The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 1-3 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  “So that kept you out of trouble.”

  “It was an ongoing process, that’s for certain. Believe it or not, Ms. Patti actually taught me how to arrange flowers.”

  “You?”

  “Are you surprised that I can put together a colorful arrangement?”

  My stare was blank. “I would be more surprised if you told me you danced for the New York City Ballet.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact…”

  “Shut the—”

  “Fuck!” Jerry slammed the brakes while reaching across the seat for me.

  It was too late. I slipped by his arm and slammed into the front window and dash, crunching my ribs, right knee, and my head all at the same time.

  “You okay, Alex?”

  I took in a breath—burned rubber lingering in the air—and felt a jabbing pain in my side. I wondered if I’d cracked a rib, or worse. “I’m fine,” I said with a shallow inhale of air.

  I righted myself on the floorboard.

  “Crap!” Jerry banged the wheel. “Motherfucking kids.”

  “What was it?”

  “A couple of punks racing their muscle car, ignoring everything around them. They just ran right through the stop sign.”

  “Did you get their license plate?”

  “Nah. Just make and model. Look, do I need to call for a paramedic?”

  “I’m good.”

  He pulled out his phone. “Double shit. Lockett’s guys are already waiting on us a block away from the pawnshop. We had to drive all the way from Southie. What did they expect?”

  High-anxiety Jerry had returned, although part of me didn’t care at that exact moment. My ribs were battling my head for top honors in the agonizing-pain category.

  Jerry slowly pulled the car to the curb, then got out and walked over to my side.

  “Why weren’t you wearing your seat belt?” he asked as he swung open the door.

  “It was fastened, but I guess it’s faulty. Remember, this is an FBI-issued vehicle. Not exactly fault-proof.”

  “Good point.”

  He grabbed my hand and attempted to pry me off the floorboard as I grunted and whined like a baby. As I finally got to my feet, my jacket caught on the edge of the glove compartment, which had popped open, and a cascade of stuff spilled to the floor. Once I got my legs under me and realized my knee injury was nothing more than a minor bruise, I leaned down to pick up loose pens and old notepads, coupons for fast food restaurants, a couple of empty containers of raisins, a bottle of ibuprofen, and some loose papers.

  “This is like a dorm room, Jerry,” I said, wincing a bit.

  He’d just crawled back into the driver’s seat, and the whole car rocked a bit. “Well, I just don’t have time to stay organized. I’m sure Drake will ding me for that on my next performance review.”

  I hesitated a moment, surprised to hear Jerry still harping on his resentment of Drake. There had to be more to their mounting feud than what I’d heard, which didn’t sound like anything special to me.

  Shuffling the papers to try to get them to fit back into the glove compartment, I came across a crumpled flyer. Red words were written across the front, flanked on either side of a picture of an automatic rifle. I glanced at Jerry, who was thumbing through his phone.

  Looking back down at the paper, I read the sentence to myself: If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.

  My pulse throbbed at the point where my head had connected with the glass, and I gingerly touched either side of the lump protruding from my head. “Hey Jerry, where did you get this?”

  He shifted his eyes from the phone and held his gaze on the flyer for a moment.

  “Oh, it’s just something I picked up when Tracy and I went to Europe.”

  He picked it up and now it’s in his car? Wait…

  “You guys went to France, right?”

  His eyes were back on his phone. “We did. Paris. Then we traveled up into the mountains. But we also swung through the UK, Ireland. Beautiful country. I think some peddler stuck that in my coat one day. Once we were back in the States, I was driving to work and found it in my coat pocket. I just stuffed it into the glove compartment, along with everything else.”

  Sounded plausible, although I wanted to quiz him more about the meaning of the automatic weapons—if, in fact, he knew anything about it. I scooted into my seat and stuffed everything back into the glove compartment as Jerry shifted the car into drive. He didn’t see me slide the flyer into the outside pocket of my jacket.

  “How far out are we?” I asked as I ran my fingers across my ribs.

  “Five minutes, max.”

  It took us about four. We pulled up behind the two detectives, and then they joined us in the backseat of Jerry’s car. Jerry barely gave us enough time for introductions, then said he and I would go in first, ask a few questions to see who was around and if they knew much about Pescatore. Then, if needed, we’d call for the two detectives, Lewis and Hitzges, to bring in the search warrant. We all fully expected the search warrant would be needed. The Boston PD uniforms would split into two groups, one pair covering the back alley, the other pair half a block down by the corner. The conversation lasted all of about two minutes, Jerry talking and everyone else nodding.

  “So, we go in, try to coax them into telling us about their operation, see if there’s any connection to these bombings, and what they might know about Pescatore’s involvement. We know if they lawyer up, they won’t share shit with us. If we get nowhere, Alex will send off a quick text, and then you guys come in with the search warrant. Any questions?” he asked as he opened his creaky door.

  “Real quickly, I need to know a couple of things,” I said.

  He huffed out a breath and shut his door.

  If we weren’t in mixed company, I would have scolded Jerry right there. He’d stomped all over my investigation, brushed me aside. His word was absolute apparently, and that didn’t sit right with me. I turned and locked eyes with Lewis and Hitzges, an even odder pairing than Jerry and I. Lewis was a youngish black man with a chrome dome, an unusually large one at that, while Hitzges was a cross between an older version of Hitler and Gary Busey.

  As I opened my mouth to speak, Hitzges pulled a mushed sandwich from his size XXL sports coat.

  “What? I’m hungry.”

  Lewis elbowed his partner. “Really, dude? Now’s the time you decide to feed that fat face of yours?”

  Hitzges returned the elbow with an extra bit of zest. “You know I’m on this new diet.”

  “Diet?” Lewis squawked out a laugh, then smacked the back of the seat right in front of my face. I flinched, but couldn’t divert my eyes from this partner train wreck.

  As Hitzges opened his mouth to take a bite, Lewis pointed at the white bread with finger marks all over it. “You’re eating another bologna sandwich, dude. How’s that supposed to be a diet?”

  Hitzges snapped off a mouthful of white bread and bologna and smacked his lips no more than a foot from his partner’s face.

  “Get that nasty shit out of my face, dude.” He covered his head as if he were taking on live fire.

  Hitzges inhaled an enormous bite, and his cheeks filled so much I thought the food might explode through his lips. He started gyrating his jaw and neck in Lewis’s face.

  “Get away from me, dude. You’re nasty,” Lewis called out.

  “The more you keep calling me ‘dude,’ the more I’m going to blow my bologna breath right in your face…jive turkey.”

  As if on cue, Jerry and I snorted out a chuckle, eyeing each other, amazed at their childish behavior. But also amused.

  Hitzges’s head turned beet red, and breadcrumbs now stuck in his mustache. “And for your information, I eat lots of little meals to help speed up my metabolism.”

  “Lots of meals, yes,” Lewis said as he moved against the far door. “Little, not so much. How can you think eating ten bologna sandwiches a day could ever help you lose weight?”


  Hitzges stuck the last wad of bread and bologna in his mouth and growled. A few specs of wet food flew out of his mouth.

  “Oops…sorry.”

  It took Lewis a second before he realized what had happened. With a disgusted look on his face, he flicked food off his shaved head. He reached over and punched his partner in the arm. “Now you’ve gone too far, you nasty Nazi.”

  “How dare you call me that, you—”

  “Hey, guys, knock it off,” I said.

  The bickering quickly dropped to cursing murmurs as they bowed up to each other like a couple of territorial walruses.

  “Now!” I belted out.

  Their backs hit the seats in an instant.

  “Can we get past this partner bickering, please? I’ve got a question I need to ask before we go and confront the bad guys.”

  “Sure,” Hitzges said, crossing his arms over his coat.

  “Better make sure you’re not smashing another one of those sandwiches,” Lewis said with a snicker.

  With his eyes still on me, Hitzges smacked Lewis with the back of his hand.

  “Hey,” Jerry barked while pointing a stiff finger to the backseat. “If you guys don’t straighten out, I’m going to kick your asses, then have Captain Lockett assign you to traffic duty.”

  The pair quickly shut their traps.

  “Okay, considering you guys have been surveying this pawnshop for what…?”

  “Six months,” Lewis said.

  “Right, six months. This area here is predominantly Italian, and from what Captain Lockett shared, this pawnshop is most likely involved in some serious shit. Any connection to our Italian friends in the organized crime business?”

  “We don’t know.” Hitzges shrugged as he picked food from his teeth. “We have our suspicions, working with our colleagues in the organized crime unit, but nothing we can take to the Suffolk County DA yet. But apparently, we’re not going to wait for that big moment.”

  “Really, Sherlock?” Lewis said, his face all in a dither. “Bombs are exploding all over the city. Don’t you think that’s more important than some money-laundering charge?”

  “Never said it wasn’t, dumbass.”

  I snapped my fingers, and they turned like two dogs who’d seen a squirrel.

  “As you guys have watched this place, have you seen Pescatore involved in anything illegal? Anything that would make you think he was into making bombs, or associated with anyone who might be into bombs?”

  “Nothin’ we’ve seen or read from anyone else filing a surveillance report.”

  We finally broke up the meeting, and Jerry and I walked on the sidewalk toward the shop.

  “Can you believe those guys?” I said, taking two steps for every loping stride that Jerry took.

  “Partners. It can be the most volatile, unhealthy relationship in your life.” His eyes glared straight ahead, the pawnshop about half a block up ahead.

  “Nick and I…we’re nothing like that. He’s more like my big brother. Well, he’d probably say I was more like his big sister. But we’re close, you know?”

  “That’s cool for you guys,” Jerry said, refusing to glance my way.

  I dodged a guy trying to sell me watches out of his trench coat, then caught back up to my boss. “Sounds like you have some experience in the shitty-partner department.”

  “Eh.”

  “All you can say is ‘eh’?” I flicked my fingers off the arm of his leather jacket.

  He continued striding down the sidewalk as if I’d not spoken a word. I wondered if I’d hit a sensitive spot.

  “Jerry, you might be my SSA, but you can tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”

  Two more strides and he was still mute. I glanced up and spotted the gold and silver lights outlining the sign, Paulie’s A1 Pawnshop. We angled to the right, crossing by the front windows, which displayed a drum set, electric guitar, and amplifier. I noticed a handwritten sign taped to the top of the guitar that read, “Paul McCartney’s Guitar! 50% Off For a Limited Time!!”

  A few feet from the door, Jerry chuckled as he glanced at the sign.

  “Jerry, you going to answer my question?”

  His big paw gripped the door handle, and he paused, looking me in the eye. “It was Drake. He used to be my partner. I was the one who taught him everything, how to do what we do every day.”

  And now I knew why Jerry seemed like he might burst into a million pieces.

  ***

  A young couple, neither of them looking a day older than twenty-one, slumped against the glass display case, where a man with hairy arms and a half-eaten cigar dangling from his mouth pressed a handheld loupe against his eye. His opposite hand held tweezers with a diamond clutched in the middle.

  “One hundred percent genuine diamond,” Hairy Man said, moving his sights from the woman wearing a waitress uniform, to the man with grease all over his hands.

  “I just want the best for my girl, that’s all,” the young man said. He leaned over and kissed his girlfriend on the cheek.

  “Ah, you’re the best.” She reciprocated, and the starlit couple shared a moment.

  The man who chewed his cigar as if it were a piece of cud rolled his eyes at the exact moment the couple wasn’t looking at him. But I was, even as I pretended to sift through a rack of silver necklaces.

  “So, can I wrap it up for ya?” Hairy Man asked.

  The young man, who I guessed was a mechanic, raised a single finger, as if a thought had come to mind.

  “So, I thought there was supposed to be some type of rating system for each of these diamonds? Something about the ‘C’ word.”

  His girlfriend smacked his shoulder. “You can’t say that word in public. Come on now.”

  “What are you talking about? I read about it on the Internet. I learned a whole lot about the Cs.”

  Hairy Man shook his head, as if he’d heard enough bickering, and held up his hand, uncoiling a finger with each term. “Cut, color, carat, clarity.”

  “Yeah, you see there? I knew what I was talking about,” the mechanic said. “So, you say this diamond is worth five hundred bucks. Prove it.” He held up his chin an extra inch, showing the pawn-shop employee who was boss.

  Hairy Man handed the loupe to the mechanic, who eyeballed the diamond.

  “So you already know that you’re buying your sweetie here a 1.5 carat rock. And that’s saying something.”

  The man said, “Yep,” as the girl giggled and hopped up and down.

  “Then we got your cut. You’re looking at a pear-shaped diamond right there. And I’m telling you, those are extremely rare.”

  Geez, this guy was laying it on thick. I swung my sight around for a second and saw Jerry still ogling the guitar in the front window.

  Hairy Man continued. “The color, now that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” He splayed his hands, and I noticed a couple of gaudy gold rings on his fingers.

  The couple nodded, and then the mechanic went back to viewing the diamond through the loupe. “One more C. That’s clarity. I studied this one extra good.”

  “We want all of our customers to be well educated before they make a purchase, but I’ve never seen anyone as astute as you,” Hairy Man said. “You oughta be proud of this guy here,” he said to the girlfriend.

  She wrapped her arms around her boyfriend’s back. “Don’t get no better than what I got,” she said.

  “So what kind of clarity is this sucker?” her boyfriend asked.

  “So we use the GIA diamond grading scale. And you are looking at what we call an IF diamond. That’s a synonym for Impossibly Flawless.”

  He stared at them for a second to see if they took the bait.

  “Hey, Paulie, when the hell are we getting in that special shipment?” A man wearing a Red Sox cap backward and a toothpick sticking out of his mouth walked out of the back room and stopped in his tracks. “Oh,” he said, scanning the room to see Paulie working with the customer. Then his eyes moved over to me and finally to
Jerry behind me. “Didn’t know you were still with a customer.”

  Paulie dropped his hands, and his rings clanged against the glass. His neck and mouth stiffened. “What does it look like we’re doing here?”

  “Sorry.” The man retreated through a gray curtain, and I wondered why he didn’t feel compelled to help Jerry or me. Still, we’d learned there were at least two men inside, including one who wasn’t inclined, or maybe trusted, to work with customers.

  “Okay, where were we?” Paulie asked, rubbing his beefy hands together.

  “Impossibly flawless,” the girl said, batting her eyelashes while staring at the stone.

  “Just because I can tell how much you love each other, I’ll throw in a fifty-dollar gift certificate to J-Mart down the street here.”

  “Thanks. We’ll take it.” They hugged, and I almost puked.

  I considered informing the young couple that they were most likely purchasing a very flawed diamond—if it wasn’t a complete fake to begin with. But I couldn’t risk making a scene, not yet. Maybe I’d have a chance to catch up with the love-struck couple later.

  Paulie took their money—all cash—and then put the diamond in its box and handed it to the mechanic.

  “Thank you for your help, sir. To be honest, I wasn’t real sure about all of that jargon about the four Cs, but I can tell you know your stuff,” he said, shaking Hairy Man’s hands vigorously.

  “You bet ya. Make sure you send all of your other young friends to Paulie’s A1 Pawnshop whenever they’re getting hitched. I guarantee they won’t walk out of here without the diamond of their dreams and the deal of a lifetime.”

  The couple locked lips while they walked through the door.

  Young love. I wondered if Mark and I had ever been that naïve.

  “Now that you’re done with the punch-drunk love couple, how much do you want for this McCartney bass guitar?” Jerry’s voice bellowed across the store.

  Paulie sauntered our way, but not before turning his head for a moment toward the back room.

  “The McCartney guitar, right. I’ve actually had that one in the family for a number of years. Found it at a music shop in Liverpool many years ago.”