Elusive (On The Run Book #1) (18 page)

Sato laughed. “I bet not.”

“That’s it, except for room
service and a charge at an airport restaurant.” Mort tapped the thick file on
Connor Freeman. “Got in a few more things on Freeman last night, too.”

“More fraud?”

Mort nodded as he ate a bite of
his sandwich. “Utah this time. Had a con going up there involving seniors and
new siding. Went through neighborhoods posing as a city inspector and told
people they weren’t in compliance with a new city code. Threated a fine if they
didn’t get it fixed within a month. His partner came around a few days later,
set up repair jobs, took deposits, then skipped town with the money.”

Sato stood and used a thick marker
to add the scam to the list on the whiteboard at the side of the room as Mort
called out the dates and specifics. Their investigation had focused on Jack
Andrews in the beginning because it was the logical place to start, but as the
information began to roll in, they found that Connor Freeman had many more
brushes with the law. Sato capped the pen, then stood there tapping it against
the palm of his hand. “So what have we got?”

He stepped away from the
whiteboard. “Connor Freeman grew up in Vegas with his single mom, stayed there,
even after she moved on. Had a couple of breaking-and-entering charges on his
record. We’ve got several complaints against him in Vegas, a few in surrounding
states. And on the other side, Andrews looks like a boy scout. Not even a
parking ticket on his record.”

“Let’s stay on Freeman. All the
jobs were low profile cons,” Mort said.

“Nothing of this magnitude,” Sato
agreed, swirling the pen in the direction of the stacks of paper that had
accumulated on the conference room table, all related to their current case.

Mort leaned back in his chair.
“Local, short term, and not very imaginative. In other words, small time. How
did he go from small time cons to such an elaborate job?”

“And why the change in territory?
Why Dallas?” Sato asked. “Maybe he met someone who hooked him up?” Sato
speculated.

“With enough cash to fund GRS as a
start-up and set him up in here in the huge house?” Mort looked doubtful.

“Yeah, unlikely,” Sato agreed.
“Maybe Freeman had been planning this con all along? Saving up from the small
cons to fund his big one, the one that would be big enough to fund his
retirement,” Sato said, making quotes in the air when he said the word
retirement.

“You ever known a thrifty con
man?” Mort asked.

Sato shook his head. “Then what?
How did they get together?”

Mort selected a file from the
stack and flipped it open. “Their secretary states Jack Andrews had the idea
for a green tech recycling business that would outsource the recyclables from
large companies in an environmentally-conscious way. He went to Vegas for a
trade show, met Connor Freeman, who agreed to back the company as long as he
became a partner.”

Sato had returned to the table and
was eating his sandwich. He opened a bag of Sun Chips. “So maybe Jack Andrews was
the patsy?” Sato said the words slowly, trying out the idea.

“It’s feasible,” Mort said. “He
caught on to the scam and took Freeman out, then took the money?”

“Possible. Any word on the money
trail?”

“Nope. The tech guys are working
on tracking it—everything is electronic now—but they haven’t got anything yet,”
Mort said, waving off the bag of chips Sato had tilted toward him.

A woman opened the conference room
door and leaned in, “Mort, the Frisco Police have a man in custody who says he
knows something about the Freeman case.”

––––––––

––––––––

––––––––

SAMMY Dovitz had turned eighteen
four months ago and sat alone in the small room on the other side of the
two-way glass, hands clasped calmly despite the handcuffs on his wrists, but
his left heel jittered below the table. If Mort had seen him on the street, he
wouldn’t have pegged him as a thief. He was a clean-cut kid with short
blond-brown hair, big dark eyes, and slightly uneven teeth. A chain link
pattern was tattooed slightly above his collarbone and he wore a diamond stud
in one earlobe.

“Caught him leaving a house near
the Sweetbriar Mall with two laptops. He had jewelry, two hunting rifles, and
other electronics in his car.” The officer handed a file to Sato, who passed it
on to Mort. “Picked him up a few months ago, same situation, he got probation,
on account of his age—first offense—but I don’t think it’ll be so easy for him
this time, and it seems there’s a certain person in prison he’s anxious to
avoid. He’s hoping to cut a deal.”

“Let’s see what he has to say,”
Sato said and pushed through the door. The officer held the door open for Mort
to follow.

“Thanks, but I’m good here,” he
said, waving the officer off.

The door closed, and Mort skimmed
the file then turned up the audio, catching Sato in mid-sentence. “...that’s it.
I can’t promise you anything. I have to hear what you have to say.”

Sammy stared at Sato for a long
moment, and then seemed to come to a decision. “Okay, last week on Monday my
friend Rick calls me. He’s got someone who needs help with a job. Something
easy. ‘Cake,’ he says.” Mort watched the kid’s face change. His air of forced
unconcern broke and he laughed. “
Worst
job ever
is more like it.”

“So you took the job,” Sato
prompted.

Sammy’s shoulder moved up a few
millimeters. “I say sure, put me in touch, but this guy, he doesn’t want to
talk on the phone. I’m supposed to meet him at the Mobil station on Hickory by
the Denny’s at six in the morning on Tuesday.” He reached up to rub his neck,
but the handcuffs caught his hand and he stopped mid-motion. Sato didn’t
interrupt, which Mort thought was a good thing. “So I show up. There’s an old,
short guy waiting out by the air pump. He gives me an address, says there’s a
handgun in the attic crawlspace above the upstairs master bath. Get it and
bring it to him at the next address he’ll give me.”

“Where was the first address?”

“Vinewood. Two story on Red Fern
Way. I can show you,” he said.

“Later,” Sato said, motioning for
him to continue. Mort could see Sammy’s whole leg bouncing, tremors from the
movement running all the way up the kid’s collar. “So I did it. There was a—”
he checked his language with a quick glance at Sato, “a woman home. No one told
me there’d be someone home. She must have been one of those home office people
because all she did was sit in her kitchen and type. I kept thinking she’d
leave, but she didn’t. Rick kept calling me. Telling me to get it done, that
the old dude was gonna freak if I didn’t get that gun. So I broke in, got the
gun, and got outta there.”

“The woman didn’t know you were
there? She didn’t hear you?”

Sammy looked offended. “Course
not.” He opened his mouth to say something, then quickly shut it. Mort grinned,
sure that the kid was going to say he was good, a professional.

“So you got the gun,” Sato said,
“Then what?”

“I go to the next address, some
office complex. Rick isn’t there, but the old dude is. I hand off the gun. I’m
ready to leave—only the guy won’t pay me. Says he’s got to do something first.
Tells me to wait in the parking lot in his car and tell him if a guy in a blue
Accord drives up. So I do it.” He threw one hand up. The cuff yanked on his
wrist. “I wasn’t leaving without payment. So he goes into the office and comes
out a couple of minutes later.”

“Anyone show up?”

“Not that I could tell. It started
raining, and I could barely see through the windshield. Anyway, as soon as he
gets back in the car, a blue Honda parks beside us and the old guy tenses up
and watches the driver. A tall guy—young, too. Around twenty-five or so with
dark hair.” Sammy swallowed. “The old guy got a look on his face...it was weird,
man, the way he watched him. Creeped me out. So I tell him I want my money, but
he says one more thing—help him knock out the guy who just went in the office.
He had some story about how there was a ton of cash in the safe, but it was a
special lock, and only that guy who went inside had it. Just knock him out and
he’d split the cash with me.”

Sammy paused, shook his head a
fraction. “Anyway, I believed him. I thought he was going to stiff me on the
job and the thought of more money—well, I did it. He went in the front, and I
went in the back window. When I got in there, they were struggling. I hit the
man with the dark hair on the back of the head with the fire extinguisher.
Knocked him out cold.” He stopped, leaned over the table, his hands curling
into fists. “That’s when I saw the other man.”

––––––––

Dallas

Monday, 2:17 p.m.

––––––––

“WHO did you see?” Sato asked.

“The man with a bullet hole in his
head.” Sammy reared back, his hands cutting through the air as far as the cuffs
allowed, palms down, fingers splayed. “That was it for me. I was done. I don’t
do that.”

“What?” Sato asked.

“Kill people. That’s what the old
dude was setting up. He was gonna prop the dark-headed guy up in his office
chair while he was out, then shoot him, set it up to look like a suicide.”

“You know this how?”

“Because he told me. He wanted me
to help him move the dark-headed guy. I said no. I was outta there, but he said
I was already involved. Better to make it clean, finish the job, that way it
wouldn’t come back on me. I told him I didn’t care. I was gone. When I made a
move for the door, the dark-headed guy on the floor...kinda, well, exploded. He
moved fast. He knocked the gun out of the old dude’s hand and hit me in the
face,” he said, lifting his chin, showing a purple bruise on the underside. “I
went down. I don’t know how long I was out—a couple of minutes, maybe?—but when
I came to, the guy with the dark hair who’d been on the floor was gone, and the
old dude was laid out on the floor beside me. I left before he woke up.”

Sato sat back, his arms crossed
over his chest. “That’s quite a story.”

“It’s true,” Sammy said. “Every
word.”

“Oh, we’ll check it out. Every
word.” Sato flipped back a few pages in his notebook. “Okay. Let’s clarify a
few things. This Rick got a last name?”

“Sure. Smith.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. At least that’s what he
calls himself. Works out of a warehouse over in Fort Worth.”

“Okay. We’ll come back to that,”
Sato said. “Describe the old dude. You said he was short...”

“Yeah, he didn’t come up to my
chin. Maybe five-three. He had thin brown hair. It was cut short. He was medium
size—not skinny, but not massive, either. Bit of a belly. Black eyes.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Ah...black. Black windbreaker kind
of thing, but heavy. Black pants.”

“Age?”

The corners of Sammy’s mouth
turned down. “I don’t know. Fifty? Sixty?”

“Anything else about him that
stands out? Scars, tattoos, that sort of thing?”

“Nah, nothing like that. He had
some kind of accent. I don’t know what kind. He didn’t say anymore than he had
too.”

“Alright,” Sato said, leaning back
in his chair. “We’ve got a short, old guy. Maybe fifty, maybe sixty in dark
clothes with an accent.” Sato sighed, shook his head. “I don’t know, that’s not
much to go on. You told me a really interesting story, but there’s not much
there we can use.”

“You want to know who he was
working with?”

“How would you know that?”

“He left his cell phone in his car
when he went inside the office the first time. I got all his recent calls saved
in my phone. I ain’t no dummy. I gotta look out for myself, man, ‘cause no one
else is looking out for me.”

––––––––

Pompeii

Monday, 4:30 p.m.

––––––––

“SO amazing,” Zoe said, stopping
in her tracks to admire a fresco with a rich gold background. They were inside
one of Pompeii’s more luxurious homes, walking along an arcade surrounding an
open courtyard area at the center of the home. In the fresco, a figure of a
young man in a toga was seated on a chair reading. “It’s so realistic. Look at
how they captured the contours of the face and arms and the sagging cloth. Hard
to believe this was painted hundreds of years before the Renaissance. That’s
Menander, a poet. The house is named for him,” Zoe said.

“Of course, I’m sure his exposed
chest has nothing to do with your admiration,” Jack said.

“No more than yours of the Venus
we saw in the other house. Oh look, more baths,” she said with delight.

“More mosaics,” Jack said and
followed her into the doorway of the room with impossibly small tiles covering
the floor.

“I love the mosaics,” Zoe said.

“I know. I can tell,” Jack said,
adjusting the strap of his backpack on his shoulders.

“You have to admit they’re
amazing, too. Maybe even more amazing than the frescos. They have the same
depth and look so realistic, but they’re made with tiny tiles. It’s amaz—”

“Amazing,” Jack finished for her.

“Do you have a better word?” Zoe
asked as they left the house and returned to the elevated sidewalk that ran
along each side of the street paved in rounded cobblestones.

“Yes. Food.”

“That does sound good.”

“There’s a restaurant back near
the Forum.” As they retraced their steps, Zoe realized how tired she was.
They’d walked all over the city. It was much larger than she’d expected. Street
after street with crumbling rock walls of what had once been homes and
street-front businesses extended around them on the careful grid of the typical
Roman city plan. They had seen the beautifully proportioned semi-circular
theater, the temples, the city’s Forum, and the impressive amphitheater, which
grass and moss seemed to be reclaiming. But the parts Zoe liked best were the
examples of everyday life that she saw as they trooped through the streets.

They passed what had once been a
bakery with huge hourglass shaped millstones and a half-circle opening of a
brick oven that looked like if you fired it up, you could cook a pizza right
then. Another turn and they passed what would have been a restaurant with
counters right on the sidewalk with hollowed out pits to keep large cauldrons
of food warm. “The Roman version of McDonald’s,” Jack quipped.

“I wish it was open,” Zoe said.

Zoe had expected for there to be
the equivalent of museum guards posted on every corner, keeping a watchful eye
on the tourists. It was an open-air museum, after all. But there was nothing
like that. She saw a few video cameras, but they mostly had free reign and were
able to wander in and out of houses, stores, even clamber up crumbling
staircases to nonexistent second stories.

A few areas were gated off, like
the one they were approaching, the area with some of the casts of human bodies.
Protected by iron gates, the figures sat mixed in with other finds in an
open-air storage facility. Intermingled with fountains, slabs of marble, and
endless rows of pots, were the plaster figures that the first archeologists
made as they excavated. Some figures were lying flat; others were twisted and
crouched, obviously trying to escape the ash and fumes that had covered the
city. Zoe thought the saddest one was a figure sitting on the ground, knees in
the air, hands covering its face.

“Wretched, isn’t it?” Jack said.

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Zoe
said. “It’s easy to get lost in the history here—the beautiful art, the ability
to walk around a first century city—and forget that thousands of people died
here...in hours,” Zoe said, glancing into the distance where Mt. Vesuvius was
clearly visible, dark against the blue sky.

Zoe felt a presence behind them.
Too close. Jack pivoted on his heel, his arms tensed, then stopped. “Nico.”

It was the guy Jack had bought the
guidebook from earlier, looming close to Zoe. “Who’s this?” Nico asked smoothly
in English. He’d lost the jacket and looked Zoe over in a way that made her
wish she were wearing another layer or two.

“A friend,” Jack said, tightly.

“Does this friend have a name?”
Nico asked, gazing at Zoe intently.

“I’m Zoe,” she said, extending her
hand. Nico clasped it and raised it to his lips. “I hope you will be my...friend,
too,” he said as he deposited a lingering, sloppy kiss on the back of her hand.
Jack rolled his eyes.

Zoe worked her hand free of his
clamp-like grip, studying Nico’s face. He couldn’t be much more than seventeen
or eighteen. Just to make his day, Zoe said, “How charming.” Nico’s grin
widened, and he shifted, placing his arm around Zoe’s shoulders. “You must help
me with my English. I need practice.”

“Your English is excellent,” Zoe
said, and Nico stood a little straighter.

“It is the special words, the...how
do you say...idioms I need help with. Like ‘head over heels.’ What does that
mean?”

Jack wedged himself between them,
breaking them apart. “Here’s an idiom for you: cut to the chase.”

“This one I know,” Nico said
excitedly, as Jack moved them away from the knots of people looking at the
casts and into an open area between the Forum and the Temple of Apollo, where a
lone remaining statue of Apollo stood, arm extended. All that remained of the
temple were the brick-fronted steps leading up to a raised platform with a few
columns rising in the air, which were surrounded by tourists, alternately
consulting maps and taking pictures. “It means to get to the important thing.”

“Yes,” Jack said approvingly. “And
the main reason you’re here...”

“To meet your beautiful friend,”
Nico said, with a lingering glance at Zoe. She couldn’t suppress a smile as
Nico caught sight of Jack’s face and quickly added, “and to tell you about
Costa. What you’ve heard is true...he is gone. Vanished. Into the skinny air.”

“Into thin air,” Jack corrected,
slightly deflated at the news.

“Into
thin
air,” Nico repeated. “People say he is in
South America, Brazil, even India.”

“Are you sure he’s not still
involved with things here in Naples?”

“No, not here,” Nico said, and
there was none of the teasing, playfulness in his tone that had been so evident
before. “If he was here, I would know. Even if he wasn’t here, but was
controlling things, I would know.”

Jack camouflaged his sigh. Nico
missed it, but Zoe was aware of it. Jack slipped Nico some folded bills, and
Nico managed to kiss Zoe’s hand again before Jack waved him off and he melted
into the crowds. He didn’t go in the direction of the entrance-slash-exit, Zoe
noticed, but she figured with a site as large as Pompeii and someone as wily as
Nico, there were probably lots of ways to get in and out without going through
the main gates.

“Is that true,” Zoe asked as they
walked slowly toward the restaurant. “Would he know if Costa were still here or
still in control of things?”

“Undoubtedly. He’s such a good
asset because he plays the clown so well. His family is one of the
best-connected in Naples. He’d know.”

“So, then Roy was right.”

“It appears so,” Jack said as they
stepped inside the restaurant with crusty sandwiches and pizza slices dripping
with mozzarella cheese on display. With the distraction of Nico gone, Zoe’s
hunger came roaring back. While they were waiting in line, Zoe asked. “Nico—he
was one of yours?”

“Did I recruit him? Yes. One of my
first.”

“I think you did good.” Their turn
came and Zoe pointed out which pizza slice she wanted then left Jack to pay,
saying, “I think I’ll wash my well-kissed hand.”

––––––––

––––––––

––––––––

THE return drive through Naples
was again a trip Zoe thought better suited to bumper cars or a dirt track
speedway. They parked in a different parking garage, and Zoe dug her nails out
of the dash, then they walked to the
Piazza
dei Martiri
, which seemed to be the Napoli equivalent of Fifth
Avenue with designer stores ringing the
piazza
.
Zoe spotted the names Ferragamo and Gucci as they found a table at a restaurant
with several rows of tables outside. The restaurant had a view of the column at
the center of the
piazza
,
which was topped with a statue of a winged angel in a flowing gown. Their
espresso arrived in miniature cups along with a plate of pastries. “Try these,”
Jack said pointing to a pastry curved like a tiny conch shell with golden
ridges. It was flaky on the outside, but creamy on the inside with a twinge of
cinnamon.

“That’s so good,” Zoe said. “What
is it?”

“
Sfogliatella
. Ricotta cheese with cinnamon.”

“I love it...and it’s not even
chocolate.” They polished off the last of the delicate morsels in silence. Zoe
sipped the strong coffee. The sun was almost down, and the lights from the
stores glowed in the twilight.

She took another sip and watched
Jack scan the piazza, eyeing the strolling pedestrians, the speeding scooters,
and the people seated at the small tables around them, who all seemed to be
either leaning forward over the table, gesturing theatrically as they talked or
busy smoking cigarettes. “So you lived here over a year...and you never mentioned
it,” Zoe said, her head tilted to one side.

He rotated his small coffee cup.
“I learned it’s easier not to say anything at all. You mention something, even
a throwaway comment, and it draws attention. People want to know more. It was
easier to never mention it in the first place.”

“I can’t imagine doing
that—editing everything I said. I’d be terrible—” she broke off. “There’s Roy.”
He was striding quickly across the
piazza
,
directly toward them. He didn’t make eye contact.

He circled the column, which was
enclosed with a raised grassy area ringed with low hedges that surrounded four
massive lion sculptures placed around the base of the column like the
directional points of a compass. Roy wore a long dark overcoat and Zoe lost him
for a second in the crowds. Jack had been right. Everyone, except Nico it
seemed, dressed in black, gray, or brown. She picked him up again as he paused
near the statue of a snarling lion. He dipped his head, cupped his hand to his
face, lit a cigarette and walked on, never glancing at their table.

Jack checked his watch. “That’s
not good, is it?” Zoe said, watching Roy’s dark shoulders meld with the crowd
going up the short street to the waterfront.

“No. Not good at all. It means
we’re blown.”