Big Money (Austin Carr Mystery) (7 page)

SEVENTEEN

The truth about what?

That’s the question I keep asking myself as I shower, smear Jif Chunky on wheat toast and natty-up for work in a
navy blue Canali, white button-down shirt and a maroon tie embroidered with tiny gold clocks.

The Canali’s secondhand, mind you. A sneaky-looking guy comes by the office every few months with a rack or two of little
worn expensive suits. Rumor is he buys them from recent Wall Street widows. Wearing dead man suits is as close to The Street as most Branchtown brokers ever get.

Or maybe Gina’s message about getting Tony to tell the truth is a
way of tugging my chain about her unfaithful husband. Maybe her message is a kind of red herring.

Wonder if Mrs. Tony Farascio’s pissed enough to take a lover?

I crank open the Camry’s sky roof as I roll onto Shrewsbury Avenue minutes later. Except for parallel golden streaks of airplane condensation, a few puffs of tangerine candy-cotton on the eastern horizon, the windy sky sets a clean palate for the coming day. The crystal air tastes like pine forests and snow-topped mountains.

I’m headed to work earlier than usual today, the sun still an un
-flowering yellow bulb behind Branchtown’s century- old sycamores and oaks. The kind of trouble I’m in—Bluefish threatening Ryan and Beth, Walter leaving, Talbot’s charges, then her murder, Big Tony’s wife giving me lustful, restless thoughts—sleeping wasn’t an option. My mind buzzed all night.

One
good
thing, an idea that came to me as I spread my peanut butter, I’ve decided to send Ryan and Beth away from Branchtown. By good, I mean they’ll be safe. Missed but safe. My ex-wife Susan won’t go along at first, but I think she’ll cooperate after I describe Bluefish, the Creeper, the stories about Ann Marie Talbot’s body I overheard around the BPD station house.

For
the past twenty-four hours, I figured Beth and Ryan would be safe as long as I did what Bluefish wanted. But Tony disappearing with the bookie’s hundred grand and Talbot’s murder dramatically changes that wishful assessment. Branchtown is turning ugly, especially for me and mine. Susan has to relocate our children someplace even
I
don’t know about.

A man doesn’t like to think he could be tortured into giving up his child
ren’s whereabouts. But why take the chance? I am a stockbroker.

Crossing the train tracks, I glance across Broad Street toward Luis’s Mexican Grill. Luis’s and Umberto’s cars are parked there every day except Monday, but I’m earlier than usual, curious if I’ve beat them to work.

Both cars
are
there, Umberto’s fifteen-year-old Ford clunker and Luis’s well-maintained red Jeep, but something else quickly grabs my eye. Something that kicks my heart into race mode: A fast-rising column of black smoke gushes from one of the restaurant’s side windows.

Fire.

I have the Camry in a left turn anyway, so all I have to do is hold the wheel a little longer to snap a U-turn across both northbound lanes of Broad Street. See how easy? Now my little Japanese import bounces right back into Luis’s gravel and asphalt parking lot. Who cares if a Branchtown cabby shows me his middle finger?

I dig inside my coa
t for the cell phone as I slide to a stop. The front suspension bottoms as the car skids across the gravel.

The 9-1-1 lady gets my name and Luis’s address, but I say no when she asks me to stay on the line.

“I’m going inside,” I say.

The kitchen door i
s unlocked. Black smoke chokes the room from ceiling to my waist, a solid hot mass, the line between black and clear a sharply defined slash across the rectangular space. The top of the long, food prep table is already invisible.

I fall to my hands and knees and scurry like a rat along the wooden legs. Heat radiates on my back like the noon summer sun. My knees crack and shout with pain on Luis’s imported Mexican tile.

I had to wear the Canali, right?

Umberto lies near the kitchen’s
twin stainless steel sinks he and Luis use to wash vegetables. I check the chef’s pulse. It’s strong and steady. There’s no sign of Luis.

I grab Umberto’s collar and drag him toward the back door. I duck walk to keep my head out of the smoke. Thank God the pint
-sized Umberto doesn’t weigh much more than Beth. I have him outside on the back steps before I can say roasted
pablano
chili.

He coughs. Breathing fine on his own.

Crawling back inside, I see the mass of hot black smoke engulfs the top three quarters of the kitchen. I have to get lower than before, snaking along like some Marine recruit dodging barbed-wire. The low, cleaner air is hotter, too. My lungs tell me to turn back.

I wheel right at the twin sinks on my way into the main dining room. My
navy blue suit begins to shred at the knees and elbows. Nobody’s
ever
going to wear this imported puppy again. The way my life’s turned so violent this year, I better start buying my clothes at Sears.

The fire must have started in the basement. Flames almost eat me as I approach the burning cellar stairwa
y. I push the door closed to hurry past. The hair on the back of my right hand curls, singed by the heat.

In the dining room, I
don’t find Luis on the right, but to the left, I spot a black Reebok poking out from behind the bar. Luis. I wriggle closer, the cloud of searing smoke warming my back like a red-hot poker.

I tug on his ankle but can’t move him. I inch closer. My back feels like it’s about to explode in flames. I grip him with both hands and yank. Nothing. He’s stuck like a long-term
bull in a bear market.

EIGHTEEN

The burning smoke forces my head and stomach lower, pressing me to the floor with a force stronger than Creeper’s hands. My nose is inches from the stained linoleum floor. A long, gray bug with hundreds of synchronized legs runs for his life, trying to hide in my nostril. I snort to blow him away.

Maybe sniffing like that enhances the senses because suddenly I can smell the cotton-blend material of my best blue suit, warming to ignition.
Sirens blare on Broad Street. The floor begins to heat up like a pancake griddle.

I wiggle beside Luis to
see what’s snagging him. No accident here. Luis’s wrists are bound with rope and tied to the stainless steel leg of his four hundred pound ice maker. No time to untangle knots. I need a sharp edge.

A
spasm makes me cough. Smoke fills my throat and makes me cough again. Dizziness blurs my vision. Probably the first stage of carbon monoxide poisoning.

My heart’s skipping rope as I yank Luis’s new switchblade from his right back pocket and hack at the ropes. But I run out of air before I can free him. My lips kiss the floor searching for the smallest taste of oxygen. I cough again, then choke. Maybe getting a spoonful of air. No matter. Smoke fills the restaurant, floor to ceiling. That has to be my last breath inside this burning coffin.

Praying adrenaline will help, I finally slash the rope in two and jerk Luis from underneath the bar and onto my shoulder. I stagger and reel backward under his weight, but the bar backs me up. I stay on my feet. This is it. Get out now. I can’t take a breath and I can’t stop walking. My face is on fire.

Through the black rolling smoke and heat, I stumble past the basement stairway,
then bank left off the twin sinks and grope along the kitchen’s wooden table. My lungs want to burst. I’m starving for air.

My head and shoulders begin to outrun my feet, stealing my balance. I can’t see my nose in the blackness.

My right hip bumps the corner of the kitchen table, then empty space, and I pitch Luis and myself toward a memory of the back door. My shoulder crashes something hard, and I spin onto steps, stumbling enough to lose Luis and fall. For a second, I’m so disoriented I imagine I’m falling off a skyscraper.

The smoke clears on my way down. I see Luis land
in the sturdy arms of a Branchtown fireman.

Nobody
catches me. I hit the asphalt like a gasping fish.

The Branchtown Fire Department saves Luis’s restaurant, but i
t’s early afternoon before the nurses let me inside his hospital room to tell him the good news. The smoke and fire did some heavy but repairable damage to the interior of his building, but it’s the minor damage to his lungs and a concussion he needs to worry about, injuries that will keep him in the hospital overnight. The doctors say someone hit him over the head with a tube-shaped weapon, most likely a pipe. Luis is too groggy when I get to his room, however, so I head outside to the parking lot where I can use my cell phone. I need to call the ex-wife, tell her about moving the children to safety.

“What do you mean you can’t do it?” I say. “You
have
to do it, Susan. Bluefish
threatened
them. Now this gangster tried to kill Luis.”

“So
you
say,” Susan says. “But your word doesn’t count much.”

“I would never lie about our children. How can you even think that?”

“Where am I going to send the children, Austin? Disney World? Both my parents are sick. It’s too late to book a sitter for the weekend. And I was counting on you picking them up tomorrow. I’ve got plans. You can’t decide to back out at the last minute.”

“
That’s
what you think? That my story is bullshit, that I’m making this up just to get out of taking them for the weekend?”

“It occurred to me.”

I take a breath. And another.

“Austin?”

“You going to be home for a while?” I say.

“I’m picking up the kids at school in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll try to have someone else call you.”

“Yeah? Who, your secretary?”

“How about Detective Jim Mallory?”

Don’t know
exactly
what my BPD connections earned Susan in the way of clarification, but I heard later
some
body convinced her to swallow my idea. Mallory or a patrolman on Mallory’s orders must have explained why I couldn’t know where the kids were headed, either. Otherwise I’m sure Susan would have called to tell me of her change of mind.

Sure she would.

NINETEEN

In
Vic’s old office the next day, I touch a sterling picture frame with strange reverence. Not sure why I left hanging this mid-ocean action photo of Mr. Vic’s forty-four-foot motor yacht, the “Triple-A.” I do not need visual reminders of my mortality, how close to death by drowning I came last year. But maybe I relish how much private boats like this cost, how much money Mr. Vic made all those years as sole owner of Shore Securities. See, with room and board, figure I’ll need half-a-million for Beth’s and Ryan’s college educations, and it important to keep my hope alive, especially in the midst of Shore’s latest tornado. Maybe the photo of Vic’s yacht helps.

Except for the
boat shot, the rest of the boss’s office crap has pretty much disappeared, casualties of an unbending policy: The Austin Carr Touch. Amplified I’m sure by the key to Mr. Vic’s well-stocked, well-heeled and normally well-locked mahogany liquor cabinet. My motto after two weeks of many forty-year-old double-bourbons: Make yourself at home.

A fold-up card table with a nifty Swedish coffee drip machine, straw baskets of sweeteners, nondairy creamer, spoons, paper cups and napkins replaces Mr.
Vic’s antique glass-front lawyer’s bookcase. A longer, rectangular fold-up table bumps Vic’s ten-ton cluttered desk. Three black trash bags full of photos and other knickknacks—Vic can’t remember what his family looks like?—gives me enough room for a cushy swivel chair, four eighteen-inch computer monitors, three state-of-the-art laptops and a laser printer that could publish the paper version of
The Washington Post
. Plus, I can slide along the whole table, do four internet dating interviews at the same time.

The paneled wall’s invisible closet holds half my suits, half my dress shirts, drawers of socks and underwear and a rack of suitably
conservative neckties. All this so I can dress here or at home, depending on mood, circumstance and the number of elapsed hours since my latest adventure inside a burning restaurant.

If this means an occasional wee-
bit pile of dirty, smoky laundry, it’s exactly the kind of necessary office evil Austin Carr can live with. Function, not form, is another one of my mottoes, bourbon or no.

The intercom buzzes. Nasty noise, that. Another Mr.
Vic leftover I could do without.

I touch the black button. “Carmela, after you call the hospital about Luis, call the electrician for me, will you? I want this intercom
—”

“Your appointment is here,” Carmela says.

“It’s four-thirty already?”

My new partner sighs. The sound is breathy and sexy. “It
’s five-forty-five. You told me to set it up after work, right?”

I sign off my
Gmail account. This new dating site offers no one worth chasing. Hope I didn’t click myself into the annual membership.

“This interview is that big hitter from Jaffy Ritter Clark?” I say.

I do remember typing in my credit card number.
Mandatory info, they said.

“Yup.”

“Frank something?”

“Franny Dahler,” Carmela says. “This
big hitter’s a female. She did one point eight million in gross commissions last year.”

“Oh, my.”

“Right. Should I send her in?”

Talking all day, working her
dad’s accounts and helping field my calls, Carmela’s voice grows huskier each day. Sends a low lovely tingle deep in my waist. Jesus, I’m so horny even the boss’s daughter is starting to arouse me.

“By all means,” I say. “Send in Ms. Dahler.”

“Hire her,” Carmela says.

Mr.
Vic’s daughter has been hurling little tips on running the business my entire two weeks as chief. Even before I ransacked Mr. Vic’s office. I think the hairy-but-busty new college graduate is heady with power, although it can’t hurt to listen. She already came up with one idea that clicked like the trunk of a new Mercedes: Firing Mr. Vic’s crabby, overpaid secretary was a dash of genius.

What do
we
care if the woman is Vic’s sister?

I stand to greet
the big hitter, my appointment, Franny Dahler. She’s been calling since Monday, one week after Walter left us for her current employer, Jaffy Ritter Clark. According to Carmela, Ms. Dahler wants to talk about switching firms.

I
bet Jaffy Ritter gave her big office to Walter.

My door cracks open.
I’m curious and hopeful. See, the loss of Walter’s production hurts Shore badly. And not just in profits for the owners—like me. Shore Securities needs a certain flow of business to justify four back-office people, three secretaries, and two traders, not to mention minimum clearing fees with a New York bank and fifty other expenses included in the cost of selling stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Peoples’ jobs depend on me lining up a new hitter to pick up Walter’s slack.

The door swings
wide open. Oh. My. God.

“You’re
Austin Carr?” Ms. Strawberry says.