by Thomson, Lh
“Mother...” the largest guy, still standing, began to say. I threw a hard right elbow backwards, catching him in the throat. He fell to the ground gasping for air, and before Mince could even take a step, the odds were down to two-on-one.
The two of them took a hesitant step forward. As I waved a finger to ward them both off, I gave one of the groaning, prone youths an unhealthy, short kick.
“Now, you two might be able to take me, still,” I told the pair. “But I doubt it.” I nodded towards Mince’s friend. “By the time you get that piece out of your pocket, you’ll be out, too.”
He looked down at his friends, then he looked at Mince.... and then he ran, as fast as his pricey high-tops could take him.
Mince seemed unfazed even by losing his supporting crew. “You think you’re pretty badass, don’t you?” he said. “Go ahead, hit me.”
I already knew Mince was a minor. The other guys were self-defence. Otherwise, I’d have taken him up on it.
Instead, I said, “No thanks, kid. I think maybe life has knocked you around enough already.”
He dropped his fists. “So what do you want?”
“I want to you to return the beer you helped steal, and I want you to leave DeShawn and Jeffrey alone.”
“Or what? You’re going to beat up some more of my friends?”
He was a smug little sociopath, but he’d given me an idea.
I turned to leave.
“Hey. Hey! Where the hell you going?” he said.
I turned and smiled over my shoulder. “I know someone who’ll have far more effect talking to you about this stuff than I could. Going to give him a call,” I said.
He crossed his arms defiantly as his friends crawled to mobility again and licked their wounds.
“Yeah? Well fuck you,” he said, as I walked away.
“I’ll see you real soon, David,” I said.
Chapter Nine
I already had a theory on what the young Brit forger Polly Clark was up to. But I wouldn’t get a chance to confirm it until she made a move. Fortunately, Danny was doing a half-decent job for a change, and had her under wraps constantly.
She was quiet as mouse, which is why it struck him as odd when, after taking a long phone call, she lit out of her store like her shoes were on fire and the parking lot was water.
“That was as close to sprinting as she’s ever going to get,” he said hurriedly over the phone, a few seconds after she took off.
“Follow her, Danny. I’ll pick up the tab for your gas and food, just don’t lose her. I’m going to head over to her store while she’s out.”
The drive over took nearly twenty-five minutes because of traffic, and by the time I walked around the back of her store in the dilapidated strip mall to see if I could get in without breaking and entering, Danny had followed her back into town, to the 30th Street Amtrak train station.
He was breathless, walking as he talked. “I don’t know Quinn, she don’t seem like the Amtrak type to me.”
Danny would know; he’d been running petty scams at the train station for years, now and again.
I said, “She’s not there to catch a train. Call the cops, now. Ask for Det. Richardson, Get him down there, and tell him I said his floaters will make sense if he meets you there – and bring backup.”
“Huh? His whatsy-what now?”
“His floaters will make sense. Look, just tell him. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I hung up then walked over to the back door. From his description, she’d bolted from the store without locking up – not that she had much worth stealing. I figured it came about five seconds after she’d heard about the failed swimming lesson featuring Delaney’s old cellmate.
Sure enough the back door was unlocked. She hadn’t even flipped over the open sign of the front door, so they’d have a hard time even making trespassing stick.
In the long run, it wouldn’t matter. If I was right, the cops would be all over the place soon anyway.
On one of her two large art tables I found what I was looking for: the Dufresne copy, pulled from its mounting and frame, crumpled up in a ball. I left it where I was, careful not to touch anything in the store before heading back to my car.
It was time to be grateful for driving the Firebird; I probably gave half the other drivers on the road heart attacks making time back to Philly.
I didn’t doubt Polly had already found what she was looking for by the time I got to the station, and I bolted past the main doors and the giant columns that preceded the huge, marble-floored main waiting area.
I headed towards the lockers, keeping an eye out for Danny. When I spotted him, he was around the corner on a short corridor to the bathrooms, keeping an eye on Polly as she fumbled with a key to a locker door, retrieved from the frame of the Dufresne copy. He saw me, and flicked his head in the direction of the opposite wall.
Across the huge hall, Teddy and his two pals were watching her, too. Things were going to get ugly quickly if the cops didn’t get there soon.
They saw us about the same time, Teddy jerking his head in my direction, then whispering to one of his men. I doubted they’d be unarmed this time; and Teddy had a shrewd look on his face, like maybe he’d figure a guy like me wouldn’t carry a piece.
Sure enough, a few seconds later they both jogged towards her, Teddy’s nine millimeter Smith & Wesson coming out of his pocket. She’d just about managed to extract the huge duffle bag from the locker when he jammed it into the small of her back, spinning her around just in time for me to get there.
“You got a good right hand, kid, but I got the range this time,” he said,
I nodded towards them. “Only way you’d ever get a shot off at me,” I said.
“You caught me a little flatfooted, that’s all. I’ll know better if we ever go again.”
“Teddy, you could have six sets of toes, and you’d still be too slow for me.”
He smiled when I used his name. “So I’m guessin’ if you know who I am you already figured this all out, right?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“So you know there’s no freakin’ way I’m leaving here without this knapsack, right?”
“I hear you got about two-point-three million reasons to hang onto it,” I said.
His eyes flitted about, scanning the room for a moment. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do: my friends and I are going to take little miss artistic here along as some insurance. I hear you’re a real sweetheart, so I’m guessing you don’t want us to shoot her in the kidneys, right?”
“One thing I don’t get,” I said. “How come you guys didn’t try to get the money before now?”
He snickered. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
I needed to kill time, wait out the cavalry. “So try me.”
“Would you believe, honor among thieves? We was just waiting out Pat, waiting for him to get paroled. Then he up and pulled a fast one; his cellmate got out and Pat put him up to ripping us off.”
“So you introduced him to the refreshing depths of the Delaware River, inconveniently attached to an anchor.”
He shrugged. There were plenty of other passengers milling around the station, but no one within earshot. “It’s nothing personal,” said Teddy. “It’s just business. Pat would even agree, if he weren’t stuck inside for another three-to-five.”
I said, “When you guys all go down for this, he’s going to get another dime at least. You’ll get life for those two goombahs. Hope it was worth it.”
That annoyed him. “You talk too fucking much. You know what? I’m thinking maybe you should come along for a little ride, too.” He pointed the gun at my head then shook it in the direction of the door. “Time to go, Quinn,” he said.
He led us out, gun on Polly’s back and his two friends behind us. They hadn’t spotted Danny yet, and I saw him out of the corner of my eye, moving along the side of the room cautiously, towards the exit.
“When we get outside, there’s a
white Chevy parked in the loading zone. Quinn, you’re getting in the back ahead of me.”
I didn’t know how he was going to do it, but Danny needed to give us a distraction, a chance for me to take one or two of them down and even things up a little, get that gun off of Polly’s back.
We walked towards the car, the cops nowhere in sight yet, although for a faint second the sound of approaching sirens made everyone look around. “Must be close,” said Teddy. “Get in.”
Danny’s timing was perfect. Just as the other thug pulled down on the handle, a pair of red dice rolled directly in front of Teddy, sliding and tumbling gracefully across the cement – Snake Eyes, which was good enough for me. As both men looked down at the dice, I flung the door open quickly, knocking down the one guy, then stamped on Teddy’s toes as hard as I could, praying they weren’t steel-toed shoes.
The cracking noise said they weren’t. He howled in pain and jumped a half-foot backwards on his one good foot, trying to train the nine millimeter on me at the same time, with predictable consequences, his balance going out from under him and a shot flying randomly into the air as he went over backwards, his head cracking loudly off the asphalt. The third gunman was going for his pocket, and I kicked down hard on his kneecap, blowing it instantly out of place.
The goon by the car had recovered his balance and didn’t even go for his gun, as the sirens wailed ever-closer. Instead, he pulled out a switchblade. “Come on! Come on, you fuck!” he said, waving it in a wild arc.
In the movies, the good guy kicks the knife out of the bad guy’s hands. Unless you’re a ballet dancer or soccer player, this is easier said than done, and I backed away quickly twice as he took two more quick swings. “Not so smart now, are you…” he said.
“Smart enough to know that siren’s just around the corner, tough guy,” I said, gesturing with my head towards the next cross street.
And just like that, he made things easy on me by looking back at the source of the wail. The punch was coming in on him before he could even fully turn back to face me. My first jab broke his nose, filling his eyes with tears so that he couldn’t see. The second was a body shot, doubling him over.
And, I got to practice my uppercut one more time. Like I said back when all this started, looking down at Abel Larsson on that pool room floor, it’s never been my best punch. But he was leaning forward when I cut loose, and I’d swear his cheap black dress shoes actually came an inch off the ground.
I’d lost sight of Polly. She’d grabbed the knapsack and was sprinting down the street, but hadn’t gotten more than fifty yards when the cruisers peeled around the corner, klaxons and lights blaring. She stuttered to a stop, then tried the other direction and saw us, stuttering to a stop again … until the heel of her right shoe came right off. “Shit!” she said. “Shit, shit, shit shit!” She kicked off her shoes. Running between traffic was out, and she turned towards the station... just in time to be greeted by the rest of the boys in blue.
An hour later, we were still at the scene, each of us getting a quick questioning independently of one another in the back of a cruiser, so police could get the freshest versions possible, see where the stories gelled and where they didn’t. Det. Richardson handled mine personally.
“Now, I have to think when we talked the other day, Mr. Quinn, you were holding out on me a little bit.”
I shook my head. “Detective, why would you get an idea like that? Geez.”
Just then, a reporter leaned over through the car window, to get video of us talking.
“Hey! Respect the police cordon, please,” the cop said.
I gestured towards the media. “Doesn’t look like I did you too much harm,” I said. “You guys are going to come out of this looking like geniuses.”
“I don’t get it,” he said. “How did you know what she was up to?”
“You kind of had to be there,” I said. It was a hell of a long story. “How long have you got?”
It took me the better part of twenty minutes to explain everything to the incredulous Richardson, who took off his old-school fedora and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Who would have figured? Pat Delaney masterminding another heist from inside.”
“His unfortunate cellmate just wasn’t clear on the threat level Pat’s former associates posed, I guess,” I said. “You might find those nines they’re packing match up with whatever they used to clip your floaters.”
Richardson rolled down his side window again and lit a smoke. “You don’t mind? I’ve had four this week, you know.”
“Cigarettes?”
“Shit no. I wish. Floaters.”
“Rough.”
He took a deep drag then blew a perfect ring out the window. “I should really fucking quit these horrible things. My wife smells the tobacco on me, she goes out of her fucking mind.”
I let him talk. Cases like this? There was no end of talking after them. Better to get accustomed to it.
“You know, I looked you up. You’ve done pretty good since getting out. In fact, you got a better closure rate than a lot of flatfoots I know.”
I had to smile at that. Then it occurred to me he probably knew my old man.
“Yeah, The Mighty Quinn,” he laughed. “Ask him about that one.”
Then his expression shifted to befuddlement. “Wait a second … you said this all started with the gallery robbery on Chestnut?”
“Yeah…”
“But what about the other picture? You said there was two that went missing. You’ve told me what happened to the first one, the fake. What about the Vermeer, the real deal…?”
I nodded. “Yeah, that bit’s interesting. Not entirely sure yet.”
He rolled his eyes and I got the sense he didn’t believe me. “Now, you’ve been full of shit with me on this once already, Quinn. Don’t let the fact that your old man and me go back fool you into thinking I won’t run your ass in if you blow this for us.”
“Just do me a favor,” I said.
“Name it.”
“Anyone asks you how you guys knew this was going down, it was an anonymous tip, okay? None of the actual story. That way, if anyone gets loose lipped…”
Richardson had been around a while. “Gotcha. But… Quinn, goddamit, why would you be asking me to keep things quiet if you didn’t know anything about the other painting?”
“Detective, have I done anything so far but make you look good?”
He frowned. But, like I said, Richardson had been around for a while. “Fine, but you don’t wrap this up quick, I’m coming after an explanation.”
“You do that ‘bad-cop intimidation’ thing really well. You could play the gruff police captain in an eighties action comedy.”
Richardson momentarily closed his eyes and took in a lungful of air. “When you were a kid, your old man used to come to the tavern and tell us what a pain in the ass you were. If his liver ever fails, I wouldn’t necessarily blame the state of crime in Philly for it.”
“You know I’m seeing him in a couple of hours. You want I should say hello?”
“Better yet,” he said, “where you drinking?”
“Druid.”
He nodded and smiled. “What my old lady don’t know, you know? I swear, working homicide is the best fucking job ever, because at least 50% of the shitheads you deal with are dead. But I still got to unwind every now and then, you know?”
Oh yeah. In this town, who didn’t?
My phone rang just as I was pulling away from the train station.
“Given that there are police cars all over the neighborhood around 30th Street station, and given that I am to understand you were there, am I to also understand you have something to fucking tell me, Quinn?” Vin the Shin asked.
Ah, hell. I had to call him soon enough anyway. “Yeah. Good news, I tracked down the two guys who knocked over your condo.”
“This is good news indeed, young bull. I feel my temper subsiding at a rate of which my doctor would approv
e.”
“Bad news, they’re both already dead.”
The line was silent for a moment. “That’s … unfortunate.”
“Yeah, but if it’s any consolation, the two guys that clipped them are sitting about a hundred yards away from me right now in the back of a cruiser.”
He was quiet again for a moment, but then said, “Quinn, I thought I made it clear that I was to hear about these two before anyone else.”
“They were already dead by the time I heard about them,” I said. “Cops fished them out of the river yesterday.”
That seemed to satisfy him a little. “As I said, unfortunate. Still, I owe you one for keeping an eye out for me,” the gang boss said. “You should come by my club. I’ll set you up with one of the girls, a private room.”
His timing couldn’t have been better – but I wasn’t going anywhere near his skanky champagne room. “Actually, sir, I can use a smaller favor.”
Vin the Shin sounded surprised. “You don’t say?”
A half-hour later, we were pulling up outside of David Mince’s building. I knew the little sociopath wasn’t going to listen to me and I sat on the front seat, separated by the raised chauffeur’s divider. But Terrasini had left the audio on between the two compartments.
“You comfy up there, Quinn?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Terrasini,” I said.
“Good. I’ll have a word with the kid, and everybody’s happy. Now let’s get this fucking over with. Paulie, go get the kid. If he’s not there, find out where the fuck he is. Quinn, does he got a car?”
“No, Mr. Terrasini, I don’t think so.”
“Good,” he said, crossing his fingers contentedly on his stomach. He could have been someone’s grandfather, out for an afternoon drive. But if anyone could scare David Mince straight, it was Vin the Shin.
A few minutes later, the door opened, and Paulie shoved Mince into the car. I listened over the intercom, trying to peek through the smoked glass – raised at the mob boss’s insistence, and without an argument from me.
For the first few seconds, no one said anything. Then Terrasini spoke up.
