“Howdy, Arnold. Long time no see.” The music suddenly stopped, and the house lights came on. Sarge and Skeeter had taken care of the other employees.
“What the fuck do you want?” Arnold said. “I told you I’d never seen that girl.”
“You lied. We’re past that. I found the girl I was lookin’ for. Puff the Magic Dragon took her back. Where is he?”
“He’ll kill you.”
“I’m sure he’ll want to. But when he finds out he’s got a lot to lose, I think he’ll want to negotiate.”
“You ain’t got nothin’ he wants.”
I holstered my pistol, grabbed Arnold by the velvet jacket, and hauled him to his feet. The surprise and initial fear on his face turned to anger and contempt.
“I’m sending a message to anybody who does business with Russell Stevens.”
“We got rights, man. You can’t come in here and fuck with us,” he said.
He’d either heard that line in a movie or it had worked for him before, because he smiled when he said it like he was holding up a magic shield.
“You want me to honor your rights?” I picked up his glasses and handed them to him. “Put these on. I don’t want you to miss anything.” I took the 870 from Skeeter, pointed it at the mirror behind the bar, and pulled the trigger. Glass showered down like confetti on Neck Tatt’s head and shoulders.
“What the fuck’re you doin’, man?” Arnold screamed.
“You gave up your rights when you shook hands with the Dragon.”
I pumped another shell in the chamber, pointed at the liquor shelf, and pulled the trigger. Another shower of glass mixed with spirits rained down on the bar. I pumped the action again. Boom! The mirror behind the back stage shattered.
“Okay, okay! What do you want?” Arnold pleaded.
Sarge and Lucky pushed the two bouncers from the front door into the room. Sarge had them covered with his Glock. The bald guy I had clocked near the back entrance stirred and started to stand. Lucky stepped in front of him.
“Stay down,” Lucky said.
The guy should have listened. Instead, he lunged forward and caught an uppercut from Lucky that put him down for the count.
“I want Maya,” I shouted and pumped another round in the chamber, looking for another target.
“She ain’t here, man. I told you that,” Arnold said.
Boom!
I took out the mirror behind the main stage. At the very least, it would take them a couple of days to clean up before they could open again. The owner of the club would get the clear message that dealing with Russell Stevens was bad for business.
Boom!
I put another load in the bar. A scream came from the dancers’ dressing room. There was more than one girl back there. I motioned for Lucky to check it out in case there was another bouncer not accounted for. Arnold hopped from one foot to the other. He wasn’t sure what I was going to do next. It was the reaction I was looking for.
“Tell Mr. Dragon I will keep going until he brings me Maya, safe and sound. When I’m through, no one will do business with him.”
“You’re a dead man,” he said.
I shoved the barrel of the 870 into his chest. Arnold fell backward on the floor. I called to Skeeter: “How many shells does this model 870 tactical pump shotgun hold?”
“The model 870 express tactical pump shotgun packs a full seven rounds of three-inch 12-guage firepower with the factory installed two-shot extension,” Skeeter recited. He’d memorized the manual when I gave him the weapon.
I looked at the manager. “Seven rounds. Did you keep count?” I pressed the barrel under his chin.
“You’re fuckin’ crazy.”
There was fear in his eyes. I was getting through to him.
“Convey the message to Russell. He knows my number. I’ll keep going until he gives up Maya. Is that clear?”
I pointed the 870 at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. The pistol grip jerked in my hand, sending a load of buckshot into the ceiling and showering us both with drywall plaster.
“Guess I had one more round,” I said.
A dark wet stain expanded around the crotch of his velvet suit.
Lucky walked out of the dressing room. “All clear.”
“Good. We’re done here.” I handed the 870 back to Skeeter and walked toward the back door.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I backed across the parking lot toward my pickup, keeping my Springfield level with the strip club VIP door. Once Arnold realized the extent of the damage, he would come after me. He knew the repair would come out of his pocket. I opened my pickup door, found a cheap pair of sunglasses on the dashboard, and slipped them on to cut the harsh afternoon glare. I waited while Lucky and Sarge climbed in the back seat and Skeeter settled into the passenger seat.
“Wait,” Skeeter said. He opened the small black backpack he was never without and took out a black box about the size of a USB wall adaptor. “GPS tracker. In case they come after us or go visit Russell.”
Skeeter fitted the device to the four-by-four parked in the reserved space. I checked my watch. It was almost five o’clock.
“You don’t mess around,” Lucky said.
“Thanks for your help,” I said.
“You didn’t really need us,” Sarge said. “But it was fun.”
I checked the rearview mirror. Sarge had a smile on his face. The only other time I’d seen him smile was after he and Lucky kicked ass on the four thugs who were after me in the gym.
When Skeeter was finished, he booted up his laptop and checked the connection. We would have a heads-up if Arnold came to visit, and we might be able to track him to Russell.
I drove out of the parking lot. “Now that we got the Dragon’s attention, it won’t be as easy the next time.”
“You don’t think he’ll hand Maya over?” Skeeter asked.
“He’ll do what Low Ball did,” I said.
“Come after you?”
“Who’s Low Ball?” Lucky asked.
“The dude who framed me for murder,” Skeeter said.
“That apartment fire on the east side? I remember that,” Sarge said.
“Nick saved my ass.”
“What happened to Low Ball?” Lucky asked.
“He took my place on death row,” Skeeter said.
Lucky leaned over the back seat and pointed to the damp spot on my chest. Blood had soaked my T-shirt. In all the excitement, I hadn’t noticed that the bandage had come loose and the scab had broken open again.
“Maybe you should skip town for a couple of days,” Lucky said. “That dragon dude knows you mean business. If he don’t give up Maya, we’ll hit him again.”
Skeeter used his metal hook to hand me a paper towel. “That sounds like the voice of reason.”
Now that the adrenaline rush was wearing off, the muscles in my chest were on fire, and I felt lightheaded from the loss of blood. “One problem. The Dragon’s already killed Lori and Candy. Nothing is stopping him from doing it again.”
I took the towel from Skeeter and pressed it over the wet spot on my T-shirt. The muscle tissue was on fire. I drove under the 410 Loop and went south on San Pedro hoping to avoid rush hour traffic. No such luck. San Antonio suffered from traffic as much as any big city. It wasn’t as bad as Houston, but that was hardly any consolation.
It was past six when I parked across the street from the two-story house where we’d found Maya. I shut the engine off and checked my phone. No missed calls or messages from Russell. I wasn’t surprised. He would wait for my next move. He would probably send a couple of thugs to my house in King William. My only concern was my neighbor, Rose. If she happened to see someone on my property, she wouldn’t hesitate to confront them. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.
“Looks like they stepped up security,” I said, looking at an overfed gangbanger lounging on the front steps. He had a black silk do-rag and a wife-bea
ter T-shirt despite the cooler weather.
“He’ll be packing,” Lucky said.
“Noted,” I said. I knew Wife-Beater would have a pistol stuck in his shorts. I didn’t think he could get to it in time to protect himself. Several rolls of fat obscured his waistband. I pointed out the staircase that led to the upstairs and sent Lucky and Sarge through the alley to get there. I hoped the occupants hadn’t added another lock. I was counting on the element of surprise.
Skeeter reloaded the 870. I waited until I thought Lucky and Sarge had had enough time to climb the back steps before stepping into the street. Skeeter followed me across the dirt lawn that was strewn with fast food wrappers and cigarette butts. I could hear the pounding rap music coming from inside the house. I picked up a three-foot length of galvanized metal pipe lying in the neglected flower garden.
Wife-Beater shifted his massive weight forward but didn’t get up. He probably weighed in at three eighty and, like all fat tough guys, expected his looks to scare people away. I stopped six inches from his black LeBron Nike basketball shoes. They were new and expensive and had never seen a basketball court.
“Give me a pound of crank and a couple of underage girls for me and my friend here,” I said.
He smiled big, stretching the size of his double chin into a full dewlap. He looked like a bulldog waiting for supper. “I know you, guero,” he said.
“I’m flattered.” I hit him in the head with the metal pipe.
“You are a man of few words,” Skeeter said.
Wife-Beater slumped forward, a trickle of blood oozing from the edge of his silk do-rag.
“This ain’t really a social call,” I said, walking to the front door.
The same three junior thugs were on the couch, playing the same video game, as we came through the front door. I pulled my Springfield and fired at the fifty-inch screen. The TV exploded in a shower of glass and plastic. They jumped off the couch like a covey of quail from a brush pile.
The thug nearest Skeeter pulled a pistol from the couch. Skeeter hit him in the side of head with the barrel of the shotgun. He dropped the pistol and collapsed on the floor.
I leveled off on the other two. One of them held a pistol pointed at the floor.
“Drop it,” I yelled. He let it fall to the floor. “Cover them,” I said to Skeeter, then kicked in the door to the back room. A skinny girl wearing a black bra and panties was scooping stacks of money into a plastic garbage bag. She kept working while I searched the room for more bodies.
“What d’ya want?” she asked, not caring about my pistol and not the least self-conscious of being seen in her underwear.
“Just keep working,” I said. “Fill up the sack.”
She tossed in the rest of the money. There were four kilo bags of meth or coke on a shelf behind her. She’d been mixing and filling smaller plastic bags for sale.
“Throw in the drugs too,” I said.
When she was finished, I motioned her toward the front room.
The stairs creaked, and three women hustled down the wooden steps followed by Sarge and Lucky. One was in her mid-forties with dyed-blond hair and a tank top that didn’t quite cover her protruding belly. She must have been the house mother for the younger girls. Her face was twisted into an angry scowl.
“You ain’t cops,” she shouted at me. “You can’t come in here.”
I ignored her. “Upstairs clear?” I asked Sarge.
He nodded. “All clear.”
“Check the kitchen and the pantry,” I said.
He disappeared through a swinging door.
“Do you hear me? You don’t have a warrant. You can’t come up in here. We got rights,” the big woman screamed. She’d seen the same movie as the strip club manager.
“Everybody’s got rights. What about their rights?” I pointed to the young girls. “Who’s lookin’ after their rights?”
“We do business here. Ain’t nobody get hurt.”
Sarge reappeared. “All clear.”
“We’re done here. Everybody out.” I heard a commotion on the porch. The door burst open, and Wife-Beater came through with a 9mm in his hand.
I fired first and hit him in the left leg. The .45 slug splattered blood on the wall. Wife-Beater screamed and did a four-hundred-pound faceplant on the hardwood floor.
“Everybody out,” I yelled again. “Take fatso with you.”
The thug Skeeter cold-cocked came to and staggered out the front door. His two companions helped Wife-Beater to his feet. I took a closer look. The bullet had grazed his outer thigh. He would live. I didn’t want to leave any bodies lying around.
I found a lighter on the coffee table. The house was a 1940s vintage wood-frame construction. With a little help, it would go up in smoke like a stack of last year’s hay. I fired the lighter and held it to a couch cushion. When it caught fire, I tossed it into the kitchen and grabbed another. By the time I walked out on the porch, smoke was already billowing from the front windows.
“What’re we supposed to do?” House Mamma screamed.
“Find a job that doesn’t involve drugs or underage girls,” I said. She wasn’t going to convince me she was a victim. “I would get the hell out of here if I were you.” I pulled out my cell phone and dialed 911. The local fire department had a great response time and would have this fire out before it did damage to the neighborhood.
We hustled back to my pickup. The neighbor’s dogs barked. An older couple across the street came out on their lawn.
“It’s about time,” the older woman yelled.
House Mamma gave her the middle finger.
“You’re a disgrace to the neighborhood,” the old man yelled.
I cranked the engine and drove away. The neighbors wouldn’t complain about me removing the resident flophouse, even if I had trampled on a few civil rights to do it.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
We passed the first firetruck speeding toward the blaze as I made the turn onto Zarzamora Street. Russell would get my message. Now he knew how I played the game and what the stakes were.
His next move would be to retaliate. I didn’t expect him to give up or turn Maya over. I wanted him pissed off enough to make a mistake, to give up his location or challenge me himself. That’s when I would nail him.
I felt the dampness on my chest. Blood had soaked the folded paper towel I’d tucked under my shirt. The only flaw in my plan was that I was operating with a hole in my chest.
Before I got to my King William neighborhood, I explained to Sarge and Lucky what I had in mind. They protested at first, but when I told them that Rose was an excellent cook, they agreed to stay and guard both our houses.
The setting sun shot streaks of pink and orange over the green canopy that covered most of the city. Rose appeared in her kitchen window when I pulled into the driveway. I waved.
“I’ll let Rose know what’s going on,” I told them. “Skeeter will show you the gun safe. Pick out what you’re comfortable with and double the ammo you think you’ll need.”
“You think he’ll hit us hard?” Sarge asked.
“He’ll want to even the score,” I said.
Sarge smiled again. The second time in two days.
Rose met me in the front yard. Her gray hair, as usual, was braided and wound in tight coils, like a Viking queen welcoming home the fleet from Britain. “I trust you’ve gotten yourself into a pickle,” she said.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” I said.
She scrutinized the men getting out of my pickup. “Where’s Kelly?”
“She’s gone back to Lubbock.”
She waited for me to fill in the details, but I stayed silent.
“You’re a hard man to get along with,” she said.
I explained briefly that we had not been able to find Maya and that I was taking things in a different direction than Kelly thought we should go. “There may be trouble.”
She pointed a bone
y finger at me. “You’re the trouble.”
“I didn’t ask her to leave.”
She was a retired university biology professor and treated everybody like one of her freshman students. “I don’t blame her. You’re about as friendly as a ground hornet when you’re working a case.”
“She had to go back to work, that’s all.”
“I know you better than you think, Nick Fischer. Once you’re on a case, nothing and no one gets in your way. Girlfriends, friends, the law… nothing. If I wanted answers or justice, I would come to you in a heartbeat. I know you’re not going to stop till you get one or the other. But if I were a young woman looking for a husband, I’d drop you like a red-hot coal.”
“So, there’s no hope for us?” I asked.
That brought a twinkle to her eye. “You’ve got issues, Nick Fischer. God help you; you’ve got issues. One of these days, you’re going to have to face that fact.”
I conceded her point. She loved to argue, and I didn’t have time to get into it with her. Instead, I explained to her that Sarge and Lucky were going to stay in my house just in case the thugs I was after showed up wanting to wreak havoc. I told her that if she saw anything to stay out of sight and let them handle it.
“I keep my dad’s revolver in the kitchen drawer, and I’ve got my shotgun,” she said.
She’d shown me the weapon before. It was a .38 Special police model that her dad purchased in the thirties. She kept it well-oiled and loaded, but I didn’t think she’d fired it in twenty years.
“Keep it there. Let Lucky and Sarge do any shooting if it’s necessary. They have more practice.”
“What about the police?” she asked.
“What about them?”
“Shouldn’t they be involved?”
“They will be. But right now, they would slow me down. A young girl’s life’s at stake.”
She clenched her jaw like she was going to protest, before slowly nodding in agreement.
“I’ll make them some dinner,” she said after a moment and hurried toward her back door. She was excited to be in on the action.
Second Chances Page 19