Duke City Split (10 page)

What was Johnny doing, talking to the guard from that bank? What the hell?

The purple car left, but Mick stayed where he was, watching Johnny. The kid appeared stunned by the encounter, and his shoulders slumped as he trudged back into the stereo store. Didn’t look as if he’d called the meeting, which meant the guard had somehow found Johnny on his own.

How was that possible? Had he somehow recognized Johnny at the bank, even though he wore a mask? Were the cops onto Johnny, too? Was the guard part of a sting?

Mick thought about that a minute. If the cops thought Johnny was involved, they wouldn’t send some bank guard to talk to him about it. They’d send in a fucking SWAT team.

Which meant the guard hadn’t told the cops about locating Johnny. Which meant the guard must be after the loot.

That made sense.

Had the guard been involved from the start? Maybe he was the one who tipped Johnny to the armored car deliveries. Maybe Johnny’s story about following the trucks for three weeks had been horseshit.

Either way, the guard wanted money now. Mick was sure of it. From the look on Johnny’s face, the guard must’ve threatened to turn him in. It was the only thing he could hold over the kid’s head. And Johnny had one thing to hold over him and Bud: He’d seen their faces.

Mick leaned across the car and took a cell phone out of the glove compartment. It was a prepaid phone, a throwaway, charged and ready for emergencies. This certainly qualified.

He dialed Bud’s number and listened to it ring a couple of times. When Bud
answered, Mick said, “We’ve got a problem.”

Pam Willis and Hector Aragon were back at their side-by-side desks on Tuesday afternoon when they caught a break. An agent in the Bureau’s office in Phoenix saw the bulletin about the Albuquerque robbery, and a detail jumped out at him.

“It’s the cosmetics,” Pam, who caught the phone call, told Hector. “They’ve had a couple of robberies over there where the perps were believed to be wearing makeup.”

“Recently?”

“One was last year. The other, two years before that. But the agent, name of Rafael Castaneda, put them together with robberies in other states, too. He seemed a little pissed that these guys tried to pass as Hispanic.”

“I can relate,” Hector said.

“Anyway, he thinks the same two guys knocked over a credit union in San Diego and banks in Seattle and Portland. He’s sending me an email with the details.”

“Nobody arrested in any of those robberies?”

She shook her head, her dark eyes gleaming.

“Castaneda has collected photos from all of the robberies,” she said. “He’s sure it’s the same guys every time. He calls them the ‘Maybelline Bandits.’ ”

“Catchy.” Hector grinned. “A wonder we hadn’t heard of them before.”

“It’s nothing official. Castaneda’s playing a hunch. These could be different guys altogether.”

“Sounds good, though, doesn’t it?” Hector said. “Always two guys in these other robberies?”

“One tall and one short. Which makes our theory about the third guy add up.”

“A newbie,” Hector said. “An apprentice.”

“They knew going in they were going to get a big haul. That’s why they brought duffel bags to carry it away.”

“Yeah,” Hector said. “Which leads us back to an inside man. Somebody told them about those casino deliveries. The timing was too perfect.”

Pam nodded. “What about that guard? He seemed suspicious to me.”

“He’s got a good employment history. No record.”

“I got the feeling he was holding something back. Didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But you could say the same thing about the people at the casino. That guy Abeyta didn’t seem too upset that someone had walked away with all that money.”

“He knows the casino will get it back. But you’re right. He seemed off to me, too. And then there’s the armored car people. The driver, the guards, the dispatcher. Any one of them could’ve tipped the robbers.”

Hector took a deep breath and blew out a sigh.

“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” he said.

“Yeah, but I feel good about Castaneda’s hunch. Let’s look at the security video again and compare it to his photos.”

“Hate to share the glory with Castaneda or anyone else,” Hector said.

“Don’t look at it that way. Look at it like this: We catch the guys responsible for all these bank holdups, the glory’s even bigger.”

“
If
we catch them. They’ve gotten away every time so far.”

“Not this time,” Pam said. “This time, they get nailed.”

By the time Johnny Muller got off work at six, he was a nervous wreck. He’d had hours to consider the bank guard’s threat but had come up with no solution. He’d either hand over half his share (and he knew that wouldn’t be the end of it), or wind up under arrest. If he told his partners about the blackmail, they might simply eliminate the threat by eliminating him. He considered running home to Texas, but he couldn’t face his dad’s inevitable smugness. He was trapped.

All because the guard recognized his stupid tattoo. God, he wished he could take back the boozy night when he’d gotten that tat. He wished he could take back the bank robbery, too. Better to be poor and stuck at Big Blast Audio forever than to be dead or imprisoned.

Johnny looked around the parking lot before he went outside. No sign of the purple Cadillac. His battered Jeep was at the far end of the lot. Old man Herrera insisted employees park over there, saving the nearer slots for customers.

The wind had come up during the afternoon, fluffy clouds moving over the city, and the breeze snatched at Johnny’s shirt as he hurried across the parking lot.

Just before he reached the Jeep, a white Chevy Equinox bounced into the lot and stopped in front of him. Bud was behind the wheel, his window down halfway. He was dressed like a golfer, in sunglasses and a yellow cap. Mick was in the passenger seat, wearing shades and the usual denim.

“Get in,” Bud said.

Johnny hesitated. His feet wanted to run, but his brain said no. No way these guys could know about the bank guard’s threat. Not yet.

Mick leaned forward to see around the driver and growled, “Get in the fucking car.”

Johnny got into the backseat behind Bud, who wheeled the compact SUV around and was back in traffic within seconds.

Mick turned in the shotgun seat so he could look Johnny in the eye.

“I saw you,” he said. “Talking to that guard. What the hell’s going on?”

Johnny’s mouth opened and closed but no sound came out.

Bud changed lanes, swinging the car into a left turn lane, then stopping for a red light. He looked over his shoulder at Johnny, too.

“Well? What about it?”

“You guys were
watching
me?” Johnny finally managed to say. “All day?”

“Protecting ourselves,” Mick said. “Good thing, too. How long have you known that guard?”

“I don’t! I’d never seen him before!”

“Bullshit,” Mick said.

“He was a customer,” Johnny said. “There at the store. But I don’t remember him. We get so many people coming and—”

“How did he fucking find you?”

“Take it easy,” Johnny said. “It was my tattoo.”

He held out his arm to display the star-in-circle design on the inside of his wrist. “The guy said he recognized it during the robbery. I don’t know how. I had on long sleeves—”

“Shit,” Bud said. “You expect us to believe this guard got one look at your tattoo and that was enough for him to track you down?”

“That’s what he said.”

“The woman who was with him,” Mick said. “With the flowers on her shoulders. Did you know her, too?”

“She said he was her boyfriend. She lured me out to the parking lot, saying she wanted me to check his stereo.”

Bud steered the SUV through the turn, onto busy Montgomery Boulevard. He said, “Then what happened?”

“The guy was waiting in the car. He said he knew I was involved in the robbery. He had a gun in his belt.”

Mick cocked an eyebrow.

“He showed me the gun,” Johnny said, “so I wouldn’t get any ideas about taking him down or something.”

“What did he
want
?” Mick said.

“Half a million dollars. I give him the money, or he goes to the cops and identifies me.”

Mick snorted. “Right. He’ll keep coming back until he bleeds you dry.”

“I know!” Johnny said. “I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. But I don’t
know what to do about him.”

“We need to make him go away,” Bud said as he took another left, back toward the store. “Empty-handed.”

“You mean kill him?”

“If it comes to that,” Mick said. “If he’s flashing a gun, talking tough, we may have no choice.”

Johnny’s face felt hot. He knew his cheeks must be glowing red.

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know if I could—”

“Nobody’s asking you to do it,” Mick said. “I’ll do it myself. That’s one thing that’s got to be done right.”

“Hey, man,” Johnny said. “This is not my fault. I can’t help it if the guy remembered me.”

“But you didn’t recognize him? When he was on the floor there in the bank?”

“I barely looked at him as I went past. Bud had them covered. I was in a hurry to get to the vault.”

“Right.”

“That’s what I was supposed to do!”

“You were supposed to do it without being identified,” Mick snarled. “Now we’ve got to find this guy and make him dead. Do you even know his name?”

“He gave me a phone number,” Johnny said.

He dug the crumpled paper out of his shirt pocket and held it up for them to see.

“I’m supposed to call in the next twenty-four hours and tell him where to pick up his money. He wants his gun back, too. The one you took off him at the bank.”

“I’ll give him his fuckin’ gun,” Mick said. “Shove it up his ass and pull the trigger.”

Johnny gulped.

“Hang on to that number,” Bud said. “We’ll figure out some way to fix this guy. Then you’ll call him to set up a meet.”

“Sure. I can do that.”

They were back at the store now. Bud swung the car into the parking lot and stopped next to Johnny’s Jeep.

“Get out,” Mick said.

“Hey, guys,” Johnny said. “I’m sorry about this. Really.”

“Just get out of the car. We’ll be in touch.”

Soon as Johnny closed the door, the SUV zoomed away, leaving him standing in the lot, holding the phone number.

Bud’s car reeked of french fries as they approached Felix’s Real Mexican Food. He and Mick had opted for a drive-through dinner while they waited for darkness.

“We probably should wait until midnight,” Mick said as they neared their destination. “Less traffic. Less chance of being seen.”

“I know, but I need to get home,” Bud said. “And this could take a while.”

They’d decided to move the cash. It probably was okay where it was, but they didn’t know how well Johnny would hold up when the bank guard tried to force the issue. Better to err on the safe side.

The plan was to take the money across town to Mick’s storage unit, the one rented under the alias “Charles Franklin.”

Bud checked his mirrors, as he’d done several times in the last half hour. He’d driven big loops around the Northeast Heights, on busy boulevards and shadowy side streets, and had yet to see a suspicious vehicle behind them.

“Guess this is it,” he said as he slowed to turn into Felix’s Real Mexican Food.

Mick swiveled in the seat, looking all around. He was holding his big pistol in his lap.

“Think you’ll need that gun?”

“If anyone walks up on us, you’ll be glad I have it.”

Bud stopped behind the boarded-up restaurant, next to the service door, and killed the headlights.

“Flashlight’s in the glove compartment,” he said.

Mick opened the box and took the black Mini-Mag out of there.

“Keep the motor running,” he said. “I’ll check it out first.”

The interior light came on when Mick opened the door, and Bud reached up for it, found the switch and cut it off. In that moment of illumination, he noticed a small pink teddy bear wedged into the backseat, forgotten there by his daughter Angela. He wondered if Johnny had noticed it earlier.

Mick opened the padlock on the service door and slipped inside the restaurant, pistol in hand. Bud rolled down his window, listening, hoping not to hear a shot.

Half a minute went past, then the door opened and Mick stuck his head out.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re clear.”

Bud got out of the car and followed Mick into the restaurant and over to the stainless steel cooler.

“You want to do the honors?”

“Sure. Shine the light over here.”

Bud spun the dial on the padlock, lining up the numbers from memory. The lock snapped open, and he slipped it out and dropped it into his jacket pocket. He felt a little short of breath as he yanked on the handle and pulled the door open.

Mick pointed the flashlight inside, and there were the duffels, lined up on the floor, fat with money.

Bud grabbed the shoulder straps of two of the bags and dragged them out of the cooler. They were heavier than he expected, and he grunted as he lifted them, then teetered under the weight as he crossed the kitchen to the service door.

He paused, peeking out, then lugged the duffels around to the back of the SUV. He set the bags down while he opened the rear door. Mick arrived with the other bags, and they put all four into the cargo area.

“Should be okay,” Mick said. “As long as we don’t loiter under any streetlights.”

“We’re not loitering anywhere. We’re getting this done as quick as we can.”

Bud got behind the wheel, the engine still idling. Soon as Mick shut his door, Bud put the car into gear and drove around the building to the street. He was very careful to mind the speed limit as he took surface streets across town. While Bud focused on his driving, Mick talked about the money.

“The problem with cash is how to use it without it coming back on you,” he said. “You can’t put it in a bank, unless you want to deposit it in different banks for less than ten grand per account. You can’t spend it, for fear the serial numbers will lead the cops back to you. You launder it, and you end up giving away forty percent to some asshole.”