Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle

by Rob Cornell

  “What about my daughter?”

  “I know where she is.”

  “Bullshit. How?”

  “How doesn’t matter. Ask me why.”

  I’d be damned if I played his games. I didn’t ask him anything. But I bet he could hear my own hot breathing through the phone now.

  “You don’t want to know why?”

  I still didn’t answer. Fuck him. This was a load of shit. Some con. After all, it was no secret that I had inherited a fortune from my song-writing parents. Composing chart-toppers helped them support their true love—the High Note. Not too many people knew about my daughter, though. A local police detective named Palmer; my daughter’s mother, Autumn; and Sheila, an old friend of the family. But Autumn was in prison and Sheila had run off to parts unknown after I ousted her for stealing booze from the bar to support her secret drinking habit.

  I couldn’t see Palmer letting something like that slip, or use it for his own scheme.

  Which left one other possibility. This guy on the phone was somehow connected to the adoption ring my daughter was sold through.

  “I can hear your wheels turning,” the caller said.

  “Who are you?”

  “Ask me why.”

  “Fuck you. Tell me who you are or I’ll hang up and my next call goes to the cops.”

  “Wow,” the guy said, drawing it out so he sounded stoned. “You are dumb.”

  The caller had caught me in the middle of an empty threat. He held the dice in this game and he knew it. I had a choice. Play along and see if he really knew something. Or cut him short and spend the next week wondering if I’d made a mistake. I chewed up and spit out my pride. “Okay. Why?” I asked, though I couldn’t quite remember what I was asking about.

  “Because,” the caller said and for a second I thought that was it. Then the creepy breathing started again. “I know where your daughter is because I’m the one who bought her.”

  Chapter 3

  “Are you listening?”

  “I’m here,” I said through clenched teeth. I wanted to crawl through the phone line and strangle this bastard on the other end. I’m the one who bought her. Like she was an easy chair on sale at Art Van.

  “I don’t want her anymore. She’s too…old…for me.”

  My intestines tied themselves into knots. I stared at the ink blotter on my desk. A doodle I had drawn on the calendar of a cartoon detective in fedora and trench coat stared back at me. I thought I had drawn him with a goofy look of suspicion. Now he looked angry, accusatory. I picked up a pen and scribbled his face out. “What have you done to her?”

  “Nothing but loved her.”

  I kept scribbling with the pen until it tore through the paper, ripping apart the detective’s head. “You sick fuck. If I find you, I’m going to—”

  “Cut my dick off? I’ve heard it before. My dick is still intact and works perfectly.”

  “I won’t go anywhere near your dick.” My hands trembled. The pen shook loose from my fingers and rolled off the desk. The air smelled stale and tasted dry. “I’m going to shoot you in your sick fucking mouth.”

  “Does that mean you’d like to meet?”

  My throat closed. I didn’t know what this guy was aiming for. Did he want to torture me? Make me torture myself with the blanks he left for my imagination to fill about what he had done to her all these years? No. This was all just a means to a blatant end—money. “How much do you want?”

  The caller chuckled. “How much is your daughter worth to you?”

  “Quit playing and give me a number.”

  “Well, she is damaged goods. So I guess that warrants a discount.”

  Oh, man, I was going to kill him. And kill him. And kill him some more. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. All that would pour from my mouth were more empty threats. But if I did end up meeting this fucker, I planned on reloading every one of those threats and opening fire on his sorry ass.

  Then I drew myself back. I had let my emotions get the better of me. Mr. Breather had pushed every right button to send me into the red zone, where instinct instead of intellect made the rules.

  “This is a con,” I said.

  “You don’t sound so sure.”

  “Child molesters don’t make confessions over the phone before demanding a ransom.”

  Another stupid chortle. “I never said I molested your daughter.”

  “You implied it. To get a rise out of me, I’d guess.” I took a deep breath and tilted my chair back. “I’m not biting. You want money, get a fucking job.” Then I slammed the phone down and yanked the cord out of the back.

  I splayed my hands flat on my desk to stop them from shaking. I saw the wreckage of my doodle and laughed. A laugh I didn’t believe, but needed at the moment like a breath of fresh air. The guy had played me like a six-string and a wa-wa pedal. I didn’t know how he knew about my daughter and what had happened to her. I did know, however, that he didn’t have her like he claimed.

  I left my office and went downstairs to the bar. Helped myself to some straight gin. It tasted flat and bitter without the tonic, but the burn going down did the trick I expected. My nerves straightened a bit. I poured another two fingers, threw it back, and returned the bottle to the shelf.

  I left the glass on the bar. Paul would bitch about that when he came in. I wasn’t in the mood to care.

  I retrieved my coat and headed out to my car, the Beemer that came with my parents’ estate. I started driving without a conscious destination. My good old subconscious had this. I ended up at the Hawthorne Public Library. The internet is cool and all, but sometimes I like to roll old school. Besides, what I’d come to look for—now that my subconscious had shared his plan with my conscious—probably couldn’t be found online. I needed newspapers. Old newspapers.

  I sat down at the microfiche machine, feeling like Indiana Jones before an ancient and powerful relic. Kids in school these days would probably laugh at the contraption. But when they hit college and had to do a serious research paper, they would leave their computer keyboards behind and come crying back to the microfiche. That is, if they could find one. I was lucky enough that Hawthorne’s library had one of the machines. Seemed most libraries had fazed them out, under the same delusion that all the world’s answers could be found on the World Wide Web.

  Enough of the back-in-my-day spiel. I had work to do.

  It didn’t take long to find the articles I was looking for. The first one was only a three-inch paragraph of vague speculation. Police investigate deaths of Hawthorne family. That’s all they knew at the time. The next article had the full outline of the story, with more speculation to fill the gaps left by police. A follow up article in the Hawthorne Tribune bordered on tabloid exuberance. They detailed a narrative, introducing Eddie for the first time in any of the papers, how he discovered his mother and brother murdered, and his father killed by his own hand with the weapon he used to erase his family. They portrayed Eddie as a sad victim, paving the way for all the other news stories and local gossip to run a game of telephone, each telling more lurid than the last, dripping with pity for Eddie and bald contempt for his father.

  What I didn’t find in the articles was any indication—even a sliver—of the dad’s possible innocence. Only a broken heart could deny the facts—Eddie’s dad had wiped out his family, sparing his teen son simply because he was in school at the time Dad snapped.

  Did I really expect anything more? Wasn’t this really just a way to distract myself from that damn phone call?

  I shut off the microfiche machine and returned the cartridges to the research desk.

  Outside, my breath steamed in the cold air. I stood at the top of the cement steps leading to the library doors, trying to decide what to do with myself.

  The stretch limo that pulled to the curb made the decision for me.

  I sat in the back of the limo, alone. The Friday edition of the Tribune lay neatly on the leather seat next to me. A pair of bottled wat
ers sat in a cup holder to one side. A mini fridge was built in under the cup holders. When the limo took a turn, I could hear a faint clink from inside the fridge. I kept my curiosity on a leash and didn’t open it. I wasn’t thirsty. I wanted to know why the driver of this limo had found me at the library and invited me for a ride. I had hesitated at first. Officer Rogers taught me in elementary school never to get into a car with a stranger. But something the driver had said made it so I couldn’t resist.

  The ride is courtesy of an old friend.

  I didn’t have many friends in Hawthorne left. And I couldn’t think of any who would send a limousine to pick me up.

  So in I went, and now I sat staring at the back of the driver’s head through the glass partition wondering how much stranger a single day could get.

  We arrived at a hotel in what qualified as part of downtown Hawthorne—basically a collection of now abandoned machine shops, hotels, and a strip club or two all gathered around the Hawthorne airport. Not a lot of flights came in and out of Hawthorne. Mostly private planes. If you wanted to book a flight for the family vacation, you’d have to leave out of Detroit Metro.

  The driver pulled into the half-circle driveway at the hotel’s front door. He got out and opened the door for me. All I needed was the red carpet and I could play the pop star my parents had always hoped I’d become. Imagine their disappointment when they learned I’d gone into private investigation instead. I never got to see their faces when I told them what I was up to out in LA, but I did hear my dad’s choked gasp over the phone. At the time, I felt like I’d really stuck it to them. I’d had no idea it would be the last time I ever spoke with them.

  The driver slipped the valet a bill and changed roles to escort. He guided me to the elevator and we rode up to the sixth floor. I tried a couple of times to ask who we were meeting with. His answer was always the same.

  “Patience,” he’d say like a Kung Fu master admonishing his student.

  In silence, we exited the elevator and followed the hall till my companion stopped in front of one of the room doors and waved a delicate hand at the knob. “Go right in.”

  “It’s been a pleasure,” I said. “We should do this again sometime.”

  One eyebrow lifted, but I didn’t get so much as a smirk out of him. Some people have no sense of humor.

  I let myself in, glad I had my gun tucked in its shoulder holster under my coat. I didn’t go many places without it anymore. I’d learned my lesson three years ago after the cluster-fuck Autumn Rice had dragged me into.

  The last person I expected to see sat at a small round table by the window. The gray sky behind her gave her face a dark cast. Her eyes looked sunken, a trait she hadn’t had last time I saw her. Her white hair had turned a dirty shade that matched the sky. The lines in her face were a picture worth more than a mere one-thousand words.

  She looked like hell, and from the color of her skin, I knew it was the drinking that had done it to her.

  “Sheila.”

  “Hello, Ridley. You’re looking a little haggard.”

  “You should talk.”

  A smile touched her face and cut some of the edge off her deteriorated look. “I have a lot to atone for.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve blown things a little out of proportion?”

  She hiked one shoulder. The pearls around her neck clicked. “There’s more to me than what you’ve seen.”

  “What I see is a drunk wallowing in self-pity because she got caught being a drunk.”

  She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. When she opened her eyes again, they showed a small shine of clarity. “Sit down, Ridley. I have something important to tell you.”

  “You disappear without a word, but now you puff back into Hawthorne with an important message? The days of you taking care of me are over. I have no interest in what you have to say.”

  “Fair enough.” Her hand went to her pearls and worried them like rosary beads. “But you have to hear it.”

  “Look at you. You’re a wreck. An insult to my parents’ memory. They trusted you with everything. You think they’d want to see you like this?”

  Her face pinched, having the opposite effect of her smile. Now she looked ten years older than her sixty-some years. “None of that matters right now. I’ve made a terrible mistake—”

  “You’ve made a few of them.”

  “Fine. Get it all out. As long as it means you’ll shut up long enough to listen to me.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”

  She touched one side of her face. “I hardly recognize myself.”

  Underwhelmed with Shelia’s victimhood, I crossed my arms and stared her down. “Tell me so I can get on with my life.”

  The room smelled like dried sweat. Not the kind of stink you’d expect from a hotel with valet parking. It made me wonder if it came from Shelia. How far had she let herself fall?

  “I’ve been living in Miami since I left here,” she said. “I have a friend who lives there. She put me up until I found a condo to rent.”

  “Did you bring photos of your vacation?”

  Her wince almost made me feel guilty. But I didn’t have much love for a supposed friend who bails on you during one of the most jacked-up times in your life.

  “There’s a bar I started to frequent,” she said, voice thick now. She was getting to the part she didn’t want to say. Which meant I probably didn’t want to hear it. “I met a man. We did a lot of drinking together. Became lovers.”

  I scrunched up my face. “Not really into senior citizen erotica. Thanks, though.”

  Her lips turned into a straight line and stretched some of the wrinkles around her mouth smooth. “Must you?”

  “You know me. I have a rep to maintain as a smart-mouth PI.”

  Her eyes watered. She dabbed at them with a knuckle before the tears could escape. “You’re angry with me.”

  “Now who’s the detective?”

  She slapped the table. The cheap wood made a hollow tock sound to accompany the snap of her hand against the surface. “Let me talk.”

  I jerked back. I’d never seen Sheila so pissed. Served her right. But maybe I was the one blowing things out of proportion. Maybe I was taking my frustration about so many things out on her because she was an easy target. Which meant maybe I should lay off a little.

  “Okay,” I said. “Truce.”

  “I was never at war with you.”

  “All right, Shelia. I get it. Say what you have to say.”

  “The man I met. His name is Hersch Olin. At least, that’s the name he gave me.”

  A twitch in my gut. I wasn’t going to like this. Not a bit.

  “He took me for a lot of money. I don’t want to get into details. But he conned me good.”

  The word conned worked like the cord that pulls open a set of blinds. “You’re the one who told him about my daughter.”

  Her gaze fell to the floor, and with it the last threads of any dignity she still clung to. “He’s already found you then?”

  The toxic mix of emotion roiling in me made it hard for me to decide exactly how I felt at that moment. “Called me this morning.”

  She lifted her hanging head, making it look like the weight of the world was balanced on the back of her neck. “You didn’t…give him anything?”

  “I know a con when I see one. He had me rattled good, though. You really know how to pick ‘em.”

  “When I met him, he was the most charming man I’d ever had the pleasure to talk with.”

  “Funny how being drunk makes even the sleaziest guys look good.”

  She screwed her lips together and tried to burn a hole in my forehead with her concentrated gaze. Then she stood. “I had a feeling he might use the personal things I shared with him for his personal gain. I just wanted to warn you.”

  “Now you fly back to Miami and get on with your bender.”

  “I have been in your life since you were bor
n. But you don’t know me, Ridley. Not everything.”

  Seemed like there was a lot of people I knew who I didn’t know. Of course, Eddie Arndt wasn’t someone who helped raise me when my parents were too busy with their music. He got a pass. Sheila? Not so much. “Near as I can tell, I don’t want to know you.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe that’s for the best.”

  I snorted. I was dizzy with frustration, outright anger, and a nagging sense of loss. I had told Sheila I didn’t recognize her anymore. The same could have been said of my whole life. “Whatever. We’re done then?”

  Her face softened. Her eyes shined. She nodded.

  As I left, I thought I heard her say something. I didn’t stop. The limo driver followed at my heels until I turned on him. “Get the fuck away from me. I’ll call a cab.”

  Which meant I had to wait an hour in the lobby, stewing and steaming. Not many cabs in Hawthorne. When the rusted and dinged Ford with the sticker on the side—Mr. Snappy’s Cabs—pulled up, it was all I could do to keep from running out the door.

  The cabby, skin the color of dark chocolate and smooth as Shea butter, double checked with me on the address I gave when I called in. My home address.

  “No,” I said. “Give me a second.” I pulled out my iPhone and fumbled with the touch screen. I’d only had the thing a few months and it still felt like an alien relic in my hands. I managed to pull up the white pages, searched for Arndt. Eddie was listed, along with his address.

  I gave the cabby that address and flopped back in the seat. The last thing I wanted to do was sit in a mostly empty mansion that fed me memories I’d rather not chew on. Going back to my office and shooting hoops with perfectly good printer paper into the recycle bin didn’t thrill me either. Not even porn could keep my mind occupied.

  I needed a case.

  So why not take one that had fallen in my lap? Even if it wasn’t much of a case at all.

  Chapter 4

  Eddie lived in an apartment complex in South Hawthorne. South Hawthorne was the proverbial “other side of the tracks.” You could almost draw a straight line through the center of Hawthorne on a map. On the north side, you have a bunch of wealthy yuppies—not all as wealthy as my parents (or me now, I guess) but a few even more loaded. On the south side, poor and working class folks that supplied the service sector with bodies to cater to those in the north. Along the border, you have Hawthorne high school, where the two classes meet and mingle during the most formative parts of their lives. Going to school every day felt like fraternizing with the enemy. And no matter how nice you were to the other side, you were always someone’s enemy.