"We’ll see, Doctor, we’ll see."
He thanked Rick for his co-operation and told him to call if he thought of anything else that might be useful in the investigation, leaving a card with all his phone numbers on it.
After Joe left, Rick spent a few self-congratulatory minutes, thinking about how well he functioned when the pressure was on. Blaming Connie had been ingenious. He wished he had thought of it earlier. Since she was disappearing with the money in exchange for her silence, it was a near-perfect solution to his problem. It would explain her departure to anyone who cared, and a few of the other folks at the clinic had been asking about her.
As he was patting himself on the back, Frances called on the intercom. Rick hoped it was not to announce Mary Lou. He could almost deal with that, but not right now. Maybe later, like a celebration, or a reward, after he thought his way through the whole thing. He knew the cops would be back with more questions. Maybe Sam could get Jimmy to say he had seen Rick here at the clinic all evening on the night of the accident.
Frances interrupted his thoughts again to tell him there was a man on the phone who had called several times and would not leave a message. He maintained that he had something very important to discuss with the doctor. Rick asked her to put the call through.
"Doctor," said the voice on the phone, "I have a certain video that concerns you. It was made by a Hispanic lady, nice looking. I’m sure you know who I mean. You don’t want the wrong people to get that DVD, do you?"
"No, we’re taking care of that," Rick said.
"I was sure you’d feel that way, Doctor. Now the question is, would you like to have the video for your very own, or do you want us to hold it for you?"
Willie thought the "us" was a nice touch. He didn’t want the sucker thinking he was operating solo. That could tempt the doctor to do something dumb.
"See, if you want it your own self, that’s going to cost you a big hunk of money." Willie said. "Maybe you can’t afford that right now. If you wanted us to hold the DVD for safe-keeping, so to say, well, you could pay us, sort of in installments, don’t you reckon?"
"Ahh…," said Rick, thoroughly confused.
"Yeah, I always wanted to make a doctor say ‘Ahh,’" Willie chuckled, feeling pleased with his quick-witted humor. "Tell you what, Doc. You take two aspirins and we’ll call you when we damn well please. Meantime, think about what I said, hear? ‘Bye, now."
Rick stared at the phone, wondering what was going on. He couldn’t imagine who that guy was or where he fit in. He must have gotten the video from Connie. There was nowhere else it could have come from. He told Frances he would be taking a long lunch and walked out to the Porsche. He had to think through this whole thing, and a solo drive in the country sounded attractive to him. There were too many people bugging him lately.
Jimmy took the audio tapes out of his machine. He was going to meet Tony and Sam at Sam’s place. They needed to figure out what to do. While Belk’s information was helpful in certain ways, in others it made life more complicated. This thing about Connie’s father, for example, really increased the complexity of an already unwieldy situation. That was a tough one.
Jimmy had been on the phone for hours this morning trying to track down her old man. He had traced Connie back to L.A. without too much trouble and found out that she had been a beautician before she became a color consultant. He’d discovered from some of his contacts in the club business out there that she had been a teenaged groupie, following some hinky little rock band from place to place. She’d been screwing the lead guitarist, as best one club owner could recall -- guy named Rick Leatherby, who had dropped out of the music scene years ago. Both of them had disappeared.
Jimmy thought all that was interesting, and it was certainly consistent with what they knew, but he couldn’t get a line on her father or any other members of her family. He was ready to write the father off as some drunken hallucination of Belk’s, until he listened in on that phone call Leatherby had gotten a few minutes ago. That had to be the father, or at least some male accomplice of the Barrera broad.
Jimmy also thought it was an interesting wrinkle that the cops had tracked the hit and run back to Leatherby’s car independently. That kind of thing usually happened in the first few hours after an accident or not at all. Some witness must have come out of the woodwork, he guessed. He’d already put his source in the police department to work on that. It probably didn’t matter, but they needed to be ready for anything, it seemed like.
He agreed with Sam that they needed the doctor to run the diet clinic to keep the money-laundering operation going, but this might be tricky. He gave Rick credit for quick thinking, saying he had loaned the car to Connie, but Jimmy thought it would have been smarter if he had kept his mouth shut and called a lawyer, the way any smart crook would have done. This just multiplied their problems.
Now the cops would go looking for Connie. Jimmy knew they would find her. Maybe not as fast as Sam had, because the cops had to play by the rules when it came to looking at private information, but she was stuck in that hospital for at least another month, so they would definitely find her. Then Rick’s story would turn to shit. Connie could blow the whole thing apart.
Now they had a new deadline, not just the one imposed by Connie and her father. They had to settle this and shut Connie up before the cops found her. Jimmy figured once Connie talked to the cops, things would start rolling downhill, with little hope of them being able to get control. Once he talked it over with Sam, he would need to get his police source to work on that one, too. At least it was the same police investigation, the one Denardo was working.
Jimmy wondered if there was any connection to the "Kathy Denardo" Belk had mentioned. Denardo was a common Italian name around Savannah, just like Alfano. Most of the Denardos were straight, hard-working people. Most of the Alfanos, well, they did what needed to be done to take care of the family. Jimmy hadn’t gotten around to asking about Kathy Denardo. He decided he ought to do it now. You never could tell where these things would take you. He picked up the phone, and in a couple of minutes he had his answer.
Day 12, Midday
Ski Cat and Fat Tony were riding out the Tybee Road in Tony’s five-year-old Chevrolet. Ski Cat’s Navigator was parked near the stadium in Daffin Park, where Tony had picked him up at a traffic light on the corner of Washington Avenue and Waters Avenue. Ski Cat had paused during a jog around the park, apparently to catch his breath, but really to wait for Tony. Ski Cat didn’t know what all the extra precautions were for, but he found out as Tony turned onto Waters and drove toward Victory Drive.
"Your place got busted last night," Tony informed Ski Cat.
"Mm-hmm."
"How you reckon they found it, Ski Cat? Your boys been sloppy?"
"Naw. Just that dumb-ass Meatball. Ain’t sloppy -- stupid, what he is." Ski Cat related the events of the night before last, when Meatball had clobbered Joe Denardo. Ski Cat blamed all his troubles on that one mistake.
Tony drove on in silence for a while, working his way through the information Ski Cat had given him. Ski Cat was touching and feeling every part of the Chevrolet he could reach, pushing, pulling, twisting, and turning. Finally, to break the silence, Ski Cat said, "Tony, my man, why for you drive this piece of shit, anyhow. Why you don’t get some good wheels. You big time."
Tony just looked at Ski Cat and shook his head. He pulled over at a gas station and said, "Out. Call one of your boys to come get you. I got to be somewhere. Stay out of trouble. Don’t be sellin’ no drugs until I give the word."
"Yassuh, Boss," Ski Cat said, his big scary grin splitting his face as he saw Tony turn red. Tony was so damn easy, Ski Cat thought.
Sam and Jimmy were already into it when Tony got there. Jimmy told Sam what he had heard on the mysterious phone call to Rick, and how well it fit in with what they already knew about Connie’s plan. They were trying to figure out why Connie’s father had chosen this morning to call Rick. It didn’t s
eem to make any sense to them, unless her father had somehow gotten wind of the fact that they had taken Belk.
They couldn’t imagine a way she could have found that out so quickly. It had only been a few hours. Sam was shaken by the notion that there was more to Connie than they had thought. That made him irritable. He was mad as a hornet when he found out about Leatherby spinning that wild tale to Denardo about Connie driving the car when the girl had been killed. Now the cops were looking for Connie and that put one more factor outside Sam’s control.
Tony walked into the middle of this discussion to announce that the cops had raided Ski Cat’s place early this morning. They had hauled away Little Toby and Meatball, and half a dozen runners, not to mention several thousand dollars and the leftover cocaine. Tony went on to explain that he and Ski Cat had stayed clear of the place ever since Meatball had brained Joe Denardo, practically on the front porch.
Sam went nuts when he heard Joe Denardo’s name a second time in the period of a few minutes. He had known the Denardos all his life. His mother had nagged his father about how fine old Big Joe Denardo had been. How come he was a police lieutenant and Sam’s old man was running a shrimp boat, she had always wanted to know. Then she had wanted Sam to be a nice boy like Joe. She couldn’t see past the shrimp boats, even when the old man had started getting rich. It still made Sam mad, especially when he was already wound up. Now Joe God Damn Denardo was messing in his business.
"Joe fuckin’ Denardo," he roared, fuming with rage.
Tony couldn’t fathom why he was so upset about Ski Cat’s place. He and Ski Cat had both gotten away. They would be up and running again in a few days, once they got through sorting out this Connie Barrera thing.
"Hate to say it, Sam," Jimmy broke in, "but that ain’t all. Last thing Belk said last night before he went to sleep was, ‘Kathy Denardo told.’ We thought it was just drunk talk last night. This morning, I found out Kathy Denardo is now Kathy Owens, the real estate lady. Remember, Barrera had her card and she lives next door. She’s Joe’s sister. Reckon she might be part of this?"
Sam, as furious as he was, didn’t think so. He thought she was a distraction. She lived next door, so her business card on Connie’s refrigerator didn’t mean much. Who knew what that drunk, Belk, was talking about? Besides, he would have called her Kathy Owens. Nobody remembered her as Kathy Denardo. On top of all that, she was a Denardo, and they were pure as the virgin birth.
During a lull in Sam’s temper tantrum, Tony said, "Maybe we ought to get Ski Cat to toss the Owens woman's condo, just to see if she's got anything around that would tie her in with Barrera."
"That's a long shot, Tony," Sam commented.
"Yeah, but it would keep that dumb-ass Ski Cat busy," Jimmy offered. "Otherwise, no telling what kind of trouble that big bastard's likely to get into."
"There's the chance he'll find something, too. There's a lot we don't know about that Barrera woman," Tony argued.
Sam agreed that they obviously didn’t have a handle on Connie. This was such a mess nothing would surprise him. They debated the question of whether Ski Cat was bright enough to search Kathy Owens's condo, or whether Jimmy or Tony should go instead, or whether one of them should go with Ski Cat. Sam didn’t like those options. He agreed that Ski Cat’s intellect put him somewhere between a smart rock and a dumb dirt clod, but Ski Cat was expendable.
If anybody was going to break into Kathy's condo, it should be Ski Cat, solo. There were people around those condos at all hours of the day and night. Lots of the residents were retired people who just peeped out the windows all day, minding everybody’s business. Sam saw this as a high-risk break-in, even in the absence of Kathy's relationship with Joe Denardo.
Breaking into Belk's law office at night was one thing, but this was completely different, in Sam’s view. The law office had required Jimmy’s finesse, and it wasn’t likely to get anybody caught, either. Sam didn’t want to risk Jimmy or Tony on a long shot, which was why they had used Ski Cat to search Connie's condo in the first place.
"It's gotta be Ski Cat, by himself," Sam ordered. "I don't want either one of you taking a chance like that. If he gets busted, it's no big deal. He doesn't know enough to do much damage."
"If Ski Cat finds anything that ties her in, reckon we'll have to take her shrimpin'," Tony said.
Sam didn’t even want to think about that, as much as he hated the Denardos. Kathy and Joe were both straight arrows. Sam knew that; Jimmy and Tony knew that. If Kathy was involved at all, she would have to be innocently holding something for Connie. Sam knew if they took Kathy shrimping they would have to take Joe, or he would kill them all, after he first skinned them alive with a dull butter knife. Besides, cops and their families were off limits. He knew this was a desperate move, but he was desperate.
Ski Cat borrowed Leon’s bateau again and went crabbing on the Wilmington River. This time, he didn’t have Dopey to help him with the break-in, but he thought that would be all right. He could wait until after dark and tie the boat up under the restaurant that was built out over the water. The tide was coming in, and by nightfall it would be high enough so he could get ashore without getting muddy.
He didn’t have any idea what kind of nightlife this woman had; he just knew he couldn’t do the job in the daytime. Tony had been clear in explaining that no matter what happened, Ski Cat was not to harm a hair on this woman’s head because her brother was a cop. Ski Cat thought Tony was old-fashioned about things like that, but Tony was the man.
Connie’s foot didn’t hurt nearly as much now. She was off the painkillers and feeling pretty well, except her foot was still suspended in mid-air. She was bored to distraction with being bedridden. There was nothing good on television and she didn’t have anything to read. She had made a list of a half a dozen favorite authors and given it to one of the nurses with whom she had become friendly. The girl had promised she would go to a bookstore tomorrow, on her day off.
The nurse was a cute, busty little girl with medium-dark skin. Connie thought the most remarkable thing about her was that her bust seemed to change size dramatically from one day to the next, but she didn’t know the girl well enough to say anything about that. The past couple of days, the girl had brought Connie bouquets of cheap flowers. When Connie thanked her, the nurse explained that this cute little guy who said he was a private detective came down the hall every day and hung around until he got a chance to talk to her.
"He's started bringing me flowers. I don't want to take them home; I live alone, and I'm not there much, so it would be a waste. They kind of brighten up your room, and we can both enjoy them here."
"It's kind of you to share them with me. Thanks."
"He's asked me out a couple of times," the nurse volunteered, "but I put him off. I don't know him, and there are lots of weirdos in South Beach. Besides, he looks like one of the Seven Dwarfs, except he's black. He even wears a stocking cap all the time."
Connie was almost sorry she had encouraged the girl’s company. She had taken to spending every spare minute fussing around Connie’s room, talking non-stop. Connie knew that living alone did that to some people. Anyway, she thought, I’ll get some books to read in two days and she won’t be here tomorrow to drive me crazy.
"Sorry to run off, but there's a new patient down the hall who's doing poorly. I've got to stay close to her for a while, but I'll check back with you as soon as I can. If you need anything, just use the call button," the nurse said, as she left Connie's room.
Connie basked in the blessed silence for a few minutes, and then she decided to call Rick and ruffle his feathers a bit. She didn’t want him to get complacent just because she had taken the pressure off. She wondered if Rick’s silent partners had tracked her down yet. She knew he would have to go to them to get the kind of money she demanded. She was sure Sarah’s parents wouldn’t give it to him. She wasn’t even sure whether they had that kind of liquidity.
She had been quite anxious about Rick's mob c
onnection at first. She reasoned that they would track her down, no matter how many false identities she used. To protect herself, she had structured this so that once she made her demand they couldn’t touch her without her revealing their whole scheme to the media.
Belk’s fee for the service she had requested was modest, and once she was out of the hospital, she would duplicate the arrangement with several other lawyers and warn Rick. She wanted to be sure he and his backers understood that it was in their best interest to keep her healthy. As she thought about it, she realized that the plan didn’t actually have to be in place to offer her the protection she needed. They just had to think that it was in place. They had no way of knowing whether she was bluffing.
As Connie made the call, Rick was still perplexed, even after a two-hour drive in the country with the top down. He couldn’t make any sense out of that morning's phone call from the guy about the video.
Connie was surprised that there was relief evident in Rick’s voice when he recognized her on the phone. She cut his greeting short.
"Look, Rick, I just want you to know I’ve changed the rules. I know you’ve talked to your silent partners about this. You need to know that I lied a little bit at first, just to keep it simple. There are more than three copies of the video. All of them are in the hands of people who will disclose them if anything happens to me. If even one of them loses touch with me, you guys are finished. Don’t be surprised if there are other changes in our arrangement, and remember, you need to keep me happy. I may not even continue to negotiate directly with you. You may hear from someone else. ‘Bye." Connie broke the connection.
She was pleased that she had thrown in the part about using someone else to negotiate. Maybe she would even do that. She would keep them off balance. She sensed that it was important for her to maintain the initiative.
Deception in Savannah: A Humorous Novel of Murder, Mystery, Sex, and Drugs Page 18
