Bingo Barge Murder (8 page)

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Hi,” I said, not sure what to say to a kidnapper. “I, ah, we’re calling about Eddy.”

“’Bout goddamn time. We want that video and the truckload of nuts if you want the biddy back.” Eddy yelled and cursed in the background. The sound of a hand being held over the receiver echoed in my ear, and I heard a muffled, “I can’t hear, Boss,” and then the man was back. At least Eddy was still kicking.

“We don’t have any truck or the nuts.”

“What ya mean you don’t have the nuts?” The hand on the receiver returned, and the voice, again muffled but understandable said, “Vincent, she says they don’t have the nuts.” There was more indecipherable murmuring in the background and a deep sigh came through the receiver. “We get the tape and the fucking nuts, and you get the pain-in-the-ass old broad.”

“I told you, we don’t have any nuts.”

The man again spoke to Vincent. Faintly I heard Vincent say, “For Christ’s sake, Pudge, gimme the fuckin’ phone.”

A couple of seconds went by and a new voice came on the other end. Vincent. I recognized his voice from the barge. “I don’t know who the hell you are and I don’t care. But you were on that blasted bingo pit last night. We saw you hot-wheel out of there in that old junker—and we followed you. You have a videotape we need, and if you have the tape, you must know something about the nuts.”

“But we don’t—”

“I know you ain’t the cops, or you wouldn’t have been creeping around that floating piece of crap. Kinky knew where that truck was, but he’s dead and can’t tell me where my fuckin’ nuts are. You, however, are not dead … yet. So, see, you’re gonna deliver ’em to us.”

“But—”

“But nothin’ lady. I need those nuts. And Pudge needs that tape. And the more I listen to that old lady bitch, the crankier I get. I want the nuts and the videotape or we’ll take the broad apart piece by piece. After we stick some duct tape on her mouth, of course.”

“But how—I don’t—” Stall them Shay, come on! In a breath I said, “I need more time.”

“Jesus. You got till tomorrow. Call this number at one o’clock. Not a moment later. I’ll tell you where to meet us with the goods. Understand?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Listen, lady, don’t screw with me. Get me my nuts and that damn tape.” Vincent hung up.

Silence filled the kitchen. Coop stared at me expectantly, and when I didn’t say anything, he waved a big hand in front of my face. “Earth to Shay, what’d they say?”

I mechanically pushed the off button on the keypad before the ungodly “if you would like to make a call” chant began, and set it gently on the tabletop. I gave him the rundown. Coop slumped in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. “How are we supposed to come up with these stupid nuts?”

“Beats me. Why do they think we have the nuts? Nuts … peanuts?” I said.

“Almonds?”

“How about cocktail nuts?”

“Or mixed nuts?”

“Walnuts?”

“Cashews. They’re my favorite.”

I smiled for a moment in spite of it all. “They know we were sneaking around the barge. And we have the tape they want. I suppose they figure we’re part of whatever Kinky was involved in.”

“Maybe we should tell Detective Bordeaux.”

“Are you crazy? You know what they said they’d do to Eddy. No way. We can’t take that chance, Coop.” I sent him a sideways look. “Since when do
you
want help from the law?”

Coop shook his head. Silence reigned as we attempted to wrap our brains around the latest turn of events. Coop finally took a deep breath. “You know, Rocky is always around the barge, in the back, being sent off by Kinky on this errand or that job.”

“So?”

“He’s got, like, a photographic memory. He can see someone or hear a name, and months later he can pull it out of that mind of his as if he heard it yesterday. Maybe he heard Kinky talking about the nuts. I’ll come with you this time. I didn’t kill Kinky, and we have the proof.”

We rolled into Rocky’s
neighborhood a little after eleven o’clock in the morning. We knew Rocky didn’t get out during the day much, but we couldn’t really postpone looking for him. I drove, wondering what would happen to Rocky now that there would be no more errands to run for Kinky. Coop kept lookout for Rocky’s green down coat. I hoped we were far off of Detective Bordeaux’s radar. I’d promised the detective I’d let her know if I saw our fugitive, and it wouldn’t look good trying to explain what he was doing in my truck.

After crisscrossing the streets, searching likely corners, and striking out everywhere, we gave up. I parked in front of Rocky’s boardinghouse, and we headed for the entryway. The building itself was an ancient, two-story house. The faded wood siding was in dire need of a new coat of paint, and the porch steps sagged dangerously underfoot.

The foyer held a bank of six silver mailboxes, and a set of warped stairs led to the second floor.

Coop scoped out the boxes. “He’s upstairs, 2C.”

“Cross your fingers he’s home.”

The upper floor was as worn out as the ground level. The walls were dingy white, and the carpet beneath our feet was threadbare. The air was heavy with the smell of fried hamburger and onions. We found 2C, and Coop rapped on the door. No response. He knocked again, and this time we heard a voice from within yell, “No one home.”

“Rocky, it’s me, Shay, and Coop’s with me. Can we talk to you?”

Silence. Then he yelled again, louder, “No one home!”

“Rocky,” I leaned my forehead against his door. “We’d like to ask you a couple things.” Nothing.

I raised my eyebrows at Coop and mouthed, “What now?”

Coop grinned wickedly. “Hey buddy, it’s Coop. How about some Popeye’s?”

Another long silence. Coop was about to knock again when the door swung open. Rocky stood before us, his green jacket drowning him, his aviator hat pulled low over his eyes. “I am ready for Popeye’s, Nick Coop and Shay O’Hanlon.”

_____

We sat down with our food as the lunch rush hit, and I ate my first real meal in two days. Rocky still had a pile of food on his plate long after Coop and I had depleted ours.

Coop sighed the sigh of a man with a happy belly and said, “Shay and I have a couple things we’d like to ask you, Rocky.”

His bushy eyebrows wiggled. “What kind of questions do you want to ask me, Nick Coop?”

“You remember what happened to Mr. Stanley, right?”

Rocky’s eyes got big, and the whites of his eyes gleamed. He nodded solemnly. “Yes, Nick Coop. I remember what happened to Mr. Stanley.”

Coop looked at me again, calmer, and then returned his gaze to the rotund man. “We’re trying to figure out who would want to hurt Mr. Stanley.”

Rocky stared benignly at Coop with those wide eyes.

My turn. “Did you hear Mr. Stanley talking to anyone about some kind of, um, nuts?”

One eyelid drooped slightly as Rocky’s eyes shifted to meet mine. I was trying to think of something else to ask that might actually elicit a response when he said, “Mr. Stanley was on the phone all the time.”

We waited for him to say more, but nothing was forthcoming.

Coop asked, “Did you hear Mr. Stanley on the phone talking about a shipment of nuts?”

I sucked air through my straw as we waited for Rocky to chew twenty-six times. He really did, and I know because I counted. He swallowed and said, “Mr. Stanley told me to never repeat what I heard when he was on the phone talking about the nuts.”

Whoa. He had heard of the nuts. Begin Project Information Extraction. Coop leaned forward. “What did you hear Mr. Stanley say about the nuts?”

Rocky said very quietly, “Mr. Stanley told me to never say anything about the nuts to anyone or he’d knock my block off.”

“Hey,” I said softly, “Mr. Stanley can’t hurt you now. Coop’s in trouble, and so is another friend of ours. We need to find out about these nuts so we can help both of them. Can you help us help them?”

The muscles in Rocky’s cheeks bulged in and out as he rhythmically clenched his teeth. Then he rubbed his right eye and said, “I don’t want anything bad to happen to Nick Coop or your friend.”

Lord, this was an exercise in patience. What I really wanted to do was grab the puffy lapels of Rocky’s jacket and shake some answers out of him. “You might be able to help both of them if you tell us what you heard about the nuts.”

“Okay, Shay O’Hanlon. I will try. But I was not listening on purpose.”

“That’s okay. Sometimes we just hear things. We want to make sure that the people who are innocent don’t get in trouble, too.”

Coop added, “It’s really okay to tell us what you heard. Did you hear Mr. Stanley on the phone talking about the nuts more than once?”

“I heard Mr. Stanley talk to someone exactly three times about the nuts, Nick Coop.”

“What did you hear when Mr. Stanley talked about the nuts?” I asked.

Rocky scrunched his eyes. Crow’s feet fanned out, reminding us that although Rocky sounded like a child, he wasn’t. “Mr. Stanley said, ‘Hello. Yeah, I know I owe you one. No, I’ll make good on my word. What do you want? When’s the truck rolling in? No, no—I—What’s it carrying? Nuts? What do you mean nuts? Almonds? What is that? Oh. No. How long? Okay. Bye’.”

It took me a minute to realize Rocky was repeating verbatim what he’d heard Kinky say on the phone. The effect was unsettling.

“Was that the end of the conversation?” Coop asked.

“Yes, Nick Coop.”

I figured that if he could pull a date out of that priceless brain of his, we’d be able to put together a timeline. “Do you remember when this conversation took place?”

“It was eleven days, three hours,” Rocky tugged the sleeve of his jacket up and peered at a large watch attached to his wrist, “and fourteen minutes ago, Shay O’Hanlon.”

Holy shit.

Coop’s vocal abilities returned before mine did. “Do you know who was sending the almonds to Mr. Stanley?”

“Mr. Stanley said one name exactly five times when he talked about the truckload of nuts. Then he also talked about the truckload of ‘stupid nuts’ to a bingo lady.”

Thank God Kinky overlooked Rocky. I suspected that Kinky often forgot that Rocky was more than a vehicle for errands and menial tasks. Mr. Word-For-Word had a comfortable position: under the radar but well within listening range.

“What names did you hear?” Coop gently asked.

“Mr. Vincent Ragozzi.”

The elusive and threatening Vincent now had a last name.

“And Ms. Rita.”

That revelation was a bombshell. Coop raised his eyebrows at me. “Do you know what Ki—Mr. Stanley was going to do with the nuts?”

I smiled weakly at Coop’s near slip.

“You should always keep your tires inflated to the exact manufacturer recommendations printed on the tires of your vehicle.”

I put a hand to my forehead and slid it over my face, concealing the smile I was unable to squelch. Rocky had done a good job of managing to stay with us. Now we were losing him to his mind’s inner machinations.

Coop said with a grin, “I’ll remember that. Did you hear where Mr. Stanley was going to store the nuts?”

Rocky nodded dramatically. “He was going to put them in Ms. Rita’s storage warehouse, Nick Coop.”

Coop said, “Do you know where this storage place is?”

Rocky’s eyes shifted to the ceiling as he thought about it. “It is Lazar and Company Dry Storage, 1047 Washington Avenue Northeast, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55550.”

I pulled a pen from my pocket and scrambled for something to write on. Rocky repeated the name and address for me and I scrawled it on an unused napkin. We sat quietly for a minute, processing the information our pal had coughed up. Then we asked Rocky about the other two conversations, but there wasn’t anything critical in either one. However, before we brought him home, I wanted to run one more name by him.

“Rocky,” I said, reaching across the table and giving his hand a squeeze to bring his attention to me. “You’ve done a great job. Now I have one more question.”

He silently gazed at me, his golden eyes gleaming.

“When we talked last time, and you told me the names of the people who’d been angry when they’d spoken to Mr. Stanley. One of the names was Buzz Riley.”

“I remember, Shay O’Hanlon.”

“Why was Buzz Riley mad at Mr. Stanley?”

“I don’t know. But he’s a very mean man. He scares me.”

Coop said, “I know he’s scary. But he’s not going to hurt you, okay?” He patted Rocky on the shoulder. “How do you know that Buzz was mad at Mr. Stanley?”

“Because Buzz Riley told Mr. Stanley, ‘If you don’t fork over the dough, I’m going to pop your eyeballs out and have them for supper.’”

We cleared the table, and Rocky suckered us into buying him two more orders of rice and beans, an order of fried chicken, a chocolate-strawberry shake, and large fries—all to go.

The return trip was a quiet one. Rocky hopped out, loot in hand, in front of his boardinghouse. He said, “I hope I helped you, Nick Coop, and your friend, too. Thank you for the most excellent food, Shay O’Hanlon.” He took a couple of steps and then turned around to face us. “You should keep your house at a comfortable sixty-eight degrees for optimal energy usage and monetary savings.”

_____

I ran into the Hole shortly past two to grab a couple cups of emergency caffeine. I steamed milk and pulled two double shots of espresso. Kate eyed me as she put the finishing touches on a customer’s order, concern shadowing her face. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No, just keep making the good detective her drink if she comes by again.”

“Does this have something to do with Eddy?” Kate was quiet when she wasn’t on the trail of some hot babe, but she was observant, and she watched the Rabbit Hole like a hawk. On any normal day, by this time, Eddy would have made at least one visit to the Hole to check out the latest happenings. Coupled with my panicked searching for her earlier and the rather tense visit with JT, it didn’t take a nuclear physicist to fill in the blanks.

I didn’t dare tell Kate the entire story. She couldn’t do anything to help, and although I trusted her implicitly, her love of gossip scared me. She might slip up and say something to someone. Someone like Detective Bordeaux. After quick deliberation I said, “Kate, something
is
going on. But I can’t talk about it yet.” With much more confidence than I felt, I added, “But everything’s going to be okay.”

She squinted at me for a moment longer, and then placed the mugs of coffee she’d been doctoring up on a tray and set off to deliver them.

I sighed deeply, finished the drink prep, nabbed a half-full box of glazed donuts from the kitchen, and hustled everything out to the loft. Coop sent down a bucket on a rope for the cups and donuts, and the ladder for me.

We settled down with the goods.

I said, “We know now that the nuts Vincent wants back are almonds. I didn’t realize that almonds were a high-ticket item, did you?”

“Nope,” Coop said as he chomped on another bite. “What can be so important about a bunch of almonds? Let’s Google them. Go get your laptop.”

I climbed down and ran over to the house to retrieve my laptop, happy that we’d installed high-speed wireless Internet in the Rabbit Hole a few months back. I hoped we were close enough to pull in the signal.

Sure enough, I fired up the laptop and jumped right onto Google. Coop hovered over my shoulder as I typed
almonds
in the search field. Almost instantly, the top ten of over six million hits appeared. I scrolled though the first page and realized we needed to narrow the field. I added the word
crime
to
almonds
, and that cut the amount of hits to half a million. The first read, Almonds: The New Gold. I clicked on the link.

Almond and walnut growers in California are literally going nuts. A highly sophisticated band of nut-nappers have been coordinating break-ins at nut orchards statewide. Truckloads of nuts, each worth over half a million dollars, have been stolen. Rumors circulating indicate the thefts may have coastal Mafia connections. Sales of California nuts last year brought in a whopping $44 million. Sales are rising, making the nuts a hot commodity in more ways than one. Recent speculation holds the nuts are being shipped to markets overseas.