The Jack Hammer
Page 13
Geoff rubbed his jaw, while sporting a grin. “I’ve learned my lesson about crossing you.”
Cam nodded, even though he didn’t believe a word that came out of his brother’s mouth. He then began stretching. As he did, he took a glance out at Stepania who was finishing up his session. He had the same build, the same leg kick in his pitching motion. It was even more eerie in person than on the video.
Cam stepped to the plate to take some swings—no different than the last few months, except this time Ron Hartell would be the one pitching to him. When the pitch came in, Cam took a short stride and met the ball with a short compact swing and drove it hard into the right field gap. It one-hopped the wall, bouncing off an advertisement for a local law office.
He was locked in on the target as another pitch headed toward him. Crack … the ball flew high and far over the right field fence. The next one went even further.
“Way to hit through the zone, Cam. But remember to stay back and rotate those hips,” Grapes offered instruction.
Cam continued to methodically launch each incoming ball like a machine.
“Okay, big brother, now I want to see you hit some real pitching,” shouted Geoff. He instructed Teo to replace Hartell, who didn’t look overly offended.
Ready or not, Cam entered the box and stared out at the young phenom. Stepania stared right back. He then lifted his leg high and brought his glove over his head. He planted his leg and let the ball go.
Cam began to stride and then figured he better get out of the way … and fast. The ball was coming straight for his head. He plummeted to the dirt as the pitch whizzed by the spot he’d just vacated. Cam looked out at his clone, who returned a competitive grin. He meant to do it.
The second pitch was a sharp-breaking slider. Cam made a helpless attempt that failed miserably. Strike one. The next pitch was high, straight and really, really fast. Another weak swing. Strike two.
“Ninety-eight,” said Ruppert, but it didn’t need any validation.
The next pitch was another slider. Cam reached out and barely foul tipped it to avoid striking out. Then came a fastball that lived up to its name. Cam got lucky. He reached for it and squared-up the ball. He sent a towering fly ball down the right field line … but it curved foul.
Stepania countered with a flurry of filthy pitches that Cam was just barely able to get a piece of to stay alive. They continued to stare each other down after each pitch. It was an old-fashioned standoff.
Finally on the twentieth pitch of the showdown, the ball whizzed past him, crossing the center of home plate.
Strike three! You’re out,” yelled Geoff, sounding giddy.
“102!” shouted Ruppert with an admiring chuckle.
Cam shrugged and stepped back toward the group. “What do you think?” Geoff asked, always needing big brother’s approval.
“If I would have seen it, I think I would have hit it,” Cam said with a grin
“Now you know what it was like to face yourself,” Grapes replied with a wry smile.
Chapter 38
Blake Fisher toweled off following a long, hot, and well-deserved shower. He spent the night along the banks of the muddy Mississippi in downtown St. Louis. The hotel offered free Internet service in his room, which he took advantage of to surf the web on Tim O’Connell’s laptop.
He read the Arizona Republic newspaper online, which had a small article buried on page eight about a fatal car accident along a desolate area of highway north of Phoenix, which was under investigation. It was vague on details, but did mention that the body was burned beyond recognition, and had yet to be identified. A source close to the police investigation indicated that foul play had not been ruled out.
Today was his big moment at the coaches’ convention. He’d been chosen to give the keynote speech about the successful funding of the new facilities they created in Sedona, which many saw as a model for other communities across the country. It was nothing compared to performing in front of the sold-out, raucous crowds in Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park, but he would take what he could get these days.
He gathered the shirt and tie he’d hung neatly in the closet, along with a pair of khakis. He rounded out the outfit with a tweed jacket. He looked in the mirror and was convinced he looked as good as he ever did.
He returned to the computer and performed his hourly ritual of checking O’Connell’s e-mail. But once again found no messages. He couldn’t believe the guy had been dead for over two days and nobody had even tried to contact him. He couldn’t have scripted it any better.
Then out of the blue, popping onto the screen was a message, startling him. The Instant Messenger’s handle was Astep4.
AStep4: Tim, I see you are online this morning. How is it going in the search for you know who? I’m dying to know!
A smile came to his face. It must be Anna. His children’s naïve stupidity was the gift that kept on giving. And it wasn’t even Father’s Day.
TOCPI: Believe me, Anna, I’m dying to know myself
AStep4: I thought you said you found him???
TOCPI: It was a mix up. I was unable to locate your father. I had a lead in Las Vegas, but it turned out to be nothing.
AStep4: Tim, part of me is sad. But part of me is happy. I was thinking with my heart over my head. He could be dangerous, and I couldn’t live with myself if you got hurt.
TOCPI: Thank you for looking out for me, Anna. You are very wise. What else is new back in New York?
AStep4: You will never believe it. My brother Teo has defected from Cuba. I am soooo happy!!! I’ll give you the details when you get back.
He swallowed hard. This was not in the script. If Anna would trust this PI, then there was no reason to believe that she wouldn’t share the information with her brother. From there, it could spread like a virus. At this point, he knew his only recourse was to silence Anna. He had no other choice.
TOCPI: Does Teo know about you-know-who?
AStep4: Not yet. But I have to tell him, Tim. It’s his father, too. And if he is alive he has every right to know.
TOCPI: Maybe we should wait until we really find him.
AStep4: I’ll wait until I see Teo in person—he is coming to NYC next week for a visit. Or maybe I’ll go to Miami. We haven’t decided yet!
TOCPI: So Teo is in Miami?
AStep4: Yes. He signed with a baseball agent, who is training him there.
TOCPI: I think you should hold off a few days. At least until I get back, and then we can tell him together.
AStep4: Ha Ha. You know he only speaks Spanish. How could you help? Are you still going to Las Vegas to visit Natasha?
He’d thought about making a stopover in Vegas to find out what exactly his youngest knew. But she was so well protected that it would have taken him weeks of meticulous planning to get near her. He didn’t have that kind of time.
He did make a stop along the way to meet up with his old friend, Chuck Eggert, who ran a used car lot in a remote town outside of Albuquerque. He’d done a lot of business with Eggert—some might say committed insurance fraud—with the many totaled vehicles Blake would recover from the canyon, and then buy them as salvage from the owners. On this trip, Blake traded him his Fisher Auto truck for a less recognizable Dodge Durango. It was a confidential deal, as all their deals were between them, so he didn’t explain why he wanted to get rid of his perfectly good truck. Things such as it likely contained blood evidence that could connect him to Tim O’Connell.
TCOPI: No, she blew me off. I’m heading home. I’ll see you in a few days.
AStep4: Can’t wait to see you! We really need to talk about a few things when you get back.
Truer words have never been spoken, he thought. The good news was the PI had kept Anna in the dark on most of what he knew. He couldn’t believe his daughter would get involved with such a loser, and despite his little speech about asking for “just a meeting”, he still suspected that the PI would try to blackmail him. But no use speculating. What
’s done is done—he needed to only concern himself with getting a full read on the amount of information transferred between the two, and then sever any future lines of communication. He would take care of that when he arrived in New York.
Chapter 39
“It was a Ford Focus rented at the Phoenix airport to a Tim O’Connell. We don’t have anything official yet, but it’s likely him,” Lewis informed Carthage, who listened intently while sipping on his coffee.
“So what do you know about him?”
“He was from New York … Queens.”
“We have a motive then, don’t we?” Carthage joked.
Lewis scowled. The toughest case he’d ever take on would be to find his own sense of humor. “He was a private investigator.”
“Now that might be a motive,” Carthage said with another of his endless chuckles. “Do you think it’s one of those typical ‘PI chases the bad guy, bad guy finds out and kills the PI cases?’ I’ve seen a hundred of these cowboys get themselves killed over the years. Who was he chasing down … some deadbeat dad?”
Lewis tossed the report on the table. Carthage picked it up and searched for his reading glasses. As he did, Lewis summarized the vitals, “Thirty-four years old, no wife, a sister back in New York. The proud owner of O’Connell Investigators LLC, except it wasn’t plural. Tim O’Connell was the only investigator.”
“Not anymore,” Carthage said with a sad shake of the head. With glasses now wedged on his red nose, he scanned the report. When he looked at the attached photo, he felt like he’d seen him somewhere before. “Does the sister know? Has she contacted anyone? Shown signs of worry?”
“It wasn’t out of character for this O’Connell guy to go for weeks with little contact when he was hot on a lead.”
“How did you find all of this out?”
“I have sources back in New York.”
“And skeletons, I’m sure,” Carthage said, continuing to sift through the report. “Wow, an Irishman, that’s why the explosion was so big, he was probably filled with so much alcohol that it was like a tanker truck going up.”
Another joke—still no laugh.
“Aren’t you Irish?” Lewis asked.
“Half, so I’m only half a drunk,” Carthage said with a grin, but then turned serious. “Are you having someone back in New York contact the sister? It looks like we might need some dental records to officially ID him.”
“Done.”
“So what was our friend Timmy doing in Phoenix?”
“That’s where this one gets interesting. Attended a tennis match on Sunday—the Scottsdale Women’s Open.”
“I’m missing the interesting part.”
“Specifically, he went to see Natasha Kushka. She’s a …”
Carthage cut him off. “I know who she is, Sip. I got grandkids for crissakes. But maybe he was tracking some cheating husband who happened to be there. There were ten thousand people at that match.”
“After the match, he posed as a reporter for a fictitious tennis magazine to get close to Kushka. When she figured him out, she really let him have it in a press conference.”
Carthage remembered where he’d seen him. “I saw that on ESPN. That poor sap is our victim?”
“As soon as we get those dental records to give him a proper identification, he will be.”
“So your theory is international superstar Natasha Kushka killed this broke PI because he posed as a fake reporter?”
“We are not ruling anything out. But it’s not the tennis match or the press conference that interest me—it’s that Kushka and O’Connell went out together that night.”
This got Carthage’s attention. “Excuse me?”
“First at a college hangout down in Tempe, and then an upscale place in North Scottsdale called Dessert Oasis.” He held up a piece of paper. “On the way, O’Connell got a speeding ticket in the now defunct Ford Focus.”
“Was she in the car?”
“No, he was alone in the vehicle.”
“So perhaps he was chasing her? Like those paparazzi.”
“If he was, he caught her. The waitress at Dessert Oasis told me that they were all snuggled into a booth in a heavy conversation. She thought they were a couple.”
“I guess it’s possible they were having a relationship and somebody was jealous of it, which ended up being bad news for Tim O’Connell. Did she have a boyfriend?”
“On again, off again with an actor named Brett Modino. He’s a big deal A-lister, but he also has a reputation for being a hothead. Has had a few brushes with the law, including a short stay in the pokey a few years back for assault and battery—broke a beer bottle over the head of some guy in a bar fight.”
“Sounds like a real sweetheart. Do you think he was involved in this?
“Doubt it—but there is some connection between O’Connell and Kushka. He’d been to her matches in Cincinnati and San Diego. He posed as a member of the press to talk to her, and he even took a trip to her hometown in Russia.”
Carthage mulled this over. If this guy had so little money, he wouldn’t travel to Russia unless there was a payoff at the end of the rainbow. “I think we need to talk to Natasha Kushka.”
“She’s currently in Las Vegas for a tennis tournament, there’s a noon flight.”
“Book it, Danno,” Carthage said. He finished the dregs of his coffee, and muttered “Russia?” under his breath.
Chapter 40
The knock didn’t sound right. Sam was paranoid about the type of characters who strolled into O’Connell Investigators, anyway, but this knock was different. And adding to her paranoia, the place wasn’t open for business on Saturday.
She put Milla under the desk, pleaded for quiet, and then moved to the door. “May I help you?”
A youthful male voice spoke through the door, “We are looking for a Ms. Samantha O’Connell.”
“May I ask what this is about?”
“We are with the NYPD. We have some information about a Tim O’Connell we’d like to discuss with her.”
“Just a minute,” she said in a worried voice, as she unlocked the numerous chains that held the door shut.
The minute she opened it, she could hear Tim’s lecturing words. Just because they say they’re police doesn’t mean they are. But when she saw the dour faces of the young officers, she really hoped they were posing as the police.
“I’m sorry, I was in the middle of changing a diaper. Please come in … how can I help you?”
The officers stepped inside the office and shut the door softly behind them. Their silence sent her nerves into overdrive.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry but I have bad news to report. We believe your brother has died in a car accident outside of Phoenix.”
It didn’t hit her at first; she just stood and stared straight ahead. The reality slowly engulfed her and she began to tremble and shake.
“Are you sure?” was all she could muster to ask, in a feeble voice.
“The police in Arizona found the car he’d rented. There was a huge explosion. They haven’t been able to completely identify the victim. That’s why we need a few things from you. Dental records and a piece of hair, maybe in an old comb or brush, so we can make a DNA match.”
This wasn’t happening. Sam began to sob. The officers tried to comfort her, but they were just awkwardly in the way. Milla wandered from under the desk. “Why are you crying, Mama?”
What was left of her heart completely crashed to the ground. She ran to her daughter and picked her up. “I just want you to know how much Mommy loves you. Do you know that?”
“Yes, Mama.”
Sam set her down and she waddled off without a care in the world. Seeing her daughter made sense—this other news didn’t. “Why!?” she screamed out.
The officers looked helpless. They offered her access to grief counselors and someone to watch Milla, but she declined. That would make it real. The sooner they left, the sooner she could wake up from this nightmare.
“Thank you,” she said and closed the door behind them. She then fell to her knees and began sobbing again.
For two straight hours, Sam sat in the swivel office chair behind her desk in a daze, only moving to tend to Milla’s needs. She knew Tim’s job was risky, and that the pursuit of Anna’s father could be dangerous, but the officers said it was a car accident. She always worried about him driving. He didn’t do much driving in New York and when he did, he wasn’t very good at it.
Later that afternoon, she was awakened by a buzz of the intercom. “Open up, Sam. I have some news for you.”
She wiped the streams of tears from her eyes and made her way to the door.
Anna burst into the office. “You’ll never believe my news!” she shouted out with glee, but was immediately frozen by the sight before her. “What is it, Sam?”
Her voice cracked, “I have really bad news about Tim.”
“I know, I talked to him this morning. Well, IM'd actually. He told me he didn’t find my father. But you were right, it could have been dangerous, so it’s probably for the best.”