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ALEX AND I WERE BACK at her house so we could dig a little deeper into not only Charles and Carla Weiss, but Philip’s brother Frank.
Alex turned the screen toward me. “This him?”
I nodded. “Yeah, that’s Frank. It’s an old photo though. He doesn’t have that much hair anymore.”
“Looks like a rug,” she said, her eyes on the photo on her screen. “Served three years in Calhoun State Prison—”
“Calhoun, in Georgia?”
She nodded. “Failed attempt at robbing a bank. Never made it out the door...security guard heard him talking on his cell phone, said he was about to rob a bank.”
“I guess Philip got all the brains in the family,” I said.
Alex nodded. “Guard hit him with a stun gun and called the cops. Found with a .22 pistol and a demand note in his pocket.” She skimmed through the other search results. “Looks like he moved to France after his sentence. Maybe with Charles Weiss?” She turned and looked at me over her shoulder. “Spent a few weeks in jail over there.”
“For what?”
“He robbed someone at gunpoint, at an ATM. The whole thing caught on video.” She let out a snort, shaking her head. “What’d Philip say it’d been, a few years since he last saw him?”
“Two or three years.”
“You don’t believe him?”
I shrugged my shoulder. “I guess it’s true. I don’t know Philip very well. Not sure I trust anything coming out of his mouth right now, either. Truth is, if he didn’t need someone to watch his boat while he traveled, we wouldn’t have had any reason to stay in touch.”
Alex got up from the desk and walked into the kitchen.
She came out a moment later and handed me a cup of coffee as she sipped from her own cup...a tea bag string hanging off the side.
Her phone rang. She looked around and shuffled the papers on top of the coffee table. “Where is it?”
The rings continued.
She reached down into the couch cushions, came up with her phone and answered it. “Hello?” Her eyes were on me as she listened to the call. “That’s great, I appreciate it, Claire. I owe you.” She was quiet for a moment, grabbed a pad and started writing. “You’re right. I will. I’ll call you.”
Alex tapped her screen and placed the phone on top of the coffee table. She turned the paper out in front of her. “Frank lives in an apartment off of Firestone Road, toward Westside.”
“You look excited,” I said.
“Excited? How so?”
“Like you love this stuff. You’re doing what you’re meant to be doing.”
She cracked half a smile with a slight shrug of her shoulder.
Alex and I had similar backgrounds. Both in law enforcement with jobs—careers—that didn’t quite go as planned. We both tried to make the most of running the security staff for the Jacksonville Sharks baseball team. But getting licensed as a private investigator and going out on my own was what made the most sense to me. It took Alex a little longer and the team being sold to get her to come along with me.
One thing we didn’t have in common was a love for guns. Alex grew up with a dad who took her hunting on weekends and holidays, although it didn’t take her long to realize shooting an animal wasn’t what she’d hoped for.
Her first animal kill was a squirrel, when she was nine.
Turns out, it was also her last.
She admitted she’d have little problem plugging someone if it meant protecting the innocent or someone she cared about. But killing an animal? She never even had a piece of meat again after shooting that squirrel.
Alex got up and walked to her closet door. It had two locks, one on top and one on the bottom. She turned each with a key and pulled the door open, stepped inside and looked toward the back wall and her collection of firearms.
She turned to me and with a nod she said, “About time you carry, at least to protect yourself. Don’t you think?”
I didn’t answer.
She reached inside, turned and held the handle of a gun toward me.
I grabbed it from her hand.
“My Glock,” she said. “It’s a 9mm. I want you to hold onto it.”
“But I—”
“Henry, you’ve had a gun pointed at your head. You’ve been chased and you’ve been shot. Carrying this won’t kill you. But walking around with nothing might.”
I held my two bare hands out in front of me, turned them back and forth for Alex. “You say that like these weapons—my bare hands—aren’t good enough?” I smiled.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head as she turned and locked the door.
––––––––
I SAT SHOTGUN IN THE passenger seat as we headed south on 295 toward the address Alex’s friend from the DMV had given us. It was Frank’s last known address on file, and it seemed to be the only one we could find.
Just off the highway and after a couple of quick turns, we pulled into what we hoped was Frank’s apartment complex. It was an older, brick building with concrete and steel steps leading up three stories. The wood trim on the windows was a faded gray with peeling paint. There wasn’t much color to the place other than potted flowers out on a handful of the concrete patios on the ground floor.
Alex walked ahead of me on our way up the stairs to the third floor. I tried to hide my limp as I followed behind her, but my thigh burned with each step I took.
We stood side-by-side at the door to apartment three-one-oh-two. I checked the folded paper I had in my pocket. “This is the place.”
Alex adjusted the holster she wore under her shirt as I knocked on the door. I had the Glock—the one Alex gave me—tucked in the waist of my pants. Both of us were prepared for Frank, who’d already waved his gun around when he first jumped in my car.
I put my ear against the door to listen, but couldn’t hear anything inside. I knocked.
Nobody came to the door.
I knocked again. I walked across the decking outside the apartment, leaned on the railing and looked down over the parking lot. I turned to Alex. “Did she tell you what kind of car he drove?”
She shook her head. “Nothing registered under his name,” she said. “His license expired.”
A woman with two kids in tow and what looked like another one in the oven—at least from where I stood on the third floor—walked across the parking lot from the apartments. She opened the back door of a small blue Toyota Corolla and helped each kid into the back seat. She reached inside the driver’s side and the trunk popped open.
Voices came from the stairway, getting louder along with footsteps coming up the stairs.
A male voice said, “Then what about Goodfellas?”
Another man’s voice answered, “Nope, doesn’t even compare. You’re just a racist. Just because the man’s black, you think—”
Frank and a younger man, thin and tall with a white tank top and red shorts that went far past his knees, stood in front of me at the top of the stairs. Neither said a word.
Frank was in the middle of eating a burger. His chewing slowed as he stared back at me.
The other one—a kid who looked a lot younger than Frank— was eating fries from a bag that had Burger Brothers printed on the side.
“Good to see you, Frank,” I said.
Without saying another word he threw his half-eaten burger at me. Ketchup and mustard exploded on my shirt.
Frank took off down the stairs.
The kid’s eyes widened, a fry hanging from his mouth. Before I had a chance to move he turned and ran down the stairs right behind Frank. He dropped his bag...fries went everywhere.
Alex and I ran down the stairs after them, although Frank and the kid had a pretty good lead.
“Frank!” I yelled. “I just want to talk.” I looked out toward the parking lot and saw Frank was running fast, moving well between the cars for someone who didn’t appear to be in the best physical shape.
I moved like the gimp but ran as fast as I could. The pain in my leg shot through my body. I looked down as blood seeped through the bandage on my leg.
Alex passed me on the stairs and reached for the kid’s shirt as he lost his footing and hit the sidewalk after the last step. He tumbled forward and skidded along the ground into a small strip of grass on the edge of the parking lot.
Alex pulled her gun and held it over him. “Stay down,” she snapped.
I stopped on the third step, just above Alex and the kid, and looked across the parking lot as Frank grabbed the pregnant woman with the two kids, pulled her from the car and threw her to the ground.
I ran toward them. The women’s two kids jumped from the back seat, screaming for their mother, helping her from the ground.
Frank jumped in the front seat, started the car, and took off for the exit. The engine made a whining sound as he gave it more than it could handle, driving full speed across the lot. The tires squealed when Frank took a sharp turn. He jumped the curb and the car bounced from the lot and disappeared onto Firestone Road.
I helped the woman to her feet as she cried and spoke to her children in Spanish. I raised my voice not only because I assumed she didn’t speak English but because I thought, for some reason, speaking louder helped the language barrier. “Are you okay?” I said. Her two children cried.
“Yes, I am okay,” she said in perfect English. She shook her head. “My car...”