Chapter Five Meetings and Greetings #3
Mikey paced the office. He pulled the note out of his pocket for the third time.
It had little information except a short list of names.
Names he recognized. He almost vomited at the thought he might have to kill one of them.
He shook his head. He didn’t have it in him.
He thought about his brother. Would Dennis have had it in him?
Dennis could be a brawler, but a murderer?
Unlikely, even though they were in a financial bind.
Plus, killing someone should be more than fifty grand.
He checked the list again. There were five names on it.
He did the math: 10,000 per person. Definitely not enough.
Not that he had a set price for murder. And if it was, in fact, something sinister, he’d have to pass.
The issue would be the fifty grand. Where would Dennis have hidden it?
Mikey finally sat down in the duct-taped vinyl office chair.
His eyes scoured the room. The place was a mess.
They would be better off if they just let the bank foreclose.
No sense in risking jail time. A lot of jail time.
Mikey thought—rather, hoped—that it wouldn’t come to murder and the matter could be handled easily.
But fifty grand for something easy was a stretch.
Arlo came bouncing into the office as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Yo, bro. Why such a long face?”
“I met with the mystery man, remember?” Mikey was totally fed up with his brother. He had been looking out for him all his life. Bailed him out of jail more than once.
“Yeah. Right.” Arlo was uninterested. He had bigger plans. “Check it out.” He showed Mikey the copy of the map. “This way, we don’t have to worry about messing up the original.” He tapped his temple with his forefinger.
“You got it all figured out?” Mikey said sarcastically.
“I do, my man. Ya see here where the river bends? That’s near Shark River.”
“And you know that how?” Mikey’s voice was strained.
Arlo opened a local map of the area and set it on the desk.
He placed the copy of the stolen one on top.
“See, here?” He pointed to where the rivers appeared to bend in the same direction.
Arlo could barely contain his excitement.
“I figure we hook up a flat-bottom boat and drive nearby the bend and look for a place where we can launch it where nobody sees us.”
Mikey was exhausted at this point. “I’ll tell you what. You scout it out. When you find a place where we can launch it and where no one will see us, you let me know.”
“Will do. So, what did the guy have to say?” Arlo asked, still studying the map.
“He said Dennis owes him fifty grand,” Mikey said. The bile was burning the back of his throat.
“Say what?” Arlo finally snapped back to the real world.
“You heard me. Fifty, as in fifty thousand.”
“Whaddya talkin’ about?” Arlo stood up straight and winced. “Fifty grand? For what?”
“For a job he did not complete.”
“What job?”
“I don’t have all the details yet.”
“Mikey, you okay in the head? Some stranger tells you he paid Dennis fifty grand, and we don’t know about it?”
“Exactly.” Mikey rubbed his face with the palms of both hands, as if he were trying to wake from a bad dream. Except it wasn’t a dream.
“So where’s the money?” Arlo asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Well, did you look for it?”
“I checked around here but couldn’t find anything that looked like cash.”
“Maybe it wasn’t cash.” Arlo finally had a salient thought. “Maybe he bought something with the money.”
“Like what?” Mikey asked. “I haven’t noticed anything new around here.”
“Maybe in his apartment upstairs?” Arlo’s brain was moving faster than usual.
“I looked.”
“Yeah, but how hard did you look?” Arlo seemed in charge at the moment.
“Maybe not hard enough.”
Arlo snapped his fingers. “I’ll go check it out.” He opened the door to the staircase that led to Dennis’ place. “I get a commission if I find it.” He bounded up the steps two at a time.
“He wants all the money back,” Mikey shouted toward his brother as he disappeared into Dennis’s apartment.
Mikey began to think really hard. Dennis had been dead for five months. How come nobody mentioned this missing money before now? Then the man’s words rang in his head. He has a deadline.
He could hear Arlo banging doors, slamming drawers, and stomping around. He called to his brother, “Find anything?”
“Not yet. But there’s a whole bunch of pictures of some locals.”
Mikey thought they may have been the people on the list. “Yeah? Like who?”
Arlo came bounding down the steps with several photos in his hands. “Like these,” he said with a strange expression on his face. “Why does he have pictures of them?” He dropped the photos on the desk.
Mikey stared down at the familiar faces. “I’m not sure why, but I know it had to do with that dude I met today.” As if on cue, the burner phone rang, sending both brothers into a state of confusion and panic.
“Where did that come from?” Arlo asked, pointing to the new gizmo Mikey fished out of his pocket.
Mikey made a gesture for Arlo to be quiet and answered. “Yeah?” He listened for a short minute. “Okay. Okay. Yeah. I’m working on it.” Droplets of sweat formed on Mikey’s forehead. “Yeah. Got it.” The call ended. Mikey set the phone down and threw up into the garbage can.