Setup on Front Street (15 page)

I
got the files back from Ryder later that day. That night, Doc returned them to
Whitney's cabinet with no trouble. He even made sure they were in alphabetical
order when he put them back.

Ever since Doc got into town, I could tell
he knew this was no ordinary job. He knew better than to come right out and ask
if I was in a jam, but he hinted around at it.

So the following morning, I sat him down
over coffee and told him what I wanted to do.

"So you see, Doc, things could get
messy."

"Shi-it, messy don't bother me, man.
Besides, from what you just told me, you might need me in there. Count me
in."

"Sorry, man. You're not the violent
type. If any shit goes down, I don't want you getting hurt."

"Hurt, shit! You don't hafta worry
'bout me. I can take care of myself. And I'll be watchin' your back while I'm
at it."

I had half a mind to take him to the
airport right then.

Except that he was right when he said I
might need him.

"Okay, but bring the satchel. And you
stay out of the way until I need you. If I need you at all. Agreed?"

He flashed his big, toothy smile.

≈≈≈

I knew I'd need a driver, too. So early that evening, Doc and I
went to Mambo's.

There were only about six or seven guys in
there, and the baseball game on the TV had the attention of most of them. The
jukebox, normally pumping with hot-blooded Cuban rhythms, sat silent. The
irresistible aroma of Cuban food sprawled out over the whole joint.

Shimmy circled the pool table, chalking his
cue, in search of the ideal shot. I steered Doc to my booth, then went right to
the pay phone.

She answered on the second ring.

"Rita. It's Don Roy."

"Why, hello, sweetheart. Got something
for a lonely girl?"

She sounded like she really meant it. I
have to admit, I'd been thinking about her a little since our last meeting. Not
that I'd ever act on it — I'm not that idiotic, and besides, I've got
Norma.

But I did think about it.

"Actually, you can do something for
me. Can I come over? Preferably when BK's not around."

As soon as I said that, I realized what it
sounded like.

She took the cue. "Well, lover, you
know you can come over anytime when he's not here. I'm having workmen in and
around the house all day tomorrow … we're doing some remodeling. But his
father's coming back from the Bahamas tomorrow night and he and some other guys
are picking the old buzzard up at the airport at eight-thirty."

"Some other guys?"

I didn't like that end of it.

"Yeah. He didn't say who, but he said after
he picked them up, they were dropping the old man's girlfriend off at her place
so she could feed her dog or something. After that, they're going out to Key
Haven to discuss business." She began to coo rather than speak. "He
prob'ly won't be back till ten-thirty or eleven."

Someone fed the jukebox and a lively merengue
tune jumped out of it. Punchy trumpets and percussion got through to the baseball
crowd at the bar. They started drumming their fingers, swaying on the
barstools. I looked over at Doc. Even he felt the feverish rhythms, bobbing his
head up and down.

"Rita, it's not what you're thinking.
I just need to talk to you is all."

"Sometimes talking's a turn-on, too,
you know."

She made me smile, but I had to get past
it.

"I'm gonna need a big favor from you.
And I can't ask you over the phone. I'd rather ask you in person. At your
house."

Her voice turned pouty. "Okay, be that
way. Eight o'clock. You know where we live?"

"That big house on William Street,
right?"

"Right. See you tomorrow."

I tapped Shimmy on the shoulder, beckoning
him over to my booth. As soon as we sat down, I ordered beers all around.

"Hey, Don Roy," he said.
"What's up?"

"Shimmy, this's Doctor Chicago. I
think I told you about him. Class A crib man from Vegas."

"Pleasure," Shimmy said, shaking
Doc's hand.

The waiter brought the beers. We each took
that first frosty sip from the new brown bottle.

I turned back to Shimmy.

"You still remember how to
drive?"

He chuckled under his breath.

"What've you got?"

"It's local. We go tomorrow night. It
pays a dime. You just drive us to the location and back. You wait in the car.
It's just a house, so there shouldn't be any rough stuff, but if there is, I'll
make it two dimes. Bring your piece, just in case. And tight rubber gloves for
all of us."

He threw a glance at Doc.

"Crib man?" He looked back at me.
"We doing a B and E?"

"Not really. There's a safe where
we're going. Doc comes into the picture just in case we need him to open
it."

That seemed to meet with his approval.

"What time you want me?"

"Be ready to go at seven-thirty."

≈≈≈

Doc and I showed up at Mambo's at seven-fifteen the next
evening. We hadn't eaten since lunch. Doc was decked in his black throwaways.
Shimmy was already there, waiting for us.

We all sat down in my booth, then ordered
coffee. A little small talk here and there, and pretty soon it was
seven-thirty.

"Where're you parked?" I asked
Shimmy.

"Around the corner."

We all got up and left.

Shimmy's car was a tan '77 Buick Electra
225, or deuce-and-a-quarter, as he called it.

It looked exactly like your basic clunky
old piece of shit from the seventies, but he'd dropped a 455-cubic-inch Buick
engine under the hood, so that after a couple of minor modifications, he was
getting almost four hundred horsepower. It could do a hundred and fifty with no
problem, outrunning even the cops.

I rode shotgun, Doc slid into the back.

"William Street," I said.
"The Whitney house."

Shimmy raised his eyebrows and whistled
through his teeth.

"Man, BK lives there now. What's the
shot?"

"Just drive. I'll explain when we get
there."

The house was less than a mile from
Mambo's. We got there at around twenty-five to eight. I had Shimmy circle the
block, then park in a metered spot with the engine off.

The house, a big white Victorian thing,
loomed about half a block in front of us on the other side of the street. A
white picket fence ran down the front of the property along the sidewalk. Four
big coconut palms, just inside the fence, stretched up toward the high, thin
clouds that drifted in from the south. Industrial-strength floodlights positioned
at the base of the palms pointed at the house, lighting up everything in sight.

From where we sat, we had a good view. I
spotted BK's Dodge in the driveway.

I turned to face the two of them.

"Okay, we're gonna wait here a little
while. Pretty soon, someone, maybe the Russians, are gonna pick BK up. Then
they're going to the airport to meet the old man, who's coming back from the
Bahamas. Not long after that, I'm going in. Rita's there and she'll let me in.
I want what's in their safe. If I can't get into it for some reason, I'm gonna
— Shimmy, where's your flashlight?"

He reached under the driver's seat and put
a mag light in my hand.

"I'm gonna go to the window and shine
this flashlight at the car. I'll blink it twice. If you see that, Doc, that's
your cue. Come on in, and bring the satchel."

Doc nodded. Then I said to Shimmy,
"You stay here the whole time. As soon as I get inside the house, start
the engine and keep it running. This'll probably go off without a hitch, but
keep your eyes peeled anyway. If BK and the Russians come back for some reason
while we're still in there, get your heater out and come running. Doc's not
holding, so I may need all the firepower help I can get."

He reached behind him, pulling a large
automatic from his rear waistband. I made it to be a nine millimeter.

He jacked it, then said firmly, "I'll
be there, bubba."

AROUND
five till eight, the dark blue Land Rover cruised by, drawing up in front of
the house.

As best I could make out, it held three men.
I couldn't tell if one of them was Yuri Vasiliev, but the one riding shotgun
was older, maybe in his fifties or sixties.

Right behind was Whitney's silver Mercedes.
From the long hair of the two occupants, I made them to be Milton and Bradley.

The Mercedes honked twice. Within twenty
seconds, BK ambled out of the house carrying a briefcase. Rita closed the door
behind him. He ducked into the Mercedes. I caught her briefly scanning the
street to see if I'd arrived.

The cars drove away in the general
direction of the airport, then I said, "We'll give them a few minutes to
make sure they don't come back for anything."

Five minutes went by. I glanced at Doc and
Shimmy before getting out of the car. Their faces told me they were ready.

In less than a minute, I stood at the door
of the house. I was uneasy under all that light; shit, it was like daylight up
there.

Fortunately, the door opened before I had a
chance to knock.

"I knew you were out there somewhere,
lurking around in the shadows," she said.

I quickly moved inside the house.

There in the hallway, out of the floodlit
entrance, I adjusted my eyes for a second. Then I got a full look at her. Her
white cotton blouse fit her just right, showing off her stuff just as she'd
planned, with skin-tight pants that begged to be removed. Her come-on smile
fronted all of it.

Even in the dim hall light, she glistened.

As I checked her out, I said, "Just
your average hanging-around-the-house outfit?"

She shrugged.

"What's a girl to do? Especially when
she's looking for excitement."

I ignored her play.

"Rita, there's something I've got to
see. It's important."

She reached for the top button on her
blouse. I pulled her hand away.

"No, come on, now. This is
serious."

"Oh, all right," she groused.
"What is it?"

"I need to see the contents of your
safe."

That brought her down to earth, and fast.

"The safe? What on earth for?"

"I just need to look in it."

"Well, Don Roy, I don't know …"

I took her hand in mine.

"Rita, you told me the old man keeps
things in there.”

"Right," she said.
"So?"

"So … I need to see what he's got. You
said he keeps it separate from BK's and your stuff. Like in a different
cubbyhole or something."

"Well, yes. He does."

"I need to see it. Now."

She paused. She was looking at me, but
right through me, you know what I mean? In her mind, she was rationalizing it,
working it all out — how the old man had treated her like shit, how BK
had jacked her around, how things hadn't worked out quite the way …

"Come on," she said. "It's
upstairs."

Her spiked heels clicked as she led me
across the tile floor.

We went up the staircase, which wasn't
nearly as grand as the rest of the house. There was some artwork on the wall
going up the steps, but I couldn't tell what it was, whether or not it was any
good.

At the top, we went into the first bedroom.

It was obviously their bedroom. Or at least
hers, whenever she banished BK to another room, which I figured was probably
pretty often these days. They had all the routine stuff in there. King-sized
bed, some kind of makeup table with a fancy mirror, a couple of dressers, along
with a huge closet in the corner.

She led me to the closet and it sucked my
breath right out of me.

It was bigger than my room, I swear! This
thing was about twenty feet deep. I stood in the doorway and I saw clothes, all
hers, lining the walls. Along a section of one of the walls was a wide,
pigeonhole-type structure just for her shoes. She must've had a hundred pairs.

Un-fucking-believable.

She moved a suitcase out of the way back in
the far left-hand corner. Reaching down to where the baseboards met, she
grabbed the thick carpeting with her thumb and index finger, then peeled it
back. It had already been cut into a two-foot by two-foot square, so that piece
just lifted up off the floor.

Beneath it was the door of the safe.

"Don Roy, I … I …"

Her eyes pleaded with me to call the whole
thing off.

"Come on, girl. Don't quit on me now.
Not when we're this close."

She spun the combination dial a few times,
stopping carefully on the right numbers, then gave the handle a turn. It
clicked.

She swung the door open, resting it against
the rear wall of the closet. She edged back as though she were afraid of what
was inside.

I moved closer, holding Shimmy's
flashlight. Inside I could see the safe was divided into two equal
compartments.

Each one had a small, cheap door about six
or eight inches square.

Each one opened with a key.

"Which one's the old man's?" I
asked her. She pointed to the one on the left and I said, "You got the
key?"

"No. He keeps it."

I headed over to the window. It faced the
back yard. I went across the hall to what looked like a guest bedroom.

At the window in that room, I slid the
curtain back a little bit. Beyond the house's blinding security lights below
was William Street. I could barely make out the car down the street a little
way through the harsh glare. I blinked the flashlight twice, hoping they'd see
it. No one moved from the car, so I blinked twice more.

Finally, I saw the car's back door open a
little. I knew it was wide enough for Doc.

"What are you doing?" Rita asked.

"Making sure I get inside that
compartment."

I went downstairs and let him in.

He followed me upstairs without a word,
without a sound. I had to turn around at the top of the stairs to make sure he
was still there.

"Where is it?" he asked.

"In here."

I brought him into the closet. He took the
flashlight from my hand, aiming its powerful beam at the safe's interior.

"It's the compartment on the
left," I offered.

"How'd you open the safe?"

"Rita knew the combination."

"Shi-it," he hissed. "This's
one of those low-grade jobs. I coulda opened it in prob'ly half the time."

After one quick look, he set the satchel on
the floor, reaching into his fanny pack. He gently pulled out a slim
leatherette box and laid it on the floor in front of him.

Inside, carefully arranged on a bed of
velvet, lay a variety of lock picks — long, pointy devices of different
widths and gauges. He selected two, then inserted them into the lock on the
left. A couple of turns later, I saw him pull the picks out, opening the door
in the process.

"There you go," he said proudly
as he moved to one side.

He handed me the flashlight. I trained it
on Whitney's sanctuary. There was some cash, but not much else. I reached in
and took it out. It consisted of two banded wads of hundred dollar bills. I
made each one to be about ten large.

"God
damn!"
Rita said.
"I had no fucking idea …"

I laughed. "This's just pocket change.
Something he can walk around with. If he needs a little dough and he doesn't
want to drive all the way out to Key Haven, where he no doubt keeps the serious
money, he can just drop in here and pick up a little loose change."

I lifted the money out of its hiding place
and into my pants pocket.

We went back downstairs. I pulled a scrap
of paper out of my wallet and, using BK's desk phone, I dialed the number that
was scribbled down.

"Ryder," I said when he answered.
"In about twenty minutes, Whitney will be landing at the airport. His two
goons, along with BK and the Russians, will be there to greet him. You can nab
them all at once. I'm going out to his Key Haven house right now to get
something out of his safe that belongs to me. You might want to come out there
later on. I'll leave the safe open for you. Maybe there'll be something
interesting inside it."

I hung up and turned to Rita.

"Now, where does the old man keep his
other safe out in the Key Haven house?"

"Same place as here. Corner of the big
closet, under the carpeting."

"Come on, Doc," I said.
"We're going to Key Haven."