by Pete Lister
“Think about this.” She continued. “Even if he finds us and we can convince him that we don’t know what he’s talking about, can he afford to let us just walk away? At that point, we could identify anybody that talked to us. They sure wouldn’t want someone who can identify them walking around. He’d have to make sure we didn’t tell anybody, even if he wasn’t sure we knew anything.”
“Ash, why couldn’t we turn it in and notify the papers ourselves? That way, drug guy would know everything we know. If the cops say the amount turned in was less than the amount he lost, he’d figure car guy or the cops, wouldn’t he? If we just go about our lives like nothing’s changed, we should be free and clear. Then someday, down the road, we could start spending it, carefully.”
“I don’t think so, Drew. Is that a risk we’re willing to take? I think we’re officially screwed regardless what we do.” They sat there silently for a while, sucking on their beer bottles.
“You know,” she told him. “We could take one of these bills down to Piggly Wiggly and get some chips to go with this beer.” Beer shot from Drew’s nose and now they were both laughing.
Drew’s eyebrows rose, and looking thoughtful, he was obviously coming up with a new idea. “Okay, Ash, how about this? You don’t have anybody here in town but me, right?”
“I have a couple of distant cousins someplace, but after the accident, I was the only one left from my immediate family, and that was a long time ago, so yeah.”
“Okay, and all I have is my dad, but he’s a retired cop, and I don’t think drug guy would be able to screw with him.”
“Honey, what are you getting at?”
“We don’t have anything holding us in Milwaukee. I’ve got a job, hardly a career. If I didn’t show up tomorrow, they’d just call somebody in to cover the run and they wouldn’t schedule me anymore. Besides, it wouldn’t be so terrible, because my customer, that’s you, wouldn’t show up, either. Life would just go on.”
“So?”
“So, what if we kept the money, all of it, and just disappeared?”
“Could we do that and get away with it?”
“We’d have to think about it, but I’ll bet it wouldn’t be that hard to disappear if you really didn’t want to be found, especially if you have half the money in Wisconsin.
“We could hit the road. Anywhere we stay, we pay cash. We could go anywhere we want and settle down. We still have our passports from the Bermuda trip last year, so we could even travel overseas, if we wanted. We use our real passports to fly to, say, England. Buy our tickets at the last minute. When we get there, we rent or buy a car using fake names and head out. Always use fake names and pay with cash. Even if somebody was on to us, all they’d be able to find out is that we flew to England. By the time they got there to look for us, we’d have disappeared, again. We could fly home the same way. I know it sounds complicated, but we could do it. It might even be fun. We have nothing holding us here, and it’s not like we’re stealing. This is found money. I mean, it’s already stolen drug money, but we didn’t steal it, and it’s not like it’s a pension fund or a church poor box. What do you think?”
“I think we need to talk to your dad.”
“I think you’re right. He stays up late, I’ll call him.”
§ § §
Twenty minutes later, the young couple was sitting at John Sherry’s kitchen table explaining what had happened.
Drew was a change-of-life baby, and his father was sixty-three, tall and straight with exactly the same physique as Drew’s, but with penetrating blue eyes and coal-black hair peppered with gray over his ears. Ashley always thought he looked like Paul Newman. Drew got his light brown hair and hazel eyes from his mother.
A retired detective, the former Milwaukee cop was able to sum up situations with uncanny insight. He could walk casually through a room or down a sidewalk, and see everything around him without seeming to look around. Drew had always depended on his advice.
“So let me get this straight. You come home from a three day casino run, and somebody’s left fourteen and a half million dollars and a hundred and sixty pounds of heroin on your bus? Is that right?”
“Well, we don’t know the back-story, Pop, but basically, yeah, that’s it.”
“And you’re actually thinking of keeping it?”
“Uh, yeah. We’re thinking about it. Look at it this way, Pop. As close as we can figure, nobody, but nobody, legit keeps fourteen and a half million bucks in hundred dollar bills lying around. Even if somebody did, they damned sure wouldn’t hide it in a tour bus and just disappear.”
“And they certainly wouldn’t have any heroin, let alone more than a hundred pounds of it.” Ashley added.
“We think that guy in the Monte Carlo took it from the guys in the Escalades. If he lived through that crash, they might be able to track it to us. If that’s the case, I don’t see how we’re safe, even if we turn it in. If he didn’t survive the crash, then the odds of the Escalade guys tracking it to us get even longer. Either way, we can safely assume we’re in the clear.
“Neither of us is actually nailed down to Milwaukee, except to be close to you. If I re-enlisted or took a job in another state, it’d be the same situation, as far as we’re concerned.”
John thought about that for a minute. “Except if you did that,” he pointed out. “I could just pick up and move near you. But if you keep this money, and you disappear, I’d be putting you at risk just by calling or visiting you. And that’s if you keep the money, which I still don’t recommend.”
“Pop, realistically, how safe are we, even if we turn the money in?”
“Well, you’ve got a point there.”
“John,” Ashley cut in. “According to Drew, your whole life has been finishing one project and starting the next one. Since it looks like we won’t be safe, regardless of what we do with the money, why don’t you come with us, and we can make our next project to keep the money and just disappear? I mean, we’re talking about fourteen and a half million dollars, here. Do you really want to give that back to some drug dealer? Drew and I have some ideas about how we could do it, and I’m sure with your background, you know all kinds of things that would help us. You know, I love you like my own dad, and we’d love to have you with us. Has your life been as interesting, as exciting, as it was before you retired? Is this how you want to spend the rest of your life? Won’t you at least think about it?”
Sherry sat back in his captain’s chair and looked around the kitchen. He saw the shelves he had mounted above the sink and the stove that held Eve’s knickknacks, the field of daisies she had painted in Door County during that last summer. He thought about all the places he had wanted to take her, and the things they had wanted to do, before life got in the way. The room hadn’t been changed much since his wife died. It still looked like a tasteful country kitchen, and John kept it as clean as she had, but Ashley was right, something was missing. He and his best friend and partner, Lee Massey, had even talked about it once or twice over the years, usually in the summer, while drinking beer and grilling in one of their backyards.
Now, he looked across the table at his son and Ashley, thinking about what they had just proposed. They all sat there without speaking for five full minutes, lost in their own thoughts. Five minutes doesn’t sound like a long time, but look at your watch and sit someplace quietly, without speaking, for five minutes. It takes all day.
Finally he nodded. “Ashley, you see all those things on the shelves there?”
“Yes.”
“Those were Drew’s mother’s. She called them her ‘collections’. Would you like to have them?”
“I’d love to have them, John. I’m honored you even thought of me.”
“Okay, I’m in.” John and Ashley shared a warm smile. In fact, the room seemed to warm up a little. Drew could see that another bond had just formed between his fiancée and his father. He didn’t feel excluded, either. He felt like Ashley had just been accepted as a full
-fledged member of the family.
John turned to Drew. “If we brainstorm this thing, we just might be able to make it work. I’ll never get rich on my pension, even with my Social Security, so this just might be the only chance I’ll ever get to grab the brass ring. A cop ripping a drug dealer off, is that ironic or what? It could be a grand adventure. There’s just one thing.”
“What’s that, Pop?”
“Dianne.” Dianne Massey was the widow of John’s old partner. Lee had suffered a fatal heart attack three months after cancer had taken Eve Sherry. The Sherrys and the Masseys had been best friends for years. John and Dianne had stayed close, and lately they had become serious. “I’d have to talk to Dianne. Honestly, I don’t know how she’d feel about it, but I’d hate to lose her, and I’d hate even worse to have to choose between you.”
“Okay, that’s fair, but Pop, I don’t know how much time we actually have to make some kind of decision.”
“That’s no problem. I hung up on her just before you got here, so I know she’s still up. Tell you what, where’s your stuff?”
“In the back of Drew’s truck.” Ashley told him. “We each took a bag of clothes and the little treasures we couldn’t leave behind, in case we couldn’t go home. We locked my car in our garage and drove over here in the pickup.”
“That’s good. Drew, go out and put your ill-gotten gains in my utility trailer. It’s steel, and it’s enclosed, and we can lock it. Put your bags in the back of my van. Then, lock your truck in the garage next door. I bought that house as a rental and haven’t finished fixing it up yet. Hook the trailer up to my van. The keys are on my key ring. While you’re doing that, I’ll call Dianne ”
The young couple nodded and left the house through the kitchen door, grabbing John’s keys from the hook by the back door. Twenty minutes later, with Drew’s truck locked away, and the trailer secured to John’s van, they returned to the house.
John was sitting at the table, with a smile on his face. “Dianne said it sounds like fun. She said that no one knows about us but you two, and her house is secure and paid for, so there’s no reason she can’t pull up stakes on short notice. If it doesn’t work out, she can always just come home, again.”
“That’s great, Pop. We love Dianne ”
“I packed a bag, Drew. Would you put it in the back of the van for me? Ashley and I will be out in a minute.” Drew looked at Ashley, who raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders.
“Sure, Pop. I’ll wait for you in the van.” Shaking his head, Drew went out the front door.
“What’s up, John?” Sherry looked at the girl for a moment.
“Now listen, Ash, are you sure about this?” he asked her. “To be honest, I’m not sure Drew has any good options, here. This plan of yours may actually be the best one he has, but even so, it’s certainly not a good one. You need to understand, though, that if you go through with this, you and Drew are a couple forever. If you’re not certain that’s what you want, you need to think about it now, before we leave. I love you to death, but this is a big step.”
“John, first of all, if those people know about Drew, they already know about me, too. More important, I love Drew. We’re already engaged. If this adventure means I’m stuck with him, and you, and Dianne, for the rest of my life, then it already sounds like a pretty good plan to me.”
She leaned over and planted a light smooch on his lips. “I love both of you, and Dianne, too. You’re all the family I have.” Smiling at him, she turned and walked calmly out the front door, joining Drew in the van.
John turned off the lights and set the thermostat to fifty-five, locking the doors and windows before walking out to his van and pulling into the street.
§ § §
Shiv Thompson was sitting at his regular booth at Carson’s on Wells, “The Place for Ribs”, when Scott and di Stasio came in and sat down across from him. Scott was slouching while di Stasio perused the chalkboard.
“You got news?”
Detective di Stasio nodded, smiling.
“Then eat.” Holding up his hand to get the waiter’s attention, Shiv held up two fingers and pointed to the detectives. The waiter nodded and headed for the kitchen. “So, waddya got?”
“We talked to your boys. They took Tommy home and laid him on the steps in front of his place. They kept his wallet, so it looks like a mugging.”
“Good, I’ll take care of Tommy’s family. And my stuff?”
“Well, we talked to the boys separately, and they all tell exactly the same story. The only common thread we can find is that bus. First, Lawrence hides his car behind the bus. Then, when the boys arrive and the bus pulls out to start loading passengers, he uses it for cover while he sneaks out of the parking lot. Then they spot him following the bus down the highway. They start after him and he loses them. They’re searching along the highway and they spot him, again, following that same bus, again. Finally, they chase him, he crashes, and here comes that bus.”
“So, suppose this bus ain’t got nothin’ to do with him? Suppose he just used it for cover?” Shiv asked.
“Then your money’s gone, your heroin’s gone, and we got nothin’, no place to start. That bus is the only clue we got at this point.” Scott told him.
“Okay, so check out the bus.”
“We already did. Like I said, I called the hotel, and they gave me the name of the tour operator that rode that bus to the casino that day, gave me her name and number, too. Then, they gave me the name of the bus company. I called the company and told them the driver might be a witness to a fatal accident, and they gave me his name and phone numbers. He’s off today, and nobody’s answering either his home phone or his cell. They told me the guide was his girlfriend, too, but she doesn’t answer, either. By the way, she’s got the same home phone number.”
“Same as who?”
“The driver. I guess they live together.”
“Ain’t that cozy? So now what?”
“I got their home address.” He handed a card to Shiv, who held it up. One of his boys appeared and took it.
“Give this to Jack. It’s the address for the bus driver and the broad from the bus. Tell him to take Pat and bring them in, Mead, not O’Reilly.” A nod and he was gone.
“Got two Pats,” he told the cops.
The waiter, a professional, not a college kid working his way through school, brought two more orders of ribs and set them down in front of the detectives. No one spoke until he left.
“So, now what?” Shiv asked.
“Well, we ran the driver’s sheet, he’s clean, no priors. Same with the girl. They’re on the schedule for another casino run tomorrow.”
“If the boys can’t find them at home, I’ll have them pick them up at the bus in the mornin’. They’ll just have to leave the passengers waitin’ somewhere.”
“If I might suggest…” Scott said softly.
“You gotta better idea, Sonny? Let’s hear it.”
“If the bus doesn’t leave the yard, or even if they just miss picking up their customers, the company’ll be alerted immediately. Worse, those places are busy first thing in the morning. It may be impossible to snatch them without attracting attention. Why don’t you have your men follow them to the casino and intercept them there? That gives your guys all day to talk to them before anybody suspects anything.”
“Good idea. I’ll have Jack take care of that. Meantime, what else?”
“Nothing else, Shiv. We have no place else to look. Your pickup with the phony load is clean. Well, not clean, but empty. Very clever, the way you guys did those trucks, by the way. Nobody at the casino saw the switch, nobody recognized the truck. By the way, when he switched the stuff to his car, he left the truck running, probably hoping somebody would steal it. He should have left your cell phone in it, too. He’d have gotten away clean.
“Oh, and we spread it around that Curtis had been killed. They liked Curtis up there. And Curtis’ Place is still closed.”
&
nbsp; “That’s ‘cause I own it.” Shiv said. “I’ll have somebody else in there in a couple of days. Pat Mead’s getting too old for this kinda work, maybe he and Donna’d like to move to the North woods, shift down to something easier.”
“Anyway, we searched the room he was in at the hotel, we backtracked the route he probably took to get there. We went through his house, and we even checked out the bus. We went up to Milwaukee early and had the supervisor open it up for us. We searched it top to bottom, there’s nothing there, at least not now.
“Now get this, we talked to the pit crew at the bus garage. They said that one of the storage bay doors underneath was broken, had a missing lock that trip. It was the back storage bay door, on the left side. That’s right next to where Lawrence parked his car.
“The maintenance supervisor says the driver knew about it and wouldn’t have used that bay, ‘cause it couldn’t be locked. That one storage bay is used to store the cleaning supplies the drivers use on the road, so it’s possible the driver could have seen the stuff, if that’s where Lawrence stashed it.”
“And now him and his girlfriend are missing.” Shiv pointed out.
“Well, we don’t know they’re actually missing, Shiv. Couple of kids live together, both got a day off, they could be anywhere. Let’s see if they show up for work tomorrow before we start worrying, eh?”
“Maybe you’re right, but if you don’t mind, I still have millions of dollars in play, here. I’ll just keep worrying now, okay?”
“Yeah, sure, Shiv.” The two detectives, having finished their ribs, got up and started for the door. “Thanks for lunch. We’ll call you if we find anything.”
“You do that.”
§ § §
The Sherrys, Ashley Bevan, and Dianne Massey were sitting in Dianne’s living room. Dianne would only admit to being middle-age, but with shoulder-length hair - and still carrying the same figure - she was still just as beautiful and clear of complexion as the day she graduated from college.
