Читать книгу Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - Lee Lamothe - Страница 11

Phil Harvey chewed slowly on a sinker, dipping it into his coffee, and watched the block through the window while the crazy Captain waited for service at the counter. There was a convention in town. He saw cars with Illinois plates, Minnesota plates, some Michigans, and some Ontario, Canada. Drones on their morning coffee break filled the Donut Hole and although there were seats at Harv’s table, no one availed themselves of his company. Three office girls carrying blue, rolled up yoga mats stood nearby, raving about the flavour of the chai and sneaking glances at him. Phil Harvey knew he was a thing of the night, not of the morning. The oversized aviator sunglass and the curtain of hair didn’t quite hide the scars and his long, black leather pimp coat was tucked around him as though he was suffering a perpetual winter. There was no hiding his twisted claw clutching the sinker. His facial burns glistened with the vitamin E cream he uselessly and constantly massaged into them.

Connie Cook carried his cup through the yoga girls and dropped heavily opposite Phil. He put a leather briefcase on the seat beside him. “You look like you didn’t sleep. You up all night, Harv, wreaking havoc?” Connie Cook’s rippled jowls were smooth with knowing kindness.

“Ah, you know, Connie. Running, running, running. Either chasing or fleeing. Spent half the night looking for Agatha but she wasn’t around, so I fucked off to do something else. I guess she didn’t want to become a cook after all.”

“You didn’t see her, eh?”

“Nope. Not a sign.”

“Can’t figure that,” Connie Cook said, shaking his head. “She was hungry to move up, become a cooker.” He had a sudden thought. “What about the chicklets?”

Harv gave him a frown. “Dunno about that, Connie. She didn’t come down. I hung around then I went up and knocked. No answer. I wasn’t about to go in there. I guess where she went the chicklets went. Unless she left them up there.”

“Well, you’re gonna have to go in there, now, Harv. Shut the thing down. Get the guy in the stairwell out of there, tell the money guy on the ground to stand by. Then you go clean out her apartment in case she left the chicklets or something dirty behind. We’ll need a new place, maybe in Hauser North.” Connie Cook pondered creases into his fat forehead. “What else? What else? Fuck, I think I’ve been ripped off. You really never saw her, eh?”

“I told you, Connie: no. I planned to take her and the chicklets up to the truck lab but she didn’t show and she didn’t show and I took off. You sure she understood? To wait for me?”

“It’ll sort itself out. Anyway, Chinamen.”

Harv nodded and finished his doughnut. “I got guys ready. Some real wreckers. You give me the place and the when and we’ll go and put an end to their bullshit.”

“Well, today, I think, at noon, not too late. You want to catch them sleeping. I got a thing I want to get for you first then you go. You go in there, you guys, and you lay waste. I mean it, Harv. Everybody that comes out of there that aren’t our guys, they’re walking funny. Take the pressing machines, any chicklets or powder they got, everything. There’s going to be some money laying around, I’m sure. You guys split it up.”

“You want to come?”

“No.” Connie Cook reflected a moment. “Yeah, you know what? I do. Yeah, I’m gonna. I got to pick something up, though, something I was going to give you, but if I’m going I’ll need it.” He gave Harv a knowing look. “You think something happened to her? To Ag? Boy, I’d like to know the details of that horror story, sometime.”

Harv sat back and disappeared himself into the folds of his leather coat. “What do I know? You were the last guy I know of to see her alive. And she was okay when you left her, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well then, nothing for us to worry about.”

* * *

Phil Harvey drove the Camaro close behind Connie Cook’s Mercedes. They wound through the city, the Captain trying to lose him at stale lights. Harv could see the Captain on his phone, hands-free, head bobbing as he yelled at the windshield as though deranged. At one point the Mercedes went into a skid, bumped the curb, and straightened itself out on the roadway.

On the edge of east Chinatown the Captain slowed, lowered his window, and waved Harv up beside his driver’s door. “Turn on the all news, Harv. Strange events up in the badlands.” He laughed and sped away. Harv fiddled his way awkwardly to an AM station and heard a roundup of headlines. One of them was about a truck explosion and fire far northeast of the city. Smoking remains had been found; unknown gender, unknown cause of death.

The Mercedes went through east Chinatown and just over the city line it pulled into a metalwork shop. The Captain waved Harv to wait and held up his hand: five minutes. He disappeared inside in a swaggering waddle and came out two minutes later with a long thin item wrapped in a green garbage bag. He popped his trunk, put the package in, and slammed it.

He waved Harv over. “You hear? That truck fire, there, up north? What’s that all about, I wonder.”

“Fuck if I.” Harv shrugged. “I got a rock solid alibi, anyway.”

“Yeah? You do?”

“Yep, I was with you.” Harv waited a beat. “Back me up or I’ll kill you too.”

The Captain laughed. “Nice one, Harv. Okay, I’ll follow you. You get your thugs over to east Chinatown and we’ll meet them there. They cool, these guys?”

“Princes, these guys are, Connie.” He punched numbers into his cellphone.

They wended their way down through the city. In east Chinatown Harv pulled the Camaro onto a side street. Connie Cook parked on the opposite side of the street, ahead. He popped the trunk, took out the long package, and held it like a golf club, putting aimlessly.

A few minutes later a black Tundra pulled up further down the block and three beefy men got out. They all had pigtails, thick faces, and wore leather jackets. One carried a long sports bag. They bounced on their toes on the sidewalk as they looked around for Harvey.

Harv climbed out and greeted them with handshakes that changed into biker brotherhood hugs. He waved Connie Cook over. The pigtailed men looked at him curiously as he crossed the road, taking in his perfect suit, the puddle of jowls, the short painful steps.

“That the guy we’re doing, Harv? He’s one fat fuck.”

Harv laughed. “No, that’s the guy we’re doing it for. We’re doing a home renovation. He’s okay. He’s weird, but we’re earning.”

One of the men took a coupon from his jacket pocket. “Give him this. He signs up for a year, he gets a lifetime membership at my new gym.”

“Wait,” Harv said. “Hold on to that and if you want him to have it, after, well, you tell him he’s a fat fuck when you give it to him. He likes it when people call him names.”

The Captain came up beside them and Harv introduced him all around. The Captain seemed pleased at meeting some real badlands thugs.

The Chinese chemistry students lived in a tall, narrow rooming house sandwiched between a massage parlour and a beauty salon. There were half a dozen mailboxes studded beside the entry door and a Room for Rent sign in the window.

The gym owner looked the building over. “What’s the plan, Harv? We know what floor they’re on?”

“They got the whole first floor and the basement. First floor is a long hallway, all the rooms on the left. There’s a kitchen at the back with stairs down. They cook in the basement.”

Connie Cook smiled. “Good that you know that, Harv. I didn’t know that.”

Harv smiled back. “Ag told me.”

The three pigtailed men pulled on leather lifting gloves. One zipped open the sports bag and handed around a sawn-off baseball bat, a hammer, and a lug wrench. Harv looked around at the passing traffic. He took off his leather coat, rolled it inside out, and handed it to Connie Cook.

The pigtailed gym owner asked Harv, “What’s the play? We wrecking the place or just doing the people in there?”

“We get them then we take the place apart. There’s any dough, we split it. Powder, we split.”

The gym owner huddled with his companions for a moment then they all trooped up the steps. The biggest of the wreckers examined the lock, then stepped back and bulled his shoulder into it. It gave easily and they ran down the hallway, whooping. A Chinese teenager wearing Snoopy undershorts came out of the kitchen with a steaming bowl in his hands. He went down under the stampede. A pigtailed man swung a hammer. A plump girl, naked, flashed out of a bedroom off to the side. The gym owner whacked her legs out as he passed.

A long-haired Asian wearing a suit and an untucked, white shirt popped out of a doorway. He saw Harv and said his name. Harv was on him with the guy with the lug wrench. Harv took the wrench and began bashing at the man’s long hair. “I told you,” he said, swinging. “I fucking told you, cocksucker.” He stood and began stomping.

Connie Cook stayed in the doorway listening to the place being busted up. When the house was secure he told Harv to get everyone to the basement.

The pigtailed guys threw everyone down the steps. The basement was unfinished and had a strong chemical odour. A blackened stove sat in one corner and buckets, tubing, and bottles of chemicals were littered over a sagging chesterfield. There were cheap Dutch pill-pressing machines with different heads scattered among them. The windows were covered with taped on, ripped up green garbage bags.

There were five prisoners. One of them remained unconscious. The girl was crying and huddling herself off to the side, sobbing and examining her knees.

Harv didn’t like the scene. The chemical smell made his scars ripple and sing, the crying girl reminded him of Agatha. He decided the thing should be over. That’s the way it was done. They’d take the powder and the dough, bust everything in sight, and give everyone a farewell tune-up.

But Cornelius Cook stood at the bottom of the steps looking at his fracas with satisfaction. “Cold in here, Harv. Turn on the stove.” He began stripping the green garbage bag from his package.