no idea what you’re talking about,” Kody told him. “I wish I could say that someone would give you trillions of dollars for me, but I’m not anyone’s prize. I’m a bartender-waitress at an Irish pub who’s struggling to make ends meet as an actress.”
“Oh, honey,” Dillinger said, “I don’t give a damn if you’re a bad actress.”
“Hey! I never said I was a bad actress!” she protested. And then, of course, she thought that he was making her crazy—heck, the whole situation was making her crazy—because who the hell cared if she was a bad actress or a good actress if she wasn’t even alive?
Dillinger waved a hand in the air. “That’s neither here nor there. You’re going to lead us to the Anthony Green stash.”
Startled, Kody went silent.
Everyone, of course, had heard about the Anthony Green stash.
Green was known to have knocked over the long-defunct Miami Bank of the Pioneers, making off with the bank’s safe-deposit boxes that had supposedly contained millions in diamonds, jewels, gold and more. It was worth millions. But Anthony Green had died in a hail of bullets—with his mouth shut. The stash was never found. It had always been suspected that Anthony Green—before his demise—had seen to it that the haul had been hidden somewhere in one of his shacks deep in the Everglades, miles from his Biscayne Bay home.
Rumor followed rumor. It was said that Guillermo Salazar—a South American drug lord—had actually found the stash about a decade ago and added a small fortune in ill-gotten heroin-sales gains to it—before he, in turn, had been shot down by a rival drug cartel.
Who the hell knew? One way or the other, it was supposedly a very large fortune.
She didn’t doubt that Salazar had sold drugs; the Coast Guard in South Florida was always busy stopping the drug trade. But she sure as hell didn’t believe that Salazar had found the Green stash at the house, because she really didn’t believe the stash was here.
Chills suddenly rose up her spine.
If she was supposed to find a stash that didn’t exist here...
They were all dead.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
“Safe,” Dillinger said.
“Safe where?”
No one answered Kody. “Where?” she repeated.
“They’re all fine, Miss Cameron.”
It was the man behind her—Barrow—who finally spoke up. “Dillinger, she needs to know that they’re all fine,” he added.
“I assure you,” Dillinger continued. “They’re all fine. They’re in the music room.”
The music room took up most of the left side of the downstairs. It would be the right place to hold a group of people.
Except...
Someone, somewhere, had to know that something was going on here. Surely one of the employees or guests had had a chance to get out a cell phone warning.
“I want to see them,” she said. “I want to see that everyone is all right.”
“Listen, missy, what you do and don’t want doesn’t matter here. What you’re going to do for us matters,” Dillinger told her.
“I don’t know where the stash is. If I did, the world would have known about it long ago,” she said. “And, if you know everything, you surely know that history says Anthony Green hid his bank treasure in some hut somewhere out in the Everglades.”
“She sure as hell isn’t rich, Dillinger,” Barrow said. “Everything is true—she’s taken a part-time job because what she’s working is off-off Broadway. If she knew about the stash, I don’t think she’d be slow-pouring Guinness at an old pub in the city.”
Dillinger seemed annoyed. Kody was, in fact, surprised by what she could read in his eyes—and in his movements.
“No one asked your opinion, Barrow,” Dillinger said. “She’s the only one who can find it. I went through every newspaper clipping—she’s loved the place since she was a kid. She’s read everything on Jimmy Crystal and Anthony Green and the mob days on Miami Beach. She knows what rooms in this place were built what years, when any restoration was done. She knows it all. She knows how to find the stash. And she’s going to help us find it.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Kody said. “You can get out now. No one knows who you guys are—the masks, I’ll grant you, are good. Well, they’re not good. They’re cheap and lousy masks, but they create the effect you want and no one here knows what your real faces look like. Pretty soon, though, walls or not, cops will swarm the place. Someone will come snooping around. Someone probably got something out on a cell phone.”
She couldn’t see his face but she knew that Dillinger smiled. “Cell phones? No, we secured those pretty quickly,” he said. “And your security guard? He’s resting—he’s got a bit of a headache.” He shook his head. “Face it, young lady. You have me and Barrow here. Floyd is with your friends, Capone is on his way to help, and the overall estate is being guarded by Baby Face Nelson and Machine Gun Kelly and our concept of modern security and communication and, you know, we’ve got good old Dutch—as in Schultz—working it all, too. I think we’re good for a while. Long enough for you to figure out where the stash is. And, let’s see, you are going to help us.”
“I won’t do anything,” she told him. “Nothing. Nothing at all—not until I know that my friends and our guests are safe and that Jose isn’t suffering from anything more than a headache.”
Not that she’d help them even then—if she even could. The stash had been missing since the 1930s. In fact, Anthony Green had used a similar ruse when he had committed the bank robbery. He’d come in fast with six men—all wearing masks. He’d gotten out just as fast. The cops had never gotten him. They’d suspected him, but they’d never had proof. They’d still been trying to find witnesses and build a case against him when he’d been gunned down on Miami Beach.
But her demands must have hit home because Dillinger turned to Barrow. “Fine. Bring her through.”
He turned to head down the hallway that led into the music room—the first large room on the left side of the house.
It was a gorgeous room, graced with exquisite crown molding, rich burgundy carpets and old seascapes of famous ports, all painted by various masters in colors that complemented the carpet. There was a wooden dais at one end of the room that accommodated a grand piano, a harp, music stands and room for another three or four musicians.
There were sofas, chairs and love seats backed to all the walls, and a massive marble fireplace for those times when it did actually get cold on the water.
Kody knew about every piece in the room, but at that moment all she saw was the group huddled together on the floor.
Quickly searching the crowd, she found Stacey Carlson, the estate manager. He was sixty or so with salt-and-pepper hair, old-fashioned sideburns and a small mustache and goatee. A dignified older man, he was quick to smile, slow to follow a joke—but brilliant. Nan Masters was huddled to
