Money for Nothing: A Vance Courage and Lauren Gold Novel (Gold & Courage Series Book 5) Read online

  "A brilliantly woven plot mixed with a rich cast of memorable characters make Karen S. Gordon's MONEY FOR NOTHING a must-read for anyone in search of an unputdownable reading experience." - Ryan Steck, The Real Book Spy

  MONEY FOR NOTHING

  KAREN S. GORDON

  Copyright © 2022 by Karen S. Gordon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Money for Nothing is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-954296-04-6 (Ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-954296-02-2 (Print)

  ISBN: 978-1-954296-05-3 (Audio)

  For my baby brother, Erich, who didn’t live long enough for the medical miracle.

  CONTENTS

  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

  About the Author

  Also by Karen S. Gordon

  1

  MIAMI FLORIDA

  PRESENT DAY

  Vance Courage gripped the wooden steering wheel of the classic Volvo, wind in his cropped dark brown hair, listening to the roar of tractor-trailers passing by as he checked the rear view mirror. Glancing over his shoulder, he hung his arm out the window and used a hand signal to change lanes. A woman in a Range Rover pulled up next to him, lowered her sunglasses, pursed her lips, turned her head, and smiled at him. Was it the good looks he was accused of having? Or was it the pleasure she derived from being able to look down on him?

  He chose option two. He used to drive a Range Rover, a black one, back in the day when he made a decent living as a plaintiff’s attorney. Before everything went to hell. Before he could afford to retire.

  He’d checked the forecast before opening the convertible top on the old car and was enjoying the early afternoon sunshine but not the sounds or smells of Interstate 95 traffic. The A/C was still on the fritz, and the heat and humidity that’d arrived early this April would’ve made the trip to Aventura Mall unbearable with the top closed. When he did get around to putting the old car in the shop, he’d have to remember to ask about a wheel alignment, too.

  Aventura was north of Miami Beach, practically to Hallandale. If he weren’t an Olympic procrastinator, he’d have ordered his nephew Ethan’s birthday gift on the ’Net and saved himself two hundred bucks and a forty-mile round trip drive plus another half hour to deliver it to his sister’s place on the south side in suburban Kendall.

  Out of nowhere, clouds formed overhead threatening to ruin the ride he’d been so far enjoying. Locals liked to say if you don’t like the weather, wait fifteen minutes. It’d even snowed once back in 1977, the only time in recorded history, and it’d left a light dusting of white powder that stretched from Miami to Fort Lauderdale to Palm Beach. His cousin Tony, then well on his way to becoming one of the biggest cocaine smugglers in U.S. history, joked it could’ve been a load of cocaine dropped from a C-130 transport plane.

  The Herald ran a headline: ‘SNOW IN MIAMI.’ The editors at the paper had to have a good laugh over that.

  A big raindrop smacked him between his gray-green eyes. Then the sky opened up.

  Shit.

  He flipped on the headlights and wipers, slowed, merged to the far right lane, then exited, making his way beneath the highway overpass and parked. He hopped out, unsnapped the vinyl cover where the canvas top was stowed, and wrangled the old metal frame from a compartment behind the back seat.

  A fierce gust of wind kicked up, unbalancing him. Fighting to stay on his feet, he pierced a hole in the worn canvas top with his thumb. A flash of green light blinded him, followed by a tooth-rattling boom and a temperature drop of at least twenty degrees. He’d lived here long enough to recognize a high voltage power arc when he saw one. And that he was dangerously close to it.

  Locals should’ve revised the ‘don’t like the weather’ claim down from fifteen minutes to two seconds.

  The rain and wind died as quickly as it had begun. Shivering, rainwater dripped from his head to his shoulders and had already soaked his pants to his knees. The clouds lifted like a theater curtain at showtime, turning the space under the overpass into a chilly sauna. He grabbed a button on his shirt and peeled the fabric from his chest, then shook his torso like a wet dog. No need to put the top up now. Wrestling the convertible with outstretched arms, he stuffed the bent metal frame back in its compartment, then plunked his wet ass behind the wheel and restarted the engine.

  He hated crowded places, especially ones filled with compulsive shoppers who needed an intervention. God knows the world was full of empty souls doing lots of insane things to outrun their fears and anxieties, and buying overpriced crap with designer labels was one of them.

  The gift wasn’t the only reason for the trip to Aventura. After exchanging several texts and one voice call on an encrypted app with the woman from the organ donation group, she insisted they meet. It was like online dating: She asked for his picture, chatted, then asked for a face-to-face in a public place. The mall was his idea because it was the only store that sold the gift he’d chosen for Ethan’s thirteenth birthday. He’d called ahead and arranged to have the chess set gift-wrapped.

  He checked the time. Just after 1 in the afternoon. He’d be a few minutes late for his meeting with Sharon, the woman from the organ donation group who’d refused to give him a last name. He’d had second thoughts about meeting her and tried twice to cancel, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer, playing the guilt card, reminding him Ethan’s life was at stake, then closing the deal, asking him what he had to lose by agreeing to a simple meeting.

  The impromptu rainstorm thickened traffic like cornstarch in boiling water. In better news, the cooler air and sunshine helped dry the front of his shirt and pants, but the backs of his trousers and shirt clung to the old leather seat.

  He slowed at the entrance nearest the Slide Tower, a twisty tube of Plexiglass nine stories tall. The gaudy attraction showcased what luxury mall owners were willing to build to lure compulsive shoppers. Although free, the sixteen seconds of p
ure adrenaline rocketing down the pipe came at a price: Riders had to climb a 93-foot spiral staircase to get to the summit. A way for the thrill junkies to pass the time while the shopaholics maxed out their plastic. He stopped curbside, reached under the seat, felt for his 9-millimeter Glock, then released his lap belt and stowed and locked the gun in the glove box.

  He pulled up to the valet, put the Volvo in neutral, and yanked the hand brake. A young man gawked at the classic car as he grabbed a ticket from inside a portable stand.

  “Can you drive a standard transmission?” Vance asked, peeling himself off the damp bucket seat like a price tag.

  “Yes, sir.” The athletic kid handed him a stack of blue paper towels to dry himself. “What year is this thing?”

  “Nineteen seventy-one,” he said, blotting the back of his slacks, not wishing to be taken for a guy who’d pissed himself. It’d be obvious to the valet but not to others once he entered the mall. He texted Sharon: Running a little late.

  “It’s a beauty,” the kid said. “Mind if I park it out here?”

  He’d seen the gull-winged Mercedes beneath the portico and a group of shoppers milling about, admiring it. “That’d be great. Keys are in it.” If he’d parked in the garage, he’d have raised the top and left the doors unlocked to deter petty thieves. Twice in the last two months, someone had slit the convertible top to steal change from the ashtray. Next month it’d be too hot to drive it even with the top down, and the estimate he’d gotten to fix the A/C was outrageous. It was time for a new car. He mopped standing rainwater from the interior, then handed the guy the wad of wetted paper towels and forty bucks cash.

  He’d planned to drop into the showroom at Aventura to see if one of those trucks he’d seen online was on display. The cyber truck was an eyesore, what you’d get if you crossed a pizza box with a Chinese food takeout carton. Maybe more like a plywood mock-up of a car of the future left behind from an old episode of The Twilight Zone. Either way, the aesthetic value wasn’t the point. When they’d unveiled it, an executive from the car company raised a sledgehammer to the fender and let it rip. It’d bounced off with such force it lifted the guy off his feet. A rock hurled at the glass didn’t go as well. The window shattered, and the video went viral, leaving many to wonder if it hadn’t been planned that way.

  Not that long ago buyers got excited about backup cameras and Bluetooth. Now ultra-luxury included armor. Wasn’t this how you boiled a frog? Start the little fellow in cool water? Engineer a vandal-proof car betting those who could afford it would see the value? People drove SUVs unaware they’d been built for crumbling roads.

  If he had time, maybe he’d put a down payment on one today. He’d be Mad Vance in ThunderDome. But that would have to wait. Finding a kidney donor for his nephew was the mission. He checked his phone. No response from Sharon. No picture. No last name. That should’ve been the third clue that something was off.

  2

  Vance rushed past the mall storefronts, glancing sideways at the shopping porn filling the display windows, then stopped at the information desk where he studied the color-coded mall map at a touchscreen kiosk. He hurried to a brightly lit casual clothing store, explaining to the clerk who’d intercepted him at the door that he’d been caught in a rainstorm with the top down. The way she looked at him with one brow raised made him wonder if she believed him.

  “Anyone ever tell you that you look like that jazz singer? The one who plays the piano? I can’t remember his name.”

  “Tony Bennett?” he deadpanned.

  “Tony Bennett doesn’t play the piano.” She riffled through a stack of jeans. “What are you? About a thirty-four-inch waist?”

  “That’s right.”

  She held the pants up in front of his belt. “Harry Connick, Junior, that’s his name. Anyone ever tell you look like him?”

  “All the time.”

  She grinned, then grabbed a green polo shirt and hung it over her arm. “Follow me,” she said, leading him to a dressing room and unlocking it with a key hanging around her wrist.

  She had him in and out in less than ten minutes. He stuffed his wet clothes in the bag meant for the new ones.

  He strode past a red Ferrari on display in front of specialty store selling cigars and humidors and whiffed fine tobacco. The computer store had a line going out the door. What a weird place is was: The employees all looked thrilled while the customers inside appeared très miserable.

  The restaurant where Sharon set the meeting was one of those American chain bakeries with a French name. He arrived a half-hour late. A man sitting at a table near the back of the café approached, a stick figure of a guy with shiny black hair who couldn’t have been more than thirty.

  He had a bad feeling about this. He wanted to leave, considered running, but he’d been spotted, and half the people sitting near the entrance had noticed him standing there, head swiveling, looking for someone who matched Sharon’s photo.

  “Meester Courage, I am Vikas. My friend is ready to meet you. Come, come.”

  Vance wasn’t sure but thought it sounded like a South Asian accent.

  Vikas gestured toward the back of the restaurant to the back of a man sitting at a booth. “He not speak such good English, so I translate.”

  “Where’s Sharon?” He’d been expecting the American woman who’d contacted him after he’d joined an online group connecting people in various stages of kidney failure to others. Even possible donors.

  “You meet her later.”

  “The plan was to meet her now.”

  “You meet later, not now. First, meet my friend.”

  A dozen diners sitting at tables near the front of the restaurant turned their heads and stared at them as he followed the thin man to a booth in the back. Vikas sat next to his companion while Vance took the seat across from them, dropping the sack of wet clothes on the tabletop.

  “This is Memo,” Vikas said, sliding closer to the boy.

  Vance guessed him to be around sixteen, eighteen at most. “Hello, Memo,” he said, working hard to contain his anger.

  Memo didn’t answer.

  Vikas said, “I tell you, he not understand your language.”

  Right. The kid didn’t even look up when he’d called him by name. “Where’s he from?”

  “Brazil. He come all the way here to meet you.”

  Vikas smiled the way jokers and clowns do.

  His bullshit detector had gone off the moment they met; now it redlined. The kid needed a shower and looked like he couldn’t afford a croissant, much less a bus ticket from South America. “No one said anything about introducing me to a donor. This was supposed to be informal. That’s what he is, right?”

  Vance tried to make eye contact, but young Memo stared at his hands, clasped to hide old scars and new ones with scabs still healing. The boy nervously picked at a crusty scrape on his left knuckle with dirty fingernails but kept his eyes cast down on the tabletop.

  “Memo,” Vikas said, “este es el hombre del que te hablé.”

  The boy nodded without looking up.

  “What did you just say to him?”

  “That you are the man I told him of. You forget how important this moment is? Huh? Huh?”

  This wasn’t the deal. He wanted to get the hell out of there.

  “You have family who sick. They die. I bring you chance to help save them. And you not want it?”

  Judging by his tone, Vikas was not pleased, contorting his face and shaking his head, then narrowing his eyes to thin lines, his ghoulish smile waning.

  Sharon worked with an NGO, a non-government organization that connected sympathetic organ donors with families in dire need. This boy wasn’t a Good Samaritan. From the looks of him, he was dirt poor. If he’d come all the way from Brazil, Vikas arranged it. He’d read about the kids trapped in impoverished places in Central and South America targeted by the likes of the demon sitting across from him. There was no Sharon.

  If he could’ve, he would’ve
sucker-punched Vikas in his lying mouth. He’d read about this trick, using an attractive female as bait to build trust. She was nothing more than a picture and a voice for hire, a front for what Vikas really was: a kidney hunter.

  “He a good match,” Vikas said. “We have best doctors. They look at blood and skin samples. All perfect.” He reached over and squeezed Memo’s shoulder. “Nice and young too, healthy.” He licked his lips. “Kidney last twenty, maybe thirty years, maybe forever.”

  What a liar. He didn’t have access to Ethan’s lab work. Healthy, his ass. The boy sitting across from him was gaunt from malnourishment, his cheeks sunken like someone five times his age.

  “No,” Vance said, getting up from the table. This was pay-to-play. “No way.” He pushed the sack of wet clothes in front of the boy, who continued to stare at his hands, still too timid to glance up, even out of curiosity. “These are for you.” He pointed to the bag and repeated it slowly. “For . . . you.”

  “Wait,” Vikas said, slithering out from the booth, grabbing the bag, trying to block the aisle. “The price is very, very good. Fifty thousand.”

  He’d have paid ten times that, but not like this. “Get out of my way.” He tried to pass, but Vikas played defense, miming each lateral move. “Don’t make a scene.”