Loose And Easy

CHAPTER EIGHT

“What do you mean you didn’t get the goddamn girl?” Franklin Bleak said into his phone. “How many lives do you think you’ve got, Dovey? Twelve? You think you’ve got twelve goddamn lives?”

“No, sir, Mr. Bleak.”

“Good, because you don’t. I can fucking guarantee you that much, Smollett.” Franklin settled back into his cordovan leather chair and lifted his feet to set them on his mahogany desk. The wallpaper in his office was richly flocked, a black rampant lion pattern on hunter green. The rug covering his hardwood floor was straight out of the Arabian Nights via hand-knotted New Zealand wool, a rich tapestry of gold, ivory, and cinnabar red. He had two richly upholstered chairs in his office, and a matching settee in a pattern called Rutherford. The material was wool, the frames were hand-carved beechwood stained to a rich cherry. Amber sconces and a crystal chandelier bathed his private lair with warm, luxurious light.

The room was richly colorful, but then, Franklin Bleak was a richly colorful guy, leaning heavily on the “rich” side of the equation. He owned Commerce City and everything north of Speer Boulevard in Denver. His empire stretched southeast to Aurora and north into Brighton. He stayed the hell out of Boulder, that crapshoot of liberalism and panty-waisted, tree-hugging, small-carbonfootprinted do-gooders to the west, but he did run a few games and some girls in Thornton. He’d stayed away from moving a lot of drugs, because drugs were such a dirty, fierce business, very dangerous. Girls were easy to keep in line. Game scores, race numbers, and the money never lied. But the drugs put a guy directly in the line of fire and could get him killed. To do drugs well, a guy needed layers, a lot of layers, between himself and the street. The safest place to sell drugs was from the top, and even then, some douche might decide to blow up your house, or take out your whole damn condominium building, just blow it the fuck up while you were asleep inside.

Drugs were a crazy business, not like the betting game and girls. Franklin Bleak left drugs to the Denver gangs, especially the Locos, who seemed to have their fingers in every kilo that ran through the city. He had no beef with the Locos, and for the most part, he’d worked hard to keep it that way.

But inevitably the three got mixed-girls, bets, drugs. You had girls who did drugs, and losers who wanted to pay in drugs, and winners who wanted to place in drugs, and guys who’d lost their ass who needed drugs, and guys in drugs who just wanted to make you a deal because you were Franklin Bleak, kind of a famous, colorful guy.

He had resisted all such offers, until the deal of a lifetime had landed practically in his lap three months ago, more of a middle-man transaction for him than outright involvement, a conduit situation of some high-end cocaine for which the demand was through the roof via a high-end dealer who only dealt with very select, high-end clients in Vail and Aspen and Beaver Creek.

And Franklin was talking incredibly select and high-end clients, famous people.

People on television and in films. Movie stars.

Colorado ski towns were Mecca to those people, and Franklin controlled a hefty portion of the front door into those towns, so naturally, when Hollywood had gone looking for a guy to bring in one of their loads from Chicago, Hollywood had found him. He had friends in Chicago. He was known. He had the ways and means… but he did not have the goddamn Alden girl, and he needed her to make sure her crapola father didn’t welsh on his bet one goddamn more time.

Bleak was done with the stupid bastard. He needed his money by five o’clock tomorrow morning, before the frickin’ crack of dawn, before the Chicago cocaine and its handlers got to Denver for the deal at nine o’clock. If Alden didn’t have his money to him by sunrise, there was literally going to be hell to pay, and then he’d give the guy two more hours. If Alden failed again, the bastard would wish he was dead, and then Franklin would make it so, putting the jerk out of his misery-and he’d be goddamned if he ever took a bet from anybody named Alden ever again.

“I don’t want to hear how you lost her, and I sure as hell don’t want to hear about O’Shaunessy’s. That O’Shaunessy bastard has given me nothing in forty years. Nothing. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Bleak.”

The whole lower downtown crowd was nothing but assholes. They thought they were better than Commerce City. They thought they were high-end, but Franklin was going to show them high-end. Lunch, that’s what Graham Percy, the Hollywood agent and his connection, had promised him- lunch with Katherine Gray, the hottest “It” girl to hit late-night cable in the last six months, his kind of girl, all legs and long red hair. Franklin liked a girl with some pizzazz, and Katherine Gray had pizzazz up the yazoo.

He looked over at a picture of her he’d cut out of Starlets magazine and framed for his desk. She was gorgeous. She’d made it. She knew what it took. She was that kind of girl, and he was that kind of guy. He knew what it took-and it was going to take the damn Alden girl to insure he got his money, and he needed his money, all eighty-two fucking thousand dollars of it to get him through the Chicago cocaine deal tomorrow. No money, no deal-no lunch. And he wasn’t letting Burt Alden screw him out of Katherine Gray and his lunch. Everyone else he’d shaken down these last two months, pulling in all his bad debts, had been giving it up, no matter what it took, or they’d kissed their ass good-bye. Alden was going to give it up, too, or Bleak was going to personally check the bastard out-as in out, done, finished, dead.

“You stay on the lookout for her, you hear me? You ask around down there. You know people. Use them. Where’s the Chicago guy, Bremerton?” Vernon Better-Watch-His-Shit Bremerton. Franklin didn’t like fucking watchdogs, and Bremerton was a watchdog, sent by the Chicago boys to make sure Franklin held up his end of the deal-the assholes.

“With me,” Dovey said.

“Good. You keep him with you. I don’t like him down here, staring at me all day like some dumb piece of Chicago pork. Put Kevin on the B and B office. Tell him to stay put.”

“I’ve got Kevin checking the coffee shop on Wazee,” the kid said, like he’d come up with a good idea.

Franklin was not impressed.

“And why in the hell would you do that? With three guys chasing them, I don’t think they’re going to stop for a goddamn cup of coffee. Do you?”

“No, sir… well, yes, sir, not stop exactly, but go by there because-”

“Because nothing, Smollett. Get Kevin back on the B and B office.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Eliot is on his way to her old man’s house, so we’re covered there, but if she shows up at that office again, you tell Kevin to get her and bring her to me. No more screwing up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you tell him to keep his hands to himself. I want her in one piece.” He wanted Burt Alden to get one last goddamn good look at what he was going to lose if he didn’t have that money, and if it got to the point where Franklin had to take the girl apart, he didn’t want her old man missing any of the action, not so much as a single piece of it.

He hoped it didn’t get to that. He really did. In his heart, he did. The girl was a looker, plenty of pizzazz, and that created options. She wouldn’t be worth eighty-two thousand dollars, not right off the cuff, but he could play her, parlay her into something to hold the damn deal together-a smart looker like her, and he could teach everybody in goddamn Denver a lesson while he was at it.

“Yes, sir.”

That was the great thing about Dovey. The kid knew the two most important words in his vocabulary were “Yes, sir.” That’s all Franklin ever wanted to hear out of him.

“You find her, Dovey, or it’s gonna hurt you. Do you understand?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

Good, Franklin thought, a little hesitation is good. It meant the kid was thinking.

But Dovey Smollett thinking wasn’t always that much better than Dovey Smollett not thinking.

Franklin ended the call and speed-dialed another number.

“Mitch,” he said, when the call was answered. “Are you and Leroy still at the Jack O’Nines?” The Jack O’Nines, a dump of a strip club in downtown, was sometimes referred to as Denver ’s little Chicago, because of the three Chicago boys who had cruised through there a few years ago. One of them had gotten himself gutted, right there in Jack’s back bar, and the other two had been capped, with all three bodies dragged out into the alley, thrown in a truck, and blown to bits in an explosion out at the old Stapleton Airport. At least that was the story.

Bremerton better watch his ass. Denver wasn’t always so good to Chicago boys.

“Yes, boss.”

“Dovey is at Sixteenth and Wazee, looking for the Alden girl. She’s on the run. I want you and Leroy down there yesterday. See if you can pick her up.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Call Dovey for his last sighting.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Did you get my money out of that prick Abrams?”

“Yes, boss.”

Good.

“How hard did you have to work for it?”

“We leaned on him enough to let him know that being late wasn’t a good idea, but we were careful. We didn’t break anything on him, just roughed him up a little.”

“Good. Then get your asses down into LoDo.” He hung up the phone and took another long look at Katherine Gray’s photo, before he pushed away from his desk and walked over to the window at the far end of his office. With a twist of a rod, the blinds opened to reveal the main floor of the Bleak Enterprises warehouse.

Paper products, that was his legitimate game, supplying paper products to businesses up and down the Front Range-paper towels, toilet paper, napkins, cleaning supplies, specialty containers, bags, boxes, whatever his customers wanted, Bleak could get, including Lady’s Pride in the seventh at the Downs, but that part of his business was run out of the back of his building.

He walked to the other end of his office and opened up another set of window blinds. A private set of stairs led from his office to the room below. Most nights, he had two guys on computers and cell phones and a digital whiteboard hanging on the wall down there. Most nights, he ran a lot of bets through that room, with most of the transactions running smooth as silk, but every now and then, something went wrong. He was a good guy, and if somebody had a sure shot they wanted to play big, but not the cash to do it, they could count on Franklin to cover it for them. But sure shots seldom were, and no matter how the damn bet turned out, the piper had to be paid.

He caught sight of his reflection in the window and narrowed his gaze. That damn hairstylist at Mirasol’s had done him no favors with this last cut.

At seventy dollars a pop, he’d think a damn hairstylist could cut a guy’s hair without cutting it all off. He still had plenty on the sides. He always had plenty on the sides, and it was the plentiful side hair that was supposed to make up for the barely noticeable thinness on top. But the damn stylist had cut him too short.

Using his fingers, he combed a few more strands off the side and up over the top. He was done with Mirasol’s. But the girl did give good color, nice and dark with just a touch of a warmer shade. That’s the way she described it, and Franklin agreed. His hair looked real natural, like he was a guy who got out in the sun.

He wasn’t.

Franklin Bleak was an inside guy, all the way; he was also the piper, and one way or another, Burt Alden was going to pay, starting with the middle-aged blonde handcuffed to a chair in the corner of the betting room. She was alone down there in the half-lit room where he ran his bets. Her first name was Beth, according to his information and her name tag, and she looked terrified-rightly so. She was a done deal. Twenty years ago… hell, even ten years ago, Franklin might have been able to cop a deal on her, but not now. She was worthless to him, except as leverage, her best years long behind her.

She was also in complete disarray-the top of her nurse’s uniform ripped up one seam, as if she might have put up a fight when Eliot had grabbed her out of the parking lot at Denver General Hospital. Her cotton pants were torn and dirty, as if she’d perhaps fallen in the parking lot and Eliot had dragged her to his car. Most of her hair had fallen free of her ponytail band and was hanging in a knotted mess to her shoulders, as if Eliot might have had a fistful of it while he was dragging her across the pavement. And one of her shoelaces was missing out of her sensible shoes.

That was a new one on Franklin. He’d never seen a woman lose a shoelace in a struggle. He’d seen them lose their shoes, but it had always been whole shoes, not just a lace.

Live and learn, Franklin thought, turning his back on the frightened, smallish woman and walking toward his desk, live and learn-unless you were Beth Alden. Her time ran out on both those options at five A.M.