Reduced Ransom! Page 7

  “Are you about through? Now calm down and just relax. She’s the brains behind all the money. I didn’t realize it at first, but it all makes perfect sense. Why do you think we haven’t heard a peep from Coach Buddy? Hell, we played right into his hand, he wants her to disappear. Yeah, Dell, we’d be doing him a favor, a real favor and he’s sitting on all the money in the world. This way she gets to start over, she’s going to Florida, but more importantly we get paid. It all works out, man. So, will you just relax? Let me worry about the details, here.”

  “How do you know she’s not going to hand you the money and have you arrested at the same time, or the next day or the day after that? Mickey, you don’t just call the whole plan off because some woman can cook spaghetti sauce and tells you she’ll pay the money. What’s she going to do, write you a personal check and then you can cash the damn thing? She can write the word ransom on the memo line, you can endorse the check and meanwhile I’ll pack a toothbrush and spend the next twenty-five years in a federal prison.”

  “Are you through with all the negative talk? Because we’re going to be a hundred grand richer starting tomorrow. That’s right, a hundred grand. Now look at me, Dell. Just like before, things have worked out in our favor. Is it exactly the way we envisioned? No, but, you see I’m flexible, I’m adjusting to the situation, adapting. I’m not going around in circles playing ‘ain’t it awful’, like someone else I could mention. Now, come on upstairs, I don’t want to leave her alone any longer than we have to. So, come on,” Mickey said.

  The kitchen was empty and for a long moment Dell stopped halfway up the staircase and looked through Mickey’s legs. Mickey seemed to be glued to the spot in the doorway, franticly scanning the room, not seeing any trace of a woman in a white terrycloth robe.

  “Ahh great, just great you idiot! See, I told you this would happen,” Dell said. He rushed past Mickey and over to the kitchen window scanning the pasture land for any movement. “God, she’s probably already flagged down a car and is gone. We’re toast, Mickey, burnt toast.”

  “Oh, gee fellas, I mean could you stir it once or twice, so it doesn’t burn. I had to use the bathroom while you had your little lovers spat downstairs. I hope this sauce is okay,” she said pulling her robe closed and bustling back to the stove.

  “Dell, get a pan out and fill it with water. Mickey, you said you two had some pasta around here, I’ll be ready for it in a few minutes. I like linguine, the number seven if you’ve got it.”

  “Come on, Dell, get the pan of water will you. Dinner in twenty minutes,” Mickey said.

  “You have any Kosher salt? I always like to use Kosher salt when I cook, and Mickey,” Candy said, “set the table.”

  Chapter 26

  “Okay,” Candy said as Dell cleared the dishes. They were sitting around the kitchen table beneath the red and white Budweiser lamp Dell had won at a Labor Day raffle a few years back. “Let’s talk about how you want to get paid, I can transfer the funds to an account, Mickey. You can take it from there, hide the trail or we could do the negotiable bonds. Obviously, that would take maybe an additional day or two. If you don’t mind me saying, and this is not a complaint, but it’s almost too small an amount. A hundred grand sounds sort of cheesy, fellas, I’ve got girlfriends that spend more than that on cosmetic surgery in any given year.”

  “I was thinking unmarked twenties,” Mickey said.

  “Twenties? As in cash, a hundred grand, cash? You’re kidding me, right? Oh Ged, but, I can see you’re not.”

  “Look fellas, I love you both, but aren’t you worried about a couple of things like maybe dye packs, tracing, marked bills, cut up newspaper, to say nothing of the distinct possibility of an arrest? I mean, what you’re doing is illegal, despite our working arrangement.”

  “We got those things covered,” Mickey said.

  “Yeah, covered. Coffee’ll be finished in a minute,” Dell said, handing out paper wrapped ice cream cones as he sat down.

  “Is this a drumstick?” Candy said. “I didn’t know they even made these anymore. It’s been years since I had one, thanks. Now, boys, you really should have some accounts where you can transfer this stuff back and forth so you won’t get caught, move it outside the country. Things have gotten a little tighter since the great recession, but you can still do it, and the small amounts your dealing with, no one has time to track that. "

  “We’re more into the cash thing, it just keeps it that much simpler,” Mickey said.

  “Okay, we’ll do cash if that’s what you really want. God, these are good, Dell. Pure, one hundred percent, artery clogging fat, it doesn’t get much better than that.”

  Chapter 27

  Mickey was waiting in a coffee shop across the street from the parking ramp. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Candy, but bottom line, he didn’t, at least not completely. Even though she’d done everything just as she promised there was still that element of doubt. He watched through the streaked windows of the coffee shop, smelling hot griddles, and heart stopping grease. He waited and watched so that in the event squad cars sealed off all the parking ramp exits he could alert Dell by phone. If all went well, they planned to meet at Dell’s lake cabin tonight.

  “Would you care to see a lunch menu, sir?” the waitress asked. Her earlier request had concerned the breakfast menu. She was a heavy-set woman, not what you might call fat, but solid, with forearms that looked like they could deliver a hard slap or a sharp pinch in a nanosecond. Her plastic name badge read Marliss. She traveled in a cloud of perfume that reminded Mickey of the scented, pink toilet paper his grandmother used to have in her home.

  “No, thanks, maybe just a little warm up,” Mickey said.

  She reflexively poured steaming coffee into the cup, trailing a bit over the saucer and across the table, marking her territory before she left.

  It had been more than an hour, but suddenly Candy appeared, strutting down the street calmly wheeling a small black suitcase behind her. She headed for the parking ramp where she expected to find him sitting in his car. As far as he could tell she wasn’t being followed. He threw two dollars on the table and left, calling to her from across the street as he exited from the diner.

  “Candy, hey, Candy.”

  “Aren’t we clever,” Candy said, as he hurried over to her. “Here, you drag this thing, I was in the bank and remembered I didn’t have anything to carry your cash in, I had to buy this thing for twenty bucks. And let me tell you, it raised a few eyebrows in old Bentley’s office. He wanted to send a guard with me. Where’s your car?”

  “This way,” Mickey said, and grabbed the plastic handle wheeling the bag behind him.

  They headed out of the parking ramp and drove in silence for the better part of the way to the airport. Candy busied herself looking through her purse seeming to run down a mental check list.

  If she’s got a gun, she’ll pull it here, he thought.

  “You okay?” he finally asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just sort of funny. I’ve been in this town for over a decade, but never felt like I lived here, just sort of visiting. I pulled that door closed behind me at the house and never thought about looking back. I’m only sad because I’m not sad. I guess that sort of says it all. I always called the house ‘the Coach’s’, like I never made it my home. It was a nice place, clean, I tried to make it warm, for him. It just was never home for me and, well now it’s time for me.”

  Mickey had heard those words before, ‘It’s time for me.’ Heard them from a number of different women in his life. But he’d never heard them said so softly, so gently, and he thought he knew exactly what she meant.

  “You sure you’re okay with all this?”

  “Would it make a difference? It’s not like we’re running off together, you’re just driving me to the airport, after you held me against my will for three days and forced me to pay for my own release. Which, even crazier, I did. Yeah, I’m okay, just fine, peachy,” she said and turned to stare out t
he window.

  They drove the remaining ten minutes in silence and it wasn’t until he was turning off the interstate, into the airport proper, that he began to worry. The blinking sign reminded motorists and anyone else to call 911 in the event of any suspicious activity. He kept checking his rearview mirror, thinking if it was going to happen it would be here at the airport. Candy would step out of the car and the next thing you know he would be surrounded by police with guns drawn.

  “What airline?” he asked.

  “Anywhere is fine,” she replied not answering his question. “I’ve got plenty of time.”

  He pulled over to the curb, had a slight panic attack as a female traffic officer stepped off the curb, nodded and walked past them. He watched her in the side view mirror as she continued to walk away from him, an unpleasant coincidence, but nothing more.

  “Thanks,” Candy said, and opened the rear door to grab her suitcase.

  “Don’t take the wrong one. All that cash could be tough going through the security check.”

  She paused for a brief moment, just enough to get his attention. “It’s been real,” she said, then flashed a quick smile and headed into the terminal.

  He didn’t wait, didn’t really look, just absently pulled into traffic, suddenly jolted back to reality by the screech of tires and the horn blast from the car he’d cut off. He shook his head, regained his bearings and headed north toward the lake country and Dell’s cabin.

  Chapter 28

  Mickey didn’t remember much of the four-and-a-half-hour drive, until he passed the Elk Lake Tavern with the ‘Fall In. Crawl Out’ sign over the door. It was the three-mile marker for Dell’s place. He took the next right, off St. Louis County pavement and onto a gravel road. A couple of miles later he turned onto a logging road marked by a rusted mail box pole.

  The rusted pole was a fair indication of the condition of the logging road. Downed branches and the summer’s crop of weeds and small saplings brushed under the car as he slowly groped his way deeper into the woods. The smell of damp pine and rotting birch hung in the still, humid air. Even in the car he could feel a spongy texture to the ground.

  He rolled the window down. It was silent except for the three or four large bugs that were batting their heads against the inside of his windshield making a cracking sound. At the frequent high spots, the El Dorado bottomed out, scraping against the trail, causing him to slow to a frustrating crawl and he arrived at the same thought he had every time he was up here, God, he hated this place.

  Dell’s cabin came into view as Mickey climbed a slight rise. Spongy rot gave way to a granite slab that begged to tear his muffler system from the undercarriage.

  Cabin was a generous term. It was actually a faded orange school bus, driven back and discarded by Dell for the purpose of being used as a hunting shack for one season while he built a cabin. That was twenty years ago and with inflation, fuel prices and life, Dell had only managed to attach a rickety screened entrance to the front half of the thing.

  Inside, rusted scars were all that remained of the seats, long ago removed and dragged down to the lake shore. In their place were cream and red painted kitchen cabinets Dell had scrounged from a remodel job, complete with a sink that drained onto the ground through a hole in the floor. The windows had been sealed shut twenty years ago with some sort of silicone material that now curled up leaving great gaps along the edges. To the rear, the emergency exit door was still in place, more or less, but the glass in the door had been replaced by a screen shrouded with a black plastic sheet.

  Fifty yards behind the bus was the lake. Not a swimming lake, the burnt stumps, dead trees, rotting logs, not to mention all the weeds and the poison ivy precluded that sort of activity. To the best of his knowledge, Mickey was unaware of anyone ever catching a fish from the lake and the last deer shot here was six or seven years ago when Dell bagged a ten-point buck while standing naked in the screened entrance.

  He parked next to Dell’s van. As he climbed out he caught sight of Dell down by the lake sitting on one of the old bus seats. Despite the stillness and the humidity, Dell was wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt, protection against the mosquitoes and black flies.

  “Everything go okay? Beer is in the cooler on the porch.” Dell said, walking toward the bus.

  “Yeah, fine. She’s headed off to wherever. I got our cut in the back seat. I’ll get it,” Mickey said, suddenly remembering he had never checked the suitcase to see if the money really was in there.

  He carried the suitcase into the bus, hoping the screening would do something to filter at least a few of the insects away. The inside was worse than he remembered, damp, smelling of mold and rot, the windows were grimy, and the floor seemed as spongy as the ground outside. He tossed the small suitcase onto the plywood counter and when it thudded hollowly he heard something scurry beneath the cabinet.

  “You ought to burn this place.”

  “Damn near did,” Dell said handing Mickey a beer. He glanced up toward a charred and scorched scar running down the length of the ceiling. “Kerosene heater wasn’t quite adjusted.”

  “You’re lucky you weren’t roasted alive or asphyxiated,” Mickey said.

  “Just open the damn suitcase, Mick.”

  He quickly zipped open the top of the small black suitcase, not immediately recognizing what he saw. It was the currency but packed sideways rather than face up. Instead of a suitcase full of Andrew Jackson’s sitting on the front of twenty dollar bills they were looking at the side cut of neatly placed bundles.

  “Man, I gotta tell you,” Dell said. “I really wasn’t sure you would pull this off, but damned if you didn’t. I thought we were going be sleeping in orange jumpsuits somewhere tonight compliments of the state. But you did it man, damned if you didn’t do it.”

  “Yeah, well we better count it just to be sure she didn’t stiff us.”

  “I got some heavy-duty contractors bags. We’ll bury the whole works, the dough from Huey is out in my trunk. We can wrap it all together in the bags for the time being. Go down deep, figure maybe we could build a fire pit over the top of the thing, anyone looking would most likely take a pass on that spot. Mick, I gotta thank you. We got more money than I ever thought I’d see in my life.”

  Something scurried in the rear of the bus, larger this time. Mickey looked around, glanced up again at the charred scar on the ceiling. “We better get it done, I have to be at work later tonight and I’m already dragging from the drive up here. I didn’t sleep all that great.”

  “You think maybe she was right, Coach’s wife, about it being stupid to bury this stuff?”

  “Yeah, it’s stupid. We’re stupid. That’s why we pulled this off, twice, successfully, because it’s stupid.”

  “I don’t mean pulling it off, it’s the burying I’m talking about. Maybe she was right, we should have bank accounts and we could transfer the money, you know like they do in the movies.”

  “You moonlight on the side, sheet rocking, you get paid by check. You deposit that check in the bank? Of course, you don’t. You know it leaves a trail and if the tax folks ever came after you and checked your account they’d find ten to twenty grand you didn’t pay taxes on, right? It’s the same thing here, we’re flying beneath the radar.”

  They dug the hole far deeper than Mickey would have liked with him on the business end of a shovel. It took two hours and four beers each to cut through tree roots, pull out half the rocks in St. Louis County, refill the hole and build a fire to cover the spot. In between times, they were swatting the air at a growing swarm of insects and flies drawn to the gallons of beer sweat.

  “Want another beer?” Dell asked, tossing his empty can into the fire.

  “No, but I’m gonna close my eyes for a half hour. I don’t want to end up in the ditch halfway home.”

  He squeezed past Dell rummaging in the bottom of the plastic cooler and climbed into the bus. He absently adjusted the pillow on the bunk bed, revealing a line of dried
mouse droppings. Something scurried in the wall next to the bunk.

  “On second thought, I better head back. I can grab a nap in a rest stop if I have to, but I need to be at work tonight so everything looks normal. You staying up here?”

  “We finished the job yesterday, I’m off ’til Monday, figure I’ll stay here tonight, keep the fire going so it leaves a lot of ash and trash, and head back tomorrow afternoon.”

  “See you at the War Bonnet tomorrow night?”

  “Yeah, I’ll probably end up with Cookie. She’s got the weekend off, if her kids or grand kids don’t hose it up for me.”

  Mickey half jumped when something squeezed behind a box under the bunk. “Enjoy yourself up here,” he said and left.

  Chapter 29

  “Go ahead on pump four.”

  Janice began to fill her car, absently staring across the street as the pump total quickly climbed. It was a hot summer day. Humid air, heavy with exhaust fumes that collected under the metal roof. Baking asphalt added more heat to the mix of noise and fumes from the street.

  Her cell phone rang, and she rummaged in her purse only to see it was another call from her stepfather, Huey. She let the call dump into her voice mail. She’d lost count of how many times he had called her just today demanding his money back.

  She told him if he wanted the money get the cops involved, go to them. That had shut him up, but only for a day or two. Now, she simply stopped taking his calls.

  At least things had eased up in the financial department with the help of the ten grand she had wormed out of those two clowns. Kidnappers. Yeah right, dumb and dumber was more like it. And her daughter Ashley had actually started to become a sweet kid, at least some of the time.