by D. J. Herda
“Your uncle?” My mind races back through every good cop/bad cop film I’ve ever seen. What the hell would Dirty Harry do at a time like this? I wracked my mystery-writing brain for a solution. Nothing popped into view.
“Yes. He’s a sergeant with the police department, in Vice. I think he’d be very interested to know how you stopped me on the street and tried to pick me up. Or whatever it is you really had in mind. And then set me up for a check-kiting scam.”
“A sergeant?”
“Third Precinct.”
“Well,” I tell her, the wheels beginning to pick up a bit of speed. I recall a story I wrote once that had a chick like this in it, a story I sold to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine or somewhere. Something about a sexy, beautiful skirt who tries to scam a widower out of his bank account, only to have the old man catch on and turn the tables on her. In the end, he was forced to shoot her, and she died in his arms.
I hoped this wouldn’t come to that.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said, talking slowly to give my mind a chance to catch up. “I think we can go one better than that. Let’s say you and I ... you know, let’s do like you say and the two of us go down to my bank, and I’ll withdraw the cash from my account and give it to you. Then you give me a receipt for it, and we’ll stop by the precinct where your uncle works, and you can explain to my uncle, who just also happens to be a cop at the Third Precinct as well, just what you’re trying to pull. Now, isn’t that a coincidence? I mean that both of our uncles work for the exact same precinct? I mean, what are the odds?”
Turn the story topsy-turvy and dump it back in the Perp’s lap. That’s the way the last one went.
“Are you kidding me?” she asked.
“He’s in Bunco and Vice. I’ll introduce you, and you can explain to him how it is that you approached me and ... and ...”
Come on, Brainiac, don’t let me down now!
“—and how you struck up a conversation with me out of the clear blue sky. And why it is that you’re pretending to be a college student when I’m just betting the closest you ever came to a classroom was probably diddling some professor who works there. And how there really isn’t any Sexual Protection League or whatever you called it. And how you never had any plans whatsoever on delivering those overpriced condoms to me once you got my money.”
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“And, while you’re at it, you can tell him why it is that you’re so damned anxious to get hold of my personal banking information.”
Bingo! That does it. I see her smile crack harder than a soft-boiled egg against a picture window on Halloween. For the first time since I laid eyes on her, I see her lips begin to quiver and her eyes dart back and forth as if seeking an avenue of escape. And finding none.
“Your ... uncle? Seriously? At the Third Precinct?”
“Uncle Frank? Yes. He works undercover in the Bunco and Vice Division. He’s a captain, and his department investigated fraud and white-collar crime.” I pause. “Little scams a lot like this. You know.”
She issues a weak denial through slightly parted lips and dancing eyes. “Well ... I mean, why do we have to start proffering charges against one another? Why can’t we just resolve this between ourselves? No need to get anyone else ...” She hesitates as she pulls out her phone, holds it up for my inspection, and deletes the order she had just placed for me. “There.” She lets out a deep sigh. “All gone. Just as if it never took place.” She hesitates again. “Okay?”
I look at her, rub my chin as if I’m thinking, and finally shrug.
“Okay. I guess it was just a big misunderstanding. No harm to anyone.”
She takes my hand, shakes it, and draws closer to me, kissing me slowly, lightly on one cheek.
“What’s that for?” I ask, hoping for the answer of all answers. I mean, sure, she may be a con, but she’s still drop-dead gorgeous. And a good man can always straighten out a woman gone astray. At least, that’s the story I tell myself, and I’m sticking to it. So I wait to hear the magic words: Oh, darling, I just couldn’t go through with it. I could never have done it to you. Not to the man I love! Can you ever forgive me? I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Whatever it takes, I’ll make it up to you.
Instead, she says, “Let’s just say it’s for being such an understanding man. I meant what I said earlier, about how I can see that you’re different. I saw that in you right from the start.”
I feel my brow rise instinctively.
“Besides,” she adds, “you can’t blame a girl for trying to pick up a few bucks here and there, can you?”
I shake my head and make a low clucking sound with my tongue. “What would your uncle say?”
She giggles. “I don’t have an uncle. Both of my parents were only children.” She shrugs. “And neither of them ever worked for the Third Precinct.” She pauses. “You?”
I look at her, more angelic than before. Purer. More God-like. I am fading fast. I know it. I can’t hold out much longer. I want her; I need her. And soon! “Me?”
“Come on. Fess up. It’s just a little too coincidental for you to have an uncle working at the same precinct as mine, wouldn’t you say? I mean, how likely would that be?”
“Well, I ... I guess.” I think about it for several seconds. I smile. “I mean since we’re both confessing here. Okay, you’re right. About that part. But I do have an uncle. In fact, I have several of them. It’s just that none of them works for the Chicago P.D. In fact, the only uncle I ever see is Uncle Jed, and that’s once a year at Christmas time. He’s a dermatologist.”
She laughs, deep and loud and throaty. “Maybe when I get old and gray, I can call on him to see if he can help.”
As if that will ever happen!
And then it dawns on me. What do I have to lose? The afternoon isn’t a complete wash. Not yet, anyway.
“You know,” I say, reaching my hands out for hers. “Now that we’ve both come clean, why don’t we just start out all over?”
“You mean like two normal people just interested in getting to know one another, no strings attached?”
Before I can respond, I feel a hand on my shoulder and, seeing both of her dainty mitts still clinging to mine, I sense instinctively that it spells trouble.
"How's it goin'?" a deep, gravelly voice spills out the words like curdled milk from a three-week-old carton. I look behind me and up. Up. Way up at a monster of a man, possibly thirty to forty feet tall. And, even though it is well over 90 degrees in the shade, there are snow clouds swirling around his head. And around his big, sagging jaw. And when that jaw lowers so that the monster can smile, a formidable hunk of steel catches the light and nearly blinds me. I am just about ready to yank myself from the monster's grasp, dash wildly across the patio, and dive into the pool when suddenly my dream woman comes to my rescue.
"Oh, just super. I've been waiting for you!" she chirps. " I'd like you to meet a good customer of mine. He just bought the Super Stud package."
"Hi," I say, playing along and smiling with all my might. He holds out a hand the size of a sirloin steak, and I take it tentatively. He can squeeze as hard as he wishes. There is no way I am going to object. Not even frown. Nor do anything else that might in any way be construed as an even remotely unfriendly act. Hostility is no way to placate a monster. I learned that in the fourth grade.
"Moose plays tight end for the Illini," she says. "And he also runs errands for a couple of ... businessmen on the lower South Side. Isn't that a stitch?"
I turn to my goddess and feel the smile slipping away. "Yeah," I say softly. "A stitch.”
“Seems we’re not going to get a chance for that do-over after all, are we?”
I shrug, wondering suddenly how anyone so drop-dead gorgeous can be so inscrutably evil. How could I have misread her so? How did I fail to see her coming?
“Seems not.”
"We better get goin'," Moose says. "Nice tah meet youse."
I nod, my heart sinking as he starts down the street and she turns after him. "Yeah. Likewise, I’m sure,” I lie, and I turn dejectedly away. Even the best mystery writers in the world sometimes come up a buck or two short.
Suddenly I feel the softness of honey-blonde hair spilling across the back of my neck and whirl around.
"By the way, your Saturday plan sounds just great," she says , adding softly, “And after you get back to your apartment ...” She turns her back to Moose.
"Yes?" I say, my heart feeling a sudden swell of blood pulsing through it. Can it be? Is it really going to happen? Is there hope for us yet?
She clutches my hand, slipping something cool into my palm. "Try the red ribbed one. It drives them crazy."
"Uhh, just a minute," I say, glancing down before moving closer. I whisper barely loud enough for me to hear. "How about you? Do I get a chance to find out if the red ribbed ones drive you crazy, too?"
She straightens up suddenly and breaks into a schoolgirl grin. "Oh, I’m afraid not. I absolutely hate red. Besides, I'm on the pill."
My heart spills once more across the pavement, and I am just about to concede failure when she stops, turns back to face me, and smiles once more. “But I wouldn’t mind dinner. Italian? Around seven? I’ll call you with my address.”
My eyes pop open. “Wait a minute. You can’t call me. You don’t have my number. You erased the order, remember?”
“I undid the erase right afterward.”
I freeze for several seconds. “You ... you undid ...”
“The order,” she says, and she throws back her head and laughs, deep and throaty. She stops and stares directly into my eyes. “Do you love me?”
I love her with all my heart and soul and the rest of me, too—whatever remains after our encounter. I can’t help but wonder if Moose, some ten feet down the street, feels the same. He stops and looks back at us over his shoulder. She turns to him. “Go on ahead, Moose. I’ll catch up with you in a couple.”
I watch stunned as he nods and does as he’s told, and before he’s out of sight, she throws her arms around my neck and pulls herself so close to me, I can feel the warmth of her breath on my lips.
“Do you find me irresistible?”
I struggle to speak, my words turning to air and drifting away on the afternoon breeze. I finally nod and manage to whisper, “Devastating.”
She giggles. “Do you want to make love to me?”
I exhale, breathe in, and pause. “Oh, God, yes. You’ll never know how much.”
She pulls herself closer, still, until her lips, wet from her tongue, slide up against mine, her mouth opening slightly as she explores the very depths of my passion. After what seems a lifetime, she slowly backs away, her eyes never once leaving mine.
“Until tomorrow evening, then,” she says, turning to leave. “Oh, and one more thing.”
I let out a sigh and feel my brows instinctively rise.
“Make sure you’re hungry. I have a feeling I’m going to be ravenous!”
SIX: Trapped!
HIGHTOWER EYED THE investigator casually. There was something about his appearance—his potbelly, the thin, greasy gray hair, the bulbous nose and fragile, fading lips—that made him look more comical than compelling. His shirt was a bilious affair sewn up years ago in hues of red and green and brown. His pants were khaki, cut off at the knees and predictably wrinkled and thread-worn at the pockets, something you might expect to find on a ten-year-old schoolboy with a penchant for keeping way-too-large treasures in way-too-small pockets. He wore thin black socks, a ribbed polyester-and-nylon blend, inside scruffy Jesus sandals that had been begging for retirement since 1943.
His face was sallow—that same Dick Nixon look that helped Kennedy gain the White House after the former Veep saw the debates go south on him back in '59—and pocked with scars from some long-ago battle with acne.
But his eyes were what caught the contractor's attention the most. Not his eyes so much as the way he used them. He periodically focused them on his target, where they seared their way deep into the unsuspecting victim before skirting away as if frightened of seeing too much, of being discovered attempting to unmask whatever it was they might turn up on the fellow. Not dancing, as though carefully choreographed and planned movements, graceful and willowy like those of a gifted ballerina, but rather bolting from the arena, stumbling over one another in an awkward attempt to escape with their lives intact. Like a meadow filled with whitetail deer freezing as the headlights from a speeding car bearing down on them before the beasts shoot off in every direction imaginable ... and some that aren’t. All in all, those eyes made him seem quite humorous, extraordinarily strange, and more than a little harmless. Or so they lent one to believe.
"So, you got this heating contractor working for you," the investigator said, those eyes flitting nervously from a bowl of spinach dip that he'd been hoarding between two stubby knees and a buxom blonde laughing languidly with a group of people at the far end of the room, "and you gave him twelve grand, and he didn't do anything for the money and then ended up closing his doors and taking off. Is that about it?"
Hightower waited for the eyes to return to him. "Yep. Exactly. He took the money under false pretenses and then just vanished. His wife, or his ex-wife now, I guess—although I think they were still living together until he split—his ex said she had no idea of where he was but told me he'd taken a bunch of her stuff with him, too, including a brand new red pickup truck with all the trimmings. She said she'd bought it for him because she had good credit, and he had none, and he'd been paying her back a little at a time each month."
"Why would she do a stupid thing like that?"
"Because he'd cut her in on a share of his heating-and-cooling business, and he promised her she'd make a ton of money off him."
"And he didn't have the money to buy the truck himself, and he didn't have the credit," the investigator mused. “Classic.”
"She called him every name in the book, plus a few I'd never heard of before. I mean, she was pissed."
Peeps leaned forward, the bowl of dip tottering precariously on the edge of the sofa before he reached down, grabbed it, and set it on the floor between his feet. "You call the police?"
Hightower shook his head. "This just happened a week ago, and we weren't sure he was actually gone until I talked to his wife. We were going to take it to the D.A. first thing Monday morning. Drop it in his lap. I've heard some talk about this guy being a con, running similar scams in the past. Although you'd never know it to talk to him. He always seemed willing to help out on short notice, always really seemed to care, you know?"
"Most cons are like that. That's how they make their marks. Build up their confidence, and then they nail 'em when they're not looking."
"Yeah. I guess. Kicker is, this isn't the first theft we've had."
Peeps raised his brows.
"Hell, no. We had somebody break into our shop and steal nearly 15 thousand worth of tools and equipment. We had one of our own foremen buy nearly six thousand dollars’ worth of roofing supplies when he only needed two grand to finish the job. The rest just sort of disappeared. Then Trinidale Builders Supply shipped twenty-two thousand dollars’ worth of finish materials to a home we were building for an older couple out in the sticks. It wasn't even under roof. The sheetrock wasn't up, doors and windows weren't in. But they dumped more than twenty grand worth of toilets and faucets and Jacuzzi tubs and ceramic tile and carpeting and lighting fixtures in an open garage, and then they billed us for it."
Peeps looked puzzled. "Well, hey, at least you got the stuff. Coulda been worse, right? No big loss.”
"Yeah, we got it, all right. But the kicker is, we never even ordered it. I'd never even discussed ordering it with them. Why would I? We were six months away—at least—from getting to the point where we could use it. That's six months of tripping over it every time one of our framers or sheet rockers came or went. When I asked Scott Sandalman to show me an orde
r form or a signature on an invoice or anything, he couldn't."
"I don't understand," Peeps said. "How could they just do that and get away with it? Didn't you report it?"
"Not yet. That's another one I was getting ready to lay on the D.A. According to Sandalman, he's still looking into the matter and will get back to me. He says their interior designer, Kelli Powell, swore that I gave her the go-ahead. In the meantime, we were working on a renovation for her—that old, three-story stucco disaster across from the courthouse, you know? But when we finished and it was time for her to close on her loan and pay us off, she refused."
"What do you mean? She refused to pay you off?"
"Pay us off, hell. She refused to close!"
"What?" Hightower threw his arms out to his side. “Why would she do a thing like that? She must have been paying through the nose for a construction loan. Why wouldn’t she want to convert that into a long-term mortgage as soon as possible?”
"I don’t know, but I talked to her mortgage broker myself. Several times. He told me all he needed was her signature, and the money was hers. It was all pre-approved, just waiting for her to come and get it. He begged me to help get her to sign. Once they paid us off, we’d sign a release, and we’d be done."
"I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t close on her new mortgage if she was that close to finishing."
"My guess is that Sandalman paid her not to. He knew she owed us more than sixty grand. And he knew that, so long as she didn't pay us, we were going to have a helluva time making up for that loss of revenue in this town. I think he wanted us out of business. We were a threat to him. Same thing with his dad. The Old Man is on the loan committee at First National Bank. We called the bank president and asked for a short-term loan to see us through. He told me that, with our solid reputation and our strong collateral, it was a cinch. But after the loan committee met the following week, the guy called to tell me he was turning us down. When I asked why, he said that certain members of the loan committee had heard about some bad business deals we'd made recently and decided we'd be a poor risk."
