Page 26 of Last Resort

Erik knew he should probably be more worried about the ominous connections between Fun Factory and the Commodore Wilson, but right now he couldn’t muster the energy.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said with a grateful smile.

“Don’t stress. Let me take care of you. It’ll be okay,” Ben assured.

Every time Erik thought it wasn’t possible to fall more in love with his partner, Ben did something that proved him wrong. It had been difficult to get over Josh’s betrayal and trust again, but deep down, Erik knew that cheating wasn’t in Ben’s personality.And I had warning signs I ignored about Josh.

Ben and I have fought and nearly died for each other. I know what we have is real. Now I just have to keep my damage from getting in my way.

“Go get comfortable. I’ll order online and be right in,” Ben told him. “Pick the movie. Whatever you choose will be fine with me.”

Erik chose one of their favorite action movies and headed back to the couch, where he wrapped himself in the knitted throw and waited for Ben to join him.

Moments later, Ben took his seat and pulled the blanket over them, then slung an arm around Erik’s shoulders. “I got us Chinese food, ordered your favorite stuff. Let’s watch things blow up and forget about everything else.”

Erik leaned his head against Ben’s shoulder and smiled.

FIVE

BEN

“I’m here in an unofficial capacity,” Chief Hendricks said when he sat in the chair across from Ben’s desk at the real estate office. “Consider it a friendly update.”

“I appreciate that,” Ben replied. “What’s up?”

“Turns out your dead renter, Tom Raines, came from a minor crime family of his own,” Hendricks said. “They were lieutenants, not bosses, but he had a number of relatives in the Mob, including his father and several cousins. Not all of them had desk jobs like Raines.”

Ben hadn’t had a chance to look that deeply into Raines’s history. Now his thoughts spun, trying to figure out where the connections might have been.

“Two of his cousins worked for honchos in the Seventh Avenue gang that you helped bust,” Hendricks said. “His father, Galen, was a suspect in several high-profile robberies back in the 1960s but never faced charges. Notes on the case suggest that someone called in favors to have the investigation mismanaged.”

“Sounds like the Newark I left behind,” Ben noted. “Did you follow the money? It’s always about the cash.”

Hendricks nodded. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Nolan. Although before you and Mitchell moved to Cape May, most of my Mob exposure was at the movies.”

“Galen wasn’t the only thief in the family,” Hendricks continued. “His father, Edwin, stole all of a casino’s money the same night the casino burned. He hid the stash before his enemies killed him, but no one ever found the loot. Rumor had it that Galen spent his whole life searching for the treasure, without luck, and that he was killed by mobsters who thought he knew where it was.”

“Talk about lousy luck,” Ben replied.

“Yeah, well the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Tom Raines used what he knew as a Mob accountant to embezzle a small fortune, and then skipped town, managing to hide for two decades before he came back to Cape May and promptly got killed,” Hendricks said.

“Does that mean you’ve got a lead about who killed him? Did they think he still had the money after all that time?” Ben asked.

“No leads yet. Enough years have gone by now that most of the perps and the detectives on the case are dead or too old to remember details,” Hendricks answered.

“We count on crooks being in a hurry to become big spenders. If they go out and pay cash for a mansion and a boat and a fancy car when they were barely making the payments on a crappy used car, that’s like sending up a flare. Otherwise, it gets harder. After a while, I imagine the department put its resources elsewhere, and the Mob bided its time,” he added.

“But why would Tom come back at all when he’d gotten away? Unless…do you think he had a lead on his grandfather’s hidden treasure?”

“Maybe. Or someone thought he did.”

“He was a Mob accountant. Tom probably knew a lot of stuff that his bosses wanted to keep on the down low,” Ben pointed out. “He did better at disappearing than WITSEC usually manages. Whatever pulled him out of hiding had to be pretty damn compelling. He had to know the Mob has a long memory.”

Hendricks’s expression darkened. “I don’t like this, Nolan. At the very least, we’ve got a contract killer in my territory. And if other people think that Raines knew where Edwin’s treasure was and left clues behind, this could get more dangerous.”

“Do you need something from me? Because you didn’t have to fill me in,” Ben replied.

“I thought you should know what we found, since Raines’s cousins and his dad were involved with the Newark Mob. Raines himself had closer ties to the Atlantic City families,” Hendricks said. “Just in case that either suggested ideas to you about who killed him or warned you about who might be involved.”

---