Private Eye Four-Pack, page 81
“It’s starting to look as though the whole situation is taking care of itself,” Carey said. “These guys are like a bunch of inbred rats turning on each other. The rumble downtown is that Soyko must have flipped out yesterday, judging by the way they found Romp. Some woman who lived below them called in and said she saw Soyko leave about eleven last night and he was really steamed up. Everybody’s out looking for Soyko today. I’m sure they’ll get him pretty soon.
“It seems for sure these characters were in on the McLean thing and some other pretty heavy garbage. Over the weekend, one of the guys investigating McLean got a call from a lady saying Soyko and Romp did everything but shoot JFK. We sent someone out to talk to those two and, before you know it, Cooper’s secretary nearly gets attacked by two guys exactly matching the descriptions of his two investigators. A woman named Ronnie Taggert. We figure she must have been the one who made the call.
“Then, just before lunch today, none other than Ms. Taggert herself—who’s disappeared since her assault—calls me and asks if we can sit down and have a talk in the not-too-distant future. Seems there’s this absolutely splendid bounty hunter exactly matching your description who gave her my name and number. She’s got all sorts of information for me about this entire mess. I’m meeting her tomorrow morning—that is, assuming she’s not dead or out of the state by then. I tried to get it sooner, but she wants to wait another day for some reason of her own. So now Romp’s dead and his partner and Cooper should be in custody before long. With Ms. Taggert’s help, we should be able to nail these two pricks to the wall and wrap up a whole lotta stuff.”
Streeter smiled when he thought about Ronnie. “Listen to that lady, Robert. I had a good feeling about her from the time I met her at Cooper’s. She’s all right. One tough ball breaker, but my read is that she’s honest. Do you really think Soyko turned on Romp? And why would Cooper want to hurt Ronnie? Those two were dating. Or whatever it is that people like Cooper do.”
“We got to sort all that out. The first thing we want to do is bring everybody in for questioning, especially Cooper. He had to be in the middle of all of it, but we’re not sure how he fits. I heard he took that Ronnie thing pretty hard, so maybe that was just the two other guys playing around on their own.
“Anyhow, when we sent some people out to their apartment last night, we find old Jacky Romp laying on the carpet looking like he went bungee jumping off a fifty-foot bridge with a sixty-foot cord. Half his head was blown away. The woman who lives below them said she heard the two men fighting shortly before eleven and then Soyko went charging out like the place was on fire. We went through the El Camino that belonged to Romp and found a bat that they traced to McLean’s beating. They got an arrest warrant for Soyko for assault on McLean and homicide for his friend. Or should I say ex-friend. Trouble is, no one knows what he’s driving, and he could be halfway to Mexico or Canada or someplace like that by now. Do you think this fits in with what you’re doing with Shelton’s widow?”
“Hard to tell.” Streeter didn’t want to share much with Carey. “Who knows about that?”
Carey just looked at him for a few seconds. “I’d suggest that you lay low for a while. Just go back to chasing your bail jumpers until we sort out all the crap on this shooting and until we get Soyko and Cooper.” Carey drained his coffee. “Will you do that simple thing for me?”
“I’ll certainly give it some thought. Will you keep me posted on everything from your end of it?”
Carey grinned. “I’ll certainly give it some thought.”
When he left the Newsstand, Streeter got into his Buick and grabbed his cellular phone to call Story. He had resisted buying one for a long time, but finally he decided that since he spent so much time in his car he should have one. To someone in his line of work a car is like a portable office. Maps, phone, handcuffs, gun, camera, spare film, a change of clothes, and assorted surveillance and work tools, even a cup to urinate in, Streeter’s Buick had them all.
He planned to spend the rest of the afternoon interviewing people on the list Story had given him. It would take his mind off Soyko. Let the cops deal with him from now on. When he got her on the phone, Story wanted to hear all about the unraveling of Cooper’s empire. He told her most of what was happening, but not about his being at Romp’s apartment or his meeting with Ronnie.
“It looks like things are coming together pretty well for us,” she told him. “Your friend Bill’s out of trouble, and Cooper and his crew should be way out of the picture before long. If that cop you think shot at your church leaves us alone for a while, that will free us up to work on Doug.”
She had a way of saying “us” that always let him know she meant him.
“I’ll let you know if we find anything,” he said evenly. Then he hung up without saying goodbye.
He went to the church to talk to Frank and see if he had any messages. The bondsman was out, and there was nothing on the voice mail. Streeter glanced at the mail on Frank’s desk. There always seemed to be a stack of junk solicitations and catalogues. One eight-and-a-half-by-eleven, two-color brochure caught his eye. It looked familiar. It was from the Executive Protectors Inc., the same company whose flyer was in Doug’s files. Streeter leafed through it, wondering what Shelton wanted from the company. In the middle of page eight he found the answer. Not only did he find what Doug had bought from the Protectors, but if he was right, Streeter was one big step closer to finding whatever was hidden.
What he saw on page eight was called “The Movable Bank,” a fireproof, bulletproof, solid-steel strongbox. “Ideal for keeping the things you value close to you at all times,” the ad copy gloated. A photograph at the bottom of the page showed the twelve-by-twelve-inch-square box being inserted under the back seat of a nondescript car.
“Fits easily under car seats, in car trunks, engine compartments, or a thousand other places. Also good for home and office security. Regularly $179.95, now only $159.95. Locks extra.”
Streeter reread the ad copy several times. He studied the picture, the box designed for small spaces in a car or truck. Story was adamant on how fussy Doug was about his Porsche: he wouldn’t even let people in the back seat. That was probably where he’d kept the strongbox. Ronnie’s mechanic friend said the car was customized, and this must have been what he meant.
And what was the common denominator in all his trips to get money and drugs, both in Boulder and Denver? The Porsche. A 1988 red 928. A nice car, but not valuable enough to deserve all the attention he gave it. Doug never was without cash or cocaine, because he never went anywhere without his car and the strongbox. Streeter had just been thinking about what a portable office his own car was. Doug’s car was a portable safe and merchandise showroom: a drug dealer’s portable office. Story said they’d looked through the car but then had given up because so much of it was burned or demolished. This “Movable Bank” could survive that. For the past few days, Streeter had been thinking that Doug had left valuable artwork hidden. Obviously, you can’t store much of that in the back of a Porsche. So it must be money or something like money that he’d left behind when he headed off to the great unknown.
He picked up the phone and dialed Story’s office number. “I’m coming over,” he said. “I know where Doug left his money.”
There was a long silence on her end of the phone. Finally, “Are you sure?” He couldn’t decide if she sounded frightened or threatening.
“I’m not positive, but it’ll be easy enough to find out. I want to move on this—now. I mean right now. I’m coming over.”
“Please do.”
With that, he hung up, grabbed the brochure, and went to his car. When he got there he looked inside his trunk to make sure he had all his tools, especially his crowbar. He slammed the trunk shut and got in the driver’s seat. As he pulled away from the curb, he was driving much faster than usual. At Broadway, he turned south and zipped toward Capitol Hill.
Soyko wondered what all the hurry was about as he pulled out into traffic, about a block behind Streeter. The bounty hunter had been driving so slow and cautious all day. And what was so interesting in the trunk?
TWENTY-THREE
Story was pacing—marching, actually—in the downstairs foyer of her office building when Streeter arrived. She was wearing shorts, a plain white blouse, and flats. More casual than he had ever seen, but there was nothing casual about her demeanor. Her shoulders were rigid, her frown deep, like her squash pose that day at the gym. She’d had time to work up a good head of skepticism while he drove over. Story Moffatt was not the kind of woman who suffered false hopes or fools easily. Her pinched-up attitude instantly put him off.
“You know, Story, this is supposed to be good news,” he said as he walked slowly toward her.
“Let’s go upstairs and talk.” Her voice was low and she didn’t smile.
“Hello to you, too.” He followed her up the stairs, the Executive Protectors brochure rolled up in his hand like a club.
When they got to her office, she nodded for him to go in and then told her secretary they were not to be disturbed. That finished, she came inside and closed the door. Streeter was standing in the middle of the room, watching her closely.
“Do you know for sure, Streeter?” There was a whiff of pleading in her voice. “I don’t mean to act like a bitch, but I don’t think I could stand it if you’re wrong. Not after all that we’ve been through with this thing.”
He nodded, his eyes nailed to hers. “It’s the car. Doug left whatever we’re looking for in his car.” He held up his hand, palm toward her, as she grimaced. “I know you said you looked through part of it and that it was destroyed and all. But it’s in there. Look at this.”
He opened the brochure and held it out for her. She stared at it but wouldn’t touch it.
“Does this look familiar?” he asked.
“I…Should it?” The bitchy edge returned.
“Read the name.”
Story looked back to the catalogue and studied it. Her frown deepened.
“It’s that booklet from Doug’s stuff. I didn’t know you took it with you.”
“I didn’t. Frank got this in the mail. He gets this kind of flyer all the time. We never read them very closely. I’ve never had much need for all these James Bond gadgets. But when I saw this today, and read the name of the company, the same one as Doug’s flyer, I looked through every page to find out what he wanted from these guys.”
He turned the booklet back to face him and stared at it for a moment. Then he flipped it open and went to page eight.
“I thought he was after the phone-sweeping equipment,” he told her. “You know, home-security garbage, something like that. But this is what Doug wanted. I’ll bet my life on it.”
He turned the book around and gave it to her. This time she took it and read the open pages closely. Suddenly her head shot up and she looked at him.
“Fireproof. That’s it, Streeter. We didn’t look inside the Porsche because everything was burned. I figured that anything inside had to have been destroyed. But this”—she looked back at page eight—“this would take care of a fire. If he got one of these boxes it’s in that precious back seat. No wonder he was so touchy about letting people back there. We have to get to that car.”
“No kidding. Plus, I got some information this morning that Doug customized the damned thing. Almost from the start, I was thinking that if he left anything it was probably not cash. I assumed he invested in something like artwork or cars. Things that you can buy and they’ll appreciate with time and then you can sell them without Uncle Sam finding out. But if this box is our answer, we’re probably looking at cash. Do you know where the Porsche is kept?”
“When I saw it, they were keeping it at the police impound. They told me it would be there for a few days and then they’d ship it off to a junkyard. Oh, God, Streeter. You don’t suppose they would have crushed it? We’ll never get anything out of it.”
“Relax, Story. Was there anything left intact? Any parts to salvage?”
“The back end was okay, I guess.”
“Then they probably kept it for parts. Give me the phone book and I’ll call the police yard to find out where they took it.”
Streeter had dealt with the Denver police-impound people dozens of times in the past. Working for various lawyers suing insurance companies, he’d had to take photos of cars after they’d been in accidents. Luckily, the police had an excellent system of storing and disposing of vehicles, so if Doug’s Porsche hadn’t been crushed, the bounty hunter didn’t anticipate any trouble finding it.
Story went behind her desk, fished out a phone book from her credenza, and handed it to him. He looked up the number for the police-impound lot and called. The clerk told him that all the cars shipped out last year would have gone to one of two lots. She gave the names and telephone numbers of both. Streeter hit paydirt at the second one, All-American Auto Salvage, just north of I-70 and northwest of the old Stapleton International Airport. That part of town is a run-down patchwork of tool shops, rusty salvage yards, ratty open fields, and an occasional convenience store or saloon.
“How late are you open?” he asked the man at All-American, who verified they had the Porsche. “Seven? We’ll be out there before then. As a matter of fact, we’re heading up now. What’s that? Row thirty, slot twelve? Thanks. No, we’re just going to take some pictures for the insurance claim. That’s right.”
When he hung up, Story asked, “What was all that about insurance-claim pictures?”
“This guy owns the car now. If I told them what we’re after, he’d have it pulled apart by the time we got downstairs. This way, he’ll leave us alone. Junkyard owners are used to people like me taking pictures of cars. He won’t even watch us.”
They had to fight rush-hour traffic, so they didn’t make it to All-American until just before six. The sun was still high in the early-summer sky, and the view of Denver to the south and the Rockies to the west was spectacular, even if their immediate surroundings were not. The lot owner, an obese man with an apparent bathing dysfunction, steered them toward the Porsche.
“See that shed by those trucks there?” he asked without getting up from a filthy couch next to the office. “Car you want’ll be right up next to it. How long you think you’ll be?”
“Half hour, tops,” Streeter answered.
The owner just nodded. Streeter kept his eye on the shabby wooden shed as he drove toward it. When they got into the main aisle, along the back row, Story suddenly got excited and jabbed an index finger toward the windshield.
“There it is. That black thing over there. You can see the red toward the back, where it wasn’t burned.”
Streeter pulled off to one side, so his Buick would sit between the Porsche and the office. The Porsche’s burned front tires were curled up under the body like a begging dog’s paws. All its windows were broken and he could see that the door on the passenger’s side was badly buckled. There was a layer of hard black soot over everything but several feet in the rear. The car looked like it had been dipped in licorice. Streeter got out of his Buick and went to the trunk. He pulled out his camera and handed it to Story, who was beside him.
“Keep an eye on the office. If that tub of lard comes out here, pretend you’re taking pictures.”
He put on some work gloves and grabbed the crowbar. Then he walked to the driver’s side. The Porsche was nestled between an old Celica on that side and the wooden shed on the other. Streeter had to step carefully over broken glass that was scattered in the aisle.
“I’ll start here. It looks easier to get into, and he might have been more likely to put the box right behind him.”
The driver’s door was buckled almost as badly as the passenger’s, but it was cracked open a few inches near the top. Streeter grabbed the edge firmly and gave it a hard pull. It groaned open. Inside, it still smelled freshly burned in the warm air. When he bent in, he could see why no one would bother looking too closely. The seats were charred stretches of soot, and it was hard to tell where anything started or stopped. He came back out and looked at Story.
“Nothing destroys like fire,” he said. “I’m going to just start pulling everything apart and see what I find.”
She walked over next to him and looked inside the car. “Can you imagine dying in there?”
Streeter frowned and then bent back inside. He knew that his chinos would be ruined by the soot. He pushed the front seat forward and kneeled in, his knee resting on the transmission hump in the back. The car was a liftback, and he had to push the seat back upright. Then he took the straight end of the crowbar and poked around the front edge of the back seat. Horizontally, at about the point it touched the passengers’ calves, there was a slight lip where the top of the seat came over. He slipped the crowbar under that and lifted. The seat came up, and he could see that there was nothing but springs under it. He lifted it higher, so that the crack ran partially to the seat on the other side of the transmission hump. He poked around under that side, and the crowbar clanked into something solid. No springs under there. He got out and walked around the car to where Story was waiting.
“I think it’s on the other side,” he said.
“Just hurry.”
“Why? This isn’t going anywhere.”
He walked out onto the main aisle, behind the Porsche, and then around to the passenger’s side, next to the shed. This time he had to use the crowbar to coax the door open. He bent inside. Then he put the claw of the crowbar under the seat opening he had created and gave a hard pull back. That forced the opening to smile all the way to the door and let him see the dusty, but highly functional, Movable Bank under the seat.
“Yes sir,” he said quietly to himself. Now he could feel the beads of sweat rolling freely down his forehead. With the crowbar he reached under the seat and tapped the box. Then he leaned back and looked at Story. “I knew it was here.”
