The Outlaw Stinky Joe (Baer Creighton Book 4), page 13
If any man exhibited confidence beyond his means, it was Clyde Munsinger. The way he took the place over without having a deal in place. He had balls like they used to say, made of lead, gave him a swagger when he walked. Though Clyde just had guts. He walked like a fairy.
So what were the odds he left the USB drive in his office?
Probably not. Shirley had said she put it on a dog. She didn’t deny he gave it to her. But it would be a hell of a thing not to bust in the door and take a gander, when he had the opportunity. Lester had told Clyde he had a camera installed, but in truth, it didn’t see much, and the video quality was grainy. If not for Paul watching Clyde go to Shirley’s place, he wouldn’t have had a lead.
It would only take a minute.
Lester stood at the door. Checked to see who watched. Kicked it in.
He stepped inside the office. Didn’t touch anything except with the soles of his boots. The television was on. He glanced things over. Allowed his gaze to drift back to the screen. A news lady posed before a wire fence in front of trash. A night scene, with a fast food joint behind.
A white pit bull killed a man at the dumpster last night.
Lester stepped back outside. Stared at the sky.
Back at the Ram, Lester scratched Lucky’s ears, roughhoused his face a little to elevate the dog’s exuberance. Then allowed Lucky to sniff the blue towel.
At almost eleven years of age, Lucky had lived a full life.
Old man. Old dog. Perfect match.
Lester had spent the last two years thinking Lucky was hands-down the best person he knew.
He parked near the restaurant he’d seen on the news, not a quarter mile from the trailer park. Helped Lucky out, and let him sniff the blue towel again.
Lester grabbed his pack from the bed of the truck and slung his raggedy .30-06 on his shoulder. Lucky trotted off.
Lester watched the dog’s gait. He followed, and swinging his arm noticed blood on his sleeve, from Lucky’s jaw.
After a bit Lester checked the distance. They’d climbed a small hill, by Flagstaff standards, but both Lester and Lucky desired a moment of rest at the top. Lucky hadn’t been excited about the search, but he’d been persistent. He kept his nose to the ground a long while, a couple of times stopping to raise his snout into the breeze. Sometimes he was a tracker, sometimes, he did area-search, seeking a short cut by zeroing in on the wind-borne trail.
Dark clouds had wandered across the sky and with them the air temperature dropped, a sudden change like stepping into a room without a heat vent. Lester studied the direction of the clouds and, without formulating a clear thought, felt apprehension in his belly. He recalled looking at a sky like that, and shortly later being buried in snow. That was the deal in Flagstaff. Any storm, any time of year, might produce snow. April was nothing special.
“You ready?”
Lester waited for Lucky, almost expecting the dog to answer. Instead, Lucky whined. At least he didn’t cough more blood.
“Maybe you need a reminder, what you’re looking for.”
He produced the blue towel and let Lucky bury his nose in it.
“Track,” Lester said.
Lucky moved out.
Most dogs in the winter, Lester surmised, found a den. The elements, the cold ... A pit bull didn’t have a heavy enough coat to survive, unless he had shelter. With the scent leading to the woods and not some old shed or garage, he figured the dog had holed up in a cave, a crevice, even a hollow tree. And that meant, since the dog spent most of his time at a single location, eventually the wind borne scent would be stronger than the one on the ground. Probably within a mile of the starting point, they’d find the dog’s shelter.
Shoot him and claim the prize.
Chapter 28
Shirley woke from fitful sleep, late in the afternoon. Her head didn’t pound like before. Now the pain was like a cancer, small, black and tentacled, reaching through her mind and coloring her mood. She could force herself to stop thinking about the agony, but not to stop suffering it. She needed more aspirin. More water.
More tequila. Less men.
She rolled, and when her feet found the floor the blood pressure spike was small, barely painful at all. Maybe a couple cups of coffee would do the trick.
Shirley found her flip flops, and realized the contents of her dresser were no longer scattered on the floor.
She smiled, picturing Brass when he was young. They didn’t have money for toys and one day he discovered how powerful bra elastic had to be to float a couple thirty pounders. He turned a chair upside down, tied off each end on a leg, and—one corner in each massive cup—used the bra to slingshot sofa pillows across the trailer.
She stood in the hallway, looking across to the far end of the living room. Saw Brass there, couldn’t have been seven—maybe ten—years old, launching pillows.
Of course, he didn’t recognize exactly what a bra was for, and years later when she needed to give him guff about something, she gave him guff about that, and his embarrassment made her marvel at her parenting skills, how she raised a soft boy in a hard world.
He put away all her undies and bras, all without waking her. That was what a man was supposed to be.
Shirley looked to where she left the laptop and thumb drive before napping, on top of the dresser.
The thumb drive was gone.
Brass had likely taken it, and from his stance earlier in the day, wanting nothing to do with taking on the evil empire of Lester Toungate, he probably wanted to mail it to him.
“Brass, what’d you go and do?”
The only bad thing about raising a tender boy—he was a wimp. She could love him like a mother should and still discern his faults. Wasn’t that the definition of motherly love?
She paused. In the recess of her mind, somewhere in the blackout drunk memory pit, she sensed not all her tools of vengeance were lost.
Maybe ...
Hadn’t she worried about the laptop falling and breaking the thumb drive?
Hadn’t she ...
Shirley opened the laptop, waited. The screen came up. Went down.
Battery dead.
She blasted out a lungful of huff and plugged in the laptop.
Made coffee to give the charge a head start. Turned on the computer, got in her robe and showered—Brass had cleaned the entire place before leaving—and when she returned, the computer was ready.
Ah! She was a genius! Even pass-out drunk, she had the foresight to save a copy. She located the file on the desktop and double clicked. Opened the next file folder, and the first image. Like she remembered, a ledger.
Numbers.
Line after line, fancy script, nonsense. In a way, numbers were the downfall of humankind.
She needed a number person to tell her what they meant.
Shirley found her cordless phone in the living room. Back at the computer, she searched for Lorell Higgins, CPA. She dialed.
“I need Lorell.”
“Who’s calling, please?” The receptionist’s tone was cool.
“Mizz Lyle.”
“Just a moment.” Crap music played across the connection. Then a soft click.
“Uh—this is Lorell.”
“I need you to look at some numbers and tell me what they mean.”
“Uh—Shirley?”
“Who else still says Mizz?”
“What kind of numbers?”
“In a ledger. A business ledger. Something is funky about them, but I can’t read a ledger. Ergo, get your ass over here.”
“I—uh. This is uh, not copacetic. I—”
“I’ll let you lick my toes.”
“Now, Mizz Lyle—”
“Throw in a foot job.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
Some men, tits. Others, ass. But, as Shirley learned through the years, an oft-under-counted contingent preferred feet. Add the freaks who were into ankles, the fraction was big enough an efficiency-minded business woman wanted an offering suitable to match demand.
Her first foot job, ages and eons ago, was ugly. Rubbing a shaft with both feet didn’t come easy like walking, where your feet do what they were built to do, and you pay attention to other things. With a foot job, you had to twist the ankles and make the legs go up and down. Joints had to be flexible. Agile.
Well, some folks painted with their feet. Played violin. Shirley set her mind to mastering the foot job.
Not having a line of sight to her feet was a disadvantage. She learned how to position a mirror, and interpret the signals in reverse.
She practiced.
On the brighter side, on the continuum of sex acts, the feet being the farthest part of the body from the brain and ostensibly the mind, sometimes she imagined they weren’t even her feet. The mirror aided the perception of distance. Once she put rubber bands on her ankles as an experiment, and the sensation was so distant, she could have been watching porn on the television, while someone massaged her feet with oil.
Not a bad way to score a hundred bucks.
Her feet swelled afterward, and clots ran in her family, so she decided not to use the rubber bands until the day she didn’t give a damn any more. There were worse ways to go.
Over the years, Shirley turned weakness into strength. Word got out.
You want a woman good with her toes ...
But the other part she promised Lorell—ugh. A man sucking your feet was like a beady-eyed baby goat suckling your elbow. How the man—or the goat—found satisfaction eluded her.
But Lorell had his fetishes.
Feet are sweet, baby.
He preferred olive oil to canola, so she put a liter on the nightstand.
Grabbed the oil towel. Downed a stiff, stiff margarita and waited for the knock on the door.
She greeted Lorell Higgins, CPA, in her bath robe. Handed him a margarita on the house and led him by his other hand to the kitchen table. Turned the laptop computer to face him, and sitting opposite, rested her breasts on the table instead of her elbows.
“What do those numbers say to you?”
Lorell twisted his head, looked down the hallway toward her bedroom. Ran his fingers through stubby gray hair. Drew tight his lips.
“I don’t appreciate you calling me at work. That was never part of the, uh, our protocol.”
“Emergency. Besides, you haven’t been around for a while. I wanted to do something special for you. On the house.”
He smiled, crisp. Un-smiled. “Technically, it isn’t on the house if you’re asking me to do something in return.”
“Dear. Baby Love. There you go talking the language of business. I’m talking the language of love. Carnal love.”
Shirley slipped her right foot from her flip flop and walked her toes up his leg. Scooted out the chair so there was room for her knee and thigh, with her foot planted on his lap.
“I—I’m not being particular. Only saying.”
“Well let me say something.” She withdrew her foot, elongating the ankle and digits, keeping her leg high, so he could observe all the way to her neatly trimmed hedges. “I got something even better than olive oil for you, this time.”
She stood, withdrew a twelve ounce can from the freezer. Stuck her fingers in and rubbed, then massaged the big toe on her right foot. She lifted her heel to the table top.
Lorell swallowed. Loosened his tie. “Is that bacon?”
She simpered.
He snarled. Lunged and placed her three biggest toes in his mouth, swirled the tongue—
“Nope!—not yet.”
She pulled back and slipped her foot on her flip flop. Closed off her nakedness with her bathrobe.
“First things first, Lorell. What’s that ledger mean?”
“Oh—that’s wrong. Just wrong.”
“Sooner you tell me what’s on those pages, sooner these phalange-digits’ll be sinning anywhere you want.”
He licked his lips. Studied her face. “Isn’t payment usually afterward?”
“Not when the transaction involves an alternate means of payment. Now stop wasting time. What’s on that ledger?”
Lorell shook his head sideways while looking at the ledger. Spoke under his breath, “Alternate means of payment. What the hell kind of talk? Didn’t come here to be spoken down to. I’m a CPA. And I can get talked down to at home. Yellow highlighter. Interesting—somebody’s already been over these books. All the fishy stuff is highlighted yellow. Whoever took this image wanted to make the subterfuge easy to find. Although, for someone with my training, it leaps off the page regardless. Look at this.”
He turned the computer and pointed.
“This line is yellow. I’m guessing the person with the highlighter was demarking suspected fraud. The entry doesn’t make sense. Forty thousand dollars for fluorescent light bulbs. Not unless these were for a sky scraper or something—and if that was the case, they wouldn’t be written in granny-hand.”
“Granny hand?”
“Shaky.”
“So why would a ledger have entries like that?”
He smiled, tilted his head. “Really? You don’t follow?”
“Nope.”
“Wait a minute.” Lorell sat erect in his chair and titled back his head so his nostrils were black holes and his eyes squinty. “Whose ledger is this?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody went to a lot of trouble.”
He stared.
Shirley stared back. Held her eyes open, even when they burned. At last, Lorell stood.
“Nothing I’d love more than your sweet feet, but this is my livelihood. I won’t go there. So good day. And don’t call my office.”
Lorell turned.
Shirley let him open the front door and slip one foot out.
“My landlord. The lady who owned this place before the new prick. That’s her writing. What’s the big deal? What’d you find?”
“Money laundering, Shirley. You didn’t know that?”
“You think I’d rub your johnson with my feet for free if I knew that?”
“Don’t be vulgar.”
“Well, I ain’t calling you a pervert, but damn. Come on. Help me out, and I’ll help you out.”
Lorell pulled his foot back into the trailer and closed the door.
“I can’t do anything, Shirley. I can’t participate in this. Can’t tell you how to make dirty money legitimate. The government will take everything I have.”
“I don’t want you to participate in anything. I don’t even understand what this is. That’s the point. I need you to tell me. So I can figure out what I’m gonna do.”
“Show the police. The FBI. The Secret Service is all over money laundering. Hell, the Treasury has an office for financial crimes.”
“See? I didn’t know that. That’s what I wanted you for. To tell me how to handle things the right way.”
Lorell rubbed his inner thigh, high. Adjusted himself.
“Come on back to the table and sit a minute, baby love.”
He stepped to her and sat. Pointed. Frowned. Blinked three times, rapid.
She nudged his thigh with her big toe.
“You use entries like this to legitimize money. This is one way, at least. Say you do something illegal for a living. Like, I’m just thinking out loud, you run a brothel. You can’t tell the government, hey, I made all this money. They’ll know you’re a criminal. They’ll put you in jail and take all your money. So that’s a problem ... Any time you use your money in the modern world, the government sees. Everything but cash transactions, right? You knew that?”
“Well, of course I knew that.”
“Okay, so let’s say you have a huge amount of money. You can’t go around paying cash for everything. You can’t buy a house with cash. Currency-paper-cash. You can’t send it secure in the mail. You can’t buy financial assets like stocks or bonds. Bottom line, you can’t store wealth as cash. Just about everything you want to do with money, you need it to be digital. But the problem is, how do you convert paper to digital?”
“Bank deposit. Let them computerize it.”
“Nope. You do that for sizable sums, the bank fills out a report to the feds. After a couple, they knock on your door and ask where the cash is coming from.”
“I guess I don’t have that problem.”
“Well, someone running a brothel, as in my example, or someone selling drugs, or stolen goods, or any other illegal activity—they need to get those big dollars into the financial system without cueing Uncle Sam. He’s a greedy bastard. One way is to fake the numbers of a cash business. That’s what you have here.”
“Forty thousand light bulbs.”
“Right. They declare the money income, write off a fake business expense, pay a little token taxes and viola, the money’s in the system, just like it was earned from a legal business. And, by the way, whoever ran these books didn’t try very hard. It was almost like she wanted someone to catch on.”
Shirley nodded slowly, little head bounces that got bigger as she connected dots between her original landlady, Betsy Peck, Clyde Munsinger, and Lester Toungate. The whole thing made sense. The Toungate Paving company rolling through and not doing shit, twice a year. The Toungate Tree Trimming. Clyde had figured it out, and after making a move on Betsy, made another on Lester.
That didn’t bode well for Clyde.
Shirley grabbed the can of bacon grease and rubbed her fingers over the frozen top until enough melted to slather her feet. She put the first on the table.
“Let’s satisfy that need, Lorell.”
Chapter 29
Joe opened his eyes. He’d done so a hundred times—whenever the wind picked up, leaves rustled, or a new scent drifted to the back room of the cave. Between, he slept. Each time he rose to turn and curl the other direction, his back leg throbbed. At last, it almost refused to move, from stiffness.
His chest was easier to reach with his tongue. The cat’s talons had opened his coat and exposed bare meat that was hot when he licked it.
At last the darkness abated and sound arrived, the rustle of squirrel on leaves. Although he’d filled his belly on man-food the night before, he felt as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
