Читать книгу Andrew Gross 3-Book Thriller Collection 1: The Dark Tide, Don’t Look Twice, Relentless - Andrew Gross, Andrew Gross - Страница 45

“Mr. Raymond?”

Hauck knocked at the small white, shingle-roofed home with a cheap green awning over the door in a middle-class section of Pensacola. There was a small patch of dry lawn in front, a black GMC pickup with an EVEN JESUS LOVED A GOOD BEER bumper sticker parked in the one-car garage.

The door opened, and a dark, sun-flayed man peered back. “Who’re you?”

“My name’s Hauck. I’m a lieutenant with the police department up in Greenwich, Connecticut. I handled your son’s case.”

Raymond was strongly built, of medium height, with a rough gray stubble. Hauck figured him for around sixty. His gnarled, cedar-colored skin looked more like a hide of leather and offset his clear blue eyes. He had a faded blue and red military tattoo on his thick right arm.

“Everyone knows me as Pappy,” he grunted, throwing open the door. “Only people who want money call me Mr. Raymond. That’s why I wasn’t sure.”

Hauck stepped through the screen door into a cramped, sparely furnished living room. There was a couch that looked like it had been there for forty years, a wooden table with a couple of Budweiser cans on it. The TV was on—a CSI rerun. There were a couple of framed pictures arranged on the wall. Kids. In baseball and football uniforms.

Hauck recognized one.

“Take yourself a seat,” Pappy Raymond said. “I’d offer you something, but my wife’s at her sister over in Destin, so there’s nothing here but week-old casserole and warm beer. What brings you all the way down here, Lieutenant Hauck?”

“Your son.”

“My son?” Raymond reached for the remote and flicked off the TV. “My son’s been dead over a year now. Hit-and-run. Never solved. I understood the case was closed.”

“Some information’s come out,” Hauck said, stepping over a pile of newspapers, “that might shed some new light on it.”

“New light …” The old man bunched his lips together and mocked being impressed. “Just in fucking time.”

Hauck stared at him. He pointed to the wall.

“That’s AJ over there, isn’t it?”

“That’s Abel.” Raymond nodded and released a breath.

“He played defensive backfield, huh?”

Raymond took a long time before saying, “Listen, son, I know you came a long way down here and that somehow you’re just trying to help my boy—” He stopped, looked at Hauck with hooded eyes. “But just why in hell are you here?”

“Charles Friedman,” Hauck answered. He moved a stack of local sports pages off the chair and sat down across from Raymond. “Any chance you know that name?”

“Friedman. Nope. Never heard it before.”

“You’re sure?”

“Said it, didn’t I? My right hand’s got a bit of a tremor in it, but not my brain.”

Hauck smiled. “Any chance AJ … Abel ever mentioned it?”

“Not to me. ’Course, we weren’t exactly in regular conversation over the past year after he moved up north.” He rubbed his face. “I don’t know if you know, but I worked thirty years down at the port.”

“I was told that, sir. By your other son when he came to claim AJ’s things.”

“Rough life.” Pappy Raymond exhaled. “Just look at me.” He picked up a photo of himself at the wheel of what appeared to be like a tug and handed it to Hauck. “Still, it provided some. Abel got what I never got—meaning a little school, not that he ever had cause to do much with it. He chose to go his own way…. We all make our choices, don’t we, Lieutenant Hauck?” He put the photo down. “Anyway, no, I don’t think he ever mentioned the name Charles Friedman to me. Why?”

“He had a connection to AJ.”

“That so?”

Hauck nodded. “He was a hedge-fund manager. He was thought to have been killed at the bombing at Grand Central Station in New York last April. But that wasn’t the case. Afterward, I believe he found a ride up to Greenwich and contacted your son.”

“Contacted Abel? Why?”

“That’s why I’m here. To find out.”

The father’s eyes narrowed, circumspect, a look Hauck knew. He laughed. “Now, that’s a pickle. One dead man going to meet another.”

“AJ never mentioned being involved in anything before he was killed? Drugs, gambling—maybe even some kind of blackmail?”

Raymond brought back his legs off the table and sat up. “I know you came down here a long way, Lieutenant, but I don’t see how you can go implying things about my boy.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Hauck said. “I apologize. I’m not interested in whatever he may have done, except if it sheds any light on who killed him. But what I am interested in is why a man who’s just gone through a life-threatening situation and whose life is a world apart from your son’s finds his way up to Greenwich and gets in touch with your boy directly after.”

Pappy Raymond shrugged. “I’m not a cop. I expect the normal course would be to ask him.”

“I wish I could,” Hauck said. “But he’s gone. For over a year. Disappeared.”

“Then that’s where I’d be putting my best efforts, son, if I were you. You’re wasting your time here.”

Hauck handed Pappy Raymond back the photo. Stood up.

“You think that man killed Abel?” Pappy Raymond said. “This Charles Friedman? Ran him down.”

“I don’t know. I think he knows what happened.”

“He was a good boy.” Raymond blew out air. A gleam showed in his clear blue eyes. “Headstrong. Did things his own way. Like you-know-who. I wish we’d had more time.” He drew in a breath. “But I’ll tell you this: That boy wouldn’t have harmed the wings on a goddamn fly, Lieutenant. No reason …” He shook his head. “No reason he had to die like that.”

“Maybe there’s someone else I could ask,” Hauck pressed. “Who might know. I’d like to help you.”

“Help me?”

“Solve AJ’s killing, Mr. Raymond, ’cause that’s what I damn well feel it was.”

The old man chuckled, a wheezy laugh escaping. “You seem like a good man, Lieutenant, and you’ve come a long way. What’d you say your name was?”

“Hauck.”

“Hauck.” Pappy Raymond flicked on the TV. “You go on back, Luh-tenant Hauck. Back to wherever you’re from. Connecticut. ‘Cause there ain’t no way in hell, whatever ‘new light’ you may have turned up, sir, that it’s ever gonna be of any help to me.”