Romeo's Town (Mike Romeo Thrillers Book 6)

by James Scott Bell

  “You’re the smartest man in this van,” I said.

  “High praise,” Ira said.

  I looked up the road. Couldn’t see Palsberg or the officers. They were probably at the door. They were probably talking right now to—

  —not San Dae-Ho.

  “There he goes,” I said.

  He was scurrying up into the hills from the back of the house.

  I jumped out of the van.

  “Michael!” Ira said.

  I ignored him. I ignored the pain in my leg, too, and ran up to the house where the cop trio was walking back to the road.

  “He’s up there,” I said. “He ran out.”

  Palsberg looked up, without concern. “We’ll come back.”

  “Who knows if he’ll be here?” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “We have no cause to stop him,” Palsberg said.

  “I do,” I said, and started around the house.

  “Come back here!” Palsberg said.

  I ignored him, too.

  He scampered up further into the hills. Nothing up there but big boulders and crags and places to hide. Somebody who lived here had the advantage of knowing where to hide.

  In ancient warfare it was not uncommon for armies to send solo warriors into the field for a mano a mano. This was usually preceded by a lot of shouting and trash talk.

  I like the ancient ways. So to keep San Dae-Ho in sight I started throwing shade.

  I began with the coward card, always a good opening salvo. “Hey Shorty! You afraid to fight? I heard you were good. All I see is your butt running away.”

  For a moment I lost sight of him behind a big rock. Which is where he stayed.

  Was he listening?

  “No police around,” I said. “Just you and me. End it now so I don’t have to hunt you down and cut off your ponytail.”

  I looked down and saw Palsberg and the cops talking to Ira.

  “Better hurry,” I said. “Looks like the cops may be on their way.”

  A slight wind through the canyon was the only sound. I took a few steps forward, stopping on a sun-bleached boulder.

  “It’s over for you, bud. We know about Adrian Hart. We know about everything. You could help yourself by copping—”

  He jumped up from behind the rocks. Literally. It was a move few people could do. But with his compact size and springy legs he made it look easy.

  He was smiling.

  He had very white teeth.

  There we were, like a couple of rams facing each other over a section of hill.

  “I’m gonna gouge your eyes out,” San Dae-Ho said.

  “You, sir, are an uncircumcised Philistine.”

  He frowned. Good. I always like to stimulate thought.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll let you live. But I’m going to break both your legs—one for Nick, and one for my car.”

  “Nick deserved it,” he said. “Now you’re gonna get what you deserve.”

  “I’m waiting,” I said.

  He dove at me like a hawk bearing down on a field mouse. It's normally bad technique to leave your feet in a fight—unless you can make the move San Dae-Ho did. I still don't know how he pulled it off. He bent his torso backward and shot his feet out. He had somehow done a one-eighty in the air. And even though I moved it was like he anticipated that's what I’d do. His right foot caught me flush on the head. I stumbled right and almost fell off my rock into a crevice. I managed to regain my footing but he was on me in a second.

  He was fast. His fists flew. He was a taekwondo guy for sure, using speed and power to try and overwhelm.

  I was only whelmed. I countered with a Jimmy Sarducci one-two. The one was my left jab, the two was a right cross that clapped him in the temple.

  He was dazed for only a second. When I went in to clap him again, he leaned back a couple of inches and avoided my punch.

  What came next was the fastest roundhouse kick I’ve ever seen. It rammed into my left thigh so hard it crunched the femoral nerve. My leg went numb and turned to jelly.

  Though it was that jelly that saved me from his next strike, as I went down just as his kick whizzed over my head.

  I knew another kick in fast-strike style was only a second away. But neural signals are faster. My right leg was still good. I fell backward and shot out my trusty heel. West met East in the valley of the nuts.

  San Dae-Ho grunted and bent forward.

  In the instant that followed I rolled and got to my feet. Or rather, foot. My left, attached to my numb leg, was of no use. It gave me only limited stability, as if one leg of a wooden stool had been zapped by a wizard and turned into warm butter.

  At least I could push off with my right.

  San Dae-Ho got back to his stance in the narrow Korean style.

  Then he pounced.

  I was sure he would kick again and aimed a Romeo’s Hammer at the meat of his thigh. But he fooled me and came over the top with a full-on right cross to my face.

  Down I went.

  This time into the crevice.

  What I thought as I fell is, I’ve been here before. Wedged in rocks. It happened once when I was in the Nevada desert and I almost didn’t make it out. Some sort of instinct kicked in now, got me to turn my body and use my right arm like a shock absorber. I managed to keep from getting stuck, but I was still between a rock and a hard face—the face of San Dae-Ho looking down at me and enjoying the moment.

  Which could be my last one. I couldn’t stand the thought that this is how I’d go. In that flash of a moment what came to my mind were faces—of Ira and Sophie and C Dog and Holly. All jumbled together but somehow distinct.

  And as San Dae-Ho jumped, his feet aimed at my face, I pushed with my elbows with all the strength I had and turned my head, just enough to avoid a full strike. His feet grazed the back of my head and hit the round hardness of a boulder. That caused him to slip. He fell behind me.

  Without looking, without having to look, I rammed my elbow where I knew his face would be.

  And it was.

  I flipped myself over and saw him groggy and trying to get up.

  The back of his head was toward me.

  I grabbed his ponytail and yanked his head back, hard.

  Then gave him three lefts to the nose, bam bam bam.

  The Korean skull has a wide, heart-shaped nasal aperture, which means more room for cartilage to be pounded back inside the head, causing all sorts of trauma, including blacking out.

  San Dae-Ho was asleep. Which was good for him when I pulled his legs over the crevice so they formed a little bridge, with the knees in the very middle. I climbed up to the high spot where San Dae-Ho had been a moment before.

  I was going to jump and break his legs. I was feeling it—the brute, the animal. He deserved it.

  Ira, Sophie, C Dog, Holly.

  I couldn’t do it. Just couldn’t.

  I dragged his body out of the crevice and onto the side of the hill. There was a little footpath there, beaten into the sun-hardened dirt. I put him on it and started him down like a rolled-up carpet. I had to push him a few times with my foot. He tumbled over rocks and scrub. He finished about fifty yards from where his house was.

  That’s when Palsberg saw me and hurried over.

  “Good God, what did you do to him?” he said.

  “Self-defense,” I said. “And by the way, he copped to killing Nick.”

  “Who’s Nick?”

  “I’ll fill you in,” I said. “And it’ll get you that search warrant.”

  It did. Paramedics took San Dae-Ho away. The telephonic warrant came in for Palsberg. They found three grenades in the van.

  It was starting to get dark. Ira wrapped things up with Palsberg. Then we headed back to Ira’s. We didn’t say much. Ira knows when to get me to talk, and when not to.

  This was a not to.

  On Friday we brought Clint home to his mother. The D.A. agreed to drop the charges in exchange for Clint’s statement and testim
ony against Timothy Aiken—who unbelievably was going to make it. Clint was still scared, but knowing Aiken was going down helped a little.

  Still, he was going to need time, lots of time, to climb out of the dark hole he was in. Trista told me she was going to take Clint out of Elias and have him finish up high school online. Then maybe she could find an art school for him to attend. I told her I thought that was a good idea.

  On Saturday I got possession of Spinoza. I had him towed to an auto body shop run by one of Ira’s former clients, Keith Johnson. The nice thing about it was that Johnson loved to restore classic cars. He had one, a beautiful 1959 Ford Fairlane, that he took to car shows. He told me it would be a long healing process, but thought he could restore my ride.

  “And faintly trust the largest hope,” I said.

  “Huh?” Johnson said.

  “Tennyson,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “The poet.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  To fill the automotive void—which one must do when his car’s in the shop in L.A.—I rented a Ford Mustang of recent vintage. Spinoza would have approved. I drove over to Ira’s Saturday evening, where he made me his famous matzo ball soup.

  After finishing one of the delicious, schmaltz-laden spheres I looked at Ira and said, “There’s something not right.”

  “With you?” Ira said.

  “That goes without saying. I mean about this whole thing.”

  “Explain.”

  “I don’t see Timothy Aiken and his daughter as masterminds of a drug enterprise in the Valley. At most they were agents. Franchisees. They take their share, but kick most of it up the line, through Adrian Hart, wherever he may be.”

  “You think Hart is the head of the snake?”

  I shook my head. “He’s the neck. Do snakes have necks?”

  “Only vertebrae. A lot of vertebrae. Two hundred to four hundred.”

  “Okay, then he’s the top ten vertebrae. But the Valley turf for Vector Dust is far and wide.”

  “But where Clint is concerned, the case is closed. So is our part in it.”

  I said nothing.

  “What is it, Michael?”

  “The scales aren’t balanced,” I said.

  With a sigh, Ira said, “Shall I try to talk you out of it?”

  I shook my head.

  “What do you propose to do?” Ira said.

  “Take another look inside Aiken’s house,” I said.

  “Whatever for?”

  “I wasn’t finished looking around.”

  “May I remind you that it is a crime scene?”

  “Was a crime scene. He had a hidden gun case. I want to see if he has a wall safe, or some other nook.”

  “Let the police handle this,” Ira said.

  “I’m helping the police,” I said.

  “What if the place is being watched?”

  “By the police? I think not. Their work is done.”

  “You’re going to just waltz in, are you?”

  “I prefer the Texas Two-Step,” I said. “I’ll get in quick. They won’t have the security system hooked up.”

  “Has it occurred to you that someone may be in the house?”

  “I’ll be quiet,” I said.

  “Michael, I must advise against this.”

  “How about coming with me?”

  “Michael—”

  “Don’t wait up for me. And save my soup.”

  “Michael!”

  I was already halfway to the door.

  The Aiken house was dark, of course. The front door lock was easy, and once in I moved around a bit, listening for sounds. Heard none.

  Using a flashlight like a trained burglar, I started with the living room. Took me five minutes or so to check behind everything that hung on a wall. An abstract print, a mirror, a framed poster from the movie Sands of Iwo Jima, a series of black-and-white photos of driftwood.

  Nothing behind them.

  There was a built-in bookcase on one side of the room. I felt around the edges, then checked the shelves. I pulled out four or five books at a time, looked, put them back. It was slow going. But I finally got to the last shelf. It held one thick volume that I took out by itself—William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

  It was a good choice because it saved my life.

  The floor creaked behind me. I turned just in time to see a shadow bearing down on me, about to strike.

  I held the Shirer book out like a shield.

  A knife thrust into it.

  The momentum of the attacker pushed me against the shelf. Instinct drove my right elbow into the attacker’s face. A perfect blow. Down he went.

  The knife was sticking out of the book. I tossed it aside.

  I knelt and grabbed the guy by the shirt, pulled him up. I still had my flashlight in my right hand. I lit up the guy’s face.

  His eyes were rolling around. And the eyes belonged to Sammie Sand.

  I set the flashlight on the floor and slapped him.

  He groaned.

  I slapped him again.

  “Who sent you?” I said. “Talk now or it’s gonna be a long—”

  Blam.

  Gunshot, from somewhere in the room. I felt it wham into Sammie Sand’s back.

  I dropped him and dove. Two shots hit the bookshelf.

  I rolled, got up, and ran to where I thought a door was. I remembered correctly. I was in another room. I put my back to the wall just inside the door.

  And waited.

  Listened.

  Looked in the dim for something to use as a weapon.

  “Michael?”

  Ira’s voice!

  “Ira, there’s a shooter!”

  “No, dear boy. The shooter is out here. Out cold.”

  I stepped out of the office and made my way to the front door. Ira was standing there.

  The form was laid out on the front lawn.

  “Had no choice,” Ira said, holding up one of his braces.

  “You came.”

  “I wasn’t about to let you get into trouble. I saw the first one enter, then the second. Then heard the shots. I caught this one in the kisser coming out.”

  “Your timing is exquisite.” I knelt down and, in the soft moonlight, looked at the face of the shooter.

  All breath left me.

  “I didn’t suspect it would be a woman,” Ira said.

  “Not just any woman,” I said. “Her name is Holly Samara.”

  “The DEA agent?”

  “The very same.”

  “Here,” Ira said, holding out a long, plastic zip tie. “Secure her wrists behind her while I call the police.”

  After I tied her up she started to come around. I pulled her to a sitting position.

  It took her a few seconds to realize where she was.

  She winced in pain. Shook her head.

  And then she smiled at me.

  “Hello, Mike,” she said.

  “Holly.”

  “I suppose you’re wondering…”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “We could have been great together,” she said.

  “You were setting me up from the start, from that little meet-cute downtown.”

  “I refuse to answer,” she said.

  “And you recruited Sammie Sand just to take special care of me.”

  “Get me a lawyer.”

  “They’ll catch up with Adrian Hart, you know.”

  “Who is Adrian Hart?” she said with a smirk.

  “Why Holly? Just why?”

  “I’ll see you again, Mike. Someday I’ll see you and we’ll talk.”

  She looked in my eyes with a confidence that sent a chill through me. She said not another word.

  When it was all over—the scene, the cops, the statements—I drove back to Ira’s in my rental. It occurred to me that Holly Samara or Sammie Sand put a tracker on it while I was enjoying matzo ball soup a few hours earlier.

  Ira helped me locate the devic
e with an electronic scanner. He looked at it and said, “Nice workmanship. Not as nice as mine, but it did its job.”

  My mind was still reeling. “I need a beer.”

  We sat in the backyard. The air was cool and the night sky typical of Los Angeles—a few stars visible, the brighter ones blinking like celebrities on a red carpet as the dimmer lights watched from behind the ropes.

  Presently, Ira asked, “Have you made a decision yet?”

  “Decision?”

  “About becoming a monk.”

  I spotted Orion’s Belt in the heavens. “Somehow, I don’t think I’m cut out for the holy life.”

  “So you’re going to stay?”

  “Where would you be without me?” I said.

  “That’s nice to hear,” Ira said. “And, I might add, it’s the other way around, too.”

  I was about to give him a snappy answer, but it caught in my throat.

  “What’s wrong, my good friend?” Ira said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Could be some of that ice ring is melting.”

  “You think?”

  “I only said could be.”

  Ira put his hand on my shoulder. “Thanks for letting me know.” After a beat he added, “Have you thought about telling that to Sophie?”

  I shook my head.

  “Why don't you?” Ira said.

  “I was almost pulled in by her, Ira. Holly, I mean. The deception. She played me like a cheap violin.”

  “It happens,” Ira said.

  “It shouldn't. Not to me.”

  “You are human, Michael. Hate to break it to you.”

  “Maybe Lucretius was right. Love is madness and misery. Beware that you are not entrapped.”

  “You don't believe that.”

  “I don't?”

  “No. Forget Holly. Think about Sophie.”

  “That’s a lot to think about,” I said.

  “When in the history of the world has there not been a lot to think about?”

  “Our curse,” I said.

  “Our opportunity,” Ira said. “Why don’t you take the opportunity and call her?”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “You are one pushy rabbi,” I said.

  “I prefer the word charming,” Ira said. He got up, grabbed his braces, and started for the house.