by Matt Coyle
“It’s behind the bookcase.” I nodded toward the large maple bookcase, that had once been my father’s, against the wall directly across from me.
“Where behind the bookcase?”
“I taped it to the back.” I raised my cuffed hands off my back. “Take these off and I’ll show you.”
“Nice try. Get up.” He pointed to the corner of the room next to the bookcase. “Go stand over there unless you want the bookshelf to flatten your ass.”
I rolled over onto my stomach, and a sharp stab in my side reminded me of the goon’s last kick. I pushed my head into the carpet and inchwormed up to my knees. From there I stepped into a squat, one leg at a time, and then finally up. It had been a while since I’d been upright. I liked things better that way. I walked over and stood in the corner of room with my back to the bookshelf, my fingers brushing against its side.
“You try something stupid and you won’t wake up the next time I put you to sleep.”
I heard him move. When I thought he was on the opposite side of the bookcase and could no longer see my hands, I wedged my dying fingers between the case and the wall.
The bookcase was solid maple, heavy with hardcovers. He’d have to use both hands to pull the case away from the wall. It would take some force.
Maybe I could help.
With my fingers still jammed between the bookcase and the wall, I contorted my head around my shoulder and saw him slip the stun gun into his back pocket and raise his hands up to the top of the bookcase.
“I lied.” I kept my eyes on him. “The drive isn’t there.”
“What the fuck?” He dropped his hands and came at me, stepping in front of the bookcase. “You’re gonna pay—”
I gripped the back edge of the case and yanked as hard as I could while I lunged off the wall with my right leg. The books, the case, and I, all came tumbling down. On top of my attacker. He groaned and squirmed, trying to free his legs pinned under the bookcase. I did an inchworm-on-speed routine among the scattered books, fighting to make it back to my feet before he could wriggle free.
I won and stepped around Robert Crais’s Hostage just as he got one leg loose. I swung my right leg at his head like Charlie Brown on the season’s opening kickoff. Only Lucy wasn’t around to yank his head out of the way. He moved it himself. Just as I started the downswing, he turned to look at me. His freshly broken nose acted as a magnet, and the top of my foot smashed the target with a crack.
“Shit!” I tumbled over the punk, books, and blood.
My foot throbbed. I wondered if the crack I’d heard had been it or the remaining cartilage in the other guy’s nose. His eyes were slits that showed only white. I thought he might be dead. The only thing moving was the blood trickling from his zigzagged nose.
I worked my way up to my feet and limped over for a closer look. A bubble of blood percolated in his right nostril while a stream of red meandered out of his left. He was alive and still had a stun gun in his back pocket. I was still naked with my hands tied behind my back. And my phone was still on the table next to the door. I’d have a hard time dialing it. I thought about running to my neighbor’s and banging my head on the front door. The cops would probably like that: onetime murder suspect caught in violent homosexual bondage game. Heather Ortiz would have the byline in the newspaper.
I squatted down with my back to the laid-out tough guy, grabbed the edge of the fallen bookcase with my leaden hands, and strained to stand up. If he suddenly awoke, I would have been in a vulnerable position. Again. But he was as still as roadkill. I backpedaled over him and backed up the bookcase against the wall.
He lay on his back outlined by scattered books. Stringy blond hair splayed out around his head like a surf-angel halo. He was probably six four and weighed over two hundred. I had to turn him over to get at his back pocket. It would have been easy if my hands weren’t numb and tied behind my back. I squatted with my back to him and grabbed his jacket. A couple of pinpricks in my fingers let me know they were still there. When I thought I felt the leather between my fingers, I tried to straighten up. I could feel his weight in my forearms and legs, but not in my hands. Before I lost the grip I dove backward and tumbled over books.
I scrambled up to my feet and saw that he was now on his stomach.
And moving.
His hands pawed the carpet in slow motion as if he were trying to dog paddle across the top of it. I was running out of time. I knelt down next to his waist and tried to find his back pocket with bloodless fingers.
“Heah—ma—funk—gun.” The tough guy started to push himself up from the carpet.
He twisted away from me just as my right hand came out of his hip pocket. With something rectangular and heavy in it. I got both hands around it and my thumb found a metal bump. I lunged backward at him and thumbed the switch hoping I had the stun gun pointed in the right direction. I landed on top of him and kept my thumb pressed down on the switch. His legs kicked spastically and then stopped moving.
I rolled off him. He lay flat, like a bear rug, bleeding onto my carpet. I sectioned up to my feet and went into the kitchen and dropped the stun gun onto the table. When Hard Guy came to, it would be my turn to ask the questions and shock some answers out of him. But I couldn’t do that with my hands cuffed behind me. I went over to the butcher-block island and fumbled with the wooden knife holder until I came out with a paring knife.
Hard Guy moaned and I heard him rustling on the carpet. I could barely feel the knife handle in my right hand and blindly tried to angle the blade at the plastic strap and my left wrist. I caught flesh. It hurt. Good. I still had some feeling left. I tried again. More flesh, more pain. Not so good.
I was still playing pincushion with my wrists when the dude rushed through the kitchen door at me. I ducked low under his arms, spun hard to my left, and the paring knife in my hand hit something hard and I lost the grip. Hard Guy yelped and tumbled past me into the kitchen table. He spun around to face me and we both looked at his right leg. The paring knife jutted out of his thigh.
“Motherfucker!” His eyes were wild like a maimed animal.
He pulled the knife out of his leg and screamed. Tears tumbled down his ruined face and he looked at the red blade. I braced for a charge, then glanced at the hole in his Levis. It was damp with blood.
He pointed the knife at my chest and took a step forward, then cried out in pain. His face went ghost and I thought he might pass out. He dropped the knife, clamped his hand on his leg, and staggered out the back door leaving behind a trail of whimpers.
I let him go.
I found the paring knife, slick with blood, on the floor and limboed it up with hands behind my back. I did more damage to my wrist than the flex-cuffs trying to cut them off. After five minutes, I gave up and fumbled the serrated knife out of the block. Better. It took me ten minutes to cut free of the flex-cuffs. By the time I was done, sweat poured off me and my left wrist looked like I’d played tic-tac-toe with a knife. The blood rushed back into my hands on the edges of razor blades. It took twenty minutes for the tingling to fade away.
I took a long, hot shower. The water stung my wrist, but felt good on the rest of my battered body. But not good enough to keep Hitchcock’s Psycho images out of my head. When I finally pushed them out, questions took their place.
I figured my attacker had to have been working for either the Albrights or Peter Stone. The Albrights would seem to be more desperate, but my money was on Stone. Hired toughs seemed like a better choice for an old casino boss than a campaigning politician. Although, sometimes it was hard to tell the difference.
But that didn’t solve the mystery of who broke in last night. Tonight’s intruder had broken a windowpane out of the back door to reach in and unlock it. Last night the lock had been picked. Why change the MO when the first one had been effective?
Maybe Stone and the Albrights had each sent their own goon on different nights. That would explain the different MOs, but it didn’t feel quite righ
t. I still didn’t see the Albrights getting their hands this dirty, even by extension. Steven Albright had enough money to mostly bankroll his own campaign. If Windsor had blackmailed the Albrights, they would have paid him.
That left someone else. There were plenty of other people on the flash drive who’d paid to demean themselves and Angela. Nine years later, many of them had probably reached a station in life where they’d pay to keep evidence of their kinks locked in a closet. I just didn’t recognize any of them.
Or, was I missing something? Was the real prize in a public storage unit waiting to be unlocked with the key Melody had hidden with the flash drive? I should probably take what I had to the police. Except they might use it as an excuse to lock me up. The new evidence didn’t change the fact that my hat was found in Windsor’s death room.
I got out of the shower and looked at myself in the mirror. Steam blotted out my reflection.
Muldoon’s
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
My cell phone woke me at 6:50 a.m., robbing me of ten minutes of sleep. I grabbed it off the nightstand and checked the incoming number. Blocked. I punched on the cell and grunted a hello.
“Rick, it sounds as if I woke you.” The voice was maple syrup over lemons. “You have my sincerest apologies.”
“Stone.” I sat up in my bed. He’d probably already moved on to plan B to get the drive after his goon failed last night.
“I’m calling to be of assistance.”
“Like the guy you sent over here to break in last night?”
“More entanglements, Rick? You seem to be constantly at odds with your environment.” A snicker. “As interesting as your reality TV wannabe life is, I’m calling about Melody. I need you to deliver a message to her.”
“She’s not here.” I guessed Melody’s arrest hadn’t hit the news yet.
“Well, of course she isn’t.” Patronizing, like a politician at a town hall meeting. “She’s in jail and it looks like she’ll be there for a while. But you already knew that.”
“If that’s true, what makes you think I’ll ever see her again?”
“She’s Melody and you’re a man.”
“Last time I checked, you were one too. Deliver your own messages, Stone.” A chuckle of my own. “Oh, I forgot. You like to send surrogates to do your dirty work.”
“Ah, the blue-collar tough-guy routine again. Let’s skip past the chest thumping.” His voice lost a few degrees of its icy cool. “Tell Melody to contact Alan Fineman to represent her. She needn’t worry about a fee.”
I wasn’t up on the San Diego legal community, but even I’d heard of Fineman. He regularly showed up on truTV as a talking head. It didn’t surprise me that he and Stone knew each other. A big-shot attorney and a powerful semilegitimate businessman. The back end of what made America great.
“What’s in it for you, Stone?” I already knew the answer, but I was good at playing dumb. Stone wanted a handpicked attorney so he could stay close to the investigation and bury any evidence the defense found that could embarrass or implicate him.
“I just want what’s best for Melody.” Somehow, he said it without laughing. “Whatever you may think of me, you know that Melody needs a good attorney and Mr. Fineman is the best. He’s never lost a murder case. Convince Melody to do what’s in her best interest. Goodbye, Rick.”
The line went dead.
Stone was making bold moves, but they exposed him. He was playing from behind and wasn’t used to it. His goon had failed to get him the flash drive, so now he hoped to bury it from the inside. He was desperate, but why? The images of him on the drive weren’t incriminating and, at worst, were only mildly embarrassing. There had to be something more. I just hadn’t found it yet.
I got up, got dressed, and felt the loss of my morning routine of letting Midnight outside. I scanned the morning paper over a bowl of Cheerios. No mention of Melody’s arrest. That would come. I grabbed the bag of Midnight’s dog food and headed for Kim’s and then work.
Elk Fenton called me on my cell phone at 8:35 a.m. while I was in Muldoon’s bar ordering from a liquor rep. Melody’s arraignment was scheduled for ten thirty at the La Jolla Courthouse. She was being represented by Timothy Buckley. Elk had never heard of him and neither had I. Maybe Alan Fineman hadn’t offered his services yet, or maybe Melody had turned him down. No matter Stone’s agenda, it would be foolish not to retain Fineman as an attorney. If I hustled, I could get my work done and get to the arraignment on time. And deliver Stone’s message.
I finished cutting meat and fish by ten and went up onto the roof of Muldoon’s with a canister of Freon. The compressor for the restaurant’s air-conditioning system had to be replenished every month or so. The unit had leaked for years and Turk’s short-term fix of refilling it with chlorofluorocarbons had turned into a long-term solution. There was probably a hole in the ozone over La Jolla that would make the Green Police shudder in their Birkenstocks.
I’d filled the compressor and was disconnecting the Freon canister when Turk came through the door onto the roof. His flip-flops crunched along the gravel and tar paper walkway that snaked around the vents and compressors. It sounded like an army marching to war. The look on his face made me the enemy.
“What the hell happened last night?” He stood in close, hovering over me. His face matched his fire-red hair.
There were many answers to that question. Just none that I wanted to talk about. “What do you mean?”
“The fucking video that’s all over YouTube.” His voice had a nasty edge that he’d never used with me before. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember going psycho on a customer last night.”
“I caught him selling drugs in the bathroom.” That suddenly didn’t sound like such a strong defense.
“So you go all Rambo on him? You looked like you were out of your mind. We’re probably going to get sued. I had to cut my trip short because of this shit.”
“Sorry.” I was.
“I don’t even know you any more, Rick.” His breath, hot on my face. “First the tough guys looking for some gal you hooked up with, then the Windsor thing in the paper, and now you go postal on some punk in front of the whole restaurant. Hell, the whole nation. And I gotta hear about it from Kris because you don’t even do the stand-up thing and call me.”
“Kris told you?” My corner was now empty.
“Yeah. She’s worried about you, and so am I.” He shook his head. “But I’m more worried about my restaurant. This kind of publicity isn’t good for business. This is La Jolla, not L.A. That shit doesn’t fly with old money. I got a call from Mrs. Fahey this morning. She says she doesn’t feel safe eating dinner here anymore. We’re gonna lose our regulars.”
“So, you want me to take some time off?” Maybe hibernating for a few days wasn’t such a bad idea.
“Rick.” He blew out an exhale that sounded like a whale spouting and the anger washed out of his face. “It’s going to have to be something more permanent.”
My gut felt like Turk had stuck a knife in it and twisted. I had to fight not to lose my balance. Muldoon’s and Midnight were the only two things permanent in my life. He couldn’t really be taking one of them away.
“What do you mean?”
“Business has been down for a while, and we can’t afford to lose any more customers. I’ve been away from the day-to-day operations for too long. It doesn’t make sense to pay you when I can do the same job.” His eyes left mine. “I’m sorry, Rick, but I’m going to have to let you go.”
Go where? Muldoon’s was all I had.
“You can’t fire me, I’m your partner.”
“My partner!” His eyes went big and his shoulders went back. “You’ve given me fifteen grand over the last two years. That doesn’t even get you two percent. We’re not partners. You’re an employee.”
Fifteen thousand dollars, seven years of sweat equity, twenty years of friendship, and I was just an employee. “You shook my hand. We had a deal.”
“You haven’t upheld your end. You needed to come up with a real business plan and get a loan. Buying the restaurant has been a fantasy, man. I should have put an end to it a long time ago.” He sighed and put his hands in his pockets. “I wish I had so you could have gotten on with your life.”
“Fifteen grand isn’t a fantasy.” My face splashed hot and I stepped in on Turk. “It’s real money earned working here sixty, seventy hours a week while you’re out chasing your childhood up a mountain or around a bar. Don’t talk to me about fantasies.”
“Don’t make this personal, Rick.” He flashed red again. “It’s a business decision. You’ve gotten reckless and you’ve become a liability. Use this time to get your life back under control.”
“Keep the self-help shit to yourself, Turk. Just give me my money and then you and I are done. It’s not personal. Just business.”
He looked down at me and sadness passed over his blue eyes, then flickered away. Back to business. He pulled a thick envelope out of his back pocket and handed it to me.
I ripped it open and saw a wad of hundred dollar bills.
“There’s five grand in there,” Turk said.
“Where’s the rest?” I waved the envelope at him.
“That’s severance.” He folded his tree-trunk arms across his massive chest. “It’s the best I can do right now. You’ll get more when business starts to pick up. You know we’ve been losing money for the past few months. We don’t have the extra cash right now.”
“I don’t give a shit! Go to the bank with a real business plan and get a loan. Just give me my money back.”
“You can’t expect to get your full investment back. While you were part owner the restaurant lost money. You’ll have to take a hit.”
“What investment? I’m an employee, not an owner. Remember?” I shoved the envelope in my pocket. “Consider the money a loan that just came due. I’ll give you until the end of the month for the other ten.”
“Then what?” He jabbed a finger the size of a roll of quarters into my chest. It felt like a jackhammer. “Are you threatening me?”
