The Lowdown (Dale Conley Action Thrillers Series Book 3) Read online

  Allie rolled her eyes. “Thanks.”

  One of the cops cleared his throat. He pointed at his wrist, which actually was bearing a watch. “Sir?”

  “Yeah, Dale,” Allie said with a mischievous, slightly wicked grin. “I don’t see any bad guys. You got anything to show for getting trapped in a phone booth by this little creature here?”

  The dog had followed her and sat by her feet. Her fingers rested atop its head, carelessly playing with its fur. The dog growled at Dale when he looked down at it.

  Dale remembered the bag that he and Percy retrieved. A jolt of excitement rushed over him.

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” he said and looked at Percy.

  Percy reached into his suit jacket and handed him the bag then said, “I gotta run. Press conference in an hour, and I need to pick Erv up first.”

  “Right,” Dale said. He’d forgotten about that. The giddiness of historical intrigue always gave Dale touches of amnesia. “Yeah, go. I’ll see you back at the office.”

  Percy nodded at Allie and walked off.

  Dale stepped a few feet away, stood beneath a lamp. He held the bag above his head, to the light.

  More symbols, at the top …

  … and bottom of the bag.

  Dale smiled. Another jolt of excitement rushed through his system. “Allie, check this out.”

  He almost called her Al again. Old habits die hard.

  Allie frowned and approached him, but when she saw the markings on the bag, her face lit up. The treasure hunter in her took over. She snatched it from him. Her eyes went wide with awe.

  “They’re symbols, aren’t they?” Dale said.

  Allie nodded quickly, enthusiastically. “They most certainly are.”

  “Told you so, Percy!” Dale yelled out to his partner, who was at the end of the alley, rounding the corner. Percy shook his head.

  Dale stuck out his tongue.

  “So what kind of symbols are they?” he said, turning back to Allie.

  “I know exactly who these symbols belong to,” she said as she brought the bag closer to her face for a moment and studied it. She lowered the bag and looked up at Dale. “A secret society.”

  Chapter 19

  The Grizzly looked across his desk, and though the man sitting across from him hadn’t introduced himself, he knew exactly who he was. There wasn’t a bit of doubt in his mind.

  “May I call you Jesse?” the Grizzly said.

  Jesse James sneered. “That would be just fine.”

  He looked just as the rumors had described him. Bright blonde hair, parted and cut short on the sides. An out-of-date look. A hairstyle of the 1950s. Or the Nazis. He wore a button-up shirt with a simple pattern, and it was wrinkled, unkempt, like he’d seen physical activity that night. Which made sense. His build was average, as were his looks. Physically, he was kind of plain. Not unpleasant looking. But still the Grizzly found him repulsive. It was the eyes. The way he looked at him. The Grizzly had been around long enough to recognize racism. And this guy had it bad. Even though the man was sitting in his office in the most congenial of manners, there was no hiding his eyes. He was brimming with hate. He was eaten up with it.

  Since most of the drug deaths had been black folk, people had been saying for some time that James was out to kill as many blacks as he could. And while the Grizzly couldn’t deny the facts—and he did believe that race must be part of the equation—to this point he had refused to believe that anyone would invest massive resources with the sole hope of getting as many people hooked and dying as possible. There had to be a financial component. It only made logical sense.

  But as he looked at the man now, face-to-face, man-to-man, he realized that he had been wrong. None of this had been based in logic. Only emotion. There was not but evil staring back at him. Jesse James was indeed on a quest. A mission. A mission of death.

  He was a formidable opponent. This conversation was going to a challenge. The Grizzly would need to plan his moves carefully. Like a chess game.

  “Normally when someone comes here without an appointment, I turn them away, Jesse,” the Grizzly said. “But how could I deny someone who announced himself as a knight?” He picked up one of the chess pieces from his desk—a knight. He broadened his smile a bit.

  “I am a knight,” Jesse James said. His voice was cold and steady with a thick Southern accent. “And my organization is here to reach an agreement with you.”

  “Why now? Why after all this subterfuge do you come to me in the middle of the night trying to make a deal?”

  “Because it’s time for my operations in the city to expand, and you hold all the power in this side of town.”

  “You don’t honestly think I’ll work with you. Your shit’s killing people. That’s just bad business.”

  James laughed at him. “You’re misunderstanding. This isn’t a business opportunity. I’m giving you the option of not being destroyed. Here’s the deal. Give me what I want, and I’ll stay out of your neighborhoods. If you don’t, we’ll bury you. Send a wave of our stuff into your turf. You won’t sell another dime bag. There won’t be one junkie left standing to sell to. I think you’ve seen what we’re capable of.”

  James’ words were ominous. But true. He wouldn’t be able to take a hit from James’ drugs. “And what is it you want from me?”

  James sneered again. He knew he had the upper hand. “Two things. First, information. Your territory is up here north of the French Quarter. With the Saint Louis Cemeteries. You have dozens of dealers, hundreds of junkies crawling over this area. Someone will be able to tell me where to find this symbol in the cemeteries.”

  He reached into his pocket, took out a paper, and tossed it onto the Grizzly’s desk. He didn’t hand it to him. He made the Grizzly pick it up. A power move.

  The Grizzly looked at the sketch on the paper. “A moon?”

  James nodded. “That’s right. And I need to know immediately. Tonight.”

  “And the second thing?”

  James narrowed his eyes. “Cooperation. Rumor has it a couple cops came by here the other day. Big wigs. Feds, I figure. I also figure you’re helping them out. I got a call right before I came here. They nearly caught one of our guys. Somehow they knew exactly where the deal was going down. Now, maybe they heard this through the grapevine, but I find it pretty coincidental that this happened the same day they met with you. From now on, you keep up appearances with them. And you report to us. Understand?”

  The Grizzly hated giving up this power to another man. But he saw little other alternative. “Seems to me that it’s in my best business interests to help you out in any way I can,” he said and put the knight back on his desk. “This organization of yours … if you’re a knight, who’s the king?”

  James just scoffed.

  “What do you call yourselves?” the Grizzly said.

  James stood up. “You find out where that moon is. You got an hour.”

  He left.

  Chapter 20

  Luanne’s breath was short, and her heart beat rapidly. She didn’t know why she was doing it, why she was there.

  She was at the desk in her bedroom. Dylan’s desk. She’d been told never to use it. But there she was anyway. Sitting in the chair behind the desk, looking at the items covering its surface.

  It was pitch-black outside the window, and the light sitting on the desktop cast a warm glow. She had the trailer to herself. Dylan and the boys were gone. They’d left for a quick run to a nearby gas station that was open late. She only had about ten minutes.

  It wasn’t often that she got time entirely to herself. She was supposed to be cooking a snack. There was a pot of popcorn on the stovetop that she’d started shortly before the guys left. It was only now starting to pop. She hated that Dylan let the boys stay up late to watch television with them like this. Especially Tyler. He was only five. But at least it was some semblance of family time. And at least Dylan was including Caleb.

  While Luanne w
ould normally use any small reprieve of solitude for something personal—listening to music, maybe reading a few pages—she was using this bit of time for something else. Something more productive.

  Because she couldn’t stop thinking about the bizarre list of city names and creepy drawings that she’d found in the car the other night.

  She looked through the papers on the top corner of the desk while the popping sounds of the popcorn grew louder from the other side of the trailer. Dylan wasn’t a tidy person, so the paperwork and other items were scattered haphazardly. This would make it more difficult for him to tell that she had looked through things. Or, the more she thought about it, maybe it would do just the opposite. Maybe Dylan’s system was organized chaos, and he’d be able to tell if one single item was slightly out of place.

  She couldn’t bare thinking about the repercussions. So she pushed the thoughts from her mind.

  There were invoices. Receipts. Shipping statements. Everything related to his work. It all seemed legitimate, but she continued to remind herself of the bizarre symbols. Something was going on here. She knew it.

  Then she saw her cousin’s name. Jesse Richter. Written on a paper with a list of other names she didn’t recognize. She did a double-take. While she knew that Dylan and Jesse had been spending more time together lately, she had no clue why his name would be written on a piece of paper among the business items on the desk. She pulled the paper out a bit. Jesse’s name was—

  There was movement in the window outside. She looked up. Headlights in the darkness. It was the Corvair. They were back already. The car was at the end of the road.

  Just like that, her few minutes of solitude were almost over. If she was going to find something, she needed to find it now.

  The popcorn was popping faster now, frantic noise matching the pace with which she was going through the documents.

  She peeled back the papers covering the one with Jesse’s name. There was nothing labeling it. It was just a list of names, about twenty of them, with Jesse’s being at the top, and they had been written in different colors of ink, as though the list had been added to over time. It was yet another perplexing piece of information—another confusing list—but it was not the smoking gun she was hoping for. She put it back.

  She sifted through the paperwork. More receipts. Some sort of voucher. But nothing related to that strange list of cities in the car, the list that she’d been thinking of almost constantly since she saw it.

  Outside, the Corvair was about to turn onto the long path leading up to the trailer. She moved to the side, getting out of view of the window. The sound of the popcorn was rapid, incessant.

  There had to be something there. Something that would shed some light. She knew there was something bizarre to that list and the symbols. She needed something concrete.

  And then she found it.

  A map of the Gulf South. Hand-drawn, clearly traced out of an encyclopedia or atlas. There were names written on the map in Dylan’s handwriting, in pencil. Location names, written in their respective positions on the map. They were the places that had been on the list in the car: Pensacola, Naval Live Oaks, New Orleans, Marianna.

  And next to each name was a small, simple drawing. The same drawings that had been on the list. They were like symbols. New Orleans had been without a symbol on the list, but it had one on the map: a crescent moon. With stars on it. Dylan had put a big question mark next to it.

  There were places where he’d written other things on the map. They’d been erased. She leaned in close, squinted. Other city names. Other drawings.

  Light shined in the window. Headlights. The car was pulling up, stopping. There was the squeal of the brakes.

  Rosemary Beach. Dothan. De Soto National Forest. Locations in the region, all of them erased. She looked closely at one of the places that wasn’t erased, Marianna, and saw that it had been written multiple times. Written down, erased, and written again. And again.

  It was like he was discovering places …

  Finding locations. Second-guessing and then confirming his work.

  Outside the car door shut.

  She jumped. The intrigue had made her forget herself a moment. She would have to hurry. She stuffed the map back where it had been and headed to the front of the trailer, back to the popcorn at the stove, just as the hinges on the door squeaked.

  Dylan and the boys stepped in. Tyler and Caleb were full of giggly energy. In their hands was the candy they’d gone to the gas station to get. They ran to the living room. Dylan stepped toward her, his boots stomping on the floor.

  “Popcorn ready?”

  Luanne nodded. “Just about, babe.”

  Dylan sniffed the air. “Smells burnt.”

  “I forgot about it for a minute.”

  Dylan looked her up and down. “Why are you breathing hard?”

  “I had to run to get it,” she said. “I was in the bathroom.”

  He just looked at her.

  She smiled. “Let’s watch the show.”

  Luanne was happy. While there were two nagging feelings whispering at her—the unease she felt about Dylan’s mysterious activities and her tension that the boys were up so late eating candy and watching TV—she felt content to be having some family time. She was on the couch with Caleb, and Dylan sat in the chair with Tyler in his lap. The lights were out. There was only the glow of the television.

  The main character in the show said something funny, and Dylan laughed loudly. He thrust his hand into the popcorn bowl, which sat on the table between the chair and the couch, and took out a big handful. He offered some to Tyler then stuffed some into his mouth.

  Luanne looked at him. She was going to get a bit more information, but she needed to play it casual. “I saw that one of those guys you were talking to tonight was Mick Henderson. What’s a guy like that doing with your business?”

  Dylan slowly turned to her. The light off the TV bounced off his face, his unkempt beard. He frowned. “What did you just ask me?”

  She paused for a moment before answering, She had to be careful. “I mean, he’s one of the biggest names in the region, and I just wouldn’t know what someone in his field would need with a pharmaceutical shipping firm.”

  Dylan narrowed his eyes. There was a pause. The screeching sound of tires came from the television. “That’s none of your business.”

  Luanne gave him a smile. “I’m just proud of you, baby. That’s all.”

  Dylan didn’t answer. He stared at her. She smiled again and looked back at the television. She could feel his eyes still upon her.

  Caleb leaned over to her. “Momma?”

  A break in the tension. She felt a wave of relief.

  “Yes, baby?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Have some popcorn.” She reached for the bowl.

  “No, I’m hungry hungry.”

  She smiled at him. “Okay, you can have my leftovers from Bello. You like spaghetti.”

  “Yeah!”

  Dylan turned to them. “The boy’s had dinner and candy and popcorn. He’ll be happy with what he gets. And what are you talking about? Bello? You said you two were getting coffee.”

  Luanne had driven into town that afternoon to visit with her friend Maria.

  “I haven’t seen her in three months,” she said. “We thought we’d eat instead.”

  “So you drove all the way into Pensacola and you bought lunch. And you weren’t gonna tell me?”

  Luanne could tell when Dylan’s anger was rising. And there were few things that made him angrier than things he perceived as disrespect. She again needed to play it safe, be diplomatic. “I wasn’t trying to hide nothing from you. It just slipped my mind, baby. Honest.”

  “I don’t know why you were eating pasta, Luanne. God knows you don’t need it.” He pointed at Caleb. “Twinkle-toes here isn’t getting it either. Tyler can have it. You want some spaghetti, boy?”

  Tyler nodded vigorously.

  Dylan
watched Luanne for a moment. There was intensity in that stare. Luanne felt it bore into her. The anger was rising.

  “So was it a good visit, at least?” he said.

  Luanne smiled. Maybe she’d been premature. He couldn’t be too angry at her if he was asking how the visit went. “It was so great catching up with her. She’s taking classes at PJC, you know. And she’s still in touch with all the people we went to high school with. She gave me the lowdown on how many of them—”

  “Wait,” Dylan said, frowning. “The ‘lowdown’?”

  The anger was still there. In his eyes. More tension. She realized that she was starting to breath harder.

  “Yeah. You know, the ‘information.’ The ‘scoop.’”

  Dylan smirked. A disgusted smirk. The look he gave her when he wanted her to know just how worthless she was. This was usually followed by a slap to the face. “She gave you the ‘lowdown,’ did she, Luanne? That’s how you’re talking now? Like some damn city hippie?”

  Calm him down. That’s the only thing she could try to do now. She knew where this was going. “It doesn’t mean nothing. It’s just a word. It’s just silly.”

  “You’re right. It is silly. Which is why I don’t want you hanging around people like her.” He gestured at Caleb and Tyler. “See, boys, this here is my mistake. I’ve let your momma down.” He looked at Tyler on his lap. “It’s time for a little lesson. You want to help Daddy out, big guy?”

  Tyler nodded.

  Something terrible was going to happen. Something worse than a slap. Luanne could feel it. Dylan had that look in his eye. A look of menace. And glee.

  “Good,” Dylan said. “Luanne, come here.”

  Luanne didn’t want to move. She wanted to stay right there on the couch. With Caleb. Safe.

  “I said, come here, Luanne!”

  She stood up. If she just did what he said, maybe he’d reconsider whatever it was he had planned. She stepped over to him.

  “Now lean down,” he said.