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“Thisis where it gets complicated?” I said.
“Yeah. Plover was pissed off that he was robbed. He said I just stood there like a dope and did nothing. And he was right. I just stood there like a big dope. Anyway, he fired me. I couldn’t blame him. The next morning, he reported the missing tray of diamonds and he accused me of taking it.”
“Did you take it?” I asked him.
“No! The police came to question me and after they left, I decided I’d go talk to Plover. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t take the diamonds and that I’d like to have my job back. I thought I’d wait until he was closing up for the night. He had a routine. He hung the Closed sign in the front door and then he went into his office in the back and did paperwork for an hour or so. I thought this would be a good time to talk to him, so at nine o’clock I parked my bike in the alley. Plover’s back door was open, and the lights were on inside. I went up to the back door and saw that Plover was arguing with two homeless guys. I sort of knew them. They hung at the corner all the time, harassing people for money. One of the homeless guys was standing back, close to the open door, and he was holding a big black garbage bag. The other homeless guy was yelling at Plover. He said if he didn’t get a million dollars, he was going to expose Plover and go to the police with the jewelry.”
My voice went up an octave. “He was trying to blackmail Plover for a million dollars?”
“Yeah,” Nutsy said. “So Plover shot him.”
“Are you serious?”
“Swear to God. Plover pulled a gun and shot the homeless guy. The one holding the bag sort of stumbled back, and Plover shot at him and missed.”
“Both these men were unarmed?”
“Yeah,” Nutsy said. “No guns, no knives, no nothing. At least none I could see. Plover squeezed off another round at the second homeless guy, and the guy turned and ran and slammed into me in the dark. He said, ‘Fuck this,’ and he shoved the bag at me, and he took off. So, I’m standing there like a dope again, and I see Plover walk up to the guy on the ground and shoot him two more times. The guy’s body kind of jumped a little and that was it. Then Plover looked out the door and saw me standing there with the bag. He fired two shots at me, and I ran to my bike and drove off as fast as I could. I swear I was a mile away before I realized I was still holding the bag. I was in such a freak-out that I didn’t even know I’d been shot. I got home and saw the blood when I got off the bike.”
“You were shot?”
Listening to this story, I was pretty freaked out now, too. I hadn’t expected anything like this. I wasn’t even sure that I believed any of what Nutsy was saying.
“He got me on my arm.” Nutsy took his sweatshirt off and showed me the wound on his upper arm. “I’m lucky Plover isn’t a good shot when he’s more than three feet away,” he said. “The bullet tore through some flesh but it missed bone and muscle. I went to the ER and got it stitched.” He grinned. “That’s one of the good things about being Nutsy. The ER is used to me coming in with weird injuries. They don’t ask a lot of questions anymore.”
“So, you’re in danger because Plover knows you saw him kill someone?”
“That’s part of it. He also knows I have the bag of jewelry.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“There’s no body. There’s no proof that any of this happened.The police would just as easily think I was part of the robbery and I scooped up the bag of jewelry. I’m already a person of interest. They would think this was another one of my stupid stunts.”
“Has Plover been in touch with you?”
“He called but I didn’t pick up. Then he texted and said he wanted to arrange a meeting. I figured he wanted to kill me like the homeless guy, so I didn’t reply. Then he started calling my parents. That was when I moved out. And then their car blew up.”
“Is that when you and Duncan decided to go to Thailand?”
“That was just talk,” Nutsy said. “We don’t have any money. We can’t go to Thailand.”
“You have the bag of jewelry.”
“It’s all fake. I wondered about the blackmail attempt, so I had the jewelry checked out. It looks good but it’s junk. Plover wasn’t upset that he was robbed. He was in a panic because if the jewelry was found and turned over to the insurance company, he’d be exposed as a fraud. He’d be ruined, and he’d go to jail. The diamonds in the safe were probably fake too, so he had to get rid of them in case he was investigated.”
“Wow.”
“Exactly,” Nutsy said.
“What are you going to do if you can’t afford Thailand?”
“I need to find the second homeless guy. He’s my witness to the murder, and he can testify to the fact that I wasn’t involved in the robbery. Duncan dropped the bag just like he said, and I think the homeless guys immediately grabbed it.”
“That’s why you came back here? To find the other homeless guy?”
“Yeah.”
“What about Duncan? Why did you have to get him out of the hospital?”
