The Mental Case (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 6)

by John Ellsworth

  "You don't have to worry. I do have my issues. Luckily most of them are controlled with medication."

  "Damn, I'm sorry. It must be really hard."

  The deputy waiting patiently at Ansel's elbow reached and touched the prisoner's upper arm.

  "We about ready?" the deputy asked.

  "Sure. Ansel, I'll report in to Libby. Make sure she's getting the care she needs."

  "I know. Thanks for that."

  "And I'll be over this afternoon. We'll lay some plans for the doctors."

  "Good. We need to do that. You need to tell me how to act."

  "Ansel, that's just it. It ain't an act, my friend. Which might just be enough to spring you."

  The DA ignored them as he blew by, Detective Jake O'Connor bringing up the rear.

  "Hello, Ansel," said the detective to Ansel. A small smile played at this mouth.

  "Go to hell," said Ansel.

  "That's no way to talk to an old friend."

  "You haven't heard anything yet," said Ansel.

  "That's enough," Thaddeus said.

  Ansel stood and crossed his wrists behind his back to be cuffed. He nodded and eyed the back of the detective as he went out the door.

  "Boys, old Ansel is just getting started."

  37

  Chapter 37

  In 2011, late August, Libby and youngest son Winston drove from Chicago to Berkeley, California. Winston had been admitted to the University of California at Berkeley and a dorm room was waiting for him. All that was needed were clothes, computer, study lamp, and books. Libby and Winston drove Winston's five-year-old Highlander and pulled a small U-Haul, loaded with Winston's golf clubs, electric cello, stereo equipment, computer, two seasons of clothes, and all the rest of the mishmash that goes into existing as an eighteen-year-old young man away from home for the first time.

  They stopped three nights along the way, watched movies until eleven, laughed and ate pizza, and enjoyed their last outing as mother and son. They both knew it was coming, the nest-leaving, so the trip and the feelings were bittersweet. Winston, of course, was glad to be moving out from under his parents' thumb; Libby was having nothing less than mood-swings that ranged from excited anticipation at having total freedom in her life to downright depression at the idea of being childless in the connected-at-the-hip sense.

  Things happened fast once they reached Berkeley--almost too fast for Libby's comfort zone. First was the matter of the new roommate. It turned out that Winston's new roomie was a young man from Peoria, Illinois, which meant Winston and Charlie immediately had a world in common and instantly became best of friends.

  Right away, Libby started getting hints from Winston that if she didn't stay over the full three days he wouldn't be disappointed.

  She began feeling like a fifth wheel, and that first night found herself alone, in a Ramada Inn, crying for no reason she could think of. Except she did think of it, when she finally felt her true feelings, and she admitted that her little boy had just walked out of her life and that he wasn't coming back. At least not as the Winston she had known.

  The next time they would see each other--Christmas--she knew their entire relationship would be different than ever before. He would be a young man with experiences she hadn't shared with him, and she would have moved on too, in her own way, and, no matter how much she hated to admit it, she knew that she would really be enjoying her freedom by then. And might even feel the tiniest bit restricted by having him around even for just a week at Christmas. When she admitted these things her tears immediately dried up, she swallowed hard, and made her plans.

  She decided she would leave the next day instead of waiting until the fourth day, as planned. After all, he needed his space and he was okay and on his way; she didn't like the fifth-wheel feeling and just the idea of taking on the role of over-protective mom, or mom-who-can't-say-goodbye, or doting mom--it was just unacceptable. She was too much her own person for that.

  So...she changed her airline reservations and flew back to Chicago that same day, arriving two days early.

  As it turned out, Ansel of course wasn't expecting her back. Not two days early.

  She arrived at 1:07 p.m. at O'Hare and took a cab all the way to Evanston. At the gate she used her clicker and was driven to the front door.

  She found herself standing inside the foyer, and she guessed Ansel was downtown at the office. Her first thought was how much she wanted to take a bath in her own tub, light some candles, and have the last cry she would allow herself to have, over Winston's moving out, and then she would climb out, dry off, and begin her new life. Thoughts of being wined and dined by Ansel as they got to know each other again, in intimacy, danced through her head and she found herself doubting if she was actually even going to need that last cry.

  She lugged her suitcase upstairs and swung into the bedroom.

  Only to find Ansel and Suzanne Fairmont lightly sleeping, clearly exhausted by a recent round of lovemaking, as both were nude, and arms and torsos and legs were entwined as only intimate sex partners will entwine.

  At first she was speechless. She knew Ansel had had his dalliances and over the years she had turned her head, as they were historically brief little flings and flirtations, occasionally an afternoon hotel here and there, but had amounted to nothing. She had found that acceptable and even had admitted she found several men over the years interesting to her, but never enough so that she acted out her own fantasies. Ansel had been the actor; she, merely the dreamer.

  But this was over the line. Screwing in her own house? She guessed not.

  She threw her suitcase at them, swung it in a huge arc and flung it. It landed with a thud! And the lovers were instantly awake and grappling for sheets and blankets.

  "I can explain this," said Ansel. "It's not what it--"

  "What are you, reading lines out of some script?" Libby said, her voice firm and even. "You can't explain jack!"

  She folded her arms across her chest and watched Suzanne bolt up and pull the sheet fully around her body, as her lips began trembling.

  "I--I--"

  "Busted," said Libby. "No, I--I--I nothing, lady. I've got eyes and I don't give one hoot in hell about you--you--you. Now you get your panties cinched up and Ansel will call you a cab. Won't you, dear?"

  "I know what you're thinking," said Ansel, "but I can--"

  "Please spare me. Two lawyers and so far not a credible sentence. Why am I not surprised?"

  But something inside Libby snapped.

  The last thing she remembered was a red blanket rolling across her brain and dimming her vision.

  She awoke four hours later in the Evanston Medical Center, and was told by the ICU nurse that she'd had a stroke.

  She tried speaking. But nothing came out.

  Ansel was beside her, holding her hand, and she knew, dimly, that she wanted him gone. That was it: gone.

  "Leave me alone," she tried to say. But it came out, "Wee n--" and then stopped. Dimly she recognized that she had lost the ability to speak. And that her entire right side was numb. Including her beautiful face. She remembered seeing clips of stroke victims on TV and she knew instantly how she must have looked. She closed her eyes and tears came.

  Two months later she would speak her first sentence.

  "My hushban ish a ashhole."

  "Excellent," said the speech therapist. "You've come so far."

  And the feelings were there.

  She loathed Suzanne Fairmont with every fiber of her being. She had stolen her husband and she had stolen Libby's health. Libby was certain that without the adulterous scene she experienced that afternoon, none of the rest of it would have happened. There would have been no stroke. There would have been no hated of her husband. Her life would be moving on in a much different direction than now.

  She hated Suzanne.

  And wished her dead.

  38

  Chapter 38

  El Capitan worked the slide on his Glock and aimed the pistol
at the back of the man's head.

  The man, in this case, was an Australian who had been stealing off the top. The oldest trick in the drug wholesaler's book: receive forty kilos of coke, sell twenty of them at street prices and twenty at street plus ten percent. Pocket the difference. Two or three times and a guy could retire. Even an Australian guy who loved his women, white beaches, and Mexican cocaine--there was enough in his pocket to hang it all up and snooze.

  But El Capitan knew everything. He owned Southern California, where the coke had been marketed. If street was one hundred an ounce, he knew it. If street was one hundred and one an ounce, he knew that, too. In fact, he kept a spreadsheet on all the counties in all the states above the border. So when the Aussie sold at one-ten and reported back one hundred, El Capitan knew he had a cheat with his foot caught in the trap.

  "Do you have any last words?" El Capitan asked the Aussie.

  The man opened his mouth to beg for his life.

  But before the man could get a word out, the drug king had squeezed the trigger.

  The man slumped face-down on the patio.

  "Get rid of this piece of shit. And hose this place off. The dogs lick this blood up. Makes me sick."

  Two bodyguards jumped to it. Two others followed the chief back inside the hacienda.

  Four American college girls greeted him, all in varying stages of undress.

  "So what do I get for my ten thousand dollars, ladies?"

  The blond from Berkeley smiled and removed her tee-shirt. She was totally naked.

  "Whatever you want," she said.

  "We've only got ‘til tomorrow night then you have to be back in school. So let's get this party started. When I count three, I want to see everyone naked. One, two--"

  "El Capitan," said a bodyguard whose mobile phone just chimed. "It's Juan Carlos Ordañez."

  "Jus’ when I was going to have my fun," said El Capitan with a flashy grin at the ladies. He accepted the cell phone from his underling.

  "JC," he said, "what's up, dog?"

  The voice on the other end sounded distant, if cell phones could sound distant. The connection was very iffy, as El Capitan was in Mexico City and Juan Carlos Ordañez in Tijuana. Not all the bugs were worked out of Carlos Slim's cell towers, but it was getting better. "We jus’ got ripped two hundred million," said Juan Carlos Ordañez.

  "What the hell? You better splain to me how that happens!"

  "This gringo took my son and he was going to kill him. Unless I wired the two hundred mil we got from Banco Nacionale."

  "I’m listening. I'm listening, but I'm not liking."

  "It's true."

  "Cabron, you listen to me. I want that money back. Is the boy safe?"

  "He is. We got him back two days ago."

  "Why did you wait so long to call me then?"

  "I tried to handle it on my own," Juan Carlos Ordañez lied. The truth was, he was too frightened to call his boss and tell what had happened. He felt like a dupe. Maybe he even felt like a dead dupe.

  "I told you already. You call me first thing about this kind of shit. Don't you know I mean that?"

  "I do. I'm sorry."

  "So where is my money now?"

  "It went back to Chicago."

  "Chicago? Like Chicago, Illinois?"

  "Si."

  "Aii, caramba! We got to do something. Do you know this man that took your son?"

  "I do. He was staying in a hotel and used his real name."

  "Who is this man?"

  "Thaddeus Murfee. Un pinche abogado."

  "This man has huge cojones, like boulders, JC. I don't like him already."

  "Me too. I hate him."

  "You jump on the next plane out. Come to my place and we'll make a plan."

  "What will we do?"

  "We? First I have to choose do I kill you or not. Then we'll see. Oh, you're leaving already? That makes me feel much better, then. Cabron."

  He threw the cell phone against the wall.

  By the next afternoon, before two, Juan Carlos Ordañez was sitting poolside at El Capitan's finca. He was drinking a single malt scotch and toying with the sweat from the glass, watching it run down and spatter on his white duck slacks. He was wearing yellow Jimmy Choo patent loafers, the white slacks, and a white silk shirt unbuttoned down the front. A straw Panama completed the look of the man of great wealth taking his ease. Which he was and he was. A Cuban cigar blossomed smoke around his head as he leaned back in the recliner and waited for El Capitan to join him.

  He was making himself look as relaxed and calm as possible, though he knew his unpredictable, impulsive superior might just as soon walk out and shoot him between the eyes as walk out and join him for a drink and make a plan about the money.

  But Juan Carlos was nobody's fool. He had a plan to make El Capitan take him back under his wing and give him the space and time to take back the two hundred million and that's all he asked. The rest of it he would make happen.

  The rear sliders were thrown open and El Capitan came striding around the pool. The first thing Juan Carlos noticed was that he wasn't packing heat, but that didn't mean his bodyguard couldn't supply him in a whisper. Still, he was able to relax and draw a deep breath when it first appeared he was in the clear.

  El Capitan smiled and began rubbing his hands together. He slapped Juan Carlos across the shoe and plopped down beside him in a pool chair.

  "So. When do I get my money back?"

  "By Friday. I have it all worked out."

  "You do? Without me you have made a plan?"

  "I thought you--"

  "Just kidding, cabron! I like your plan already because it gets my money back. Now give me the details."

  "The money was wired out of Hong Kong to Chicago."

  "And who did that?"

  "I did, El Capitan."

  El Capitan waggled a finger under Juan Carlos' nose. "Bad, bad boy. You shouldn't take my money without asking first."

  "They had my boy. He said he would kill him."

  "I know all that already. So. My money goes from bank to bank. What happened next?"

  "It went into a law firm in Chicago. That much I know."

  "Law firm? You mean some putos abogados got my money?"

  "That's right. Only it was their money first."

  "Ah, but fair is fair. We stole it fair and square."

  "That's true. We stole it fair and square. Now they got it back."

  "Okay, so what's our plan? I hope it's a good one and I don't have to shoot you today. It's too hot to shoot someone. Caramba!"

  "The same man who took it from the law firm one time will take it again."

  "And why would he do this?"

  "Because he has a son. Away at college."

  "A college stud? Really? Where?"

  "At Berkeley. And this puto abogado worships this kid. He will get your money."

  "Seems like a lot of trouble for us."

  "It's a lot of money, El Capitan."

  "Now tell me some shit I don't know, homeboy. Eh?"

  39

  Chapter 39

  Ruben Washington was a Manual Arts High School dropout, ninth grade. Rootless and hating the world, he had pulled twenty-four months in Juvie for shooting up a convenience store when a gunfight erupted down the canned goods aisle. When it was all over and the smoke had cleared, Ruben lay under the Folger's Coffee display, bleeding profusely from a neck wound, while two Crips one aisle over lay crumpled and dead. It had been a two-on-one and the odds had been against him. But he was faster with his silver Sanchi .38 revolver than they were with their .22 Berettas and their wounds were mortal while his was only life-threatening. Before he could bleed out, the EMT's had him transfused and racing for the ER two blocks away where a trauma surgeon laced him back together and staunched the flow of blood. Forty-eight hours later he woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed and spent the next two years in the juvenile court system, bouncing between being tried as a minor and tried as an adult.

&nb
sp; As he quickly learned, the Cook County judicial system was mean and heartless. It held no love for a gang-banger with two kills to his credit.

  He turned eighteen behind barred windows.

  When he was released, he possessed no marketable skills, his educational record made him unemployable because it didn't exist, but none of that mattered, because the heavily redesigned Ruben Washington proudly displayed the SS13 tattoo on his neck and the initials of two dead Crips on his right shoulder. Which meant he owned street cred. Enough to get him laid, made, and paid. Magnetic, it all flowed to him easily and endlessly, drugs, dollars, and drive-bys.

  On his twentieth birthday he was running the whole show and celebrated with a gift to his mother of $100,000 cash. Not having yet digested mom's cake, Ruben and two funny boys shredded four Crips in a drive-by just-for-fun. That's what you did on your twentieth birthday when you were SS13 and scrambling on the South Side.

  The gun that saved his life in the convenience store was the same gun that killed Suzanne Fairmont. It had been stored in the CPD evidence warehouse, awaiting use at trial. Then the trial went away, and a green van that said Metal Fabricators down the side made a haul of weapons from closed cases. These artifacts were trucked away to meltdown. Ruben's gun was saved by a larcenous sergeant who just couldn't resist the weapon's pearl-handled grips. It would have been melted down that afternoon if he hadn't plucked it off the van. The sergeant took the gun home and put it in his gun safe and immediately forgot all about it.

  It remained in the safe for two years, until his sixteen year old swiped the key and had a look inside.

  Maybe not all genetic, the pearl handles swept him away just like they had his old man. The kid lifted the gun, felt the heft, and claimed it for his own. That afternoon he purchased two boxes of full metal jacket target loads and headed for the hills behind Barrington. He fired two rounds and hit a Coke can with the second blast. He was about to drill it again when the hammer met the firing pin and flame shot backwards out of the cylinder, searing the kid's sighting eye and blinding him.