Jeff,
finds himself in Atlanta Magic
Town
Chapter 8 of Magic Town ...
Saturday, 8:17 AM: What a Mess
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Magic Town, Chapter 8
Saturday,
8:17 AM: What a Mess
Shonna leapt from the car, Jeff saw a flash of Shonna running around the
car holding a pistol in her right hand with Jeff wondering where the hell she
had a gun this whole time.
Timidly, Jeff opened the car door stepping out needing to stretch from
having been in it so long. Slowly he walked up to the opened house door peering
inside. There was nobody in the small living room. Suddenly he heard Shonna
screaming, “OH MY GOD! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS! PERKINS WHAT HAPPENED!”
Slowly Jeff crept through the living room looking carefully around him.
There was a coffee table in the living room strewn with coffee cups. A sport
coat lay across the back of the couch. He stepped to the left, poked his head
into the kitchen seeing a coffee pot half-filled with the warmer still on, a
couple dishes in the sink.
He crept slowly toward the bedroom hallway. Just as he got to the hall, Perkins
appeared in front of him looking down at Jeff startled, dumfounded he took a
step back, his jaw dropped.
Jeff looked up at him wondering what was going on, “Perkins right?” The
bouncer looked at him blankly, barely nodding. “What’s the deal?”
“You, you––” Perkins stuttered like he was trying to catch his breath,
Jeff could see he was struggling for some reason trying to gain composure.
Shonna stepped out of the bedrooms, “Perkins, this is a mess and I’ve
got to figure out what to do here, but there’s gonna be police and you shouldn’t
be here.”
“Okay, miss Shonna, but––” motioning to Jeff.
“Perkins, go!”
“Okay if you say so, theys nothin’ you need from me?”
She reached up touching him on the shoulder, “No, I’m sorry you had to
see all this, but I really need to call the police, it would be bad for you to
be here, don’t you think?”
He nodded, thanked her, turned, walked out of the house, she followed
him. Jeff watched her standing at the door. He could hear Perkins’s car start
up, pulling away as she stood at the door with her back to Jeff. A few seconds
after Perkins drove away he watched, Shonna crossing her arms stiffly across
her chest without saying a word.
Less than five seconds later Jeff heard what sounded like two cars with
high-powered engines screeching to a stop only feet from the front of the house.
Four men ran in behind Shonna, she passed quickly into the house, across the
living room heading to the bedrooms, snapping to Jeff, “Stay out here, the
couch!” he nodded, they sprinted into the bedrooms.
Jeff sat down on the couch with elbows on his knees, his head spinning, tightness
in his stomach like cramps. It was full daylight outside. He glanced around him
seeing the sport coat hanging over the back of the couch. Impulsively, he
reached around him picking up the coat to inspect it. It reeked of aftershave or
cologne; he couldn’t place the smell or the brand. He looked at it closely,
holding it to the coat he was wearing. An exact match. He looked at the label. Calvin Klein. Jeff laughed to himself, pulled
open his coat seeing Calvin Klein,
“Jesus, I wonder what brand of underwear he wears!” He laid it over his knees, began
going through the pockets.
The right inside pocket had a money clip with a wad of twenties. He very
gingerly pulled two of the twenties out of the bundle being careful not to
touch the gold money clip. There was a Mount Blanc
Using the two twenties over his fingers, he gingerly pulled out a neatly
tri-folded set of papers from the other pocket, maybe twenty five pages he
guessed. The first page looked like some kind of a summary with a column of
dates going back to the first of November, to the right of each date were
dollar figures which he guessed averaged about a hundred thousand dollars a day.
The next page looked like a more detailed account with a date on the top, the
top page having a date from two days ago. There were columns on each page with
a sum on the bottom of one of the columns. The next page was in the same format
with another sum at the bottom. Each page was in the same form with the dates
going back one day at a time, twenty days to the first of November. The summary
page had a bottom number of just over two million dollars for the twenty days.
He flipped through the pages realizing that the summary page had the sum
numbers with the dates for each of these single-day reports.
“Wow,” he said to himself, “That’s three million dollars a month,” with
a low whistle, “nearly forty million dollars a year!” Jeff thought about what
that kind of money can buy here in 1994. This is a staggering sum!
Jeff sat back realizing that this stack of papers was the evidence of
all the corruption that Shonna told him about.
He looked back at the summary page seeing that every other number was
circled in blue ink with lines leading to the letters ‘FS $1.12 M’ in the right
border, written in the same neat block printing on the back of the card. “FS is
Frank Schedz,” he said softly out loud, “he’s taking half! Or maybe he wants
half?”
There was one more single sheet, with a series of two letters in a
column, percentage numbers next to each one. Jeff looked at the writing on the
back of the card, saw they were some of the same initials that appeared on the
page, the page had a big X scratched across the page in the same color ink as
the writing on the card, obviously saying that this page was no good. The page
had crinkled stretches like it had been pulled on from two sides, pulled
between two competing hands. He couldn’t help saying out loud, “Someone pulled
this out of someone’s hand. There was anger here!” He tried to think what this
all meant.
Oh, my god, he was really in it,
just like she said! He sat back recalling all the things that Shonna told him,
mulling the conversations they had as they watched the house this morning.
He felt the rest of the coat thinking there would be nothing because his
coats always had the outside pockets sewn shut, he felt a heavy bulge in the
right outside pocket, reached in pulling out a thirty-eight snub-nosed revolver,
holding it gingerly with one of the twenties. It was a Colt Cobra, a small handful of gun with a tiny short two-inch barrel.
He half-smiled because he once owned one just like it but sold it because you
can’t hit the broad side of a barn with it. He looked into the cylinder, there
were bullets in the four positions he could see. He laughed to himself, “I
guess a guy can’t be too careful!” He put it back into the coat’s side pocket, folded
all the papers together putting them, the card case, pen, single card back into
the pockets they came from.
He heard loud talking in the bedrooms, people walking back and forth
between two doors. He couldn’t see into the rooms from where he sat.
Soon Jeff heard the rushing of cars outside. Somehow he was expecting
lights and sirens. No lights, no sirens. In a minute three men rushed in, one
in front, a gurney being pulled and pushed by the others. They were nearly
running. He stood up to look after them when Shonna came out into the living room.
Jeff looked at her hearing his voice sound almost panicked, “What’s
going on?”
“Okay, time to get you the hell out of here. Come on, let’s go.” Without
another word she nearly ran out of the house, Jeff started to follow her when
he had a second thought running back to scoop up the sports coat. Soon the car
was speeding down the road. Jeff looked at his watch, nearly nine o’clock.
“Where’s your hotel?”
Jeff directed her to the Sheraton near the airport. When they reached
the hotel twenty minutes later Shonna drove around the building away from the
frontage road and freeway, without a word parked, got out of the car. Jeff
grabbed the smelly coat following her up to a back door. He reached into his
pocket fumbling for his hotel key, turning the lock he opened the door. Shonna scanned
the parking lot, following Jeff inside.
Jeff turned to Shonna as they walked along the hotel hallway, “So did Perkins
know you as Shonna back there?”
“That’s all he knows me as.”
“Why did he think you came there, I mean wouldn’t that be confusing to
him?”
“He set up the meeting because I told him that I needed to talk to the
congressman, he didn’t know what the meeting was about. Of course nobody knew
that all those people would be there. I guess he showed up without knowing all
those people were there, he went in expecting to see the congressman and a
couple other people.” She shook her head, “Instead he walks in on a murder.
Poor guy.”
“Murder? There were dead people in that house?”
“Yep.”
“How many?”
“Three dead, the congressman was still alive.”
“Wow,” Jeff wondered sitting
back. Murdered while he was sitting in that car watching the house with Shonna.
He felt a cold chill rush up his spine.
Jeff turned to her, “Did he tell you why he took so long in the house?”
“He said he was trying to render assistance. That would make sense.
Maybe he panicked a little.” They came to the elevators, he leaned forward
pressing the button. “He’s not the brightest bulb in the pack, so I’m sure he
was really confused. It was a hell of a scene, pretty nasty. I’m really glad
you didn’t have to see it.”
After a short elevator ride they walked down the fifth floor hallway toward
Jeff’s hotel room door. He stepped over a copy of USA Today on the hallway
floor, opened the door, Shonna followed scooping up the newspaper, next standing
in Jeff’s room. It was surreal to be back in his room, all nice and tranquil,
bed made neatly, his suit case sitting on the stand, ironing board out from him
pressing his shirt yesterday afternoon before heading down to the shuttle.
“What do you have there?” She reached out for the coat.
Jeff started to hand it to her, instead he laid it out on the bed, pulled
the twenties out of his pocket, gingerly using them as gloves to empty the
contents of the coat’s pockets onto the bed. She gave him a quick smile,
“Smart, no fingerprints.” Shonna sat down on the bed, reached into her purse
pulling out a little plastic packet, ripped it open with her teeth, spilling
out white light-fabric gloves onto the bed. She put them on, began studying the
papers. She picked up the card with the scribbles on back shaking her head.
“Jesus, the total smoking gun.”
Jeff looked over her shoulder, “Are those initials?”
“You sure you didn’t get your fingerprints on this stuff?”
“You will find my prints on these two twenties and nothing else.” He
smiled proudly waving them clutched in fingers, “Sherlock Holmes!”
She turned around, studied him, burst out laughing at Jeff holding the
twenties in his fingers, laughing again even harder, laughing so hard tears
appeared in her eyes, started rolling down her cheeks. Jeff couldn’t help start
laughing himself, that contagious effect plus they were so exhausted that it
felt like that’s all they could do at that moment.
Finally she caught herself. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, Jeffery, you are my
Watson, aren’t you?”
Jeff smiled, wiping tears from his cheeks. They both felt better.
She turned, started looking through the ledger pages glancing up at him
with a questioning expression. She began to paw again through the ledger sheets,
“These are my accounting sheets, the ones that I did in that damned room in the
basement of the club.”
“They were in his coat pocket.”
“These are definitely mine, see the little black pen scribble initials
on the bottom? They required me to do that as a way to somehow make sure they
are authentic, from me.” She flipped between the pages making note of the dates
on top of each, “They’re out of order, that’s good, that means they’ve been
handled, that’s really good. God, I’ll bet these are a harvest of finger
prints!”
She
paused looking at the whole stack. “But how did the congressman get these?”
“When you do your accounting, where does
your stuff go to?”
“Antonio.”
“Antonio? Who’s Antonio?”
“The owner of the club.”
Shonna stood up reaching for the phone, “I need to use your phone, but
you need to step out. Go get us some coffee, be back in ten minutes.”
Jeff stood up, feeling a wave of tired as he drifted to the door, back
ten minutes later with two coffees and four pastries.
He took a sip of the coffee, two bites of a donut, slumped into the
stuffed chair in the corner.
Shonna was just finishing a call, “Okay, you set up the first for five
downtown, I’ll set up the other for tonight. You can arrange all that? At ops?”
she scribbled in her notebook. “No, no escort, I got him. Could use a guard in
the hotel hallway here.” Listening to the other end. “You know how dangerous
this is, right? If something happens to him we are so screwed.” She glanced over her shoulder to Jeff, listened.
“Yeah, a score for sure. Okay, he’ll get some sleep, then we’ll come see you
there.”
She hung up turning to Jeff. “Okay, we figured out what to do with you.”
He looked to her questioningly. She smiled.
“Welcome to the United States House of Representatives!”
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MAGIC TOWN !
http://chrislamela.blogspot.com/2012/06/magic-town-chapter-9.html
