Jake Caldwell Thrillers

by Weaver, James

  “I ain’t your friend. I’ll cut your ass up, take your money and your truck.”

  “Do you know how many bones are in the human body?” Jake asked after a beat.

  The guy’s face clouded. “Huh?”

  Jake jerked his head off the rest, and the guy with the knife took a half step back. “Two hundred and six. I’ve probably broken every one of them on a hundred different people at one point or another. Tougher guys than a shithead like you. But I’ve never broken all two hundred and six on one guy at one time. Now, I’ve had a really bad day, so do yourself a favor and put your little popsicle stick in your pocket, leave me alone, and you won’t have to spend the next six months in intensive care learning how to walk again.”

  The blade wavered as the tweaker considered his options. The resolve in Jake’s eyes blazed, and the punk took another two steps back. His partner already staggered back the way they came. The switchblade disappeared, and the tweaker chased after his partner. Jake’s hand relaxed on the gun, and he resumed his watch on Logan’s apartment.

  An hour later as the clock on the dash verged on midnight, the lights in the office went dark, and the two detectives he met earlier emerged. They drove off into the night in a dark sedan. Jake rolled forward into their former parking spot. The sub place was empty, and the laundromat held a couple of bleary patrons staring hollow-eyed at spinning clothes dryers.

  Jake grabbed a mini flashlight from his glove compartment. Scaling the steps to the Logan’s office, he found the door sealed with yellow crime scene tape. He sliced open the tape with a knife. Logan’s key unlocked the door.

  The office was still trashed, but it was obvious the detectives combed through the paperwork. Some was still scattered on the floor, but they stacked neat piles on the secretary’s desk. Jake didn’t bother with it. If it was important, Detective Ogio would have taken it.

  He swept the flashlight toward Logan’s office and followed the beam around the desk, kneeling on the floor. He examined the underside of the desk as Logan directed. Nothing there but particle board. Flashing the light across the floor, he noticed an irregular cut in the hardwood. He jammed the pocketknife into the wood’s edge and pried the board high enough to slip his fingers underneath revealing a compartment. A wad of cash, maybe a thousand dollars, a loaded .38 revolver with the serial number scratched off, and a pocket-sized notebook.

  Jake left the cash and gun in place and took the notebook. He sat in Logan’s chair and used the flashlight to read the contents. The first page was a series of eight-letter words in a single column, all crossed out except the last one. Chiefs22. Computer passwords, and not very good ones. The laptop on Logan’s desk was gone. Ogio probably took it with him. He flipped through several pages of chicken scratch notes that were basic to-do lists. On the last page, three names were listed, again in a single column. Snell, Parley and Ares.

  Jake had no idea who or what Snell was. The only Parley he knew was his best friend James “Bear” Parley from Warsaw who was now the county sheriff, but what were the odds they were the same person? Ares. Maybe an informant or the Greek God. Or was it Roman? He got them confused. The rest of the notebook was blank, and Jake slipped it in his back pocket. He spent twenty minutes searching the office with the flashlight but found nothing but old case files, bills, and lease agreements. The less you know on this one, the better. What was Logan dragging him into?

  He clicked off the flashlight, padded back to his truck and drove toward home. Snell, Parley and Ares. Voleski and the mysterious, silver briefcase. A screaming girl from a pharmaceutical plant. As Jake drove away, he noticed a dark sedan slide out behind him.

  Chapter Six

  The two men in the dark sedan who followed Jake through Kansas City were low men, bruisers who followed orders but were not expected to make any intelligent decisions on their own. The Neanderthal driver with the mashed nose steered with his right arm and smoked with his left, the window halfway down. His passenger was one level up in the organization’s hierarchy and rested his shaved head against the seat. With his knees shoved against the dashboard, it was difficult to get comfortable.

  “This is getting old,” the driver said, his Russian accent thick and guttural. He sounded like Boris from the cartoon Rocky and Bullwinkle.

  “Yup. Stay back. You’re getting too close,” the passenger said. He was from Arizona and sick of the cool weather and the thug next to him.

  “I know what I’m doing. I’ve followed this man for two days and he hasn’t seen me yet.”

  “Toss the cigarette. Damn car smells bad enough after being cooped in here with you.”

  The driver narrowed his eyes, and his hair-lined nostrils flared. The passenger knew this arrangement wouldn’t last. Tensions were high. Two days without much sleep, alternating the watch. The car smelled like smoke, bad farts, and body odor.

  “No,” the driver said. “Roll down your window if it is so bad. These cigarettes are keeping me from losing my mind.”

  The passenger shifted again and lowered his window. He wanted to stick his head out like a dog.

  “Think the big guy found anything in Logan’s office?” the passenger asked, scratching his thin beard. Kansas City had been his hometown for the last three years. He should be the one driving, not this knuckle-dragging Siberian.

  “We should beat him and find out. Would at least be something to do.”

  “Wouldn’t be as easy as you think.”

  “Why is this?”

  “Caldwell is a tough son of a bitch. He’s probably beaten as many guys as you have.”

  The driver flicked the cigarette butt out the window. “I doubt it.”

  “If he leads us to Voleski, maybe you’ll get your chance to find out.”

  “Maybe. After I beat Voleski to death.”

  The passenger narrowed his eyes, head cranking slowly toward the Russian. “You have a strange fixation with beating people to death.”

  The Russian shrugged. “It is what I do best.”

  * * *

  Jake used the drive time to call Sheriff James Parley, who was known by most as Bear due to his immense size. The two reunited last fall after Jake’s sixteen-year disappearance from home. When Jake had to take out local drug lord Shane Langston to save his daughter, it was Bear by his side. It had also been Bear who took a bullet to the shoulder during the ordeal. A fact he rarely let Jake forget.

  “You coming home this weekend?” Bear asked.

  “I promised Maggie we’d steal your boat and go fishing.”

  “Screw that, I’m coming with you. I haven’t tossed a line in the water in weeks.”

  “Anything exciting going on in Benton County?”

  Bear groaned. “Gettin’ ready for Langston’s trial. Would have been easier if you’d just shot the rotten son of a bitch. I hate squeezing my fat ass in those witness chairs. So, what’s up? How’s your case going?”

  Jake glanced at the rearview mirror. The dark sedan lurked back a couple car lengths. Two figures inside. He turned left on 18th Street and the sedan followed.

  “You know a guy named Jack Logan?”

  “Ex-cop. A drunk who always looks like he slept in an alley.”

  Jake grinned. “That’s him.”

  “Hell of a good guy if he keeps the bottle in check,” Bear said. “Pretty fucking smart too. If I need something in Kansas City, he’d be one of the first guys I’d go to. Why?”

  “He’s the one who hired me to help him out on this case.”

  “No shit? That’s who you’ve been working with for the last few months?”

  “Yeah, thought I told you.”

  “How’d you hook up with him?”

  “Known him for a few years. We knocked heads once going after the same guy. Just hit it off after that. We weren’t exactly friends right off the bat but kept in contact over the years.”

  “Small world,” Bear said. “How is old Logan?”

  “Someone beat the holy crap out of him and put h
im in the hospital tonight.”

  There was silence on Bear’s end. Jake pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex and backed into a spot in the corner.

  “You still there?” Jake asked. The dark sedan crept by slow enough to count the lug nuts on the wheels and continued out of sight. Jake knew they’d turn around.

  “He going to make it?”

  “No reason to think he won’t,” Jake said. “Whoever it was busted his ass up good. Trashed his office too. They were looking for something, but I don’t know what. A lot of weird shit has popped up the last two days.”

  “You need my help?”

  Jake’s brow shot up. “You offering?”

  “Logan saved my ass once upon a time. I owe him. Things are pretty quiet around here for once. I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”

  Relief shivered through Jake. He was in over his head and needed someone to help with direction. He trusted Bear with his life and could think of nobody better. He slid into his apartment and kept the lights dark. Out the window, the sedan parked a half block away, the two figures sitting just out of the reach of a nearby streetlight.

  Crossing the room, he rooted in the dark for a pair of binoculars on a closet shelf. He trained them on the sedan. Their faces were in shadow; the one detail he could make out was they were hulks. Probably not cops. They just didn’t give off that vibe. He scanned to the front of the car and noted the license plate number.

  The need for secrecy fulfilled, Jake flipped on the lights and went to his computer. He clicked on the link to the Department of Motor Vehicles database Logan hooked him up with. After typing in the plate number of the sedan, he selected Missouri as the state. It kicked back a registration to the American Toy Factory.

  Jake’s shoulders slumped. To the average person, a search of the American Toy Factory would find a warehouse with plastic injection molders for toy figures you’d find in your local dollar stores. The cheap kind of army men with too much plastic trim attached. The kind his father would buy him for Christmas when Jake was a kid because you got a lot of them and a couple bucks wouldn’t cut too deep into Stony’s drinking money. But Jake wasn’t the average person. He knew the American Toy Factory was a front company for his former boss. He shut the laptop lid and leaned back in his chair. The mob had a tail on him. The question was…why?

  Chapter Seven

  Jake spent a restless night tossing in bed, his sheets twisted around his body like ropes. A dream of his father breaking his kneecap with a lead pipe and his daughter screaming for help in the next room when he couldn’t move. The screams from his daughter never happened, but the lead pipe did. He awoke in a sheen of sweat, his bad knee throbbing. As the sleep fog cleared, he realized it wasn’t his daughter’s voice in the dream. It was the girl on the dead guy’s phone. She wasn’t going to leave him alone.

  He trudged to the living room window and glanced to the street. The sedan was still parked at the curb, the climbing rays of the morning sun revealing the passenger sacked out in the seat. Bald guy, thick like a maple tree. The driver was wider, maybe an oak. Jake didn’t recognize either of them. Keats had a lot of guys working for him, so Jake wasn’t surprised he didn’t place them. He texted Bear to meet him at a local diner a few blocks away. A minute later, a return text binged—Bear would hit Kansas City in an hour.

  To kill time, Jake threw on a pair of shorts and did pushups and sit ups until he was covered in sweat. He curled a pair of forty-pound dumb bells until he couldn’t lift the weights past his waist. He skipped the empty fridge and found one last energy bar hidden in the back of a cabinet. He should go to the store before he starved to death.

  Jake showered and threw on blue jeans and a denim shirt, tucking his Glock in his waistband holster. Wanting to ditch his tail, he snuck out the back entrance. The nearly deserted alley behind his building held only a reeking dumpster and a sleeping bum. He needed some good karma, so he dipped into his pocket and selected a ten, slipping it into the bum’s shirt pocket.

  The half-full diner was long, narrow and quiet except for the clinking of plates and rattling of the Kansas City Star newspaper as the sun broke over the horizon. The smell of frying bacon, grilled onions and percolating coffee made his mouth water and arteries narrow. Four-person tables sprawled along a wall in front of a serving bar lined with red, vinyl stools capped with blue-collar guys mixed with power suits. Carb-loading for the day’s grind ahead. Jake chose a sticky booth in the back where he could watch everyone coming in. He ordered black coffee and waited for Bear.

  * * *

  A mere four blocks away from the diner, Alexander Voleski lay wide awake in the basement apartment. One arm wrapped around the pillow under his head, and the other resting on the silver briefcase on the floor. Gentle snores rolled from the naked girl next to him. A girl he met last year who he treated very well and who, in turn, screwed him with reckless abandon whenever he showed up on her doorstep. She knew what he did, and the presence of his briefcase and the gun didn’t scare her. He told her last night she was taking today off from the tattoo parlor down the street, and she didn’t object or ask why. He liked that about her.

  Two more days to get through. He didn’t plan on leaving the apartment and thought he would be safe. But, Voleski had been around long enough to know that nothing was ever that easy.

  * * *

  Bear filled the front door of the diner a little before eight looking like the second coming of Grizzly Adams. Blue jeans covered his long legs, and a black leather jacket hid his growing belly. At six-four with a dark beard, people moved out of his way.

  The two men clasped in a man hug, two bone-rattling claps on the back. No more, no less. They sat, and Bear ordered coffee.

  “Maggie says hi,” Bear said. “Stopped by to check on her and Halle last night on my way home. She’s worried about you.”

  “She shouldn’t.”

  “Doesn’t matter if she should or not. She just does. She know what happened to Logan?”

  “Don’t tell her,” Jake said. “I promised I’d get into more legitimate, less dangerous work. If she knew Logan got his ass kicked because of this case, she’d give me some ultimatum about dropping it and coming back to Warsaw. I’m not dropping this. Not after what they did to him.”

  Bear regarded him through squinted eyes. “You have that look like the time the Brakeville brothers got overly aggressive with your sister in high school.”

  “And what happened to them?”

  Bear grinned. “They missed a few days of school. Charlie still doesn’t walk right.”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  “The whole family is.”

  “Well, the guys who thrashed Logan are going to get worse when I find them.”

  The waitress brought Bear his coffee and topped off Jake’s mug. They ordered generous portions of pancakes, bacon and hash browns. Bear leaned in close.

  “So what’s going on?”

  “How do you know Logan?”

  “We worked together on a drug task force five or six years ago. He was run off the police force on bullshit drug charges about a year later.”

  “So they were bullshit?”

  “Hell yes,” Bear said, his lip curled up. “He was a good cop, clean as they come. He just came too close to the wrong people in the wrong positions. They trumped up the drug charges and kicked his ass out the door without so much as a fuck you very much. He fell into the bottle for a while, and we kind of lost touch. He’s a good man. Saved my ass from getting shot once which is more than I can say for you.”

  “Not my fault you’re such a big target.” Jake checked around for eavesdroppers. The coast was clear. “So Logan has been feeding me some easy cases over the last four months. The cash I made off Keats is running a little low, and I’m looking for some legit work. Usually it’s been surveillance or trying to find someone since that pretty much fell in line with my previous career.”

  “Anything interesting?”

&n
bsp; Jake shook his head. “Not really, unless you count catching a husband throwing a hump to his wife’s best friend in the back of the family mini-van. Last week, he called and said he needed help on a case.”

  “What’s the job?”

  “Tracking down some guy named Alexander Voleski and a silver briefcase he’s hauling around. Heard of him?”

  “Voleski? No. What’s in the case?”

  “I have no idea and Logan claims he doesn’t know either. Might be a lie, but I didn’t press him on it. I thought it was a simple job, like some guy skipping on his child support payments or something.”

  Jake filled him in on the dead guy in the apartment all the way to Keats’s guys tailing him. The waitress returned with stacks of plates balanced on her thin arms and distributed them across the table. They talked in between bites.

  “So you’re no closer to finding this Voleski than when you started?” Bear asked.

  “Maybe a little. Logan told me to check a stash under his desk before the drugs at the hospital conked him out. I found this notebook.” Jake tossed the thin book across the table. Bear flipped past the passwords page and read the three names listed on the last page.

  “I’m assuming Parley is me. Ares? Wasn’t that one of the Greek gods?”

  “Or Roman,” Jake offered.

  “I always get them confused.”

  “Me too. What about Snell? Is that a person?”

  “Victoria Snell. Special Agent with the FBI.”

  “You know her?” Jake asked, leaning forward.

  “Oh, yeah. She served on the drug task force with Logan and me. She’s good. Nice thing about her is if your drink gets too warm, she can stick her finger in it and cool it right off.”