Mad Dog Justice by Mark Rubinstein Read Free Book Online Page A

office one night, two Septembers ago. You haven’t seen him in nearly thirty years. He’s a guy who used to gamble, whose moniker was ‘Snake Eyes,’ who’s been livin’ in a bettor’s paradise—Vegas—where he’s managed some restaurants. He pops in out of the blue and tells you about a restaurant proposition in Manhattan, this place McLaughlin’s. Right?”
    Roddy nods as something cold snakes through his chest. Morgan’s done plenty of digging into the case in a mere two days. He knows almost as much as Roddy about McLaughlin’s and how the whole mess got started.
    How much did Danny tell this guy?
    “And this Kenny Egan character wanted you to invest as a silent partner in a restaurant. Am I right?”
    Roddy nods, wishing he could bolt up from the chair and leave the lounge.
    “So, like a smart man, you send him to your accountant and best friend, Daniel Burns, who’s now lyin’ in the hospital recovering from bullet wounds as we speak. And Burns goes over everything. So then you and Burns go into business with Egan. Am I getting this right?”
    “That’s right, if you want to call it that,” Roddy says, staring into Morgan’s flickering eyes.
    “Well, what would you call it, Doc?” Morgan once again leans back in the chair and crosses his arms.
    “We were silent partners. We weren’t involved on a day-today basis. We just put up money as investors. I was at the restaurant maybe three or four times … for dinner. I had nothing to do with running the place.”
    “Okay. So you each put a hundred K into the business and Egan puts in three hundred, right?”
    “Right.”
    “What was Burns’s role in this setup?”
    “Same as mine, a silent partner. And the restaurant’s accountant.”
    “So Burns looked into everything and okayed the deal?”
    “Yes. He thought it made financial sense after he looked at the numbers.”
    “Okay, Doc,” Morgan says, pursing his lips. “So you’re in business and things’re lookin’ good for a while. But then the place starts losing money. You know why?”
    Jesus, did Danny spill everything to this guy?
    “It turns out it was poorly managed.”
    “By whom?”
    “By Ken Egan. He said there was a lot of stealing going on. Employees were lifting all kinds of stuff—alcoholic beverages, steaks, you name it. It was a thief’s paradise. Kenny said it happens in every restaurant.”
    “So let’s assume that’s true, Doc. You and Burns decide to get out, right?”
    “Yes.”
    Morgan exhales and nods his head. He rubs his chin with his forefinger and thumb. “So you meet with Egan and tell him you’re both pulling out, right?”
    “Right.”
    “How’d he take that?” Morgan’s bushy eyebrows dance upward, droop down, and then rise again.
    “He was upset, but the place was hemorrhaging money.”
    “So what happened?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.” Roddy feels a cramp begin in the arch of his right foot. Soon he’ll feel a wrenching spasm, and he’ll have to rip off his clog and begin rubbing the foot.
    “Oh, c’mon, Doc. Sure you do. What happened to Egan?”
    “I don’t know. He disappeared.”
    “Just like
that
? He disappears into thin
air
?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “And you guys close the restaurant and the previous owner, McLaughlin, exercises his lien, and that’s it?”
    “What can I say? I don’t know.”
    “How does a guy just disappear? Huh?”
    “Detective, I have no idea.” Roddy’s hands curl in his lap as an image of that last night in McLaughlin’s back office floods his mind: that fat bastard Grange slugging down the Klonopin-laced scotch, the Glenfiddich—
that good shit
, as Grange called it—and then passing out like a bloated sack of shit; the three of them, he, Kenny, and Danny hauling that lard-assed bastard out the restaurant’s back door to the Sequoia; and the insane drive upstate on the Taconic to that shitpit, Snapper Pond.
    “When was the last time you saw Egan?”
    “The last night I was