Deadly Assets (Badge of Honor 12)

Who’s “us” and “we”? You the only one here.

Tyrone nodded again, then stepped past the smiling salesman, slowly scanning the merchandise on display in the brightly lit glass cases. He stopped for a closer look at a display on the far right.

These weren’t here last time. They changed out stuff.

But what he said is no lie! They got way more necklaces and rings than last time! Look at all them diamonds!

The two other customers on the opposite side of the room left the store as he started toward them.

Tyrone saw that the display cases in the middle held the flashy but inexpensive merchandise—the man-made cubic zirconia that sparkled like diamonds, for example, that the manager had first shown him the day he bought the Rolex, before learning that Tyrone had real cash burning a hole in his pocket.

Then he reached the far left cases.

And more watches!

Shit! A whole line of Presidents!

He looked for a long moment, then walked back toward the entrance, glanced over his shoulder at the salesman, and said, “Later.”

“Good luck at the tables! I’ll be here until five, or after that if you wish.”

Tyrone Hooks nodded as he left.

After entering the casino floor, and nearly knocking over a short, old white-haired woman who was waddling into the mall, he glanced at his watch. He then looked back at the jewelry store and pulled out his cell phone. He thumbed a text message—“1 dude rocks right clocks left skip junk in middle”—and hit SEND.

He went to one of the cashier cages and pulled the wad of cash from his pocket. In it was a plastic Lucky Stars Rewards debit card, and he gave it and ten twenty-dollar bills to the cashier. She added the two hundred dollars to his card’s account, then handed back the card.

He then went to the escalators that led to the second level of the casino. As he rode up, he looked out the wall of windows and saw, through a heavy snowfall, the enormous outline of a cargo ship making its way against the current of the Delaware, headed toward the Philadelphia Port Authority docks. On its deck, intermodal containers were stacked twenty high, looking like so many multicolored toy boxes. His cousin who worked at the docks had heard that a lot of meth and coke got smuggled in them, and Tyrone wondered what-all else could be inside. Then he scanned to the left and saw a large swarm of teenagers—at least fifty—moving quickly through the slush of the casino’s huge parking lot.

Right on time, he thought as he looked at his cell phone screen. The cracked Liberty Bell icon labeled ROCKIN215, which was the social network name he’d created on the Philly News Now website, showed that there were seventy new instant messages under “lucky stars hookup,” and more by the second.

He sent the text message “rock it” then looked back across the casino floor and, after a minute, picked out one, two, then three and four black males, all more or less dressed alike in black jeans, high-top boots, and heavy coats. They moved at a quick pace—coming from different directions and converging on the entrance to the miniature mall.

Tyrone knew they had obviously received his group text. He also knew that, concealed under their coats, two of them had short-handled ten-pound sledgehammers and the other two had black nylon bags. And, while he didn’t know it for sure, he would quickly wager against any casino odds that all were packing pistols.

That bet I know I win, he thought.

He turned to take the next escalator up to the third floor just as the first of the teenagers entered the revolving doors.

—

Mrs. Gladys Schnabel, a somewhat pudgy grandmother with curly, blue-tinged white hair, a deeply wrinkled pale face, and large round eyeglasses that hung from her neck by a chain of tiny fake pearls, stood at a chromed clothing rack at the back of Medusa’s Secret Closet. She was holding up a red velvet hanger emblazoned with the logotype FLEUR OF ENGLAND. Dangling from the hanger was a light tan silk satin undergarment set that consisted of an impossibly thin plunge bra and an even tinier thong panty.

Mrs. Schnabel seemed to be staring at the ensemble in stark disbelief.

She had arrived at the casino that morning with her daughter, forty-five-year-old Anna Cottrell, and her twenty-six-year-old granddaughter, Marie Cottrell. The two elder women had come down from Durham, a picturesque village that was a two-hour drive north. Marie lived in Philly. It was Mrs. Schnabel’s seventieth birthday, and having a “girls’ celebration” in the big city had been Anna’s idea. A little gambling fun, some shopping, a nice meal and a show, then back to the peace and tranquillity of the rolling hills of northern Bucks County.

“You have an eye for quality—that set is one of our best sellers,” the saleswoman, an olive-skinned brunette, said as she approached. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, and wore a tight black dress that accentuated her athletic body. Her small golden badge read SAMANTHA. “It’s our finest silk, in the color that is called ‘nude.’”

Mrs. Schnabel’s skeptical gray eyes went from Samantha to the hanger, where she tugged the hidden price tag into view.

“My goodness!” she blurted. “How times have changed. I’m going to have to get really lucky at those one-arm bandits. Two hundred dollars?”

Samantha reached out and softly stroked the fabric of the bra. “But just feel this luxurious silk! And note that the ring and slides are of eighteen-karat gold.”

The look on Mrs. Schnabel’s face suggested that she was neither impressed nor sold.

But she then said, with obvious pride, “Well, even if I were to be so lucky today, it would be a gift for my wonderful granddaughter. Marie and my daughter are off powdering their noses. It’s our girls’ day—we’re celebrating my birthday.”