Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle

by Rob Cornell

  The radio crackled and Paul’s voice came through. “I’m where you told me.”

  I scooped the radio off the seat and pressed the button to answer. “Okay, keep me posted.”

  I glanced at my gun, but it didn’t perk up and give me comforting advice. It looked to me like a coiled snake, ready to strike with its venomous fangs at any moment. But wasn’t that the point of a gun?

  The time on the clock in the dash read six fifteen. Paul and I had first met in the High Note’s parking lot, then drove over to the trailer park at five-thirty. Angie had promised to try keeping him until at least eight. After that, I was on my own.

  But I didn’t take any chances. Getting up at four that morning was a lot easier than getting to bed the night before. Coffee and adrenaline kept me awake now. I was ready to end this. All I had to do was wait.

  Paul’s signal came just after seven.

  “Guy’s coming out now.” Pause. “He matches the picture. I’m out.”

  I jammed my car into drive and mashed the gas pedal. My tires spun on the icy street for a moment before gaining traction. Then I was barreling around the block, heart racing, hands gripping the wheel as if I meant to tear it loose.

  When I cleared the corner onto Angie’s street I saw Paul kneeling in the snow in front of her trailer. As I sped closer, I noticed the form underneath him. I slid to a stop, grabbed my, gun and flew out of the car.

  The body under Paul lay face down in the snow. Paul held a hand on the back of the guy’s head, but his face was turned toward me and I recognized him immediately. I held my gun in a two-handed grip and aimed at Bobby’s face.

  “Let his head up,” I said.

  Paul removed his hand and Bobby arched his back and looked up at me. He grinned. “No fucking way.”

  “Looks like I win the race,” I said.

  “Are you kidding? I told you, I already crossed the finish line. I found her, Rid. I know right where she is. And I can take you to her, if you want.”

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing yet. But she got me so horny, I had to take up Angie’s offer for a good time.” He shook his head. “Coke and sex. Should have figured my two addictions would get me into trouble.”

  “Is she here in Hawthorne?”

  “No way, man. She’s up north. Get your ape off of me and we can go visit.”

  I took a quick glance around. We couldn’t stay out here for long without attracting attention. I pulled a set of handcuffs from my pocket and tossed them to Paul. Without a word, he clamped the cuffs around Bobby’s wrists behind his back.

  “You’re fucking yourself treating me this way, Rid. You get ugly, I won’t tell you how to find her.”

  I jerked by head to one side. “Take him.”

  Paul stood and easily lifted Bobby off the ground. Snow covered the front of him and powdered his hair like a bad case of dandruff. As Paul jerked him toward his truck, Bobby glared at me. “What would Dad say about you doing this?”

  “He’d say you deserved it.”

  We blindfolded him and took him to my house, put him down in the wine cellar—which was loaded with bottles I had never thought to look at when I moved back into the house—and let him stew for a while. Paul and I sat upstairs in the kitchen.

  “Doesn’t seem like the talkative type,” Paul said.

  “No,” I said. “He’ll put up a fight.”

  “So you’re gonna get rough?”

  “He knows where my daughter is. And he has Hal somewhere, too.”

  “Wasn’t asking you to justify yourself. Just making sure I understand what I’m into.”

  “No. You’ve done your part. And I appreciate it.”

  He tilted his chin up. “You want this to work, you’re gonna need back up.”

  “I can’t ask you to do this.”

  “He knows where your daughter is. And he has Hal.”

  I couldn’t deny Paul’s help would make this a lot easier. He was tougher than I was. Colder. And would probably be more convincing for Bobby than I could. This overstepped the boundary I was willing to drag Paul across, though. “You can’t.”

  “Don’t you think I can make my own decisions about what I can or can’t?”

  “That’s not the point. You—”

  “Owe you for keeping me around, paying me well, and staying loyal when I’ve needed you to.” He scooted his chair away from the table and stood. “You ready to do this or what?”

  He had this look in his eye that made me feel like he might get aggressive with me if I tried to deny his help. Trying to protect him was an insult to him. “Okay. Let’s talk to him.”

  We had Bobby cuffed to a pipe running along the cellar ceiling. His arms stretched up like a ref calling a field goal, one cuff on each hand, the chain over the top of the pipe. The set up looked a little medieval. I hoped it was enough to intimidate Bobby into talking without having to provide much more motivation.

  He still wore the blindfold, but he heard us come down and grinned big. “I’m impressed, Rid. You never took things to this level in the old days.”

  “A lot’s changed,” I said. “Don’t test to find out how much.”

  “Oh, hell no. I’m gonna make you reach your limit. I gotta see how badass you’ve become.”

  Paul snorted. “You want to see how much of a badass I am? Want to test me?”

  Bobby titled his head at the sound of Paul’s voice. “It’s the gorilla goomba. You former mob? I can smell the WOP sweat on ya.”

  Paul gave me a glance, asking permission to jam a fist somewhere into Bobby.

  I shook my head. Not yet. I circled around to Bobby’s left.

  He turned his head, following the sound of my footsteps.

  “Let’s start easy,” I said. “What did you do to Hal?”

  Bobby cracked up, chortling as if sitting at a table in a comedy club instead of chained to a pipe in my wine cellar. “That’s awesome.”

  “Where is he?”

  “You care more about that old dude than you do your daughter?”

  “I’m asking you a question you’re more inclined to answer. We’ll get to her in a minute.”

  He threw his head back and laughed some more. “Man, you are a goof. One minute I think you’re a hell of a detective, then next you’re so stupid it hurts.”

  His tone. That mirth. Bobby had always had a pocket full of sarcasm to spread around. This was darker. Mean. “I’m not interested in your critique. I want to know what you did with Hal.”

  He let his laughter peter out. The smile cracking his face remained, looking demented with his eyes covered by the blindfold. “Nothing,” he said.

  Paul’s scuffed along the cement floor when he stepped forward, the sound like a hush. “I can make brushing your teeth a lot faster in the morning if you don’t stop with the games.”

  “It’s all a game. That’s the point.” He turned his head from side to side as if he could see through the blindfold to scan his surroundings. His head stopped with his covered gaze aimed a mere foot to the right of my face. “I never did a thing to the old dude. He presented an opportunity I took advantage of.”

  I moved in close, put my ear a handful of inches from his ear. “I figured I’d have to save the rough stuff for getting you to talk about my daughter. But if you—”

  “Lisa.”

  “Who?”

  “If you’re going to keep talking about her, you might as well call her by her name.”

  Hot needles prickled up my neck and across my face. I had him cuffed to a pipe over his head, blindfolded, and under threat of physical harm if he didn’t cooperate, and somehow he had wrested control of the conversation. My hand took on a mind of its own and smacked Bobby’s cheek, leaving behind a red mark.

  Bobby smiled. “That tickled.”

  I slapped him harder on the same cheek.

  “There. That’s a little better.”

  “How much of your story is bullshit, Bobby? Everything? You say yo
u didn’t do anything to Hal? Did you really find my daughter? Do you really expect me to believe you know her name?”

  “You should be worried about your old guy friend.”

  “Stop. You don’t have control here. Start talking straight or get used as a heavy bag for me and Paul here to work out some frustration.”

  “You’re all talk, Rid. You’ve always been a soft touch. Always let yourself get wrapped up in your emotions life a fucking woman.”

  I stepped back. Enough. I turned to Paul.

  It was all the invitation he needed. He stepped forward and went to work on Bobby’s kidneys, throwing low hooks, lefts and rights, back and forth. Bobby laughed at the abuse at first. But Paul kept at it until the laughs turned to hollow grunts and eventually drew tears.

  Paul backed off.

  Bobby swung a moment like a wind chime in a soft breeze. When he stilled, he said, “Wow. That was pretty good.” He tried to make it sound light, but I could hear the pinch in his voice

  The cellar grew filled with the smell of sweat and anger. I buzzed like a recluse required to give a speech in front of millions—totally out of my element and certain I’d fail. But I couldn’t fail. I had to end this, whether he was telling the truth or not. “Start with Hal,” I said.

  “He’s in the hospital. Had a heart attack. Jeeze, Rid, this is easy stuff to find out. Did you even bother checking?”

  I hadn’t, because Bobby had driven me to conclusions with his hints and taunts—the medallion, the note planted in Hal’s house. Just enough to draw my scent off the true path—a prime example of the proverbial red herring.

  “Why should we believe you?” Paul asked.

  “Because, King Kong, it’s really easy to check. Call Rosemoor Hospital. He’s out of ICU now, so you should be able to talk to him.”

  It drove me bats that he could know all of this, that his investigative skills had trumped mine four times over. It was small comfort to have managed to trap him like we had. He still knew more than I did.

  “So you faked the whole thing with Hal,” I said. “Are you faking this stuff about my daughter?”

  “Please call her Lisa. ‘My daughter’ this and ‘my daughter’ that is more of a mouthful than any straight man likes to have.”

  “What’s her last name, then?”

  “Are you kidding? You’ve got me cuffed in what smells like a wine cellar, a caveman who likes to take easy shots at a guy’s kidneys, and stand to inherit what rightfully belongs to me. Her last name is all I got left here.”

  “Playing the victim doesn’t wear well on you, Bobby. If you really know who and where she is, all you have to do is give me a full name and I can check it out. Then we can cut you loose.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “You ready to share?”

  He hung his head, sighed. “You win. Her full name is Lisa Bobby’s-Gonna-Fuck-Me-In-Every-Hole-On-My-Body. I think it’s French.”

  My fist never felt so good as it did when I clocked Bobby across the face, knocking his blindfold askew. The initial seconds of satisfaction gave way to a crackling ache across my knuckles, but I savored that pain as well.

  His head snapped to the side and when it swung back toward me, blood trickled from his nose. One eye peeked out from under the blindfold. He fluttered that eye and then focused it on me. “Damn, bro. I’m kinda proud of you. You’ve manned up.”

  I yanked the blindfold off and tossed it aside. I wanted him to look me in the eye and tell me he really knew how to find my daughter. I gripped his chin in one hand and forced him to face me. “Last chance.”

  “Or what? You let the gorilla loose again?”

  “Lie to me one more time and see.”

  “You really want to end this so soon?”

  “I wanted it done a long time ago.”

  He jerked his chin from my grasp. “Go to hell. I hate you. I hate you so much I want you to wonder until the day you die if I really found her, and what I might have done to her.”

  “All this because of an inheritance?”

  “It’s not just any inheritance. It’s the world my father raised me in. It’s a promise made a lifetime ago and stolen from me in a moment of spite. If he’d had time to think it over, he would have changed the will. He would have given the agency to me.”

  “I already told you, I would give you the agency. I don’t care about that.”

  “You don’t care.” He spat on the floor, his saliva tinted pink with blood. “That just makes it worse. He signed the agency off to someone who couldn’t give a fuck. Nice.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Forget it, Rid. I’m done. You’ll never know.”

  I curled my hands into fists. Somehow I kept from striking him again, though that was no reason to be proud. The next step would taint my conscience for the rest of my life. I turned to Paul. “Upstairs.”

  He followed me to the top of the stairs.

  I closed the door to keep Bobby from hearing us. “I have to know,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “But a few jabs to the kidneys and a pop to the nose aren’t going to do it. Maybe nothing will.”

  “Let me take care of it. He’ll tell me.”

  I shook my head. “You could beat him to near death. The best you’ll get out of him is another lie.”

  “It’s not just about working him over. Trust me. I’ve done this kind of thing before.”

  I didn’t ask ‘cause I didn’t want him to tell. “I don’t know, Paul. We’re skirting that line.”

  He hooked a hand round the back of my neck and pulled me within inches of his face. “He’s already crossed the line. They way he’s talked about your daughter, what he’s going to do to her.”

  “Empty threats.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Don’t stick up for this guy. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  Only at one time he had. He had deserved that and more. I had owed him for help forging the individual I wanted to become, making my own destiny, separate from what my parents had wanted. In short, I owed him my life.

  Paul could tell what I was thinking. “He’s not your friend anymore, Ridley.”

  I closed my eyes and made one of the harder decisions of my life.

  Chapter 30

  I could have walked away from the screams. The house was big enough. I could have easily found a quiet corner where I could pretend Bobby wasn’t begging Paul to stop…please stop…I can’t…I won’t…please…

  Instead, I stayed close to the closed cellar door. I sat on the floor against the wall opposite the door, mostly staring into space, occasionally started at a sudden shout from below. But the shouts weren’t the worst part. It was the heavy silences in between that unnerved. Paul had said his interrogation methods involved more than physical abuse. He didn’t tell me what that “more” equated to, but I had a suspicion those techniques happened during the silences.

  It took Paul two and a half hours, though after the first hour, silence had dominated over the screams. Paul stepped out of the cellar, massaging his knuckles.

  I stood, noticed the blood stains down his white shirt like a butcher’s apron, and shivered. I met his eyes, didn’t have to say anything.

  “I’ve got something I think will help.”

  Something? I wanted to pelt him with questions, but I swallowed them all. Time to trust Paul and follow his head.

  We reconvened at the kitchen table after Paul washed his hands in the sink and I got him a pad of paper that he’d requested. At the table, he scribbled something on the pad, then turned it around and shoved it across to me.

  An address.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “It’s where he’s been staying in Hawthorne. He rented the apartment about four weeks ago.”

  “Four weeks?” Plenty of time to gather all manner of information about my habits, my acquaintances, my weaknesses. “He really thought this through.”

  “Far as I can tell, he’s a psychot
ic. But I don’t really know the guy.”

  I wouldn’t have ever put that label on Bobby before. Now? That shoe could fit nice and snug. Could Mort’s death have caused a psychotic break? I was no shrink, but it felt right. Bobby and Mort were closer than any father and son I’d ever known. They worked together, played together, shared everything. I imagined losing his father would be like losing a limb. People have broken down for much less.

  I tapped the address written on the pad. “If this is his base of operation, he’ll have all this collected info there.”

  Paul nodded.

  “How did you get him to give you this address?”

  “That’s for me to know and for you never to think about again.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “You’re better off if you do.”

  Paul stayed at the house to keep watch over Bobby. I Googled the address and printed a map to the apartment, located not far south from where I lived. It was probably the closest affordable apartment complex to my house. Which meant the owners wanted to put on airs that the building belonged to the more elite domiciles nearby. This led to ornate landscaping, constantly maintained building facades, and last, but certainly not least, no buzzers to get in either of the trio of buildings housing the apartments—this was a nice neighborhood, no need for buzzers.

  I easily found my way to Bobby’s door and picked the lock to let myself in.

  The apartment came furnished, the style ode de la old people. On one wall, Bobby had taken down the included artwork—a painting of a sailboat—and had set the framed picture on the floor and leaned against the wall. In place of the painting he had hung a corkboard that was now littered with various papers and sticky notes, a map of Hawthorne, and date-stamped photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.

  I crossed the room to get a closer look. A month’s worth of work hung on this board, all revolving around me. Notes stuck to the map indicating frequently attended locations and travel routes. Photographs of people with faces circled in red marker and labeled with their names. I found a copy of paperwork for Hal’s admittance into the hospital. Who knew how he got a hold of something like that? He must have charmed the pants off—literally—a nurse or something. Another testament to Bobby’s skill and willingness to cross the line Mort had drawn for us as PIs in training.