“What news now?” Frank asked.
“I’m afraid your son, Will, washed up on a Massachusetts beach a couple of days ago.”
He didn’t look shocked and he didn’t cry, or scream or do much of anything other than stare at me. I figured Keane had told them the news but maybe he didn’t give them all of the details and I was going to string it along as far as I could at this point.
“Unless you finally did find Will, I think you are mistaken,” he said.
“We did. He washed up,” I said.
Frank shook his head and smirked. “You’re as stupid as the American police officers who called us yesterday. My wife flew down to Boston to claim his body. Guess what? It wasn’t him. Not our son, although I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was the way he lives his life.”
Now it was my turn to be in shock. “There’s been a mistake.”
“No mistake on our part. My wife is on her way home now. No one is going to reimburse us for the money we had to pay for a short flight, either. I have a right mind to sue everyone. You understand what I’m saying? Hundreds it cost for the ticket and hotel and food,” Frank said.
I took out my wallet and slipped five hundred dollar bills from it, holding them up.
Frank’s eyes got wide.
“Let me in. Give me fifteen minutes of your time. I really need to ask you some questions. Please,” I said.
Frank stepped aside and I could see the wheels turning in his head. I’m not a cynical man, but everyone had their price. I sometimes wondered in times like this if I could’ve gotten my foot in the door with a crisp fifty. I had no time to waste, though. Usually on jobs I could spread it out, enjoy the planning and look at it from all angles.
This wasn’t a job. This was covering up a job that got away from me from my past. I wondered how many others would someday bite me.
Before I could sit on his worn couch I was talking, taking in the dull furniture and fading pictures on the walls.
“I thought I heard you say it wasn’t Will,” I said.
“William,” Frank said defensively. He was jittery, his hands moving in his lap.
I put up a hand. “I’m not the cops. Not the FBI.”
Frank started to rise from his chair. “Then get out of my house.”
“I was the man who got you Will when he was just a baby,” I said. I knew I was breaking my own rules but I felt the press of time on my shoulders right now. Dancing around the issue and hoping this guy understood was not an option today. Too much at stake, like my life and livelihood.
“I don’t understand. We adopted from Saint Mark’s.”
I shook my head. “I’m going to tell you something that can never be repeated, even to your wife. This information is so sensitive because it is dangerous. I need you to nod your head and tell me you get it,” I said. I was playing a dangerous game and I knew it.
Frank nodded his head.
“Your son was part of a Mob hit. A very important person. High-ranking mobster. But he wasn’t killed, obviously. He was rescued and hidden away. Given to a nice family in Montreal named Black. Never told where he came from or who he really was. Only. . . maybe the bad guys have figured out who he was. When the body washed ashore I thought it was Will. William. But now you’re telling me it wasn’t him?”
Frank nodded. I could see the old man was on the verge of tears. His hands had stopped moving.
“My wife verified it wasn’t William. Not our son, although she said it looked like him. Whoever it was even had his old Army jacket on with the pins,” Frank said.
“It was definitely his jacket?”
“Yes. She noticed the rip on the sleeve and he had all these patches sewn onto it and pins from these horribly named musical groups he liked, even as a small child.” Frank put his head down. “He was so angry, even before his teen angst years. So physically violent.”
“You sent him away?” I asked gently.
Frank’s head snapped up and there was anger in his eyes. “We threw him out. At twelve. Tossed him into the street like garbage. We never got help for William. We just gave up on the boy.”
I stared at Frank because I had no follow-up question or comment. I was trying to process this information and see if it was relevant to anything. When Marisa had told me they abandoned the kid I thought she was cutting to the chase. I assumed counseling and individual therapy, maybe family counseling, had been done. All avenues exhausted. Will ran away at twelve and his parents wept for the boy each and every night.
The Black family had let a child walk away, one they’d sworn to protect. They’d adopted the kid from what was usually a bad situation. Foster care. The system. Birth parents who didn’t want them. Abandonment issues.
I wanted to punch this old man in the face.
“That was it?” I asked.
Frank nodded and reached under the chair cushion, pulling out a flask. He offered me a sip but I declined. He took such a large pull I figured half of the flask was now empty.
“Did you see Will in the last few years?”
Frank wiped his mouth and smacked his lips. He was a drunk and an alcoholic. Maybe Will getting away from this guy was a good thing, although based on the stories I’d heard so far about Will’s life, it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. I liked that expression.
“My wife ran into him at the Port Authority once, about two years ago. She was on her way to meet her sister for lunch. She said he looked like death warmed over. Slumped against the wall with nothing but a sleeping bag filled with junk. A tin can for tips. He was playing his guitar for change. Probably for drugs and alcohol,” Frank said.
I declined pointing at the flask in his hand and let him continue.
“When he saw my wife, you know what he did?” Frank asked.
I wanted to say spit on her but I just stared.
“He spit on her. Can you believe it?”
I stood. “Yes. I can. You and your wife threw out a kid who’d already been thrown out. You abandoned a twelve year old little boy with anger issues. Instead of getting Will help you. . . you’re a horrible person, and so is your damn wife.” I was livid and my hands were shaking in anger.
I wasn’t a violent man, per se, but this guy was pushing all the right buttons. In case you hadn’t already guessed, I took protecting children very seriously. My job was to take them from an abysmal situation and put them with loving, caring people. I did this at great risk. Sure, the money was amazing but I’d do it for free if I knew it would help a kid.
The Black family had taken damaged goods and further crushed it. William Black had been dealt the worst hand ever, and I felt sorry for the kid. What chance did he have? I know the bleeding heart Liberals will moan about how bad this kid had it, and for once I agreed.
“Get out of my house,” Frank said and tried to stand.
I moved two steps forward and chopped him in the throat without a thought. I’m not a violent person, I told myself as I cocked my fist back.
“I’m going to ask you a few more questions and then I’ll leave. You’ll answer them truthfully and the five hundred is yours. I’ll add another hundred to keep your mouth shut. Got it? I wasn’t here. Do we have a deal?” I kept my fist ready to strike. I was actually hoping he’d say something stupid or curse at me so I could unload and beat him to within an inch of his life.
I’m really not a violent person, but I can be pushed like anyone else.
Frank sat down and finished off what little was left in his flask, rubbing his throat.
“Do you have anything left of his?”
Frank shook his head.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you got rid of him like a sack of garbage?”
Frank sighed. When he spoke his voice cracked and he was in obvious pain from the throat chop, which made me happy.
“We were still collecting from the state. We needed the money but not the problem,” Frank said.
“You sicken me,” I said. I knew it was cliché bu
t it fit.
Frank glared. “William tried to set the house on fire during one of his meth binges. He built a lab in the garage at ten. At ten. The kid was a menace and couldn’t be controlled. He was glad to leave and so were we.”
I had serious doubts the kid had built a meth lab. I’m sure he smoked pot and maybe did some hard stuff but cooking his own? No way. Frank was making excuses and trying to paint himself as the victim.
“What else can you tell me about him? If it wasn’t Will on the beach, where could he be?”
Frank shrugged. “Check Port Authority or the sewers. You can’t miss the dirty bum. He looked like a rat with his gray skin and missing all his teeth from the drugs.”
Missing all his teeth.
The toothless guy in the upstairs window of the jazz club was Will Black.
Alive and well. For now.
EIGHT
The white van smelled like bleach and I had to roll the windows down so I didn’t choke on the fumes. Whoever Marisa got the van from was new at this, because a clean vehicle just meant no fingerprints or receipts to McDonalds under the seat. Not a new clean and polish. I needed this to look old and grungy, like a real work van. The cops needed to be out looking at the million plumbers, carpenters, flooring guys and whoever else drove these things so I could get away.
Instead, I was in the shiniest white van in Las Vegas. I was sparkling down the road, an eyesore for drivers around me. If I hadn’t already set everything into motion and needed to drive out and to Texas as soon as possible I would’ve called Marisa and had her find a new van and fire whoever she was working with on this bright thing.
I usually drove past the location three or four times when I wanted to be seen, but with the van so obviously new, most of the work vans in the city would be eliminated by the cops. As soon as I dumped it and switched cars I knew it would be a race to get as many miles away from Vegas before it was found.
Yeah, I know. I keep talking about it but lately things were bugging me more than usual. I really didn’t need this job. Definitely not for the money, but for the sheer fact I was too busy to really get behind it. You needed to commit both mentally and physically, and I was still thinking about Will Black in the window.
I took a leisurely drive past the school, already let out and only a few cars in the parking lot. With any luck, the school cameras would pick up on the van and get the tag number, which was yanked from another car.
Damn, I hoped it was. Didn’t everyone know that was how you did it? Based on the van I now had my doubts.
I called Marisa and complained about the situation.
“Stop whining and get it done,” Marisa said. She had a way with words. Just for the record: when my voice swells a couple of octaves it isn’t whining. It’s getting excited. Big difference. “They stole a new van since they had short notice. The plates are jacked from another van, which will throw the cops for a second. Enough to get you out of Dodge.”
“I’m in Vegas, not Dodge.”
She didn’t even bother to tell me how lame my joke was.
“How’s the surveillance in New York going?” I asked.
She groaned loudly on the phone.
I was supposed to be working and when you were in the midst of a job you never worried about the previous one or the next one. But in all fairness, Will Black wasn’t an upcoming job. He was a problem I needed to sort out before Keane or Chenzo figured out where he was hiding.
“I have a guy on it. Don’t worry. The club was open last night and two of them went inside and listened to boringly smooth jazz for hours,” Marisa said.
“What came of it?”
“They both hate jazz even more, I imagine. Will Black never made an appearance and they couldn’t get up the stairs to the apartments. Too many eyes watching. There is definitely something going on in the building, but it could just be drug trafficking. According to what they heard, the joint is only open Friday night through Sunday afternoon,” Marisa said.
“Did you call it a joint?”
Marisa laughed. “Just hip to the jazz lingo, mulligan.”
“I think mulligan means cop, or something to do with golf?” I had no idea but I knew she had used it wrong. She needed to work on her jazz slang.
“Anyway. . . it’s being looked at. Not any of your concern right now. You need to focus on the task at hand, see?” She said this in a really bad 1950’s mobster movie voice, which made me laugh.
I hadn’t laughed in awhile and it felt good.
“Are you wearing a disguise?” Marisa asked.
“Yes,” I answered reluctantly. I never showed her what I had done to change my appearance but it never stopped her from asking.
“Take a selfie and send it to me.”
“I don’t know what a selfie is but I’m not sending one to you,” I said. Part of the fun was her going out of her mind trying to guess what I was dressed like or what I’d done to my face for the job.
Five years ago I’d taken a newborn from a stripper in Kansas City. My disguise was an overweight blind woman who was in the neighborhood wandering around all day. When the stripper – I’ll call her a woman so no one gets offended for whatever reason – walked by and into her apartment I followed. I was like a ghost. Just a poor blind soul out in the big, bad world.
I held the stripper, uh, woman up with a knife and took the kid.
The worst part of it? She barely put up a fight. I think she knew what the real deal was. Her small-time crook boyfriend was the baby daddy, and he paid a pretty penny to get rid of the kid before his wife found out.
Marisa, smiling, had told me three months later he was found dead in the back of the strip club he frequented. It seems he’d knocked up another stripper. . . ugh. . . woman, and this time her big-time crook husband took care of the guy.
Payback was a bitch, as they say.
The best part for me was the surveillance footage from the convenience store across the street. It clearly showed the blind woman entering the building behind the stripper and a few minutes later she didn’t look all that blind, carrying a baby in her arms and walking quickly around the corner and out of sight.
Marisa loved it. Now, she asked a million questions after each job.
“I’m in position,” I said as I parked the van down the street.
In case you were wondering, I was wearing my old man disguise I’d used before, mostly for California and the Pacific Northwest jobs over the years: a graying hair wig with matching moustache, thick Coke bottle glasses and a small red rose in my faded jacket pocket.
The rose was a nice touch and could tie this serial kidnapper into a few crimes and keep the FBI and local cops busy. You’d think putting them together would be bad for business, but I learned from my predecessor the best thing to do would be to give your fake evildoer some personality. Let the media run with it, and it would only hinder the investigations.
I was the Red Rose Kidnapper. Wanted in three States and I was about to add Nevada to the list. As long as I kept doing these jobs in this area of the country, no one would tie any of it into any of my other jobs.
The bogus tips would come pouring into the tip lines tonight, most of which would be whack jobs looking for their fifteen minutes of fame or the ones who believed an alien had taken over the children. The flood of bad tips would bury the one or two real ones until it was too late. I figured the FBI and local cops were still wading through the rivers of calls from years ago. I didn’t have an ego so a letter mailed to the newspaper calling out law enforcement wasn’t going to happen. All I wanted was to get this done and over with and move on so I could get back to the jazz club.
I saw the first cheerleader exiting the side gym door but it wasn’t the target. She got into a waiting Hummer and drove off just as another two came out.
This wasn’t like the high school I went to. It was clean and bright. The rich kids went here and these were the kids I despised growing up because I wanted to be them. I guess I am one of the r
ich kids now, just twice their age. Or more.
I glanced again at her picture on my phone. Heck, I could glance at four hundred of her pictures if I wanted to. Her Facebook page was wide open and her entire life, down to the fact she had sushi with her friend Dee two nights ago, she really thought one of the football players was hot, and she’d smoked more than a few joints since high school started.
I smiled, thinking of the word joint. I knew Marisa didn’t have this experience in school. I’d watched her from a distance until she dropped out in ninth grade and started doing the wrong thing. Someday I was going to convince her to get her GED, but she didn’t think it meant anything. Maybe she was right. She had enough street smarts for both of us combined, and I grew up in a rough neighborhood.
There she was. When I was doing a job I never used the target’s name in my head. Too personal, even though I wasn’t going to kill them. If I treated them like a human being I might hesitate, especially with an older kid. I’d clubbed a couple over the head in the past because they didn’t cooperate and fought back. Which is the norm, but when you get a wired kid on drugs or someone who’s been lifting weights since they were ten, it gets rough.
She was standing at the edge of the parking lot with two of her fellow cheerleaders, backpacks over their shoulders like a scene from Beverly Hills: 90210.
It was a show when I was this kid’s age and it rocked. Look it up, it might be on Netflix.
The waiting was the hardest part. Any number of random occurrences could happen before I got to her: a nosy parent or teacher wondering what a pristine white van was doing in the school parking lot, a police cruiser on patrol because the extracurricular stuff was getting out at this time every day, or just bad luck. The only time I almost didn’t finish a job was when the stolen car didn’t start and I had to get a jump from what turned out to be a very friendly off-duty cop.
Dirty Deeds Page 6
