David Putnam - The Disposables

They had the 45K I took off Q-Ball and his two guns. I didn’t have too long and Vanfleet would tell them the color and make of my car and there’d be a BOLO. A calculated risk. I’d keep the car a little longer then dump it. I headed over to 117th and Alabama. The conversation with Robby suddenly popped into my head. I pulled to the curb and slugged the steering wheel. He knew about that place, he’d said as much. And if he had Taco Quickie staked out, he’d have my pad staked as well. He had me boxed. Marie was right, take the ten grand, the tickets, the kids, get on the freighter, and get out of Dodge. Bail right now before something irreversible happened. Like getting picked up.

I put the purple Monte Carlo in gear and drove. I had to think. I turned on Bullis Road, headed south. If luck had been with me, I’d have been at the park right now paying off the perv out of the 45K. I continued on south, my subconscious doing the driving. I tried to envision life in a Third World country with eight kids and a lovely wife, the hardships with out any money. When I returned to reality, I was eastbound on Rosecrans Boulevard, entering the city of Downy not but a few miles away from Jumbo’s pad.

Fate.

Only I knew it wasn’t fate. Jumbo owed me a hundred twenty-five for the train heist. Plenty enough to start a new life, plenty enough reason to take the chance, go head-to-head with him and that Crazy Ned Bressler.

The house was just as Chocolate described, larger than all the houses around it. Easy to spot. In a time when most dope dealers were downplaying their wealth so law enforcement wouldn’t tumble to them and seize it, Jumbo washed his money with auto parts stores, donut shops, and two strip joints, each of which had the ability to hide vast quantities of money. So he flaunted it. He paid all his taxes and flaunted it. He’d even, on occasion, asked me my opinion on stock investments. But the most effective method was what he called the shoebox approach.

After the first heist, I met Jumbo at Tits Up, his place on Compton Avenue, for a beer and to pick up my pay. Jumbo had thought it ironic how I’d once chased him and now worked for him. He bragged about how he’d thwarted cops’ efforts. He put the US currency in shoeboxes and mailed them regular air mail to the Middle Eastern country of Jordan. The money was put in a bank and wire transferred back to him as an investment from a shell corporation. He claimed the infusion of cash on his taxes. There was more to it I was sure, but he could justify every overt penny. Hence, the large manse set in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

He knew I’d show sometime and wouldn’t chance a scene at his own pad. Chances were slim that I’d find him at home.

In the long circular brick and concrete driveway, under the portico, sat Jumbo’s Beemer along with a whole mob of other expensive cars: Beemers, Lexuses, Mercedes.

The ten-foot-tall front doors were inset with clear beveled glass that gave an obscured view of the marble entry and the white carpeted spiral staircase to the second floor. The security video camera was partially camouflaged in the old Victorian gas lamp illuminating the exterior. I tried the door.

Unlocked.

Trap or overconfidence?

I went in. On an oak table just inside the door sat some sort of crystal decoration, an orb setting in a nest of icicles. I picked up the orb, the size of a cue ball, hefted it, and put it in my jacket pocket, kept my hand there.

Faint music echoed from somewhere deeper in the house. If he was running scared, he sure had balls for throwing a party.

Three steps down to the immense sunken living room, which was filled with a middle-class yuppie crowd, stood Jumbo trying to fit in, a true poseur. The group ebbed and surged around their host and the open bar, manned by two women in white see-through halter tops. I guessed this to be some sort of celebratory party.

My eyes came back to Jumbo and stayed on him until he felt their glare. When he looked over, his skin went ashen, his hand limp, dumping some of his cosmopolitan, the liquid a diluted red. He wasn’t being bold after all, having the party. He’d thought I’d been taken off the board. He must have inside information. The crowd, in tune with their benevolent host, a few at a time, went quiet until the entire party stood holding their free drinks, with small plates or napkins of canapés, their eyes on me. I took the crystal orb from my pocket, pulled back and threw it with everything I had at the plate glass wall that separated the living room from the perfectly landscaped backyard.

The crystal orb bounced off. The plate glass wall shattered into millions of tiny cubes. The crowd collectively gasped. When their amazement faded, they all looked at me, then back at their host. The glass crackled, the noise growing louder until the entire wall came down in one folding sheet. The crowd surged away in a tidal wave. Their momentum grew until they stampeded to the door, flowed around me, a pylon in a turbulent sea. I held Jumbo’s gaze, wanting to look side to side, knowing at any moment Crazy Ned Bressler was about to sneak up with an ice pick and scramble my brain through an unsuspecting ear. Do it so quick no one would see it.

Finally, the noise subsided, the room empty. The crowd left behind broken martini and highball glasses and clear glass plates with pâté and barbequed meatballs mixed with crumbled crackers. The two scared bartenders held their ground behind the bar. Jumbo regained some composure. “You really know how to ruin a celebration.”

“That right? What’re you celebrating?”

He moved to the bar, turning his back to me. In a lowered voice he asked the bartender, “Glenfiddich neat.” He waited until she poured and he slugged down the amber liquid and set the glass down for a refill.

“One of your overseas companies just post a huge profit?”

He took the bottle of Glenfiddich and moved to the couch. To the ladies he said, “You girls are excused for the evening. Sorry for the short night. You’ll, of course, be compensated.”

He poured another. If he kept it up, he’d be pickled by morning. The girls grabbed their stylish purses from under the counter and picked their way through the debris field to the front door.

“And to answer your question, yes, an overseas corporation just posted an excellent accounting for the last quarter.”

“I can imagine. What, a ten-million-dollar profit? Computer chips?”

He didn’t answer and took another long pull.

I asked, “Where’s Ned?”

“Don’t try and play games with me. I know why you’re here.”

I stepped over to an end table and picked up a bronze sculpture, an abstraction of what looked like an African gazelle melded with an African tribesman, and held it down by my side. I liked the heft of it.

“Detective Johnson, you are a true thug.” Now Jumbo looked really scared. Just the way I wanted him.

“What happened to calling me Bad Boy?”

“They asked me to try and get you to talk about Ned, but obviously you’re too smart for that.”

His words came out and entered my brain, but didn’t immediately sink in. Slow motion analysis because I knew their meaning and didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want it to be true.

Then Jumbo said the words I knew were coming next. The words that meant the end of my world as I knew it.

The end of everything.

Jumbo smiled when he said, “Looks like some bad weather. Might even be a tornado brewing out there.”

BMFs were a tight-knit team. They had to be to chase the most dangerous animals in the world. They read each other’s moves, knew what each team member was thinking, and used code words to operate on a covert level that at the same time confounded their prey. Robby Wicks had used the same code words from bygone days as a matter of flaunting his ability to outmaneuver me. “Might be a tornado brewing,” was the bust sign when the informant was in fear for his life and wanted the cops to swarm in and save him.