Big Money (Austin Carr Mystery)

by Jack Getze

  Creeper sure is making a lot of noise, though. Hope that means he doesn’t know I’m here.

  Maximilian Zakowsky

  Soon as he sees the complicated electronic controls—so many dials, switches and gauges—Max wishes he made Jerry come with him. The only thing Max knows about electronics is how to use an on/off switch. Plus, English is mostly a hard language for Max to read. Big words are impossible. What if he misses an important warning, an instruction? What if, in trying to use this meat smoker, Max burns down Bluefish’s hunting lodge?

  Like Jerry always says, screw it. All Max has to do is make heat, not cook the meat. Ha-ha.

  Max locates what he hopes is the main on/off switch, and then the digital control with a gauge for recommended temperatures. His thick forefinger finds and pokes the up-arrow on a switch, and presto, a red number appears. Two hundred degrees should be plenty. Today’s mark is already half-dead.

  Bluefish’s meat smoker is big enough to hold two whole deer, one on each rack. But clearly Max’s job will be easier if he makes the space as large as possible. The mark may come to life when he sees where Max wants to put him.

  Max slides out the smoker’s chrome rack and sets the table-sized equipment on the floor, leaning it against the bare block basement wall. The clink of metal hitting cold cement echoes in the nearly barren room.

  Max climbs the stairs and shuffles through the lodge’s big living room, across the porch and down the front steps to the Lincoln Town Car. A pale blue sky shows where the east wind lives. The air smells of coming rain and lightning.

  God himself is about to get pissy.

  From the Lincoln’s trunk, Max lifts the mark off the spare tire and onto his shoulders. Though limp now, the young man fought hard earlier. A tough and loyal soldier, this man didn’t make a sound or give up one piece of information when Jerry cut him.

  But the mark is not so tough and loyal that Bluefish’s smoker won’t make him talk. Fire and heat make people speak for thousands and thousands of years.

  Even lions make noise when fire comes. They cry like babies.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I scramble to the bedroom window again when I hear Creeper’s Jurassic weight stretch the front porch boards. Through dusty glass, I watch Creeper shuffle-skip down the front steps, the big man’s arms and hips maintaining a bouncy rhythm all the way to the Lincoln Town Car. Looks like he might be whistling.

  Gee, how nice Creeper is in such a happy mood. Skipping. Bouncing. Whistling. Maybe Bluefish wants him to strangle some puppies.

  Creeper pulls open the Lincoln’s trunk. I have a good angle because of where he’s parked, and I can see a man inside, apparently dead or at least dead drunk. He doesn’t twitch as Creeper snatches him up by the crotch and neck, throws him across his bathtub-sized shoulders. I can see the guy’s black clothes and shape.

  The Creeper keeps a jaunty gait as he hauls the familiar human back toward the lodge. The black sack of fertilizer on Creeper’s shoulders is dressed like, and sure looks like, Gianni or Tomas. Whichever, Mama Bones’ nephew isn’t dead yet. He lifts his head slightly, jerks his eyes open while he’s bouncing on Creeper’s shoulders.

  Glad he’s not dead. But this means I have to do something. Mama Bones and those two men—Mr. Trim and Mr. Fit—pulled my ass out of a nasty spot a few hours ago. I can’t run away from their trouble.

  Well, I could. A lot of stock jockeys I know would duck for an exit. And like I said before when I jumped on Rags, I’m no hero. I have no desire to test myself against Creeper. Are you kidding? It’s just that...well, if Creeper has captured Gianni or Tomas, whichever, what does that say about the present physical condition of lovely Gina Farascio and my charge, Mama Bones?

  In particular, I keep thinking about Gina.

  Although, maybe right now isn’t the best time. My breath comes in short shallow gasps. My heart’s clunking like a broken electric fan. Creeper does unhealthy things to my blood pressure. Worse even than General Tso’s deep-fried chicken balls.

  I unzip Gianni’s bug-out bag. That takes half a minute as the camouflage canvas carryall is the size soccer goalies carry—think park bench. When I do get inside, the bounty includes a red climbing rope with clips and fittings and hooks, a pair of new blue jeans, a dark wool shirt, a green down jacket, a cell phone, sixty bucks cash, dry matches, a compass, eight protein bars, a waterproof tarp, a twelve-inch K-Bar hunting knife, water bottles and a snub-nose Smith & Wesson .38.

  Fully loaded.

  With an extra box of bullets

  I’m tiptoeing down the lodge’s basement steps when someone—I assume Gianni or Tomas—screams. The sound pokes my gut like one of Umberto’s rare-but-deadly over-spiced burritos. Like a King Cobra bite, Umberto’s mistakenly prepared killer chili combo gives you less than one hour to consume an antidote.

  The narrow, dank stairway feels like a mine shaft, the rock walls smooth and gray, the wooden steps uneven and warped. I travel down to the basement one careful step at a time, the Smith & Wesson held in front of me like an airline vomit bag.

  There was nothing in my Series Seven stockbroker’s study guide to indicate the correct grip for revolvers, but I do my best at the bottom of the steps. I imagine fictional detectives played on the television show Southland as they deploy the two handed, arms extended grip. Weapon at eye-level.

  I read in the newspaper once that even real cops think Southland was right on.

  Stepping forward, what I see in Bluefish’s cement basement rattles my already shaky courage. Hell, I damn near pee my pants. Creeper has Gianni—I recognize the lower hairline now—hoisted in the air, Gianni’s bare feet stuck inside some kind of appliance. Directly beneath Gianni’s tootsies, an electric heating element glows red hot.

  “Get him out of there,” I say.

  Creeper glances at me over his shoulder. His gaze sneers at my revolver like it’s a giant cockroach.

  Gianni screams again.

  I fire at Creeper’s knees.

  The gunshot slams my brain with sound, the explosion bouncing off the walls and around the cement room like a foul ball in the empty seats. My vision blurs and my sinuses sting.

  Creeper doesn’t blink at the noise. His gaze drops toward his feet, focuses on the new white chip in the basement’s cement floor.

  Can’t believe I missed. Creeper’s knees are as big as steamer trunks.

  Another Gianni scream reaches my battered eardrums. The sound is heart-wrenching. I step closer and raise the weapon to target Creeper’s nose. My finger pressures the trigger. Funny, but I don’t think killing this man would bother me much. Creeper is the kind of monster who could have killed my children the other night without a qualm.

  The big man must read my mind because he pulls Gianni’s feet out from the oven thingy. I resist an urge to shoot anyway. Creeper’s going to kill you if you don’t kill him, a voice whispers. Think of it in terms of Beth and Ryan’s future. Making sure they have one. Instead, I use the Smith & Wesson to wave Creeper away from the aluminum appliance. What would I do without TV and the movies? First the two handed grip, now the gun as casual directional aide. Who needs a police academy?

  When Creeper is tucked away where he can’t reach me in less than three strides, I tell him to put Gianni down, then walk backward toward the big cooking thing.

  “Is smoker,” Creeper says. Grinning at me with ugly teeth. But he still holds Gianni across his shoulders like a bagged wild animal.

  “I don’t care. Put Gianni down—carefully—and walk over beside whatever it is. Then snuggle up. This thirty-eight won’t blow your head off, but you won’t hear the shot either.”

  Creeper lets Gianni’s weight slide off his shoulders, stooping so that Mama Bones’ nephew drops gently onto the bare cement. Silence returns to the basement air. My gunshot played out like the last chord of a rock anthem.

  I use Gianni’s hunting knife from the bug-out bag to cut the duct tape binding his wrists and knees. “You okay?” I whispe
r.

  Gianni groans and mumbles two or three words I can’t make out. His bare feet are black on the bottom, smoking, with white blisters bubbling up like bacon. My stomach warns me I might get sick. I tighten my grip on the revolver.

  A new voice on the stairway says, “Put down the gun, Carr.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  My heart skips. It’s Gianni’s brother Tomas and a Vin Diesel wannabe, the bald guy and Tomas both wearing tight black jeans and black T-shirts, a dark blockade on the basement stairway above. The angry expression on their faces gives me pause; their assault rifles give me weak knees. My Smith & Wesson feels like a squirt gun.

  “I’m on your side,” I say, trying to keep an eye on Creeper.

  “For the moment,” Tomas says. “So do your new pals a favor. Put that revolver down.”

  Both assault rifles stay focused on my chest. I see no alternative but to comply, stooping slowly, the basement floor chilling my knuckles as I set down the Smith & Wesson beside Gianni’s wounded frame. The cold on my fingers travels up my arm and touches every nerve inside me. The basement air tastes of Gianni’s burnt flesh.

  Under the artful direction of Tomas, his shaved-head sidekick and their U.S. Army-issue assault rifles, Creeper and I load Gianni into the back of the same white Escalade I rode in last night. The closeness of Creeper’s mountainous body keeps my nerves running on a blade. Standing next to the guy, I feel like I’m beside a rope leashed grizzly bear. Everything is safe and calm as long as the bear chooses.

  Tomas motions with the muzzle of his rifle for Creeper to walk away from the Caddy, toward the pine building. Creeper obeys, at least in part I’m sure, because his mother raised him to be polite. Also perhaps because Tomas’ M-16 can deliver bullets in three-round bursts, up to ninety per minute.

  I figure I’m looking good. Tomas didn’t send me over to the steps. But when I reach for the Caddy’s door handle, Tomas’s bald friend stiff-arms me away.

  “You’re not coming with us,” Tomas says.

  “You’re leaving me with Creeper?”

  “Ha. Good name for him. And yeah, you’re staying because we’ve had enough of this fight. We want Max to know it. We want him to tell Bluefish.”

  My stomach, which was finally returning to normal, flips upside down again. Wonder if that bug-out bag has any seltzer tablets?

  “You hear that, Max?” Tomas says. “I’m taking my brother Gianni back, that’s all. I don’t care what you did to him. This battle is over. You can have Carr as a peace offering.”

  My head does a slow but full-boat swivel, a deliberate search for escape routes. Everywhere the view is the same—scrub pine forest. Too bad I can’t fly. Looks like this stockbroker’s going for a run in the yellow-green woods.

  “I was kidding,” Tomas whispers. “Here’s your gun back. You can take Max’s Town Car.”

  Whew.

  Does knowing someone’s planning to kill you give you license to kill that person first? Aiming the Smith & Wesson at Creeper’s garage door of a chest, I decide yes, it probably does. But I’m still not going to shoot him.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “Give me the keys to the Lincoln,” I say.

  Tomas and his bald friend left fifteen seconds ago. I can still hear the car’s engine. The film of dust the tires kicked up now floats in the space between me and Creeper. The fog of war. Maybe I’m being a little dramatic.

  Or not. I walk closer, within eight feet of Creeper, then aim the gun at the big goon’s twisted nose. Hey, this worked before. I like precedent. “Only one more time I say this, Max. Give me the keys.”

  Creeper grins. His teeth look like a recently burned forest. Lots of dark empty spaces and broken, snapped-off tree-trunks.

  I pressure the trigger.

  Creeper digs into his pocket, eases out a baseball-size gob of brass and chrome and rusty keys. His huge fingers work on the tiny pieces of metal like a silversmith, quickly separating a silver car key.

  Creeper knows I’m not bluffing.

  The big man shows me the key he’s removed, that it’s for a Ford product, then stuffs the puppy in his mouth and swallows.

  Bastard’s not as dumb as those teeth make him look. No one could be. What I mean, Creeper can tell by looking at me I won’t shoot him unless I absolutely have to. But how does a guy learn to trust instincts like that? Bigger than ballsy, if you ask me. Like a guy who’d wrestle two bears at the same time.

  I am out of options. Waiting around for Creeper to pass the key is not what I’d call a viable option.

  “Okay, smart ass,” I say. “I’m going to disappear into these woods. If I hear you following me, I’ll stop, hide and shoot you on sight.”

  Creeper’s grin stretches into a wicked smile. It’s an ugly thing. Like the winner of a frightening jack-o-lantern contest on Halloween. Eyes and teeth from hell.

  Sucks my breath away. Makes me wonder if a bullet to the brain would even kill him.

  THIRTY

  I stumble on an embedded pine cone, knock my shoulder against the gray, denuded limb of an otherwise-yellowish evergreen. Must be two hundred billion bad ass ugly trees in New Jersey’s pine barrens. And half of them are staring back at me, blocking my course. I feel like a tick, fighting his way across a dog’s hairy back.

  My progress is slow and increasingly unsteady. Through, around and under these nasty scrub pine trees is a trail I carve myself, each step a road builder. Adding to my immobility, Gianni’s bug-out bag hangs on my back like a dead horse.

  Although there is a lot of good stuff in there.

  Checking the compass, for instance, I know I’m hiking due east. This is strategically important because I can’t negotiate two steps without tripping over a cone, make two yards without ducking under a snapped, sharp limb. I’ve suffered equally tough terrain getting to a bathroom stall at Giant Stadium, true, but keeping my direction would be impossible for this backwoods tenderfoot were it not for Gianni’s unusual compass.

  Inside a hexagon-shaped, black plastic frame, the bubble lens magnifies a tightly-bunched field, the N, S, E and W part of a luridly 1960s psychedelic nude woman with large breasts. I like holding it.

  I’m not stopping to listen for Creeper anymore. I figure he either came right after me, in contempt, or he decided to make a call for backup. If he came after me, he’d be here by now. At the very least, I would hear trees falling.

  No, a Bluefish-sponsored posse of sweat suit clad gunman and young bikers probably now hunts me, not just Creeper. I’d guess no more than fifteen, twenty minutes behind me, too. I try to think of that when my leg muscles tell me to rest. If I could accomplish the task without getting wet, I wouldn’t stop to pee.

  Twice I catch sight of the paved road I traveled with Mama Bones and the Trim/Fit Brothers—Gianni and Tomas—last night. Glimpses only, but enough to tell me I’m definitely on the right course. Eventually I have to hit The Garden State Parkway. Five miles. Ten miles. I don’t know how far it was, nor how fast I can negotiate this scrub pine and bright green poison oak.

  I decide against using the prepaid cell phone in Gianni’s bug-out bag, at least for now. I’m not much of a multi-tasker, and moving quickly, efficiently and quietly through the pine barrens deserves no less than one hundred percent of my attention. My life depends on it.

  I’d equate my current situation with an old fashioned parachute jump. Throw yourself out of an airplane, and it’s important to focus on pulling that rip cord.

  Around noon, with a wind-driven cloudy sky announcing the arrival of darker weather, I realize my body has to rest. My heart and lungs can’t distribute enough oxygen to counteract the exhaustion or the cramping in my legs and back. Plus, I just noticed I’m already lying down.

  Taking the first of an intended parade of slow, deep breaths, I notice bloody scratches now mark the back of my hands. Reminds me of the last time I tried to touch Susan’s breasts. I think it was our honeymoon.

  I hear people whispering. Two, may
be three voices, Creeper’s not among them. Very close. Why didn’t I hear their footsteps? Should I run for it? Or hide? Or piss my pants and die?

  The wind picks up again. The sky turned charcoal over the last fifteen minutes, and now the garbage truck rumble of thunder barrels this way, up from Baltimore and the Carolinas. Lightning flashes all over the southern sky.

  Should I run or hide?

  A cloudburst makes the decision for me. I reach inside the bug-out bag.

  It’s midnight under Gianni’s black plastic tarp. I have a watch, and I’m fairly dry. But the undiluted darkness makes me dizzy, like all my senses are shutting down. I am generally and ominously uncertain of my status.

  The wind pushes rain through the pines in a steady, unsettling hiss. Water splashes hard against the tarp. I smell pine resin and a sticky, fearful odor I finally connect to my own perspiration. I’m sweating like it’s the last day of the month and my sales commissions don’t match my bar tab.

  Two sets of soft feet creep toward me across the wet, needle-covered forest floor. My heart beat quickens, and the thumping inside my chest is so intense, I worry the noise will give me away. Like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart.

  The gentle footsteps glide past, the searchers apparently seeing only black shadow beneath fallen pine trees, one stubby trunk leaning atop the other. I’d rather be in my apartment, sure, my bed in particular, but I am proud of this hiding spot. Like when I was ten and built a cool fort.

  Lightning cracks close. Very close. I can hear tree wood split before the giant ka-boom flattens the plastic tarp against my body.

  When my ears stop ringing, the footsteps are gone.

  An hour later, the rain comes only in gusts, peaking when the wind surges, beating like a hundred tom-toms against the dead wood and plastic over my head. The air inside my makeshift tent smells only of pine resin now, not my stinky sweat.