Reduced Ransom!

by Mike Faricy

  Over coffee Huey explained the situation. “It’s pretty simple. I’m her stepfather, for God’s sake. She’s as big a pain as her mother was. So, get the money back and let me know who was in on this with her. It’s got to be some strange kind of dude,” he added, remembering the voice on the phone that had ultimately sent him to Seattle.

  “Don’t do anything to him. I’ll deal with that myself. You just get the money and a name.”

  “Your daughter? Why don’t you just pick up the phone and call her? Or better yet, go over to her place?”

  “Stepdaughter, and I got my reasons. Look Buster, with all due respect, that’s not really your problem. You just need to get the money from her, not worry about why. She’s tight with a nickel that one, just like the old lady was. She’s probably got it sitting under her bed or in a closet.”

  “So how rough do you want me to get?”

  “Well, she has to be able to pay, and if she’s dead she can’t pay. But, aside from that, feel free to do whatever will get the job done. I can’t have people thinking they can hustle me for money. I’d be the laughing stock of this town anyone got wind of it. And that stunt with my car, burning the garage down. Whoever pulled that little torch job off had inside information and sent me a message. I want to deal with him, personally. I bought into it at first, but the more I think about it, it’s just too stupid. A hundred grand? Come on, who could possibly be that dumb?”

  Chapter 35

  “How dumb are you, Mick?” It wasn’t dangerous enough the way we were working things, now you decide to sleep with Huey’s kid?”

  “Dell, will you relax. I told you it was a one shot deal. She bumped into us by mistake, doesn’t even know who you are. She has no way of getting in touch with me. Shit happens. It’s just one of those crazy, spur of the moment sort of things. She couldn’t help herself, she fell for me. You’ve never ended up in some woman’s bed wondering how you got there?”

  “Not some woman I kidnapped and held for ransom for God’s sake. Not Huey’s kid. What if she tries to get in touch with you?”

  “I just told you, she can’t. We’ll just stay away from the War Bonnet for a week or two. I’ll give Harlan the word, make sure he doesn’t pass out any information on either one of us. You might want to mention something to Cookie, too. We don’t need her opening her mouth and saying something stupid to someone.” Mickey’s cellphone suddenly rang. “Hello?”

  “Oh, hey. Just wanted to see how you were doing. That head feeling any better?” Janice said.

  “Ahh, yeah . . . hi. I’m feeling fine, just fine." Mickey suddenly turned his back to Dell and lowered his voice to almost a whisper. “Kinda busy right now, maybe we could talk a little later.”

  “It’s her, isn’t it?” said Dell, standing up, not sure what to do, suddenly looking out the window, up and down the street to see if they were surrounded.

  “How ‘bout I talk to you a little later?”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry to bother you. I was just wondering if maybe you wanted to get together, even later tonight if that would work for you?”

  “Yeah, sounds great. I’ll call you in a bit.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  “Oh, that’s just great. For not being able to get in touch with you, she seems to have done alright for herself. What the hell are you thinking? Are you crazy? What if she brings Huey after us? I’m not supposed to mention anything to anyone, but apparently, it’s okay for you to hop in the sack with her and have her call you for a second date. Jesus, Mick, this takes the cake. Are there any other surprises you would like to lay on me? You two going to vacation down in Grand Cayman and stay with the Coach’s wife, have her cook you up some more spaghetti.”

  “It wasn’t spaghetti, it was linguini, number seven linguini, I always—”

  “Cut the crap, Mick. We’re not talking about some slap on the wrist offense here. We’ll both be dead by the time they decide to let us out. That’s if Huey doesn’t kill us first. We’re looking at federal charges here, federal charges, man. I love you, but you’re a class A screw up. I’ve always stuck by you, always been there, always gone along, but you seem to have this self destruct gene and I’m not going down this time. I can’t. I won’t. So, do whatever in the hell you want here, but until you come to your senses, I’m out of it. You let me know when you start thinking clearly, but I’m not risking everything just because you got the hots for this woman.”

  “Now, Dell, just hold on.”

  “Ask yourself this, Mick. What in the hell does she see in you? Christ, look at this joint. You live in a two-bedroom apartment with empty beer cases stacked up for end tables. You got a painting of a naked woman you met in Vegas hanging over your couch and I’m guessing probably the same sheets on your bed for the last couple of months. You’re a goofball, Mick. You don’t have a career, you can’t hold a job. I know, I know,” Dell said, holding up a hand to stop Mickey’s protest. “You’re a notary public. Come on man, first of all, that’s not a career, okay. And second, you’re not, you’re not even a notary, Mick. You just bought the stamp.”

  “Will you calm down, Dell.”

  “No, not this time. Sometimes I think you tell yourself these lies so often you forget they’re lies. All you did was have a guy make you a stamp, and you’ve been faking the notary gig for years. What’s it bring in, about twenty bucks a month? That doesn’t buy you drinks for one night. You’ve never held a job for more than six months. I love you, but just think about it. I mean the woman doesn’t have enough headaches in her life, now she wants to take up with you? Come on Mick, wise up.”

  “So, does that mean you’re not interested in the next little project I’ve been thinking about?”

  “Next project. Are you nuts? Did you hear anything I’ve been saying?”

  “Dell, calm down, old buddy, look at the facts here. Seems to me I’ve delivered more payola than either one of us has ever seen before. Seems to me that we are both walking around free as a bird. Seems to me that if the cops or the feds were on to us, we would both be locked up by now. Seems to me that so far, both my plans have worked perfectly. Seems to me—”

  “Worked perfectly? Mick, did you listen to anything I just said? You’re playing with fire here. How do you know this Janice isn’t just setting us up? This is Huey Evans’ daughter, for Christ sake. Forget what he did to us as kids, that doesn’t even count. You know what his reputation is.”

  “I know but—”

  “Worked perfectly? The first woman, your new main squeeze, you gave her ten grand, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance she’s setting you up. The second woman you so carefully chose, we couldn’t even get a response from her husband, Coach Buddy. Hell, Mick, she finally had to pay us herself, just to get out of town. That’s working perfectly?”

  “Are you through, Dell? See that’s the difference between us. You get hung up on the details, you sweat the small shit. I’m more of your big picture sort of guy, I get results. The bottom line is, no matter what you say, we got ourselves two big old contractor bags buried in northern Minnesota, both of them filled with cash. And, I’m going to do it a third time, even if I have to do it alone. So, you in or not?”

  “Mick, forget about the last two and how they worked out. I’ll give you this, we got the dough. But, the girl, she worries me, in fact she scares the absolute hell out of me.”

  “Dell, I know what you mean, but I think she’s actually on the level. It would have been easy to give both of us up last night, or me toward the end of the night. Instead, she cooks me breakfast, and then calls to see if I’m all right. I mean, what’s that? I understand you being worried. But I promise you, I’ll check it out, be real careful, cover for both of us. I promise I’ll check it out, take a real close look, and play it extremely safe. Satisfied?”

  Chapter 36

  They had agreed to get together for dinner, Mickey suggesting that he cook, sounding like a true romantic. All the while thinking if he was going to check Janice
out, what better way to do it then at his duplex, uninterrupted. More importantly, he could feed her for under thirty bucks.

  She arrived promptly at seven-thirty, giving him time to sort of clean, and dump a lot of junk into the spare bedroom. He’d cleaned the bathroom, dusted a few shiny things, set the table for two, turned off most of the lights and lit the three Christmas candles on the table. He also set a loaded Luger in a kitchen drawer beneath a dish towel. The Luger had a clip that held nine, hollow point rounds. He fired up the blender just as she rang the doorbell.

  “Hi, find the place okay?”

  “That shirt is great,” she said, laughing at the two mermaids dominating his front.

  “I’m upstairs,” he gestured with a hand, and followed her up the stairs. She continued talking and he was suddenly aware of a pause in her conversation as she stepped into his unit.

  “I’m sorry, what was that? I missed it,” he said.

  “I said, I love what you’ve done with the place,” she half laughed, taking in the beer case end tables, mismatched furniture and the painting of the naked red head. “Someone you know?”

  “Not anymore,” he said, pouring two thirds of a blender into a glass just slightly smaller than a birdbath and handing it to her. “I thought it might be the perfect night for a margarita.”

  “Wow, this is a really big glass.”

  “Yeah, aren’t they great, got ‘em down in Mexico.”

  “Amazing, it holds almost a pitcher’s worth,” she said.

  The air conditioner chugged along, fighting to keep the room at a moderate heat as opposed to slightly cool. Occasionally it kicked in with a power surge that made the lights blink. They ran the gamut of polite conversation. Mickey went into detail how he had just wanted to die after his last bout of Montezuma’s Revenge down in Mexico. How he was a business man of varied interests, dabbling in a variety of different things.

  “You mean like kidnapping?”

  “You want to hear some more music?” he said, ignoring the question. “Pick something out over there.” He pointed with his glass at the dusty cassette player sitting on a shelf made of bricks and boards. “I built that, the shelf, painted it, too.”

  “Where are your CD’s?”

  “I just have tapes, some pretty good stuff there. Put in any one you like.”

  “Yeah, I listen to this Bobby Vee one all the time,” she said, meaning anything but.

  “Here, you know Ricky Nelson, right? The original teen idol, I mean Poor little Fool? Hello Mary Lou? Garden Party?”

  “Where do you even get cassette tapes nowadays?”

  He shook his head, slipped Ricky Nelson in, pushed the tape deck closed, and waited for a few seconds of static before Ricky launched into the soft beginning of Lonesome Town, ‘There’s a place, where lover’s go, to cry their troubles away.’ Ricky dropped down an octave, heavy, suddenly close, like the heat outside and Mickey took her in his arms and started to move. ‘And they call it lonesome town, where the broken hearts stay.’

  He was one hell of a dancer and he softly, gently, directed her. Danced with her like she’d never, ever been danced with before. Not swirls or spins but slow, close, passionate without ever really touching, just hands and fingers directing her by the slightest pressures to which she knew instantly, genetically, how to respond. When the song finished her back was to him. His arms were wrapped around her waist, but not too tight, just perfect, sheltering her from the world. She could feel his breath close to her left ear, exciting her. In just two minutes and nineteen seconds she’d fallen for Ricky Nelson and Mickey. She didn’t know if it was the dance or the margaritas.

  “Wow,” she gasped, turning, and looking deep into his eyes.

  “Thanks, I had better get that spaghetti going or we’ll never eat,” Mickey said, missing every clue and hint, turning and walking into the kitchen.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “Yeah, finish that drink, we got wine with dinner. Pasta ala Mickey, tonight.”

  “Mmm-mmm, sounds like I’ll like it.”

  Over dinner they both laughed too much, more from the margaritas and the bottom half of their bottle of wine than anything said. Things seemed to be going along nicely for both of them and so, Mickey figured his timing couldn’t be better to ask the question.

  “How are things with your father?”

  “He is not my father, he is the reason my mother is dead, he killed her a hundred times over, she died of a broken heart. He didn’t love her, he despises me, and as far as I’m concerned, he can just go to hell. The sooner the better.”

  “More wine?” Mickey said.

  “I told you he calls me all the time, threatening me, trying to get that money back. Thinks I set the whole thing up, burned his stupid car.”

  “His car? We never did anything to his car.”

  “Well, someone did. Anyway, you brought it up,” she said, then drained her wine glass and thrust it in Mickey’s direction. “I don’t want anything from you. I’m not asking for anything. I was just pumping gas yesterday, saw you go into some lousy dive bar and got up the courage to sneak in there to look at you. That’s all I wanted to do, just look at you. I was just curious, and, if I didn’t have those beers, we never would have talked. You never would have ended up in my bed, and I wouldn’t be here tonight.

  “Huey wants you to pay back the money? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

  “Gee, really? Tell him that, like it would stop him. But it’s not why I talked to you last night. Okay? You were the first guy, oh God, this is how screwed up my life is. You’re the first guy I can remember being kind to me. My stepfather’s a jerk, my ex is a bigger jerk and I’ve had a string of losers you wouldn’t believe. Now, I go and run into the guy who kidnapped me, and take him into my bed. I’m such a pathetic loser.” She began to sob, head in her hands, pasta sauce splattered on her blouse.

  “I think you’re being a little bit hard on yourself, aren’t you? Let’s take them one at a time, the easy ones first. Your ex, from what you’ve said he’s been out of the picture, right?”

  She sniffled, nodded, and looked at him through puffy eyes.

  “All right so cross him off the list. You can do better than him. Now those other losers, so what. See that painting, that red head over the couch? I paid for that, even though she gave it to me as a surprise, turns out she was doing the damn painter on the side. Amazingly, that’s why it took two months to finish the damn thing. She gets copies made and sends them out to LA, so she can become a star. I get the damned painting and a couple of grand worth of credit card bills. She’s out in LA, supposedly living the life.”

  “Is she a star?”

  “You don’t recognize her, do you? That’s cause your looking at her face. She works under a number of different names, usually in a different forty-five-minute video with a different bunch of guys every week or so. That’s when she’s not winking at cars from some street corner.”

  “You mean, she’s a porn star?”

  “I mean she’s in porn, not what you’d call a star, and that’s what I got to show for it, that painting. I keep it there to remind me of how stupid I was, once. Well, and because it actually kinda makes the room, too. I mean, you gotta admit, it sort of ties everything together, the reds, her lipstick, the beer cases and all.”

  “Yeah, well my ex and all those losers, that’s the easy part, but that still leaves the other problem.”

  “Huey? He’ll dial down, just relax and be patient, believe me, he’ll run out of steam. I’ve dealt with guys like him all my life, they always run out of steam. Sooner or later he’ll be making someone else’s life miserable.”

  Chapter 37

  Buster Keegan had followed Janice for the better part of the day to the grocery store, a mall, the gas station, dry cleaners, liquor store, back to the grocery store and now he glanced at his watch thinking this is going absolutely nowhere. He watched her park, straighten her top before ringing the doorbell
, waiting on the porch and then entering the house once the guy stepped out and glanced around. The whole process took less than forty-five seconds and was uneventful, until the guy looked up and down the street like a gunfighter and Buster thought, ‘Bingo’.

  Only someone who had something to hide looked around that way, too cautious, way too careful. He climbed out of his car and felt the hot humid air encase him like a plastic dry-cleaning bag.

  It was a duplex, one up, one down, and the guy didn’t look like he was Charlotte Minx listed as living in unit one, so he must be M. Donnelly in unit two. Buster jotted down the name, took the mail out of the mailbox, and climbed back in his car.

  The mail consisted of three pieces; an ad circular, a pizza offer, and a credit card application addressed to Michael Donnelly or current resident. M equals Michael and Buster had a name. He guessed by the look of Huey’s stepdaughter, tight little shorts and a smaller top, that she planned to spend the night, which gave Buster time for a little dinner and research on Michael Donnelly.

  “Explain this relationship to me again,” Huey said to Buster. They were sitting in Huey’s back yard. He had been listening off and on to Buster. Occasionally, he stared behind Buster at the recently poured concrete pad and two courses of freshly laid block that was the foundation for his new garage.

  “What’d you say his name was again?”

  “Donnelly, Michael Donnelly. Local guy, did some time a few years back up in Lino Lakes for receiving stolen property. His sentence was about twice what’s normal. In fact, he was a first timer, so it should have been a suspended sentence and probation. This guy gets double the time and serves it all. I figure he’s connected. No visible means of support. I kept getting the sense, as I checked him out, that it’s all just a little too vague. You know, like no one could be that much of a loser on paper unless it’s all an act and he’s really connected. I couldn’t find any employment records for the past twenty years except he claims to be a notary public. That’s like the head of some crime family claiming to grow roses for a living. I think you scratch much below the surface of this guy he’s going to be wired to some pretty heavy hitters. Nothing else makes any sense.”