Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle (20 page)

“Here’s the deal,” I said to the image of Sheila on the laptop. “He’s going to prompt you with some questions and start sketching. You describe Hersch as best you can and I can put a face to his name.”

She nodded. “I’m ready.”

I shifted to the side and let Gwen take over. He propped his sketchpad on one arm and poised his pencil over the page. While he asked her questions and he drew his impressions, he would occasionally hold his work in progress to the camera so Sheila could make sure he was on the right track.

When I had first asked Palmer to hook me up with a sketch artist, he had said there was no such thing anymore. I found that pretty hard to believe. He claimed the computer software they used these days had sent them into near extinction. I had caught on to the word “near” and pressed for any recommendation he could offer. Turned out he had a guy of his own he used. Said he didn’t trust the software as much as the old fashioned way, but he kept it to himself, only using the artist when he could get away with it without anyone else in the department finding out. It’s what made Palmer so reluctant to share Gwen with me. He didn’t want any of the others in the department trying to bogart his source.

While Gwen and Sheila worked, I zoned out. My mind drifted to Eddie, the panic in his voice when we last spoke. I couldn’t blame him for his paranoia. Who else could claim so much tragedy in one lifetime? I’d had my licks, but my life looked sweet and peachy in comparison. That didn’t make it any easier to look past his raping Amanda. It did allow for a dash of pity to cut down the bitterness.

Hopefully he was talking to his cousin and trying to find out if he’d spilled a few beans in the course of the last few weeks. Then I could show him the sketch, and if our guys matched, we had the connection and were playing on a whole new field.

“Mr. Brone?”

I blinked my way out of my thoughts. It felt like I was coming up for air after sitting at the bottom of a pool, a little painful but also a refreshing relief. “We good?”

Gwen turned his sketch book so I could see who he had drawn.

A lead weight dropped into my stomach. My mouth went dry. I could feel the skin on my balls shrink while every hair on my body stood on end. To cap it all off, my breathing turned to shallow and labored the edges of my vision darkened, halfway to passing out.

A hand grasped my arm. “Mr. Brone?”

I peeled my gaze away from the sketch and looked at the kid squeezing my bicep. Who the hell was he? What was I doing in an interrogation room with him?

“Ridley? What’s the matter?” I stared at the computer screen. The room started spinning. “Sheila?”

“Do you know him?”

Did I know him? Did I
fucking
know him? No. I didn’t know him. Obviously I didn’t. I thought he was the guy who had helped me get off the streets of LA and into a real life. The one who had introduced me to the man who became my beloved mentor. The person who had made up for my years as an only child, the brother I never had. Mort’s son. My old friend.

Bobby Quinn.

Chapter 21

I stood outside of the police department by an ashtray with at least a thousand cigarette butts shoved in the sand like tiny tombstones. No one was out smoking, but I could still smell the nicotine on the cold air as if someone had just left. I leaned against the brick façade of the building, hands shoved in my coat pockets, staring out beyond the parking lot to Garfield Park across the street. From here all I could see where the naked oak and maple trees, their branches pawing at the gray sky like blackened fingernails. I remembered a rainy night at that park, where I had first learned about my daughter.

I felt like I had lived three different lives. One was as a kid, surrounded by my parents’ addiction to performance, and their constant pushing to have me join them in their obsession. The second life was out in LA, finding out who I was supposed to be, and how I could reconcile that with who I’d been conditioned to think I wanted to be. This was also the life where I had met Mort, who could have been my father, and acted like it sometimes. And Bobby, of course. Now I was living my third life—partly the man my parents had hoped I’d be, and partly the person I wanted to be. A strange hybrid, but one I was slowly getting used to. Then a sketch enters the mix and swirls all my lives together like a tornado-powered paint stick. I didn’t recognize the color. If for no other reason than unanswerable question—

Why, Bobby? Why are you doing this?

I couldn’t begin to guess. When I left Los Angeles to come back to Hawthorne, it felt like leaving family. I felt the way I should have when leaving Hawthorne. Bobby and Mort threw me a going away party. We got drunk and hugged and cried. A piece of me tore loose and stayed there with them, and I had taken their memory with me.

Then distance did what it does so well. We stayed in touch often during the first few months. A few times Mort suggested picking up and moving back to Los Angeles. A tempting proposition. I had missed the Quinns. Felt it like an ache in my side after running too long.

After those first few months, though, our correspondence grew less and less. We downgraded from regular phone calls to the occasional email. And then our separate lives consumed us, and we lost track of one another in the fog.

I hadn’t spoken to Bobby in over three years. What had changed since then? Why would he come back into my life so bent on tearing it apart that he would play lover to a woman nearly twice his age (a tidbit Sheila failed to mention), use what he learned to strike at my weakest point, and spend close to a week taunting me?

What had happened?

I supposed the best way to find out would be to ask him.

Burned by the cold while standing outside daydreaming, I sought the shelter of my car, cranked the heat up and drove across the street into Garfield Park. I made sure to drive around to a different section than where Autumn had told me about our daughter. I might subconsciously want to wallow in broken memories of my parents, but I had no desire to let thoughts of Autumn tramp dirty footprints through the clean parts of my mind.

In the winter it looked like a different place. Bare branches and undisturbed plains of white. Mine were one of only a few sets of tire tracks along the drive surrounding the park. I pulled to the side of the drive next to a gnarled oak, not an official parking spot, but I didn’t think anyone would care where I parked. People didn’t spend much time in parks during the winter.

Heat running, my body warming up, I pulled out my phone and dialed the number for man who had called himself Hersch, who I now knew was Bobby Quinn.

He answered chuckling. “What’s your grand scheme to get me this time?”

“I don’t know,” I said. My esophagus felt as if it were twisting like a wrung rag. “You used to be a good PI. Why don’t you give me some ideas…Bobby?”

“Ha!” He burst into a mad laughter that sounded nothing like the Bobby Quinn I used to know. In fact, even knowing who he was now, I still hadn’t recognized his voice when he first answered. But it didn’t sound like a faked voice either. It sounded as if his voice had physically changed since I last spoke to him as a friend and not a con man.

“Phew.” Bobby wound up the laughter to a quite titter. “Took you long enough to figure that out. You’ve lost your edge, Rid. I mean, really lost it. You suck now.”

I didn’t want to banter. I wanted answers. “Why are you doing this?”

“You think you can cut to the chase like that? You think you have the
right
to rush me?”

“I don’t understand. We were friends. Good friends.”

“I’m glad you put that in the past tense. Lets me know we’re on the same page.”

I found it hard to breathe. A painful knot tied itself up in the center of my back. Hot air roared from the vents in the dashboard. I’d gone from cold to sweating. I stared at the fan control, but couldn’t motivate myself to reach over and dial it down.

“Did I lose you?” Bobby asked.

“I’m here.”

“This doesn’t change anything, do you understand? The terms remain the same. Million bucks wired to my account, or I find your daughter and play matchmaker with one of my prison buddies.”

Knowing this was Bobby turned my perspective of everything that came before. His mention of doing time was one of those things. “I can’t believe you would end up in prison. For what?”

“For none of your fucking business.”

“At least tell me what you want.”

“I’m pretty sure I covered that about a hundred times. I want your money, honey. Nothing complicated about it. No reason to think too hard. I need money. You have money. See how that works?”

“You mean to tell me you’re willing to throw away years of friendship for my money?”

He made a disgusted
tsk
sound. “Friendship? That was another life, bro. Right here, right now? You’re my pretty cash cow.” He chuckled. “Poetry is beautiful.”

He had always had a knack for whipping up a batch of sarcasm, wit, and undiluted clowning around. He was a big part of my smart mouth training. But I would always be the student to this master.

I said, “We might have lost touch, but I still saw you as a friend. Someone who’d made a big impression in my life.”

“See? I’m just returning the favor. I want to make a big impact on
your
life.” He sighed, his tone of voice turning serious. “Is it working?”

“That’s all you want is money. That’s what this whole con is about?”

“I hate talking in circles. If you don’t have any original topics of conversation, I’m going to go back to finding your daughter.”

“You need to stop this.”

“No.
You
need to stop this. You’re the only one who can.”

I could sense him ready to cut out. I threw what I had at him before he could hang up. “What’s this got to do with Eddie Arndt?”

A pause. Long enough to make me think he’d already hung up, but I could hear a faint something. A TV? No. Music. Familiar music. A song my parents had written. I suddenly faced this image of Bobby in some seedy hotel room, a wall covered with photos and newspaper clippings all about my parents, about me. A miniature stereo playing a collection of my parents’ songs on a steady loop. None of that was probably true, but it spoke to the maniacal nature of his behavior.

“Who is Eddie?” he asked finally.

“I think you know. He part of another angle with this scheme you’ve got going.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, right. What about Hal? Where have you got him?”

“Have him? What makes you think
I
have him?”

“Quit screwing with me. What are you up to?”

“And there we are back to that. Good-bye, Rid. Don’t bother calling again. I’m tossing this phone. I’ll just keep checking my account until I see your deposit. Until then, the race continues.”

“You’re a fucking animal,” I shouted, but I was the only one who heard it. Bobby had hung up.

Breathing heavy, the car’s heater pushing the oppressive level, I glared at my fancy phone as if it were to blame for the wreck of a conversation I had just had with Bobby. The phone innocuously displayed the time so that I could tick off minutes while I sat stunned, letting the car run, the needle on the gas gauge sideling toward the E.

I felt like I had spent a lot of time on the phone. Too much time. But while I sat there I determined I had to make at least one last call. While it had been years, I still remembered the phone number.

I didn’t expect the female voice that picked up. “Thank you for calling the Quinn agency. How can I help you?”

“May I speak with Mort Quinn please?”

Her voice gigged a little before she recovered. “I’m sorry. Did you mean Robert Quinn?”

No thanks. I’d already talked to him. “I would like Mort if he’s available.”

“Well, he’s…can you hold a moment?”

How hard is it to get your boss on the phone?
“I’ll hold.”

Pan flute music filled my ear after she put me on hold. The pan flute is a beautiful instrument, but it was never meant to play the likes of Lady Gaga. Apparently, no one had informed this particular flautist of that.