Hot shot, p.20
Hot Shot, page 20
“Okay, boys and one girl, talk to me. I need to know everything, and I need to know it now before I leave here. What is going on? I can handle whatever it is, so do not leave anything out. I want to help if I can. I can actually concentrate now that I know Cosmo is definitely out of the woods and on the mend. Like I said, talk to me.” Lizzie drew a deep breath as she returned to what she called her safe zone, the law.
Maggie and Jack both took turns explaining what was going on, what had already gone down, and what they suspected. “We would have kept you in the loop, Lizzie, but you were in no condition to do anything other than what you’ve been doing, taking care of your husband and being at his side. Now you know as much as we know. We’re hoping to find out more when Charles talks to Abner and Avery,” Maggie said.
“So who is going where now?” Lizzie asked.
“To be decided. You should leave now, Lizzie, you look beat. We know where to find you if we need you. If you don’t mind, we need to sit here a bit and figure out our next move. Is that okay with you?”
“No problem. Stay as long as you like. If it’s okay with you, then I am outta here,” Lizzie said. “Call me if you need me. My plan is to head back to the hospital around five.”
Kisses, hugs, and hard squeezes followed; then Lizzie was gone.
“You guys waiting for a bus or what?” Maggie growled. “What are we doing, and who is doing what? What’s the plan here? Why are we wasting time?”
“Why don’t you go first, Maggie, since you always have the best ideas,” Jack said, sarcasm ringing in his voice.
The sarcasm did not go unnoticed by Maggie. “You’re just saying that because you know it’s true and you’re jealous that none of you ever comes up with a workable, doable plan. I said a plan. But that goes for ideas, too.”
“Let’s hear it,” Ted barked.
“Well, for starters, we need to know what we as a group are prepared to do once we knock on doors, meaning Lizzie’s front door and Mr. Hershel’s front door. Do we go in like gangbusters, or do we say hello when and if the door opens, wanna buy a subscription to People magazine? What?” Maggie sputtered irritably.
“We need to get the lay of the land, see which way the wind is blowing. That kind of thing,” Jack said. “When we walk away with our opinions, that’s when we make a plan. So let’s decide now who is going where.”
“How about if Ted, Espinosa, and I take Mr. Hershel. Our cover story can be we’re going to do a write-up on his wife, Donna, also known as Dolly. A nostalgia piece. Just the mention of the wife he loved and adored might help Mr. Hershel make a decision to give us some sort of subtle clue, if he can. Assuming he’s being held hostage. It’s an idea, a thought, but if you can come up with something better, I’m all for it. In the meantime, Dennis, Harry, and Jack head for Lizzie’s house. I don’t know how you want to play that. There could be one person in there or there could be a dozen. There are only three of you. Bear that in mind,” Maggie said.
“Now, having said that, Jack, you are more familiar with Happy Village than my little group. We can switch up if you prefer to go there. Dennis went with you the first time, and while it’s going to be new to Harry, you might need Harry. I can concoct some kind of story when we knock on Lizzie’s door. So what’s it gonna be?”
Cyrus reared up and let loose with a sharp bark.
“Sorry, big guy,” Maggie said, as she ruffled the fur on Cyrus’s head, “four of you!”
“Okay, let’s go with what Maggie just suggested. We take on Happy Village and Mr. Hershel. But we’ll need another vehicle, so we’ll get out at Babylon and rent a vehicle from there. Dennis, can you do that now? Ask for something fairly conservative for a visit to Mr. Herschel’s.”
“I’m on it,” Dennis said as he brought all his fingers into play on the mini keyboard.
Jack tapped Harry on the arm the minute they were seated in back of the van. “You okay, Harry? You’re looking a little frazzled.”
“A little!” Harry hissed, outrage ringing in his voice. “Those guys do not eat or sleep. All they do is gamble. AND WIN. I’m afraid to go to sleep for fear of what they might do. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have six security guys standing behind you all day and all night watching every move you make? Even though I wasn’t gambling, I was with them. I was their host. To be perfectly honest, I think they think I’m a shill of some kind for the guys. I know security thinks they have some secret magic, something or other that lets them win, win, win! The truth is, they’re just dumb lucky. Plus, they are oblivious to everyone and everything except the cards or the machines. When they got on that gold-buying gig, I wanted nothing more than to shoot myself.”
Jack patted Harry’s arm to show his sympathy. Cyrus nuzzled his leg in a show of support. “Don’t beat yourself up over this, Harry. Chalk it up to beginner’s luck. We just turned it all over to Lizzie, so you’re off the hook. Look, if you want to go back to the hotel and grab some sleep, Dennis, Cyrus, and I can handle this. We’ll come get you when we get back. You’re not going to be any good to us if your timing is off and your head is with your friends. Get some sleep and a take a nice long shower. You’ll feel like your old self in no time.”
“I’m never going to feel like myself until those guys are on the plane and cruising at thirty thousand feet.”
“That bad, huh?” Jack grinned.
Harry laughed, a sickly sound. “Yes and no. Don’t get me wrong. They’re all great guys. This is the first time they’ve been to the States, and they love it. They love all this Vegas claptrap, and they absolutely love the money. They are having the time of their lives. They really got off on the pillow thing. I don’t know how you came up with that, but I’m glad you did. But, yeah, I’ll stay at the hotel and grab some sleep.
“The truth, Jack. What the hell is going on here?” Harry whispered.
Jack shook his head. “The truth is, we do not have a clue. We’re all just waiting to see what Abner and Avery come up with. All we know is that it involves the dark web. When I say dark web, I’m not talking about identity theft, credit card theft, and stuff like that. I’m talking sicko stuff, depravity, murder, blood, all kinds of killings just for sport. God, I can’t even go there. You are getting my point, right?”
“Yes, sorry to say,” Harry said.
“We’re here!” Dennis chortled happily. He handed the van key to Ted and hopped out of the van. “I’ll sign out our new rental and meet you right here.” He looked at Harry and winced. “You don’t look so good, Harry. You coming down with something, or are you just exhausted?”
“You writing a book or something?” Harry muttered as he waved to Jack and headed for the lobby and the elevator that would take him to his room for some much-needed sleep.
“No,” Dennis called out, “I just care about you, and I worry when I see something that concerns me. Right now, you concern me, and I want to know if there’s anything I can do for you.”
Harry stopped in midstride and turned around. “I’m a little short of being okay, Dennis. A shower and some sleep will have me up and back to my old self. I appreciate your concern.” With that, Harry turned on his heel and headed for the elevator.
“I knew it! I knew it! He is sick. We need to do something for him. Harry is like our rock. When Harry is nice like that, then you know something is wrong. What should we do?” Dennis said, bouncing from one foot to the other. He was so agitated, his face was beet red.
Jack clapped Dennis on the back. “Harry is fine, but he is exhausted. Trust me on that. Do you think I’d leave him even for a minute if I thought there was something wrong?” Cyrus backed up his master’s statement with two short barks.
“Well then, okay, if you say so. I’ll get the car and meet you out here. Stay put and don’t wander off.”
“Okay, Dad.” Jack laughed. “Go already!”
Ted slid behind the wheel. Maggie and Espinosa piled in and sat down behind Ted in the plush seats.
“Call in every twenty minutes,” Jack called as Ted slipped the van into gear and drove off.
Jack looked down at Cyrus, who was staring up at him expectantly. “For now until Dennis shows up with our new ride, it’s just you and me, big guy.” Cyrus didn’t bother to bark. It was so obvious. One human plus one dog made two. He sat back on his haunches and waited more patiently than his master.
Ten minutes into the wait, Jack looked down at his phone to see an incoming text. He read it once, then again, before he shoved the phone back into his pocket. “Change of plans. We’re headed up to the penthouse for a briefing with Avery and Abner. Let’s just hope they have some good news.”
In less than twenty minutes, all the guys and Maggie were seated at Annie’s dining-room table. Coffee was perking, and everyone was chattering a mile a minute until Charles blew the whistle that he was never without. The room went silent instantly. Fergus handed out cups of coffee while Avery and Abner shuffled papers and folders in preparation for their brand of show-and-tell.
“You have the floor, Avery,” Charles said the moment Fergus sat down.
Avery didn’t bother clearing his throat the way he usually did before giving one of his reports. Nor did he rotate his neck to ease the tension he was under. He looked over at Abner, who nodded, and dived right in. “None of this is good. That’s for starters. I think, and Abner agrees with me, as does Philonias Needlemeyer, that we have every piece of information there is on the dark web. I also want to say we would not have what we have without Phil’s help. So kudos to Phil.
“Let’s start with Mr. Zack Meadows. He loves money. Actually, I think it’s safe to say he worships money. He’s also a high-stakes gambler. We can throw all kinds of shade at him, and it would fit. He takes bribes. Big bribes. He has two sets of friends. Normal people he associates with on a daily basis, personal as well as professional. None of those people have a bad word to say about him. Then he has a dark set of friends, the kind you don’t invite to Sunday dinner. In other words, he lives two separate lives, with the dark, black side the more prominent one. It seems to be where he thrives.
“As near as we can tell, somehow, in some way, Cosmo Cricket must have seen or heard something that caused him to be concerned about Zack Meadows as far back as a year ago. We were not able to find out what it was or even if we’re right. But he had many meetings with Meadows, which was unusual, given that they were not even serving on the same regulatory outfit. The meetings took place off the beaten track, so to speak—a diner here, the park, a pub, all public places. This is where we think Meadows got spooked. Cricket was closing in on him. One possibility is that he somehow lured Cricket to Happy Village that day with the intent of having him killed.
“Meadows’s contacts on the dark web put him in touch with the Devil’s own. The Lobos. He made contact with them and suggested that they recruit the Scorpions, with whom he had an ongoing relationship. He promised the gang some big bucks to take out Cricket. At the same time, he introduced their leader to several members of the Lobos. Meadows is on a first-name basis with those bastards. They also thrive on the dark, black web. Hell, I think they own it.”
Abner held up his hand. “Stop right there—go back to how Meadows got into this in the first place. The tenants at Happy Village, the ones who disappeared. Meadows had access to all the tenants’ applications right down to how much money they had in the bank. The guy is a pretty good hacker himself. He found out that they all had massive insurance policies. All of them were older. He cherry-picked the ones he wanted, hacked into the insurance companies, and raised the amount of their policies by several million each. He routed the billing statements through a dummy address at Happy Village, collected the mail late at night, and paid the premiums out of some offshore secret fund. He used a different Happy Village address for the payments.
“Phil told us that Meadows has collected fifty-one million dollars to date on those policies.”
“Who . . . what . . . that . . . that . . .” Maggie started to stammer and couldn’t get her question out.
“I don’t think there is anyone here who wants to hear or could handle the gory details. The missing tenants are deceased. By the worst means possible. For sport as well as for money,” Avery said. “We need to move along here.”
“Meadows hired the Scorpions to abduct and kill the Happy Village tenants and paid them half at the outset. They were to get the final payment on that contract next week, we think, and the same sort of arrangement was agreed to for killing Mr. Cricket, but then Mr. Cricket was shot but not killed, and things ground to a halt. Since Mr. Cricket survived the shooting, we think Meadows refused to pay the second half of the money due on that contract.
“At the same time all this was going on, the Scorpions were trying to become members of the Lobos and decided to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, and use killing Mr. Cricket as their initiation exercise. It appears they were stalking him, just waiting for the right time to take him out.
“And now we have the second possibility. If Mr. Cricket was not at Happy Village because Meadows arranged for him to be there for the express purpose of having the Scorpions kill him, they may have gotten ahead of themselves and shot Mr. Cricket ahead of schedule just because he was where he was at the time. As I said, we’re pretty sure Meadows refused to pay them for the hit on Mr. Cricket since he was still alive. So when the Scorpions were not paid the rest of the money due them for the hit on Mr. Cricket, they threatened Meadows. We are almost certain that Zack Meadows is hiding out at Peter Hershel’s house on Magnolia Terrace. That’s why we sent you the text. We didn’t want you going there and upsetting the apple cart.
“We realize this is a lot of conjecture on our part, but you have to remember who and what we’re dealing with here. While it’s conjecture on our part, that idea—or something very much like it—is the only thing that makes sense.”
“This is crazy,” Ted said.
“Yeah, you think so?” Abner drawled. “We didn’t even get to the really absurd part yet. We think the Scorpions are holed up in Lizzie’s house. We think it’s a standoff between Meadows and the Scorpions. Thank God Lizzie didn’t go into the house. They would have killed her for sure. Here’s the thing—killing Cosmo, or anyone for that matter, was to be the Scorpions entrance exercise for membership in the Lobos. What they did to the Happy Village tenants didn’t count in the Lobos’s eyes because it came before they sought membership. Fortunately for Cosmo, they flubbed the shooting. This is when it all turned into a three-ring circus. Everyone is after everyone else, and with the Scorpions having flunked their entrance exam for membership in the Lobos, they can expect no help from that quarter,” Abner added.
“Where does that leave us? Where do we go from here?” Jack asked.
“I guess this is where we have to decide what to do,” Charles said. “Time to run it up the flagpole to see if anyone salutes.”
“Why Mr. Hershel?” Maggie asked.
“Did you miss the part about Meadows buying Mr. Hershel’s casino in town? Then shafting him and the people he was going to invest with for a brand-new casino? Meadows was to approve the license. The investors disappeared and left Mr. Hershel holding the bag. God alone knows what happened to them, and I don’t even want to guess. Meadows knows Hershel, has had dealings with him. He’s elderly, and Meadows is in his prime. He could take out the old man with one hand,” Charles said.
“Okay, yes, I get it. I just got confused given all the different characters we’re dealing with,” Maggie said. “I’m not sensing any urgency here with any of you, or am I wrong?”
“Yes and no,” Charles said. “I don’t think there’s any immediate danger to Mr. Hershel. I’m sure Meadows is trying to figure out his next move, assuming he hasn’t made it already, and I’d hazard a guess that he’s been in touch with the Scorpions for two reasons. First, he owes them money for the killing of the tenants, if not just for the hit on Cosmo, and he knows they’ll go after him if he doesn’t pay up. He knows what they are capable of, so he might want to offer to pay off his debt to them. Second, he wants to entice them to help him, and the way he’d do that, we assume, is to promise to go to the Lobos and ask them to give the Scorpions a second chance to join their devilish gang. The Scorpions want that more than anything. Will they bite? I’m thinking they will.”
“I’m not getting any of this,” Espinosa grumbled. “What is Meadows getting out of this? What’s his end game? If the Scorpions get inducted into the Lobos, that means they could then take out Meadows. What am I missing here?”
Everyone in the room looked as perplexed as Espinosa sounded. They all turned to look at Charles for an answer.
Charles threw his hands in the air.
“His safety! Nothing else makes sense,” Dennis said. “Think about it. Gangs don’t squeal on anyone. That’s a given. The only person who stands in Meadows’s way is Cosmo Cricket, who is going to live to fight another day, and by that I mean he’ll start talking to the authorities once he’s well enough to do so. He will tell them all about what he suspects, what he can prove and not prove. Meadows has to take it on the lam and get away clean, so he can spend all that insurance money plus the money he got for the sale of Hershel’s casino. He’s looking for safe passage.”
“But he could have left at any time. Right now, in fact,” Jack said. “Why hasn’t he gone to ground already? Why is he still messing around with the gangs and the dark web?”
“Because he needs the Lobos to take out the Scorpions. Once they’re gone, there are no witnesses to what he’s done. He needs that to happen before he can even think about leaving. I’m sure he’s got something all set up, a plan of action, and he just walks out one day and never returns. It’s just my opinion.” Dennis defended his statement when he saw the dubious expressions on everyone else’s face.
“Makes sense in a cockamamy kind of way. Actually it’s better than anything the rest of us came up with,” Jack said, clapping Dennis on the back. Dennis beamed his pleasure.
