T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality (24 page)

Several people had drifted into the gym’s juice bar and it was beginning to resemble the Block during happy hour. Only this crowd was partaking in health drinks instead of booze and they all looked like they’d walked right out
of People
magazine. But the familiar camaraderie was there.

“So what happened?”

“Nothing really. Jared and this guy Walton talked for a while. They agreed to get together later and that was about it.”

“Did Jared seem pleased to see Walton?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. He didn’t ask the guy to sit down and join us.”

“Where were they meeting later?”

“Umm.” He paused to think. “A bar I think. I remember that the roommate said drinks would be on him. Club something.

Club Capers.
The same bar imprinted on the outside of the matchbook I’d found in the shooter’s pocket. I’d checked the phonebook and there were no other bars that began with the word “club.” Had Walton conspired to trick Jared into a meeting, only to kidnap him? Or were Jared and Walton working together? Either way, Walton’s father had access to crucial information, which may have fueled the scam. The senator was the head of the finance committee and used a laptop. All the senators had one, compliments of taxpayers. There was no telling where the computer had been and who had access to it.

I finished my smoothie, put some money on the counter, thanked Matt for his time, and headed out.

“You ever decide to get back in the dating game …” the sentence drifted off as he raised an eyebrow at me.

Like
a jazzy heartbeat, the dynamic group Foreplay pulsed from Bose speakers in Bill’s place when I picked him up for our lunch date. He never got bent out of shape over my independence, odd
occupation, or propensity to be the person behind the wheel. Sprawled on the sofa, he was reading a movie trade magazine. Celebrity weddings was the cover story.

“Hey!” he said and pointed to a candid paparazzi photo. “This gown would look incredible on you, don’t you think?”

The thought of stuffing my body into layers of white satin and chiffon made me nauseous. I changed the subject to something more palatable: food.

“Hey, yourself,” I said, planting a kiss on his mouth. “We still on for lunch?”

“I’d love to eat with you,” he said, pulling me onto the sofa. “Or, we could skip lunch.”

If it weren’t for the Chesterfield case and the sickening vision of a wedding dress he’d wedged in my head, I would have skipped lunch in a second. Delayed it, anyway. “Save that thought,” I told him. “Right now, you and I and Ox are going to dine at Club Capers.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep.” I was sure I hadn’t been followed after leaving the health club, but took a quick look at the street below Bill’s condo anyway. Somebody had sent the shooter and could easily send another one after me. In addition to the Glock strapped to my side, I had the Sig in place around my ankle and a razor-sharp Browning knife in my pocket. The pocketknife was perfectly weighted for throwing, a skill Ox had taught me. The three-inch blade was the perfect length to quietly drop someone at close range, a neat trick the U.S. government had taught me. I’d also put the CAR-16 assault rifle in the rear floorboard of the Benz. With thirty rounds per magazine, a short barrel, and collapsible stock, it was a perfect combat weapon to conceal in a vehicle. It was entirely too much firepower for a civilian to be carrying around, but both times I’d chosen to use it in the past, it had come in quite handy.

If Ox and I were correct about Jared’s life being tied in to the SIPA transfers, the grim reaper wasn’t knocking on the door, it was pounding. Tomorrow was July first. I wasn’t sure what I was up against and I damn sure wasn’t going to be caught unprepared.

The only comforting thing about the man Spud shot was that he must have been an amateur. Ox confirmed it was the same person who’d come looking for me a day earlier, and agreed the man was a novice assassin. Had he been a professional, he never would have tried to hit me in my home. Besides that, a pro would carry a different weapon. Revolvers equipped with silencers were much louder and drew more attention than semiautomatics. And if he was a hit man subversive enough to do the job in my own house, he probably would have succeeded. On the other hand, amateurs took lives everyday. Being hit by a high-paid professional didn’t make you any deader than being hit by a two-bit street thug. Dead was dead.

Bill shot me a quizzical look. “Isn’t Club Capers a titty bar, Jersey?”

“I’m not sure. But if the menu doesn’t look appealing, we’ll just have a drink while you admire the dancing, then go somewhere else for chow.”

“I bet this has something to do with the Chesterfield case,” he mused, replying to a text message on his phone. “Not that I’m complaining. I haven’t been to Club Capers since a bachelor party last year.”

I watched to make sure he set the alarm and locked the dead bolt. If Bill thought I was acting strangely, he didn’t mention it. He was probably too energized by the thought of lunch at Club Capers to notice oddities.

We collected Ox at the Block, and during the half-hour it took us to find Club Capers, we didn’t pick up a tail. During
the fifteen seconds it took us to be seated inside Club Capers, we picked up a young dancer. Assuming that two guys and a woman entering a strip joint were looking for action, she shimmied into a seat at our table and introduced herself as Honey. She wore a short silk robe that was held shut by one minuscule button at the waistline. There were no garments underneath except a G-string.

Ox nodded pleasantly, as though she was a shopper in line at the grocery store rather than a nearly nude girl who oozed sex appeal. “Thanks, but we’re just here for some lunch. Is this the only Club Capers or is there another location?”

“We’re the only one I know of,” she said, leaning forward to reveal lots of pale, unblemished skin before nodding in the direction of the back corner. “The Capers bar is back there. It’s got televisions and a separate entrance. That way, men can tell their wives they’re at a sports bar.”

“Don’t do this any longer than you have to,” he told the dancer, slipping her a ten-dollar bill. “It’ll make you age pretty quick.”

“You’re probably right,” Honey answered, tucking the money into something beneath her jacket. She sauntered off in search of another mark, putting her time to good use until it was her turn to dance on stage again.

Capers bar sat on the other side of double glass doors and, as promised, it resembled a sports bar strewn with ESPN-tuned television screens. An assortment of bistro tables were sandwiched between a U-shaped bar and a wall laden with cozy sofa and chair arrangements.

We situated ourselves at a table in the far corner where Ox and I had our backs to a wall and could see both entrances. We could also see who came and went through the swinging kitchen doors. Although he appeared completely relaxed, Ox was as tuned into
our surroundings as I was. Enjoying himself, Bill was tuned into the circulating dancers.

The darkened bar was unusually busy for a Sunday afternoon and to my surprise, the majority of customers were eating lunch. I supposed the ambience made a cheeseburger well worth the twelve-dollar menu price. We ordered iced teas and three hamburger platters with hand-dipped onion rings and hoped for the best. I pulled the matchbook out of my pocket and passed it to Ox.

“You make anything of this?” I asked him.

He studied the scribbles on the inside cover for a few seconds, looked at the cover that read CLUB CAPERS with an etching of a nude woman, then returned his gaze to the writing.

“It’s today’s date—” he glanced at his watch “—and about four thirty. Don’t know about these other scribbles. Looks like ‘collect’?”

“That’s what I thought. But collect what? It could be a collect call, but there’s no telephone number.”

“The ‘Fifth St. left’ looks like directions to somewhere,” he said. “Fifth Street?”

“That’s not enough information for directions,” Bill pointed out, half-listening. “There’d be a house number or something.”

“What else could ‘St.’ stand for?” Ox said.

“Saint? Stop?” Bill brainstormed.

Our teas arrived and we toasted to a successful recovery of Jared. Looking around, I noticed that the bar stools were perfectly spaced, in contrast to the Block, where bar stools ended up everywhere by the end of the evening. The Capers bar had large, leather-covered swivel stools that were affixed permanently to the ground by a single pole support.

“Bar stool. Could it be the fifth bar stool?” Ox said at the exact same time I thought it.

I nodded. “But from which left? It would depend on which door you came in.”

He downed a third of his tea with one smooth gulp. “Maybe the guy hired to hit you was supposed to come here to collect his fee.”

“What?” Bill demanded. “Somebody tried to kill you, Jersey?”

“You haven’t told him,” Ox said.

I shook my head.

Bill stopped staring at a dancer. “When?”

“A guy broke into the Block last night,” I told him. “To eliminate me. Probably to keep me from investigating the Jared Chesterfield case, since that’s all I’m working on right now.”

“A guy? What guy?”

“We don’t know who, or why.”

“I only wanted you to help Lolly with the cheating-husband thing. I never expected that you’d get so involved and that you could get hurt.” He shook his head and went back to watching the dancer with a vertical worry line creasing an otherwise smooth forehead.

“It’s what I do, Bill.” The burgers arrived, preempting further explanation.

Frowning, he sprinkled salt on his onion rings. “You mean, what you
used
to do. You’re retired, remember?”

“Retired or not, it’s one reason why you shouldn’t want to marry me.” I was actually
glad
I’d stumbled into the Chesterfield mess, even though it threw a curve ball at my retirement plans. Putting away bad guys always has given me a euphoric high. I just prayed that we caught them in time.

Ox unceremoniously dug into his burger.

“Well, soon you really will be retired and done with this stuff for good,” Bill said and ate an onion ring. “Then you’ll come around and deal with your gamophobia. That’s a fear of marriage. I read an article on it.”

The corners of Ox’s mouth went up, just a little, as he took another bite of hamburger. To stop further discussion of my impending nuptials, I dug into my food, too. The burger was great—juicy and served on a freshly baked bun. It may have been worth twelve dollars, even if not delivered by a topless waitress.

“Think I know which side the fifth bar stool is on,” Ox said between bites. Without making a show of doing so, my eyes scanned the bar area. A burly man in his early fifties was settling himself onto the fifth bar stool from the left, if viewed from the bar entrance. He glanced from his watch to the doorway and back to his watch. I questioned Ox with my eyes.

“He’s the friend of the guy that made Spud angry.” It was thug number two. The one who hadn’t stumbled across Cracker and gotten himself shot to death in my home.

I drank some tea. “He paying any attention to us?”

“Not yet,” Ox said.

“Bill, why don’t you go back to Club Capers for a little while? Enjoy the entertainment on the other side of those swinging doors,” I said.

He started to protest.

“She’ll be fine,” Ox said. Wordlessly, Bill stood and walked out of the bar.

Our server stopped by to check on us. We assured her everything was good. Even in his preoccupied state, the man on the fifth bar stool took a few moments to admire the server’s bare breasts and afterward, her retreating backside. Then his eyes swept the room and fear registered when he recognized Ox. He shoved himself off the stool and ran to the door. Ox, moving more gracefully than any two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man ought to be able to, caught up with the guy before he made it outside. Right behind them, my hand tightened on the grip of the Glock as Ox used one of the man’s arms as leverage to shove him outside to the sidewalk.

The man jerked his head backward into Ox’s chin and frantically drew a gun from his jacket pocket. Ox’s hold on the man’s forearm strengthened to a bone-crushing force. Wincing in pain and unable to turn his body around to face us, he dropped the gun and stopped struggling. I retrieved the weapon while Ox instructed the guy to keep walking. A couple of kids on skateboards gave us a wide berth as they wheeled past.

“Fellow tried to pull a gun on me,” Ox said, unconcerned, as though commenting on the weather.

“Well, that was a crazy thing to do,” I replied.

The three of us made our way to the rear of the Club Capers building and, after I patted the thug down and found no more weapons, Ox slammed him against a Dumpster.

“You’ve made a mistake,” the man stammered as he struggled to remain on his feet. “I don’t know what you want.” He wore an off-brand polyester suit with a white button-down shirt and no tie. His body bulged beneath the disheveled fabric, but the mass was soft weight with no solid muscle behind it.

“I think you do,” I said.

“I don’t even know who you are!”

“I think you do,” I repeated.

Breathing heavy, his eyes darted back and forth from Ox to me.

“I’m the woman you and your buddy were hired to drop. Problem is, I’m not ready to check out just yet.”

Leaving me to deal with the rent-a-thug, Ox headed back inside the club. Our guy had come to meet someone at Club Capers, and that someone could very well have shown up. Walking into a club, even an adult club, Ox was about as unobtrusive as an elephant. But whomever hired the shooter might recognize me.

I studied the heavyset man more closely. His demeanor verified that he wasn’t a professional hit man. “Tell me who hired you and this encounter will be easier for us both.”

He turned to run. I threw a low side-kick to the back of his knee. The instant he went down, I cuffed one of his hands to a thin metal pole that ran vertically along the corner of the Dumpster, and pressed on his damaged knee with my foot just because he’d angered me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His free hand raked across a balding head.