Стюарт Вудс - Standup Guy

After that, since he had hocked his laptop, he stopped in a computer café and rented himself an hour of running down his target on Google and Facebook. He was amused that Harry Moss had what had to be a fifteen-year-old photograph posted, along with a plea to hear from eligible ladies. That done, he drove to Delray and found the elderly beachfront apartment building that was home to Mr. Moss.

Question: how did the guy buy this place and handle the property taxes on an FBI pension? A trip to the courthouse solved that riddle. Then he looked for the nearest coffee shop that a sixty-one-year-old guy would have breakfast at every day. He found just the right place, went in, sat at the counter, and ordered a big breakfast. An attractive black woman in a neat uniform took his order, then succumbed to his charms and started talking.

“You a cop?” she asked.

“You’re smart—ex-FBI, retired a couple years ago. I’m Will, Madge.” Her name was on a plastic tag pinned to her yellow uniform.

“Hey. I got another regular customer used to be FBI. Maybe you know him?”

“Name?”

“Harry Moss.”

“Sure I knew him a little: not too tall, balding, early sixties?”

“He’s not balding anymore, he’s bald.”

And in forty-five minutes, between eggs and bacon and the occasional other customers’ needs, he got a lot. He left a big tip.

“You come back, now, hear?”

“I hear ya. You want to have dinner one of these nights?”

She handed him a card. “Call me and find out.”

• • •

Crowder hung around the apartment building long enough to see Moss leave the building. He followed from way back and watched the man park at a shopping center and go into a Publix market. He left with half a basket of what Crowder thought was probably frozen dinners.

Crowder didn’t wait for him to go out in the evening; he could make that up later. He drove home, found his apartment clean and neat, then sat down and wrote out his report. He hung his suit in the closet and fell into his reclining chair in his shirt and shorts with a large bourbon. Tiger Woods was playing in California, and he was looking good.

• • •

Harry Moss walked into the diner at five o’clock for his usual slice of key lime pie and coffee. “Hey, Madge,” he said, climbing onto a stool.

“Hey, Harry,” Madge said. She put the pie and coffee on the counter without being asked. “Friend of yours came in here this morning.”

“Friend?” Who would that be?

“Well, he said he knew you a little from the FBI days. Name of Will. Black dude.”

Moss paused with the first bite of pie nearly to his mouth, then he put down the fork. “I only ever knew two or three black agents, and none of ’em was Will.”

Madge shrugged. “I guess he got the wrong guy, then. He described you like he knew you, though.”

Moss made a second attempt to eat the first bite of his pie, but his mouth tasted funny, and he put it down again. “Madge, you been talking about me to somebody?”

“Nah, he brought you up,” she lied.

“What’d he ask you?”

“He wanted to know if you lived around here, said he wanted to look you up.” She was getting into the swing of her lie, now, to see if she could get a rise out of Harry. She did.

Moss’s face was turning red. “What did you tell him?”

“Just that I knew you. I told him I don’t know where you live.”

“You sure you didn’t tell him that?”

“Now that I think of it, I don’t know where you live.”

“What was he driving?”

“An old Mercedes convertible, real old. He parked it across the street.”

“What color?”

“Kind of off-white.”

“Describe him.”

“Big black dude, six-two, on the heavy side. Sharp dresser.”

Moss tried again with the pie and got down a bite. Who the hell was this guy?

43

Stone got downstairs to his office at the usual time, and there was a pink memo slip on his desk: call Dan Sparks. Stone called. Out of the office, leave a message. He did. A week had passed since he had been up to Connecticut, and he hadn’t seen Hank, which was okay with him. He was oddly disturbed that she had been sleeping with her captor. What was that? Stockholm syndrome?

He called Dino. “Morning.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“You heard anything from Dan Sparks?”

“I had a message on my desk when I got in. He was out when I called back.”

“Me, too. You think his people picked up Buono?”

“I’d be real surprised if Bats was still in Connecticut. You see him on the news?”

“I saw a report.”

“I ran him against the database, and he had no arrest record,” Dino said.

“I would have thought he did,” Stone said. “I mean, the guy’s a career criminal, and he’s, what, forty? How’d he avoid arrest for so long?”

“He must be real careful. You know, it’s funny, his uncle Eduardo never got busted, either, until his pals gave him up after his big heist.”

“Maybe caution runs in the family. He’s got a father named Gino, lives in Queens. Run him, will you?”

“Hang on.” There was the sound of computer keys clicking.

“Nada,” Dino said. “He’s clean.”

“That’s puzzling. You think it means anything?”

“Means what? I can’t think of anything. Either they were all three extremely smart and careful, or they all got very lucky.”

“That’s too lucky,” Dino said. “Hang on, Dan Sparks is returning my call. I’ll tie you in, if I can remember how to work this phone.”

There was a click. “Dan?”

“Yeah, Dino.”

“I’ve got Stone on the line, too. Save you a call.”

“Thanks, I need to talk to the two of you.”

“Shoot.”

“My crime-scene team went through the house on the lake, and they found traces of blood in the kitchen drain.”

“I don’t think Hank was hurt,” Stone said.

“Well, it’s not a mystery. We found a body about fifteen yards into the trees.”

“What kind of a body?” Dino asked.

“White male, five-eight, maybe, a hundred and forty, maybe, sporty clothes.”

“Did you take prints?” Stone asked.

“Yeah, we can scan and run ’em pretty much instantly these days. No hit on our computers or the national.”

“What about dental?”

“That’ll be tough,” Sparks said. “The guy has no head.”

It got real quiet for a few seconds.

“Cause of death?” Dino asked.

“Multiple knife wounds in his back. A knife in the kitchen matches the wounds—that’s one possibility. An ax was leaning against a woodshed at the side of the house—that’s another.”

“Any sign of the car?” Stone asked.

“Sign, yeah. There were tracks running into the lake.”

“Could you see anything in the water?”

“Nah, lake’s about thirty feet deep there. We’ve got divers on the way. They can probably float it.”

“How do they do that?” Stone asked.

“They’ll take big bladders down there, put ’em in the car and inflate ’em from compressed-air bottles. That should pop it right up, and we can tow it to shore. You fellas thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Probably,” Dino said.

“Maybe,” Stone chipped in.

“My guess, the lady didn’t take kindly to being kidnapped, so she took the first opportunity.”

“She didn’t want to drive away in the car,” Dino said. “She knew he drove stolen cars from his chop shop.”

“Nice point,” Sparks said.

“If I were a lawyer,” Stone said, “oh, that’s right, I am—I could make a case for self-defense in court.”

“I would buy that,” Sparks said, “if the guy still had a head.”