Blast from the Past (A Mac Faraday Mystery) (6 page)

Chapter Nine

“I take it things are happening,” Mac said when the back of the white van opened to invite him and Gnarly to join the party hosted by two men whom he had never met.

In the van, crowded with audio surveillance equipment, one of the men was having a soft conversation with David, who was in his police chief’s uniform.

“Who’s watching Archie?” Mac asked Randi Finnegan.

“Bogie and half of the Spencer police force are protecting her,” Randi said, “not to mention your security people.” She added, “All of my charges should be so heavily guarded.”

“It’s going down now.” David nodded out the front windshield.

Tommy Cruze’s limousine was pulling into the Dockside Cafe.

“What a small world,” Mac said. “I just came out of there.”

Randi introduced Mac to the agent in the front passenger seat of the van. “This is Special Agent Sid Delaney. He’s my inside guy with the organized crime bureau.” She gestured at the other agent manning the audio equipment. “That’s Tony Bennett.”

“Tony Bennett?” Mac smiled at the agent. “Any relation?”

The young man grinned back. “As a matter of fact, we’re cousins.”

Mac blinked. “Cousins? I’m sorry, but you’re kind of young to be Tony Bennett’s cousin.”

“Tony?” Now it was Agent Bennett’s turn to be confused. “My cousin’s name is Haley. Who are you talking about?”

Randi leaned over to tell him. “Tony’s a famous singer—a little before your time.” She told Mac, “Haley is a movie actress—a little after your time.”

David reminded them of their reason for being there. “Tommy Cruze is meeting his contract killer in that café.”

Agent Delaney pointed out the group across the street that had climbed out of the limousine. “You’re not going to believe who’s with Cruze.”

They all crowded forward to see. In addition to the driver scoping out the landscape, Tommy Cruze was deep in conversation with a bald man with a bushy white mustache.

“Who is that?” Mac asked about their interest.

“Alan Richardson,” Special Agent Delaney answered. “We’ve been trying to prove for a long time that he’s more involved with Cruze’s operation than purely with his legal counsel. If he’s there when Cruze puts out the order for this hit, we’ll have him on accessory and conspiracy.”

“Richardson was the last call that Ginger Altman made on her cell phone,” David said.

“Really?” Delaney asked with a pleased smile.

“Here comes the hit man,” Agent Bennett said. “The show is about to start, lady and gentlemen.”

Mac moved up toward the front of the van to gaze out the windshield. He recognized one of the two men going inside as the body guard, the enforcer, who had been sitting in the front of the limousine the day before.

The enforcer peered around the parking lot while talking with his companion, a muscular man dressed in a black. He had tattoos going up his neck. Both of their eyes darted around the parking lot. When they spotted the van, the men turned away to face the other direction.

Realizing that both the enforcer and the hit men were undercover federal agents, Mac smirked.

They were going into the café when the woman whom Mac had seen stumble in the parking lot earlier shot out through the open door with her bird-beaked companion close behind her.

“Nora, what did you expect me to do?” The group in the van could hear the scrawny man objecting through one of the federal agent’s audio feed. “Do you want to see me killed? What was I supposed to do?”

“Be a man for once,” they heard Nora answer before the agent wearing the mike went inside. The door closed to shut off the conversation.

Outside, Nora hurried across the parking lot in their direction with her companion lagging behind. As they passed the van on their way into the hotel, everyone ducked down and held their breath so that the couple wouldn’t be aware of the conference inside—even Gnarly seemed to sense the need to be quiet.

“Coffee?” Mac recognized the deep, commanding voice of Tommy Cruze offering the new arrivals a drink before they started with the matter at hand.

“Black,” one of the men said.

“Nothing for me,” another voice Mac didn’t recognize responded.

“Come on,” Tommy ordered. “I don’t trust a man who won’t drink with me, even if it’s only coffee.”

“Then I guess we won’t be doing business.” They heard what sounded like someone standing up.

“Wait a minute,” Tommy said. “Where are you going so fast?”

“I’m a busy man. I don’t have time to waste on people I won’t be doing any work for. Later.”

Tommy laughed. The others at the table joined in before he said, “I like you. You have guts. I respect that in a man—but not in women—especially a woman who doesn’t know who she’s supposed to be scared of, or when. A woman like that needs to be taught a lesson—a good, long lesson that involves so much pain that she’ll be begging you to put her out of her misery … which I don’t want done until she’s learned her lesson.”  

“We have a problem.” Agent Delaney startled them out of the conversation.

A black SUV had pulled up near the parking lot entrance to the Dockside Café. Two men wearing jackets with
“FBI”
emblazed across the back in white block lettering got out.

“What is that about?” Randi asked.

Recalling the attempted hit on Archie, David said, “I don’t think they’re feds.”

“No, they’re not.” Agent Delaney shook his head. “Those aren’t government tags on that van. There’s a hit going down.”

Mac grasped the gun he wore in the waistband of his running pants. “The question is, who are they here to hit? The good guys or the bad ones?”

David threw open the door. “Doesn’t matter. We need to stop them or we won’t get enough evidence to nail Cruze.”

Gnarly jumped out the door and trotted around to the back of the van.

As if the agents inside could hear him, Agent Delaney said into his mike, “Hurry up, guys. Get the goods on Cruze and get out of there.”

Mac, David, and Randi jogged across the road in the direction of the parking lot. Each of them had taken out their guns and concealed them behind their backs.

His gold police chief’s shield shining in the morning sun, David stepped up ahead of them. “Good morning,” he called out in a cheery voice.

The man in the blue jacket who had fallen several feet behind his partner whirled around.

On David’s left, Mac caught sight of the Uzi in the assassin’s grip. “Gun!” Mac fired off three shots to drop the gunman with his hand on the trigger. A continuous spray of bullets went wild around the parking lot before the Uzi dropped out his hand.

While Mac dove to the left to take cover behind a car, David and Randi went to the other side to hide behind the assailants’ van.

Unable to make it to the door, the remaining assailant fired off a spray from his automatic weapon while diving for cover in the space between Tommy Cruze’s limousine and the café’s catering van.

“At least they didn’t get inside to blow our set up,” Randi told David, who was calling on his radio for back up.

“Gee, like all these bullets flying in the parking lot isn’t going to blow it.” David called across the parking lot to Mac, “You okay?”

Mac gave him the signal of a thumbs up.

The federal agents’ van was sitting helplessly across the street. Their parking space had a clear view of the café in order to keep tabs on Tommy Cruze. Now, since the assassin had a clear view of it, and there was no place for the agents to seek cover upon exiting, it had become a kill zone. Agents Delaney and Bennett couldn’t come out to assist Mac, David, and Randi without getting cut in half by the Uzi.

“Back up is coming,” David signaled to Mac at the same time that a spatter of shots came from behind the limousine when the shooter opened fire.

Glass rained down on them from car windows. Metal and gravel flew around them. Screaming, Randi ducked while David covered her as best he could. As fast and furious as the bullets were flying, their weapons were no match. They were outgunned.

As abruptly as the shooting started, it stopped.

For a moment, there was silence while Mac, Randi, and David held their breath.

Mac felt his chest. His heart was still beating as fast as it could.

Anguished screams came from the direction of the shooter. He sounded like a victim of a monster from some horror film—specifically, a werewolf movie. His cry was liberally mixed with snarling growls.

Mac rose to his feet and peered around from behind the car.

The bloodied body was sprawled on the ground in the middle of the parking lot where the shooter had tried to escape the ambush that had come up from behind.

His face covered with blood and the strap of the Uzi in his jaws, Gnarly trotted out from behind the limousine and over to Mac. The dog dropped the weapon at his master’s feet as if it were a stick he had retrieved in a game of fetch.

“When you said back up was coming, I assumed they would be in a police cruiser,” Randi told David, “not a dog collar.” 

“Are you okay?” Agent Bennett asked them. “If it wasn’t for your dog coming up over the top of the van—I never saw anything like it, except maybe in a military special forces K-9.”

Special Agent Delaney ran past them and into the Dockside Café.

David and Randi were examining the two dead assassins. Gnarly had ripped open the throat of the man who had them pinned. Blood had sprayed from the severed jugular vein and coated the sides of the van and the limousine.

“I guess the operation is blown.” Mac knelt to examine Gnarly. Blood dripped from his jowls. “They can’t get Tommy Cruze on soliciting murder for hire.”

“Now it’s a whole different ball game,” Bennett said.

The woman who had served Mac his coffee came running out of the café with her daughter in her arms. Hysteria filled her face. “Help! Somebody help us!” A large handbag flapping from where it hung off her shoulders, she ran to Randi who hugged both her and the little girl.

“What’s going on?” David asked Agent Bennett.

“People are dropping dead inside the cafe.”

Chapter Ten

“Three dead mobsters inside and two dead outside.” In the parking lot, Bogie shook his head to make sense of it all when he and the whole Spencer police force arrived on the scene.

The FBI agents had also called in their people, who were still moments away.

Mac saw that Randi was still comforting the café owner and her daughter. Clutching her toy dog, the little girl looked frightened, but wasn’t at all as hysterical as her mother.

The US Marshal stepped across the parking lot to where Mac was filling in Bogie. “We need to get Leah and her daughter out of here before the media arrives. Cameras are going to be everywhere, and we need to get her to a secure location before that happens.”

“Who’s Leah?” Bogie asked.

Randi nodded over to the café owner. “Her daughter’s name is Sari. With this happening in her café, and Tommy Cruze’s organization involved—”

“There are those who will assume she was involved in some way and retaliate,” Mac finished.

“Can I take them back to Spencer Manor in David’s cruiser?” she asked Bogie. “I’m afraid with members of organized crime in the area—”

Mac clasped his hand on her arm. “Wait a minute.”

“I don’t have a minute.”

“Leah and her daughter are your charges,” Mac said in a low voice. When she tried to argue, he interrupted, “You’re in plain clothes. David’s in his uniform. But when she came running out of the café, she ran to you.” He gestured at the dead assassins. “Who were they after? Tommy Cruze or her? Who’s after her?”

“I can’t tell you that.” Randi glanced over at Leah, who was hugging her daughter as tightly as she could.

His arms folded over his chest, Bogie ordered her to answer. “I’m laying my life on the line to protect these young ladies. I have a right to know who from.”

“The mob,” Randi whispered. “Leah used to be married to someone very high up in organized crime, but he wasn’t in Tommy Cruze’s organization. Her husband was abusive, and she put up with it. After she had Sari, she decided to leave, but knew he’d never let her go. So two years ago she collected everything she could get her hands on, walked into the FBI offices, and offered it all in exchange for a new life for her and her daughter.” She added, “Leah has provided us with invaluable information on all of the inner workings of some of the biggest crime syndicates on the West Coast. That’s why we relocated her in the East.”

Bogie unfolded his arms. “Did this Ginger who gave away Archie’s location also know Leah’s?”

Randi yanked her arm out of Mac’s grip. “She certainly had access to it.”

Mac squinted at Leah and her young daughter. “Don’t you find it very interesting that Cruze chose
this
café to have breakfast at?”

Randi sighed. “Interesting isn’t the word I was thinking of.”

“I’m escorting all of you back to Spencer Manor.” Bogie turned to Mac. “Will you explain to the chief?”

Mac nodded his agreement.

Bogie called to the German shepherd rolling on his back in the nearby grass to take care of an itch between his shoulder blades. “We’ll take Gnarly with us so he doesn’t contaminate the crime scene.”

“Don’t clean him up,” Mac said. “He took down one of the shooters, so the feds will need to process him for evidence.”

Noting the blood encrusted on Gnarly’s snout and in his mane, Bogie held up his hands in surrender.  “I don’t want to be the one to tell Archie that she’s going to have to cancel his appointment with Misty.” He peered down at Mac from under his big, bushy gray eyebrows.

“Archie will understand.”

“But will Gnarly?” Bogie asked.

“Gnarly’s a big dog,” Mac said. “He can handle it.”

Gnarly was glancing back and forth between the two men with a questioning look on his face.

“Are you sure about that?” Bogie asked Mac before turning back to his cruiser.

Randi ushered the café owner and her daughter into Bogie’s cruiser. Ignoring Bogie’s direction for him to sit in the back, Gnarly jumped into the front passenger seat and refused to budge. Giving up without a fight, Bogie climbed into the driver’s seat and sped off in the direction from which he had come only minutes before.

Mac watched them race across the bridge and roll along Lakeshore Drive. As they disappeared from sight, the van from the morgue and the medical examiner’s car arrived. The medical examiner was covering the dead bodies up with white sheets when Mac went inside to learn about the other murders.

Inside the café, Mac found David trying to gather information from the one remaining witness who had survived the incident.

The round table in the center of the dining room and the six chairs that had surrounded it were overturned. Bodies were scattered on the floor like fallen tin soldiers in a child’s playroom.

Mac recognized the squat form of Tommy Cruze, sprawled on the floor with his arms and legs twisted like a Gumby doll. His eyes and mouth were open wide. A few feet away, his driver-slash-bodyguard was the same. One of his arms was twisted behind his back where he had landed on it. His lifeless eyes gazed up at Mac. Both men’s chins, necks, chests, and abdomens were covered in blood that had spewed out of their mouths and nostrils.

Lying near the coffee counter was the man Mac had seen come in with the assassin.

Someone’s missing.

“Where’s the hit man?” Mac whispered to Special Agent Delaney, who was kneeling next to the mobster’s enforcer. He recalled that less than twenty-four hours before, this same man was pointing a gun at his head.

“What hit man?” Delaney shot him a smirk.

Mac cocked his head at him.

“Richardson says this is everybody,” the special agent said.

Mac gazed down at the body sprawled out at his feet. Unlike Cruze and his bodyguard, the enforcer, who had recruited the hit man tasked with killing Archie, was spotless. There wasn’t a drop of blood on him.

Special Agent Delaney gestured over at the cash register where Alan Richardson was mopping his sweaty bald head with a linen handkerchief while David questioned him. “Maybe you can help your police chief get some useful information out of Cruze’s lawyer.”

The doors flew open and the morgue attendants came in with a gurney and body bag. Special Agent Delaney gestured at them. “Over here. This one goes first.”

Mac whirled around to watch Delaney direct them in bagging the body and getting him out.
Before the ME can do his one scene examination? But—
When he saw Delaney cast a warning look in his direction, Mac turned back to the coffee counter.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” With his handkerchief, Alan Richardson wiped down his bushy mustache. “There was no one else here.”

“Are you sure about that?” David asked with a straight face. “Three dead men. They certainly didn’t drop dead from natural causes. Someone had to have done something to make that happen.”

Catching David’s eye, Mac put on a straight face as well. To let Richardson know they were waiting outside would be to blow the undercover agents’ covers.

“Unless you mean the owner and her creepy daughter,” the lawyer responded.

“What’s so creepy about her daughter?” Mac asked.

Richardson shot him a glance. “She doesn’t talk. You say hello to her and she looks like she’s going to jump out of her skin.”

“Maybe she looks scared because she is scared,” Mac said. “You’re not exactly Mr. Rogers.”

The lawyer turned to the police chief while cocking his head in Mac’s direction. “Who is this guy?”

“Mac Faraday is a homicide detective,” David said. “He works on contract with the Spencer police department on special cases.”

Mac caught a wink from David in his direction. The police chief had lied as smoothly as if they had sorted it out before Tommy Cruze had dropped dead.

“Tell us what happened,” David ordered Alan Richardson.

The lawyer wiped the beads of sweat from his bald head. “My client, Tommy Cruze, and I came here for a breakfast meeting with a couple of associates.”

“What type of associates?” Mac stepped aside to allow the morgue attendants to wheel out the gurney with the enforcer in the sealed body bag.

Alan Richardson paused to watch the gurney leaving.  His face grew pale. His flabby jowls quivered.

“Mr. Richardson?” David prodded him. “What happened here? Who were those men with the automatic weapons outside?”

“Were they after your client?” Mac asked. “Maybe settling an old score? Or was it a new one?”

“Tommy Cruze is—was—a legitimate businessman,” Alan insisted.

“Yeah. Right,” Mac responded.

“He was framed for the murder that he went to jail for,” Richardson said. “The fed that led the investigation was crooked—and now he’s sitting in Cruze’s cell. The judge saw it for what it was and overturned the conviction.”

“And how much did you pay that judge to flip the conviction?” Special Agent Delaney had come over to ask.

“Don’t answer that, darling.” A tall, leggy redhead in a white business suit filled the doorway leading in from the reception area.

Mac wasn’t into buxom bombshells who looked like they belonged in the centerfold of a magazine. He preferred his women petite and sleek—the type he could pick up in his arms—like Archie. But, as he looked at the redhead, he thought that if he were into bombshells—here was one. He could see by the drop of Delaney’s jaw that this woman was his type.

When the redhead stepped in, she gazed down at the floor in the direction of the dead bodies. Delaney reached out his arm to block further entrance. “You can’t come in, ma’am. This is a crime scene.”

“She’s allowed,” Richardson said. “Ariel is my attorney. We’re business partners.” He grasped her arm to pull her around. “She’s also my wife.”

Her eyes still on Tommy Cruze’s motionless body, she said, “Richardson can’t answer any questions without my being present.”

“Mrs. Richardson,” Mac said, “since you and your husband are partners, then I guess that means you worked for Tommy Cruze, too?”

“She never met Cruze.” Alan stepped between them to block his view of her. “I met Ariel after Tommy went to prison. She’s had no connection with him or his business in any way, shape, or form.”

“While you were in with him up to your eyebrows,” Special Agent Delaney said.

“Doesn’t matter now, does it?” Alan replied. “You got what you wanted. Cruze is dead.”

While Alan ranted on at the federal agent and David, Mac watched Ariel staring at Cruze’s body on the floor. Feeling his eyes on her, she lifted her eyes to meet his. Fear filled them before she turned away.

Alan continued, “I wouldn’t be surprised if those hit men outside wearing FBI jackets really did belong to you.”

“If it wasn’t for your agents being either crooked or incompetent,” Ariel interjected, “that animal would still be locked up.  But you couldn’t put Cruze away and keep him there, so someone had to do the job for you.”

“Like your husband?” David asked.

Pointing a long dagger of a fingernail in his direction, Ariel turned to the police chief. “You better watch who you go throwing accusations at.”

“I had nothing to do with Cruze’s extracurricular activities,” her husband said.

“You’re full of it, Richardson,” Delaney said. “Cruze is dead. You aren’t on his payroll anymore. So you can cut the crap and tell us who offed him. Or were you the target? Maybe Ray Bonito decided he was tired of being number two, especially after ten years of running the operation, and decided to eliminate the top man—and his lawyer—to clear the field.” 

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Ariel replied. “Bonito is a certified psychopath. Not only that, but he was none too happy when Cruze’s conviction was overturned. When you make an insane man unhappy, you have a gourmet recipe for a blood bath.”

“Ray Bonito is crazy,” her husband said. “I haven’t seen him in over a year and a half. He’s become paranoid, which happens to many men who get into bed with organized crime figures. After years of looking over your shoulder to see who’s waiting to stab you in the back—literally— you can’t help but become paranoid and cut yourself off from everyone.” He added, “The only ones he’ll have face-to-face meetings with are his most trusted men.”

“And that doesn’t include you?” Mac asked.

“You want to know how paranoid Ray Bonito is?” Richardson asked. “I’ll tell you. Tommy Cruze couldn’t even get in to see him. Ever since he got out, Tommy’s been trying to have a face to face with Bonito—and Bonito works for Cruze, not the other way around.”

Special Agent Delaney asked, “Are you saying Cruze was still running things while he was in jail?”

“Working remotely is all the rage nowadays,” the mob lawyer said with a chuckle.

“Bonito set up this hit,” Ariel said in a harsh voice while casting a glance at Tommy Cruze’s body once more.  “Ray Bonito is the one you should be questioning.”

“What’s Bonito’s favorite MO?” Mac gestured at the two dead bodies being examined by the county medical examiner. “Firing squad or poison?”

Richardson shook his head. “Poison? That’s much too tame for Ray Bonito.” Looking around, he pointed at the two men twisted in death poses on the floor. “I haven’t a clue about who did this. The only thing I can think of is the lady who runs the place. After all, everything we ate and drank came from her.”

Examining the array of overturned coffee mugs, smashed creamers, and sugar packets scattered all over the floor where they had fallen when the table was overturned, Mac asked, “Was there anyone else here when you came in?”

“Besides that woman and her weird daughter—”

Richardson backed up when David abruptly stepped up to him. “That ‘weird daughter’ is a child. You don’t know anything about her—the way she lives, where she comes from. So when you talk about that little girl, you do it with respect. Do you understand me?”

Ariel jumped to her husband’s defense. “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

Pulling her back from where she was chastising the police chief, Richardson nodded his head. Beads of sweat poured down the sides of his face to soak the collar of his shirt.

Mac pointed at a table for two against the window looking out onto the deck. The napkins had been used, but the table was clear of any food or drinks. “Was someone sitting here?”

“When we came in,” Richardson said. “A couple. But then, right after we sat down, they got into a fight and left.”

“Fight over what?” Mac asked.

“I have no idea.” Richardson shook his head. “Suddenly out of the blue, the wife had a meltdown and stormed out with her wuss husband chasing after her.”

Mac recalled hearing the wife, Nora, on the audio saying that she wished he could be a man for once.  Now Richardson referred to the husband as a “wuss.” “Did you or Cruze or any of his people or associates say anything to them?”

Richardson shook his head. “None of us knew them or ever saw either of them before.” He cocked his head at Mac. “Are you thinking that maybe they planted the poison that killed Cruze?”

“Tommy Cruze made a fortune out of making enemies,” Delaney told him. “There’s no telling what score that couple may have been settling.”

“We didn’t decide we were even coming here until this morning,” Richardson said. “Those two were here when we came in. If they came to kill Cruze, then how did they know we were going to be here, and how did they do it?”

“Good question,” Mac said while watching David answer his radio.

The police chief’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped before he turned away and stepped into the reception area away from them. “Are you kidding me?”