Road Rules Online

The door to the interrogation room opened.  In walked a fiftyish man with a little bit of a belly and a rumpled brown suit.  He didn’t look any happier than the last time Stan saw him.

“Hello, Detective,” said Stan.  “How were those donuts?”

“Shut up.”  He sat down across from Stan and tossed faxed photos in front of him.  In one picture, a dark-haired man in his early thirties preened for the camera, his fashion choices seemingly dictated by Don Johnson in his pre-Nash Bridges days.  The other two showed Stan the smiling mugs of Mike Blake and Tim Mason.

“The guy on the left,” he said.

“Which one?” asked the detective.

“Well, I’d point, but you still have my hands cuffed behind my back.  By the way, good timing on the part of the deputies.  I’d just taken a dump when they busted me.  We can do this all night long if you want.”

“The guys from Cleveland said you were a pain in the ass.”  He pointed at the dark-haired man.  “Do you know this man?”

“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.  Is he famous?”

“In some circles.  Have you been to Miami?”

“Not recently, though I was thinking of going there when my ride dropped me off in your lovely city.  By the way, do you think I could get a tour of the Mercer House before this is all over with?  I just loved Midnight in the Gard-”

“Shut up.”  The detective pointed at the next picture.

“Timmy Mason,” said Stan.  “That little punk’s grown a set of balls since high school.”

“High school?”

“Buckland High School.  It’s about thirty miles south of Cleveland in the wilds of Medina County.”

“Don’t you mean Me-dee-na?”

“Me-die-na.  Rhymes with vag-”

“What about this guy?”  He tapped Mike’s picture.

“Looks familiar.  Like I might have gone to school with him.”

“But you haven’t seen him recently.”

“No.”

“What about Mr. Mason?”

Stan ground his teeth.  “Yeah, I’ve seen that little red-headed fuck.  He carjacked me south of Wytheville, Virginia, this afternoon.”

“What were you doing in Wytheville?”

“Trying to deliver a car for a friend.”

“Who?”

Stan looked around the interrogation room.  Why he hadn’t given up Mike or Cinnamon, he didn’t know, other than he had as much to lose as they did if they were caught.  Right now, he held most of the cards.  He decided to play his joker.  His damaged left knee began to ache with anticipation.

“There’s this loan shark in Cleveland, see.”  Christ, he sounded like Edward G. Robinson now.  “And he’s a chintzy bastard.  You want, I’ll show you what he did to my knee when I was a day late with the vig.”

“Vig?”

“Interest on a shark’s loan.  Anyway, this fucker sells used cars out of some shithole in Old Brooklyn Village.”

“Brooklyn.  New York?”

“No, it’s a neighborhood on Cleveland’s south side.  On a good day, it can pretend to be Parma and feel better about itself.  Anyway, this asshole’s name is Andre Koradovich, and that guy in the center…”

“Mason?”

“Yeah, Mason.  That’s Andre’s little butt buddy.  They put together this little excursion.  Then Timmy there chases me down I-77, pulls a gun on me while I’m changing a tire, and jacks my car.  I had to hitchhike the rest of the way so I could go explain to the buyer what happened.”

“Why not go back to Cleveland?  Why not tell this Kora-…  Korano-…”

“Koradovich.  They call him Andre the Giant, since he’s so big.”

“Yeah.  Why not go back to Andre and tell him what happened?”

He’d been wanting to say this for a long time.  The possibility of dodging prison dropped the perfect opportunity in his lap.  “Fuck Andre.  Fuck him.  Fuck him up the ass with a cattle prod, that stupid Ukrainian fuck.”

The detective waved to someone watching from behind the reflective glass. Another detective, this one with black hair, black eyes, and a black mustache, poked his head in the door.  “Yeah?”

“APB on a guy named Tim Mason.  Use the description Cleveland faxed us.  I want our boys and the Savannah PD looking.  Make sure the staties in Georgia and South Carolina are notified.”

“Gotcha.”  The new cop disappeared.

Stan smiled.  “You think you could use a taser on Timmy?  ‘Cuz I’d pay to see that.”

SUNDAY

Chapter 20

As they played the closing theme to The Wire, it occurred to Mike he couldn’t remember a single thing about the night’s show.  He sat up and noticed Cinnamon wasn’t looking at the television, either.  She seemed to find an indeterminate stain on the floor more interesting.  Mike found his own gaze drawn to the Chest.

“Can’t sleep, either, eh?” he said.

She shook her head.

He picked up the remote, which appeared to have been chewed on by something, possibly a human being, and changed the channel to CNN.  The terror crawl announced Stan’s arrest.  Beneath the credits for Larry King Live, it also said Cleveland Police believed “accomplices” were in Savannah as well and that the FBI had joined the search.

Mike saw the Chest and two suspects in the room.  One suspect sat in the chair staring ahead into nothing.  The other he saw in the mirror.

“Look, Mason doesn’t know who you are,” said Mike.  “No one does.  At best, you’re ‘an unknown African-American woman.’”

She glared at him.

“You know what I mean,” he said.  “If you leave now, you can get away clear.”

She went back to staring ahead.  “No.”

“Cinnamon, look.  You’ve come this far for what?  You said something about Stan costing you your job.  Well, Stan’s in jail now.  Sooner or later, he’s going to give me up.  But he doesn’t know your real name.  I don’t know your real name either.”

Her eyes met his.

“If you ask me,” he said, “I’ll drive you to the airport so you can fly back to Cleveland.”

She got up, stuffed some cash from her purse into her jeans, and grabbed the keys to the Camry.  “Do you trust me?”

“Do I have a choice?”

She tossed her purse back on the corner table.  “Neither of us do.”  She opened the door, then turned back.  “Sharon.”

“What?”

“My name is Sharon.  Sharon Harrow.”

“Myron Blake.”

“What’s your favorite booze, Myron Blake?”

What is she doing? “Jim Beam.”

She smiled.  “Can you trust a woman who drinks Hennessey?”

“Can you?”

She closed the door.  Mike heard the Camry start up.  He wondered if she would turn him in.  Then he noticed she’d left her purse.  He got up and went through it, finding her wallet, still open after she took out some cash.  Cinnamon carried a driver’s license, Social Security card, and…

“Jordan & Associates?”

If she came back, he’d know they had something in common:  Tim Mason somehow screwed them both over.  If she sent cops back or left him stranded, he’d know Mason had screwed him again.