Streeter Box Set

by Michael Stone

  Todd felt himself getting even more aroused. Karen was about his age—thirty-four, give or take. But she acted like she’d been dealing with defense lawyers for fifty years. The perfect trial advocate, Karen Maples had it all. She was smart, aggressive, combative, and would rather die of a brain tumor than admit she was wrong or in trouble. Losing was out of the question.

  Finally, Karen squinted at him in deep concentration. She liked Todd, the DA’s investigator assigned to her. Pleasant-looking, thin and blond with a pale, narrow mustache. They’d worked together on a few cases and he was no fool. Plus, he treated her with deference bordering on affection. That didn’t happen to her often. Especially the affection part.

  “What was it you wanted to see me about?” she asked. “I hope it’s not bad news. This thing with Bosco and Kostas is coming together in—what?—less than two weeks to go. I sure don’t need any bad news, Todd.”

  He frowned briefly and then cleared his throat. “Well, there is one small item you might want to know about. The guys down in Vice are pretty pissed about Mitch Bosco. Apparently, he’s been moving a little product lately and he’s not even trying to be cool about it. Vice could have nailed him last week and they don’t get why we’re holding them back. I blew some smoke at them yesterday, but they’re still not happy.” He shrugged. “I don’t think we should be, either. Bosco’s giving us Kostas but he’s getting a free ride on that gun-sale thing. Not a bad deal. You should try and rein him.”

  Karen sat up, frowning. “You’re right about that. Nailing Ted Kostas’ll be nice, but it’s not like I can build a career around it. Still, I’m not going to allow some little chicken-shit dime-bag pot arrest to stand in the way of this sting.”

  “Coke, not pot.” Todd shifted in his chair. “Bosco’s moving coke.”

  “Whatever. You get my meaning.”

  “Look, Karen,” he said, “I know how bringing Kostas down would be nice, and how we need Bosco to do that. But he’s being a total jerk lately. We can’t lose control of the guy.”

  “You’re right. Also, let’s see if we can move things up. Work on getting me those cars a little sooner, Todd.” Karen leaned forward in her chair. “This should be a fairly simple matter. Bosco hooks our guys up with Kostas and they sell him the hot cars. Ba-da-bing. We all go home happy except for Kostas who goes to jail.” She paused. “The more I think about this sting, the less enthused I get. I know Ted Kostas used to run a decent-sized operation, but he’s by himself now. Strictly small potatoes and dumb as a post. Let’s make it quick and painless.”

  Todd nodded. “I’ll see what I can do about the cars. That shouldn’t be much of a problem. They’re just loaners.” In terms of ambition, Todd was a comer all the way, and he liked working with Karen. “I’m with you one hundred percent on this, and I’ll deal with the Vice people. But try and keep Bosco in line.”

  She nodded and gave him a smile. “I hate talking to that fool. Mr. Success. You should hear him. Always quoting this self-help junk. But I’ll give him a call. Anything else?”

  “Actually, yes.” Todd stood up and looked down at her, taking a deep breath. “I’m wondering if we could have dinner together sometime soon. Tonight would work for me.”

  Karen’s head bobbed slightly while she considered his proposal. She took him in with one hard glance. She had already been through a messy office romance back in Pittsburgh. But even Karen did not live by work alone, and Todd did have a trim build and nice blue eyes. Plenty of beach-boy hair, too. And he was a worker. No doubt about that.

  “But not for me,” she said slowly. Then she added, “Tomorrow night should. We can catch up on the case while we’re eating.”

  “Great,” he said. Yeah, right, he thought. Dinner on a Friday night after work. Dinner and drinks. We’ll just do that catching-up thing.

  FOURTEEN

  Ted Kostas walked from his car with the 387 serial-number stickers he’d spent the day scraping off of that many stolen color-television sets jammed into his various pants and shirt pockets. He thought it might be a prudent idea to get rid of them fairly quickly. Ted figured the most he could handle would be explaining why he had all those hot sets sitting in the garage at his place. “Holy shit, officer,” he could say. “You tell me those things were lifted from a railroad car the other night? I think I read something about that in the papers. Believe me, I had no idea when my friend asked me to store the stupid things that they were the exact same Sonys that I’d been reading about. No way in hell I would have done it if I knew they were stolen. Like how could I know that?”

  But explaining how the serial-number tags ended up in his pockets was another matter entirely, and Ted well knew it. He walked to the middle of the darkened alley behind some stores on 38th Street, near Federal Boulevard. The alley was randomly chosen by him as he drove around the West Side, quite a distance from his place. On one side of him were the backs of stores, on the other were garages for the houses that fronted on 39th Street. Ted was carrying a large tin of lighter fluid and his ancient Zippo. He figured he’d burn the whole batch of stickers and be done with it. No one knew him around there. Glancing up and down the alley and then at the backs of the houses, he didn’t see anyone. He knelt between a big blue Dumpster and the side of a wooden garage and set the metal Zippo and the fluid on the ground. Fifty-seven years old, and carrying an extra forty-odd pounds around, he found kneeling no small task. First he stroked his gray beard a couple of times, then he started emptying his pockets alongside the lighter and fluid. Within a minute or so he had piled all of the sticky-backed serial tags neatly about two feet from the garage.

  Ted stood up, one knee cracking loudly. Getting old is hell, he thought. Glancing around one more time, he still saw no one. Not at this time of night. It had to be after ten. A working-class Mexican neighborhood like this, he didn’t expect to see anyone out and about. So he knelt again, grabbed the tin, and started squeezing the fluid onto the pile in front of him. As the tin got about half empty, Ted heard a car coming down the alley behind him. Slowly, he half turned in that direction while still draining the tin. As his head turned, his arm with the fluid moved up, too, sending a thick spray of the stuff along the ground and onto the side of the garage. Ted, not being what anyone would describe as an astute man, didn’t notice this as he listened to the approaching vehicle. Before the car got anywhere near where he was squatting, it stopped and backed out of the alley.

  The stolen-television fence then turned back to the job at hand and finished dumping the fluid. He dropped the tin onto the pile, picked up the old Zippo, and clicked it open. As an afterthought, he pulled a Camel nonfilter from the pack in his shirt pocket and put it between his lips. First he lit the cigarette and then he moved the lighter over the pile. The fluid caught like crazy right off, making a harsh popping sound and sending flames almost a foot straight up, so they almost caught Ted’s beard. The Greek, as he was sometimes known, shot his head back to avoid the flames and quickly stood up. Quickly for him, anyhow.

  “The hell?” he muttered as he watched the flames move with amazing speed from the pile over the trail of fluid he’d squirted on the ground, which was covered with dry, dead leaves. From there, the fire silently moved a few feet up the dry-rotted wall of the old garage.

  Ted stood there and took it all in for a moment before moving around the burning pile and stepping to the garage side, which was going up rather nicely by now. A swath of about two square feet was in flames. With the cigarette still in his mouth, Ted swiped at the wall once with his right hand. He obviously had no formal training in this type of thing. His hand smacked hard against the wood, and immediately he could feel the sting of a burn.

  “Aggggh,” he yelled and bounced back a step.

  His eyes were wide and he looked around for a moment. Then he stomped once at the flames on the ground with his left foot. The bottom of his shoe lingered on the leaves longer than he had intended. Several of the parched leaves clung to it as he finally lifted his fo
ot. Now he was standing there with the garage going up next to him and his one foot raised about eighteen inches off the ground, also on fire.

  “Muthafucka,” he yelped, hopping back away from the garage and then stamping his shoe down several times until the flames went out. He looked at the smoldering shoe for a few bewildered seconds, turned around, and headed back to his car, figuring who gives a rip about some old run-down garage. Certainly not Ted Kostas. By the time he made it to the big Volvo and got inside, the flames were moving slightly farther up the garage wall. The inside of his car quickly smelled like burned rubber from his shoe.

  Driving to the end of the alley, Ted shot a glance in his rear-view mirror. He could see that a fair chunk of the garage wall was engulfed, which didn’t bother him much, for he assumed that meant that the serial-number stickers were history by now. Ted figured he’d done what he’d set out to do, so he was feeling okay about himself by the time he wheeled out of the alley. Still, he silently cursed the fact that he had to be out at that time of night getting rid of the stickers. If he’d had a crew to help him he could have just passed the work on to one of them. Maybe they could figure out a way to do the job right. Even a partner would be nice. But he never could find anyone who’d work with him. At least not for any extended period of time. Long ago, Ted had resigned himself to the life of a lonely fence and petty thief. At least it beat working for a living. Probably. And he could move the merchandise when it was available. Made more than decent money most times.

  Then he flashed on the cars he would be getting soon. A couple of new Jaguars, no less. At least if that clown Mitch Bosco came through like he said. This would be the move that would give Kostas some real breathing room. He figured his end would be pushing around the forty-thousand-dollar range. Maybe more. With that nice little thought close to him, he headed back south, to his side of town and a refrigerator full of beer.

  FIFTEEN

  Shortly after ten that Friday morning, Streeter walked out to his old brown Buick, which was parked in front of the church, and headed to Denver’s midtown Capitol Hill section and Mitch Bosco’s place. Fortunately, Mitch’s driver’s license had been renewed on his birthday, a scant three months earlier. Renewed with a current address. That surprised the bounty hunter, because people who lived outside the law rarely did things like keep their licenses current or register to vote. But here was Mitch trotting down to the DMV as he turned forty-two, dutifully giving them his correct address.

  As he drove south on Broadway, Streeter thought of his conversation the day before with Freddy the D. If any good had come from it, he couldn’t see it. The man sat there impassive as a corpse, eating ever so slowly, reacting to nothing. Letting on that he thought Alphonse’s restaurant was still in play, which was not good news. This thing was a long way from over, Streeter thought as he moved east onto Colfax Avenue. But what did he expect? That the D. would fold up because Streeter had worn a leather jacket and talked a little tough? Damn, that Disanto was one big man. Bigger than the bounty hunter himself. A head like a concrete gargoyle, too.

  On Wednesday night, Streeter and Frank had argued about his talking to the D. at all. Frank, the lawman even in retirement, had insisted that Alphonse, Sheri, and Streeter trot down to the police station and lay it all out for the detectives. Streeter had explained why that wouldn’t work. Not with Sheri and her father both refusing to say a word about the card-game robbery or seeing Bosco in West Vail. And the fax didn’t tie Disanto to anything, either. Even Frank had to admit that when he studied it. Way too vague. Earlier on Wednesday, Streeter had tried to interest Detective Carey in Disanto, but what little he could hint at didn’t even raise an eyebrow.

  Now it was time for the second phase of his plan. Tail Mitch and let him know it. If he couldn’t rattle Freddy, maybe he could rattle Bosco. Streeter knew it would be easy for him to let Mitch know he was there. One-man, moving surveillances were difficult. Stay close, chances are he’ll see you. Hang back, you’ll probably lose him. Streeter didn’t have time to follow the man for long and still keep an eye on the Luccis, so he decided to be obvious.

  Mitch lit a Salem 100 and thought of his conversation with Freddy the D. the day before. Freddy had sounded madder than usual and left no doubt he wanted to turn up the heat on Lucci. Fine with Mitch. “Opportunities are for those who are open,” he’d memorized. “Seize them quickly.” He needed the money. Mitch had himself on a savings plan that gave him a projected retirement date of 2011. He’d turn fifty-three that year, and at his current rate of savings, what with Disanto’s jobs, the odd coke deal, other moves he’d get from time to time, and tax-sheltered investments, Mitch figured to have just over eight hundred thousand socked away by then. Enough to retire in close to style. Since he’d begun fashioning his “Ladder of Success,” Mitch had watched his money closely. Although he lived in a decent high-rise apartment building four blocks south of the State Capitol, his rent included heat, utilities, and furniture. “Stay mobile and don’t tie up income,” he’d heard on an investment tape. “A penny saved is two pennies earned.” So Mitch was anxious to get back at it with Lucci. That meant money, plus showing the D. that he wasn’t a total screwup after West Vail.

  He scratched at his chest under the silk bathrobe he wore, thinking about what the D. had told him on Thursday. Who was this bounty hunter Disanto was talking about? Some big, cocky dude who mentioned the cops repeatedly to the D. He didn’t go into any details, but Freddy said that this Streeter guy specifically talked about Mitch. Not fatal, but definitely not good, either.

  “Guy seems to be no stranger to you,” the D. had told him on the phone. Then there was that long, dramatic pause, like he wanted Mitch to confess something. “No stranger at all,” Disanto had concluded.

  Bosco shrugged. Whatever the hell that meant. Not much he could do about it this morning. He figured he’d learn more that night, when they hooked up to discuss the new job. For now, he’d take a quick shower and then head over to talk to Ted Kostas. Iron out a few details on the Jaguar buy. Be good to get that monkey off his back, Mitch thought as he headed down the hall to the bathroom. Let Kostas do the time Mitch should be getting for selling a couple of pieces to an undercover cop. Bargains and shortcuts. That’s how the criminal-justice system worked. Nobody knew that better than him. Giving up Kostas was just part of the cost of doing business.

  Streeter parked almost directly in front of Mitch’s building. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out the paperwork Ronnie’d gotten at the DMV. On her own initiative, she’d also gotten automobile-registration information on all the vehicles Disanto and Bosco owned. Streeter glanced at the plate number for Bosco’s 1986 green Volvo station wagon. Making a mental note of the number, he got out of his car. He looked up and down Pearl Street, straining to find Bosco’s car. After walking south a bit, he noticed a parking lot on that side of Mitch’s building. There it was, the green Volvo wagon. Streeter returned to his car and backed up slightly so he could watch both the front door of the high-rise and the lot.

  Sitting there in his car seat, he thought about old Lucci’s problems. Streeter wondered if he could talk Alphonse into the quite sensible option of selling his prime restaurant. Doubtful. Why should he have any luck if Sheri couldn’t do it? Then he wondered how far Disanto would go to get the place. Can’t get much heavier than arson, and if Disanto had killed the guy in Wyoming, well, he was able to do anything. Streeter struggled to dismiss the thought. No point in worrying, especially on a stakeout. Frank had told him long ago that you’d drive yourself crazy doing that. Streeter had sat there for forty-five minutes when he saw a man come out the front door. From the way Sheri had described Mitch, he figured this must be his boy. He watched the guy walk slowly to the side parking lot and go to the Volvo station wagon. Mitch, all right.

  Bosco took his time unlocking the door and letting the engine warm up once he got inside. He didn’t look around much, but lit a cigarette and finally put the car in reverse. When he g
ot to the curb, Streeter quickly started his Buick and put it into gear. Mitch glanced his way without seeming to notice the old brown car starting up just across from him. Then he turned right on Pearl. Streeter followed him at just over a car length as he drove to Broadway and then south, beyond the Valley Highway. Then took a right followed by a left as he curled around for a few more blocks. Streeter stayed so close he figured that only if Mitch were a complete idiot would he not notice him, especially on those empty side roads.

  Mitch quickly drove the last few blocks to Ted Kostas’s scrap yard. He barely glanced in the rearview mirror the whole time, from what Streeter could see. When he parked in front of the scrap yard, Mitch got out without looking around. The bounty hunter stopped about a half-block behind the Volvo and kept his engine running. Mitch walked to a small gate next to the large gate in front of the driveway leading into the yard. He opened it and went inside, closing it carefully behind him. Then he headed up the drive and went into a tiny building.

  After sitting there for a minute or so, Streeter finally shut off his engine. He got out and moved slowly toward the yard. An ancient, rusty metal sign marked “T.K. Scrap” hung slightly lopsided on the fence near the entrance. Actually, the place was too small to be a junkyard. It was more of a large auto-repair lot. A brick building was on the left , a side yard containing maybe a dozen gutted cars on the right. A short driveway between the two led up to a grimy shack that looked like it once was a small gas station. That was where Mitch had gone. Next to the shack was a narrow pen housing two angry-looking Dobermans. Streeter walked past the place and then turned around and walked slowly back. If Bosco hadn’t noticed him until now, this would probably get his attention.

  When Mitch got inside the shack, he went right to the tiny office in the rear. Ted Kostas was working on a sub sandwich, sitting at a desk that was cramped with smudged papers and car parts.