Johnny Temple - USA Noir - Best of the Akashic Noir Series

“Yeah. What’s up with it? Any leads?” Heart pounding fast, Schaeffer lowered his head and listened real carefully.

“Not many. But we heard something and we’re hoping you can help us out. You know the neighborhood, right?”

“Pretty good.”

“Looks like one of T.G.’s boys was running a scam. Involved some tall paper. Six figures. We don’t know if it had anything to do with the clip, but we want to talk to him. Name of Ricky Kelleher. You know him?”

Schaeffer glanced at Ricky, five feet away. He said into the phone, “Not sure. What’s the scam?”

“This Kelleher was working with somebody from Florida. They came up with a pretty slick plan. They sell some loser a confiscated boat, only what happens is, there is no boat. It’s all a setup. Then when it’s time to deliver, they tell the poor asshole that the feds just raided ’em. He better forget about his money, shut up, and go to ground.”

That little fucking prick… Schaeffer’s hand began shak­ing with anger as he stared at Ricky. He told the Homicide cop, “Haven’t seen him for a while. But I’ll ask around.”

“Thanks.”

He disconnected and walked up to Ricky, who was work­ing on his second beer.

“You know when that guy’s going to get here?” Schaeffer asked casually. “The boat guy?”

“Should be anytime,” the punk said.

Schaeffer nodded, drank some of his own beer. Then he lowered his head, whispered, “That call I just got? Don’t know if you’re interested but it was my supplier. He just got a shipment from Mexico. He’s gonna meet me in the alley in a few minutes. It’s some really fine shit. He’ll give it to us for cost. You interested?”

“Fuck yes,” the little man said.

The men pushed out the back door into the alley. Letting Ricky precede him, Schaeffer reminded himself that after he’d strangled the punk to death, he’d have to be sure to take the rest of the bribe money out of his pocket.

Oh, and the watch too. The detective decided that you really couldn’t have too many Rolexes after all.

Detective Robert Schaeffer was enjoying a grande mocha outside the Starbucks on Ninth Avenue. He was sitting in a metal chair, none too comfortable, and he wondered if it was the type that outdoor furniture king Shelby distributed to his fellow hicks.

“Hey there,” a man’s voice said to him.

Schaeffer glanced over at a guy sitting down at the table next to him. He was vaguely familiar and even though the cop didn’t exactly recognize him, he smiled a greeting.

Then the realization hit him like ice water and he gasped. It was the fake Internal Affairs detective, the guy T.G. had hired to clip him.

Christ!

The man’s right hand was inside a paper bag, where there’d be a pistol, of course.

Schaeffer froze.

“Relax,” the guy said, laughing at the cop’s expression. “Everything’s cool.” He extracted his hand from the bag. No gun. He was holding a raisin scone. He took a bite. “I’m not who you think I am.”

“Then who the fuck are you?”

“You don’t need my name. I’m a private eye. That’ll do. Now listen, we’ve got a business proposition for you.” The PI looked up and waved. To Schaeffer he said, “I want to introduce you to some folks.”

A middle-aged couple, also carrying coffee, walked out­side. In shock, Schaeffer realized that the man was Shelby, the tourist they’d scammed a few days ago. The woman with him seemed familiar too. But he couldn’t place her.

“Detective,” the man said with a cold smile.

The woman’s gaze was chill too, but no smile was involved.

“Whatta you want?” the cop snapped to the private eye.

“I’ll let them explain that.” He took a large bite of scone.

Shelby’s eyes locked onto Schaeffer’s face with a ballsy confidence that was a lot different from the timid, defeated look he’d had in the cheap hotel, sitting next to Darla, the used-to-be-a-guy hooker. “Detective, here’s the deal: A few months ago my son was on vacation here with some friends from college. He was dancing in a club near Broadway and your associates T.G. Reilly and Ricky Kelleher slipped some drugs into his pocket. Then you came in and busted him for possession. Just like with me, you set him up and told him you’d let him go if he paid you off. Only Michael decided you weren’t going to get away with it. He took a swing at you and was going to call 911. But you and T.G. Reilly dragged him into the alley and beat him so badly he’s got permanent brain damage and is going to be in therapy for years.”

Schaeffer remembered the college kid, yeah. It’d been a bad beating. But he said, “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Shhhhh,” the private eye said. “The Shelbys hired me to find out what happened to their son. I’ve spent two months in Hell’s Kitchen, learning everything there is to know about you and those two pricks you worked with.” A nod toward the tourist. “Back to you.” The PI ate some more scone.

The husband said, “We decided you were going to pay for what you did. Only we couldn’t go to the police—who knew how many of them were working with you? So my wife and I and our other son—Michael’s brother—came up with an idea. We decided to let you assholes do the work for us; you were going to double-cross each other.”

“This is bullshit. You—”

The woman snapped, “Shut up and listen.” She explained: They set up a sting in Hanny’s bar. The private eye pretended to be a scam artist from Florida selling stolen boats and their older son played a young guy from Jersey who’d been duped out of his money. This got Ricky’s attention, and he talked his way into the phony boat scam. Staring at Schaeffer, she said, “We knew you liked boats, so it made sense that Ricky’d try to set you up.”

The husband added, “Only we needed some serious cash on the table, a bunch of it—to give you losers some real incentive to betray each other.”

So he went to T.G.’s hangout and asked about a hooker, figuring that the three of them would set up an extortion scam.

He chuckled. “I kept hoping you’d keep raising the bidding when you were blackmailing me. I wanted at least six figures in the pot.”

T.G. was their first target. That afternoon the private eye pretended to be a hit man hired by T.G. to kill Schaeffer so he’d get all the money.

“You!” the detective whispered, staring at the wife. “You’re the woman who screamed.”

Shelby said, “We needed to give you the chance to escape—so you’d go straight to T.G.’s place and take care of him.”

Oh lord. The hit, the fake Internal Affairs cop… It was all a setup!

“Then Ricky took you to Hanrahan’s, where he was going to introduce you to the boat dealer from Florida.”

The private eye wiped his mouth and leaned froward. “ Hello ,” he said in a deeper voice. “ This’s Malone from Homicide. ”

“Oh fuck,” Schaeffer spat out. “You let me know that Ricky’d set me up. So…” His voice faded.

The PI whispered, “You’d take care of him too.”

The cold smile on his face again, Shelby said, “Two perps down. Now we just have the last one. You.”

“What’re you going to do?” the cop whispered.

The wife said, “Our son’s got to have years of therapy. He’ll never recover completely.”

Schaeffer shook his head. “You’ve got evidence, right?”

“Oh, you bet. Our older son was outside of Mack’s wait­ing for you when you went there to get T.G. We’ve got real nice footage of you shooting him. Two in the head. Real nasty.”

“And the sequel,” the private eye said. “In the alley behind Hanrahan’s. Where you strangled Ricky.” He added, “Oh, and we’ve got the license number of the truck that came to get Ricky’s body in the dumpster. We followed it to Jersey. We can implicate a bunch of very unpleasant people, who aren’t going to be happy they’ve been fingered because of you.”