Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle (30 page)

“What’s her last name, then?”

“Are you kidding? You’ve got me cuffed in what smells like a wine cellar, a caveman who likes to take easy shots at a guy’s kidneys, and stand to inherit what rightfully belongs to me. Her last name is all I got left here.”

“Playing the victim doesn’t wear well on you, Bobby. If you really know who and where she is, all you have to do is give me a full name and I can check it out. Then we can cut you loose.”

“Just like that, huh?”

“You ready to share?”

He hung his head, sighed. “You win. Her full name is Lisa Bobby’s-Gonna-Fuck-Me-In-Every-Hole-On-My-Body. I think it’s French.”

My fist never felt so good as it did when I clocked Bobby across the face, knocking his blindfold askew. The initial seconds of satisfaction gave way to a crackling ache across my knuckles, but I savored that pain as well.

His head snapped to the side and when it swung back toward me, blood trickled from his nose. One eye peeked out from under the blindfold. He fluttered that eye and then focused it on me. “Damn, bro. I’m kinda proud of you. You’ve manned up.”

I yanked the blindfold off and tossed it aside. I wanted him to look me in the eye and tell me he really knew how to find my daughter. I gripped his chin in one hand and forced him to face me. “Last chance.”

“Or what? You let the gorilla loose again?”

“Lie to me one more time and see.”

“You really want to end this so soon?”

“I wanted it done a long time ago.”

He jerked his chin from my grasp. “Go to hell. I hate you. I hate you so much I want you to wonder until the day you die if I really found her, and what I might have done to her.”

“All this because of an inheritance?”

“It’s not just any inheritance. It’s the world my father raised me in. It’s a promise made a lifetime ago and stolen from me in a moment of spite. If he’d had time to think it over, he would have changed the will. He would have given the agency to me.”

“I already told you, I would give you the agency. I don’t care about that.”

“You don’t care.” He spat on the floor, his saliva tinted pink with blood. “That just makes it worse. He signed the agency off to someone who couldn’t give a fuck. Nice.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Forget it, Rid. I’m done. You’ll never know.”

I curled my hands into fists. Somehow I kept from striking him again, though that was no reason to be proud. The next step would taint my conscience for the rest of my life. I turned to Paul. “Upstairs.”

He followed me to the top of the stairs.

I closed the door to keep Bobby from hearing us. “I have to know,” I said.

“Yes.”

“But a few jabs to the kidneys and a pop to the nose aren’t going to do it. Maybe nothing will.”

“Let me take care of it. He’ll tell me.”

I shook my head. “You could beat him to near death. The best you’ll get out of him is another lie.”

“It’s not just about working him over. Trust me. I’ve done this kind of thing before.”

I didn’t ask ‘cause I didn’t want him to tell. “I don’t know, Paul. We’re skirting that line.”

He hooked a hand round the back of my neck and pulled me within inches of his face. “He’s already crossed the line. They way he’s talked about your daughter, what he’s going to do to her.”

“Empty threats.”

“Doesn’t matter. Don’t stick up for this guy. He doesn’t deserve it.”

Only at one time he had. He had deserved that and more. I had owed him for help forging the individual I wanted to become, making my own destiny, separate from what my parents had wanted. In short, I owed him my life.

Paul could tell what I was thinking. “He’s not your friend anymore, Ridley.”

I closed my eyes and made one of the harder decisions of my life.

Chapter 30

I could have walked away from the screams. The house was big enough. I could have easily found a quiet corner where I could pretend Bobby wasn’t begging Paul to
stop…please stop…I can’t…I won’t…please…

Instead, I stayed close to the closed cellar door. I sat on the floor against the wall opposite the door, mostly staring into space, occasionally started at a sudden shout from below. But the shouts weren’t the worst part. It was the heavy silences in between that unnerved. Paul had said his interrogation methods involved more than physical abuse. He didn’t tell me what that “more” equated to, but I had a suspicion those techniques happened during the silences.

It took Paul two and a half hours, though after the first hour, silence had dominated over the screams. Paul stepped out of the cellar, massaging his knuckles.

I stood, noticed the blood stains down his white shirt like a butcher’s apron, and shivered. I met his eyes, didn’t have to say anything.

“I’ve got something I think will help.”

Something? I wanted to pelt him with questions, but I swallowed them all. Time to trust Paul and follow his head.

We reconvened at the kitchen table after Paul washed his hands in the sink and I got him a pad of paper that he’d requested. At the table, he scribbled something on the pad, then turned it around and shoved it across to me.

An address.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s where he’s been staying in Hawthorne. He rented the apartment about four weeks ago.”

“Four weeks?” Plenty of time to gather all manner of information about my habits, my acquaintances, my weaknesses. “He really thought this through.”

“Far as I can tell, he’s a psychotic. But I don’t really know the guy.”

I wouldn’t have ever put that label on Bobby before. Now? That shoe could fit nice and snug. Could Mort’s death have caused a psychotic break? I was no shrink, but it felt right. Bobby and Mort were closer than any father and son I’d ever known. They worked together, played together, shared everything. I imagined losing his father would be like losing a limb. People have broken down for much less.

I tapped the address written on the pad. “If this is his base of operation, he’ll have all this collected info there.”

Paul nodded.

“How did you get him to give you this address?”

“That’s for me to know and for you never to think about again.”

“I don’t think I can do that.”

“You’re better off if you do.”

Paul stayed at the house to keep watch over Bobby. I Googled the address and printed a map to the apartment, located not far south from where I lived. It was probably the closest affordable apartment complex to my house. Which meant the owners wanted to put on airs that the building belonged to the more elite domiciles nearby. This led to ornate landscaping, constantly maintained building facades, and last, but certainly not least, no buzzers to get in either of the trio of buildings housing the apartments—this was a nice neighborhood, no need for buzzers.

I easily found my way to Bobby’s door and picked the lock to let myself in.

The apartment came furnished, the style ode de la old people. On one wall, Bobby had taken down the included artwork—a painting of a sailboat—and had set the framed picture on the floor and leaned against the wall. In place of the painting he had hung a corkboard that was now littered with various papers and sticky notes, a map of Hawthorne, and date-stamped photographs. Lots and lots of photographs.

I crossed the room to get a closer look. A month’s worth of work hung on this board, all revolving around me. Notes stuck to the map indicating frequently attended locations and travel routes. Photographs of people with faces circled in red marker and labeled with their names. I found a copy of paperwork for Hal’s admittance into the hospital. Who knew how he got a hold of something like that? He must have charmed the pants off—literally—a nurse or something. Another testament to Bobby’s skill and willingness to cross the line Mort had drawn for us as PIs in training.

A PI without ethics is nothing more than a low-class hustler.

Boy did Bobby know how to hustle.

I didn’t find much else from the board that I didn’t already know. After all, this was my life. Nothing about my daughter, not even the pictures he’d emailed me. Most likely he had a laptop around here where he kept that additional information.

I started to turn away to look for it when one last picture on the board caught my attention. I’d initially skimmed over it because it sat among a collage of photos tracking my whereabouts and frequented locals. But this one didn’t fit. I looked closer and a tremor and buzz shot through me as I realized what I was looking at.

The photo featured the outside of Eddie’s apartment building. The angle was similar to other photos taken of the place, a couple with me entering and exiting. This one, date-stamped November 12—the day Eddie was killed—showed someone else exiting the building. Someone I recognized…just as Bobby had promised I would.

Bobbie’s cousin, Shawn.

The knowledge made my continued search hard to focus on. I did my best to force it to the background. But even when I didn’t think about it directly, my body hummed like an electrical transformer, the voltage within desperate to lash out.

In the bedroom, on the dresser, I found the laptop and Bobby’s camera. A new wave of jitters hit me. The laptop sat before me like an ancient artifact, the secrets within possibly life-changing.

I found it hard to move forward. I pushed. The answers were here. Either Bobby had faked his information about my daughter, or he had evidence of who and where she really was.

I went to the dresser, flipped open the laptop, and powered it on. It felt like an age while I waited for the computer to fully boot.

It took no time at all to find what I was looking for. A folder on his desktop was labeled
Ridley’s Spawn
. The derogatory label suggested what was inside just might be true.

I clicked open the folder and found out once and for all.

Chapter 31

I took his laptop. It was mine now, simple as that.

Back at the house, I found Paul in the wine cellar. He was tending to Bobby’s broken and bloody nose. The blood had rolled over his mouth and down his chin and had started to coagulate into crusty red goatee. More blood ran from jagged cuts on his bare chest. His shirt was tossed onto the floor. A broken wine bottle lay close by. Some of the shards had a deeper red on the edges than the wine it had held. The smell of the spilled wine permeated the cellar.

Paul dabbed at Bobby’s bloody face with a damp rag. He stopped and turned when I came in. His gaze went to the laptop I carried under my arm like a school book.

Bobby saw it too and groaned. “You ruined all the fun, Rid.” His voice sounded stuffy and clogged as if he had a bad cold.

I glared at him, the frost fire burning inside my belly chilling my bones and beading my skin with sweat.

Paul twisted the rag in both hands. “Ridley?”

“It’s true,” I said. “He found her.”

Bobby grinned, showing off the gap in his teeth where Paul had apparently knocked one out. “See? I wouldn’t lie to you. You’re my best friend.”

I approached him, held the laptop out to Paul. “Can you hold this?”

Paul tossed aside the rag, took the computer from me, and stepped back. He knew what was coming.

Bobby stared into my eyes. “You don’t have the balls. You wouldn’t have sent down your goon to work me over if you did.”

“Circumstance has changed.” I rolled up my sleeves. “You threatened my daughter.”

He jerked against the cuff, scraping the chain across the pipe. His body smelled of sweat and blood. “She isn’t your daughter. You didn’t raise her. You didn’t even know what she looked like until I showed you.”

“I’ve been looking for her for three years—”

“And doing a piss poor job.”

“I wasn’t willing to con and torture people to get to her.”

He bellowed laughter, the sound echoing through the cellar. “Oh, no?” He tucked in his chin so he could look at his chest. Then he lifted his gaze back to me. “Oh, no?”

“You’re the exception, Bobby. You made me stoop because you were taking out your daddy issues on me.”

He thrashed, clinking the handcuff chain against the pipe again and again as if he thought he could break the pipe or chain if he kept yanking. “You God damned son of a bitch. You ruined my life.”