“You own this building?”
“Naw. Wish I did. I could have sold it for plenty.”
“You mean to Bernie Gold, right?”
I could see the expression on his face change, as if I’d thrown cold water on it.
“You got your money’s worth, honey. Now get the hell out of here.” He turned and went back to his bench behind the counter.
“Sure thing, honey. Getting the hell out.”
I stepped outside, glanced at the time on my phone, and wondered what was going on with Gurn, temporarily MIA. It was pushing eleven-thirty a.m. Looking up at the blazing sky, I thought of the old saying, Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun. I felt the urge to bark.
Just then the phone rang and I looked at the caller info. My heart literally skipped a beat - love does that - and answered the call.
“Hi, darling man! I was just wondering about you.”
“Hi, sweetheart. Sorry I didn’t call earlier, but I’ve been busy.”
“What’s wrong?”
His voice sounded sad and concerned. I had a feeling he didn’t have good news for me on the Manning front. Unless he’d met a gorgeous flight attendant on United Airlines and they were running away to Argentina together. Hmmm. Sometimes I need to sit on my imagination, I really do.
Unaware of my weird thought processes, Gurn went on.
“I’ve called in every favor I can think of and finally found somebody willing to talk. Wherever you are, I hope you can sit down for this.”
I followed his advise and plopped myself under a shade tree.
“I’m sitting.”
“The FBI knows all about Dennis Manning. They found him three years ago. He’s in the Witness Protection Program. He uses the name --”
“Samuel Randolph.” I finished for him without thinking.
“Yes. How did you know?” His astonishment radiated over the phone.
“I got a lead on him this morning. How could the FBI be protecting him after what he did? Did they always know he’d faked his death?”
“Not until they came across him dealing with some other people they’ve been following. Once they found Manning, they decided to use him to get to the bigger fish. He’s about to give evidence to the Grand Jury on a nationwide child pornography ring. The man who got killed was one of the lesser partners in the syndicate, sent down to keep an eye on Manning.”
“You mean Bernie Gold?”
“So that’s his name. I couldn’t get any information about him. But the main boss, Rodrigo Santiago, is the one they want to hang and they’re willing to give Manning a get-out-of-jail-free card to do it. The scuttlebutt is Manning took the opportunity to get rid of Gold and pin it on Vicki, maybe with the idea of taking off on both parties. The Feds are watching Manning like a hawk. Here’s the tough part and you’re not going to like it. Manning gives evidence in less than three days. After that they ship him and his wife off to parts unknown to start a new life. Even my pals don’t know where that is.”
“So if I don’t nail him soon, we could lose him forever?”
Gurn let out a long sigh. “There’s nothing to nail. Once he testifies, he starts a new life. As far as the law is concerned, Dennis Manning is as dead as if he had died on that boat nine years ago.”
“Wait a minute! Does that means Vicki goes to jail for killing Bernie Gold? If that’s what they’re thinking, I’m not letting that scumbag get away with this.”
“I’ve been thinking that over. Maybe we can negotiate something.”
“You negotiate all you want. I’m going to do something.”
“That’s my girl.” I could feel his grin on the other side of the line. “But Lee, be careful. These are dangerous people. Why don’t you wait until I get back to NOLA, which should be in a few hours? How about that?”
“How about if I promise to keep you updated as I go along? Like right now, I’m on my way to Colbert’s Motor Repair, which is owned by said scumbag. I’m going to look around, maybe do a little B&E. I’m wearing your denim shirt. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not in the least. What do you have with you?”
“If you mean a weapon, I’ve got Lady Blue and a box of cartridges. I don’t plan on having a shootout with anybody but thanks for taking me to the shooting range last week, just in case. I should go, Gurn. All of a sudden the sky is clouding up. It looks like it might rain. I may have my gun with me, but I don’t have an umbrella.”
“Could be nature’s way of telling you to wait until I get there.”
“Could be nature’s way of telling me to get on with it.”
He laughed. “Be careful, sweetheart. I love you.”
“Backatcha.”
Chapter Thirteen
When life Hands You Lemons, Make Limoncello
Several blocks later I came to a corrugated, half-moon shaped Quonset hut type building, looking straight out of World War Two. It sat on another narrow strip of land, like everything else around here, surrounded by dull grey gravel instead of grass or weeds. Dense, tall bushes ran around the outer three sides of the perimeter.
A white sign with ‘Colbert Motors’ written in peeling red paint hung above the center of two wide corrugated doors. The doors were closed and locked, a heavy-duty hasp binding them together. A battered black pickup truck with balding tires sat in one of the three spaces allotted for cars. The truck door opened willingly to me, so I searched the cab for anything interesting, keeping an eye out for passersby. Not one scrap of paper, not even in the glove box.
I banged the door of the truck shut, and walked the graveled perimeter of the forty-foot building, aware of only the sound of birds, the occasional toot of a car horn in the distance, and the crunching sound of my feet on the small rocks.
Along the side of the building were oil drums, tools, and other mysterious paraphernalia I suspected were used to repair engines. Even I could see, a person who knows nothing about tools, most of what was lying around outside cost money. Left where they were they would either start rusting or ‘taking a walk’ soon, indications to me this place had been recently and hurriedly deserted. That thought made me charge around to the back of the building. Was I already too late?
An old boat trailer sat on two flat tires, the long hitch resting on a bed of coiled, rusty chains. Back here everything looked like it had been in place for years, if not decades.
There was a back entrance to the shop, a door crudely welded into the siding by blowtorch. I yanked on the door, but it was locked. There isn’t a lock I can’t get into given enough time, but I planned on trying one of the three sliding windows on either side of the building first. Just then I heard two vehicles pull up in the front and turn their motors off. A man with an authoritative voice started barking orders.
“Get all those files out of the office, take them around to the back, and burn them in one of the oil drums back there. I don’t want a single thing left for anybody to find.”
A car door slammed shut and someone crunched up the gravel at the front of the building. His gait was irregular. The screeching sound of the corrugated front doors being forced open drowned out anything else he might have said.
Meanwhile, I was in a panic. I danced around in circles looking for a way out of this one. Sure, I had my gun and could shoot my way out if I had to – we’d already covered that - but I really, really didn’t want to. So loud and messy.
Suddenly, I heard a set of uneven, but fast striding feet on the gravel heading toward me. Was it Manning with his limp? More importantly, if I stayed where I was, my only recourse was to hop into an oil drum, and hope it wasn’t the drum they’d start a fire in.
The densely packed bushes lining the property called to me. I hightailed it over. Pushing and beating at stiff, prickly brushwood, I tried to wedge my body inside. Limbs, twigs, and branches grabbed at me from the top of my hair to the ties on my leather shoes. Scratches burned my face, neck, hands, and feet and still I plunged deeper into it. Man oh man,
what I do for a living.
I managed to get in about two feet, and came nose to nose with a garter snake hanging out on one of the limbs. I started to scream and maybe the snake did, too, but the back door flew open, banging against the tin siding with such force, we both froze. I could only pray I was inside the bushes deep enough so my cobalt blue Capri pants didn’t show.
Through a tiny break in the branches, I could barely see a bald, older white man and a younger black man exit the building carrying boxes filled with file folders. The limping man had come around the outside of the building and stood with his back to me holding a one-gallon red can. On his head was a tan cap.
I couldn’t see enough of him to make sure it was Dennis Manning, but it added up. I mean, if it looks like a rabbit, hops like a rabbit, and wears a tan Great Gatsby cap, it’s Manning, right? Well, maybe. Okay, I needed to see his face. The tan capped man continued to stand in silence, apparently watching the two men. I thought this out.
The young black man dumped the contents of his box into a drum then the older white man did the same. They threw the empty cardboard boxes away, maybe under the awning of the building. Then they moved out of my pathetic line of vision, but it was clear the man with the tan cap gave the orders.
“Get out of the way, old man,” he said. “You’ll get splashed with gasoline.” I heard the sound of a liquid being poured.
“You’re using too much, boss,” the young black man said. “Let me do it.”
More sounds of pouring liquid. I was getting nervous. Unless you were burning down the Empire State Building, it was a lot of gasoline.
“Stand back,” tan cap ordered.
I didn’t hear the strike of a match, but a second later, there was more of an explosion than the roar of a bonfire. I think the snake fainted. I know the thought crossed my mind.
Thick black smoke curled and twisted in the ever-darkening sky. I could feel the heat even from where I was.
“Go get the rest of the files,” the tan capped man shouted. The underlings went back into the building. Something else was yelled to the men inside, but the words were masked by the sounds of the blaze.
Was this Dennis Manning, now known as Samuel Randolph? I needed to be certain. Think, think, I demanded of myself, trying to ignore the feeling of being in the middle of a cactus patch. The camera on your smart phone! And it can zoom in!
But if I wanted to take pictures with my phone, plus see what was going on, I’d have to move. And if I made any form of movement, I might attract attention. Just when I felt frustrated beyond belief, a wind kicked up, sort of a precursor to it’s-gonna-rain-big-time. Unburned papers broke free from their boxes. A few partially burned ones from the drum were pulled into the swirling updrafts and across the small yard. The three men scrambled after them.
I used this opportunity to squat, breaking small branches and limbs on my way down. Then I scrunched down on my hands and knees, sticking my butt up in the air. I maneuvered myself below the branch line and in between two narrow trunks. Lowering my face to the ground, I got a clear view.
I reached up behind me, pulled the fanny pack around to my front, and unzipped it. I was pricked at every point by the sharp, needle-like undergrowth. I withdrew my phone then Lady Blue, setting the gun on the ground in front of me. You never know.
The men retrieved all the flyaway documents and tossed them into the oil drum with the rest of the burning material. I opened the phone, put the camera on zoom, and started taking pictures madly. The zoom allowed me to see the two underlings up close and personal, tattoos, twitching noses and all. Writing showed up on many of the file covers. I couldn’t make out what was written, but maybe Richard could enlarge the names, numbers, whatever, later on. It was worth a shot. So shoot I did, taking nearly fifty pictures.
The tan capped man finally turned and faced my direction, pausing for a moment. As I took his picture, I knew then for sure it was Dennis Manning. Richard had done a bang up job of projecting what he looked like nine years after the fact.
Then Manning did something that surprised me, right out of a James Bond movie. He lifted the hitch of the boat trailer, dragged it to one side, and dropped it to the ground. Then he returned to the coiled chains on the ground and reached down. Instead of heavy chains, they seemed to be one glued together piece, weighing next to nothing. Another version of the pseudo rocks people use to hide their house keys. How do people come up with these ideas? It’s all I can do to run my espresso machine.
Manning set the chain facade on top of the trailer hitch and went back to the spot where they had been. With the heel of his shoe, he scraped a portion of the gravel away. Once cleared, he bent down and pulled up on a metal ring.
A large trap door opened, and Manning descended a set of steps into a cellar. He came back up moments later carrying an armful of files. Man oh man, I sure wanted to have those files but I didn’t feel like shooting three men to get them, so I stayed put. He threw the files on the fire and descended the stairs again. It began to sprinkle.
As he returned from the cellar with the second batch of files, the cell phone clipped to his belt rang. He threw the files on the ground and answered his phone with a curt “Yes.”
After that he only listened, but I could see whatever was said on the other end of the line upset him. He snapped the phone closed and turned to the men.
“Something’s happened. I have to leave immediately. Burn the last of these files along with the rest of the ones on the fire. Then put the boat trailer over the storage room again.” He looked up at the sky. “And hurry up before the downpour. When you’re done, dispose of the truck in the front. It’s clean but take it somewhere where it will never be found. You got that?”
The older man nodded but kept his head down, as if afraid to look Manning in the eye. The black one grinned and said, “You know I do you a good job, boss. You know that.”
I kept taking pictures, even though the phone was signaling yellow, a low battery charge.
“Just do this right and I’ll see you’re taken care of.” With that vague promise, Manning ran to the front of the building. I heard a car door open, slam shut, and the start of an engine. The back wheels of a white Jaguar spewed gravel everywhere, as he reversed next to the right side of the building. Something in my life was going right, because the back end of the car was directly in my line of vision. I managed to snap a partial license plate number before the phone blinked red twice then died. Manning careened away, the screech of tires and smell of burning rubber filling the air.
The men looked after the departing car. Then with zero gusto, picked up a stack of files and tossed them into the consuming inferno. The heavens opened up at that moment, and the onslaught doused the flames to not much more than a flicker. The men didn’t seem to notice. They drew into themselves, drenched, and uncomfortable by the deluge. Sissies.
I of course, was fairly dry at this point, protected by the thick canopy of branches and leaves. After several more seconds, however, icy rainwater poured off branches and leaves, ran down slender trunks, and got me. The ground, soaked with water, turned to mud. There’s no escaping the stuff.
Protecting my smart phone, I shook it and hoped to fool it into thinking it had a little life left in it. It didn’t. Meanwhile, the men threw the last of the files onto the former bonfire. The black man turned to the other, and said something lost to me in the noise of pounding rain. Then he ran to the front of the building. I heard the truck’s motor start and it, too, careened away.
Meanwhile, the older man hurriedly shut the trapdoor, threw the chains to the ground, and lifted the hitch of the trailer, dumping it onto the chains. Then he took off like his butt was on fire, which it couldn’t have been, because he was too wet.
I waited only a split second then stood. The rain beat down on the world; water ran off the top of my head and down my back. Returning my phone and gun to the fanny pack, I fought my way out of the brush as fast as I could. I had one purpose in mind, sav
e whatever files hadn’t burned yet. My muddy Capri pants caught on a particularly nasty branch and I heard a long ripping sound. I didn’t even look down; these pants weren’t working for me, anyway.
I ran over to the smoldering oil drum and reached out. Despite the cooling rain, the sides were still too hot to touch. I kicked the drum over on its side with my foot. A pile of smoking rubble tumbled out. I looked around then picked up two soggy cardboard boxes and using them as potholders, grabbed the bottom of the drum, turned it upside down, and shook it. The rest of the contents plummeted out. I tossed the drum aside and it rolled several feet away.
The smoldering pile on the ground was just as I’d hoped. Papers in the middle of the drum hadn’t had a chance to burn. The blessed rain had seen to that. With glee, I watched the deluge put out any remaining fire. The winds kicked up again but the papers were saturated with water and almost welded together as one. I sneezed, drenched to the skin.
I looked around for something to throw the precious unburned papers into and found a cardboard box at the bottom of the stack under the overhang, not quite wet through. Careful not to disturb the unburned pile any more than I had to, I lifted it up and placed it into the box.
My hands, arms, and feet previously spotted with mud, now was covered in soot. That didn’t bother me as much as the papers I worked so valiantly to recover were being smashed down by heavy drops of rain, possibly destroying even more evidence. I removed Gurn’s denim shirt and covered the top of the box, shivering as I did so. I sneezed again and wiped away the water running down my face with my free hand. Too late I realized I’d smeared my scratched up face with all kinds of black stuff. Great.
I set the box under the overhand then turned back to the empty boat trailer with a big sigh. Duty called. I had to go down into the cellar and check for more evidence.
I lifted the ice-cold hitch off the chains with a big grunt, it being heavier than I had thought it would be. After I humped the sucker over to the side, I was rewarded with a twinge in my lower back. Tomorrow Bengay for strained muscles, Neosporin for scratches. What a life.
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