Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(113)

The guy catches it and shoves it back in before it can fall into the street, but Jason Laverty spent two tours in Iraq and he knows an RPG launcher when he sees it. He flips on the blues and hooks in behind the guy, who looks around with a startled expression.

“Sidearm!” he snaps at his partner. “Get it out!”

They fly out the doors, double-fisted Glocks pointing at the sky.

“Drop the box, sir!” Laverty shouts. “Drop the box and put your hands on the van! Lean forward. Do it now!”

For a moment the guy—he’s about forty, olive-skinned, round-shouldered—hugs the florist’s box tighter against his chest, like a baby. But when Rosie Rosario lowers her gun and points it at his chest, he drops the box. It splits wide open and reveals what Laverty tentatively identifies as a Russian-made Hashim antitank grenade launcher.

“Holy shit!” Rosario says, and then: “Toody, Toody, I got an id—”

“Officers, lower your weapons.”

Laverty keeps his focus on Grenade Launcher Guy, but Rosario turns and sees a gray-haired Cauc in a blue jacket. He’s wearing an earpiece and has his own Glock. Before she can ask him anything, the street is full of men in blue jackets, all running for King Virtue Pawn & Loan. One is carrying a Stinger battering ram, the kind cops call a baby doorbuster. She sees ATF on the backs of the jackets, and all at once she has that unmistakable I-stepped-in-shit feeling.

“Officers, lower your weapons. Agent James Kosinsky, ATF.”

Laverty says, “Maybe you’d like one of us to cuff him first? Just asking.”

ATF agents are piling into the pawnshop like Christmas shoppers into Walmart on Black Friday. A crowd is gathering across the street, as yet too stunned by the size of the strike force to start casting aspersions. Or stones, for that matter.

Kosinsky sighs. “You may as well,” he says. “The horse has left the barn.”

“We didn’t know you had anything going,” Laverty says. Meanwhile, Grenade Launcher Guy already has his hands off the van and behind him with the wrists pressed together. It’s pretty clear this isn’t his first rodeo. “He was unlocking his van and I saw that poking out of the end of the box. What was I supposed to do?”

“What you did, of course.” From inside the pawnshop there comes the sound of breaking glass, shouts, and then the boom of the doorbuster being put to work. “Tell you what, now that you’re here, why don’t you throw Mr. Cavelli there in the back of your car and come on inside. See what we’ve got.”

While Laverty and Rosario are escorting their prisoner to the cruiser, Kosinsky notes the number.

“So,” he says. “Which one of you is Toody and which one is Muldoon?”





11


As the ATF strike force, led by Agent Kosinsky, begins its inventory of the cavernous storage area behind King Virtue Pawn & Loan’s humble fa?ade, a gray Mercedes sedan is pulling to the curb in front of 49 Elm Street. Hodges is behind the wheel. Today Holly is riding shotgun—because, she claims (with at least some logic), the car is more hers than theirs.

“Someone is home,” she points out. “There’s a very badly maintained Honda Civic in the driveway.”

Hodges notes the shuffling approach of an old man from the house directly across the street. “I will now speak with Mr. Concerned Citizen. You two will keep your mouths shut.”

He rolls down his window. “Help you, sir?”

“I thought maybe I could help you,” the old guy says. His bright eyes are busy inventorying Hodges and his passengers. Also the car, which doesn’t surprise Hodges. It’s a mighty fine car. “If you’re looking for Brady, you’re out of luck. That in the driveway is Missus Hartsfield’s car. Haven’t seen it move in weeks. Not sure it even runs anymore. Maybe Missus Hartsfield went off with him, because I haven’t seen her today. Usually I do, when she toddles out to get her post.” He points to the mailbox beside the door of 49. “She likes the catalogs. Most women do.” He extends a knuckly hand. “Hank Beeson.”

Hodges shakes it briefly, then flashes his ID, careful to keep his thumb over the expiration date. “Good to meet you, Mr. Beeson. I’m Detective Bill Hodges. Can you tell me what kind of car Mr. Hartsfield drives? Make and model?”

“It’s a brown Subaru. Can’t help you with the model or the year. All those rice-burners look the same to me.”

“Uh-huh. Have to ask you to go back to your house now, sir. We may come by to ask you a few questions later.”

“Did Brady do something wrong?”

“Just a routine call,” Hodges says. “Go on back to your house, please.”

Instead of doing that, Beeson bends lower for a look at Jerome. “Aren’t you kinda young to be on the cops?”

“I’m a trainee,” Jerome says. “Better do as Detective Hodges says, sir.”

“I’m goin, I’m goin.” But he gives the trio another stem-to-stern onceover first. “Since when do city cops drive around in Mercedes-Benzes?”

Hodges has no answer for that, but Holly does. “It’s a RICO car. RICO stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations. We take their stuff. We can use it any way we want because we’re the police.”