On the Street Where You Die (Stanley Bentworth mysteries Book 1) Read online

My secret was out.

  “Yeah. The Lieutenant was one of those guys who bores the shit out of you with his endless litany about the evils of drink, meetings, twelve steps, one day at a time, and all that shit.”

  “I know the type. I married his sister.” He took another drink.

  “He asked who my enabler was.”

  “Your what?”

  “Someone who encourages the drinking. Like my ex-wife. And maybe your wife. They nag you about your drinking so you drink more to block it out.”

  I looked toward the bar and said, “I told him these days my enabler is Sammy.”

  We both took slow sips. Buford took another pull on his cigar. I lit another last cigarette.

  “So you wound up a P.I.”

  “After I retired without a pension, I got a license, had cards printed, and painted my name on the door. It was that or be a Walmart greeter.”

  “You like this line of work?”

  “If I have to work for assholes, I might as well be self-employed.”

  “And now you find missing persons.”

  “Runaway teenagers, deadbeat dads, bail jumpers, cheating spouses, hidden assets. The usual.”

  I downed the last of my bourbon.

  “Now,” I said, “are you going to give me some details about the shakedown or are you going to have another drink?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I signaled to Sammy to bring another round. I took a pencil and pad from my trench coat pocket. I don’t always take notes, but detectives on TV do it, and it’s expected.

  Like most clients, Buford recited his life story first, something I usually don’t care about, but if you don’t let them spill their guts, they’ll keep trying. So, I am a good listener. A booth in a bar can be a kind of confessional.

  “I’m a financier. Investment counselor. Big money. High-profile clientele. Moguls, movie stars, politicians. You ever read the financial section of the newspaper? Or the Wall Street Journal?”

  “No. I figured I’d take that up after I make my second million.”

  “Already made your first?” He was probably wondering if I was a potential client.

  “No. Gave up on that. Working on my second.”

  “That’s why you don’t know my name. I make a lot of money in investments.”

  “Ponzi? Like Madoff?”

  “No. Not yet anyway. I know my shit. My clients all made money in 2008. There’s a Rolls parked in the alley behind your office with a driver waiting to take me home to a twenty-two year old wife in a big house in the Heights. I want to keep the Rolls, the driver, and the house. Not to mention the wife. I need to hang onto my money.”

  “And you need help with that?”

  “I do.”

  “To help you find a blackmailer.”

  Buford leaned back and crossed his arms. His cigar hung out over his suit jacket, and the ash grew longer with each puff. I waited for it to drop off and burn a hole in the expensive garment.

  “I wasn’t always a successful investment counselor,” he said.

  “Were you an unsuccessful investment counselor?”

  “No. I mean, I got into investments late in life. I’m good at it.”

  “You don’t look like the typical investment counselor.”

  “What do I look like?” he asked.

  “More like the typical biker bar bouncer. Except for the clothes. You got tattoos under those threads?”

  He ignored my sarcasm and took a long drag on his cigar. The ash grew longer.

  “I know you’re a big mother,” I said, “but how does a guy with a moniker like Buford Overbee get a job as a wise guy?”

  Buford smiled for the first time. “That wasn’t my name back then. I changed it when I went into this line of work. More respectable, more impressive.”

  “More anonymous.”

  “Right. I chose a name that doesn’t look like me. Not only do my present clients not know about my past, my former employers don’t know about my present. I keep a low profile. No pictures, no interviews. The press refers to me as ‘the elusive Buford Overbee.’ Like Howard Hughes in his later years. Always in the action but never in the picture.”

  The cigar ash was due to fall off on its own. He flicked it off in the ash tray. Now I could breathe again.

  “What was your name before?” I asked.

  “You don’t need that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because your knowing that could draw the attention of the boys back home.”

  “And they’d come after me to learn what I know?”

  “They would.”

  “How would they know that I know?” This was getting complicated.

  “Stan, you’re going to come into contact with some of my people and, I hope, the blackmailer himself. These kinds of secrets are hard to keep.”

  “You don’t trust your people?”

  “I don’t trust anyone. Remember, the family pays well for information. Like if you tell them what they want to know, you get to keep your arms and legs.”

  He still had some secrets, even from me, his personal detective as of a thousand bucks ago. I’d have to break down that wall eventually, but not yet.

  “I assume there’s a reason you don’t want your previous colleagues in the family to know where you are.”

  “A very big reason having to do with a grand jury and a federal prosecutor.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m guessing that after testifying, you joined the witness protection country club.”

  “I did.”

  “And that’s how they don’t know where you are.”

  “It is.”

  “And the blackmailer, whoever it is, figured it all out.”

  “Apparently.”

  I reached my arms out and stretched them behind me on the back of the bench.

  “How does a wise guy from the streets choose investment counselor as a cover profession? Why not something easy like brain surgeon or theoretical physicist?”

  “I always had a feel for the market. I learned the ins and outs of insider trading when I was connected. You can do great things if you don’t have scruples and don’t have to worry about being caught.”

  “Which you don’t when the feds are your guardian angels,” I said.

  “Which they are as long as you can be helpful.”

  “How do you build up a list of clients when you’re an unknown, new investment counselor recently retired from the mob? Cold calls? Door-to-door?”

  Imagine a guy his size knocking on your door selling mutual funds.

  “I scammed my way into it.”

  Why did that not surprise me?

  He continued. “I sent e-mails to about two hundred investors and told half of them that a particular stock would go up and the other half it would drop. Whichever way it went, I removed the other half from my list and did it again with another stock.”

  “I can see where this is going,” I said.

  “I did it three times. After that, I had a list of twenty-five investors that had just gotten three consecutive hot tips. I sent them invitations to be clients. Most of them signed on. After that it was word of mouth.”

  “After that you had to deliver.”

  “And I do.”

  “And now somebody has found you and wants to be paid for his silence.”

  “Exactly. He uses e-mail and requires online payments, for chrissake, using OnlinePay.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You send money using the Internet.”

  Learn something new every day.

  “How much dust does he want?”

  “Started out twenty grand, which I paid. But it seems that’s only the first installment. Apparently this goes on forever. This time he wants thirty. I can’t do that. Twenty grand here, thirty grand there, it adds up.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “I want it stopped,” he said. “Not just because of the money, but because I don’t want some scumbag knowing he
got one over on me. I hate that. That’s where you come in, Stan. Find out who and where he is. You say that’s your specialty? That’s what I’m buying. You find him. I’ll take it from there.”

  “I just have to find someone whose name, address, and likeness we don’t know. Should be easy enough.”

  That was a bluff.

  “All I have is his e-mail address. Can you do anything with that?”

  “Well, that will take some serious hacking. I’ll call in Rodney.”

  Rodney was my nephew, my sister’s boy.

  “Rodney?”

  “My computer expert. When he’s not working for me, he surfs for porn and breaks into government computers. Just for the hell of it.”

  “You sure a guy like that is reliable? Sounds flaky.”

  “I’m sure. When it comes to computers, if he can’t do it, it can’t be done.”

  “Okay. What’s your fee?”

  “Five hundred a day plus expenses.”

  I seldom got that much, but if you don’t ask...

  “What kind of expenses?”

  “Travel, bribes, tips for information, whatever I have to pay Rodney, and such.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “For now I need the e-mail address of the blackmailer. And a way to reach you.”

  Buford took a card from his wallet and wrote on the back. “This is his e-mail address. My cell and e-mail are on the other side. Don’t pass them around.”

  I looked at the card. “I’ll need your home address.”

  “No, you won’t. You need to talk to me, call. You can e-mail or text an invoice when you need to be paid. Just don’t try to outbid the blackmailer. Keep me in the loop too. Daily progress reports.”

  “Will do.”

  “Stan, you do this for me and your financial worries are eased a bit. I’ll keep you on retainer for as long as I might have these kinds of problems.”

  That was the best news I’d heard all day. “Don’t worry, Buford. I’ll find the rat.”

  We shook hands and Buford threw a twenty on the table and left. I went to the front window and watched him cross the street and go behind my building to the alley. Soon a white Rolls Royce Phantom pulled out of the side street and turned north. I couldn’t see the driver. But the big man in the alpaca coat and fedora was in the back seat lighting another cigar. The Rolls sped away.

  I ordered another drink.

  Chapter 3

  I must have spent the night in my car. That’s where I woke up. My head pounded like the bass drum in a street band. Thump, thump. My stomach churned like a cement mixer.

  I got out of the car, went into my office building, and climbed the stairs to the third floor. There seemed to be more stairs today than usual.

  I’ve got to talk to the landlord about that elevator. It hasn’t worked since before Nixon resigned. But then he’ll talk to me about the rent. Which hasn’t been paid since...well, you get the idea.

  I went in the door marked, “Bentworth Detective Agency, LLC.” I had lettered that sign myself. It showed. The door opened into Willa’s office, which served as a waiting room and reception lobby. My office was behind hers with a closed door that separated us. The two offices could have used some paint, and the few pieces of furniture were more suited for the land fill, but clients didn’t seem to mind. Like Buford, they had problems to be solved, and most of them cared more about results than about how my office looked.

  Willa was already there, settled at her desk, looking in a hand mirror, and adjusting her makeup, a wasted effort. She was in her fifties with graying hair, square-rimmed reading glasses, and was as skinny as a fourteen-ounce pool cue. Today she was wearing a drab one-piece suit and Eleanor Roosevelt shoes.

  Willa had come to work the previous year and was the most efficient office manager I’d ever had. For the first time in my long and illustrious career as a P.I., my files were in order, my schedule organized, my books balanced, and my bank account reconciled. Overdrawn but reconciled.

  Rodney was waiting for me in my office, sitting in my chair reading a comic book with his feet up on my desk. I stood in the doorway, bleary-eyed and head throbbing, and looked at him.

  “What’s up Uncle Stanley?” Rodney was too cheerful for this kind of morning. Hell, Ebenezer Scrooge before the ghosts would have been too cheerful. My mouth felt like I’d been licking the bottom of a bird cage, the ringing in my ears would have rivaled the Anvil Chorus, and my asshole felt like Johnny Cash’s burning ring of fire. I didn’t dare fart. They’d have had to pick me up somewhere near Cleveland.

  If you need any more hangover metaphors, come back tomorrow.

  I made my usual morning-after resolution to quit drinking. This time I meant it. Like all the other times.

  Rodney made no move to vacate my desk. He was tall and gangly with spiked orange hair. He was dressed in the usual baggy shorts, the top of which was down around the lower part of his ass with the crotch at his knees.

  “Rodney, what holds those pants up?”

  He put the comic book on the table and turned the swivel chair to face me.

  “Will power,” he said.

  “Get up,” I said.

  He stood up and walked past me. I sat down.

  “Your Jockey shorts are showing,” I said.

  “That’s the style.” He turned to face me.

  “I hope you change them every day.”

  “Yellow in front, brown in back.”

  His T-shirt said, “If God hadn’t meant for man to eat pussy, He wouldn’t have made it look like a taco.” The back of the shirt had a picture of a vertical taco.

  “Damn, Rodney. That shirt can get you arrested. Does your mother know about it?”

  “She bought it.”

  My sister. What a piece of work.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “You called last night. Said we have a job.”

  “I did? Oh, yeah, I did.” I didn’t remember the call, but we did have work. “Got your laptop?”

  “Yeah, in my backpack.”

  “If I give you an e-mail address, can you find out whose it is and where they are?”

  His backpack hung from a hook on the coat rack. He got it, pulled the other chair over, unpacked the laptop, and set it up on the desk.

  “Usually,” he said. “It can take some time depending on whether it’s through a website service or a dedicated mail server. One way or other I have to hack into the server with its IP address, crack the password file, get root privileges—”

  “I don’t need details, Rodney.” If I’d let him, he’d give me the history of hacking all the way back to Babbage.

  I wrote the blackmailer’s e-mail address on a slip of paper and gave it to him. “How long will it take?”

  “Better part of the day,” he said.

  That meant about an hour. Rodney always overestimated.

  “I might not find out where the guy is located,” he said. “He can log on from anywhere. But I can probably get his name and sometimes his home address.”

  “That’ll be enough. When you’re done with that, I’ll have another job for you. Use my desk. I’ll be gone for a while. Breakfast.”

  Just saying the word turned my stomach. But often food was the only way out of a hangover.

  “Can I smoke in here?”

  “Smoke what?”

  “Shit.”

  “No.”

  “You drink in here.”

  “Booze is legal, Rodney, and won’t cost me my P.I. ticket, and it doesn’t get into the draperies.”

  “What draperies?”

  “I keep meaning to get draperies. Anyway, keep the shit in your backpack.”

  I got the thousand bucks out of the safe, left Rodney to his hacking, and went into the outer office.

  “Most secretaries would have brought coffee to the boss by now,” I said to Willa.

  “Most secretaries get paid with some degree of regularity.”

  I handed her Buford�
�s stack of hundred-dollar bills.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “What’s it look like?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, counting the money. “It’s been so long.”

  Everybody’s a smartass today.

  I shrugged. “Pay some bills with it.”

  “Can I start with my back pay?”

  “If you must.”

  “I must.”

  “Will it cover what I owe you?”

  “No. But I won’t take it all.”

  I sat on the edge of her desk. “Start a file, Willa. New client. Name of Buford Overbee.”

  “You’re kidding,” she said. She was making notes.

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “Me. Wait’ll you see him.”

  “Nobody’s ever seen him. Address?”

  “Don’t have one. Here’s his phone number and e-mail.” I gave her the card.

  She wrote down the contact information and turned the card over. “Whose e-mail is this on the back?”

  “It’s relevant to the case.”

  “Relevant e-mail address,” she said and made more notes. She gave the card back to me.

  “Don’t send any e-mail to that address. Its owner doesn’t know we have it. Doesn’t even know about us.”

  “Whatever. I suppose you’ll explain later.”

  “If I have to. I’m out of here. Got to get some breakfast. Hope I can hold it down.”

  “Get some breath mints too, Stan. Whatever you were celebrating last night is still with us. You’ve got a breath on you would wither crab grass across the Interstate.”

  Only a true friend would tell you that.

  She opened a drawer and began rummaging in it. “Now where did I put that Lysol spray?”

  “Don’t worry. It won’t get into the draperies.”

  “What dr— Oh, get the hell out of here.”

  I went across the street to Ray’s diner, my usual eating place. It was in a brick building, now mostly unoccupied. Ray grilled the best burger on either side of the tracks, and his loyal clientele kept him in business.

  Bunny was on duty. I was always glad to see Bunny. She had been my on-again, off-again girlfriend for about seven years. Even when we were off-again, like now, we stayed friends. Not many women in my life had been able to do that. My breakups had always been noisy and unpleasant. Not with Bunny, though. We’d just agree that time had come to move on, usually at her initiative. Then after some time off, we’d try again. This was one of those times when we weren’t trying.