AKA Charlie McQueen

 

   

ROCKLAND, MAINE

The black Lincoln entered the town from the north. In it was one man. Big. Dark and swarthy. He had a huge diamond ring on the pinky finger of the hand wrapped around the steering wheel as he drove slowly down the main street of the town. Past the stores, the two bars and the three restaurants. Past the boats in the harbour, both anchored and heading out to sea and the pleasure craft, all neat and tidy, in their docking bays. He passed the single office building that housed all of the city’s departments, on two floors with Venetian blinds pleasure craft and a third floor, with the windows all covered with light-coloured curtains.

He pulled over in front of the municipal building and went inside. He made an enquiry, then left and walked up the street to a restaurant where Ron Rowan sat reading a daily morning newspaper from Bangor.

Ron took a look at the guy who took a seat at the next table and ordered a coffee and some toast. He then turned and looked at Ron, who was eyeing him suspiciously.

“How you doin’?” The stranger asked.

“Just fine?” Ron said. “Where you headed?”

“South.” the stranger said.

“Boston or New York. ‘Cause’s that’s all that’s south of here.”

The guy just stared at Ron for a moment then said

“Lookin’ for someone…You live here?”

“Yep.”

“Ever heard of a guy named Jack Kingston?”

“Can’t say as I have, and I know just about everybody in this town. It’s not all that big.”

“Hmmm.” The stranger said.

“Why you looking for this guy?” Ron asked.

“Just a favor for a friend.” The stranger replied and then turned his attention to his coffee and toast.

Ten minutes later, he put a ten-dollar bill on the table, got up. He nodded to Ron, then walked up the street to his car.

A couple minutes later, the Lincoln drove by heading north.

~ 2 ~

The first thing Charlie McQueen did upon waking up in the morning was to listen. 

He listened carefully and silently for a good couple of minutes. He knew his house and had gotten to the point where he  could pretty much identify even a slight squeak and where it came from. 

Satisfied that no one else was actually in the house with him, he pulled himself up and shifted his feet onto the floor. He then took his H&K 9 mm pistol from the night table and left the bedroom, to check the exterior, because you could never be sure who might be lurking out there.

He pulled on his jeans and a T-shirt, which had pretty much been his uniform all his life. On his way out of the bedroom, he caught a look at himself in the mirror. He was in his late twenties. His body was lean. His hair was not too long and not too short, and a colour approaching, but not quite succeeding at being red, owing to his Irish ancestry.  He was what most people, and several of the unattached women in Rockland, would consider a good-looking guy. 

Charlie walked through the house quietly in his bare feet, making sure he hadn’t missed anything. He checked all three doors and all the windows. Truth be told, he felt a little paranoid about this morning ritual. But he had learned the hard way that better safe than sorry was the only way people like him were allowed to move through life.

Charlie looked out the back window of his kitchen, which gave him a picturesque view of the Rockland, Maine harbour, littered with a combination of fishing boats and pleasure craft. The sea was calm today, as it was on most days in the summer. The sun was already fairly high in the sky. Charlie was a night owl and seldom got to sleep before 3 AM. But that was the nature of the beast Charlie rode. He couldn’t hit the pillow till the last games on the West Coast were done.

Charlie made himself a coffee and stepped outside onto a back deck that overlooked a well-tended yard that rolled gently down to the Atlantic Ocean. The ocean air was salty and warm. He sat down at the table and just stared out at the sea. It had always had an effect on him that was both calming and invigorating at the same time. Charlie wondered about how that worked, but not for very long. He finished his coffee and headed in to shower and get re-dressed. He was meeting up with his guy, Ron Rowan, for lunch at the Home Kitchen Cafe, a restaurant Charlie owned on Main Street, which was really Highway 1, that ran up and down the eastern seaboard.

~ 3 ~

Ron Rowan was sitting at a table under an umbrella in front of the Home Kitchen Cafe, chewing on a toothpick, with a half-empty coffee cup in front of him and an iPad propped up beside it. 

Ron was a large man, who looked just like what he once was, which was a defensive guard for the Green Bay Packers. Eight full seasons, which was a lifetime and a half for a lineman. But Ron was lucky to have gone through it concussion-free. He was also smart with his money, never married or divorced and was able to move comfortably to Rockland, buy the Domino’s pizza franchise that pretty much ran itself and set up a personal investigation business with a night school degree he earned through the course of his last two off-seasons. 

Charlie McQueen was his main client and his best friend.

Charlie pulled up into the lot beside the restaurant and parked his Toyota 4Runner. A moment later, he plopped himself down on a chair across from Ron. A waitress poked her head out the door and Charlie just pointed at Ron’s coffee cup.

“Beautiful day.” Ron said.

“Yessiree. So what’s goin’ on in sleepy old Rockland, my friend?”

“Actually,” Ron said, “There is something.” With that, he turned his iPad to show Charlie the screen. “You recognize this piece of work?” Charlie was looking at a large man in a dark suit, who was sitting at what was the table next Ron’s.

“No, who is he?”

“Dunno. But he was looking for a guy named Jack Kingston. That name ring a bell?”

The waitress, whose name was Denise but everybody called her Dennie, brought Charlie his coffee, with cream and sugar added. 

As she walked away Charlie took another look at the image on the iPad. “Never seen him before. Did you talk to him?” he said.

“Yeah. A bit. Wasn’t the friendliest guy I’ve ever met. I told him there was nobody in Rockland by that name, ‘cause I knew everybody and would know that.”

“Has he left town yet?”

“Yeah, about half an hour ago. So this Jack Kingston? You know anything about him?”

Charlie leaned back and took a deep breath. “No, I can’t say as I do.”

Ron smiled, then rubbed his right eye a bit. It watered a lot. Probably, he thought, from too many hard jolts over the NFL years. He stared at Charlie who was still looking at the man on the iPad screen.

“Your business, Charlie, is the only thing in this town that would attract someone like that. New York City. Thousand-dollar suit with a bulge under the jacket. Big gas-guzzling Lincoln. The whole mobster costume.”

“But you don’t know that for sure, now do you?” Charlie pushed the iPad back over to Ron’s side of the table.

“The only reason I ask is a cliche…you know, knowledge is power. If I have a little of one, I have a lot of the other. And since part of my job is protecting you, well, you can see how that all fits together.”

Charlie leaned back in his chair. “OK. Let’s suppose that mook was looking for me. What then? You gonna take him out in your boat and dump him in the bay? They’ll just send another guy. But like you said, he left town. So the point of you knowing any more than you already do about me is kind of moot.”

Ron cracked a smile. “You’re a clever guy, Charlie McQueen. I do admire that quality. But it still leaves me at a loss. What did this guy want?”

“Oh,” Charlie said letting out a barely audible sigh, “He didn’t want anything other than confirmation of my location. Then they would send a crew and turn this town inside out trying to find me. And that would get pretty fuckin’ messy.”

“And you felt the need to keep me in the dark about this shit? Come on Charlie.” 

Denise the waitress appeared with their breakfast. Bacon and three eggs over easy with home fries. They had the same thing almost every time they met there in the morning, so there was no real need to take an order. She promised to be back with more coffee and slipped inside the restaurant. Charlie took a bite of his bacon. Then he took another deep breath. “Well, I guess I really do owe you an explanation then.’ he said. “You’re not in a hurry, are you?”

“No Charlie, I’ve got all day.”

“First of all,” Charlie said. “We probably have to close down the office and pack everything up. We need to do it over the next few days at the latest. If they sent one guy they’ll send another and sooner or later they’ll find me.”

Ron quietly ate his breakfast. He knew Charlie well enough to understand that he never said anything he didn’t mean. Charlie was a careful man. Like most smart gamblers, he thought a lot before he made a move. 

“Not a problem,” Ron said. “I’ll call the kids and they’ll take everything down.” The kids were the two teenage boys Ron inherited when he moved in with a lady named Celia Thomas.

“Good.” Charlie said. “OK. So you want to know who I really am.” Charlie took a sip of his coffee. “Tell the truth, sometimes I wonder about that myself. Well, I really am Charlie McQueen. But I was also that Jack Kingston guy. A few years back.”

Charlie took a sip of his coffee and a mouthful of food. After it was all down the gullet, he started talking.

“I was twenty-three. I had just earned a Master's degree in applied mathematics at MIT and headed to New York to make my fortune. With the kind of math skills I had, I could have done all kinds of things. But I used those skills all through my time at MIT to bet on pro sports. I studied all the stats, checked out all the injuries, read all the player profiles, and built probability matches for every possible team scenario in both the NBA and the NFL. I got to New York with my Master’s, a couple hundred grand in a savings account, my tuition paid off and an idea to open a sports book there. Same as I had up at MIT only bigger.”

Charlie took a sip of his coffee, then chewed on a piece of bacon. “At MIT, I roomed with a guy named Jamie Glass, who was a math nerd like me. Only his obsession was with the market. We graduated the same year, but I hung around to get my Masters. Jamie got a job with an elite equities firm in Manhattan, ‘cause his folks were connected that way. When I got there, we became roomies again.”

Charlie paused again to wolf down some of his eggs and toast. Ron was watching him with keen interest. As he listened to the story, it occurred to him how little about his friend and client he actually knew. Some investigator he turned out to be, he thought.

After another sip of coffee, Charlie continued. “Jamie didn’t really have much interest in sports betting, and he was a trust fund kid so he didn’t have to work at all, which gave him a pretty aggressive attitude when it came to the market. He lived in a beautiful brownstone close to Central Park that his parents gave him as a graduation gift. There was enough room there for me to set up shop in the spare bedroom. Jamie worked downtown and between work and his nightlife, we hardly ever saw each other.

“I put together a small setup and spent my afternoons doing research and my nights monitoring the games. I was a bit younger then and could get by on a couple hours of sleep at night. 

“Sometimes in the late afternoons, I would take a basketball down to the park at the end of the block and shoot hoops for some exercise and fresh air. This is where I met a guy named LaMarr Washington. LaMarr was about twenty years old. And since he was in the park almost every time I went there, we started to play a little one-on-one. Slowly, over the course of the summer, we became friends. He found out what I did and I found out a bit about him. His dad was a semi-famous jazz musician and his mom was a doctor, which explained why he lived uptown and didn’t appear to do much of anything that I could see.”

Ron tapped on the window and held up his coffee cup. A moment later Denise the waitress came out with a pot of coffee and some little containers of cream. She filled both cups, took away the empty plates and left.

Ron said. “This LaMarr guy. Sounds like he was black.”

“Yeah, he was. And he was pretty cool. He had dropped out of Columbia after two years and started dealing weed. This was back before it was legalized. He was a lid dealer. But he did most of his selling down in the money towers, blissfully aware that the white guys were mostly weed smokers because anything harder would seriously fuck up your judgement.

“So LaMarr knew his way around. I asked him how a black kid was able to move around down there without attracting a lot of attention from the local constabulary. He said it was as easy as just riding a bike and carrying his weed in a courier pouch. ‘Those motherfuckers are completely invisible down there’, he told me. And he was right. Bike couriers were so ubiquitous that nobody really saw them.”

Charlie paused and looked out at the bay across the street. Then, after another sip of coffee, he snapped back into story-telling mode.

“LaMarr and I started talking about sports betting and he indicated to me that he could put me onto a bar that ran a small sports book and catered to a lot of Wall Street types who couldn’t stop gambling even after work. I told him that I might be interested in seeing that, so one evening he took me down there. 

“The bar was basically a hole in the wall down on Beaver Street which was right around the corner from the business end of Wall Street. It was called the Eager Beaver. LaMarr went over and talked to the bartender for a few seconds, then motioned for me to follow him up the back stairs. This is where I met Francesco Collucci. 

“Francesco wanted to be called Frank. Guess he thought that made him more acceptable to his waspy clientele. But make no mistake, Frank was pure guinea from his slicked-back hair to his monogrammed cufflinks to the huge diamond ring on his pinkie finger. He walked and talked the part like he was born to it. And though he would never be one of them, he understood his customers pretty well. They loved to play the long shots in the evening like they did all day at work. He made most of his money on the wide spreads, and he would make it a couple grand at a time.

“Lamarr introduced me as a guy who liked to bet on sports. Frank knew instantly that I wasn’t Wall Street or even close. But he just shook my hand and wished me a lot of luck.

“LaMarr and I hung around and watched the suits trickle in until the place was jammed. Apparently, it was this way five nights a week. The bar had about a dozen monitors that showed nothing but sports and financial news. Everybody drank a lot, and  smoked a lot of week in the basement washroom. But the real money came from the gambling Jones all those Wall Streeters had in their veins. They had money to burn and they loved to burn it. Frank had a trio of very good-looking Italian girls who took the bets at the bar. It was a pretty sweet setup as those things go.

“After LaMarr got me initiated, I started coming back regularly, making bets. Nothing too big, just a C-note here and there. Then, over the next couple of months, I started upping it. On a good night, I could take down at least five grand.

“After a couple weeks or so of this heavier action, Frank called me up to his office. He wanted to know who the hell I really was and how I ended up sitting at the bar with a bunch of bluebloods and taking so much of his money. 

“I made up some cock and bull story about always being lucky when it came football and hoops. Mostly because I was a rabid fan and read the sports pages a lot. I was pretty sure he didn’t buy it. But he also didn’t kick me out on my ass. After a while, we kinda bonded. I think he just wanted to keep his eye on me. But I played along and backed off a bit. To tell you the truth, running your own book is a fairly lonely gig. I liked the vibe of the place. Even got to know a couple of guys who knew Jaimie Glass. One day, Frank and I were talking about online gambling and I made the mistake of tipping my hand and telling him, you know, theoretically, that I could set up his book online and that he could take bets from anywhere, not just the local bar patrons.

“Well, that’s all I had to say. This guy was more aggressive than a mongoose in a cobra pit and it wasn’t too long before I was setting up a system for him and we were partners after a fashion. Badda boom badda bing.”

Charlie and Ron finished their coffees and got up. They crossed Highway One and walked together down to one of the piers that jutted out into the harbour. The sky above them was cloudless and the sun was warm as they walked the length of the pier. They eventually came to a 40-foot cruiser tied in a slip. They climbed on board and sat down on the rear deck. Charlie produced a joint and lit it up taking a deep toke. He passed the joint to Ron, who took a hit and passed it back.

“You know, I am going to miss this place. I mean it’s a sleepy little burg in the north end of nowhere. But I really got to like it here.”

“What makes you so sure you have to go?” Ron asked.

“Call it instinct. These guys are predators and I have something that belongs to one of them.”

“So why don’t you finish the story,” Ron said, “And maybe, we can figure out a way through this that doesn’t involve you having to disappear.”

Charlie took another toke on the joint and then offered it to Ron, who declined. He didn’t want to be whacked-out stoned for this.

“OK. So…I set up a system for Frank. LaMarr got one of his friends to manage all the hardware and programming and we found another geek from MIT to teach LaMarr how to run the whole show. It only took about a month to iron out all the kinks and get it up and running. After that, it was a licence to print money. Frank just sat in his office drinking his good scotch, watching sports and making mucho dinero. I didn’t come around to the bar much after that. Except to pick up my cut, all in cash, which I stashed in an oversized safe deposit box at Citibank.

Charlie got up and walked to the rail of the boat. He looked out at the harbour and noticed he could see a long way. The air was crystal clear and it felt good to breathe it. Then he turned around and leaned on the rail.

“One day, it was a Saturday, Frank called me and insisted that I come down that afternoon. He wanted to introduce me to someone. I got to the bar at around three. There was nobody around. All the patrons were sitting in their multi-million dollar studio apartments watching college football and hoops and making Frank money online.

“When I arrived, Frank was sitting at one of the tables with an old guy. There were two other guys sitting at the bar, nursing beers. Pretty nasty lookin’ dudes. Frank got up and introduced the old guy as his father, Aldo. Aldo was small but tough looking. He nodded to me without bothering to shake hands. I sat down at the table. Frank got busy explaining how I was the guy who took the whole sports book online and that his profits had basically quadrupled over the three months since. He made me sound like I was some sort of fucking genius. Then the old man asked me if I thought I might like to do the same thing for some people he knew out in New Rochelle.

“About ten alarms went off in my head when he asked me that. It felt like I was walking into the lion’s den. We talked about it a bit more, and the more the old man talked about it, the more it felt like it was about money laundering as opposed to sports betting. I told him I’d have to think about it because I had a number of projects going on and needed to figure out if I would have time.

“I was real polite about it and they seemed to be OK with that. So I got my ass out of there. I hung around for a while at a Starbucks across the street until I saw the old man and his two goons leave and get into their car. Then I went back. Frank was in his office. I was really pissed and let him know it. It was a pretty substantial argument, which fortunately for me didn’t get violent. But one of the things that became clear to me was that Frank was hung up about proving his worth to his father. 

“I didn’t really need any of his Freudian crap. All I wanted to do, at that point, was cut ties and get free. Besides, I had already set up my own system at the house and was pulling in low-to-mid five figures every week. This is a country full of stupid gamblers, Ron. I didn’t need the mafia grief.”

“A lot of people in this country think they can buy just about anything they want.” Ron said.

“Tell me about it. Fortunately none of the Italians, not even LaMarr,  knew exactly where I lived, and I was careful not to tell anyone. My business with Frank was always cash transactions, so I never really needed a bank account, just a box. All Frank had was the number of a burner phone that I used to deal with him. Eventually, after he bugged me about setting up the other shop in the burbs, I told him that I was bowing out altogether. I was throwing away a lot of money, but these people are like zombies. All they want to do is suck the brain out of your head and fry it up.”

“So it sounds like you got away clean. No harm, no foul.” Ron got up and went into the galley. He came back with a bottle of scotch and two glasses.

“Yeah, you would think so,” Charlie said, “And if that was the end of the story, you’d be right. But it’s not the end. Even though I thought it was at the time.”

Ron poured out a couple of glasses of scotch. He took a sip and so did Charlie.

“So I called it quits.” Charlie said, “Settled up with Frank. Took my money and headed home. After that, it was business as usual for a while. Periodically, I would grab a coffee with LaMarr and he would fill me in. The sports book was doing just fine. No hard feelings. In fact, according to him, nobody ever mentioned my name.”

“You had to feel pretty good about that.” Ron said as he took a small sip of the scotch.

“Oh yeah, I did. After a month or so, I kinda forgot all about it. Met a girl that Jamie introduced me to. She was a creative director at a big ad agency that he met at some party and got to be friends with. She was about four years older than me, but didn’t seem to care and neither did I. Her name was Terry Franco, and she was pretty hot. We didn’t see each other a whole lot. She was married to her work, and mostly used me to get laid on the nights when she had enough energy left for a little romance. She was bright and sexy and sort of in awe of the fact that I lived in Manhattan and didn’t actually work for anyone. It was all good.

“Then one day, my little burner phone, rang. It was Frank. He wanted to talk to me, in person, about a new opportunity he‘d come up with. He was friendly and polite. I could have just told him to fuck off and left it right there. But that’s what you call the fatal slip. I said OK. I told him I would meet with him, but no strings, no bullshit, and no old mafiosos.”

Charlie stopped and looked out over the water. He shook his head and then finished off the glass of scotch and poured another one.

“Maybe it’s on me Ron,” Charlie said, “For thinking I could do business with people who operate on a whole other level. It wasn’t Frank’s fault…he was probably raised from birth without any real idea of normal. These are people who live a whole lot further outside the law than I do. I didn’t have to go back and see him that last time. I could have just begged off, hung up, tossed the phone in the river and gone on with my life.”

“Anyway, I digress. 

“I went down to Wall Street and met with him. First of all, he thanked me. Business was booming and he had branched out into college football, baseball and tennis and was investigating European pro soccer. He asked me what I was doing. I told him some bullshit story about probability and statistics that sailed over his head. So then he started to talk about another income stream he was developing that I could maybe help him with. Cocaine. He told me that he had been in touch with a dealer who represented one of the Columbian cartels and that this guy was willing to talk about a pretty sizeable quantity.”

“By sizeable, what did he mean? Ron asked. “A kilo or two?”

“More like twenty. Frank told me he had a retail network out in the burbs where the demand was substantial.” 

Charlie laughed to himself and took another sip of scotch. “This dealer, his name was Felix Sanches, he was asking seventy-two thousand a key, and for whatever crazy ass reason, Frank wanted to get him down to sixty. So I’m sitting there and I can’t believe my ears. 

“I ask him what the hell he needs me for. Just find another dealer who’s willing to go sixty grand a key. And he said they already tried that, but the Sanches dude was the only one with the weight he was looking for. So then I ask him what I have to do with any of this. And he tells me he thinks I’m the best salesman he knows, and if I can’t get this Felix guy down to sixty, then nobody can and he’d be happy to pay the seventy-two or whatever I can get him down to. 

“He also told me he wasn’t too thrilled about the idea of dealing with a greaseball spic, which I thought was pretty rich coming from a greaseball dago. In retrospect, I think he just needed me to over-inflate his importance. These guys are all emotional primates. Stronger, faster, tougher, more controlling. But I’m still not buyin’ it. So he pulls out his last card. Tells me, really quietly, that people who do business with him are hardly ever given the chance to just walk away. I was given that chance and so he figured I owed him, you know, some kind of favour.”

Charlie got up again and walked over to the railing and rubbed his head a bit. Recounting all of this was obviously painful for him. But Ron said nothing, content to just wait him out. Then after a moment, Charlie sat back down and started to talk again.

“So I met up with this Felix guy. It was like something out of a movie. This dude was a total slickster. Wore the best of everything. Shone like a new silver dollar in the park where we met. Came with two badass-looking dudes who hung back while we walked and talked.

“I gave him the pitch. Asked him how many opportunities did he get to offload twenty keys in one deal. Promised him more orders in the future. The guy was quiet. He listened carefully, while I did all the jabbering. When I was finished, we walked a bit without saying anything. Then all he said was ‘I will split the difference with you. Sixty-six. That’s final.’ 

“I wasn’t about to argue with this dude, so we shook hands and he walked off with his two gauchos. Sixty-six times twenty is about a million three. So reported I back to Frank. And he thanked me and asked me if I’d like to be there for the exchange. I got a good laugh out of that and told him I lived up to my end and I was done. Later that day, I got a text from Frank with a map and a time of 11:00 PM that night. The note just read, ‘If you’re still interested.’ Some guys just never know when the fuckin’ soup is cooked, you know.”

“Something tells me that, once again, you didn’t walk away when you had the chance,” Ron said, pouring himself another scotch.

“No, I sorta didn’t. I went to the meet location, which was some old warehouse out in Brooklyn. I brought my binoculars so I could just watch what was going down from a safe distance. Even from a few hundred yards away, I could sense the tension. 

“Then all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. A ton of shooting and then just like fifteen seconds later, it was dead silent. I thought, holy fuck, they all killed each other. So I drove down and snuck inside. Dead bodies, scattered around the two cars. Then I hear a groan. I moved around the the far side of Frank’s car and saw him propped up against the rear door. He was bleeding from his shoulder and his leg and barely conscious. I tied off his leg wound the best I could with his tie and then loaded him into his car. I popped the trunk of my car and stashed the coke from the Columbians’ car and the money that was in Frank’s car.

“I brought Frank to a hospital in Brooklyn and split once they had him on a stretcher. Then I drove back to the warehouse. I was thinking a lot more clearly then. I wiped down everything I thought I had touched, and got my ass out of there. I loaded the drugs and the money into my car. I drove to Manhattan and dropped the coke off at Frank’s office. I really didn’t know what the hell else to do with it. But I kept the money. Figured that was a fair trade for savin’ Frank’s ass. On the way home I called the Brooklyn police with my burner and reported the shooting at the warehouse. Then I drove down to the East River, wiped down the phone and tossed it as far as I could. The next day, I packed up my computers, said goodbye to my lady and Jamie and got the fuck out of Dodge.

“I spent the next three days on the road, looking for a place to roost. Listened to the radio a lot but the news stories about the shooting were vague and didn’t mention any names. And finally, I ended up here.

“I waited about three months, then Face-timed LaMarr to see how everything was going. He told me that Frank had recovered, but had a badly damaged left leg from the shooting. LaMarr and his buddy moved the sports book to another location because Frank sold the bar to a couple of other Italian guys, money launderers. Mostly, Frank just sat around at home, drinking and swimming for rehab while they made money for him.

“I asked LaMarr if Frank ever mentioned me. He said no. So I counted that as a plus. He also told me that Frank was pretty miserable, on account of everything going south like it did. He had to deal with the cops about the shootout in Brooklyn, but since there was no coke and no money, it just looked like a blood feud or territorial squabble and Frank did nothing to dissuade them of that notion. Just another bunch of dead criminal types in Brooklyn. And since they couldn’t find Frank’s prints on any of the weapons, they decided not to press charges. But I think Frank’s dad might have had a say in that.”

Charlie leaned back in his chair and looked at Ron. “And that’s it, right up to three years ago when I got here and set up my sports book.”

Ron scratched his head. “That’s one fuck of a story, Charlie. But it sounds like you got away clean.”

“I thought so too, Ron. I really did.” Charlie said. “Trouble is, I don’t know what he’s looking for me for. Yeah, I took his money, but left him twenty times that value in coke.”

“You know,” Ron said, after thinking about it for a bit. “Maybe you don’t have to leave this place after all. Maybe, we should go down to New York and find out just what this is all about. Otherwise, you might never find a place to call home.”

“I don’t know, Ron. I’m a gambler and I really don’t like the odds here.”

“You don’t have to deal with him directly. Just show me the way and I’ll take care of it. It’s a fact-finding mission is all.”

Charlie got to his feet and started pacing the small deck of the boat. His mind was doing some serious flip-flopping, back and forth between believing that Ron might be onto something and quite the opposite: that this was maybe the dumbest move to make. Ron was a loyal friend and a team player from way back. And now that he understood the whole stinking mess of it, he was still willing to do what he could to help his friend. That kind of loyalty was hard to find these days.

“So what’s your plan, Ron?” Charlie said. “Not capitulating, but genuinely curious.”

“Well, we go find this mafia guy. I talk to him. See what his issues are and how we can resolve them amicably.”

“And if that’s not doable?”

“No harm. No foul. We pack you up and disappear you.”

Charlie took a deep breath. “These people, they’re not the salt of the earth or anything close to it.”

“Eight years in Green Bay, Charlie. Surrounded by all kinds of deviants, many of whom were out to do me serious harm. Not sure a crippled mafia guy even qualifies as that much of a threat.”

“It would be a mistake to underestimate him.”

“All the same, I’m willing to do this for you. If I get you off whatever hook you’re on, I get to keep a friend. If not, we always have plan B.”

~ 4 ~

Frank Tucci, sat by the pool in his backyard in New Rochelle. He had lost a lot of weight when he was in the hospital and then rehabbing his leg and shoulder. But he was putting the weight back on now. He could swim because his shoulder was just winged. Forty stitches and two months later it was all healed. He had just finished doing a couple dozen lengths of his pool and was sitting in a lounge chair. Behind him, the house loomed large and modern. No greasy dago shit for Frank. Everything was current to the point of being cold. But he didn’t care.

His dad had finally passed away and that was a huge weight off his shoulders. It was also a huge jump to his bank account. Several million in fully laundered cash, some property worth a couple more million, and a small stack of blue chip stocks. His accountant, Sammy Toppazzini managed it all for him. Sammy settled the estate and took care of all the help Frank needed around his house. All Frank had to do was nothing. The sports book took zero effort on his part, thanks to the two black kids who ran it for him. He was set for life and without his old man around to tell him what a fucking loser her was, he felt pretty good about things in general.

He had managed to patch things up with the Colombians who seemed to be happy to be rid of Sanches anyway, since he was, evidently, some kind of loose cannon. He returned the coke with a hundred grand for the inconvenience he had caused. After that, he decided that the cocaine business was a little too big a pain in the ass for him. Gambling was nice and safe and legal in New York State now. So, thanks to Sammy and his lawyer, Jacob Fine, he was totally legit. It was time for him to think about getting out there and finding a Mrs. Tucci and maybe making some baby Tuccis.

But there was that one thing. That thing that was always scratching away in the back of his mind. That fucking Jack Kingston, or whatever he was callin’ himself these days. That malandrine had taken off with more than a million of his bucks and he wanted that shit back. For whatever reason, he never managed to factor in the reality that Jack had saved his life, because he would probably have bled out in that warehouse before somebody showed up, which might have been never.

Still, it gnawed at him. He had sent a couple of guys he knew out to look for Jack all up and down the east coast because he figured Jack for an easterner. They came up empty, but as Frank well knew, it was easy to be invisible and make big bucks these days. He was just hoping for a lucky break. But it seemed like the only lucky break he’d really gotten was when Jack saved his sorry ass after that shootout with the spics.

He thought a lot about letting it go while he was doing his lengths in the pool. Fair trade. Paid a million three to have his ass saved, and right now his ass was worth considerably more than that. But it was there and it wouldn’t really go away. 

He called off the search once his guy, Tino, made it all the way up to Maine, and his other guy, Carlo, made it as far south as Jacksonville. Maybe he would never find the guy, and he would just have to live with this little scratching in his head. Maybe it would fade as he carried on with his life. At least that’s what he hoped. He took a long sip of his sangria, then got up and slipped into the pool again. Maybe he could swim that motherfucker out of his head.

~5 ~

The drive down from Maine was long and mostly quiet. They got an early start and made it to Boston four hours later, where they stopped for lunch at a Denny’s, mostly for the coffee, because by the time they got there, Charlie was just starting to wake up and needed a jolt. On the way down from Boston, Charlie texted LaMarr who sent him back Frank’s address.

The plan was simple. First, they would cruise the neighbourhood and get the lay of the land. Charlie would drop Ron at the front of the house, then take the car down the block. Ron would knock on the door and if nobody answered, he would go round the back. According to LaMarr, Frank spent a lot of time in and beside his pool, swimming and drinking. 

They drove by the house a couple of times and only saw one car, a brand new Lincoln Continental in the driveway. But the garage door was closed so they weren’t sure about what was in there.

 Charlie let Ron out of the car and he walked up the driveway. He peered into the garage. No other cars, just a lot of stuff piled up on one side and a slot for one car on the other. Instead of knocking on the front door, Ron decided to go around the back. As he did, he called Charlie and left the phone open in his front shirt pocket.

It was later in the afternoon and Frank was in his usual place sitting at table by the pool. He was a little bit ripped. The Sangria pitcher was nearly empty. Ron approached cautiously.

“Frank Tucci?”

Frank was a bit startled, jerking his head around to see the big man standing about ten feet from him. He was also a little bit drunk. “Who wants to know?

“The name’s Ron. I’m a friend of Jack Kingston’s.”

“Oh yeah. That little motherfucker.”

“We noticed that you sent someone to look for him.”

“North or south? I sent guys both ways.”

“That doesn’t matter. What does matter is why you sent these guys in the first place.”

Ron moved closer and Frank gestured for him to sit. “I’d offer you some Sangria but I drank the whole fuckin’ thing.”

“Obviously.” said Ron, as he pulled up a chair and sat facing Frank.

Frank continued, “I sent some guys to see if they could find him. I know he’s smart enough to build a pretty good wall. Guess that includes you. You look like you could handle yourself in any sort of…altercation.”

“You still haven’t explained why you sent these guys or what you want with Jack. From all I’ve heard, he saved your life.”

“So they tell me. I was a bit out of it at the time, so I don’t really know that for sure.”

That told Ron a whole lot.

“So what’s your real beef with Jack?”

“He stole some money from me and I want it back.”

“From what I understand he made you a rich man and you got foolish and decided to get into the cocaine business, very much against his advice and, as it turned out, your better judgement. Seems to me all Jack was trying to do was help you out.”

“It’s the principle of the thing…was it Ron?”

“Ron Rowan.”

“That name rings a bell. You look like a pro athlete. You ever play at that level?”

“Yeah. Packers. Eight years.”

“Son of a bitch. Right. Defensive lineman. My leg may be fucked up, but at least my memory’s intact.”

“I just came by to say that Jack would be willing to meet with you and talk this out.”

“Sure. But only if he’s willing to plop down a million three. Plus the other hundred g’s I had to give the spics to keep them from shooting me again. Then we can talk all fuckin’ day.”

“You know, after Jack told me the story about you and him, I came away with the feeling that you might not give a shit about the money, but that you were pissed because Jack was leaving.” Ron said. “Guys like you, I imagine, can’t have a lot of friends. They got guys who work for them, but not many real buds. You considered Jack’s leaving a betrayal. He was a friend and he just left you high and dry when you needed him most.”

Frank said nothing for a while. “Maybe there’s some truth to what you’re sayin’. Doesn’t change anything.”

Ron continued. “And maybe you’re just using the money as an excuse to be pissed at Jack when you really should be thinking about what drove him away in the first place.”

“You got it all figured out, don’t ya, Ron Rowan…fuckin’ Green Bay Packers.”

“Yeah, I think I do. And I also think that this obsession of yours isn’t ever going away, is it?”.

“No…no it’s not. But I suppose you came here to try and talk me out of it.”

“Not at all. I came here to make sure of a couple things. One, that you were hopelessly obsessed with punishing Jack, which appears to be the case.”

“And two?”

Ron took a deep breath. “And two, that you would never get the chance to do it.”

 With that, Ron reached swiftly behind his back and produced a silenced H&K pistol that he had purchased from an underground gun dealer who operated out of Bangor. Without a second’s hesitation, he fired two shots. One into the centre of Frank’s chest and another into the centre of his forehead. Frank died quickly and before his brain had a chance to know what was going on. 

Ron then got up, picked up the two spent shell casings and walked down to the small dock at the end of the lawn. He removed the silencer and slipped it into his pocket. He took the gun apart, then wiped down all the pieces with a small towel that was sitting on one of the lawn chairs, then tossed everything as far out into the Long Island Sound as he could. He then pulled the phone out of his pocket and summoned Charlie. “We’re done here, Charlie.” 

Charlie was waiting for him as he came up the side of the house and down the driveway. Ron looked around as he got into the car. He saw no one. All busy making money or spending it down in the city, he thought.

“You know…” Charlie said, “I never really wanted it to end this way.”

“Nobody ever does. But sometimes, you know, that’s how it’s gotta be.”

“I can’t say I’m not relieved.”

“You should be. But the way you told me the story, I didn’t see you as the bad guy here. I didn’t see him that way either. He was just dealing with his demons and the demons were winning.”

“We all have our demons, Ron.”

Ron just chuckled. “Yeah, you got that right, Charlie.”

Charlie dropped the Jeep into gear and they headed down the street and back to Rockland. Charlie was sad that somebody had to die. But at the same time, he was glad it wasn’t him. 

While they were heading for the highway, they drove past the New Rochelle rail station, and Charlie did a hard right and pulled in. He stopped close to the ticket office.

“I’m gonna go down to the city, just for a couple of days. Maybe I can talk Terry Franco into retiring.” Charlie said 

“Knock yourself out,” Ron said. “Rockland will still be there when you’re done.”

Charlie and Ron did a bit of an awkward man hug and then Charlie got out of the car, walked into the station and bought a ticket on the southbound train. Ron headed over to Highway One and went north.

 FIN 

 FIN