Chapter Twenty-Three
Dylan
I smiled when the bartender handed me the phone. "I should have known you'd waste your one phone call on me."
"Yeah, tell Frankie I'm sorry if any of this blows back on him," Joey said.
"It won't, I swear." I held my beer up to toast my generous host, our friend and owner of Joey's favorite dive bar. "Now tell me about you."
"They've got me singing like a bird, Dylan," Joey joked.
"Take it easy on them. They only want the truth," I reminded him.
Joey snorted. "The truth. You best be careful they don't go finding a scapegoat."
"I'm not on the run, Joey. In fact, you can tell them that. I'm going to clear my name."
Joey groaned. "Goddamnit, Dylan. Why can't you ever let anyone else do the heavy lifting? Let the cops sort it out. I'm calling you to tell you everything's fine. I got this. You go to ground and don't come out until these knuckleheads have seen the light."
"Did they get anyone else?" I asked.
"Hell, no," Joey said. "I got Thomas out, and Al took off as soon as you did."
"All right, Joey. I'll check on them. You just try to relax a little and only make a couple new enemies." I hung up as Joey laughed uproariously into the phone.
He definitely would not be giving Bethany's colleagues an easy time. Police or not, Joey could railroad a conversation faster than anyone I'd ever known. He'd wear them down before he started to cooperate and by then, they'd be willing to hear something real.
I headed from the bar to the compact electronics store jammed next door. There I bought a burner phone and called Thomas right away.
"Man, I'm hiding out at Patricia's place. I don't mind taking a few days off," Thomas said.
I shook my head as I heard a giggle. I hung up, certain that Thomas would be laying very low quite happily for the foreseeable future.
Al was another story.
"Where's my uncle?" he yelped as soon as he realized it was me.
"They're questioning him. Don't worry, you should pity the people questioning him. Really," I said.
Al gave a tight laugh. "So, he's not mad?"
"Mad? This is like getting on a game show for him. How are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm good. It's all good. I'm fine."
I didn't question Al's nervous chatter. "I'm sorry I put you in such a stressful situation. Don't worry, everything will clear up. You'll still have a job."
"Thanks, Dylan. I don't know what to say."
"Say you'll lay low for the next couple of days. Stay safe and out of the way," I told him.
Satisfied that my crew was going to be all right, I hung up the burner phone and headed away from the bar as fast as I could. It only took a few blocks for me to pick up a tail, and I had to think fast.
Only someone used to walking the neighborhood after countless classic cars broke down would know the routes I knew. I ducked into the laundromat and jogged downstairs to the vending machines that sold detergent. Down a short hallway was a door that led to the basement storeroom of the pop-up holiday store.
I ran upstairs and was back on the street, free and clear in a matter of minutes. I'd even borrowed myself a baseball hat from the laundromat lost and found, so it felt all right to run across the street.
From there, I knew the police assumed I would try to head home but I turned the opposite direction. They didn't know that my job meant I had friends all over. Friends with fast cars.
It was only a short bus ride and a quick jog to the warehouse where my friend had his recording studio. I tore off the baseball hat and ran my fingers through my hair as I passed by Maseratis and Cadillacs to the hidden alley door.
Jasper had his own security, and I had to wait for my friend himself to give his permission.
"Well, if it isn't my favorite used car salesman in the flesh," Jasper said over the intercom. "Let him in."
"I'm going to be honest, Jasper. I'm just here to call in a favor," I called.
"Good. I need a break."
I found Jasper in his garage all ready to admire his collection of vintage cars. It was more than a hobby to him; it was a point of pride and also a personal meditation. Every time he looked at those cars, he felt like he had made it.
"Now you just have to keep going," I said.
Jasper laughed at my mind-reading. "Don't you go trying to sell me a minivan now, Dylan."
I laughed. "No, I'm here to sell you a raw deal. I need to borrow one of your cars and if I don't succeed in what I'm doing, you'll have the cops here in the future asking questions."
His smile reminded me of Joey. "I love when they question me and I legit have nothing to say."
Jasper gestured to the key rack then gave me a jaunty salute. With that, he disappeared upstairs to look forward to his plausible deniability.
I was kind and picked an Impala that was still in need of a paint job. It wasn't so flashy even though it backfired as I pulled into the hospital parking garage. I drove down at least two levels before finding a lightly populated corner to keep the car safe.
Luckily, the authorities weren't worried there would be any blow back for my friend. I found him recovering from the carjacking by watching Bond movies on the hospital television.
"It was awful, Dylan," he told me.
I listened to his recounting, sympathized with the length of his physical therapy stint, and then asked the question I needed to know.
When he'd given me the exact location of the carjacking, I thanked him and sneaked out of the hospital as fast as I could. I didn't have very long to test out my hunch, and I had to hurry before someone noticed me in the loud Impala.
As I closed in on the carjacking site, I saw my hunch was possible. It was only a few miles from my shop. Albeit, the way was twisted around big old warehouse buildings and one-way streets but it was almost as if I could see the escape route.
Things were starting to make sense.
I traced possible routes and had to start over due to road construction, dead end alleys, and one new build. Maybe I was chasing a foolish theory. Maybe wishful thinking had me supposing I could be an investigator. If I didn't figure out some proof soon, they'd pick me up and all my delays would only make me look guiltier.
I wished I could call Bethany.
I was still confused about what had happened in the pizza shop. It seemed as if Bethany had had a change of heart, but she was so businesslike I couldn't tell. Maybe it was just a tactic?
I hoped she didn't think I would lead her to the real criminals because it seemed like I was going nowhere fast.
My phone rang as I retraced and rerouted yet again. "Thomas? Is everything all right?"
"Yeah, no problem. I double-checked on those part sales like Joey asked," Thomas said.
I interrupted him. "Joey? He's being held for questioning. How'd he get another phone call?"
Thomas laughed. "I don't know, man, I didn't ask. But I did jump on to our shop server and figure out the bad sales."
I listened, amazed, as my quietest employee ran down every part that could have corresponded to the illegal sales Bethany's case listed. He had cross-referenced them with jobs we'd done and found a handful of possible overlaps.
"Too bad I can't confirm it because the whole place is one giant ribbon of police tape but I bet we'd find our shop supplied those black-market sales," Thomas told me.
I was speechless. My crew was going to bat for me and we were going to hit it out of the park. My fingers itched to all Bethany again, but I didn't quite have all the evidence we needed.
"Thanks, Thomas. Remember that little Corvette? She's yours when this is all over," I told him.
Thomas whistled and then shook himself back to reality. "Hey, good luck, man."
I hung up and tried out my hunch again. This time, I really sat at the carjacking site and tried to envision how it all happened. The victim, a close friend of our shop's, was driving westbound when he noticed a trash bag in the street. He slowed down to avoid it and that's when the man jumped in front of him.
I slowed in the intersection and tried to think about the situation from the carjacker's point of view. He thought it would be easy to pull the driver from the car and jump in over him. That would leave him heading westbound.
I looked for the first turn and thought if I was trying to get away as fast as possible, I would turn right and double-back. Then the route started to unfold. The carjacker headed east three blocks past the intersection where he grabbed the car, then he crossed the same road and headed around back of my shop.
I cruised past the alley and saw what Thomas meant about all the police tape.
A shiver of unease went down my spine. I needed to get far away and make sure the police didn't catch me in their net. I saw unmarked cars on every block, unless it was just my paranoia. I shook my head to clear it and headed in a different direction.
I had to find Jasmine.
She was the only one who could pull everything together. I felt like she was the catalyst that started it all. She'd met me at the nightclub before I even laid eyes on Bethany. Jasmine had been part of it from before I came on the scene. It was obvious now that her boyfriend was the carjacker and now I understood why she was frightened.
He'd threatened her life if she told the authorities anything.
The little blonde turned out to be easier to find than I thought. After I'd seen her get jerked into the Charger, I had noted the street corner. If he had known where to find her then it must be a regular haunt of hers. I drove there and soon enough she showed up.
As soon as she heard the Impala's engine, Jasmine started to run. She dodged down an alley and left me having to double park the Impala and sprint to catch her.
"Wait, I'm trying to help! Isn't that what you told me you wanted?" I asked.
Jasmine wriggled hard against my arm. "What are you trying to do? Get me killed?"
"You can't be seen with me? I thought being seen with me was part of your job description." I fought the urge to shake the troubled blonde and let her go instead.
"It's not like I had a choice," Jasmine said. She rammed her hard platform heel down on the arch of my foot and took off when I bent over in pain.
She was too scared to talk but I followed her anyway. It was obvious now that Jasmine operated under the assumption she'd be killed if she didn't. So, I let her think she'd lost me and then continued on foot.
As I darted behind doors and dumpsters, I called Jasper's studio and told him where his guys could pick up the car. I offered him free paint jobs for life, starting with the Impala.
Jasmine was trucking down the avenue with great determination. I was still amazed at the speed and distance she could cover in her towering platform shoes. At least now I could attest to how solid they were. I limped along after her and hoped something would come out of it.
I was rapidly running out of time. The longer I took trying to track down my hunches, the longer my crews' necks were sticking out. Thomas had already gone far over the top and handed me a whole stack of potential evidence. I still had the names to connect the black-market sales.
Still, that wouldn't help the fact that Joey was probably looking at an overnight in a holding cell. Or worse, stuck in an interrogation room. He'd be regaling everyone with complete retellings of all his clever quips for years to come.
Al needed the money to send to his mother. From what I had heard, even a few days off could cause her to overdraw again and incur more debt. He'd been working like a mule ever since he hit my shop.
Then my thoughts stopped but my feet almost kept going into traffic.
Across the street, Jasmine had met her appointment: Al opened the door of the Charger as her boyfriend yelled at her from behind the wheel. I watched them all drive off together and wondered how in the hell I would be able to tell Joey the truth about his nephew.