by Pete Lister
“What could we have accomplished that the crowd already on the scene couldn’t? I was serious when I told Lucy that the highway patrol has instructed us not to stop unless we’re the ones having the emergency. I suppose if we were the first ones on the scene, and it looked like someone could die if we didn’t help, I’d have to stop, but there were already two cars there. I just didn’t see where we had anything else to offer.”
“I guess you’re right.” She was obviously down about it. “I just felt so helpless and uncaring rolling right past the way we did.”
“I know, me, too. I’m sorry, Ash, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do. You just suck it up and move on. Remember how they always told the troops to ‘adapt and advance’? That’s what we did. C’mon, let’s go get some lunch.”
The second day and night of the tour, at Turtle Lake, had been fun. Ashley had won sixteen hundred dollars on a Triple Diamond slot and Drew scored a hundred and eighty-five at blackjack. They had enjoyed a wonderful steak and lobster dinner at the Me-Ki-Noc restaurant, replete with the antlers and feathers, joined by another couple from the tour. The conversation was lively, and the forecast for the ride to the Mohican North Star Casino in Bowler the next morning called for clear and sunny.
§ § §
“Shiv, we got him.”
“Did you find the stuff?”
“He didn’t have it with him. We were chasing him on the highway when he flipped over a guard rail and rolled a couple times. We stopped and tried to get him out and the son of a bitch started shooting at us. He got Tommy and winged Mark. We had to do him, Shiv, it was self-defense. He would have mowed us down on the side of the road, shooting right through his windshield. We were out in the open with no place to hide.
“You know we’d do anything for you, Shiv, but honestly, none of us is much interested in taking a slug just to keep your guy alive so you can kill him later. I know the money’s important, but my life means more to me than your money.”
“I know that, Jack. I don’t expect you to charge him while he’s shooting at you. This ain’t the Army. I’ve told you boys before, you ain‘t gotta kiss my ass. Just be honest with me. You shoot straight with me, we’re okay. So, then what?”
“Well, we searched the car, but there was nothing there. He had a couple grand in his pockets, all in hundreds. Oh, and in the trunk there were a dozen or so hundreds scattered around, but that was it. All he had in his pockets was cash and his wallet. We brought it all. I had the guys put Tommy in the back of our car and we got the hell out of there.
“That tour bus passed us while we were trying to get him out. You know, the one from Lake of the Torches that he used for cover in the parking lot? We didn’t want to take a chance they’d seen it and called 911.”
“Okay, good headwork. C’mon home, Jack. We’ll figure out what to do next from here. Keep your phone on.”
“Right, Shiv. Listen, you need us right away? We figured we’d stop for something to eat. Seems like we found some Benjamins layin’ around, you know?”
“You got them all, I hope?”
“Every last one of them.” Jack replied, laughing.
Shiv laughed, too. “No, that’s okay. After what I been through since last night, you guys ripping me off for dinner ain’t gonna hurt. But listen, get down the road a ways before you stop, and don’t drive so it looks like you’re a Army convoy. Drive like, half a mile apart, knowatamean?”
“Gotcha. Don’t draw attention. We’ll see you in four or five hours.”
“Yeah, call me when you get in.”
§ § §
7
It was almost midnight in Milwaukee. Thunderheads were building and the air was filled with lightning, turning the night to day for a fraction of a second. After the flash, it was pitch dark, in spite of the street lights, until night vision returned. Rain was coming, you could feel it in the damp, heavy air, but it hadn’t started, yet. The onshore wind, carrying the moisture from Lake Michigan, was picking up, too.
After dropping the last passengers at the Watertown Plank Road park-and-ride, Drew returned the coach to the ‘barn’ on the south side. Ashley carried their bags over to Drew’s dark blue F-250 pickup while he did his post-trip walk-around. After inspecting the interior of the coach, he was going through the luggage bays, checking for overlooked bags, before turning in his keys.
“Ashley!” he called. “Come look at this!” Ashley closed the truck door and walked back to where Drew crouched on the left side of the bus. He had the third luggage bay door open and was shining his flashlight into the bay.
“What is it, my hunk?”
“I don’t know. This stuff wasn’t here when we left on this trip.” She crouched down next to him and looked where he was pointing his flashlight. Inside the bay, in front of where the drivers’ cleaning supplies were stored, she saw stacks of wrapped bundles, dozens of them, tossed haphazardly into the center of the bay.
“What are they?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t put them there?”
“Never saw them before. I know none of the passengers left them, ‘cause I loaded and unloaded all their stuff, myself. The lock’s broken, so I didn’t even use this bay.” Reaching in, Drew pulled out one of the bundles.
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed. Shining his small Maglite, he had turned the bundle so he was looking at the end, which had been torn open. It was a shrink-wrapped stack of hundred dollar bills, and it stretched from his elbow to his wrist.
“Ash, you know what this is? This is a foot-long stack of hundred dollar bills.” He started pulling out more bundles, and each one looked the same, except the rest were still sealed and, of course, a little longer than that first one.
“It looks like somebody opened this one and took about an inch worth out,” he observed. Crawling into the bay, he started passing out the bundles. Ashley opened the second luggage bay door and started stacking the bundles neatly along the front edge of the bay as Drew handed them to her. Soon, the bundles changed shape. Pulling one out, he shined his flashlight on it and gasped.
Ashley, who had just finished counting fifty-two bundles of cash, looked up. “What is it?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he responded, “but, I think it’s drugs.” The grayish white package in his hand was seven or eight inches long by four or five inches wide, a little over an inch thick, and weighed a couple of pounds. “I’ve never seen one before, but I think this is a kilo.”
“I think you’re right.”
“What is it, heroin? Is coke packed this way?”
“Normally just heroin. Coke comes in bottles and cans.”
“Cute.”
“I thought so. I remember we handled a couple of these at Lackland. What are you going to do with it?”
“Let’s think about this. Okay. Here. Let’s lock it up and go get something to eat. That’ll give us time to talk about it and figure out what to do next. We should probably call Dean or the cops.” Dean was the station manager for the bus company. “It should be safe locked up here. Nobody knows about it. I can always tell Dean in the morning.”
“But, Drew, will this bus still be here in the morning? What if it’s assigned to another run? We sometimes leave before dawn on our trips.”
“That’s true. It could be going out early.”
“How early?”
“It could be real early. When we do those Springfield runs, sometimes we have to leave in the middle of the night to get to the Illinois schools in time. And, sometimes those are five- or ten-bus runs. Drivers could actually be coming in any time now.”
“So why don’t we put the stuff in the pickup, and then we can decide?”
“We could do that.”
“You know, Drew, we really should just call the police and turn this in.”
“Yeah, I know.” They stood looking at each other for a full minute, then another minute, and then another. Finally, looking at the pile of hun
dred-dollar bills, Ashley snorted, a quiet sort of quick exhalation.
“Go get the truck.” she said. “I don’t feel like making a hundred trips across the parking lot, schlepping this stuff.” Drew returned a minute later, backing the pickup along the left side of the coach, with his tonneau cover raised and the tailgate down.
It only took the two of them a couple of minutes to get the truck loaded and the coach secured. Drew drove out of the lot, stopping to drop off the bus keys, and they headed home.
§ § §
Shiv Thompson and the two Chicago detectives were sitting in Shiv’s office. The place looked like the set of an old Sam Spade movie, cheap desk, cheap chairs, cheap filing cabinet, and a bottle on the credenza. But completely out of place and character, the walls were lined with over-sized Audubon bird prints, mounted in beautiful matching rosewood frames. It had taken di Stasio months to get used to this facet of Thompson’s personality. He could order a hit without thinking twice, but he loved these bird prints.
Shiv and both cops had glasses in front of them. It was the middle of the night, after the end of their shift, and Shiv’s storm troopers had returned from Wisconsin with a complete report.
“Okay, what do we know?” Shiv asked.
“We know the dumb bastard used a phony name and then ID’ed his own car when he registered,” Scott said. “and, we know that when your guys caught up with him, he didn’t have the stuff with him. What about the room he stayed in?”
“I had the boys check it out. Nothin’ there. I don’t believe a guy steals thirteen million bucks and leaves it in a casino hotel room, anyway. So, where’s he hide it? Did he stash it before he checked in?”
“Shiv, how big is all that?” Scott asked. “I mean, would it fit in his trunk?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s about fifty-two sticks of cash, each about a foot long, an’ sixty-four kilos of horse, each one about the size of a paperback.”
“I don’t think he’d stash it before checking in.” Di Stasio looked thoughtful. “I can’t see him letting it out of his sight, at least until he knows he’s safe. If he’d gone to ground somewhere, I could see it, but not while he’s still on the run.”
“Where was he when Jack found him?” asked Scott.
“He was in a car, hiding behind a bus. After the bus pulled up to the hotel to load, he used it as cover to slip out of the parkin’ lot. The boys said it looked like he was playing tag with the bus on the highway. Then, after they caught up with him, the bus passed them, again.”
“Could the bus be involved?” di Stasio asked.
“I dunno,” Shiv answered. “Ain’t there some way to find out who was driving it, and where it is now?”
“Sure,” Scott told him. “Did your guys see any other buses in that lot?”
“I don’t think so, lemme check.” Shiv reached for the phone and dialed. “Jack, how many other buses were in that parking lot at the casino? Okay, thanks. No, go on back to the family.”
Turning back to the two cops, Shiv reported, “No, just the one.”
“Then I’ll call the hotel and tell them there was a fatal accident, and we think that someone on the bus may have witnessed it. They have no reason to keep that kind of thing private.”
“That’s good. That’s why I pay you guys, instead of some rookie. See what you can find out.”
The two detectives nodded silently, finished their drinks, and left the room.
§ § §
8
“Drew, where could that stuff have come from?” Drew and Ashley were sitting in their living room, a pizza and a couple of beer bottles on the coffee table.
“Honey, I haven’t the foggiest idea. It wasn’t there when we left. I know I looked in there, ‘cause the maintenance guys and I talked about how nobody would break into a bus to steal cleaning supplies. I did a full pre-trip and opened that bay door when I inventoried the cleaning stuff. I know it wasn’t there before I buttoned up the coach that night at Lake of the Torches, ‘cause I used the cleaning stuff on the inside of the coach.”
“What about St. Croix? Did you clean that night?”
“Not really, I just swept, and the broom’s right inside the bay door on the right side. I pulled it out, but I don’t think I looked any farther into the bay.”
“So somebody stuck it in there at one of the first two casinos?”
“I can’t think of any place else. We didn’t make any other stops between casinos, either, except to drop off the passengers on the way home, and those park-and-rides were deserted.”
“So it had to happen at one of those casinos.”
“You know what? That morning when we were leaving Lake of the Torches? There was a guy with an old Monte Carlo parked all the way back, on the left side of the coach. He was walking out to his car while I was starting the engine. Remember those two black Cadillac Escalades full of guys in black suits that came charging in? When we pulled up to load the passengers, the Monte Carlo was just pulling out. I never opened that third bay, because the lock was broken, and I didn’t need the space.
“Those guys from the Escalades were combing the parking lot when we pulled out of there, and later, on the highway, that Monte Carlo passed us, then the Escalades passed us. They were all going like a bat out of hell. Then, a little while later, he passed us, again. Then the Escalades passed us, again, like they were chasing him. And then, a couple miles down the road, that was the Chevy that was upside down, and the guys from the Escalades were crawling all over it. We thought they were trying to help.
“But, suppose Monte Carlo guy was hiding from the Escalade guys. When he saw them pull in, he hid that stuff in the bus, figuring he’d follow us and get it out later. Escalade guys spotted him and started chasing him. He ended up rolling his car, and that’s why he didn’t take it out when we stopped. Does that make sense?”
“Well, the scenario makes sense, the way you laid it out. But, where,” she asked, “would a guy in an old Monte Carlo get that much money and drugs? Why would he hide it in a strange bus? And why, Oh...My...God! He stole it! Drew, he stole that stuff from some drug dealer, and that’s why the guys in the SUVs were chasing him! It makes perfect sense.
“Car guy steals the drugs and cash from some drug lord,” she continued, getting excited now. “Drug lord finds him and sends his thugs to get the guy and the stuff back. Car guy hides at Lake of the Torches while we’re there, and when SUV guys show up, he panics and hides the stuff in our bus. SUV guys chase him and he crashes. If he didn’t get killed, I’m sure they found out the stuff was in our bus. If he did get killed, then they don’t know where the stuff is now. Oh, shit! Now what do we do?”
“For one thing,” Drew pointed out. “I think that if he told SUV guys where he stashed the stuff, they would have come and gotten it before we got home.”
“But, they didn’t know our itinerary. Drew, we can’t even give the stuff back, now, ‘cause we don’t know who drug lord is. If we turn it in to the police, and drug lord figures out we found it, then we’re really screwed ‘cause there’s a public record of our names. You know it won’t take more than a couple hours to make the news, right? He’ll think we were involved.”
“Okay, slow down here.” Drew took a pull from his beer bottle and sat quietly for a minute. “I suppose that Escalade guys could figure out that Monte Carlo guy might have hidden the stuff in the bus. If they do, I suppose they could figure out whose coach it was. From there, it wouldn’t be all that hard for them to find out who was driving.
“So, how much money are we talking about here?”
“I don’t know. I suppose we could figure it out.” Drew put his beer down and walked out to his truck, returning with the opened bundle of cash and one of the sealed bundles. Putting them down on the table, he pulled a yardstick from between the fridge and the kitchen counter. He laid the yardstick on the table and measured the sealed stack first. “Okay, that’s exactly a foot.”
Laying the yardstick over the opened sta
ck, he measured that it was an inch shorter, so he took out an inch of bills, and removed them. He sat down and started counting. When he finished, he looked up. “Two hundred thirty-five dollars.”
“Those are hundred dollar bills, sweetie, not ones.” She said, laughing at him.
“Oh, right. Let’s see, two hundred thirty-five times a hundred is two hundred thirty-five hundred, three places, comma, that’s twenty-three thousand, five hundred dollars. Ash, where’s the calculator?” Ashley retrieved a calculator from the top of the refrigerator and handed it to him. “Two hundred thirty-five bills to the inch, times 12 inches, that’s 2,820 bills, which is two hundred eighty-two thousand, and there’s what, fifty of these bundles?”
“Fifty-two.”
“Two hundred eighty-two thousand times one twenty seven plus two hundred fifty eight five for the opened one…Oh, Jesus, Ash! That’s fourteen…million…five…hundred…sixty…thousand…dollars! What in hell have we gotten ourselves into?” The two of them sat at the table, staring at each other and the money.
“Okay, Drew,” he could see the gears whirring in her head as she scribbled on a note pad. “Suppose we keep the open one, that’s what, two fifty-eight five? Or even half the open one. We take all the rest of the stuff and turn it in to the police. We tell them the truth, leaving out the part about the stuff we kept, and wash our hands of it. If anybody asks us, we found the stuff, didn’t know where it came from, and we turned it all in. We can’t account for where car guy might have spent or given away some of the haul.”
“Yeah.” Drew was nodding. “Then we put it in the safe deposit box and we don’t touch it. We let it sit there for a couple of years, and then start using it, a little bit at a time. No one’s the wiser.” He sat back smiling, but Ashley still looked concerned.
“Drew, fourteen and a half million dollars. Where could that come from? If it really is drug money, it’s got to be somebody pretty high up the food chain. I’m sure those guys standing on street corners don’t get that kind of cash. If it’s somebody that high up, he can certainly afford enough goons to find us.
