The Banker, page 15
‘Maudlin?’
‘You’re sitting here eating trailer park food and drinking by yourself. Even that annoying cat isn’t circling around begging for food.’
‘This case is getting frustrating. They have a rhythm, like waves, and this part, this is the trough.’
‘Sure, makes sense.’
‘I met with a money launderer today and then my FBI friend called.’
‘Wanting information about the money guy.’
‘Yeah, but not wanting to ask. She’s afraid I’m going to get in trouble someday associating with criminals.’
‘Seems like that’s part of your job.’
‘Of course it is. She’s convinced that I am too smart for my own good.’
‘She sweet on you, ’cause I am pretty sure Angela’d object?’
‘No, not sweet exactly. Maybe maternal? And Angela would drop me like a box of rocks if she thought I was entertaining other women,’ I said.
‘Drop you like a box of rocks? I think she’d cut you.’
‘She’s not the jealous type.’
‘No, Red, she might not be, but there’s something about her. She’s tough. Maybe tougher than you.’
‘Ha! She never ran recon on the Ho Chi Minh trail.’
‘Lack of opportunity doesn’t mean she isn’t tough.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said, thinking of the warehouse in Southie where Angela had shot and killed a blackmailer.
It wasn’t exactly murder – he’d had a gun – but it was as close as you could get. Maybe that was why we were together. She couldn’t look at me as a killer without admitting she was one too. Vietnam and my involvement were always an unspoken thing lurking in the background.
‘Don’t get me wrong, Red, she’s good people. Pretty, too. I can see why you’re dating.’
‘Yeah, she is. Plus, she never criticizes my dinner choices.’
‘Red, that’s not dinner, that’s just pushing calories.’
‘We can’t all cook like you do.’ I was no slouch in the kitchen, but Chris was a fantastic cook. A year ago when I was crashing at his place in San Francisco, he had made the best risotto that I had ever had.
‘No, but you don’t have to eat canned stew and elbow macaroni.’
‘It isn’t bad.’ It wasn’t.
‘To each their own. I think I found a place to live.’
‘Cool, where?’
‘Somerville, above an Irish bar.’ He named a local bar that was a Somerville institution.
‘Slummah-ville?’ I said in my best Boston-ese.
‘Yeah, the price is right. Carney helped me find the place.’
‘Well, at least you’ll be near a bar.’
‘It is convenient.’
‘You’ll like the music. It’ll remind you of Bluegrass but less twangy.’
The next morning, Chris and I drove to Carney’s in the Maverick. Chris was going to drive my car back and borrow it while I had the T-Bird. We got to the garage as it was opening. Carney moved a little slower than when I had first met him, but he was still big and tough. It had been more than thirty years since he’d been a paratrooper in Korea, fighting for his life in his Asian war, but I wouldn’t want to fight him now.
‘Andy, got a haircut? Chris.’ He offered Chris a casual nod. ‘Good to see you boys.’
‘Same. How are you doing?’
‘No complaints. No one, not the priest nor my wife, listens when I do.’
Carney had a linguistic trait of a lot of Boston Irish men who, schooled by the nuns, spoke at times with a heavy emphasis on good diction and proper grammar. I suspect it had to do with the proliferation of rulers amongst the nuns and their willingness to use them correctively.
‘I appreciate the rental.’
‘It’s a loaner and you know that.’
‘I can afford it.’
‘Your money’s no good, and you know that too.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Let me get the whip. Wait here.’ Carney walked out of the back of his shop. His slight limp, courtesy of some Chinese shrapnel, was barely noticeable.
‘Andy, what’s up with you two and the money thing?’ Chris asked.
‘He hired me to help him find his daughter. She was with her drug dealing, pimping, piece of shit boyfriend. She was hooked on H. While getting her out of there, I tossed the guy down a flight of stairs. Since then, he’s felt obligated.’
‘It makes you uncomfortable.’
‘Yep.’
‘You don’t have to go to him, or you could pay him,’ Chris said.
‘He’s juiced into the parts of Boston that they don’t talk about on PBS. That, and it would hurt his feelings if I went elsewhere,’ I said.
‘He’d know?’
‘Yeah, he’s that juiced in.’
‘Guess you’re both lucky, then.’
Any smartass reply that I had was cut off by two sharp beeps of the horn in the parking lot. We went outside to the sight of Carney behind the wheel of a black Ford coupe. It was sharp looking, all beveled edges and none of the boxy, hard angles of most cars these days. It looked fast and sleek and, while I loved the Maverick, I was having serious automotive infidelity issues.
‘You like it?’ Carney asked as he climbed out.
‘Like it? It’s a beauty.’ It was, with a double pinstripe on each side, a stylized bird emblem above the chrome grill and on the panels behind the half window on each side. It looked fast and modern, and I was impressed. If the Maverick was a P-47 Thunderbolt, this car was like an F-4 Phantom.
‘It’s got a small block V-8 that I’ve personally tuned. It’s plenty fast. I tightened up the suspension, tweaked the breaks and done a bunch of other stuff that an automotive philistine such as yourself wouldn’t appreciate even if I could explain it to you.’
‘Philistine, ha,’ I objected.
‘You loved that garbage Karmann Ghia.’
‘That car had style. Like a Porsche 300 series.’
‘Yeah, that’s all it had.’ Carney didn’t like foreign cars and, of the ones made in America, he preferred Fords. To each their own, I guess. He didn’t criticize my taste in guns.
‘Where’d you get it?’
‘It’s not hot, if that’s what you’re asking.’ With Carney that was a possibility, but no one could change out a VIN better than he could.
‘I’m going to a town where the Chief of Police already has it in for me. Me being in a hot car would make him extremely happy.’
‘That why you got a haircut like some sort of state trooper?’
‘Yep. Where’s the car from?’
‘A guy had bad luck betting on the horses. He had worse credit. He gave the T-Bird to some guys he owed money to. They sold it to me for a good price. It’s got good papers and is as legit as if it rolled off a dealer’s lot.’
‘Guy’d rather give up his wheels than catch a beating.’ Chris stated the obvious.
‘Yeah, something like that. Andy, it’s registered and inspected. Everything on it is legal, and no one’s looking for the car.’
‘OK by me.’ I didn’t love that some guy had lost the car to his loan shark, but that was his business, not Carney’s.
‘Good. Use it as long as you need it. If you like it, we can talk.’
‘Cool.’ I lowered myself into the bucket seat, my .38 digging into my side a little. I adjusted the seat; Carney was a little shorter. It wasn’t that it was radically more modern than the Maverick, but it was nine years younger and a hell of a lot nicer. The T-Bird had bucket seats, a push-button radio and power windows. It was like going from a Sherman Tank to an M60 tank. Both were tanks, but newer was better.
I pulled out, weaving my way through the city. By the time I was on the highway, I had the radio tuned to a station that was playing The Band, and cool air was coming from the vents. The ride was as smooth as Carney had promised.
The Maverick was fast with an engine that growled. Carney had tuned the Holley carburetor helped get the most horses out of the engine. There was something about it that reminded me of one of those thick-necked bulldogs. The T-Bird was something else altogether. When I applied a little pressure to the accelerator, that car responded promptly and smoothly. There was some growling under the hood, but it was softer. The T-Bird was just more refined. It’s not that I forgot about the Maverick, it’s just that I knew I was going to buy the T-Bird from Carney. It wasn’t as cool as Magnum’s Ferrari, but I was never going to have Ferrari money. But I could probably scrape up quasi-legally obtained T-Bird money.
I glided into Amesbury, paying attention to the speed limit. The local cops were probably a little jumpy after two murders, and I was already trying to avoid them. I wasn’t sure that I trusted Chief Dixon not to throw me in a cell again or otherwise waste my time. I didn’t trust him to find out who murdered Karen Marti. He didn’t strike me as the type to let his detectives do their jobs without interfering. I was certain that whatever he stuck his nose into, he would screw up.
Finding her murdered like that had gotten to me. She had died a hard, horrible death, and I wasn’t confident that the local boys were going to solve it. Even if the rest of the department were grade A, they still were being led by a boob. Something told me that they didn’t know anything about Lintz and his embezzling. If they didn’t know about that, then they probably weren’t looking at him as the killer. That also meant that they weren’t looking at Stanley Clark, who was mixed up in all of this somehow. If I found out that one of them murdered her, then I was going to kill him.
‘Young Sergeant, get your ass in my office, now!’ I remember Sergeant Major Billy Justice’s booming voice like it was yesterday. I was back in camp from a little R&R down in Saigon. I had still been drunk when I got on the blacked-out C-123, we called the ‘Blackbird,’ that SOG used to shuttle men and equipment around Vietnam. I had walked up the ramp in the back of the bird in chinos stained with blood, dirt and whatever else had latched on to them from the streets of Saigon.
It had been an epic R&R, and I had been drunk as a lord. I didn’t pick the fight with the REMFs, and I didn’t ask the MPs to join in. I didn’t kill anyone, and I didn’t use my knife or my R&R gun, which that month was a Smith & Wesson 1917 with the barrel cut down to two inches. It fired a .45 ACP round and held six of them and, though it was heavy, it fit in my waistband under a Hawaiian shirt nicely. I just punched, kicked, Judo-chopped and fought my way through them.
I had made my way through the writhing masses and wandered the streets trying to stay one jump ahead of the MPs. Stopping in off limits clubs and bars, a drink here and there until I was able to make it out to Tan Son Nhat Airport. The guard at the gate took in my tattered chinos and ripped Hawaiian shirt dubiously. He viewed my SOG pass and the SOG ‘get out of jail free’ card that we were all issued. He thought for a second and then muttered, ‘fuck it’ under his breath, waving me through.
When it was time to get on the Blackbird, I staggered up the ramp. When we got airborne, the crew chief was cool and let me stretch out on the floor to catch a nap. He nudged me with the toe of his flight boot when we were getting ready to land. I lay there for a second shivering on the cold, metal flight deck. I sat up and realized that I had gone from drunk to hungover in the space of the short flight.
I was walking by the HQ shack when Billy Justice’s voice rang out. I did a Right Face and stopped in front of the screen door to his office. I knocked and went in when he told me to. He was sitting at his metal desk that had been redirected from some headquarters element in Saigon. They didn’t need it as much as the Sergeant Major did.
‘How was R&R, Roark? Looks like you had yourself some fun,’ he said, eyeing my Hawaiian shirt with its missing buttons and pocket ripped, hanging down.
‘Oh yes, Sergeant Major, it was a good time.’
‘Roark, I know you’re Irish and your forebears have a reputation for drinking and fighting. I was in the Cav and know all the words to the Garryowen … I get it.’
‘Um, sure, Sergeant Major.’ I wasn’t sure where he was going with it, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like it.
‘It’s not your fault. It’s a cultural thing, you people just want to drink and fight. The Boston Irish are the worst of all. I think it’s those cold ass winters and all that snow. It makes y’all mean. That wanting to fight, it’s what makes you good soldiers and average cops. Why, I’ve been known to drink and fight a little too when I was a youth,’ he said paternally, which scared me even more.
‘Yes, Sergeant Major,’ seemed the safest reply.
‘Now, listen here, young sergeant.’
I had no idea how old Billy Justice was, but I had heard rumors that he had been sent to South East Asia as one of the first Special Forces soldiers in Operation Hotfoot, which was to train the Laotian Army, that he had been one of the Green Berets at Fort Bragg when Kennedy had made his famous visit, and that he had been on the ground in the Congo during Operation Dragon Rouge. He had split the last several years between Vietnam, Bragg and Walter Reed. Even if he hadn’t been a legend or hulking figure of a man, Billy Justice would be one of the last men on the planet I’d want angry at me.
‘The Army has spent a lot of money and time to transform you from some sort of Boston bar fighting trash into a commando, an intellectual and a Special Forces soldier. Not just that, but one fighting in the most secret, dirtiest part of this war. If you get hurt in battle so, be it. Get in a bar fight, fine. Men need to blow off steam. But if you get yourself hurt or killed because you try and take on all the REMFs and all the MPs in Saigon, that means I have one less One-Zero, one less team leader in the fight.’
‘Sergeant Major, I’m tired and hungover and not sure I heard you right. I’m a One-Two and assistant team leader, not a One-Zero.’
‘Yeah, well, the old man and I had a chat yesterday. You’ve been moved up; you might stay there if you can stop your natural inclination to fuck up. You gotta watch that anger of yours, boy. It’s going to get you in trouble someday.’
‘Yes, Sergeant Major.’
He stood up and stuck out his massive right hand. I shook it or, more accurately, had my hand crushed in his massive clasp.
‘Go get cleaned up and get some chow. We can talk about your team and the details later.’
I drove up to Amesbury, thinking of how much I wanted to have a ‘discussion’ with Lintz and Stan ‘Captain Muscles’ Clark. I wanted to punch my way to the truth of whatever it was they were up to. I told myself that it was about the dead woman, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that it didn’t have something to do with my blowing off the case in the early stages.
I also heard Sergeant Major’s voice from the past, cautioning me against my own tendency to be quick to anger. I wasn’t a twenty-one-year-old kid anymore. There was a lot more mileage on me now but that was no guarantee that I was any wiser. I would talk to Brock and watch Lintz, maybe even spend some time watching Clark. He seemed like too much of an asshole not to be involved.
I parked in Market Square, which was a nice collection of brick buildings with plate glass storefronts not far from the river. I found a pay phone and called Brock’s extension at the bank. He picked it up after a couple of rings.
‘It’s Roark. Can you talk?’
‘Um, this isn’t a good time.’
‘I can’t imagine it is. It might not be, but we should still talk.’
‘Roark, really …’
‘Listen,’ I cut him off, ‘I found Karen Marti’s body and then the local cops threw me in a jail cell for most of the day a couple days ago. I am running out of what little patience I have left.’
‘OK, OK, where are you?’
‘Market Square.’
‘OK, there’s a place to get a cup of coffee on Elm and High streets. It’s across from the roundabout. I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.’
The place was called The Market Square Bakery. Looking through the plate glass windows, I saw a large, open seating area. Beyond that was a glass case that held cakes and pastries and then further along the counter, there were different types of bread on display. Inside, the smell of freshly brewed coffee got my attention. I went to the counter and ordered a cup of coffee and a croissant filled with ham and melted cheese. When I eyed it perched on a pile on a cake stand under glass, I felt instantly hungry and knew that was the only cure.
I took my coffee and pastry sandwich to a table that afforded me a view of the door and the street through the plate glass. I sat with my back to the wall. Amesbury wasn’t Saigon or Boston, but lately it was looking a lot more dangerous. Two murders, a bank robbery and embezzlement … I was glad that I had my .38 with me.
Looking through the plate glass windows, I saw Brock as he walked down the street in front of the bakery. He had a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead and looked nervously into the bakery. Brock walked in and stopped at the counter to order something, which turned out to be a coffee. I think this country would come to a complete halt if it weren’t for coffee.
‘OK, Roark, I’m here. What’s so urgent?’
‘You mean besides two of your employees murdered in as many weeks?’
‘There’s no need to be flippant. We’re all devastated by their deaths.’ We both had a talent for stating the obvious.
‘It’s not flippancy, it’s a sour stomach.’
‘Sour stomach?’
‘You ever spend a night in jail or find a murdered woman?’ I asked pointedly.
‘No. No, I haven’t.’
‘I don’t recommend either.’
‘Why am I here, Mr Roark?’
‘Do you know a man named Stanley Clark?’
‘Sure. He’s a real estate appraiser. Why?’
‘He knew Karen Marti, my guess is intimately. Is it possible he’s somehow involved in the embezzlement?’
‘I am not sure how. He doesn’t strike me as a master criminal. He looks at property and based on a simple formula comes up with an estimate. Anyone can do it, Mr Roark. Plus, he doesn’t have access to the bank or its accounts.’
‘Sure, but Karen Marti did. You told me that she had access to everything. I saw them out one night. They seemed to be more than casual acquaintances. What if he was using her to access the bank?’
