Free The Catch by Archer Mayor Page B

reservations. I heard of those model airplanes being used, too. You know, remote control? It’s not that hard, once you get the hang of it. All that crap about the border being monitored twenty-four/seven and a hundred percent is bullshit. They got a few cops running a crapshoot.”
    Gunther kept pushing. “But it all came out of Canada, regardless of what it was.”
    Flaco shook his head pityingly. “I been talking to myself here.”
    “Who’s the supplier, then?”
    His expression changed to something possibly more self-protective. “I don’t know.”
    “You implied you’ve done this, too,” Joe said. “Who did you see up there?”
    Flaco glanced at Lenny Chapman.
    “Tell him,” Chapman urged. “I’m not here to jam you up. You and I work together, remember?”
    But it was a nonstarter. “I don’t know,” Flaco said. “Honest. I don’t think anybody knows. I did it a couple of times. Luis did it a bunch. Every time, all we got was the product. We’d be told to show up wherever and pick it up, and it would be there. Never saw nobody. I always figured we were watched, but maybe that was just the creeps, you know?”
    “You knew Grega did it,” Sammie asked. “You got other names?”
    Flaco was already waving that away with his hand. “Nah, nah. Luis brought me in ’cause he couldn’t do it a couple of times. I was like a subcontractor. I only knew him, and he said we might get in trouble even then.”
    “Meaning he knew more than you did,” Joe said.
    “Well,
yeah.
Plus, Grega’s a bad man, on the move. Takes no shit. Rumor is, he’s killed people, but what do I know?” Flaco finished rhetorically.
    Joe exchanged quick looks with his colleagues. Chapman took that as an opportunity to aim the car toward a darkened parking lot under an elevated railway, speaking as he drove. “Right, Flaco, what do you know?”
    He stopped the car and twisted around in his seat. “You been a big help, man.” He reached back and shook hands. “Take it easy.”
    Flaco was nonplussed. “That it?”
    “That’s it,” Chapman told him.
    The skinny man hesitantly got out of the backseat, holding the door open for a moment to ask, “What was this about?”
    “Jimmy Marano was shot to death tonight,” Chapman said. “And Grega’s on the run. You might want to watch your back. Somebody’s shaking things up, and since I found you in under an hour, you might want to figure out who’s calling the shots now, or they might find you next.”
    Chapman started rolling away before Flaco had even fully closed the door.
    Joe leaned over and finished shutting it. “I’m with him, Lenny,” he admitted. “What exactly did we get out of that?”
    Chapman laughed as he picked up speed and reached for his cell phone. “I hope we got a rabbit to run,” he said. “And with any luck, we should be able to track him as he goes. In Flaco’s case, it’s less
what
he knows and more
who
that counts. This isn’t the first time I’ve used him to lead me to someone else.”
    He began giving instructions on the phone, ordering a tail on Flaco, “as tight as a tick.” He turned to his guests afterward. “Flaco’s never happier than when he shares bad news with someone. We’ve just got to hope that someone’s connected to the fire we just lit under him.”

        CHAPTER 10        
    “Don’t be an asshole. Pass the gravy.”
    Alan Budney stopped talking to his sister, reached out, and grabbed the small pot of gravy that his mother had just brought. He handed it to his brother beside him, eyeing his father at the head of the table.
    “’Bout time,” the older man said in response.
    Alan ignored him, returning to his conversation.
    He was at home—or what had been home when he was younger—where his parents still lived, by the ocean’s edge, in Blackmore Harbor, in the heart of Maine’s Down East seacoast.
    The Budney place wasn’t what Realtors envisioned when they touted “waterfront property” on