Big Money (Austin Carr Mystery) (8 page)

TWENTY

Ms. Strawberry saying, “I was insulted you walked out of The Martha’s bar the other night.”

I give Cutie Pie the full-boat Carr grin.
Is this reddish-blond-haired stockbroker pulling all three of my legs? “I had urgent business.”

Ms. Strawberry
crosses her legs, showing me enough thigh to arouse Ben Franklin. “Really?” she says. “I was hoping you were looking at
me
with some urgency.”

I clear my throat
, speechless. Wonder if producing boners is how she grossed nearly two million bucks last year? She certainly has all the qualifications for male leadership. Put Ms. Strawberry in a corporate boardroom, they’d elect her chairman and chief executive, all kinds of body parts going up during the vote.

“
Maybe your decision to leave was blurred by too much drink,” she says.

I roll my chair up close to the desk. Don’t think Ms. Dahler’s quite ready for a complete frontal view of my lap just yet. My appreciation for her thin summer dress is quite formidable.

“Perhaps I was over-served,” I say. “But I left because I had to, not because I wanted to. There was a lot on my mind.”

“You mean Shore’s AASD troubles?” She grins, a startling display of pure white, perfectly capped teeth.
She and Tony could have gone to the same dentist. Another movie-star-quality ranking for Ms. Strawberry’s long list of attractive physical endowments.

Wait
. How did she know about the AASD investigation? Was Ms. Strawberry close enough that night to hear me talking to myself?

No. I know.
“Did my ex-friend Walter mention the AASD investigation around Jaffy Ritter?”

Franny nods, bouncing her chin-length, wavy
red hair. “More like he gave lectures on the subject. Not just me either. He’s been speaking before luncheon crowds this week.”

Sounds like Walter. The bastard. I thought we were pals, so I kept his departure secret two days. Meanwhile, he used that weekend to work on Shore’s client list, including two of
my
biggest clients. When I lived in California, Walter’s betrayal might have caused me to talk about my hurt feelings. But I live in Jersey now. No complaining. I have to accept the fact Walter made me his bitch.

And then get even.

“So why would you want to move your book and business to Shore?” I say. “There could be bad publicity about the investigation, plus you know Shore can’t afford the kind of bonus a big wire firm could pay you. Right now, Shore can’t afford to pay
any
kind of bonus.”

Let’s see how she handles obstacles.

Franny’s gaze searches mine, then holds me tight. Her chin is set, too. Like the keystone of an arch. “I don’t want a big bonus,” she says. “I want a bigger percentage of commissions and trailers.”

Okay, this f
igures. Franny Dahler, alias Ms. Strawberry, the Queen of Branchtown brokers, is pistol smart and quick on her feet. She knows instinctively that Shore Securities might flounder without Walter. She thinks I might be desperate in Vic’s absence. In the vernacular, the lady is trying to seize me by the short hair.

Ms.
Strawberry saying, “And I’m willing to stick around long enough to make the deal pay off for both of us.”

I glance at my empty bourbon glass. I like this
brass-blond lady, and I mean over and above my not-so-secret lust. I know she can sell bonds. One point eight million of them.
I’d
never say no to her. All of which means I am probably going to let her squeeze me on percentages. My only hesitation, I sense Ms. Strawberry is not telling me everything about her desire to change firms. It’s more than money. Swear to God, I’ll bet Walter got her corner glass office overlooking the Navasquan River.

But white lies and hunches can’t matter in Shore’s current situation.
Walter’s lack of production is already worrying the back office. Once I start letting one or two of those people go, I’ll lose salesmen. Could become an ugly cycle. Mr. Vic will return next fall to find me and Carmela—just the two of us—working from a camper.

“How about forty-five
percent for five years?” I say.

“How about sixty for three?”

It’s strictly business me wanting to hire her. I’m paying absolutely no attention to whatever is quietly lifting my desk—the card table with three computers and four monitors on it. Hope she doesn’t re-cross her legs again.

“
Forty is what I pay my best producers, but for you I’d go fifty for six years.”

She shakes her head. “You need a big producer, right now. Sixty for one year, then fifty for another three.”

“My best offer is fifty-five percent for six months, then fifty for two more years, forty-five for another two—you sign a five-year contract.”

Her gaze roams my face.
“Commissions
and
mutual fund trailers?”

“Everything.”

“Done,” she says.

In
my enthusiasm to shake hands on the deal, I stand up from behind the big desk, forgetting my groin area will now be fully exposed. Her eyes throw me a slow once over, and Ms. Franny Dahler, Ms. Strawberry, leaves my private office grinning like a circus clown.

I’m not embarrassed. I think it’s good to tell women how you feel, and showing is always better than telling. I hope Ms. Strawberry
can start next week. She’ll be earning at a better commission rate than me or Carmela.

I have more crap paperwork to sign than a U.S. Army supply sergeant. It’s eight o’clock before I close up Shore Securities for the weekend and begin to dream of Luis’s place, Umberto’s green-chili burritos.

A motion sensor illuminates the back parking lot as I walk to my Camry, but the neighboring businesses are closed, and a huge ring of darkness encircles me. Like a spotlighted performer, my skin tingles with the sensation of being watched.

Maximilian Zakowsky

Max squeezes into the shotgun seat of Jerry’s rumbling new silver Corvette. Max’s knees stretch the dashboard. His right shoulder bends the door glass. He feels like stick of gum in a shiny metal wrapper.

Max contorts his upper body to reach the window button, uses his hand to tug on his left leg, squashing his nuts to make room for Jerry to work the Corvette’s floor-mounted gear shift.

“Let’s steal a car quick,” Max says. “A big one.”

Jerry guns the loud V-8 engine, racing the car’s four
hundred horse powers like a NASCAR driver. Or a kid with a new toy. Max has known Jerry four years now and each one is the same. Fast cars and faster women. Only thing new is fancier suits and the big diamond earring Jerry wears since he started playing golf with those ex-pro football players.

“You see something with New York plates, holler,” Jerry says. “Otherwise, I know a good spot on the other side of the tunnel.”

Max points with his left hand, his index finger touching the Corvette’s windshield. “Pull into the bus lot one mile ahead, right by entrance to Parkway. Many New York cars park there. People take bus to Atlantic City casinos.”

“Yeah? All right, let’s try it. Look for a Lincoln Town Car or a Caddy, some snazzy wheels. The chef at
this place cooks for gourmets at the James Beard House.”

Max grunts.

“What’s the matter?” Jerry says. Jerry points the Corvette’s shiny silver nose toward the Garden State Parkway. The road rushes past like a black river of individual rocks, the sports car so close to the ground. Cold wind stings Max’s face.

“Come on, Max. I know you. What’s the matter?”

“We should hide, wait for this mark in his bedroom,” Max says.

“The boss’s way is better.”

“No mistakes when I catch the mark by surprise,” Max says.

Jerry glances at him. “What the hell are you worried about? Not that bartender’s lucky kick?”

Max breathes deeply. “Bartender was quick like a cat. Only a little lucky.”

“Nothing like that
ever happened before. A freaking fluke is what that was.”

Maybe Jerry is right. “Is true.
Max only get knocked down twice in whole life.”

Jerry brakes at a red light, hits the right turn signal.
Click-click. Click-click.
The bus parking lot is just across the street. Max will be much happier in a bigger car. So will Max’s nuts.

“I bet the other time
you got laid out was from an elephant,” Jerry says.

Max says nothing. Elephants usually nice. It was a big cat that brought Max to his knees many years earlier. A mean
, smelly lion named Victor.

TWENTY-ONE

At the two-gas-station corner of Broad Street and Willow, a black or midnight-blue new Lincoln Town Car matches my turn. When I straighten out and accelerate, the Lincoln’s wide headlights perfectly mimic my Camry’s modest speed, holding exactly half-a-block back. Like I was towing the puppy.

We’re traveling north on Highway 35, but I’m guessing my Friday evening just turned south.

Figures I’m being followed. In two weeks’ time, Austin Carr has seen two lifetimes worth of threatened financial ruin, fights, beatings, fires, assaults and murder. Not to mention interrogations, accusations and obfuscations. I’ve been betrayed, befuddled and bewildered. Of
course
I’m being followed.

I slide the Toyota over a lane and lock the doors. For the umpteenth time since Mr.
Vic sailed for Tuscany and Walter sold my friendship for half a million dollars, I ask myself how violence and disaster so easily entered my life? Potential injury or death, a nonexistent love life and looming bankruptcy stalk my good humor like a trio of vultures.

Just before the next intersection, I flip the wheel hard left, ducking in front of oncoming traffic and bouncing the Camry into a Burger King. A triple
beef, triple cheese sounds awful, but I need a place to hide.

All four of the Camry’s wheels go into a slide, but I swerve and pump the gas pedal just in time, carefully avoiding the eight-foot plastic King who serves as menu to the drive-thru line.

In my mirror, I see the Lincoln cruise past the second and final Burger King entrance. I can’t see the driver thanks to the Lincoln’s tinted windows.

I skulk
in BK’s back lot five or six minutes. No sign of the Lincoln. I could have ordered a Coke and that triple-triple while I sailed past the King. Maybe a shake and an order of fries.

Two parked cars leave, and I spot an alley
I hadn’t noticed before. Should I run for it? Seems like the natural thing to do, at least for me. I did the peyote thing with a Native American friend once, as a kid, and discovered through dream and hallucination that my animal spirit guide is a horse. Nervous, with extra-long legs for a get-out-fast giddy-up.

I yank
on the Camry’s wheel and pull off a nasty, rubber-burning K-turn in front of an angry mom and two wide-eyed kids in a mini-van, then sail through the newly discovered back exit, turn left down an alley, doubling back toward Branchtown. Austin Carr
is
The Transporter.

Must be garbage day tomorrow. Overflowing tin and plastic trash cans litter the dark al
ley on both sides. Instead of a stallion, I feel like a bowling ball curling down a waxed lane. The Camry racks up a few cans—two spares and a strike.

I’m twenty-five feet from the next side street when a black shadow
zips from a driveway and fills the alley, a low curtain sliding right to left. My heart thuds as I slam the brakes too late, skidding to a hard tap against the rear fender of the dark Lincoln Town Car—the one that’s been following me. As we collide, I’m thinking, where did he come from, when my Camry’s steering wheel explodes. The built-in air bag punches my face. My own hands —they were positioned low, thank God—strike harder against my chest. My body reels in shock and pain.

About the time I realize exactly what’s happened, that I’m still alive, I hear my car door open. Someone helps yank the
giant pillow out of my mouth, nose and eyes. It’s Tony Farascio, wearing his usual golf magazine apparel, a full-boat grin on his George Clooney-like face.

His sausage of a thumb points toward the L
incoln as a window slides down. “Say hi to Gina.”

TWENTY-TWO

I am slowly adapting to my new environment. Ford Motor Company black leather, with buffed silver and polished walnut trim, hosted by the unofficial prince and princess of a Brooklyn mafia crew. Last time I saw Gina she wanted to shoot her husband with some kind of bazooka-size handgun. Now the two of them are almost kissy-kissy, Tony’s knockout wife looking extra sexy in a silky black dress.

“Hungry?” Gina says to me.

“I’ll let you know when my stomach grows back.”

“Did we scare you?” she says.

My heart rate is still elevated, but at least my nose stopped bleeding and I can move my wrists again. Every breath pains certain ribs. “Nope. I love being chased.”

Tony laughs. Not Gina. She hasn’t
smiled at me since I climbed into the back seat, the two of them in front. The air tastes of leather and perfume, or maybe it’s Tony’s after-shave. On the radio, Frank Sinatra sings “Summer Wind.”

“We were having a little
fun,” Tony says to me. “Don’t worry about your car. I’ll take care of the towing...everything.”

The first question that comes t
o my mind isn’t about my car. “It’s nice to finally see you again, Tony. So what happened at the hotel?”

“
We’re headed for The City,” he says. “You got forty-five minutes to work up an appetite.”

Is he going to ignore my question?

“Maybe longer if the tunnel’s choked up,” he says. “You’re eating at the best Italian restaurant in Little Italy.”

Oh, boy
. “Instead of dinner, how about discussing you disappearing with Bluefish’s hundred grand?” I say. “Maybe a sentence or two about Talbot turning up dead? Tony? What the hell happened?”

The Farascios exchange a long look
.

“Wait until
you taste the baked mac,” Gina says.

Hanging twine-covered wine bottles camouflage three short walls of the narrow, one
room restaurant. A single glass window faces Mulberry Street. Fourteen white linen tables fill the boxcar sized space. The Farascios and I take up two, Tony needing a table all by himself.

Green
, bell pepper-shaped wall lamps provide the only light. Sinatra is singing in here, too, some sappy 1950s love song I don’t even
want
to remember the name of. Truth is I’m a bit dizzy. Can’t shake this time-warp feeling about my current whereabouts and the Farascio’s company. It’s either a Sinatra overload or maybe it’s because Tony just told me to “forget about it” concerning Bluefish’s threats and money.

“Bluefis
h will back off me and Luis because you tell him to?” I say.

“Ab-so-fucking-lutely,” Tony says. “And he’ll eat the one
hundred gees I took from him, too. The war is over. Trust me, this has already been explained to Bluefish.”

I’m far from expert on mob organizational matters, but I suppose it’s logical that a New York mafia family would hold sway over a bookie from Branchtown, New Jersey. Maybe Tony
can
have Bluefish and the Creeper called off. Mr. Vic certainly gave me Tony’s number for a reason.

“But what about Talbot?
” I say. “Did you go to her room? Did you see her?”

“Sure,” Tony says. “She’s an old friend. I gave her
a taste of Bluefish’s cash, explained about me and Vic, and now everything’s cool. No more co-mingling. She was okay when I left her.”

Gina’s
open hand launches for her husband’s face like a tiger. But Tony’s quicker. He catches her wrist six inches from contact.

“
I bet you gave her a taste,” Gina says. “Asshole.”

Tony’s fingers turn white around Gina’s wrist. She winces from the pain.

So glad I came to d
inner with the Farascios.