Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle

by Rob Cornell

  Just when I thought I was out of places to search, I found an envelope taped to the bottom of a drawer in the bathroom vanity. I hesitated from touching it. I had no idea what I’d find inside. After all the rummaging I’d done through Hal’s things, now I felt like I was invading his privacy. Hilarious, I know.

  I dug my right glove out of my coat pocket and put it on. With my gloved hand I peeled the envelope off the drawer, then took it out to the bed where I laid it on the deep red duvet. I stared down at the envelope, my breath puffing clouds into the cold air. It was a standard business-sized envelope, a cream color, no writing, and not sealed, but only tucked closed.

  I put my other glove on, picked up the envelope, and opened it. I withdrew the single sheet of tri-folded paper, dropped the envelope back onto the bed, and unfolded the paper.

  One sentence, three words and a question mark”

  Found him yet?

  I crumpled the paper into my fist then threw the waded ball away as if it might bite if I held on too long. I growled, the sound echoing back at me in the silent room. I stopped myself from kicking the night stand or punching a hole in the wall. An act of will far stronger than any I had made in recent memory.

  Found him yet?

  I could hear Hersch’s morphing voice speaking those three words. First as his Butthead stoner persona, then his refined, cold, and dangerous voice. He’d played me again. Right down to finding a place to hide his note that he knew I’d find, because he knew how well I would search.

  I stalked out of the bedroom, not bothering to retrieve the note. It wouldn’t do me any good. In the living room I took a final look at Hal’s abandoned home. What could have Hersch done with him? Kidnapped him? Killed him?

  Whatever he had done, I knew it wouldn’t be easy for me to find him. Hersch would have made sure of that. Hal was the ultimate red herring and a victim to Hersch’s wickedness simply because the poor bastard liked to come to my karaoke bar.

  This left me with a choice. Continue my search for Hal and help him if he could still be helped. Or forgo that search for Hal and redouble my efforts to track Hersch. If I could find Hersch, I could find Hal through him. But I couldn’t know what condition Hersch had Hal in. Changing focus and going after Hersch might put Hal at risk if he wasn’t already lost.

  I didn’t want to make this choice. I boiled it down to its basest ingredients.

  Find and help Hal (if he could be helped).

  Or find Hersch and protect my daughter from him.

  Daughter.

  Hal.

  Daughter.

  Hal.

  I couldn’t hold back. I punched a hole through the drywall by the entrance. My glove kept my knuckles from scraping, but the impact sent shockwaves of pain through each joint in my fingers and up through my wrist. The pain in my hand, I felt, was a fair trade for the satisfaction I got from breaking something. I looked at that small satisfaction as foreshadowing to the exuberant glee I would feel when I did the same to Hersch’s face.

  All those tough thoughts didn’t help with my current problem—an impossible choice that nevertheless had to be made.

  Chapter 18

  The choice fairies hadn’t made the decision for me while I slept. I woke up about mid-morning feeling weirdly refreshed. My stomach roiled too much to contemplate breakfast, though. I went through my morning ritual—besides the breakfast—then did something I hadn’t done since I lived in LA. I worked out.

  Me and Bobby used to run on the beach, and not the paved path. That was for sissies. Us manly men chugged through the sand. We could make it from Manhattan beach to Santa Monica and still feel up to poking fun at the street performers on the Third Street Promenade. This was before Bobby had started with the cocaine—a part of him I tried to smudge over when it came to my memories of him.

  Instead of a beach, I now had a personal gym (surprise, surprise). I had never, ever used it before. Not when I’d lived here as a kid, and not after I had moved back in after inheriting the house. The equipment was state of the art—did you expect anything less? A treadmill couldn’t just be a treadmill. It had to have a control panel that looked like it belonged on the starship Enterprise. Some torturous looking contraption with weights, pulleys, and a chair that looked well suited for water boarding haunted one corner of the gym. A pair of his and her matching stationary bikes with built in TVs stood side-by-side in the center. Plenty of free weights to tone up a small army filled a rack along the wall with another matching set of weight benches nearby.

  For whatever reason, the gym equipment hadn’t gotten the sheet treatment, which meant a whole lot of dust. I wiped one of the weight benches clean and ran through a few simple exercises with the barbells. Arms magically turned from bone and flesh to floppy rubber, I moved on to the treadmill. The learning curve on operating the thing was pretty steep, but I grew up in the computer age—if I could surf the net, surely I could operate this treadmill.

  Ten minutes later, I got the thing started.

  I ran until it hurt to breathe. Then I pushed myself a little farther.

  I was a mess of sweat and trembling muscles when I called it quits. I hit the shower room connected to the gym, scoring myself with hot water.

  By the time I returned to the kitchen, clean and weak-kneed, I had made my decision. It hurt. But I made it.

  Palmer munched on his burrito while I stared out the restaurant’s window at the falling snow. More than six inches had fallen since it started back up late in the afternoon yesterday. A salt truck barreled down the road, scattering rock salt pebbles in its wake. The huge vehicle moved way too fast down a snowy road if you asked me. Did the driver not realize the salt shot out behind him, not in front of him?

  “So what you’re saying is,” Palmer said through a mouthful of rice, beans, cheese and flour tortilla, “Zelinski has dropped off the face of the earth and your guy Hersch has something to do with it.”

  Why Palmer felt he had to state the blatantly obvious to the very person who had told him the story, I didn’t have a clue. Could be him thinking out loud. Could be he liked to talk with his mouth full and didn’t have anything interesting to add quite yet.

  He swallowed and dropped the burrito on his plate. “You got the note?”

  “I left it at the house. It’s not going to have anything on it.”

  He wiped his mouth with a napkin, adjusted his glasses. “You know there’s not enough for me to do anything.”

  “That’s not why I’m telling you about it.”

  “Then why?”

  “I’m going after this guy,” I said. “I keep looking for Hal, I’ll spend the rest of my life at it. The only way to end this is to cut it off at the source.”

  “I still don’t know what you’re asking me to do?”

  “This Hersch is serious ugly. Dangerous. I go after him, I don’t know what the collateral damage might be. I guess I’m giving you a heads up.”

  He looked down at his plate and grimaced. The restaurant, Mama Bandito’s, made the best burritos in West Michigan. I’d never seen anyone look at one of them the way Palmer did.

  “Sorry if I ruined your appetite,” I said.

  “If I needed to diet, you’d be my go-to man.” He pushed his plate aside. “Are you telling me this because you think bodies are gonna drop.”

  I took a deep breath. “Possible.”

  He folded his arms and leaned back, head ducked so he looked at me over the top of his glasses. “You want to fill me in on your plan so I know what to expect?”

  “Simple,” I said. “I’m going to offer him a million dollars.”

  “Give me his number.”

  Sheila sputtered a moment, probably trying to figure out who would start a phone conversation like that without even saying hello. “Ridley?”

  “How’s Florida? Weather sucks here.”

  “It’s chilly. Only in the fifties.” I heard her hurmph, and she caught up. “What’s going on?”

  “I need the num
ber Hersch gave you.”

  “Why?”

  “None of your business. Give it to me.”

  “You’re going to give him the money?”

  “Yes.”

  Her next breath came shaky. “I think it’s the right thing to do.”

  “I didn’t ask for your blessing. Just give me the fucking number.”

  Now she huffed. “When are you going to—”

  “Never, if you keep stalling.”

  “I’m worried about you. Is that all right?”

  Damn it, but I’d hope this would be a four sentence conversation at the most. Guess I should have known better. “Sheila, you were right. Hersch is in Hawthorne and he’s put someone I know in danger to get at me.”

  “Oh, God. Who?”

  “You probably don’t know him. He’s a regular at the bar. Pretty flamboyant fan of the old standards.”

  “You mean Hal?”

  “So you do know him.”

  “Ridley, he’s been going to the High Note practically since your parents opened its doors.”

  I tried to remember ever seeing Hal when I was a kid. Couldn’t, though. He would have been what? Twenty-five, thirty years younger. The High Note had a lot more high profile traffic back then, too. Hal could have easily blended in, except for his off-key warble.

  “Well, he’s missing,” I said. “And Hersch is responsible.”

  “How do you know?”

  I explained the medallion and the note at Hal’s house.

  She gasped. “Have you told the police?”

  “I’ve filled in a detective with the department. But most of this is still circumstantial and doesn’t provide much to go on.”

  “They have to be able to do something.”

  “They can’t,” I said. “But I can. And you can help me.”

  Silence for a moment, except for the soft sound of her breath against the receiver on her end. “Please be careful. The money isn’t important. Your life…and Hal’s. That’s what matters.”

  I swallowed my cheeky response, reminding myself that she had offered up nearly every cent to her name to get Hersch off my back. “I know.”

  She gave me the number.

  His voice sounded like a snake on sandpaper, slick and rough at the same time. “Hello?”

  “You know who this is?” I asked.

  Hersch chuckled, reverting a little to his stoner laugh. “What can I do for you?”

  “I got your note.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure, sure.” I sat at the piano in the music study. I had drawn the drape off completely. I brushed the keys with my fingertips. “You win, Hersch. I’m ready to pay.”

  “You must think I’m stupid.”

  A cold nail slammed into my heart. “Greedy,” I said while trying to hold my voice steady, “but not stupid.”

  “So you changed your mind about the money out of the goodness of your heart?”

  I traced the length of middle C with my index finger. I didn’t have to hit the key to hear the note. “I want Hal back.”

  “You’re more worried about some old loser than your daughter.”

  “Don’t you get it? I want to end this.”

  “You still haven’t figured out who I am, have you?”

  “You’re a dickhead. What else is there to know?”

  His voice turned dark. “Do not fuck with me, Brone. While I did time, I met a few sex offenders. You don’t want me to introduce one of them to your daughter, do you?”

  “I have your money. We don’t have to do this anymore.”

  “Heh. So we set up a meet, you hand over the money, and then that cop friend you had lunch with busts me. That the plan?”

  “That cop’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “How do you think Detective Palmer would feel if his wife had a bad accident?”

  Finally, a gap in his research. “Palmer doesn’t have a wife, asshole.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” His laugh dropped to bass level. “He has a domestic partner.”

  An icy hot wash fell over me. He’d blindsided me again. “You’re making that up.”

  “What’s the matter? Are you homophobic? Or jealous?”

  This grifter had worked hard to make himself appear omniscient, and his work was paying off. I felt like a preschooler in a college level physics class, totally out of my league and scared out of my mind. “What do you want from me if not the money?”

  “Oh, I can use the money. No doubt. But we’re going to have to get creative with how I get it.”

  “Like what? A drop off?”

  “I was thinking more like a deposit.”

  He liked his tricks, liked keeping me off balance by keeping me guessing. I didn’t play along this time. He could tell me what the hell he was talking about without any prompting from me.

  He did, sounding only a little disappointed by not getting a rise out of me. “I have a bank account. It’s temporary and out of the country, so don’t get excited. You can’t trace me through it.”

  I absently mashed down an E flat Major on the piano. “I’m not depositing money to an offshore account.”

  “Then the race continues.”

  “You’re scared to meet me? Even though whatever bug crawled up your ass claiming to have my name is tap dancing in your small intestines? “

  “You come up with the cutest sayings. I think you should go into writing for bumper stickers and t-shirts. I think you’d have more success than in the investigative field.”

  It was like a frickin smartass battle royal. Only, I didn’t want to play. I want Hersch’s neck in my hands. But he had me, again. If he had an offshore account able to accept a million dollar transfer, he had no reason to put himself in danger by good old duffle bag in a trash barrel at the park.

  “Silence,” Hersch said. “Sounds like I put a damper on your lame plan to capture me.”

  “Not capture. Kill.”

  “That’s the spirit.” A faint wet noise came across the line as if he were licking his lips. “Call me when you really plan to hand over the money.”

  I barked into the phone before he hung up, “This isn’t about money. What the fuck do you want from me?”

  “Oh, no. I’m not giving away juicy details. That will spoil the fun.”

  “Are you practicing to be an evil overlord? This is stupid. Quit the antics and tell me what you really want me to do.”

  He hummed as if deeply considering. “I want you to suffer.”

  The line clicked and went dead.

  Chapter 19

  There had to be some way to lure him in.

  While I drove to my next destination, I drew my phone and called the bar. Paul picked up on the third ring. “You planning on coming in soon?” he asked.

  “Sorry about last night. Everything go okay?”

  “We managed somehow.” Paul could split a phrase so finely you could never tell if he was being sarcastic or genuine. I chose sarcastic for this one, a safe bet.

  “I can’t make it in again tonight,” I said.

  “Your work life interfering with your work life?”

  He liked to tease me that I worked basically two full-time jobs when, with my inheritance, I didn’t really have to work at all. “Not a typical job. This one is in-house.”

  Paul’s tone changed, lightening ever so slightly. “Anything you need help with?”

  “Just keep things rolling at the bar.”

  “You let me know if it gets serious. You’ve seen me. I’m good for more than just serving drinks.”

  I thanked him for the offer, hung up, and drove the rest of the way to Devon the Devil Man’s house.

  “Yeah,” Devon said, the light from four computer monitors the only thing illuminating his face. “That’s not really possible.”

  I looked around Devon’s downstairs room—as in down in his mother’s basement room—and admired his toy collection which had grown exponentially since last
time I had visited him at home. Devon’s the guy I teach vocal lessons to. He’s my only student, and the only reason I do it is because he helped big time with that Autumn snafu. Devon’s got computer skills like Tiger Woods has golf skills—only without the awkward public affairs and the worldwide notoriety. And, unlike Tiger, Devon didn’t get outside much.

  Among the various action figures, spaceship models, and collector statuettes, several versions of Darth Vader stared down at us from the shelf above his desk. At one end, Devon had the old school original Vader with the light saber that came out of his arm. Beside the original stood the evolutionary chain of improvements to the figure throughout time, ending with a fancy looking, anatomically correct Vader that looked too expensive to actually play with. I often wondered if Devon played with his toys. I had a feeling he did, except for the ones still in their packages hung on the only wall that didn’t have a table with a computer on it.

  Devon said, “The Viper Mark VII from Battlestar is new.”

  While some of his words sounded like English, he might as well have said Bla,bla, blobbity, blabla. I smiled. “Cool.” I shifted in my so-called chair, which was a hot pink inflatable loveseat. Supposedly the blow-up piece of furniture could support two. I wouldn’t want to test it. “About the phone thing, though—”

  The computer he sat in front of chirruped and a little box popped up on the monitor. He held up a finger and swiveled so he could type something on the keyboard. The box popped up again with another accompanying toot. Devon giggled and snorted. He swiveled back to me with a grin that looked ghastly in the monitor light. His devil’s lock—a long wave of hair dangling from his otherwise shorn head—hung over one eye. He swiped the lone lock aside and tucked it behind his ear. “You totally need to get on Twitter. I still can’t believe you’re not on. You can update all your followers right from the iPhone I set you up with.”

  Whenever Devon started in on the techno toy talk (or TTT—pronounced titty, or T-cubed for the prudes) I felt tired all over, like I had after my annual workout session that morning. Devon had no patience for my luddite leanings. He spotted the boredom on my face and swatted my arm. “Step into the new century, Ridley. I bet you’re still reading paper books.”