Short Cut (The Reluctant Hustler Book 2) Read online

  Maybe there was still a chance to try to help him out. It was my turn to stock the fridge with beer, so I headed to the state-run Wine and Spirit store over on Girard. Aside from the brew, I wanted to see if that old guy really was there.

  * * *

  A bored-looking clerk glanced up when the door chimed at my entrance. He was about my age, early thirties at the youngest. Not my guy, in any case.

  “Help you find something?” The store was fairly empty, as it was before noon.

  I started to say no as I pointed to an enormous cardboard display of a football player with a six-pack of beer tucked under his arm like a pigskin. The figure looked like he was going to smash through a stack of cases. I decided to do my part for the home team and took a case off the top.

  “Actually yes, I’m looking for another guy who works here, an older gentleman?”

  “We have a couple. Do you have a name?”

  I didn’t bring the Ryan list with me. I’d decided to treat it like dynamite, but I checked it before I left. “Russ,” I said. “No, that’s not it. Ross.”

  The guy’s eyes narrowed. “He expecting you?”

  “I’m not sure. You can mention I’m a friend of Ryan’s and if that doesn’t ring a bell for him, then I’m sorry to waste your time.”

  The guy glanced around the empty store and shrugged. “I get paid by the hour.”

  A few minutes later the clerk returned and I recognized Russ/Ross peeking out the door to the back area.

  “You can leave that on the counter and I’ll ring you up,” the clerk said. I nodded and walked past aisles of bright green Midori and Blue Curacao liqueurs.

  The old guy pulled the door all the way open as I approached.

  “You’re Ross?”

  “Ryan spoke to you?” I thought he might grab hold of me. The guy looked like he hadn’t slept since the last time I saw him weeks ago. His curly gray hair tufted out from a balding pate like a clown’s hair in a black and white film.

  “I wasn’t prepared for your visit last time,” I hedged. “I understand much better now, but why don’t you start from the beginning so there’s no confusion?”

  Relief washed across his face and his eyes welled up. My neck started to itch. I don’t do sob scenes well. I could hear some voices joking and laughing from the back area, but far away. We could speak freely.

  “My kid sister.” Ross stopped, I suppose at my expression. “Kid to me, she’s sixty-one. I should be retired but, well, you don’t need to hear all my problems.” He flashed a nervous smile.

  “One at a time, anyway. So, your sister, what’s her name?”

  “Evelyn. She’s been fighting cancer for a couple years now and the docs put her on a new chemo drug to shrink the tumors. It was working, but her damn insurance company changed the rules and now they won’t pay for it.”

  “Ryan’s not doing insurance as far as I know,” I was only kidding, but I remembered that these stores were run by the state. “You get your coverage from the state working here, don’t you? Can you get her a job here?” I felt like King Solomon for an entire second before Ross replied.

  “She’s, what’s the word for it these days? Special? She helps out at the local Y but lives on her own. Flat out refuses to live with my wife and I so the state won’t let me claim her as a dependent for the insurance.”

  “I see, so what exactly was Ryan doing for you?”

  Ross handed me an empty prescription bottle. I noticed the date on the label was a year old.

  “Doxitax? I never heard of it.”

  “Be cheaper if it said ‘gold nuggets’,” Ross said.

  “I’m sure.” I wished I could ask Ryan how he was supposed to pay for this. “So, uh, if I can find some of this, you know, somehow, what was your arrangement with Ryan?”

  Ross glanced around. “Tell him I might have a line on a bottle or two of what we talked about.”

  I remembered from the list some mention of rare whiskeys, so I decided to pretend I understood and check later. “Right. Tell you what. I’m still new, let me ask around and if I have any luck I will get back to you.”

  He looked like he shrank an inch at the news the way his shoulders sagged. “She looks gray again. I think the tumors are coming back. The other stuff they have her on is sugar pills for all the good they’re doing her.”

  “Can I hold onto this bottle? I’ll get you an answer as fast as I can, all right?” Why the hell was I feeling guilty about some hustle that had nothing to do with me?

  He handed it over. “Ryan told me he knew some people.” Ross seemed to be talking to himself as much as me. “I promised my parents before they died that I’d take care of her …”

  * * *

  Rollie’s House

  “Kid, you know I’m no lawyer, but if you get caught, they’ll lock you up.” Rollie’s pledge of support needed some work.

  “Since when did you let that kind of stuff make you so nervous?”

  “Since total strangers began to knock on my front door asking me or you to go jump into Felony Lake.” Rollie’s lips pressed together before he resumed. “Besides, you don’t owe Ryan anything. I’d say the balance is on the other side of the ledger.”

  “Maybe so. But you didn’t see this guy’s face. He looked lost.”

  “Plenty of lost animals at the pound, you can’t save them all.”

  “All right, I get it. You saw the list, looks like Ryan had his ‘charities,’ but I think I see the whole picture a little better. He collected favors as much as cash. More, maybe.”

  “Big deal. He can’t use either now.”

  I nodded. “But not too many people know that. We have a shot to cash in some to our advantage.” I was thinking out loud. I was also remembering how Ryan helped my mom and maybe I owed him one after all.

  “What advantage? Looks like a creative way to land in prison. And for what?”

  He had a point. “I don’t know, but I think I’m going to look up Doc Crock and see if he has any ideas.” I watched Rollie walk to the coat rack and get his windbreaker. “What are you doing?”

  “What’s it look like? I’m coming with you.” Rollie grabbed his car keys.

  * * *

  Lansdowne, PA

  The Blue Bomber’s engine roared like a stock car’s, which was exactly how Rollie drove it. The powder blue Oldsmobile Delta 88 may have looked like a geezermobile, but the fat tires and deep rumble of the crate motor V8 made it a sleeper. I slid across the bench seats and white-knuckled the “Oh shit” handle on the headliner while Rollie powered around turns.

  “Next time it’s for pinks!” Rollie yelled out the window to the tricked-out Subaru driven by a kid with a man-bun who made the mistake of revving his engine at the last stoplight.

  “Rollie, we don’t need to be smashed up to talk to the doc,” I said. “Besides, I thought you wanted to avoid getting in trouble.” The only other time we came out this way, both I and Ryan’s friend, the crooked cop Bishop, were badly wounded and every second counted. I was sliced up like a turkey and Bishop had a slug in his ass. We’d needed the best no-questions-asked medical help money could buy.

  “C’mon, kid, gotta blow out the carbon every once in a while.” Rollie grinned. I swear he looked ten years younger every time he tried to kill me in this thing. “She pulls hard on race gas, doesn’t she?”

  We thundered up the road and I was about to point out a squad car when Rollie backed off the gas and it felt like we’d run into a giant pillow. “Not a bad job bleeding the brakes, if I do say.” Rollie glanced over at the police car and nodded at the officer behind the wheel. “Just an old man scouting out some new early bird specials,” he said under his breath.

  “It’s not too late to call ahead first.”

  “Why spoil the surprise?” he said. “Let’s see how strong these ties are on your magic list. If he tells us to go fuck ourselves, we have a good idea we wasted a perfectly good evening pawing through that dictionary while playing codebre
aker.”

  We passed the historic Fernwood Cemetery and turned up the next street. Rollie pulled into a driveway a couple houses down and killed the engine.

  We walked over to the side entrance and I noticed the small security camera. I didn’t see any cars other than ours in the driveway.

  “Maybe they aren’t home,” I said.

  Before Rollie could respond, an intercom speaker crackled to life. “Whattayawant?”

  “Dr. Crocker? Hello?” Rollie spoke at the lens. “Does that camera work, or are you back on the sauce?”

  “Rollie …,” I said.

  “I remember you,” the doc’s voice growled over the speaker. “Shut up and wait there.”

  “His customer service has improved,” I said. The last time we were there, he and his live-in girlfriend nurse threw us out when we were barely off the operating table. He did work for the O’Brien’s and others who needed his under-the-radar emergency medical services. When he realized we’d been in a beef with the Irish Mob, he got spooked.

  The door opened a minute later and Doc Crock stood in a worn maroon terrycloth bathrobe. He was unshaven and his hair stuck out like gray straw. It was after two o’clock.

  “Sorry to wake you.” I wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Not for long. Get lost. I can’t help you.”

  “I haven’t asked for anything yet,” I said. “And before you slam the door, you should know we smoked the peace pipe with our Irish friends. You can ask them yourself.”

  He looked around. There were some other houses close by, but mostly just small gas stations and car repair places. It seemed like the kind of place where everyone minded their own business. “Get in here.” We followed him in to what laughingly passed for a waiting room, with its beat-up couches and old TV. “I don’t ask them anything. They tell me when they need something, and that’s it.”

  “Well you aren’t going to get clipped for speaking to me, all right?”

  “Says you.” He looked us both over. “Unless you’re bleeding internally, you two don’t look hurt.”

  “We’re fine. I’m here because Ryan Buckley told me you were the right person to speak with.”

  “He did? And when was that?”

  I racked my brain trying to remember how much Crocker knew about what happened to Ryan. “He’s left me in charge for now and you’re listed as a good guy to know for certain hard-to-find items.”

  “Hard to find, huh? I hope you know better than to hit me up for a shitload of Oxy or anything like that.”

  I pulled out the bottle. “Nothing quite so … recreational. This lady is hurting bad and her brother thinks she won’t make it without this.”

  Doc Crock read the label. I noticed his eyes didn’t look so bleary now that we were off the street and began to suspect some of that was an act.

  “Nobody takes this stuff for fun. Obviously, I don’t have a pillowcase of it in the closet, but I may be able to tap a source.” He looked up from the label. “But we don’t work off favors, Kyle.”

  I was surprised he knew my name, but I guess Ryan was as good as his word about preparing people for me to be his understudy. “How much?” We’d anticipated this and had stopped by the safe deposit box on the way.

  “This is a year old. How long has she been off it?”

  “Don’t know. I assume that’s the correct dose.”

  “That’s a stupid assumption, but it also isn’t my problem. I wish I could see her chart.”

  “How much?”

  “Five grand. That’s cash up front and I can have it for you by tomorrow afternoon. That should be good for a month and I’ll see if we can do better down the road if that’s what you want. Speed carries a price.”

  Actually, the number wasn’t worse than what the insurance company turned down, but I figured this source hadn’t acquired the pills at retail, either. I nodded to Rollie, who counted out the bills.

  “Be back here same time tomorrow.” He poked me in the chest. “And if I hear the Irish are still on the warpath, you can forget the whole thing.”

  “Always a pleasure,” I said.

  “Hey,” he whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Tell your guy I hope they help.”

  Chapter 10

  Keane Physical Therapy, Fishtown

  “Five more reps,” Sandy growled at me right after she shoved the weight machine pin even lower on the heavy stack of iron plates.

  The smell of fresh paint hung in my nostrils while I tried not to show the pain from my aching knee. “Meet the new torture chamber, same as the old torture chamber.” Sweat poured down my face. I’d missed this?

  “Keep whining and I’ll start thinking you like the attention you get from this damage.” Her tiny smile told me she didn’t mean it.

  Sandy Keane, my long-time physical therapist, at least on this side of the world, and much more recently, my sometime dating partner. The whole thing still felt strange, as I was still getting used to the idea of having an ex-wife.

  I wiped my face and took a drink of water. “The muscles feel like Jell-O, but good Jell-O, you know?”

  “The stronger they get, the sooner you can run.” She brushed her dark red hair out of her face.

  “I can run,” I tried to say under my breath, but the acoustics in the new place made it easy for her to hear me.

  “I meant run without setting your rehab back a month every time.” She glanced up at the clock.

  “Got another client soon? I can do the cool-down stretches in the other room if you like.” I stood and tested weight on my left leg. It hurt, but just soreness from the exercise, not a fresh injury. A nice change of pace.

  Her expression clouded, and she turned away. “I’m not sure.”

  She’d only been over at this new location a few months. I was one of the few clients to follow Sandy from the Roseman Institute into her own practice. It was a small space in a building she shared with a chiropractor who, I swear, went by the name Barnaby Bones.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She started gnawing on her thumbnail and I realized she’d taken most of them down to the quick.

  I should have noticed that sooner. “I’ll do my cool-down by walking around the block slowly. Come with.”

  “I should stay.” She looked at the clock again.

  “How about we talk here? You’re sure everything is okay?”

  She shook her head and when she didn’t speak, I saw she was on the verge of tears. I didn’t know her that well but got the sense that was rare.

  “We won’t go far. I don’t move that fast. If they show up, we’ll see them. Come out and some nice fresh Philly air.”

  She forced a smile, which I appreciated. I took her hand.

  On the steps I glanced back to make sure we’d secured the door and saw movement in the window under the painted sign for the chiropractor. The curtain was pulled back and a thin-faced man in his fifties stared directly at us. Barnaby Bones, if that was his real name, and not a trace of a grin, like the chipper guy on the sign.

  Sandy jumped right in. “I’ve been an idiot.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “If this isn’t about us, can you catch me up?”

  She looked at me while we walked. “Remember how Barnaby got me all those referrals?”

  “Yeah and I still don’t know how you call him that with a straight face.”

  “Because it’s better than ‘Dr. Bones.’”

  Fair enough.

  She continued. “Anyway, I was so busy being excited to cover the rent that I didn’t see the pattern.”

  “What pattern?”

  “All the referrals that came through Barnaby were from the same doctor and insurance company.”

  I thought about that. “But if they were all from the same guy, that might make sense. Is the insurance company legit?”

  “As far as I know. We didn’t use them at Roseman, but that was ha
lf the reason I wanted to leave there in the first place. I wanted to take on as wide a range of clients as possible.”

  “And the insurance company paid?”

  “So far. Better than yours, who still might bag on me.”

  I stopped her. “I’ll get you paid, even out of my pocket, don’t you worry.”

  She waved it off. “Listen. The patients are diverse enough. When I went back and looked at the treatments, they are all soft-tissue, kind of subjective aches and pains.”

  “You think they were faking?”

  “Not necessarily, but I couldn’t prove it if they were.”

  “That hardly makes you an idiot,” I said.

  “No, but how about when my mentor-buddy Barnaby popped in a couple weeks ago and mentioned that Dr. Park had other places to send these clients?”

  “Unless …?” I’d started to get the picture.

  “Unless I could come up with a, how did he put it, ‘finder’s fee’ for clients. All in cash, of course.”

  “Ah, hell. I’m sorry, Sandy.”

  “It gets worse. The prick actually looked offended when I said the words ‘Insurance fraud.’”

  “Truth hurts.”

  “And it looks like I’m the collateral damage.”

  “Huh?”

  “He flat-out warned me that loose talk like that was dangerous and reminded me, with copies of records of all the clients I’d treated from Dr. Park, that he would be happy to testify all about my involvement if I said anything.”

  “You didn’t know.” It sounded feeble to my own ears.

  “I’d hate to argue that in court, and I don’t exactly have a rainy-day fund for a top shelf lawyer.”

  “So, where did you leave things?”

  She sighed. “A standoff, I guess. I told him no more referrals, no more Dr. Park, no anything. I could build my business on my own.” Her eyes welled up. “Tough talk, huh?”

  I hugged her. “A tough lady. We’ll get you through this.”

  “I don’t think so. Now he wants to raise the rent.”

  One of the reasons for her move to open her own shop was learning about the space here next to the chiropractor that was offered at below-market rates. I was beginning to see why.