Jake Caldwell Thrillers

by Weaver, James

  Jake cracked the door to the bathroom. The shower door was clear, and she was all soapy, like a Playboy centerfold in the middle of a photo shoot. A warm, berry fragrance carried with the steam. He admired the view and resisted the urge to jump in with her.

  “You want coffee, babe?” he asked.

  “You would be my hero. And a bagel.”

  “Okay. Be back in a minute.”

  Jake closed the door and shut the blinds on both the bedroom and living room. He slipped on tennis shoes and a t-shirt, the fabric tight against his large biceps. The morning was brisk with a light dew coating every surface and the few cars on the street. Instead of turning right to the coffee shop on the corner, he turned left and headed straight for the two guys in the sedan. The driver’s eyes widened, and the passenger slumped in disappointment. Jake marched to the passenger side and put his hands on the window, leaning over to see inside.

  “What the fuck do you guys want?” Jake asked.

  “I told you that you followed him too close,” the bald passenger said to the driver. “When did you make us?”

  “Yesterday,” Jake said.

  “I told him to let me drive,” the passenger said. “You never would have seen us.”

  “That is bullshit,” the driver said, his accent a guttural, Russian.

  “Is it? If it’s bullshit, then why is he here?”

  “To hell with this guy,” the driver said.

  “He always this pleasant to be around?” Jake asked.

  “You have no idea,” the passenger said.

  “Listen, tell Keats I’ll come see him this morning. Now that the cat is out of the bag, you guys can leave and go back to doing more important mafia stuff.”

  “Who is this Keats?” the Russian asked. The passenger rolled his hooded eyes and looked at Jake like see what I have to put up with?

  “You may be a moron, pal, but don’t treat me like one,” Jake said.

  The door to the sedan opened and the broad-shouldered Russian stepped out, a couple inches shorter than Jake but weighing the same. His nose was mashed, broken a few times, definitely a brawler. He barged around the front of the car and stood toe-to-toe with Jake, crowding his personal space. Jake didn’t like his personal space invaded.

  “You have problem with me?” the Russian asked.

  “Yeah, your breath reeks like coffee and cigarettes. Not a good combination.”

  “Maybe you want something to do about it?”

  “Demetri,” the passenger said. “Get in the car. You don’t wanna do it.”

  “Shut up,” Demetri said.

  “He’s right, Demetri,” Jake said, feeling the adrenaline flood his system, his hands tingling. “You definitely don’t want to do this.”

  “There are two of us and one of you.”

  Jake kept his voice calm and even. “No, there’s one of you. See, your buddy is smart. He doesn’t like you and he’s not getting out of the car. Your cover is blown and you’re pissed off. You think you can take me, but you’re wrong. The question is how many days do you want to spend in the hospital to find out?”

  “Demetri,” the passenger said, “get in the fucking car and let’s go.”

  Demetri’s facial muscles twitched, his eyes narrow and cold. There was no doubt in Jake’s mind the Russian had been in a lot of fights, but the preponderance of facial scars revealed he hadn’t won many of them. Jake was seconds away from headbutting the guy into next week when the Russian stepped back.

  “We finish this some other time,” Demetri said.

  “It’s your funeral.” Jake turned back to the passenger. “What’s your name?”

  “Sparks.”

  “Tell Keats I’ll be there in an hour.”

  Demetri started the sedan, peeling away from the curb and down the street. Jake took a deep breath and shook out his tingling hands. He knew he could’ve taken the Russian, but the best fight is the one you don’t have to fight. He loped across the street and bought a couple coffees and a box of bagels and donuts.

  Back in his apartment, a dressed Maggie ate one of the bagels and he opted for a donut. She wasn’t big on sweets. She gathered her things, and he escorted her to her car, missing her already.

  “When’s the lease up on this place?” she asked.

  “Couple more months. Besides, gives me some place to go when I’m working here. You wouldn’t want me at some seedy motel.”

  “I don’t want you here at all. I want you home with me. When are you going to stop chasing bad guys through dark alleys?”

  “When they stop running from me.”

  She stepped forward, palms flat on his chest. “So is that a yes on you coming home this weekend to spend time with me and our daughter?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Why hope? With Logan out, you said your case was dead.”

  “I still haven’t found the guys that beat him.”

  “Any leads?”

  “A few.” He winked. “Not dangerous ones though.”

  “Lucky for you I have to get back to work by noon. So, tell me not to worry and kiss me goodbye.”

  He leaned in and kissed her lips. They were soft and tasted like chocolate.

  “You ate one of my donuts, didn’t you?”

  “Come home this weekend and I’ll give you something sweeter.”

  Jake watched until her taillights disappeared around the corner, already missing her. It was good to be in love, the opposite of having to talk with Jason Keats.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jason Keats was a millionaire, how many times over Jake didn’t know. Running drugs, guns, and booze was good business, a market that didn’t ebb and flow with the country’s economic whims. He ran everything from a warehouse in Kansas City’s River Market district—a quaint collection of restaurants, bars, and office buildings north of downtown.

  The mid-morning March sun peeked through dirt-speckled windows set high in the warehouse walls. Jake strode through an open bay door and across the concrete floor. As usual, the blue and orange storage racks were all but empty, and his boots echoed with each step. Jake’s followers, Demetri and Sparks, sat at a table by a breakroom near the long, metal staircase leading to Keats’s office. Sparks read the paper and glanced up as Jake approached. Demetri scowled.

  The door to Keats’s office stood open. Jake knocked on the frame and crossed the thick, well-padded maroon carpet. Keats sat behind a large mahogany desk talking to someone on the phone. He motioned for Jake to sit. Jake was struck by a strong wave of déjà vu. Six months ago, he was in that very chair striking a deal with Keats to get him out of the leg-breaking business. He hadn’t planned on a return visit.

  Keats hung up. He swiveled to face Jake and straightened the tie looping his thick neck. Jake could count on one hand the number of times Keats wore a suit in the last five years. His grey hair was slicked back, his green eyes piercing.

  “You have a date, Jason?” Jake asked.

  “Funeral. Percell’s kid was killed in a car wreck a couple days ago.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” Percell ran Keats’s liquor network. Decent guy, ugly wife. Jake had met his kid once.

  “How are you? Sleeping better at night now?” Keats asked, voice low and scratchy. An allusion to Jake’s desire to get out of his mob enforcement role—the echoes of breaking bones causing restless nights.

  “Like a baby. You look good. Lost weight?”

  “A few pounds. Doctor says I have to exercise more to relieve stress. How’s your new little family?”

  Jake jumped to the point. He had no desire to talk about Maggie and Halle with Keats. “Why do you have two gorillas tailing me?”

  Keats climbed to his feet and walked around the desk, leaning against the front. “Because they don’t have to tail Jack Logan anymore.”

  “You have something to do with Logan?”

  “Why would I?”

  “You tell me.”

  Keats took a drink from a coffee mug on his d
esk. He shifted gears. “What do you think of Demetri?”

  “He’s a moron.”

  “You pissed him off. He wants to come at you with a knife.”

  “Let him. You’d have to hire another guy to take his place and pay for an extensive hospital stay.”

  Keats laughed, spider-web cracks around his eyes. “Man, I miss having you on the team, Jake. Good help is hard to find. What about Spencer?”

  “Who?”

  “The bald guy with the scar.”

  “Said his name was Sparks.”

  “Spencer Sparks,” Keats said.

  Jake winced. “That’s unfortunate. He seems smart. Smart enough not to get out of the car when his partner squared up on me.”

  “He’s the new you. He’s babysitting Demetri for now as Demetri doesn’t actually work for me. I don’t trust the guy.”

  The foggy crystal ball from the last twenty-four hours cleared, the haze disappearing with a poof. Demetri. Voleski. Russians. Time to test how truthful Keats would be with him.

  “So why are they following me?”

  “They’re looking for Alexander Voleski. He took something of mine, and I want it back. You’re also looking for Voleski and you’re better than they are. I hoped you’d lead them to him.”

  “So you didn’t hire Logan to track down Voleski?”

  Keats huffed. “Jack Logan wouldn’t cross the street to piss on me if I was on fire.” So much for Jake’s theory.

  “So why not cut out the middleman and come directly to me?”

  “Would you have accepted?”

  “Probably not. But it’s nice to know you’re wanted.”

  Keats ambled to a credenza. He filled his coffee mug and poured one for Jake. He handed Jake the cup and sat in an adjacent chair. Here came the sales pitch.

  “I don’t care what you do, I don’t care how you do it,” Keats said. “I want Voleski. Nobody jumps ship on me.”

  “I did.”

  “I let you go. There’s a difference. You also didn’t steal anything from me.”

  “You want the silver briefcase.”

  “Exactly. And Voleski’s head on a stick,” Keats said. “Here’s my proposal. I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars if you find and deliver the briefcase to me in the next twenty-four hours. I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars if you deliver Voleski to me. Dead or alive, I don’t give a shit. If you deliver both at the same time, there’s another fifty thousand in it for you. More than enough to kick off your little private investigation endeavor.”

  “What makes you think I want to be a PI?”

  Keats flashed his pearly whites. “You don’t think I hear things?”

  “And if I say no?” Jake asked.

  “Why would you ask?”

  “Because the last time I asked the question, you intoned you would whack me if I didn’t do what you wanted.”

  “No such intonations this time,” Keats said. “This is a pure business proposal. But, a lucrative one.”

  “What’s in the case that’s so important?”

  Keats regarded him for a moment. “Is that really important to know?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know to do this simple job.”

  “If it’s such a simple job, have Larry and Curly downstairs do it.”

  Keats’s lips pressed together, his jaw clenched, nostrils flared. The telltale sign Jake pushed him as far as he dared.

  “Do you want the fucking job or not, Caldwell?” Keats asked.

  Jake thought for a moment. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars to do what Logan was hired to do—find Voleski and the briefcase. That kind of money would set him and Maggie up for a long time. Pay for Halle’s college. Logan didn’t tell him who hired them to find the Russian, so technically Jake wouldn’t know what to do with the man if he did track him down. It wasn’t Keats because he offered a hundred and fifty big ones for the task. The problem was the unknown contents of the briefcase. He couldn’t sleep if the money was covered in blood.

  “Let me think about it,” Jake said. “I’ll call you with a yes or no.”

  Jake stood and shook Keats’s hand. He reached the door when Keats called after him.

  “Jake? Be careful. I’m not the only one looking for Voleski.”

  “Who else?”

  “People you don’t want to fuck with.”

  Jake nodded and headed down the stairs. He winked at Sparks. Demetri twirled a giant hunting knife in his hand and pointed the blade at Jake. Jake flipped him off on the way to his truck. It was time to find out what Ares was. Since Keats wasn’t spilling his guts, the one person he knew who could tell him was Victoria Snell. He just had a stop to make first.

  * * *

  Tanner Stanton hung up his office phone and clipped along the cold, black-tiled hall in the center of Blue Heron’s building. Two days ago, he’d sent Voleski’s picture out to his network with promises of a reward. The manager of an EZ Mart in downtown KC reviewed his surveillance footage from his store camera and recognized Voleski buying cigarettes and vodka the previous afternoon. The clerk working that day said Voleski went into an apartment building across the street. Sometimes it took a lucky break, and Stanton wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  His muscular arms swung with purpose, propelling him forward. Time was running out, and if he didn’t come through this time—his life wouldn’t be worth shit. He swung through the security office, stopped in front of a thick steel door, and waved his keycard in front of a gray pad.

  A steel honeycomb-tread staircase took Stanton to a dim, concrete tunnel sixty feet long. Along the right-hand wall, three red doors led to separate labs. The labs were empty for now, for which he was glad. Ares was in there, and it scared the bejesus out of him. He trotted past the three labs and waved the keycard at another pad outside the steel door at the end of the hall, which opened to a room filled with monitors and a blue-suited security man named Devaroux. Devaroux served with Stanton in the Army Rangers and was stationed in the basement to watch nothing but the monitors. They couldn’t afford another security breach at this point.

  “Any change?” Stanton asked.

  “Nope. Barely any movement at all,” Devaroux said, scratching his goatee. “This is boring the shit out of me, Stanton.”

  “I got a lead on Voleski. Come with me. I’ll get Billy to come in early to cover your spot. Let’s get out of these damn suits and head over there.”

  Devaroux jumped out of the chair, anxious to escape the dungeon. He grabbed his gun from the monitoring desk and shoved it into a shoulder holster. He kissed his fingers and pressed them against one of the computer monitors. The monitor showed a live camera shot of the secure room next door where a young, blonde girl lay huddled on a cot, eyes wide and afraid.

  “See you later, sweetheart,” Devaroux said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Outside Keats’s warehouse, Jake dialed Snell’s office. The FBI receptionist said she was out and had no indication when she would return. He called the hospital. No change in Logan’s condition. He thought about the padlock key from Logan’s office and decided to check out his house.

  Twenty minutes later, Jake veered off I-169 and headed east on Shawnee Mission Parkway through the light mid-morning traffic. He passed a series of drab, cookie-cutter office buildings and wheeled right into a residential, middle-class neighborhood. He wound through a few tree-lined streets and parked in front of a white ranch squished between rows of gnarled oak trees.

  Yard work obviously wasn’t Logan’s forte. The overgrown vegetation creeping across the front yard represented more weeds than grass. Two chipped concrete steps led to a cracked and uneven walkway approaching a ranch-style home encased in horizontal, white vinyl siding. A four-foot-high wooden fence that had avoided stain and paint since the Carter administration protected the backyard.

  The front door was locked. Jake checked under a flower
pot where Logan kept a key, but it wasn’t there today. He peered through the living room window. Whoever trashed Logan’s office also paid a visit to his house. Unless Logan was just a horrible housekeeper, which was always a possibility.

  Jake hugged the right side of the house and tried the door leading to the garage. Locked. An open, wobbly gate led into the backyard where hefty trees dominated the landscape. In the heart of summer, not a lick of the sun’s rays would penetrate the foliage. In late March, plenty of sunshine fed the growth of weeds poking through the dirt floor. A dilapidated swing rusted under one of the trees, its chain and plastic seat dangling off one side. A wooden shed hid in the corner of the lot where perhaps Logan kept a mower. Given the state of the yard, Jake surmised it was a shed Logan didn’t visit often.

  Jake hopped onto a large, wooden deck that needed several coats of finish, its sole occupants a stainless-steel barbecue grill and a folding lawn chair with Logan’s ass imprinted in the stretched plastic. Several empty cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon lay crushed on the deck like fallen soldiers. A peek in the window revealed the cramped kitchen. The cabinet doors stood open and their contents littered the floor. The back door was ajar, the pane of the door’s window closest to the deadbolt broken. Glass crunched under his boots as he pushed the door open and entered.

  Jake swept through the three bedrooms and searched their associated closets, stepping over debris, and found nothing containing a padlock. He knocked on walls and floors listening for a hollow sound to indicate a hidden compartment. If Logan had one in his office, maybe he had a stash at home as well. Nothing. A search of the one-car garage was equally unrewarding, just a messy workbench and oil stains on the floor where Logan’s truck parked. A small box in the corner contained a couple ceramic bowls, a leash, and a half-empty bag of dog food. Maybe Logan’s dog bit the dust since his last visit.