Quinn Checks In (Liam Quinn 1)

by Thomson, Lh

  She wasn’t going to tell me jack. “I think you should get out of my store. You’re not a cop and I don’t have to talk to you. Go on, get out!”

  She was practically shoving me towards the front door, which was probably fortunate timing on her part: it was the same exact moment Teddy Allison and his two buddies decided to come in through the back door.

  Teddy was already pulling a nine millimeter. I grabbed Polly by the wrist and pulled her towards the main door. “We need to be leaving.”

  She ran after me, half trying to keep stride, half trying to pull away. We crossed the small parking lot to my car. “Get in!” I yelled.

  She stood there, torn. Then Teddy and the boys burst through the front doors.

  “We’re out of time, they’re armed, get in,” I said, leaning over the passenger seat to talk to her through the Firebird’s open window.

  Regardless of what she thought of me, the young crook wasn’t stupid. She climbed in and I hit the gas, just in time for a bullet to shatter the back windshield.

  Dammit. I worked for an insurance agency ... and had no glass coverage.

  We peeled out of the lot, their green sedan squealing out about two hundred yards behind us. I downshifted and took us around the first corner on a freewheeling roll, asphalt blackened by haste and desperation. The sedan flew around right after us, fishtailing, almost rolling onto two tires... but hanging in there.

  We were on the wide MLK Boulevard now, and I gunned the Firebird’s big engine, running us in and out of the other traffic at fifty. The sedan was having trouble keeping pace now, its handling insufficient to the task, the car’s frame bouncing off other cars, drivers swerving, more back axles fishtailing wildly. Polly cringed reflexively as she heard the cars begin to careen into one another, the crunch, thud and crash of breaking glass.

  Me? I wasn’t even looking back. As we approached the cross street at Haddon, it was obvious the mess behind us was at least going to slow them down. The light was already yellow and we were still thirty yards away. We blew into the intersection with me frantically braking and shifting, the engine howling in protest as the car wound down through the gears and I pulled us hard to the left, just as the rest of the traffic flow shifted direction.

  The sedan had gotten around the tangle behind us, but hadn’t made the light, and the large concrete divide made catching up impossible.

  I waited until we found a quiet side street then pulled the car over. “Ok, so you’re absolutely sure you haven’t talked to Patrick Delaney in the last few weeks?”

  She shot me a cold, defensive look, but said nothing.

  I added, “Because that sure as hell looked like Teddy Allison and the rest of Pat’s old gang.”

  Still she said nothing, but now crossed one of her arms at her midsection, defensively. “I’m as surprised as you are those guys are still around,” she said with all the fervent conviction of a crook who couldn’t think up a clever lie on the spot.

  “Want to know what I think, Polly?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.” Still defiant, but nervous, maybe even a little scared.

  “I think your boy Pat recovered the money. And they think you’ve got a handle on it. So maybe they stole that forgery because it gives them something on you. Or maybe they know it means something to you.”

  She half-smiled, a true poker tell. I was wrong, and she knew it. And I had no authority to keep grilling her. She knew that, too.

  “They said on the news they got away with a ton of cash,” she said.

  “So?”

  “So if I had that kind of money, do you think I’d still be living in Camden and working in a strip mall?”

  “I don’t know what you’d do, Polly.”

  “No? Well then I’ll tell you: I’d fuck off back across the ocean to my own country, where men are still at least a little bit dependable.”

  Sure, that was Polly Clark. Ms. Dependable herself. “So you don’t have anything to say about that little chase just now?”

  “You going to let me out of your car now, or is this a kidnapping?”

  “There’s nothing stopping you.”

  She smiled gracefully … and then she spat in my face. “Fuck you.”

  She slammed the door when she climbed out. I hate it when people slam my car doors. I wiped the spit off and watched her round the corner of the alley and disappear into the street.

  As I drove home, there was no doubt in my mind she was lying; she knew where the heist money was stashed, or at the very least Pat’s old gang thought she did. There wasn’t much point in them shaking her down otherwise – and I had a hard time seeing Teddy Allison being into arts and crafts.

  After I got back into Philly, I grabbed a roast beef bagel and a coffee to take home with me then headed back to the loft. When I got up to my floor, Ricky had his door open a crack again... but this time was peeking through it and, after scoping me out, closed it quickly as if not wanting to be seen.

  I was going to have to talk to him at some point about it. He didn’t deserve the stress he’d had to endure, thanks to Vin the Shin’s goons, and that was my fault for bringing them there in the first place. His reaction at the door suggested maybe he felt the same way.

  For now, I contented myself to finally catch up on the day’s news, to down my bagel and to try to relax for a night with a good book.

  I love to read. Before prison, I wasn’t the biggest reader. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy a good piece of fiction, I just never had the time, it seemed.

  But in prison you’ve got all sorts of time – nothing but, as a wise man once said. So I’d worked myself into the habit of making sure I took at least a few hours every day to read something new.

  One paragraph in, my phone rang.

  “Liam?”

  It was Alison Pace.

  “Look, I was just in the neighborhood and I thought I’d stop around and see what kind of progress you were making,” she said with the same warm, charming tone that had been on display the first time we’d talked.

  “You’re downstairs?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s 3B. I’ll buzz you in,” I said.

  About a minute later she knocked on the door. When I opened it, she looked stunning, in a sheer grey dinner gown, at once both formal and provocative, elegantly cut but with a plunging neckline that flattered her cleavage. Her hair was held up and the jewelry looked like it could have paid for my loft with relative ease.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have called before...”

  “No. No, it’s okay,” I said. “I’m never really off the clock. Please...” I motioned for her to come in and she walked past me, the back of the dress slit open down to the base of her spine, accentuating her tanned skin.

  “I was at a charity event down the street. I just wanted to thank you for taking this all so seriously,” she said, as I pointed to the opposite couch. “I understand from John that you’ve made a number of inquiries.”

  “It’s nothing – makes my job a lot easier if I know where everyone stands,” I said. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

  She nodded. “Please.”

  I moved to the sideboard and poured us each a healthy dose. She downed hers in two swallows, before I’d even sat back down. “Another?” I said, giving her a squint.

  “Thanks,” she said, accepting it gratefully.

  “Why am I guessing the stress of all of this is wearing on you a bit?”

  She nodded. “I think Leo and I are going to break up. It’s just… I don’t know, uninteresting now? I’m not sure we even got as far as supportive.”

  “That’s difficult.”

  Alison nodded, pushing back her hair with an air of reflex tension. “It’s not even the worst of it. I have to worry about my job, too. It’s... well, we were already having financial troubles before the robbery even happened. I mean, I don’t know if you know but...”

  “I talked to John at length. His problems ar
en’t a big secret.”

  “So you know about Carl and Dennis Hecht?”

  “Dennis?”

  “Carl’s brother and business advisor. Cold guy.”

  “So they’re peas from the same rotten pod?”

  She took a sip of wine and sort of drifted off a little, gazing spacily over its brim. “Sort of, yeah.”

  Then she looked over the brim at me, fixing me with her dark eyes. “Doesn’t look like you’re sharing this place. You’re single?”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything, watching the dimmed overhead light glint off her lipstick as she took a sip. I couldn’t help but think that that was one lucky glass.

  She got up and walked over to the window, holding her drink close, staring out at the city lights. “I just need to forget about all this whole mess, you know? Even if it’s just for a few hours.”

  I walked over and looked out at the glow, far into the distance. “It’s always dazzling at night, the lights and motion, the constant blur of activity, fully involved but out of reach... behind glass.”

  She turned, close to me and looked up into my eyes. I could feel the warmth of her close to me. “Quinn...” she said, moving closer.

  I shook my head gently and put a finger to her lips. “Shhh.... You’re a client, I’m working on your case, and you’re my best friend’s friend.”

  Alison looked wistful. “So nothing....”

  “No. Highly flattered, but bad timing.”

  She looked back down at the lights, watching Philadelphia’s night stretch on, the ribbon of vehicles heading down 21st Street. “Isn’t that always the way?” she said.

  She finished her glass of wine. “I should go.”

  “No rush.”

  “You’re being very nice, but...”

  “No, I mean it. Last of the genuine nice guys.”

  “You’re cute as hell, you know that?”

  I didn’t, but she’d had a couple of glasses of wine, so I took the compliment. “Thank you.”

  “I don’t know why Nora doesn’t talk about you more,” she said.

  Ouch.

  I said, “Well, we’ve known each other a long time. We don’t really have any secrets.”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

  Oh, I was pretty sure she did. “Again, flattery is appreciated, but will get you nowhere.”

  She downed the rest of her glass. “Drink up, and we’ll see in a couple of hours,” she said.

  And so she stayed for one more glass, and one more, and we talked until about half past midnight, eventually revisiting the sleeping arrangements: after way too many glasses of wine for her to risk driving, she took the bed, and I took the couch. In no time, I was dreaming of forgeries that were more valuable than the real thing, my tired brain trying to figure out what that had to do with an armored-car load of money.

  Chapter Eight

  At the Druid, they had an Irish band playing on the patio – anything to get the younger guys in on a Monday night.

  It wasn’t working so well. The same regular crew of old ex-cops were wide-load flattening the same old bar stools. Davy had come out, though – right from work – and was chatting animatedly with Pa, my brother’s crew-cut red hair a contrast to our father’s silvery locks, and his frame many, many donuts short of retirement.

  I couldn’t hear what they were arguing about until I’d pushed the folks milling around and managed to get closer.

  “Your brother, bless his foolish heart, thinks most people would feel safer and be happier if they had a gun in the house,” said Pa.

  Davy gave me a quick glance but didn’t say hello, instead turning back to our dad. “In Switzerland, it’s the law. And that’s one of the most peaceful countries on Earth.”

  Dad shook his head. “That’s fine if you’re already doing okay, if you’re a secure person with a normal life. And most of those guns in Switzerland are long rifles, for purposes of a national militia – you know, like the Second Amendment? But you’d put a gun in every house in West Philly?”

  On dad’s other side, former traffic cop Melvin Guest had been listening in, and he laughed at dad’s suggestion. “You put a gun in every household in West Philly, you end up with a lot of dumb, dead motherfuckers.”

  Davy was about to argue back, but I interjected. “It’s true. It’s not the gun, it’s the circumstance that causes someone to use it that’s important. The poorer and more desperate they are, the more often they use guns.”

  My brother looked at me cynically. “Yeah? I call bullshit.”

  “Then explain why they have open carry laws for handguns in both Maine and Arizona, but only Arizona has serious gun crime.”

  Davy squinted, trying to figure out the dichotomy. “Yeah? Well fuck you, Liam. What the fuck do you know anyway? You spend too much time talking to your criminal buddies.”

  “My criminal buddies? I’ll tell you what, Davy, they may be a bunch of criminals but at least they’re not dumb enough to think we should give every household a gun. This isn’t Switzerland. There’s too much income disparity and unhappiness in America.”

  The older guys were nodding, but Davy seemed almost taken aback. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You guys agree with this moral relativity shit?” He slugged back the last of his beer and got up to leave. “You got to come where I drink and ruin shit here too, right?”

  I sighed and tilted my head back reflexively in a show of frustration. “Davy, come on...”

  “Don’t you come on me,” he said, hat under his arm as always when off duty. “You done some real stupid fucking things in the last few years, but everyone else ends up paying for your shit,” he said.

  “Davy....”

  He held up a hand. “Ah! Forget about it. I’m out of here.” And then he strode out of the room, going through the balcony door so he could stop and light a quick smoke on the “patio.”

  I guess Pa saw the hurt look on my face, because he put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “I know you want your brother to accept you again. But don’t let that get you thinking he’s always right, and you’re always wrong. ‘Cause it ain’t so.”

  Melvin harrumphed once indignantly. “Always? Liam, your brother’s arguments... shit, he’s a good kid, Davy, but he couldn’t win an argument over whether water was wet if he fell out of a boat.”

  Dad took a little intake of breath at that, but he didn’t argue. “He ain’t my brightest.” He glanced at me sideways. “Then again, my brightest ain’t so bright neither, judging on recent history.”

  He had that right. I told him about the chase and the forger, and Vin the Shin. Terrasini’s involvement seemed to worry Pa to no end.

  “You stay away from those guys, you hear? The amount of shit you been in already, any of our boys finds out you’re talking to Vin The Shin, they’ll make you as dirty in a second.”

  “I didn’t exactly have an option, Pa. He scooped me off the middle of the street. Besides, he’s got reasons for needing this case solved himself.”

  I went through the story of the Dufresne theft, the forgery and the robbery at Vin the Shin’s condo.

  Pa rolled his eyes Heaven-ward. “You just can’t avoid trouble, even when you’re doing the right thing.”

  Melvin hadn’t seen me in years. “You still boxing, Liam? I remember that fight you had with Marty Clooney, when you was about fifteen or sixteen. That seven-punch combo that put him down was something else.”

  Most people wouldn’t have believed it, but that combo was a legit sequence shown me by my manager at the time, the great Garde Svensson. He passed on a couple of years later, but he was real proud of me that night, as were my parents.

  That was the past, done. “Nah, just a working stiff now, Mr. Guest.”

  My dad muttered under his breath, then finished the short glass of whisky he’d ordered between beers. “You keep working for Vin the Shin, you’ll be a real stiff,” he said.

  “I just have to resolve this case, Pa
; then I’ll never see the guy again.”

  “So what’s taking so long?”

  Funny. He knew damn well as a cop that a blind robbery like this could take months or years to solve, if ever. I probably had a month or two at most before the company started talking about write-downs, starting with my commission.

  Melvin said, “You should keep tabs on the girlfriend. No doubt she’s lying.”

  Dad concurred. “Yeah, follow the money, Liam. Pat Delaney’s on the inside for four more years. But the money’s on the outside and so is she, and his former crew has it in for her. Doesn’t take a mathematician. Follow the girl, eventually she’ll lead you to the money.”

  They had a point. The money was definitely tied to the Dufresne switch, and whoever switched the paintings also stole the Vermeer. But I’ve done a few stakeouts in the past, and they’re the worst, hours of just sitting there with nothing to do but read and watch and, typically, record dead air.

  Pa saw my hangdog look. “Hey, that’s why you should have been a cop,” he said. “When you got a partner, it’s a lot easier to kill time: one guy can watch while the other takes a nap, for instance.”

  That gave me an idea. I didn’t have a partner, but I had a guy who owed me big time, and that was going to have to do.

  Danny Saint was still working the Washington Park area, but had branched out from Three-Card Monte to hosting a dice game.

  Hosting dice is smart, from a criminal perspective. The odds are so thoroughly against the player – it ain’t roulette bad, but it’s up there – that the house never does too badly. Of course, the easier the money, the more heat you got from other operators.

  If you were a smooth enough operator, you could flop out the dice for an identical pair that was weighted to roll snake eyes most of the time. Then there was no doubting who was going home happy.

  The dice game was behind a corner store just off the park’s south side. Players were rolling up against the back wall, trying to match their earlier rolls or get a natural seven or eleven. Judging by the thatch of bills in Danny’s hand, the house was even more crooked than usual.