Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle (27 page)

“You’d have to find me first.” He hummed low. “She’s pretty. Must take after her mother.”

Every nerve and muscle buzzed. I kept picturing turning his face into a meaty mess with my fists.

I sat at my desk in the office. The celebrity faces in the photos along the walls stared at me with disdainful eyes.
You fucked up, Ridley. You failed.
“Tell me where, Bobby. For all we’ve been through together, you can’t really want to torture me like this.”

“Heard you called home,” he said. “Did you cry when you heard about Dad?”

“Did you?”

“You fucking prick.” His voice sounded sloppy wet, as if he were foaming at the mouth. “I loved my dad more than anything. I took care of him all through his last weeks. You’re damn right I cried. That’s why it fucking burns me.”

“Are you finally ready to tell me what that is?”

“Now that I’ve found her, yeah. You can know.” I heard him swallow. “Dad had a will. He gave almost everything to me. Almost.”

“You’re talking about what he wanted me to have.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“Of course not. You’re his executor. Right now, you’re the only one who knows.”

“I’ll tell you what he gave you,” he said. “He gave you the agency. Can you fucking believe that? His own son, who’s worked for him forever, who was the one that brought you into the equation, and I get his fucking house, his money, his car. But
you
get the agency.”

When you stack stunning revelations, it can make you stick, like beer before liquor. I didn’t have anything to say. No problem. Bobby had plenty.

“I don’t want any of this other shit. He could have given it all to you, if he’d given me the agency. You don’t even live here anymore. Why would he give it to
you
?”

I hadn’t a clue. Not even a guess.

“You still there?” Bobby asked.

“I’m here.”

“You got nothing to say?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why he would do that.”

“He says why, in the will.”

His tone told me this surreal moment would go from bizarre to full on wacky land.

“I made a copy of this part. Let me read it to you.” He cleared his throat in an exaggerated way. “I have chosen Ridley Brone to take on my investigative agency in order to coax him back to where he belongs instead of where guilt has guided him. I hope that he will shake loose those chains of false responsibility and do what is right for him.”

Mort, what were you thinking? I can’t just drop everything here and move back to LA.

“Can you believe that crap?” Bobby asked.

“No,” I said. “No I can’t.”

“So now you know.” I heard the snap of a shutter. “There. A nice picture. I’ll email it to you.”

“You don’t have to do this, Bobby. If you’d just come and talked to me, we could have worked this out. My place is here, now. I can sign the agency over to you. Then we’re good.”

“Are you kidding? Dad chose you over me. I’m pissed, Ridley. Pissed at him and pissed at you for being such a suck ass that he forgot who his real son was.”

“That isn’t true.”

“Say what you want. It’s too late to make deals.”

That tremor rolled up through me again and rattled my throat when I spoke. “What are you going to do?”

“I told you. I met some guys in the clink. I’m going to introduce them.”

“You might be angry with me, but you’re not going to take that out on a sixteen year-old girl.”

Bobby belched a curt laugh. “You know what I did time for?”

I was afraid to ask, so I let Bobby tell me on his own.

“You seen those show where they set up guys trying to hook up with underage girls?”

Scorching bile ran up the back of my throat.

“I got caught myself. Didn’t make TV or anything, but the cops did a good job setting me up. When it comes to young tail, I get careless.”

“You’re lying.”

“You know how to do background checks. Run one on me.”

How could so much warp after only a few years? I didn’t even recognize Bobby anymore. And it hurt to wonder what Mort had thought about all this. Now it made some sense why Mort had left the agency with me. He’d wanted to punish Bobby. To make it clear he didn’t trust him to run his business anymore.

“How did this happen to you?”

“It’s been nice talking, Rid. But I’m feeling a little horny. I might have to stop following her around the mall and rub one out in the man’s room.”

“Stop it! This pervert act won’t solve anything. It’s bullshit and you know it.”

He sighed. “Like I said. I’ll email you a pic.” He disconnected before I could say more.

I knew the sex stuff was crap. Just like the first time he’d tried to pull that. He knew it was the best way to burn me. And it had worked, even as I didn’t believe a word.

For all I knew, he could be lying about finding her, too.

Then my computer dinged with a new email message. I opened it reluctantly.

The photo Bobby promised filled the screen. A zoomed in portrait.

She had dark, straight hair like her mother’s.

Lots of people have dark hair. That doesn’t mean this is your daughter.

She had a familiar cast to her face, a gaunt don’t-fuck-with-me look even while she smiled. I knew that face because I saw it every time I looked in a mirror.

That is the height of ego. You’re projecting. She looks like any other random teen trolling the mall.

Bobby had zoomed in close enough that I couldn’t make out any of her surrounds or who, if anyone, she was with. Just the smiling face that looked like a hybrid mix of Autumn and me no matter how much that inside voice wanted to deny it.

Oh, I’ll deny it. I’ll deny it until you come to your senses and realize Bobby is playing you yet again. He knows you well enough to push every right button, flip every last switch.

I closed the email.

Despite its annoying rebuttals, the voice had dropped an interesting fact that I could turn around and maybe use. Bobby knew me, knew my character, knew exactly what to say and do to pull me apart. But didn’t I know him, too?

I picked up the phone and dialed Mort’s office number again. The receptionist I’d spoken to before answered with the agency’s spiel.

I introduced myself.

“Yes, I remember,” she said. “How are you?”

“Well, I’ve been better. I’m a little worried about Bobby.”

“He still hasn’t returned. But I’m sure he’s okay.”

“Here’s the thing. He contacted me since the last time you and I spoke. He sounded pretty upset about something in Mort’s will.”

“Oh?” Her curiosity was palpable.

“It seems Mort left the agency to me.”

She gasped.

“I know, right? I can’t figure why Mort would do such a thing.” But I had an idea, and it had to do with Bobby’s time in prison, which had nothing to do with being a perv and everything to do with disappointing his father.

The hesitant noise Wanda made told me she knew, too. “It’s not really my place to guess.”

“But you don’t have to guess, do you?”

I heard a sigh leak from between her lips. “I can’t talk about it.”

“I know about his time in prison,” I said. “He told me. Might that have something to do with it?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. I had just started working here. I almost quit because Mr. Quinn was always in such a rage. I didn’t realize at the time that wasn’t normal for him.”

“What changed your mind?” I asked, throwing in some casual conversation to keep her comfortable talking to me.

“Flowers.” She giggled like a middle-schooler. “Mr. Quinn bought me a bouquet of lilies and apologized. Shortly after that, he calmed down and I got to know the real Mr. Quinn.”

I’d seen Mort as upset as she described only one time before—when he had discovered Bobby’s drug problem.”Was Mort responsible for Bobby’s arrest?”

“How did you know?”

“It was the drugs, wasn’t it?”

“Gosh. I really shouldn’t be talking about this. I really shouldn’t be on the phone this long, either. Mr. Barclay’s stressed enough as it is without me slacking off.”

“One last question?”

“You sound like Mr. Quinn. He was always asking questions, all the time. Even when he wasn’t working.”

“Occupational habit.”

“Just a quick one,” she said.

“After Bobby got out, did he start back on the drugs?”

“It was none of my business.”

“Come on, Wanda. You must have been able to tell.”

“I didn’t notice with Bobby, but he’d always been good about hiding it…” She trailed off.

I waited.

“Mr. Quinn, on the other hand? He spent more and more time locked in his office. Began passing off casework to Mr. Barclay, or turning it down outright. I knew things were…getting like before, when I’d first started.”

I wanted a bigger picture of Mort, not necessarily because it would help with Bobby, but because all of this reminded me of how much I’d missed out when it came to my mentor. I should have stayed a part of his life, might have even been able to help with Bobby.

“Mort wasn’t upset when he sent Bobby to prison?”

“Oh, no. He didn’t talk much about it with me, but I hear things, conversations on the phone and whatnot. If anything, he felt…relieved. I think he expected this to straighten out Bobby once and for all.”

And when it didn’t work out, and Mort got hit with cancer, he had decided he couldn’t trust Bobby to run the business and willed it to someone else. Me.

“Thank you, Wanda. I think this will help a lot.”

“Do you mind if I ask, help you with what?”

“Finding Bobby.”

Chapter 28

I must like long shots. I had gone and sniffed me out another one.

Which is probably why Palmer looked at me like a two-headed monster. (I was getting used to that, though.) “Bit of a stretched, don’t you think?”

I shrugged. “It’s my time to waste.”

He went to rub his head, halted with his hand halfway there, then rested his hand on the bar. I had taken Palmer into the bar during off hours like I used to with my old friend, Tom Fortier. Sharing beers in a quiet bar seemed to help smooth difficult requests from law enforcement professionals.

He sipped at his beer, an Indian Pale Ale from a micro brewery in Battle Creek. His face scrunched up. “What is this?”

“Something with actual flavor.”

He curled a lip. “You’re one of those beer snobs. We got one on the force. Drives me fucking crazy listening to him talk about beer. In my world, the most complicated thing about a beer is pulling back the tab to open the can.”

“That’s very refined, Palmer.”

He slid that perfectly good beer aside, turned on his bar stool, and looked me straight in the eye, as if ready to tell me the secret to life. “Don’t you have any Budweiser?”

I rolled my eyes back in my head. “Heathen.” I reached past him and took his beer, set it next to mine. “You’ll get your Bud after you agree to give me those names.”

This time he couldn’t stop himself. He sailed a hand over the stubble on his head. “Do you even know what you’re asking?”

“Yes,” I said. “I want the names of all the convicted drug dealers currently out of jail and operating in Hawthorne.”

“You know you can look that kind of thing up on the internet?”

“The key phrase is ‘currently operating.’ Most dealers don’t advertise on the net.”

Palmer huffed. “Some of them use Facebook.”

“Seriously?”

“I’ve seen it. Dealers aren’t usually the smartest of criminals. They sit right next to bank robbers as the dumbest of the crowd.”

“You’re ruining my romanticized view of the underworld, taught to me by classic films such as
Scarface,
and
Ocean’s Eleven
.”

“I didn’t say anything about kingpins. As far as
Ocean’s Eleven
? Guys smart enough to pull off a heist like that don’t rob banks, they work on Wall Street.”

“Another classic. ‘Greed is good.’”

“Are you done with the Film 101 crap?”

“I’ve had a long week and my life is coming apart at the seams—”

“Again.”

“—and I’m just trying to lighten things up before my nervous breakdown kicks in.”

“Three days ago you gave me a heads up that shit might go down with this con man you were dealing with. The very next day, you call me and tell me your client slipped and fell in the tub, only you think it’s a homicide. Have I got all this so far?”

“Sounds about right.”

“Now you want names of dealers possibly back to work in the city after serving time, lowlifes that might be dumb, but are all the more dangerous because of it.”

“On the money.”

“Because the con man is an old friend of yours, and he has a drug problem, so you think you can track him down through his dealer.”

“I don’t care what they say about you, Palmer. You’re a bright cop.”

He glared at me over the tops of his glasses. “You know, Shanks could be your new cop friend so you can leave me alone. I think she actually likes you.”

“She does?”

He pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose and smiled. “Oh, you like her, too, huh? But you like her like her.”