The Fugitive Grandma

Chapter 53 -The Con Job

Lester Cummings was angry and restless, swatting the air with a pool cue in the bar next to his office. He and his men had been going full throttle for a week now since the Shady Palms robbery. Everything else was on hold. The regular bingo games were suspended indefinitely. So, in addition to the money stolen from the lockbox, Lester already had lost another week’s worth of proceeds.

Harry sat beside Lester next to the pool table, smoking a cigarette, trying to think of something intelligent to say to his sullen boss.

“Cheer up, Les. We’ll find them.”

Lester brought the pool stick down swift and hard on Harry’s knee in the location of the gunshot wound. Harry let out a sharp howl like a dog whose paw has just been pierced by a thorn.

“Don’t you tell me to cheer up, you worthless piece of trash!” Lester roared, his voice creaking like a boiling teapot. “If you’d been doing your job, minding the shop at Shady Palms, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Now I’m bleeding money, totally exposed, and we still can’t find the kid and the old lady. The only way we can get at them is through Frank. And we can’t even touch him without risking a run-in with that detective. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, Harry. This was supposed to be the move to ease me into retirement. I’ve been busting my hump all these years and now I’m ready to close down shop and live comfortably. And you, you screw up everything.”

Lester’s face was purple with rage as he furiously recited the details of his predicament. He clutched the pool cue and whacked Harry on the knee again in the same tender spot. This time, Harry winced but didn’t dare make a sound.

Rudy came in and removed his hat and sunglasses. His face was covered with stubble, the beginnings of a scraggly beard. His appearance was once again dramatically transformed from the role of septuagenarian gambler at the bingo game a week ago.

“Think I finally have a lead,” Rudy announced to his boss. “I talked to Pat Sherwood, one of my old Aryan Nations buddies from the joint. Pat lives in Riverside now and has a gig selling pills out of his home on the black market. Anyway, he was talking to one of his customers who told him about a rumor spreading. There’s someone new in Santa Ramona selling on the black market. Word is the guy’s Elmer Dillinger, used to be the head pharmacist at Caruso’s. That’s the place on Magnolia that got bought by Great American.”

“That’s the store where Stella Valentine used to work, the same location that she and the kid robbed on Friday. That guy must be connected to Stella,” Lester said.

Rudy nodded. “Exactly. She scores drugs in the robbery, and a few days later this cat comes out of retirement selling bootleg medicine. Some coincidence, huh?”

“What else did you learn about this Dillinger guy? Is he cutting into your friend’s business?”

“Not really. My guy sells pills to tweakers and junkies, addicts who don’t have real prescriptions. Pat hears that Dillinger has a totally different angle. He sells to people who are sick and really need the medicine. And they have the prescriptions to prove it. So, there’s no overlap, no competition.”

“Sounds like a good business either way,” Lester said. “Stella and Dillinger must be sitting on a hundred grand worth of medicine at this point. I’d like to have this Dillinger lead us to Stella, and then after we’re through with them, we can take their inventory. That’ll be a nice little perk after all the trouble she’s put us through. Maybe your friend can move it for us.”

“I am sure he’d be glad to pick up the extra business.”

“So where can we find this Dillinger? I’d like to pay him a visit right now.”

“He’s unlisted, and I haven’t had time to track him down through other means. But I was able to get a description of what he looks like and he sounds like the guy we’ve seen several times outside Stella’s church.”

Rudy described Elmer’s appearance and Harry raised his hand, speaking up in a shaky voice. “I’ve seen him, too, last time I was outside the Szymanski house. Seems like it’s his nightly routine to stop by the church and then walk across the street to pay Millie a visit.”

Lester nodded. “So it’s all coming together. I didn’t think they were smart enough to pull off something like this. But now I suspect that damn Valentine family and their cronies have been playing me all along. They must think they’re pretty slick. First, luring me into the real estate game just as the market is set to tank. Then, they infiltrate Shady Palms and steal my bingo money as a seed for their prescription drug racket. It’s just been one thing after another, but it all adds up to a massive con job. I underestimated them from the get-go. Seemed like such losers, the whole family, and that’s what kept me off balance. Well, the con job is over. They are all going down. No mercy. I’ll be damned if anyone gets away with making a fool of me.”

“When do we move?” Rudy asked.

“Now. I want you on stakeout watching the church and the Szymanski house starting immediately. Don’t leave there until you see Frank or Dillinger show up to pay this lady a visit. Sooner or later, one of them will lead us to Stella and Johnny. Then all the prayers in the world won’t do them any good.”