Short Cut (The Reluctant Hustler Book 2) Read online

  SHORT CUT

  Other Titles by J. Gregory Smith

  Thrillers

  A Noble Cause (Thomas & Mercer, Kindle Bestseller U.S., UK and Germany)

  The Flamekeepers (Thomas & Mercer)

  Darwin’s Pause (RedAcre Press)

  The Reluctant Hustler Series

  Quick Fix (Book 1, RedAcre Press)

  Short Cut (Book 2, RedAcre Press)

  The Paul Chang Mystery Series

  Final Price (Book One, Thomas & Mercer)

  Legacy of the Dragon (Book Two, Thomas & Mercer)

  Send in the Clowns (Book Three, Thomas & Mercer)

  Young Adult

  The Crystal Mountain (RedAcre Press)

  Short Stories

  “Heroic Measures” (Amazon StoryFront)

  “Blenders” (Insidious Assassins, Smart Rhino Publishing)

  “The Pepper Tyrant” (Uncommon Assassins, Smart Rhino Publishing)

  “Something Borrowed” (Zippered Flesh: Tales of Body Enhancements Gone Bad, Smart Rhino Publishing)

  “Street Smarts” (Stories from the Ink Slingers, A Written Remains Anthology, Gryphonwood Press)

  “Powder Burns” (A Plague of Shadows, Smart Rhino Publishing)

  J. GREORY SMITH

  SHORT CUT

  RedAcre Press

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2020 J. Gregory Smith

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by RedAcre Press

  Cover design by Ebook Launch

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2020

  ISBN 978-1-7353889-0-8

  For Julie

  Table of Contents

  Other Titles by J. Gregory Smith

  Chapter 1: Fishtown, Philadelphia Pennsylvania

  Chapter 2: Fishtown, Cream of the Cup

  Chapter 3: Fishtown, The Heather Bakery

  Chapter 4: Fishtown

  Chapter 5:

  Chapter 6: PNC Bank

  Chapter 7:

  Chapter 8: Rollie’s House

  Chapter 9: Fishtown: Two days later

  Chapter 10: Keane Physical Therapy, Fishtown

  Chapter 11: Rollie’s Place

  Chapter 12: Media, Pennsylvania

  Chapter 13: Fishtown

  Chapter 14: Ryan’s Place, Fishtown

  Chapter 15: Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia

  Chapter 16: Fishtown, Office of Dr. Joo Won Park

  Chapter 17: Media, PA: Route One Coffee Shop

  Chapter 18: Fishtown: Ryan’s House

  Chapter 19: Fishtown, Rollie’s Place: The next morning

  Chapter 20: Fishtown, Ryan’s House: Two days later.

  Chapter 21: Fishtown, Rollie’s place: The next day

  Chapter 22: Rollie’s Place

  Chapter 23: Fishtown

  Chapter 24: Fishtown

  Chapter 25: Scorpio Photography Studios : Two days later

  Chapter 26: Near Rollie’s Place

  Chapter 27: Port of Philadelphia

  Chapter 28: Port of Philadelphia

  Chapter 29: Johnstown, PA

  Chapter 30: Johnstown, Pennsylvania

  Chapter 31: Highlands Limestone and Crushed Stone

  Chapter 32: The Quarry

  Chapter 33: In the woods near the trailhead

  Chapter 34: Trailhead Parking Lot

  Chapter 35: The Quarry

  Chapter 36: Gallagher’s Truck Service

  Chapter 37: Fishtown

  Chapter 38: Rollie’s Place: Two days later

  Chapter 39: Fishtown, Cream of the Cup: Three days later

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Fishtown, Philadelphia Pennsylvania

  “Hold that goddamn frame straight, kid! You want this to look like some hack installed these window bars?” Rollie stood behind me on the porch of this small house in the Fishtown neighborhood in Philly.

  “Some hack is installing them,” I said as the sweat crawled down my sides. My shoulders ached in protest while I tried to hold the set of steel security bars long enough for the old man to anchor it with a long bolt.

  “Speak for yourself, sonny,” Rollie said.

  This was supposed to be the easy window, at least compared to the ladder work required to reach the ones on the second floor. Removing the old, rusted bars had been a bitch, but they had pretty much screamed “Nobody home!”

  It was going to be a long day.

  “I just hope these do the trick,” I said.

  Rollie moved behind me and I heard the cordless power drill whine as it drove a second bolt home. I was able to relax a bit since the weight of the bars now rested on the thick bottom bolts.

  “Don’t slack off yet. Brace the top or the whole thing will wrench free and we’ll have to start over.”

  “Like hell we’ll start over. That happens and we go to plan B: burn the sucker to the ground and be done with it.”

  Rollie managed to speak around the last bolt he held in his mouth. “You figure out a way to claim the insurance for yourself?”

  “Not yet.” I smiled back. It was a harmless joke, but it wasn’t funny. Our friend Ryan Buckley’s name may have been on the deed, but as of six months ago it really belonged to his estate. Rollie and I were just buttoning up the place because we knew he’d have appreciated it. It had already gone sideways in enough ways to hammer home the lesson I’d thought I’d already learned—the whole no-good-deed-going-unpunished thing—but as it would turn out, I hadn’t seen anything yet. I’d thought the death of my best friend would make my life simpler.

  So much for that.

  The problem was that the world considered Ryan missing, but alive. Those of us who knew better—Rollie, a charter member of that club, had been with me the night he’d died—wouldn’t dare say anything to the authorities. For now, we had to help pretend everything was fine to avoid drawing scrutiny from some very bad actors. Hell, even if we’d wanted to spill the beans, we couldn’t have proven anything.

  “I asked Beth and she told me that without evidence of foul play, the state typically waits seven years before making an official declaration.”

  “Jesus wept,” Rollie said. “I’ll be dead of old age by then and don’t expect me to be patching the roof all that time.”

  I doubted that. For a guy in his seventies he was tougher than men twenty years younger.

  “Did she say anything about coming back from Colorado? If she’s moving in with you in my place, I’ll have to keep your security deposit.”

  He knew better. “The ink’s barely dry on the divorce. You’re stuck with me for the time being. I could flop here, I guess.” Beth and I had been on track to split up, then after getting pulled through Ryan’s last adventure almost called it off. Luckily, we came to our senses and agreed to move on, she all the way to Denver to work as a paralegal.

  “Crap,” Rollie said. He wiped a sleeve across his forehead. He wore his dyed brown hair in a crewcut.

  Rollie loved to bitch about keeping a renter in the house, but it had been his idea when my marriage was on the rocks and I was out on the street. With his own wife passed away, I think he enjoyed the conversation.

  “And I might be stateside for a bit this time.” Until recently I was overseas driving supply trucks i
n the Sand Box for Delivergistics, a military contractor and logistics firm.

  Rollie secured the remaining bolt and tested the bars like an agitated prisoner in lockup. “That should keep out the riff-raff.” He turned to me. “Did you hear anything new on that investigation?”

  I stretched out my tired shoulders. “Local Iraqis are pissed about a shootout between our operations/security teams and insurgents. Some of our guys can be fairly energetic once the fur flies.”

  “Things can get full ugly in a hurry. Sometimes hitting the hardest, the fastest is the only way to come out alive,” Rollie said. His dark eyes took on a hard glint and I could see the sniper he’d been in Vietnam.

  “It’s turned into a complete clusterfuck and Delivergistics has put a bunch of work on hold so lots of us are kicking it back here hoping the whole thing blows over.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “They say it could sink the company. But it’s hard to be sure from long distance. Some of those security guys saved my ass from bandits a time or two.” I didn’t know all of the operations guys that well, but a few were real hotheads. Who really knew?

  “Get a load of this rolling freakshow,” Rollie said, snapping me back to the here and now.

  I followed his gaze to see an electric-blue VW Beetle, only the owner had customized the thing with the front grill from a classic Bentley, complete with the iconic chrome winged “B” hood ornament.

  My heart sank as the car slowed. I was grateful for once that the narrow street was packed with parked cars. Maybe he’d go away.

  “Oh shit,” I said. “Now what?”

  “Friend of yours?”

  I couldn’t see inside due to the over-tinted windows, but as it passed by the horn made a cornball “Awooga” sound like an old Model T.

  The car crawled around the corner where I could see there was an open spot.

  “Damn.”

  “What?”

  “More of this weird Ryan crap.” I turned to Rollie. “Remember Latimer’s Fix-it-Up?”

  “The repair shop? Didn’t the guy die?”

  I nodded. “Last year. That’s his kid’s car. His name is Terrance, but everyone calls him Beetle Bentley. Beet for short.”

  “I can’t imagine why.” Rollie’s eyes scrunched while he searched his memory. It was a small neighborhood, but since Rollie could fix about anything himself he probably never got to know the guy well. “Wasn’t his kid …”

  “I don’t know the clinical term or diagnosis or whatever but yeah, the kid is a little off. I think he still bags groceries, but I know he’s dumped all his cash into that goofy car.”

  “You know him well?”

  “No, but Ryan must have. Beet came to me the other day while I was over here and wanted some cash.”

  “Is he on drugs?”

  “Illegal stuff?” I shook my head. “Not that I can tell. No, he wanted a couple thousand, like a loan. He kept asking me where Ryan was.” That was a popular but awkward question on the best of days. It seemed like everyone in Fishtown knew Ryan, and wanted something from him.

  “What the hell did you tell him?”

  “What do you think? I’m not a bank, but it was hard to see a guy in his twenties on the verge of tears.” I didn’t have any better answers for Beet today and a feeling of dread grew while we waited for him to present himself.

  When he rounded the corner, the first thing I noticed was that he walked with a limp he didn’t have before. I pick up on things like that, having a bad knee of my own, courtesy of an IED explosion in Iraq. I’m lucky I still have a leg at all.

  Somehow, I didn’t think Beet was feeling too lucky. He made his way toward us with his head down. He wore dark Ray-Ban knockoffs and a blue Star Trek Federation logo ball cap to complement the faded Spock T-shirt stretched tight over his pudgy belly.

  The last time I saw him he’d been wearing the exact same outfit.

  “Hey, Beet. You doing okay?”

  He looked up and now I got a good look at his face. Purple crescents under his eyes spread beyond the frames of his shades. His lower lip was swollen and he winced when he smiled at me. Instead of answering me, he set to probing the cut his smile had reopened with the tip of his tongue. One of his front teeth was missing.

  “Jeez, Beet. What the hell happened to you?”

  “It’s my fault. Is Ryan here?” He looked at Rollie. “Are you Ryan’s daddy?” He waved a pasty arm as if shooing an insect. “No, he said his daddy was dead. Like mine. I wish he wasn’t.”

  Rollie’s hard body language softened and he put the cordless drill down. “We were friends of Ryan’s … are friends,” Rollie corrected, but Beet didn’t catch the slip.

  I jumped in. “You want to come inside? I think, uh, Ryan has some water or soda.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “It hurts to stand up. Driving is okay, though.”

  We led him inside.

  Inside, Ryan’s place looked like a time capsule from our high school days. After his parents died, he’d left the house as it had been. The old furniture gathered dust and any framed pictures Rollie and I moved off the walls showed how faded the surrounding wallpaper had become.

  He’d never really moved out. He’d worked with me at Delivergistics and both of us spent large chunks of time overseas, so he never got around to it. Even after his folks were gone, when I was back in town, he rarely let me inside the place. Or anyone else, it seemed.

  “Will he be back soon?” Beet pressed. “The other guy gets mad real fast.”

  “What guy?” Rollie said.

  “The money guy. He was so nice before. Until I couldn’t pay.”

  My heart sank. “Beet, what did you do?”

  He looked up at me and I resisted an urge to wipe his face for him. I never had any kids, but I imagine that’s what the impulse might feel like. Except this “kid” was twenty-five or so.

  “What was I supposed to do, Kyle? Ryan always helped before. He told me to go to you if he wasn’t around. You said no.”

  The words hung in the air like an indictment. But something else had a bizarre yet familiar ring. “Wait. What, exactly, did Ryan say?” I tore off a square of paper towel and handed it to him.

  I saw Rollie wince when Beet took off the shades and blew his nose. One eye looked like he was wearing a purple monocle and the other wasn’t much better. At least the nose didn’t look broken.

  “Ryan said ‘I might have to be away for a while, but you can always go to Kyle. He’s going to be helping me out.’”

  I met Rollie’s gaze with a slight shake of my head. “Beet, Ryan did have to go away and it might be for a long time, but he never told me that.”

  Beet smiled and brought the paper towel to his cracked lip. “Oh! I just thought you was mad at me or something.”

  “Of course not. But tell me more about the guy who did this to you. You owe him money?”

  Beet’s shoulders sagged and he stared at the floor, nodding. “I don’t have it. I’m gonna get it, but Mr. Lee at the store said they can’t do advances.”

  I knew he couldn’t be getting more than minimum wage for bagging groceries. “How much did you borrow?”

  “Two thousand.”

  Holy crap.

  “I got a new exhaust and another hood ornament. Someone stole the last one. Very fusstrating.” Beet frowned. “Only, he said it was more and I had to pay to some guy named Veeg. Do you know him?”

  “Veeg?” It didn’t ring a bell.

  Rollie was quicker on the draw: “Vig? Is that what he was saying?”

  Beet scrunched up his pale, freckled face. “Maybe. He talks funny. Is that like when he calls me beeeg guy?”

  The vig—loan shark-speak for interest. “Could be,” I said. “Did he say how much?”

  “I guess. The first week he got mad when I didn’t have his money and said ‘Veeg added. Next week, you pay that or else.’ Only nobody named Veeg or Vig came by to collect.”

  Rollie shook his head
and gestured toward Beet’s busted-up face. “So, this was the ‘next week’ and the ‘or else’?”

  Beet nodded. “My teeth still hurt.” He looked at me. “Are you sure you can’t help? I think next time he might bring Veeg with him. I’m scared.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll help.” I didn’t have a lot of cash on me, but I thought we could get the dogs called off while we straightened it out. “Vig is the extra guys like him want for lending you money. He was asking you to at least pay that extra amount.”

  “I thought he wanted it all, but I didn’t have any of it yet. Ryan always gave me time and he told me how much each week. Dad made sure I didn’t forget or spend it.”

  I knew Ryan had been into a lot of shady things, but it was clear this couldn’t be a huge profit center for him. More like a community service.

  “We need to talk to this guy,” I said. “Explain the misunderstanding.” One look at Rollie’s set jaw told me he was in. “Who is he?”

  I saw fear trace across Beet’s childlike face. “You’re not gonna make him mad, are you?”

  “No,” I said, though the way I felt right now made that an iffy promise. “We’re going to pay the vig for you and get him off your back while we figure something out for the rest.”

  “Son,” Rollie said, “can you tell us who he is and where we can find him?”

  Beet glanced at him, then back to me. “You guys would do that?”

  I nodded. I’d even pinkie swear if it made him happy.

  “His name is Milosh. He hangs out at a café on Girard Ave. Cream of the Cup?”

  “I know it,” I said.

  Rollie made a stink face. “Artsy-fartsy crap. Kind of place that stares at you cross-eyed if you order a simple black coffee.”

  Beet smiled at that. “You, too? He sits in the back. He has black hair and round metal glasses.”

  “Milosh doesn’t sound like an Irish name.” Rollie said it matter-of-factly, but I got his point. We lived smack dab in Philly Irish Mob territory. Interlopers not wanted, as Rollie and I knew all too well.

  Chapter 2

  Fishtown, Cream of the Cup

  The moment I set foot inside the shop I knew why it was the first time. It was exactly the sort of hip-by-the-numbers place that set my teeth on edge like chewing on aluminum foil. The scent of burned sugar and almonds filled the air and a couple of white twenty-something customers with dreadlocks and assorted ink and piercings glanced up and decided we weren’t worth their time.