Bingo Barge Murder (6 page)

I shuddered, lifted out the papers, and quickly sifted through them. There were a number of rumpled gas receipts and a business card for a storage warehouse off of Washington Avenue in Minneapolis. Interesting. If this stuff were hidden here, it must have some kind of significance.

One of the envelopes contained the title to a 1983 Caddy in Kinky’s name. I’d seen the car in the Bingo Barge parking lot. The behemoth was all big tires, tinted windows, and curb feelers.

“He must have used his video-making hideout as some kind of safety deposit box,” Coop said. I stuffed the business card and the gas receipts in my pocket and we put the rest of the boxes back. Coop carried the video equipment into Kinky’s office. Eddy was still in Kinky’s chair, in the act of carefully ripping off the top two pages of the big calendar on the desk.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Kinky’s not going to miss these where he is. Might come in handy, never know. Could be secret codes in the doodles.”

My hand shot out and stopped her in mid-rip. “Stop! What if the police need these for something? I’m sure they’ve already seen them. You can’t take what’s sitting here in plain sight. They’ll know someone was here.”

Eddy rolled her eyes at me. “Okay, you might be right. But what if one of those doodles holds the dirt we need?”

I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Fine. Anyway. I’ve decided I can’t call that man by his given name after seeing his goods on the video. ‘Kinky’ damn sure fits the man.” She nodded once emphatically. “So. What’d you find?”

Coop set the box on the desk. “The camcorder and probably a VCR.” He fingered the padlock. Then he pulled out his keys and tried to fit each key into the slot on the bottom of the lock, but none of them worked.

I remembered the key ring in the desk drawer. “What about these?” I lifted out the ring I’d seen earlier and tossed it to Coop, who one-handed them in a jingle of metal. The third key he tried opened the lock with a soft click. Eddy and I crowded around as Coop lifted the lid. A tiny VCR occupied the box. I pulled it out and plugged the power cord into the wall.

“Ah, there’s the power button,” Coop muttered with satisfaction. A humming and a soft grinding came from the machine, and a video tape popped out. “And what do we have here?”

I grabbed the playing-card-sized cassette and turned it over and around. It was unlabeled, and the tape inside was at the start or had been rewound to the beginning. I walked over to the VCR, looked around for some kind of converter. The mini cassette slid into a VCR-sized doohickey that sat next to the player. I popped the carrier into the VCR and pressed play. Familiar gray snow filled the monitor. Then the picture, although still fuzzy, cleared up enough to show Kinky’s loveseat. No one was in the frame. I pushed the fast-forward button. Pretty soon Kinky speed-walked in and disappeared behind his desk. A couple of long minutes of nothing passed. Then a scruffy-looking man popped in, made some animated movements, and zoomed out of the room.

Coop crossed his arms. “That was Buzz. Buzz Riley.” A name on Rocky’s list.

The tape kept zinging along. Pretty soon Kinky left and then returned, followed by Lavonne of
Lovin’ Lavonne
. They chatted some, then moved over to the loveseat and proceeded to reenact the scene we’d already witnessed.

Thanks to fast-forward, they finished quickly, then resituated their clothes and stood discussing something. Lavonne appeared mad as a wet cat when she stormed out.

I said, “You don’t think this is from the night Kinky was killed, do you?”

Coop said, “If I show up, you know it is.”

Kinky popped in and out of the picture a few more times, and then another woman appeared, who, thankfully, kept her clothes on. She and Kinky exchanged words.

“God, I wish this thing had sound,” I said.

The woman, obviously agitated, waved a finger with a long, blood-red polished fingernail at Kinky. “That’s Rita Lazar,” Coop said.

Rita and Kinky soon exited.

The tape zipped forward, and Coop flashed onto the screen. He buzzed around the room. At one point he had the legendary, bronzed bingo dauber, tossing it back and forth from one hand to the other. Kinky appeared again, followed by a few moments of very animated discussion. Kinky’s arm went up, a finger pointing to the door. Coop set the dauber on the desk and exited.

“Man, that hurts almost as much the second time around,” Coop said with a grimace.

We’d been standing mesmerized in front of the monitor for several minutes. Suddenly, we were jolted back to reality by the loud sound of shattering glass.

I dove for the
light switch. Coop hit the power on the TV and frantically jabbed at the eject button on the VCR. Eddy stood rooted to the floor. Her eyes went wide and round, the whites showing bright against her dark skin.

“What the hell?” Coop whispered. With a rattle and click of the VCR, Coop yanked the cassette out of the player.

It had sounded as if the crash came from the main bingo floor. I whispered, “Where does this hallway go?”

“Past the restrooms and break room. There’s an emergency exit at the end, but it’ll set off the alarm.”

I grabbed Eddy’s arm. “Come on.”

At the threshold, I stopped. Whoever broke in had to hear the hammering of our hearts. We were probably twenty feet away from the main bingo area, and I caught a brief flash of light. It blinked out as fast as it came on, followed by another loud bang.

“Shut the fuck up,” a man said in an ominous, low voice.

Cops wouldn’t break in, so who were these guys?

I dragged Eddy out the door, and Coop followed us. We hustled farther down the hall away from the bingo floor. A door was propped open, and I darted into the room as fast as one can dart with two people in tow.

Eddy flung herself against the wall. I knelt next to the doorframe, struggling to quiet my panicked breathing.

“Oh God,” Eddy whispered, realizing which room we’d landed in from the acrid odor heavy in the air. “I don’t want to die in the toilet. Is this the men’s toilet? I’d rather die in the women’s.”

“Hush!” I poked Eddy with my elbow. She fell silent. My breath stuck in my lungs as footsteps echoed nearer. The interlopers had entered the hallway.

“The office is somewhere here,” the low voice said.

“It damn well better be. Your directions are shit, Pudge,” said another voice, accented and not as deep. Brooklyn, or Jersey, maybe? “Christ. I can’t believe you did that, you dumbass.”

Another oath from the first man. “I said I was sorry. Bastard shouldn’t have done what he done. That’s serious shit, ya know?”

“Yeah, yeah, what-the-fuck-ever. There’s gotta be something here that’ll tell us where those fucking nuts went.” The footsteps stopped, fortunately not in front of our hideout. Probably at the office we’d vacated. “You should have at least made him tell you where the stupid truck is before you did him.”

Nuts? I pressed my head hard against the tile wall, praying they wouldn’t come closer, wondering what kind of nuts would have anything to do with the Bingo Barge and Kinky’s death.

“Here, Boss,” Pudge said.

I hazarded a quick peek around the doorframe. The light in Kinky’s office blinked on. I jerked my head out of the line of sight.

Eddy leaned toward me. “We need a diversion to get the hell off this tub.”

“What do you suggest?” Coop whispered.

“Shh.” I waved a hand at them as the strange voices carried down the hall to us.

“… the hell is this? Some kind of fucking VCR?” asked the Boss.

“I dunno, Boss.” Silence reigned momentarily, and then Pudge said, “What’s on that tape?” More silence. I imagined one of them starting the
Lovin’ Lavonne
cassette.

After what felt like a very long silence, Pudge said, “Holy shit, it’s Stanley and some ho.”

“And they’re getting it on,” the other man said. A pause, then, “Where’s the cam?”

“I think this thing is it, Boss,” Pudge said. The men went silent, and then metallic banging echoed down the hall.

“There’s a goddamn camera set up so Stanley can get his rocks off watching replays of him banging someone? How long does the damn thing run? Is there a tape in it?” More pounding.

“Vincent, there’s no tape in that machine.” Pudge’s voice pitched up an octave.

“Well, where did it go? If a tape was running when you were in here—oh Christ, Pudge. Do
not
tell me you’re on camera smashing Long Dong Anderson’s skull in. Why does this happen to me? All I want are my fucking nuts back! There’s got to be some record of what that rat did with them. If I have to tear this goddamn place apart …” Vincent’s voice had begun quietly and ended in a bellow.

“What if the cops have it?” Pudge dared to interject.

“You better hope they don’t fucking have it. Keep hunting.”

Almost as one, Coop, Eddy, and I shifted away from the doorway. The two strange men themselves were fucking nuts. We needed to get out of there before this Vincent, aka the Boss, and Pudge decided they had to take a leak.

Coop leaned into Eddy and me. “I have an idea,” he whispered. “Three of us won’t make it past the office door without being seen. But I think I can. I’ll sneak out onto the floor and turn on the speaker system and the bingo machine. It’s loud, and I’ll stick the microphone close to the balls. It’ll almost sound like gunfire. Then I’ll head out the front doors. You guys do the emergency door. When you hear guns, run!” Coop scooted around Eddy and me. “Wish me luck,” he said quietly, and slipped out the door.

Eddy and I peeked around the doorjamb to watch. As Coop closed in on the office, I saw he’d stuck the tape in his jacket pocket and it was dangerously close to tumbling out. I wanted to warn him, but Vincent and Pudge would hear me. He passed Kinky’s office. As he moved into the shadows, the tape fell to the floor with an incredibly loud clatter.

After that, everything was a blur. Coop scrambled to grab the tape. His foot inadvertently bumped it, sending it skittering down the floor ahead of him. Two shadowy figures raced out of the office. The rubber on Coop’s tennis shoes made desperate squeaking sounds on the cracked linoleum. He propelled himself from the hallway and into the bingo area, the two men tearing after him.

Eddy and I took off like spitballs out of a straw. She hit the emergency release on the door with the heel of her hand and we fled through the opening. Sirens screeched, slamming into my ears with the force of a physical assault. Red lights mounted beneath the walkway roof flashed bright.

A secondary gangway led from the barge, landing at the back of the boat very near where we’d boarded. A Supplies Only sign was attached to the railing next to it. Eddy and I were over the supply bridge in a flash.

We crossed the road and ducked into a thick stand of trees between the barge and the lot we’d parked in. I pulled up short, grabbed a tree trunk for support, and struggled to catch my breath.

“You okay?” I gasped.

Eddy nodded, her cheeks puffing as she blew out air. “Where’s Nicholas?”

Sirens still blared from the barge, and the red lights strobed, but we saw no other people. No Coop. No bad guys.

“Come on, child, we need to haul ass out of here.”

I stumbled after Eddy. Real police sirens sounded in the distance, urging us to move our keisters. We burst out of the woods and climbed into Eddy’s truck.

“Where the hell is Coop?” Near the barge, the silhouettes of a short, chubby figure and a taller, heavy-set man scrambled away from the barge. They ran across the street, jumped into a parked car, and rocketed off down the road.

“Boy’s on his own now. Pray.” With that, Eddy put the truck in reverse, hit the accelerator, and executed a textbook one-eighty. She slammed the gearshift into drive and jammed the pedal home.

As the truck’s wheels won the fight and gripped asphalt, a lone figure careened out of the woods at a dead run and launched himself headlong into the bed of the pickup. The truck swayed with the sudden weight as Eddy peeled out of the lot. I twisted around, fingers digging into the headrest.

Coop’s arm stuck straight up out of the bed of the truck, the videotape clutched triumphantly in his hand.

_____

How we made it home in one piece, I have no idea. Coop disappeared the moment Eddy pulled the truck in the garage. I followed Eddy into the kitchen and watched as she spiked hot chocolate with a liberal splash of peppermint schnapps and we regrouped around the table in the loft.

“Thanks for making me ride in the back the whole way home,” Coop said once he settled in.

“I wasn’t about to stop just to let you in the cab. What if those bums were right behind us? No, sir. Once we were cruising, I wasn’t stopping!” Eddy pursed her lips and shook her head. “How on earth did you manage to get away from that mess, Nicholas?”

I sipped my cocoa. The hot chocolate was laced with so much booze that it made me shudder, and heat oozed down my chest like lava.

“I got a hold of that damn tape and made a mad dash for the front doors. Those two wackos came racing out after me. I crossed the gangway, and then there was this huge crash behind me. Both of them were down flopping around on the dock like catfish in the bottom of a boat. The dude in the front must’ve hit one of the warped planks on the dock and tripped them both up.” He eyed Eddy. “I thought you were gonna leave me in the dust there for a minute, Lead Foot.”

Eddy’s face crinkled, threatening a smile. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, kid.”

Coop turned on the 12-inch TV, fed the cassette into the VCR, and once again watched the hard-won tape on fast-forward. After Coop exited the office, nothing happened for what felt like many long minutes.

My eyeballs were drying out from staring at the screen. I forced a blink as Kinky entered the scene and disappeared from the shot, presumably sitting down behind his desk.

“There! Stop the tape!” I nearly tipped my chair over lunging for the VCR. Coop beat me to it and pressed the play button. The picture slowed down to real time.

A hefty man with a rotund belly appeared. Dressed in a black jacket and dark pants, he stood facing the desk. Gesturing wildly, his arms flapped like a bird’s. Kinky sauntered into the picture again and leaned against the edge of his desk, a cajoling look on his face. The man took a step away from Kinky, and then Kinky’s face changed, going from placating to lewd. In the blink of an eye, Kinky reached out and grabbed one of the man’s butt cheeks and gave it a healthy squeeze. The side of the man’s face turned deep red.

The next action occurred so fast that it was hard to make out. The fat man stiffened for a moment, lunged out of the frame, and then popped back in, one arm swinging in an arc toward Kinky. In a glint of gold, then a splatter of red, Kinky collapsed to the floor like a giant sack of potatoes. The man froze and stared a moment at the oversized, bronzed bingo dauber. He tossed the bloodied dauber to the ground, turned, and bolted out of the room. We watched the tape to the end, but there was nothing else either incriminating or indecent on it.

Coop pushed the stop button and we sat in stunned silence.

I finally croaked, “Holy crap.” We had just witnessed the murder of another human being. I could hardly believe it. The man was a pig, but still. In a moment, in a flash, life could end. Just like that. I swallowed hard.

“Sweet Jesus, indeed. That man is a murderer.” Eddy shuddered. “That has to be Pudge. Sweeeeeeeet Jesus,” she repeated in a whisper.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked quietly. This was way out of our league. Oh hell, it was out of our league the moment Coop pulled me into the garage and told me what was going on. We needed to turn this mess over to Detective Bordeaux.

Eddy summarized, “Pudge killed Kinky. He was definitely one of the men on that floating palace of porn tonight. And Vincent wants his effing nuts.” Eddy’s lip twitched in distaste. “I certainly won’t forget that man’s foul mouth.”

Coop held a thumb up. “We have Kinky’s murder on tape.” He added his forefinger to his thumb. “Kinky was taping his nooners with a secret camera in his office. Let’s see. My prints are on the murder weapon.” Up went his middle finger. “The man who conked Kinky appears with another crazy man named Vincent, while we’re searching Kinky’s office.” Coop studied his hand. “These two yahoos are searching for some ‘fucking nuts’ and it seems Kinky did something with said nuts.”

“Why are these nuts such a big deal?” I asked, unable to fathom why anyone would be concerned about nuts. The idea was preposterous. “Besides, what does it matter anymore? We have the tape and it shows that Coop’s innocent.”

Eddy ignored me. “One of them said something about a missing truck. What truck?” The mystery element of this mess had grabbed her very susceptible imagination.

I said, “What kind of nuts could throw these guys into such a tizzy?”

“I surely don’t know. But Shay’s right. We have a tape that clearly shows Coop didn’t kill Kinky. We’ll turn it over in the morning. No use in raising hell this late.” Eddy stifled a yawn and stood. “My brain’s had all it can handle. Nicholas, you tuck yourself in here one more night.”