Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Back on Piedmont

and heading for his next customer, Frank chuckled at how an empty tube and a bottle of water could turn into something far more potent in a pigeon’s mind. He was getting too old to break legs. Better to let them threaten themselves. He could never be half so scary as someone’s imagination.

Light rain fell as wet streets steamed. Frank drove through the dusk out of Buckhead and toward Dunwoody, where a suburban princess owed him for getting her house out of foreclosure. In the sky, heavy bass drumrolls rumbled constantly. This time of year, you could just about set your watch by the daily thunderstorms.

His cell rang in three short beeps. Horace calling from the office. He hit the stereo, piping his assistant’s voice over the speakers. Alpine and Ma Bell had a baby. Frank chuckled before speaking.

“Yo, Ace. Whatcha got for me?”

“Hey, Boss! Where you at? Out of Fuckhead already?” Horace came from Stone Mountain and had no use for yuppies and frat boys. “You need to get your ass back here. I’m staring at fifteen thou’ in small bills, sittin’ on your desk and waitin’ to multiply.”

Another bullshit strong-arm gig. Dammit, he’d told Horace a hundred times…

“Who wants what done to who? You know I don’t take up-fronts for anything. I’m just a loan office—

“I know. I know that, Boss. But you want to take this one, I guaran-damn-tee you.”

Dead air for a space as Horace waited for him to speak, but Frank could be silent as the grave. Finally Horace said something that shook him. Shook him badly, in fact. Chalk one up for the old bastard.

“You remember Yvonne?”

Yvonne Rudabaugh. A one of a kind name for a one of a kind woman. Frank remembered all right. All too well. Yvonne was a train, and he’d been stalled on the tracks. It had taken a lot of PMS—pain, misery, and suffering—before he’d finally learned his lesson and sworn her off a couple of years ago. At least that’s what he liked to pretend. Truth was, he swore her off because she up and disappeared one day.

And like any other addict, he still had a few fond memories and the occasional craving.

“Please don’t tell me Yvonne wants to hire me.” That would be like sending a junkie on a pharmaceutical delivery.

“Oh no. Not that.” Horace said, then paused again.

Little shit’s enjoying this, Frank thought.

“C’mon, Horace. Give. Don’t make me collect from you.” An old threat, and an empty one his friend and associate heard at least once a day.

“It’s her husband, Boss. He wants you to find her.”

Frank hung up without replying and turned around, heading to the Connector and back to his North Druid Hills office.

Husband, eh? Hard to believe. That was a pretty major change for the hard woman he’d known. In his mind, he heard his father’s voice, drawling his favorite phrase out with a twinkle in his eye.

A haaaaard woman, Frank. You’ll have fun fer a while, then she’ll tear you up one side and down the other, boy.

What had the little minx gone and gotten herself into now?

Frank pulled up to the drab, white office building and parked in his usual spot. At eight in the evening, the lot was empty except for a sleek black Lincoln Town Car. Two men leaned on the fender. One smaller, wearing a classic chauffeur cap and coat, the other a hulking brute with slicked black hair and a wide mustache.

The second man stood taller than Frank and half again as wide, wearing a suit that must chafe the hell out his armpits. The big guy locked on to Frank, eyes tracking him like a gunner’s sights. Big, but with something happening upstairs. A bodyguard with a brain. Frank ignored both of them.

The building was a simple two-story square block with a dentist, a low-rent lawsuit-happy lawyer, six vacancies, and Powers Contracting Services. Frank kept the place shabby but neat. A card reading

Out at Job Site

taped to the small window set head-high in the heavy steel door, plus the fact he and Horace always kept the door locked, kept any would-be customers from entering.

Frank took a deep breath, opened the door, and walked in.

Horace wore his usual straw cowpoke hat, brim curled tightly at the sides. The bandanna was green today. He never changed hats, but each day he wrapped it in a different color.

He sat at a large metal desk, the kind of thing you’d see marked down at an office salvage place, which is where he’d found it three years ago when he opened up shop as an independent. The desk held only a computer and telephone.

And a plain manila envelope with a wad of banknotes peeping out.

The scene took Frank back to when he and Horace had worked as collectors and enforcers for various groups on a purely contract basis, which was how he’d met Yvonne.

On the wall opposite, beside a door marked KEEP OUT: HIGH VOLTAGE, a large rectangular block made of Styrofoam and straw hung, covered by a sheet with a man-sized silhouette target. Several knives were stuck in the target’s chest and neck, and the handle of a screwdriver jutted from where the target’s eye would be. Horace loved flingin’ his things, as he put it, and had once been the champeen tomahawker of North Georgia.

He didn’t know if his friend was world-class or not, but if he ever pissed Horace off, Frank would make sure he stood at least thirty yards away.

The visitor’s chair was an uncomfortable old metal-framed job with a sagging seat, designed to discourage any visitor from staying for long. In it sat a tall, thin, and distinguished-looking gentleman in an expensive grey suit, as relaxed as if it were a plush chaise lounge. He had silver hair, not yet gone to white. His eyes were a piercing sky blue. Frank couldn’t see his face, but he could smell some sort of musky cologne wafting off his guest.

The old fellow rose, extended a hand lined with veins and age spots but with no trace of a tremble, and inclined his head slightly.

“How do you do, Mr. Powers?” he said. “My name is Quentin LaRouche. I believe you know my wife, Yvonne.” It wasn’t a question, and while LaRouche seemed genial enough, he wasn’t smiling. His voice was smooth. Cultured. The voice of the genteel old South.

Frank had heard plenty of phony accents over the years. He’d gotten very good at picking up on them, a requirement when tracking people down who don’t want to be found.

LaRouche’s wasn’t bad at all.

It wasn’t easy to erase all traces of South Boston, but his guest almost had it. It helped that his chosen fakery also had a lack of Rs.

Powuhs

. Why the hell would Yvonne marry a creep like this?

Never mind, not his business. Not anymore.

“I know her,” Frank said. “Or at least I did once upon a time. What happened to her?”

“She is missing,” his guest said. “For a week now. She went out to meet some friends, and never arrived.”

“Did she drive herself?”

“Yes. Her car was found outside a deserted warehouse near the airport.”

“Have you called the cops? Filed a missing person report?”

LaRouche sighed. “There are reasons I am not at liberty to involve the authorities, Mr. Powers. I wish to handle this matter privately, as far as possible.”

Yvonne, Yvonne. What are you mixed up in this time?

Frank said, “Okay, tell me. Who would be after Yvonne? Or is it you they’re after and just using her?”

The thin man leaned forward slightly, hawk’s eyes focused on Frank’s own. “My wife speaks quite highly of you. She says you are very professional. And very good at finding people. May I trust your discretion, Mr. Powers? Completely and without reservation?”

Frank stared back with the same intensity. “Depends, Mr. LaRouche. How much are you paying and what am I likely up against?”

LaRouche nodded, apparently satisfied with the answer. Frank had passed the honesty test.

“I will pay you two hundred thousand dollars for her safe return. Half now, which is yours no matter the outcome, for your time and trouble. The other half when she is safely home.”

Frank caught Horace’s gaze as his eyebrows rose. Two hundred grand to fetch a runaway?

“As far as the opposition, they are...well, not exactly old family men, if you understand,” LaRouche said. “Somewhere above the typical street gang, but not well established in the upper circles of our business.”

“And what is your business?” Frank asked.

LaRouche pursed his thin lips, considering. “We deal in, let us say, recreation. We provide our clients with products or people to help them forget their miseries for a brief time.”

“Drugs and hookers,” Frank said. “Why not just say so up front?”

“As you say, Mr. Powers,” LaRouche replied. “A crass way to put it, but accurate enough. Our clientele wishes to keep names and details out of the newspapers and off the Internet. We are very exclusive, very discreet, and very well compensated.”

“Okay,” Frank said. “So how about Yvonne? What’s her place in all this?”

“Yvonne is my business manager, as well as my wife. She handles most of the dealings with clients. I work more with our suppliers and employees.”

“Makes sense,” Frank said. “She was always a charmer.” He could see her now. Low cut dress, ankle-breaker heels, folds and waves of coppery hair cascading down her back—

Stop it. That was years ago. Plus, things didn’t end well between them. Still, though,

this

guy? What the hell did he have that made him so much better than…

Knock it off, Whiny.

He shook his head, trying to get Yvonne the woman out of his mind. She was Yvonne the target now. “So do you have any ideas who I should start with?”

LaRouche stood and fished a card out of his pocket, passing the small rectangle to Frank.

“I would start here. Check with Marcus Kaplan, one of the security men. Not one of mine, but somebody Yvonne deals with regularly. He can get you in touch with someone who may have information.”

Frank took the object, noting that it wasn’t a business card, but an advertising leaflet for The Jaguar, one of the more upscale “Gentleman’s Clubs.” A fancy way of saying a fancy strip joint. He’d heard the girls were

very

friendly. If you had the cash, anyway.

Frank walked to the copier and pilfered a blank sheet of paper. He grabbed a pen from the jumble Horace kept in an hourglass Coca-Cola glass and wrote two sentences.

In return for $200,000 plus expenses, Frank Powers will find and deliver one Yvonne Rudabaugh LaRouche to Quentin LaRouche. Half the payment remittable on contract agreement, balance due on delivery.

He scrawled his signature at the bottom and held the pen to LaRouche, who read the contract over and smiled.

“Very succinct, Mr. Powers. I applaud you.” He added his own name below Frank’s, then pulled a banded stack of hundred-dollar bills from his jacket and handed it over. “You may take the envelope for expense money. Let me know if you need more.”

The two men shook hands, and LaRouche left. The old man’s card stuck out from the band around the topmost cash bundle. Frank stuffed the loose bills in his pocket and grabbed the envelope. He pulled out a handful of notes and handed them to Horace.

“Christmas come early this year,” he said, fanning the hundreds. Far more intelligent than his hokey demeanor suggested, Horace let Frank do the talking with clients most of the time but filed away everything he heard.

He, Frank, and Yvonne had been a great team once. Horace was the best partner he could ask for, but Frank still missed his old flame.

His thoughts must have been on his face. He caught Horace staring at him. His old friend still had a smirk, but his look was as soft as it ever got.

“You gonna be okay with this, Boss?”

“Sure, Ace. It’s just a job, right?” Not the biggest pile of bullshit he’d ever shoveled, but big enough that Horace could smell it.

“You take care of yourself, dude,” Horace said. “I mean it. Don’t go gettin’ yer head blowed off. Or your heart yanked out again.”

Frank sucked in air, and let it drain away.

“No promises, but I’ll do my best. Hold the fort ‘til I get back, Hoss.”