The Last Quarter (A James Bishop short story) Read online

  Bishop smiled back. ‘I may have committed a misdemeanour here and there.’

  ‘No felonies?’

  ‘One or two maybe.’ He gave another shrug. ‘I lose track.’

  ‘Lose track? You? That’ll be the day.’

  ‘How about you, Eric? I heard rumours you got assigned to bomb disposal in Afghanistan. That right?’

  ‘Hey, explosive ordnance disposal, if you don’t mind. And just for my last year, yeah. They told me I had a natural talent. When my eight was up, I got out and tried a few things here and there, but I always wanted to work for myself. Now I got my wish. Things are always greener on the other side, ain’t they?’ Eric took another slug of his drink and sighed. ‘So you really wanna know why we cancelled the poker evenings?’

  ‘If you feel you can trust me with the information.’

  Eric snorted. ‘Let’s take that as read, huh? Okay, what happened was the four of us found a much better way to spend our leisure time. And a far more profitable way.’

  FIVE

  Bishop took another sip of his drink and said nothing. He knew enough to let Eric tell it at his own pace.

  ‘See, the last few years, the four of us have been getting together regularly for some five-card draw,’ Eric continued. ‘Just for a couple of bucks apiece, you know? Nothing heavy. There was me, Mike Padgett, Darren Frederickson and Gene Spurgeon. Did Cassie tell you anything about the guys?’

  ‘Not much,’ Bishop said. ‘But Frederickson was a cop, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yeah, five years retired. He was on half-pension due to partial disability. I got to know him through Gene, who I’ve known since before the Corps. He’s a plain-clothes dick, works out of the Barclay PD. Mike was ex-army, but I didn’t hold that against him. He had his own landscaping business and Cassie used him once when she wanted to tidy up our rear garden. I got to know him through that, and over time we all gradually got to know each other pretty well. We liked each other’s company, so we decided to make it a regular thing and get together once or twice a week. You know, play a few hands and bitch about the world. Like that.’

  Eric exhaled. ‘Only recently, the bitching’d been getting louder than usual. Mainly about money. We’d all been suffering, see. I’d not been getting the orders I needed to stay afloat, and the same went for Mike. Darren’s part-time security work was drying up and his half-pension wasn’t enough to live on. And Gene . . . Well, Gene’s got his own problems with work. Let’s just say he ain’t got the kind of job security he would have expected after fifteen years on the force.’ He scratched his nose and took another sip of his drink.

  ‘I can see where this is going,’ Bishop said quietly. ‘At one of these poker evenings, somebody put forward an idea that would solve everybody’s financial problems overnight.’

  Eric smiled. ‘Got it in one. It was Darren who came up with it. Although he was retired, he’d stayed tight with a lot of the guys in the department, and as a result he usually got invited to their social gatherings. And you know cops when they get together, they love talking shop. So he was at a barbecue when one of the guys started discussing this informant of his. How this punk had heard a rumour about an abandoned building being taken over by one of the local drug pushers as a kind of temporary holding station.’

  ‘What, for drugs?’

  ‘No, no,’ Eric said. ‘For cash. Beautiful unmarked bills. This pusher was supposedly under the command of one of the main coke and heroin traffickers out of Philly, and he and his crew were responsible for overseeing all the street-level stuff and collecting each night’s takings before personally delivering it to the main man.

  ‘Except it seems Mr Pusher got lazy. He grew tired of going round to his street people himself, and decided to find a remote place to hole up for a few hours each night where they could come and deliver the money to him instead. Early every morning the lieutenants would drive out to this location and hand over the previous day’s profits, and a few hours later Mr Pusher and his crew would take the whole lot to their boss over in Philly. We liked the sound of that set-up. We decided there were real possibilities there.’

  Bishop said, ‘To wipe them all out and take their money, you mean?’

  ‘Hey, we felt we were the good guys, but where was it getting us? We were all broke and things were only gonna get worse, yet these shitbirds were selling drugs to schoolkids and raking it in. So we figured why not get proactive and do something about it?’

  Bishop didn’t answer. Instead, he said, ‘I take it this informant didn’t know the exact location, though.’

  Eric chuckled and said, ‘Oh, that’d be too easy.’ He poured more bourbon into his cup and took another sip. ‘He’d heard it was somewhere in Camden, and that was it. But luckily the cop in question wasn’t taking the rumour seriously, as this informant wasn’t the most reliable guy on the planet, on top of which those guys never go into Camden unless they absolutely have to. It’s like a Third World warzone over there. A real shithole. So Darren suggested we spend some time checking the waterfront area ourselves, since most of the buildings around there have been condemned for years and any one of them could have fitted the bill.’

  ‘At which point the poker evenings stopped.’

  ‘Right. We started spending all our spare time checking out the area late at night, hoping to get lucky. Which we did a fortnight later. Mike found this abandoned office building in a real run-down area, and told us he’d seen some bad dudes coming and going, and even worse dudes guarding the place with some heavy-looking firepower. So I found a good spot and spent a few nights scoping it out. I knew straight away it was the place the punk had been talking about. Three armed goons outside, front and back. Four deliveries a night, usually in the early morning. Once the last delivery was made, Mr Bigshot and his pals would wait for an hour or so before taking off in four cars. Then the same thing would happen the next night. It looked good, Bish. I felt that with a little precision planning, things could work out real nice for us.’

  ‘So you did it.’

  ‘Oh yeah. We did it all right.’ He noticed Bishop’s empty cup and poured a couple more fingers into it. ‘I planned it all out and it just was like old times in Saudi. It felt real natural, know what I mean? And weapons weren’t a problem. I still had my MP7 I brought back from Kuwait. Mike had a fully automatic Uzi he’d picked up in Iraq, of all places. Gene had his Remington 12-gauge, while Darren would be the driver and lookout. I gave us Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta call signals. We all wore black clothes and ski masks, and when the time came, we hit ’em hard and put ’em all down in less than a minute.’

  Bishop frowned. ‘You mean you executed them?’

  ‘Nine punks in total. Hey, don’t look at me like that, man. They were the lowest of the low, okay? Probably killed ten times as many people as we ever did in the Corps.’

  Bishop decided he wasn’t equipped to comment on probabilities. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then we located the bags of cash and got outta there before anybody else arrived. It all went like clockwork. It really did.’

  Bishop wouldn’t have expected anything less. One of the reasons he and Eric had gotten along so well back in the Corps was because they both believed anything worth doing was worth doing right. Making sure every ‘i’ was dotted and every ‘t’ crossed at the planning stages. They’d proved over and over that the key to success was often in the detail.

  ‘Were there any witnesses?’ Bishop asked.

  ‘Yeah, three girls. Pros, according to the news reports. There were four to begin with, but one of the perps was off his head on something, probably angel dust, and sliced his one up before we could put him down. We knocked the other three girls out, but all they saw were guys in ski masks anyway. At least that’s what they told the cops the next day. And there was nobody outside when we made our getaway. As far as the cops and the papers were concerned, it was just another turf war that got out of hand, which was perfectly fine by us. So what do you think of your ol
d buddy now, Bish? Disappointed, right?’

  ‘I don’t judge my friends, Eric. I guess you did what you felt you had to do at the time.’

  ‘Yeah, you got that right. And nine less pushers in the world ain’t gonna cause me any sleepless nights either.’

  Bishop couldn’t really argue with that aspect. But then it could be said that he was morally lacking where legalities were concerned. Had been ever since leaving prison.

  ‘So how much did you come away with in the end?’

  Eric placed a foot on the desk. ‘Little over eight hundred grand in total, all in small bills. Worked out at two hundred apiece, which we were all pretty happy about. Hidden my share in a safe place until I figure out what to do with it. There’s no rush.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Same, as far as I know. No idea where Mike and Darren stashed theirs, but the money’s probably still there. I can’t see either one mentioning it to their nearest and dearest, so there’s a good chance it might never get found.’

  ‘Or somebody’s already found it.’

  Eric’s eyes narrowed. ‘Come on, Bish, we back to that again?’

  Bishop set his empty cup down on the desk. ‘It’s a possibility, don’t you think? For example, this big drug trafficker in Philly can’t have been too happy on learning that his people were taken out and his money stolen. It seems logical to me that he’d send someone down to see what they could find out.’

  ‘So somehow they discover we were the guys behind it and start picking us off, one by one?’ Eric snorted. ‘Can’t you see how crazy that sounds? And even if I were to accept that part of it, Darren wasn’t gunned down in some drive-by shooting; he died from a heart attack, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Heart attacks have been known to be faked, but I’m just throwing out possibilities here. Like maybe one of you mentioned what happened that night to someone outside the circle. A friend, for example. Like you’re telling me right now. And maybe that friend decided that all that cash lying around was just too tempting to pass up.’

  Lines appeared on Eric’s forehead. ‘But you and me go way back. I trust you.’

  ‘Right. But maybe one of the others felt the same way about one of their friends, and maybe they misjudged things a little. I’d say that’s a more likely scenario. What about these two deaths? Did Darren have an existing heart condition?’

  ‘Yeah, that was the reason why he was pensioned off. But look—’

  Bishop continued. ‘So it might not have been too hard for somebody who knew what they were doing to tip him over into heart attack country. And then there’s this hit-and-run on Mike. Have the police got any leads on the car?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’ Eric was already shaking his head. ‘No, that don’t hold water at all. Sorry, Bish, but you’re wasting your time. Darren and Mike both died the way it was reported. In each case, what you see is what you get.’

  Bishop nodded. ‘So are you telling me to lay off?’

  ‘If I did, would you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Eric sighed and stared up at the ceiling for a few beats. Then he said, ‘Still covering my back, huh, Bish?’

  ‘If I don’t, who will?’

  Eric shook his head again. ‘Hell, do what you want. I won’t stop you. At least it’ll help convince Cassie she’s barking up the wrong tree.’

  Bishop smiled. ‘That’s the attitude. So will this Gene Spurgeon talk to me?’

  Eric scratched his head. ‘Maybe. I’ve known him a long time, so if I explain who you are . . . I’ll have to call him first and let you know, okay?’

  ‘Fair enough. Now all I need are the home addresses for the other two.’

  ‘Oh Christ. You sure you wanna do this? Darren’s sister’s safe enough, but I met Mike’s girlfriend once before, and let me tell you, once was more than enough. That girl’s as crazy as a shithouse rat, no lie.’

  ‘In that case,’ Bishop said, ‘I definitely want to see her.’

  SIX

  Bishop knocked on the door to apartment 14b and waited. From Eric’s it had been a quick thirty-minute drive to the Colonial Apartments, a three-storey seventies-era apartment complex just off Route 70 in Cherry Hill. It was a long, unremarkable building with fake marble pillars guarding the main entrance and a mostly empty parking lot out front. The whole place reminded Bishop of a Howard Johnson he’d once stayed in over in Bakersfield, California. Characterless was a good word to describe it.

  He heard muffled voices coming from inside and then the door was pulled open by a slight, dark-haired, attractive woman dressed all in black. Black T-shirt, black jeans, black bandana headband. A young long-haired guy in a leather raincoat pecked her cheek as he slipped past her, smirking at Bishop as he went. Bishop watched him disappear down the hallway before turning back to the woman. He guessed she was in her late twenties, with a silver nose ring and two silver hoops through her lower lip. He looked into her larger than normal brown eyes and saw that the pupils were dilated. Definitely on something. She looked almost manic.

  ‘Well?’ the woman said.

  ‘Lauren McLaughlin?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  ‘Like to talk to you for a few minutes if that’s okay. My name’s Bishop. From the local coroner’s office. It’s about Mr Padgett.’ The lie came fairly smooth and easy.

  She gave a shrug and walked back into the apartment without a word. Bishop assumed he’d been invited in and followed her down a hallway, past a messy living room and into the kitchen diner area at the end. The whole room smelled of week-old mozzarella. He perched on a backless stool at the breakfast counter as Lauren McLaughlin rummaged around in a kitchen drawer.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked without turning.

  ‘That’d be great, thanks.’ Bishop looked behind him and saw a table filled with old pizza boxes and empty beer bottles. Cleaning up after herself clearly wasn’t high on Lauren’s list of priorities. Still, it was her life. And he’d seen a lot worse. He was in the process of turning back to the counter when he heard a movement to his left and then felt the cold barrel of a gun press itself against his temple.

  Out the corner of his eye he saw Lauren a couple of feet away from him with her right arm outstretched. So Eric hadn’t been exaggerating about her state of mind. She was jittery too, which wasn’t encouraging. Bishop immediately relaxed his body and breathed deeply through his nose. Remaining calm was the best defence in a situation like this.

  ‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked softly.

  She pressed the barrel harder against his temple. ‘Which hospital sent you this time?’

  ‘Hospital? I don’t follow.’

  ‘Care centre, then,’ she shouted. ‘You goddamn social workers are all the same. Why can’t you leave me the hell alone, huh? Why?’

  Bishop blinked slowly. ‘I already told you, I’m from the coroner’s office. I only came to—’ Suddenly his eyes widened and he said in a louder voice, ‘Jesus, you got major cockroaches in this place.’

  He immediately felt the pressure against his temple ease and ducked his head forward while at the same time delivering a sideways elbow strike to the woman’s midsection. He felt the point of his elbow slam into her chest, and she uttered a soft ‘Oof,’ as she doubled forward in pain. Bishop quickly swivelled on the stool and snatched the gun from her grip, then watched as she fell to the floor in slow motion. She curled up in a foetal position with her hands pressed against her chest, eyes clamped shut.

  ‘Oh, you bastard,’ she hissed, kicking both feet like a kid.

  ‘Well, you kind of brought it on yourself,’ he said, and got up, looking the gun over. It was a Beretta Bobcat, a tiny little mouse gun with an eight-round magazine that barely covered his open hand. But no less lethal for all that. Especially at point-blank range. Great for home protection, but not so good when the homeowner was off her head on drugs.

  He slipped the piece into his jacket pocket for the time being, then knelt down next
to her. ‘Here, let me help you up.’

  ‘Stay the hell away from me, shitheel.’

  Ignoring her, he grabbed her under both armpits and gently got her to her feet, then placed her on the stool he’d been sitting on. She still had one hand pressed to her chest.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on,’ Bishop said, ‘but it’s no good for you. Hate to think what my friends in the police department would say if I told them about this.’

  She turned to him with narrowed eyes. ‘Police? You ain’t a care worker or anything?’

  ‘I told you, I’m from the coroner’s office. I came here with a few follow-up questions regarding Mr Padgett’s accident. But now I’m thinking I’d just better call the police and get them over here instead.’ He began to turn away.

  She grabbed his wrist to stop him. ‘Hey, wait. I thought you were someone else, that’s all. I’ll answer whatever questions you got, just don’t call the cops, okay?’

  Bishop paused, then said, ‘Okay.’ He took the other stool and said, ‘Now tell me what happened on the night of Michael’s accident.’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘It weren’t no accident what happened. It was murder, or manslaughter, whatever you people call it.’

  ‘Well that’s what we’re still trying to determine. Just tell me what happened.’

  ‘You guys already know all this,’ she said. ‘Last Friday, Mike went out for his evening run like he usually did. I reminded him to bring a few beers back from the store and off he went, and that was the last I time I ever saw him alive. They said some old Buick or something just ran right into him and then sped off without even slowing.’

  ‘There were witnesses?’

  Lauren frowned at him. ‘Don’t you know this already? The cops already got all those details. Why don’t you just ask them?’

  ‘Our office likes to keep its investigations separate from the police whenever possible,’ he said. Which was a blatant lie. Bishop knew that coroners conducted their own investigations into wrongful death cases, but other than that, he was winging it. He just hoped Lauren’s fragile mental state would help him get through the inconsistencies in his story. ‘Please answer the question.’