowgirl
stayed in the garage to make some phone calls. He began with Mike.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I’m in town,” Mike said.
“Why?”

“Can we meet at your place
in a half-hour? I’ll tell the others to meet us there.”

Mike lightened up at the
other end. He knew exactly what this meant. “Morrison, you son of a bitch,” he
said. “You did it!”

“I take that as a yes. See
you in thirty minutes.”

Morrison hung up. Next on
his list was Harris. He dialed him on his mobile. “Can you be at Mike’s place
in thirty minutes?” he said when the wily old fox picked up.

Harris had a good nose too.
He just knew he’d stuff his pockets.

“I’ll be there,” he said.
“Do I need to bring anything?”

“Just make sure you have
enough room in your trunk,” Morrison said before hanging up.

He stared again at the
three heavy duffel bags lying on the bare cement floor, bulging with the
greatest pile of money he’d ever seen in one single place.

They were at a crossroads.

Now was the time to
perform the most dangerous part of any criminal operation.

The money split.

Always a nerve-wracking
moment, in the best of cases.

But today, Morrison had
decided to throw an extra layer of complexity on top of it. It worried him, of
course. And it also worried Cowgirl.

“Are you sure you still
want to proceed this way?” she asked.

“Yes. It’s the right thing
to do,” he said.

She nodded her approval.
They had discussed the issue at length.

“It’s risky,” he said, “but
I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

She didn’t oppose him. He
knew she trusted him and that she would always give him the benefit of the
doubt.

So he prepared for his
final phone call.

He punched in Sheriff
Sanford’s number.

When she picked up, he
said, “We’re making a move now. Be ready.”