“How much?”
“Enough. He said the ‘adjustment,’ I guess that’s supposed to be chiropractor humor, in cash, was to make up for my uncooperative nature.”
“Weasel. How about I see to it he needs more than a bone crusher?” I was kidding, but only because I knew she wouldn’t want that.
“Aren’t you sweet? But then I’d have nobody to take me out and he’d still have that sword over my head.” She shook her head. “I’m going to have to start over again, probably in a different state. Maybe Jersey or Delaware.”
My head was spinning with names from Ryan’s list. Some ideas started to percolate.
“I hate to tell you that might not make a difference. I think insurance crimes might be a federal thing.” I was outrunning my legal knowledge fast, but I remembered reading something about it when I was worried that I might get cut off for my injury.
“Wonderful. The kicker is that he has two different rental agreements from me, including one that says I’ll pay the higher rate.”
“How?”
“I told you I was an idiot. He slipped in an extra form on me when I was signing and I read the first one but didn’t check the second. Now he has a version with my real signature.”
“Son of a …” Now the wheels were really spinning in my brain. “Where does he keep the contracts?”
“I don’t know, in his office I guess, unless he took it home. Why?”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“No. He’s very secretive. I don’t even know his original real name, he even uses Barnaby on his contracts. What are you thinking?”
“Me? Nuttin’. I just noticed a long line of black cats that are about to cross his path, that’s all.”
Chapter 11
Rollie’s Place
I didn’t get back to sleep the remainder of the night, but once the sun came up hunger shoved me out of bed.
Rollie topped off my coffee and listened to me tell him about Sandy’s situation.
“Slimy. What’s the old one about a deal that’s too good to be true?”
“Yeah. He thinks he has her. Unfortunately, she agrees.”
“Am I hearing you right? You’re going to let that crap stand?”
“That hurts me, Rollie,” I said. “Of course not. Just trying to establish the rules of engagement.”
“All right, the world makes sense again. I’m in.”
I hadn’t thought I could keep him away. “I guess we can’t shoot the bastard,” I joked. “But other than that, there’s only one real rule.”
“Yeeees?” Rollie asked.
“Don’t get caught.”
* * *
Lansdale: Doc Crock’s Place
“Any problems?” I asked Doc Crock after he invited me inside.
“My whole life is a problem,” Doc said. “But I’m guessing you meant the meds. Money always talks. I have them.”
I was ready to roll and stood waiting. “I think this is the part where you hand me what I paid for and I’m on my way.”
He looked at me like I was nuts. “No, this is the part where I offer you a beer or some tea or whatever and we talk about the Eagles or the weather or whether or not you’re getting laid these days.”
“Huh?”
“Ryan said you were bright. Now would be a great time to start acting like it.”
“You lost me.”
Doc’s face hardened. His jaw set and he stared at me. “Does the term ‘low profile’ mean anything to you? The neighbors mind their business, but if cars show up for five minutes and then drive off, what does that look like?”
Oh, yeah. “Like a drug deal?”
“There’s the gray matter I was waiting for. And they’d be right, wouldn’t they?” Doc shook his head. “If you’re going to stand in for Ryan you better wise up quick. You want to be a sneak, start thinking like one or you’re going to get pinched or clipped by someone who never took a Hippocratic Oath.”
“All right.” I felt just as dumb as he seemed to think I was.
“Wait here and contemplate your navel for about fifteen. I’ll be back.” Doc disappeared through a door. I heard the lock from the other side.
When he returned, he handed me the old scrip bottle, now stuffed with white pills. “Like I told you before, this should last a month at the rate on the original scrip. When you need more, bring this back. Give me some lead time and I can do the same for about half the cost.”
“Okay, thanks.” I stuffed the pill bottle in the pouch in front of the gray hoodie I was wearing.
“Not exactly professional grade, smuggler-approved, but there shouldn’t be any reason for anyone to be suspicious. Try not to get pulled over.”
I was just hoping to get the stuff out of my hands as fast as possible.
* * *
On the way to the state liquor store to find Ross it occurred to me that I would place Rollie in jeopardy by pulling any of this activity while in his home. He hadn’t said a word, but I knew how things worked. An ambitious prosecutor could tangle the home up in some RICO case crap. Rollie could even lose his house.
As soon as I had the thought, the solution popped into my head. Anything I did that was what I thought of as “Ryan’s list” stuff might as well be done from Ryan’s house.
* * *
Fine Wine and Good Spirits, Girard Ave.
The same lanky guy sat at the counter and the place was busier than the last time I visited. I scanned the store for anyone looking like a cop and kept reminding myself this wasn’t heroin and I wasn’t some dealer.
No? Semantics won’t keep you out of the pokey.
Sometimes my conscience was an asshole. I thought of my mom on her sickbed and decided I could still look at myself in the mirror.
This time the guy left his post and called to the back without my having said a word. I remembered how, at the end, hours felt like days at my mom’s deathbed. Any thread of hope was like gold.
Ross appeared a moment later. “Come on back, I have that special order for you.”
Jeeze. Ross’s eyes had such dark circles he looked like he’d put on zombie makeup for Halloween.
I stepped through the door and he led me to a small office. There was nobody inside and he closed the door. “Everything okay?”
I saw his entire world rested on that simple question. I nodded and handed him the bottle. “My guy said that’s a month at the rate on the label, but without more info he can’t guarantee anything.”
“We left guarantee a year ago.” Ross blinked away a tear. “I hope this will do.” He reached inside a desk drawer and removed a dark hand-made wood box. “Teeling 33-year-old. Super rare, one of less than three hundred bottles made. Over three retail.”
“Hundred?” I asked. Too rich for my blood.
“Thousand.” Ross looked insulted. “I can get others, some even nicer. Ryan collected them or something, he said.”
“No, that’s fine. Thank you.” I took the box and was careful not to drop it.
“No, thank you. This is a lifesaver.” Ross clutched the pill bottle in his fist. He dropped his voice into a whisper. “Can I get more, you know, later?”
I hadn’t planned on making this a habit. Or doing it at all, for that matter. But I just nodded.
I thought he was going to hug me so I backed out and slipped out of the store as quickly as I could.
* * *
Fishtown: Ryan’s Place
I drank some outdated instant coffee I’d scrounged from Ryan’s cupboard. I needed the caffeine and didn’t want to leave before my next “appointment” showed up. It had taken more convincing than I had expected to get a face-to-face, but I hadn’t seen any other way.
He was a starred and circled name from Ryan’s list and, if he was half as good as the emphasis implied, just the guy I needed. Sandy’s situation had kept me awake all night and thinking about what she was going through burned in my gut.
I heard a light tap and looked to the front doo
r. I didn’t see anyone and thought I just wasn’t used to all the noises the old house made.
Tap, tap, tap.
I realized it was the back door.
It was either a prelude to a break-in or my guy was even more squirrely than I realized.
Rollie and I had staged baseball bats by the doors just in case while we were working on the place. You never knew who might have figured the place was empty and we’d need to encourage the riff-raff to keep their distance. I moved to the door and saw a masked figure in a hoodie hovering by the back step.
My adrenaline kicked hard and I hurried as fast as I could without popping the scar tissue on my knee, another way of saying a fast walk, and snagged the bat.
The guy in the mask was barely taller than Tom, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Kids didn’t need much strength to pull a trigger and this place was as good as any for a gang initiation.
By now the guy must have seen or at least heard me coming. He didn’t run and I noticed both hands were buried in his pockets.
I snatched the door open with one hand and brought the bat up. I was close enough to take his head off if his hands so much as left the pockets. “Whattyawant?”
The eyes behind the mask went wide and I heard “Oh, shit” from behind the bandana. I could see it was a white guy and the voice sounded young.
“Hands, slow out of the pockets and empty, or I cave in your skull,” I growled and got close enough that he’d never get away before I got in a good lick. Judging by his size one would be more than enough.
“Dude, you invited me!” the guy squeaked.
“You’re VoxPox?” I didn’t have a real name but hoped I would soon, as this moniker was right out of a videogame chatboard.
I saw pale pink palms come out of the pockets. No weapons and they were shaking.
Ryan, this your idea of a joke?
“Who did you expect? Are you Kyle?”
I almost told him to call me Mr. Logan but lowered the bat and turned aside. “That’s me. We spoke on the phone. Ryan said it was okay, right?”
The kid had sounded older on the phone. Fear factor?
“Ryan said a lot of things,” he said. “You sure you aren’t going to crack me?” Jeez he sounded like he hadn’t hit puberty yet.
“The neighborhood can be an adventure sometimes. Where are you from?”
The guy came into the house. “I’ve never been inside here before. I thought it’d be different.”
I wasn’t surprised. I barely saw the place even when we were tight growing up. Ryan was a private guy in many ways and weird about who met his parents. He didn’t change after they were gone. The whole place was like a weird shrine.
“Are you going to lose the anarchist-chic look or what?” I pointed to the dopey bandana and hood.
The guy paused. “You don’t need my real name. Why do you need to see my face?”
“Ryan told me what you look like,” I lied. “You better match the description or it’s ‘Batter up,’ got it?”
He let a sigh like the teen I expected. “Fine. But I’m not used to dealing with people I don’t know.”
“Tell me about it.”
The guy removed the mask and I tried to conceal my surprise. Not a teen, and not a guy.
VoxPox was a young lady, probably in her early twenties. She had mousy brown short-cropped hair and a pretty face, outside of a droop on one side that went from her left eye to her mouth.
“Happy?” She had a defiant spark in her eyes.
“You can’t be too careful,” I said.
“I can see Ryan never told you everything.”
I knew I shouldn’t have felt defensive but did anyway. “Not necessary.”
“Yeah it is. I don’t want to talk shop while you’re wondering and wondering.”
“Fine. What happened to your face?” I was curious.
“A stroke. When I was fifteen. Believe that shit?”
“I thought you sounded like a kid, but that was when I expected you to be a guy. Your voice sounds unaffected.”
“So, Ryan never said what I look like.” Her smile was kind of crooked, but it seemed to suit her, like she was hiding a secret. Probably she was.
“Busted. No, he didn’t.”
“You’re funny. As for the voice, you’re hearing years of therapy and speech training. I was going to get into acting, but I’m not exactly ready for my closeup.”
“It makes you distinctive,” I offered.
“Ooh, I could star in the all new Really Diff’rent Strokes.”
She’d had that one teed up and ready to go. “The droop isn’t the problem, it’s the chip on your shoulder, but I’m not your shrink or your life coach.”
“That’s good. I don’t do sympathy discounts.”
“Ryan suggested you for a reason, I hope. Are you as good as he says?”
“Better.” She walked in to the living room. “Whoa. The seventies called and asked for their decorator back.” She turned to me. “When is he coming home anyway?”
I shook my head. “Can’t say. A long time, could be permanent. Things got hot for him around here. You’re stuck with me for now, but I can pay.”
“You’ve worked with Ryan over in Iraq?”
How much did this girl already know about me? “Yeah, which put me halfway across the world a lot of the time. The company is in trouble right now. I might be home for good.”
“Okay. Ryan and I did a lot of barter.”
“I hear that quite a bit. Let’s find out if you can help me first,” I said. “I guess I need a hacker.”
She grimaced. “Anybody can do that. I’m a data manipulation artist.”
“You just made that up.”
That crooked smile again. “Not bad, huh?” She plopped into a chair and I thought maybe she was starting to relax. “Lay it on me. What do you need?”
Where to start? “My sort-of girlfriend—”
“No stalking.”
“Nothing like that. Her landlord is blackmailing her and I need to get some documents. I realized snatching the hardcopies probably wouldn’t do the trick.”
I told her the situation and she listened with a focused stare at the faded carpet. I noticed all the wisecracks vanished while she took in the details.
“He needs his ass kicked,” she said.
“Agreed. Two things about that: I went that route once with someone else and got locked up for my trouble, and even after what this jerk has pulled, I don’t think that’s what Sandy would want.”
“Where do I come in?”
“I need someone to get into this guy Barnaby’s office and find that copy of the fraud lease, but I assume he must have backups. Even if we found all the bogus leases, we still have a problem with Sandy linked to the scam clients. Those would show in the doctor’s records not to mention the insurance company who paid on the claims.” I stopped when she looked at me like I was nuts.
“Slow down there, sport,” she said. “You want me to hack into this goofus Barnaby’s system, and some shady doctor and then a big insurance company, and do what to them exactly?”
“It sounds like a lot when you put it like that.” I paused. “Look, I guess I need advice as well as expertise.”
“I don’t want us to get on the wrong foot here since we just met.” She stretched her neck and I could hear the vertebrae crackle. “Let me be clear. I’m not a ninja or cat burglar. I don’t do B&E’s, lock picking, any of that crap, okay?”
“I thought—”
“Never mind what you thought. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have called. You definitely want me to check this dude’s system. And I love solving mysteries like an alter ego. I’ll be happy to snoop the doctor’s stuff too, but I’m not about to go take on a big company’s finance system, not without a good reason and for this, it’s overkill.”
“Fair enough.” I wasn’t a hacker, but the thought of learning what all Barnaby was doing gave me more ideas. “As long as Barnaby and the
doctor have a reason to keep quiet like Sandy does then they lose their leverage. Even more so if we find out about more sketchy crap that they’re into.”
Her eyes lit up. “Now you’re talking my language! And I’m always down for some counter-blackmail. This cat needs a beat-down, VoxPox style.”
“So, we’re on the same page,” I paused. “You don’t expect me to call you that, do you?”
She thought about it. “For right now, yeah. If we work well together, maybe my name later. VP will do. We superheroes need to protect our secret identities.”
“VP it is. Tell me, if I can get you access, can you find what I need so he’ll leave Sandy alone for good?”
She answered without a trace of a smile. “Do you want him to cuss, cry, or kill himself?”
Chapter 12
Media, Pennsylvania
I sat in my truck just off Route One near Troop K of the Pennsylvania State Police. After getting instructions and a wish list from VP I decided I should look up an old friend. Except Steve Bishop wasn’t a long-lost buddy and we weren’t really friends.
He may have been a dirty cop, but his own screwy ethics made as much sense as anything else. Once upon a time I think he had a promising career with the State Police. I suspect long before he hooked up with Ryan that he was cherry-picking choice bits from the seized property room at the barracks.
He’d expected to retire off the score Ryan plotted right before it blew up in all our faces. Half that score got ripped off and we had to split what was left. That didn’t begin to account for the personal costs. That was the night I nearly got fileted with a knife and Bishop had a nice bullet wound in the ass. Yes, Doc Crock fixed up our bodies, but the damage to Bishop’s retirement portfolio was enough that he wound up back in the property room, corrupt and bitter.
Just my luck.
I picked up a burner phone and used one of the several numbers for Bishop from Ryan’s list. Just to be safe, I made sure it wasn’t an official police line. Sometimes calls were recorded for “quality assurance.”
“Who is this?” Bishop’s voice growled over the line.
“Bishop? Man, time flies.”
Short Cut (The Reluctant Hustler Book 2) Page 7
