“Clever boy,” Sid shot back. “Too bad dead men don’t get to spend their money. You might as well kiss your sorry ass goodbye right now, Richie.” He paused. “Jesus, who’d a thought you had the stones to pull a move like this? I always pegged you for a queer or something like that.”
Richie put his left hand on the trunk top, his body swaying for a moment. His stomach twitched in violent nausea and he squinted to focus. He could feel the sweat forming over his eyes and he quickly ran the back of his gun hand across his forehead. What the hell was his move now? The gun seemed to weigh about a hundred pounds and it almost fell from his hand. Say something, do something. But what? Sid and Dexter were glaring hard at him and he knew they were thinking of lunging out. Richie pulled his head back and managed to steady his .357, moving it slowly and evenly between the two men. His mouth was so dry by now he wasn’t sure he could say another word. He glanced down at the party mask and hat resting on Sid’s legs and just that quick motion of his head caused the nausea to flare.
Suddenly he spoke, his words sounding thick and tentative. “We’ll see who’s the queer.” Then, before he even realized it was happening, Richie’s body shuddered wildly and he vomited straight out his mouth and nose, all over the two men. They jolted upright screaming, with Dexter crashing his head on the trunk frame. Then they fell back to their original positions, both swearing so broadly that Richie couldn’t make out what they were saying. With his left hand, he jerked the trunk lid closed.
As he took a step back, wiping at his mouth with his free hand, he could hear the two men groaning loudly and banging into the sides and top of the trunk. Almost against his will, he smiled as he thought of that extra helping of pasta in white wine and clam sauce he’d had for dinner. “Enjoy,” he said toward the car, his grin widening.
When he got back to his Chevy Blazer, he jumped in and quickly drove east. It would probably take Sid and Dexter hours to get free and they wouldn’t be thinking all that clear once they were out. Still, Richie had to get Tina fast. Their contingency plan in case something went wrong was for them to leave Colorado. Right now. They each had a suitcase packed full of clothes in the back of the Blazer. As he drove, he picked up his cell phone and called her at work.
“Get out of there,” he told her when she answered. “Grab whatever we need and get the hell moving. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes in front of Currigan.”
“What happened?” Her voice stayed calm.
“Sid Wahl happened, is what. He made me. I thought you said he never did pickups.”
“He was there? He doesn’t…I mean not usually. From what I heard, he’s only done that maybe twice.”
“Well, make that three times,” he responded. “And he was working with that psychotic Indian, or whatever he is. Calley. I ’bout wet my pants when those two came out the door.”
“Dexter? He never makes pickups either. Almost never, anyhow. Are you sure they knew it was you?”
Richie said nothing at first. “It’s a long story but Wahl ended up calling me ‘Richie boy, Tina’s friend.’ I’d say that’s a pretty good indication they made me.”
“Damn,” she said. “Rudy’s going to want us dead for sure.”
“He has to find us first. Plus, Sid and Dexter are furious. We had a little accident that’s not sitting too well with them right about now. Grab that stuff and get going.”
Tina looked at the phone for a long time after she hung up. Running her hand down the front of her skirt, she shook her head. They’d planned for the worst but she’d never really thought it would happen. Other than cops stumbling into the alley, Richie being recognized was about the only thing that could go wrong. Now Rudy would know for sure that she was involved. Two and two always equals four, even to an utter bozo like Rudy Fontana.
And he’d be doubly furious because she’d had a position of trust. Although only twenty-nine, Tina Gillis had worked for him for nearly four years. First as a topless dancer at one of his strip joints and later as full manager of his three massage parlors. Finally as his Gal Friday. But she never turned tricks. Didn’t have to. When she was stripping, she’d make an easy twenty-five hundred a week just for shaking it up a few hours a night. All smiles and flying red hair, moving around the stage like a jungle cat, Tina seemed to just magically pull the fives and tens out of their pockets from across the room.
In her current job, she helped with the overall operation of Rudy’s incredibly lucrative sex-for-sale empire scattered throughout Denver. She ran personal errands, advised him on hirings and firings, kept his appointments straight and his office organized, and was a part-time confidante. He didn’t tell her everything, but she knew plenty. Like when and where the cash pickups were made.
For his part, Rudy liked Tina from the first day he met her. Oddly, the attraction was never sexual. She was much sharper than the rest of his girls: dependable and with a work ethic that would make a Japanese CEO blink. He trusted her completely. She knew that, which is what made her think she’d be above suspicion for the robbery. But all that changed when Sid recognized Richie.
Tina walked to her file cabinet in Rudy’s outer office and opened the bottom drawer. Muffled downtown traffic noise from Champa Street outside the window was the only other sound. She grabbed the two fat file folders she’d been assembling over the past few months. The Denver Vice Bureau would give up doughnuts forever just to get their hands on them. They contained names, numbers, code words, addresses, and dates, along with cryptic ledgers. Also, they held a couple of dozen photos of naked middle-aged men frolicking with Rudy’s girls, doing things that a Doberman in heat probably wouldn’t even consider. Tina recognized several of the johns from local television and newspaper stories. These were important men. Although she didn’t understand all the material, she was pretty sure that she had enough goodies to put Mr. Fontana behind bars for all eternity, plus ten. Her and Richie’s life insurance policy. She stuffed the folders into her large purse and glanced around the room one final time.
“So long, Rudy,” she whispered. “Thanks for the severance package.” With that she walked out and headed to the nearby Currigan Exhibition Hall to meet Richie.
TWO
Streeter just knew that the dipshit in the fancy Saab was going to plow into his Buick. Driving slowly past the parking-lot entrance, he’d noticed that the driver, instead of looking ahead, was perched up on his Yuppie butt, one hand on the wheel, and studying his reflection in the rearview mirror. Combing his hair with his right hand as his new convertible rolled forward. Immediately after they collided, Streeter pulled over. This would really mess up the rush-hour crunch on First Avenue. He got out and glanced at his right rear quarter panel. Not much of a collision. He wouldn’t even bother repairing a fifteen-year-old tank like the Buick. Just tell the Saab moron to be careful and then head on home.
“I had the right-of-way,” the other driver said as he walked to the front of his car. He nodded toward the traffic light, which was now in his favor. “Look.” His voice was high and whiny. “It only comes in one shade of green. That one! Yours was red.”
He was maybe thirty, tanned, and well dressed. And there was a pinched-up arrogance about him that said he wasn’t about to take the fall for some lumbering jerk in an American car. A brown one, no less.
“Those lights change color from time to time,” Streeter said firmly. “You don’t have to be a Supreme Court justice to figure this one out. I had the green light, and besides, you’ve got front-end damage and that usually means you’re at fault. Which planet did you learn to drive on?”
The young man raised his shoulders in indignation and pointed at the Buick. “The same one where you got that piece of shit.”
Streeter glanced at the clogged, late-afternoon traffic. They were in front of Denver’s posh Cherry Creek Shopping Mall. He shook his head. “Look, there’s not much damage for either of us. Let’s just forget it. Life’s too short to deal with insurance claims adjusters.”
; The Saab guy wasn’t buying any of that. He went back to his car to get paper on which to write Streeter’s name and license number. He was gone a couple of minutes, and just as he returned, a Denver motorcycle cop pulled up behind the Buick and parked. The officer got off and approached them, studying the damage. “Back up into the lot,” he finally said. “Both of you.”
They did as ordered. Streeter was hesitant about giving the cop his license. As a bounty hunter and part-time PI, he valued his privacy so much that he didn’t even have a license in his own name. When an old friend of his who looked like him had died a few years earlier, Streeter had sort of inherited his driver’s license. By now, it had been renewed, with Streeter’s photo. The cop silently read it: Sex: M; Height: 6'2"; Weight: 220 lb.; Birth Date: 4/22/53; Eyes: Brown; Hair: Brown. He noted the address, which used to be the friend’s. When he finished, he took the Saab driver’s license and clipped it to his ticket pad. Then he started writing him a citation, no questions asked.
“You have got to be joking,” the Yuppie said. “I had the right-of-way. This clown even suggested that we leave. That must mean something.”
The cop stopped writing. “It means you should have listened to him. The one with the front-end damage most always gets the ticket, pal.”
When Streeter got home, he looked for his partner, Frank Dazzler. The two men lived and worked in a converted church on the fringes of Denver’s booming Lower Downtown: about a mile northeast of Coors Field, where the Rockies played, and two miles due north of the downtown financial district. The old warehouse/liquor store area had been deteriorating for years. Then, in the early nineties, the new baseball field and a sharp upturn in urban real-estate values changed all that. On all sides of the ballpark, ancient brick buildings were converted to lofts, brew pubs, and restaurants, or leveled for parking lots. Those improvements hadn’t reached Dazzler’s Bail Bonds yet, but the down-and-dirty mood of the area around the church was shifting.
Streeter headed back to Frank’s first-floor office. An ex–sheriff’s deputy, Dazzler lived in the rear of the church and had a work area in the old rectory. When Streeter got there, his partner was lying on the couch across from a stained-glass window on the west wall. Frank was wearing a red sweatshirt, black running shorts, white Nikes, and plaid socks that came up almost to his knees. There was a gray towel over his face and he was asleep. A few years earlier, in his late fifties, Frank had taken up racewalking to keep his expanding waistline in check. “I’m starting to look like a duck with an eating disorder,” he had told Streeter back then. “Guy my age can’t let too many things go south.”
Streeter wasn’t surprised when Frank took up exercising for the first time in his life. Frank had been a widower since just before he moved into the church in the mid-seventies. He tended to give people long-winded lectures on the building’s varied history. Built shortly after the turn of the century, the church had gone through several incarnations under different exotic Christian denominations. The two men took actual ownership of the place in the mid-eighties, when the previous owner put it up for a surety bond for his son, who subsequently fled to Mexico. Frank loved the place and planned to live there forever. He even had jumped into a romantic relationship with the owner of a feminist self-defense school that he rented space to on the first floor. Coincidentally, that’s when he started exercising. For such a tough-looking man, Frank was highly conscious of his appearance. He usually wore linen suits in summer, spring, and fall, while favoring navy and charcoal sport coats in winter. With a quick smile, thick hair, and deep-blue eyes, he still cut a hell of a figure.
The bounty hunter stared at the bondsman. Frank’s stomach moved up and down, regular as an iron lung. The two men had been partners for eleven years and Streeter thought of Frank as a father figure. He reached down and gently shook his shoulder. “Hey, old guy,” he said. His voice was low and calm as he lifted the towel. “Wake up. It’s almost time for your afternoon feeding.”
Frank’s head moved from side to side in confusion, his eyes remaining closed. His mouth made a smacking sound and finally he looked up. “Wha’? Feeding?” Focusing on the man bending over him, he added, “It’s you. I just been out walking for over an hour. Passed everything on two legs like they were made out of cement. Go ahead with the wisecracks, but I’m probably in better shape than you are, Street.” He sat up.
“I’m sure of it.” Unlikely, as Streeter was a former college football player who worked out almost daily with weights in the church’s basement. “You’re a regular poster boy for the Lawrence Welk Show.”
Streeter stepped back to let him get up. Frank moved to the middle of the room and, yawning, arched his back. Then he went behind the huge desk in front of the window and dropped into a swivel chair. He stared at Streeter, who was now seated on the other side of the desk. Soft pastels from the setting sun filtered through the colored window and made the room feel like Christmas.
“Stick around for a while, okay?” Frank asked. “I got a call today from an old pal. Martin Moats. We’ve known each other for at least a couple of centuries now. Marty’s a real character from out in the middle of nowhere. A little farm town on the Western Slope. A self-made millionaire, but money or not, the guy still acts like a hick with an attitude. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t shake the hayseeds out of Marty. God knows, his wife’s tried to give him some class, but he’s from the old school all the way. Usually pretty tight with a buck, too.” Frank paused, pondering that. “He’s coming by in a minute and he wants to talk to us. He asked that you be here.”
Martin “Marty” Moats was the self-proclaimed Waterbed King of Colorado’s Front Range. He owned thirty-four stores stretching from Fort Collins in the north all the way south to Pueblo. “For Sleep That Floats, See Marty Moats.” The slogan jangled relentlessly over the radio and television. As his own spokesman, Moats was better known than the governor.
“What does the waterbed guy want with me?” Streeter asked.
Frank shrugged. “He didn’t go into any details, but it seems he wants you to find someone. Wanted to know if you still do skip tracing.” He glanced toward the door. “Ask him yourself. I think that’s him now.”
They could hear the church’s front door open and close, followed by footsteps approaching down the hall. “Frank, what the hell kind of place is this?” Marty Moats’s familiar baritone rumbled into the office. “Looks like the damned headquarters of the German High Command.”
Frank rolled his eyes at Streeter and stood up. “That’s our Marty. The man never had an opinion that he didn’t immediately let the whole world in on.” Then he glanced at the door and yelled, “In here, you old farmer.”
Martin Moats had a way of taking over a room immediately. He looked slightly older and larger than on TV. More impressive, too. Barely an inch shorter than Streeter, he carried himself stiff as a surfboard and his dark gray eyes honed in on whomever he met. Although he was smiling, those eyes were serious, almost sad. He squinted into the darkening office. “Jesus, you running a gay bar in here, Frank? Colored windows and no lights. Very romantic.”
Frank leaned over his desk and switched on his reading lamp. “That any better, Marty? You been here less than a minute and already you called me a Nazi and a bunny rabbit. How does Marlene put up with you?”
Marty stiffened even more but his face and voice both softened. “I don’t know, Frank. But I’m just glad she does. We celebrated our forty-sixth anniversary last week, if you can believe that.”
“I can’t.” Frank smiled back. He took a step forward and the two men hugged. “Give her my regards, huh?” the bondsman said as he backed off.
Streeter now stood and faced the visitor. Marty glanced at him over Frank’s shoulder and his smile instinctively widened. “Is this your linebacker?” he asked as Frank stepped aside and he moved in Streeter’s direction. Seeing the bulk and cut-up muscles under Streeter’s gray T-shirt, he added, “Looks like the Broncos could use you.�
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“Those days are over,” the bounty hunter said as he stuck out his hand. “I’m just Frank’s partner now. Streeter.”
Marty nodded and grabbed his hand, shaking it with a strength surprising for a man of seventy. “I’m Marty Moats and I sell waterbeds. Exactly what do you sleep on, son?”
Streeter felt a pinch of annoyance at the sales question. “Mostly my side, but sometimes on my stomach. Frank tells me you’re looking for someone.”
The Waterbed King read his mood and appropriately shifted gears. “You got that right.” He sat in a chair in front of the desk, pulling a thin Corona cigar and a lighter from his pants pocket as he did. His matching salt-and-pepper hair and mustache looked old-fashioned but distinguished. The mustache was trimmed tight as a worm, and it gave him the look of a Waspy Cesar Romero. He smelled of faded cologne and his stomach bubbled over his belt when he settled in. But he sat as proud as he stood. “My nephew. No one’s seen him for a week or so. Not that I give much of a rip, myself. To be perfectly honest, the boy’s a flake and he’s not the brightest thing in long pants, either. Move the toilet over a foot or so and he’d piss on the floor. But Marlene, now, she thinks the sun rises and sets on Richie’s ass.”
“Is that unusual? You not hearing from him for that long?” Streeter asked as he sat in the chair next to him.
Marty fired up his cigar and studied the burning end. Then he stuck the red Bic back into his pocket and looked at Streeter. “Not really. Like I said, the kid’s a flake. He usually doesn’t shine around unless he wants something. But this is different.” He glanced at his cigar again. “He’s really in trouble this time.”
He seemed lost in thought and didn’t say anything for a while, so Frank spoke. “Mind telling us what makes you think that?”
Streeter Box Set Page 46
