Lee gestured toward the garage door. The big man was trussed and gagged with duct tape and seated on the floor of the garage against the door. He had a loop of clothesline run twice around his neck and secured to the frame of the garage door.
Lee touched the button of a garage door opener clipped to his belt. The door banged and ground and rose, lifting the big man to his feet by the noose. Lee tapped the button, and the door stopped at halfway open. The big man stood on tiptoes, making strangling noises through the duct-tape gag.
“You’ll be hanging with him if you don’t get chatty,” Lee said and leaned back on a stout wood tool-bench. The pegboard above it held a selection of files, awls, picks, hammers, and pliers.
“You’ll kill him.”
“I might. That’s up to you.”
“What did he tell you?”
“You ask a lot of questions for a guy duct-taped into a party chair in my garage.”
“You’re fucked, friend. You’re so fucked, and you don’t know it.”
“Then I have nothing to lose,” Lee said and selected an ice pick from the pegboard.
Ray-Bans went quiet except for breathing through his nose. His partner’s breath whistled, and his toes scraped the concrete floor.
“Your big asshole-buddy told me you traced me through the deal I had in Gainesville. He told me I’m kind of a dead end. I’m a cut-out. You need me to talk to find out who else was in the deal on my side. And when I talked, I was no more use to you or your people.”
It was all lies; the big guy told Lee nada. He didn’t wake up until after Lee had him rigged up in the garage door gallows. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out these guys were connected to Dwayne and his egghead girlfriend somehow.
Ray-Bans glared into Lee’s eyes. His breathing became shallow. He was trying hard to not look at the five-inch spike in Lee’s fist.
“You even know who you work for? His name is Neal Harnesh, right? Some English prick, right? Think he cares about you?”
Lee dragged the point of the pick across Ray-Ban’s knee.
“It’s the money, isn’t it? It’s marked somehow. Maybe not all of it, but enough of it. No one’s spent the marked ones yet, and your boss is losing his patience. And I’m the key.”
Lee balanced the point ever so gently over the place where the knee joint joins at the meniscus.
“You tell them I was gone. Tell them I wasn’t here.”
Ray-Bans stiffened, eyes locked on Lee’s. He stank. Greasy sweat popped from every pore and ran down his face, his throat and stained his suit at the crotch and armpits.
“Tell them your buddy ran off on you.”
Lee kicked Ray-Bans in the chest and the folding chair went over hard. The little man let out a grunt. Lee held the point of the ice pick to the bent knee. He turned the handle just enough, so the needle point parted the silk stretched over the joint.
“Only first you’re going to tell me how the money was marked.”
Ray-Bans talked.
They found the two phony agents parked on the long-term lot, at the Boise airport. An elderly couple returning from a week in Las Vegas heard squealing and kicking coming from a car parked two slots from their Wagoneer. They investigated and were shocked to find two naked men, one wearing only sunglasses, wrapped in duct tape in the back seat of a Mercedes. They dialed 911, then took pictures of the two wide-eyed men with their cell phone and tweeted it to their friends while waiting for the cops.
#uwontbelievethis
“Some of the money is bad.”
Dwayne knew it was trouble when the burner issued to him by Hammond buzzed on his nightstand.
“What’s that mean?”
“Some of the bundles were painted with UV ink. I found about five percent of my stash is marked.”
“We run it under a light, and we’re good.”
“Unless you and your girlfriend spent some of it.”
“Haven’t touched it. But we paid out everyone’s shares.” No names. Even on a throwaway.
“Call them. They can pick up a UV lamp at Walmart.”
“Then we burn it.”
“Get rid of it any way you like. Just so it doesn’t tie back to you.”
“You want to tell me where you came across this?”
“Not on the phone. We’ll talk soon.”
The line went dead.
Dwayne had two calls to make.
Four days later, the offices of Wounded Warriors in Franklin, Tennessee received a large Federal Express delivery containing close to six million dollars in hundreds and fifties. No note. No name on the return address in Clermont, Florida that turned out to be a shuttered Dairy Queen on 98. The sender paid at FedEx in cash, and no one could remember what he looked like.
18
The Raj
The Ocean Raj was never going to be mistaken for the Calypso.
It was an ugly hulk, painted pumpkin orange above the waterline. It resembled nothing more than a skateboard with a blunt prow and a long, flat foredeck. The bridge and crew quarters squatted aft over the engines. The main deck was empty, and the holds were battened down, making it ride high in the water where it was anchored in the middle of the inner harbor off the piers along the Kasr Raes Al Tin.
Dwayne and Boats arrived early in the morning at the harbor master’s office in the Port of Alexandria. They wanted the Raj brought into a quayside berth for the next two weeks. The harbormaster explained that he had a very big family of ungrateful children and many problems to deal with and his mother was ill, and there were no open berths available for a month or more. A discreet envelope packed with Yankee greenbacks revealed an empty mooring along a pier that the harbormaster had apparently missed, what with all the personal problems he was currently dealing with. One misses details like that when one is preoccupied. His mother was very ill, you
