Dead Money Run

By J. Frank James

Lou Malloy meets a young and beautiful PI, Hilary Kelly, and together they fight to keep their freedom and $15 million in Mob money as Malloy and Kelly race to protect what he earned the hard way and find the people responsible for his sisters death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514411056

J. Frank James

Born in Tennessee, James (Jim) F. Johnson began a career in writing while pursuing his degrees in Journalism and Advertising from the University of Florida at the College of Journalism. While attending school, James worked for the Gainesville Sun as a reporter, photographer, and plate maker. Several of his stories were picked up by the Associated Press. Subsequently, Jim went on to attend law school and obtained a Doctorate of Law. While in law school Jim was a member of the law review and published an article there. It wasn’t until later in life that Jim’s journalism skills would again serve him well as he began to write his books. It is in these books that Jim will introduce you to his cast of characters that make up the Crime Bandit team. You will meet Lou Malloy, Hilary Kelly, Crusher Barnes and the mysterious “Blue” as they fight their way through one intrigue after another. Jim writes under the pseudonym J. Frank James as a tribute to his father Frank Johnson, who gave his life serving his country during World War II. Jim has been many things in life, but his greatest enjoyment comes from communicating with people and introducing new readers to the characters that appear in his books. He has written ten novels to date. In addition to his writing pursuits, Jim is also a self-taught artist and rug designer concentrating on endangered species. Jim has displayed his art in several galleries. He has had shows in the Booth Bay Gallery, Booth Bay, Maine; The Goodyear Cottage on Jekyll Island, Georgia; Blue Frog Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia; Glynn Art Association, St Simon’s Island, Georgia; McIntosh Art Association, Darien, Georgia. Working with acrylics, his work is bold, fun, and inspiring. Prints are limited editions on both paper and stretched canvas. Jim lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his lovely wife, Lorraine, and their ninety-five pound boxer named Jake.

Book preview

Dead Money Run

J. Frank James

Copyright © 2015 by J. Frank James.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2015915723

ISBN:      Hardcover         978-1-5144-1107-0

                Softcover          978-1-5144-1106-3

                eBook               978-1-5144-1105-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The cover of this book is owned by the author and subject to the copyright laws as set forth herein. The little man appearing in the lower right hand corner of the cover is a registered trademark.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 09/30/2015

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Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Other Books

by

J. Frank James

Lou Malloy Novels

Lou Malloy: The Run Begins

Dead Money Run

Only Two Cats

Blue Cat in Paradise

Rainbow Games

Two Birds to Kill

Last Flamingo

Finders, Keepers

Games We Play

Indigo Marsh Novels

Voodoo Moon Rising

Fear No Evil

Killing Time

DEDICATION

To Lieutenant James Franklin Johnson Sr., US Army Air Forces, WWII, KIA, October 14, 1944. He will remain in my thoughts and prayers forever.

CHAPTER 1

THE WARDEN WAS a small man, but neatly dressed. Everything about him was neat—from his hair to his shoes. He was almost too neat.

So what are your plans, Lou? the warden asked when I walked into the room and sat down. I didn’t say anything.

Reaching across his desk, Edwards turned over a little hourglass full of sand. We both watched it for a few seconds and then looked at each other. This was the first time I ever met the man. What did he care about me now? Since he never cared before, I figured the man was just looking for information. Perhaps he wanted to give me a warning.

Do you ever think about time, Lou?

After fifteen years, what do you think? I said.

Looking at me, he smiled and said, Most valuable thing we have, and no one seems to mourn its passing until it’s too late.

Again, I had nothing to say to that. Conversations with a prison warden came with a lot of maybes. Whatever this meeting was about, I wasn’t going to take any risks.

While in prison, I trained myself to watch a man’s hands. If he rubbed his hands in a washing motion, he was lying. If he messed with his fingernails, he wasn’t interested in the conversation. The warden was rubbing his hands as if he had touched something distasteful.

I haven’t given it a lot of thought, Warden Edwards.

Call me John, Lou. We’re friends now, Edwards said while rubbing his hands in a determined kind of way.

So now we were friends. I wanted to tell him he was a liar, but my better judgment stopped me. Probably a good way to delay my release—things get lost and papers go unsigned. Things happen.

Okay, John, I said.

You know, we never found the fifteen million, he said.

I didn’t know you were looking for it.

I watched his eyes flicker briefly. I seemed to hit a sweet spot.

No, Lou. You misunderstand, he said as he caught himself. There is a reward for the recovery of the money. Did you know that?

Edwards said it more as a statement than a question. I said nothing and waited. Edwards shifted in his chair and started to rub his hands again.

It would be in your best interest to tell them what you know.

Who’s the ‘them,’ John? I asked.

They’re the people looking for the money.

I thought about that for a few moments. The statement covered a lot of ground.

Since I didn’t take the money in the first place, I don’t have anything to tell them. They need to ask the people who took it, I said.

Edwards was smiling now, and he stopped rubbing his hands.

There are some people that think you do.

I can’t help what people think.

Ten percent, he said.

Ten percent of what? I replied.

The money, Lou. Ten percent of fifteen million is a lot of money.

Like I said, I hadn’t heard about the reward, I said.

Yeah, it seems the Indian casino had insurance. The insurance company that paid off on the claim put up a ten percent reward for the return of the money. A million five is a lot of money.

I hope they find it, I said.

Edwards blinked his eyes, signaling he was moving on to something else.

Sorry to hear about your sister, he said. I understand they are doing all they can to find her killer.

Edwards was a real card and running out of things to say. On any other day, in any other place, he would be dead or wishing he was.

Thanks, John. Your words are real comforting, I said and returned my gaze to the little hourglass and the sand as it accumulated on the bottom.

All this moron wanted for me to do was to make him happy. For that matter, make all his buddies happy. Just one big happy group, sitting around, smiling at one another; happy, happy, now let’s just get the money and spread it all around, and we could go on being happy. In the meantime, my sister rested in a hole somewhere, feeding worms. I had money on the worms being real happy. No word on how my sister felt.

Edwards looked disappointed when I didn’t add to our conversation.

Lou, it might be a good idea for you to help them find the money. It could be a big windfall.

Now we were getting somewhere. Just like all the rest of the treasure hunters, the miserable bastard was just in it for the money.

Windfall for who, John? Me or you?

When I finished asking the question, as if tasting a lemon, Edwards twisted his face and, at the same time, waved his hands at an imaginary fly before answering.

I’m not sure what you mean, Lou. I’m just trying to give you a head start. If it was my decision, you would still be with us. Fifteen million dollars was a lot of money to lose.

It still is, I said.

I sat and watched Edwards shift in his chair some more. We had nothing left to talk about. I could sense him working out in his mind how he was going to present his failure to get a lead out of me on the money.

So, what are you going to do now? Edwards said.

Finally, I had enough.

Leave. Isn’t that what we all do?

His smile vanished. He knew he was wasting his time on someone who had maxed out. He also knew he couldn’t hold me. There would be no parole violation with the threat to reincarcerate me. No work-release effort to rehabilitate me. Just a new suit made in the prison cut and sew area and a hundred bucks was the sum total of it. That probably hadn’t changed since the ’30s. I wondered if Al Capone wore the suit they gave him when he got out.

We were both looking at the little hourglass of sand now. When all the sand had drained from the top of the glass to the bottom, Edwards suddenly stood up, as if being shot out of a cannon, and stuck out his hand. Getting up from my chair, I didn’t shake his hand. I just turned and left the room. I didn’t want to touch him.

CHAPTER 2

SIX MONTHS BEFORE my scheduled release, a letter came from a Jake Lockman, notifying me of my sister’s death. It had been typed on one of those old vintage-style typewriters that had a well-used half-black and half-red cloth ribbon. All the letters with closed loops were filled in, and some of the red had bled onto the paper, but I got their meaning. My sister had been found dead in an Indian casino in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Lockman had signed the letter and wrote a telephone number under his signature.

In the letter, Lockman referred to my sister as Kandi, but for me, she would always be Susan Malloy. I remembered when she called to tell me about her decision to change her name to Kandi Kain. At the time, she said it was going to be just for professional reasons. I didn’t like it and said so. Now I suspected there was another reason, a reason that might have gotten her killed.

Lou, for a crook, you’re so old-fashioned. I need my name to be snappy, was the way Susan put it. "Susan Malloy sounds so Midwest, if you get my meaning?"

I remembered saying, "And you think the name Kandi Kain is going to do it for you?"

Don’t you think it has a nice ring to it? she replied.

When I told her the only women with names like that were pole dancers and hookers, I never heard from her again.

So how do you know my sister, Lockman? I asked when I called.

Please, Lou, call me Jake, he said.

Okay, Jake.

I lived with your sister in Jacksonville Beach. We own a condo there together.

His explanation didn’t answer my question.

I don’t call that a relationship, Jake. Sounds more like an investment. My next question went for the fences.

My sister was a prostitute, Jake. You wouldn’t have been her pimp, by any chance?

That’s laying it on the line a little bit, don’t you think, Lou?

Lockman, I’m about to max out from one of the toughest prison systems in America, and I quit worrying about feelings a long time ago.

When do you get out?

Answer my question, I said.

I wouldn’t call our relationship as one just based on economics, he said.

No? What would you call it?

I could hear a click in Lockman’s voice when I asked my last question.

I think a partnership would be more like it.

I see. So you hit on the women, and my sister, the men, is that how it was?

Lou, please. That’s not how it was at all.

I’m all ears, I said.

In an attempt to change the subject, Lockman said, Look, Lou, I just wanted to know when you were getting out and to offer you a place to stay. That’s it. What’s the big deal about when you get out?

Why do you want to know? I asked.

Thought you might want to stay here at the condo, you know. Like, take some time to get things behind you. Besides, I suppose you are entitled to Kandi’s half of the deal.

When Lockman referred to my sister’s alias, Kandi Kain, I didn’t correct him. That could come later.

Tell me, Jake, what was my sister’s half exactly?

Okay, it’s like this. We worked together to set up gigs for businessmen who were looking for a little fun. You know. I would set up parties that from time to time involving some of the girls from the Casino. Kandi would get the girls, and I would set up the parties. That was it. It wasn’t a deal like you might be thinking.

Jake, you don’t have any idea what I’m thinking.

Yeah, well, I know, but I just want you to know Kandi and I were together on this.

I get it, I said. You were like a tour director for sex.

Why do you want to keep bringing sex into the deal? asked Lockman.

Lockman, there are three reasons people do things today—power, money, and sex. So far, you’ve hit two out of three.

Lou, I’m just calling to give you a hand. That’s it.

I appreciate the thought, Jake. I have other plans, and going to Jacksonville Beach isn’t one of them, I replied.

Since I had been in prison, I had received four letters from my sister. While she told me about her condo investment, she never mentioned a Jake Lockman.

Oh, well, you have my number. If you need anything, just give me a call. I would like to find the people who killed your sister too. She was an important part of my life. I wanted to tell the jerk that she was all the life I had, but I didn’t and hung up.

After talking with Lockman, I felt sure that he wasn’t a player, but there was a chance that he might have access to information that would lead me to a place to start looking for my sister’s killer once I got out. Generally, men like Jake Lockman worked the fringes of a deal trying to insert themselves into an operation in the hopes someone would throw them a bone. The thing they had to do was be ready when the bone came their way. Lockman probably was one of those who did the grunt work for the A team when they needed something done. But whatever role in my sister’s life, I felt sure she saw him as just a means to an end. What he played I had to find out, if I wanted to learn who killed her and why, was what that end was.

CHAPTER 3

FOR FIFTEEN YEARS, I lived in a room the size of a walk-in closet. After about a year of being in prison, I felt like a zoo animal, and it went down from there.

I was the only one left from a gang that robbed an Indian casino on Cumberland Island off the coast of Georgia known as the Golden Slipper Casino and Resort fifteen years ago. Even though the crime took place on Indian land, my crime came under the federal penal code, and that landed me in the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta for fifteen years.

The use of the term correctional in terms of prison rehabilitation was a joke. About thirteen million people serve time in a prison or jail each year somewhere, according to a study by some goodie two-shoe outfit. The report went on to state that 67 percent of those released commit new offenses, and 52 percent return to prison within three years. So where did the correction come into it? Without crime, wardens, correctional officers, food commissaries, and parole boards would be without jobs. Whoever said that crime didn’t pay didn’t know what they were talking about.

Life inside the prison was like living in a city where there were no rules, just boundaries. Everything was based on territory and how much of it you could stake out as yours. The new prisoners were called fish. It took me six months and about a half dozen fights to establish myself as a person to leave alone. I didn’t want or seek friends. As far as I was concerned, there was nothing in prison that warmed my heart. If anything, I learned that it was best not to have one. The prisoners who could not protect themselves were nothing but prey for the predators.

Inside prison it was common knowledge that I was the only surviving member of the gang that had stolen the fifteen million dollars from the casino run by the Timucua Indians.

At the time we took the money, there were three of us. My role was to drive the boat that was to transport the money to a place called Turtle Point, which, at one time, had been an airfield used by the government to train pilots to track German U-boats that patrolled the coastal waters from Charleston to Miami, trying to sink Liberty boats loaded with war supplies for soldiers fighting in Europe.

The plan was pretty straightforward. My two partners, Henry Lowe and Benny Star, were the inside men. Their job was to set everything up. I was just the wheelman. At eighteen years old, I figured I had nothing to lose. If everything went as planned, I was going to be five million dollars richer. With that kind of money, I figured I could call my own shots. Being as young as I was, at the time, I didn’t have the good sense of a moron. On the night we pulled the job, both my partners never made it out of the casino alive, and I had to try to finish the scheme on my own. Fortunately for me, I was able to secure the money in the boat and make it back to Turtle Point, where I hid the money before getting picked up by the police. Once I was arrested, everything sort of went on cruise control. My conviction was a foregone conclusion. I had been picked up on an outside security camera while I was loading the boat with the duffel bags of money. How Lowe and Star figured to get around the security at a casino was a mystery to me, a mystery that I learned the answer to the hard way by spending fifteen years in prison for my role in the crime.

Looking back on my time in prison, one thing positive about my time spent, I had a lot of opportunity to plan my future, which, on occasion, didn’t look all that bright since some of the gangs made a move to get me to disclose where I had stuffed the money.

I felt sure that it was the Indians trying to get their hands on the money, and then one day I was working in the laundry when a couple of hard cases tried to make a move on me. I took one and shoved his head in a pail of bleach. He didn’t die easy. The other one I knocked the shank he was going to cut me with out of his hand and stuck it in his belly, cutting one of his livers almost in half. However, there was one good thing that came out of it. I learned that he had been hired by the people who had a vested interest in getting to my fifteen million dollars. It seemed they had something to do with the casino we had robbed that night. The Golden Slipper Casino and Resort, owned by the Timucua Indians, was now on my checklist, and I proceeded to learn everything about the Timucua Indians that I could.

CHAPTER 4

THE TIMUCUA INDIANS, at one time, numbered over two hundred thousand, but disease and loss of their hunting grounds condemned them almost to extinction by the early 1700s. Unlike many of their brothers, such as the Seminoles, Cherokee, and Creek, the Timucua stayed on their lands. By the time they received the permit to build the Casino on Cumberland Island, less than a thousand of them remained, and none of them lived in tepees. But they were Indians, and with the passing of the Indian Regulatory Gaming Act, they had the right to control their destiny. And though they were riding high, they still relied on the white man to run the casinos and provide the slot machines, gaming tables, and everything else necessary for a casino to make money.

The Golden Slipper Casino and Resort was built on land that had been federal property. Because of some entangled legal issues with people who claimed ownership of the Island and opposed the construction of a casino, it took a few years to get the necessary permits to build the Slipper, as the locals referred to it.

After a lengthy legal battle, the government, anxious to amend its many wrongs in its relationship with the American Indian, won out in the end, and the Indians got their casino. However, the Timucua’s right to use the property was subject to a ninety-nine-year lease with the US Department of the Interior.

After my arrest, I felt like the Indians. I had little hope. The real owners of the Casino were a tangled mess of corporations controlled by some government bureaucrats and mobbed-up sharpies from Las Vegas, and they wanted their fifteen million back—or my skin.

The fact of it was, I had been caught on one of the Casino security cameras grabbing bags of money out of a small creek behind the Casino, and with both my partners dead, I became the government’s poster boy for why it was not a good idea to steal from Uncle Sam.

Without the money to hire a decent lawyer and unwilling to put my fate into the hands of a court-appointed legal jockey, I worked out a plea deal for fifteen years that just happened to coincide with the amount of money taken. The prosecutor on the case was less than enthusiastic about taking the deal on the part of the government, but with the jurisprudence system being what it was—and the fact that the power brokers in the deal did not want to expose their underbelly—the plea agreement went through. Besides, they figured I would make parole in five years, as was the custom, and lead them to the money. I fooled them by taking the whole ride. As far as I was concerned, having a parole officer with his nose up my ass for the next ten years wasn’t any better than staying in prison.

The good news was that the money we took from the casino was clean. Since it was not from a bank, they never had the need to use dye packets, or what we in the game refer to as marked. So it was finders, keepers, and being the finder, I planned on keeping it, unless somebody got lucky and took it away from me.

There had been several attempts to kill me while I was in prison, but a guy named Crusher, who jailed next to my cell, watched my back. A professional wrestler before he turned criminal, he wasn’t called Crusher for nothing. By the time he left, I had worked myself into pretty good shape, and because I had a reputation of giving no quarter, most of the population left me alone. Still, there were some who tried their luck, such as it was. A couple of guards even gave it a whirl, but I broke both arms on one, and the other was in traction for six months and would never walk again without the use of a cane.

Every now and then, the lead detective on the case for the government would pull me out of general population for a sit-down to discuss the advantages of giving up the money. The pitch was always the same. If I cooperated, they could make my life inside real sweet and easy. Each time he came, I told him to quit fucking his fist and to leave me alone. Finally, he took the hint.

In the end, I didn’t roll over and give up the money. I figured if I did, I would still be in prison and fifteen million poorer. Anyway, once I gave up the money, no matter how tough I thought I was, my life would not be worth an ant’s fart. For fifteen years, I figured the money was the only thing keeping me alive.

Then there was my sister. I was looking forward to seeing her again and patching up any issues between us. News of her death ended all that.

I was not sure finding out who killed my sister was as important to me as finding out why she was killed. The two probably went hand in hand, but I knew one thing—my search had to start with Lockman. He didn’t sound like someone who had just lost his significant other when I talked to him. He sounded more