Sallow City

by Jim Heskett

  “I don’t understand,” Rourke said. “Your gang was going on a trip south and now you’re not? What does this have to do with us?”

  The mobster spat more blood onto the floor. “You can try your little robbery operation today, but you’re going to walk into a full-scale war, right there in the Dort Mall. We’re going to surprise those fuckers before they can surprise us.

  “So it doesn’t matter where we keep the money or how many of the pit bosses are strapped. Everyone in the whole damn Crossroads organization, from Harvey to the low-level muscle guys are going to be armed with automatic weapons and defending the mall today, and then tomorrow, we’ll all be gone. Disappeared and setting up shop somewhere else. You’re not going to see a dime of that cash, you idiots.”

  Rourke gritted his teeth. He couldn’t accept this if it were true. All those months of planning, of acquiring weapons and ammunition, of staking out the casino entrances and exits… all wasted because the timing was off.

  Such a little detail that could make a huge difference.

  Rourke opened his mouth to question the mobster further, but he was interrupted when the door to the house creaked open. Into the garage slinked a beautiful redhead, followed by a tall man. Both of them with silenced guns in hand. Cartoonishly long. They were dressed in dark suits, like government agents on tv shows.

  Ethan was standing directly in front of the workbench where he’d left his pistol. Ethan tried to spin and snatch it, but the woman raised her gun. Pulled back the slide.

  “Ethan, don’t,” Rourke said.

  “Listen to him, Ethan,” the woman said. “We didn’t come here to kill you, just to talk. I don’t want to pull this trigger. But believe me when I say that I won’t take that chance with you. I’ve seen your rap sheet.”

  Rourke and Carter gathered closer to Ethan on one side of the garage, opposite the woman and man. The secured gangster hung limply from the overhead beam, his eyes flicking back and forth between the two parties.

  “What are you doing with this individual?” she said.

  “None of your business,” Rourke said.

  The woman pivoted and shot the gangster in the forehead. The silencer on her gun made the blast seem like a whip crack instead of the thunderous crash it would have been in this small space.

  The gangster’s head slumped forward, blood pouring onto the floor.

  “Why would you do such an imbecilic thing?” Carter said, flailing his hands in the air. “He had information.”

  “You were going to have to kill him anyway,” she said. “If you let him go, you’d be dead within minutes. Plus, good chance he was lying about whatever he told you.”

  “Who are you?” Rourke said.

  “Don’t tell him,” the man in the suit said.

  The woman shrugged and addressed her partner. “What do I care?” Then to Rourke: “I’m Olivia, and this is my colleague Jeremy.”

  Jeremy took a hand off his gun to offer a brief wave, then resumed pointing it directly at Ethan’s head.

  “What do you want?” Rourke said.

  “We know who you are,” Olivia said. “We know what you’re trying to do at the Dort Mall. We came here, tonight, to politely ask you not to break into that casino. Maybe you heard about that dead body they altered to look like someone else?”

  Rourke knew exactly who they were talking about. He wondered if Olivia had already figured out they’d met the guy who looked like Logan King. Probably, since she knew so much about everything else.

  “That was all about starting a war,” Olivia said. “The gang is packing up to head south and face off with the Sinaloa cartel tomorrow, and we need to make sure you don’t mess that up. We have orders to apprehend some high-ranking Sinaloa people, and they don’t come out of hiding often.”

  “That’s the thing,” Rourke said. “It’s not happening that way.”

  Olivia narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  Rourke gestured at the dead gangster, his limp weight slowly oscillating back and forth on the rope. “Right before you came in, he was telling us something. Maybe he would have told us more if you hadn’t shot him.”

  She sighed and bit her lower lip. Sneaked a glance at the dead gangster, blood dribbling out of the hole in his forehead. “My mistake. What did he say?”

  “Why should we tell you anything?” Ethan said.

  Jeremy chambered a round into his gun.

  Rourke held his hands out. “The cartel is coming here. Today. The war is happening in Michigan, not in Mexico.”

  Olivia and Jeremy shared a look of surprise. This was new information to them, obviously.

  “Shit,” she said to her colleague. “We aren’t ready to go yet.”

  An idea popped into Rourke’s head. It was sloppy, impulsive, and most likely, destined to fail. But it did put the odds back in his favor. These two looked like they knew how to handle themselves.

  “What if we team up?” he said.

  Olivia narrowed her eyes. “Why would we do that?”

  “Because if Crossroads and the cartel are warring, they’re going to be out in the mall, not in the basement where the casino is. We sneak in the back, get the money, and then work our way out, and we’ll provide guns to help you. You-watch-our-back, we-watch-yours kind of thing.”

  She pursed her lips. “But we don’t care about your little casino robbery.”

  “We could cut you in,” Rourke said.

  “Damn it, guys,” Ethan said under his breath, “we shouldn’t be making deals with these people.”

  For a second, Olivia seemed to consider Rourke’s offer. Then, the gangster hanging from the beam jerked. Like a spastic shudder running up his torso and into his arms. Some kind of last gasp or muscle reaction.

  It was enough to get the attention of Olivia and Jeremy. They both reacted and swung their weapons toward the gangster. In a flash, Ethan snatched the pistol off the workbench, shot Jeremy in the chest, and then Olivia in the head. The non-silenced pistol blasted like a rocket taking off in the small space of this garage.

  Jeremy didn’t go down, so Ethan shot him again.

  It all happened too quickly for Rourke to do anything to prevent it. One second, he was making a deal. The next, spent pistol casings jangled on the concrete and these two strangers were crumpling to the floor.

  “Son of a bitch,” Rourke said as he gazed at the bodies of the two people breathing their last breaths in Ethan’s garage. Three dead people within ten feet of him. “What did you do that for?”

  “You heard her,” Ethan said. “They don’t care about getting into the casino. It’s all about some gang war power play thing. They said they just came to talk, but why would they let us walk out of here? Why tell us their names and their plans if they were going to let us live?”

  Rourke had to admit that Ethan had a point. “Doesn’t matter now. Get their guns and get ready. We’ll come back later and deal with these bodies. Right now, we’re going back to the mall, while we still have time.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Micah watched Yvette’s eyes as she struggled not to move, since she had a knife pressed to her neck. The blade made a slight indentation in her skin, but her assailant wasn’t holding it tight enough to draw blood. Only enough to keep her in place.

  The man standing behind Yvette tilted his head to look around her. Micah recognized him. The same bushy-eyebrowed man who had given him the password in the basement of the mall, his passage into the casino.

  Counterfeit.

  “Hello,” Bushy Eyebrows said as his teeth gritted in an angry sneer of a smile. “You again. I had a feeling we weren’t done with you.”

  “Let her go.”

  “You know I can’t do that. Harvey doesn’t like to leave witnesses. Your time is up too, Mr. Reed. I wasn’t sure when I saw you before, but now that you’ve dropped the phony contacts and glasses, I am. It’s good that I ran into you.”

  Micah had to do some quick math. The knife was at
her throat. He was five feet away. He couldn’t rush at Bushy Eyebrows quickly enough to disarm him. But enough of his head was exposed from behind Yvette that if Micah could get the Glock up in time, he could put a bullet in Bushy Eyebrows’ forehead, maybe before he could react and kill Yvette.

  Maybe. Or he might accidentally shoot Yvette if he wasn’t careful.

  Her eyes were wide open. Full of panic. Even though she’d known they would come for her, that fact probably wasn’t a comfort right now, facing fate. Micah was the only person standing between her and certain death.

  Bushy Eyebrows flinched and Micah lifted the weapon. No time to think, just to act.

  Too slow.

  The knife sliced across Yvette’s throat, digging in and carving a line. The gash immediately turned red as blood poured out. Bushy Eyebrows heaved her body at Micah, then turned to escape out the way he’d come. He managed to spin all the way around before Micah got his finger on the trigger.

  Micah leaned to the right, aimed his gun, and shot the man in the back, all before Yvette tumbled into his arms. She landed on him, knocking Micah back a few steps. He felt dampness on the front of his shirt as her arms flopped around him. She was gasping for breath, gulping blood down.

  He lowered her to the ground while keeping his eyes on Bushy Eyebrows. The man didn’t move. He was sprawled with his head to the side, eyes open. Not blinking. Micah waited a couple of seconds to be sure that he couldn’t detect any rise and fall of Bushy Eyebrows’ chest.

  Micah turned Yvette on her back, and he took her hand and placed it over the hole in her throat. Pressed her hand down to close up the wound.

  “Yvette, listen to me. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to make it through this. Just stay awake, and I’m going to get you to a hospital.”

  Blood continued to pour out.

  “You have to press hard. As hard as you can.”

  Her eyes darted back and forth. Despite forcing her hand down to put pressure on the wound, blood still leaked from it in pulsing waves. Trickled between her fingers, turning her hand into a red mess.

  She tried to speak, but a trickle of blood dribbled out of the side of her mouth instead. She stilled and her eyes blinked, and then shut. The blood continued to leak, but her mouth stopped moving.

  He held her for another minute, brain swimming. So much chaos. Micah had killed two people in the last two minutes. And he’d let another one die because he hadn’t been quick enough to save her.

  Could he have saved her? Had it even been possible?

  None of that mattered right now. He had to get out of here before others came to look for her.

  He let go of Yvette, and then noticed a perfect bloody thumbprint on her temple. His thumbprint. He smudged it and thought about what else he might have touched in this house. Front door, for sure. Had he handled anything in Logan’s room? He couldn’t remember.

  This woman on the floor hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d been the victim of a terrible bargain her son had engineered, and now they were both dead because of it.

  She deserved justice.

  “I’m not going to let them get away with this.”

  He checked the gangster he’d shot in the back to ensure he was dead, then Micah hurried into Logan’s room to check for fingerprints. Made his way back to the living room, keeping his gun on the man there. Still not moving.

  He wiped off both sides of the front doorknob, then paused when Yvette’s dog darted out from under the couch. Glared up at him.

  “I’m really sorry about your mom, but you can’t stay here, dog.”

  The dog cocked its little head but didn’t move.

  “No one is coming to feed you anymore.”

  The dog still didn’t move.

  Micah snatched the dog by the collar and dragged it—yipping and biting—out the front door. He slammed the door behind him so the dog couldn’t get back in, then he released the collar. The dog stared up at him again, whining.

  “I’m serious, buddy. Someone else is going to have to take you because I don’t even live here. So go now, be brave. You can do this.”

  The dog sat on the porch. Then plopped onto its belly, panting and sour-faced.

  Micah didn’t have time for this. After he had convinced himself the dog would be fine, he left the porch and jumped in the rental car. Sped through the streets of Burton to rejoin the interstate. One thing on his mind: getting to that casino before Crossroads had a chance to finish packing and leave to start a war with the Sinaloa. By tomorrow, they would all be gone.

  After a couple minutes on the interstate, he yanked his phone out of his pocket and called Frank’s hospital room. He spent so long on hold, he was only a mile or two away from the mall by the time they’d connected him with Frank’s room.

  “Frank.”

  “Yeah, kid. What’s up?” Frank sounded groggy, gravelly, not like himself.

  “Everything has changed. I found the mother of the lookalike they killed. It wasn’t about a bounty at all. These Crossroads people were trying to draw out the cartel so they could start a war. They’re headed down to Mexico tomorrow so they can kill all the head Sinaloa players. They want to move drugs up and down I-35 without worrying about cartel interference.”

  Frank coughed a bit. “Not about the bounty. Actually, that makes a lot of sense.”

  “If they’re leaving, I don’t have much time to put a stop to all of this. I’m on my way back to the mall right now to intervene. I’m almost there.”

  “Why?”

  Micah stopped short, stumbled over his words. “What do you mean?”

  “This was never about you. Your part is done here. You found out who this kid was, and that’s what we set out to do. And if they’re trying to start a war, maybe you let them. You have no stake in that war.”

  “But it’s so much bigger than that. These people have to be stopped. Logan King needs justice.”

  “So what are you going to do? Waltz in there and take on the whole neo-Nazi army? Think this through, Micah. You overestimate your power in this situation.”

  Micah held the phone away from his ear. As he neared the mall, he saw lights flickering near the building, above the trees that obscured his view. Flashes like fireworks, maybe. But that wasn’t likely since it wasn’t dark outside.

  “I gotta go, Frank.”

  Micah turned into the parking lot to find a row of cars beyond the trees. And a line of people in front of those cars.

  And the source of the lights: automatic weapons fire.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The AK-47 and extra ammo weighed Rourke down like a suit of armor. The gangster they’d held hostage in Ethan’s garage had told the truth. There was a full-scale epic battle occurring on the front side of the mall. Rourke couldn’t see it firsthand from behind the mall, but he didn’t need to. Sounded like a Hollywood war movie.

  As he and his two friends hustled through the trees behind the back side of the mall, he didn’t care about excess noise attracting attention. With the constant gunfire eruptions, they clearly didn’t need to make a stealthy approach.

  But they could make use of all this chaos, hopefully. Sneak in the back amid a frontal assault, get to the cashier, get the money, get the hell out. This ambush development was the best thing that had happened to the plan since they’d started. Instead of facing a basement full of casino guards, they would probably walk into an empty room.

  An empty room with a shitload of money in it. Life-changing money.

  Ethan paused at the edge of the parking lot, put his hand on the dumpster’s corner. He leaned over, wheezing.

  “You okay?” Rourke said.

  “Fine. I just need a minute.”

  “We don’t have a minute,” Carter said. “Who knows how long this is going to last. The cops will be here momentarily, and we need to be done and gone before they show up.”

  Ethan waved a hand in the general direction of the crackling weapons fire coming from the front of t
he mall. “Do you really think with a massive gang war going on, that the cops are what we need to worry about?”

  Carter opened his mouth to reply, but Rourke held up a hand. “Ethan, can you rest later? We really do need to hurry. If not for the cops, we need to worry about some of those people breaking through and coming downstairs. Let’s get in there while it’s probably empty. It’s too good to pass up.”

  Ethan nodded, and they hustled across the parking lot, assault rifles and pockets full of rounds clanking.

  They skidded to a stop at the back door, all of them now panting. Rourke’s hands vibrated and his breakfast bounced around his stomach like basketballs on a trampoline.

  “You have the kit, right?” Rourke said to Carter. “Tell me you have the kit.”

  Carter pulled a small cardboard box out of his pocket. “Next day shipping, motherfucker,” he said with a smirk. Carter was actually enjoying this. Or he was working overtime to cover up his fears.

  He pulled out a set of tools from the box, then held them in the palm of his hand. “I think this is all of them.”

  Rourke closely examined the tools. Looked like a collection of dentist picks. “You remember how to do this, right?”

  Carter frowned. “I think so. I mean, I watched that Micah guy do it, so I think I can too. Didn’t seem that intricate. The bendy one goes in the bottom, and the curvy one goes in the top. Then you jiggle until the shit opens.”

  Carter leaned down to the back door. The area was shaded, so Rourke took out his phone and shined the flashlight app onto the keyhole.

  Ethan hunkered down, assault rifle pointed at the ground in front of the door. His eyes were laser-focused, his mouth pulled into a sneer. Air whistled in and out of his flared nostrils.