The Holdouts (Buddy Lock Thrillers Book 2)

by James Tucker

  Buddy leaned closer. “Holdouts? How many?”

  As he thought about that particular building, Lin Wong’s eyes narrowed slightly. Then he said, “Three at Nanjing. One of them my friend. He ran a jewelry shop around the corner that’s become an ice cream store. Everybody knew him. He was head of our neighborhood business association. My friend keeps telling me the developer is pressuring him to sell, but he and his wife won’t do it. And why should they? Their place on the third floor is big. They raised their children there. And they like the neighborhood, although Chinatown is changing, becoming like everywhere else.” Studying Buddy’s face and clothing, Lin Wong asked, “Where do you live?”

  Buddy said, “Upper East Side. My fiancée has a place there.”

  The man nodded, but his face showed disbelief. He flicked at his sleeve, as if a speck of dust had fallen on it.

  Buddy asked, “Could you tell me where your friend and his wife are?”

  Lin Wong shrugged. “I haven’t seen him in a few days. Or her. But I heard they gave in, signed the papers after all.” He shook his head and added, “Very strange, since he told me they’d never sell. Not now. He told me they’d sell in ten years and give their children even more money.”

  Buddy had two thoughts. He’d deal with the second one first. He said, “How old are the children?”

  “I don’t know. There are two sons and a daughter, I think. One involved in television. The others . . . I don’t remember.”

  Buddy felt his pulse jump. He pulled out the small notebook and pen he carried with him everywhere. He said, “Would you give me the name of your friend? And his wife?”

  Lin Wong considered the request. He looked away from Buddy, through the glass wall at the suite of pristine offices—his fiefdom, the generator of money for his own family.

  Buddy listened to the older man’s breath but didn’t push him. He remained unmoving in the uncomfortable chair.

  At last, Lin Wong turned to him and said, “My friend is Chen Sung. His wife is Lily.”

  Buddy recalled the inscription in the engagement ring worn by the Jane Doe found off Long Island. He wrote quickly and was ready with the next question. “What about the third holdout? Do you know his name?”

  “No,” Lin Wong said, “I don’t know the name. It’s a young woman from California—Los Angeles, I think. Chen told me that several years ago she inherited her apartment in the Nanjing building from her grandmother. She’s rich and won’t leave for any price. She’ll take them all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. But you can see the sign across the street for Haddon House. The developer must think she’ll sign the papers. Maybe they’re putting pressure on her just as they did on Chen and Lily.”

  Buddy said, “What kind of pressure?”

  Lin Wong put his hands together. “I don’t know. But I guess it worked.”

  35

  Ben trusted his school friends and the text messages he received from them. Even after three weeks at Vista, he felt that they’d accepted him. Like most kids his age, they texted back and forth, before and during and after class, without paying much attention to who was who. It was their separate world, hidden from adults.

  In the afternoon, he attended his social studies class remotely. He sat at the table in the great room in the house on the bluff. Staring at his computer screen, he watched and listened to his teacher. To his left was the social studies textbook, open to a page about the Transcontinental Railroad.

  Now and then he glanced over his laptop screen at Mei. She was on the sofa, reading a magazine, sipping a cup of coffee.

  Boring. This was a text from Alan Blackman, one of his friends. Since he’d paired his new watch with his phone and his laptop, the texts appeared on all three devices.

  Yep, he replied, typing into a text box on the laptop screen, although he liked trains and wished he’d lived in the time when the frontier existed and the country was still being settled. He liked the idea of getting away, going somewhere nobody knew his name. He could take Buddy’s last name. He could become Ben Lock, and nobody would connect him to his family’s past.

  This idea thrilled him. He was about to ask Mei if he could change his name, when a chime sounded through his headphones.

  He read the new text.

  Dude, where r u? She asked about u.

  Ben hunched forward and typed: Vanessa?

  U r right.

  Ben flushed. Vanessa Knight was the prettiest girl in the fourth grade at Vista School. So that Mei didn’t notice he was ignoring his class, he turned off the sound notification for texts on the devices but left on the watch’s haptic tap feature. Each time he received a text, the watch tapped his wrist. He typed: Paris.

  Really?

  He smiled and typed: Jamaica.

  BS

  Africa

  Nah

  Ben typed: New York.

  Then y not in class?

  Ben typed: In the country.

  Town?

  Rockridge.

  Ur house?

  Mei’s friend owns it. I get to watch Netflix.

  He waited for a response. When none came, he typed: What did Vanessa say?

  Still no response.

  He closed the laptop and looked out the windows.

  The snow had stopped, but the sky remained gray.

  36

  Buddy stood inside the door of the real estate office and scanned the street for Ponytail and Rat Eyes. Careful to obscure his movements from the receptionist, he pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster and put it in the right side pocket of his overcoat.

  His hand gripping the stock, he pushed open the door with his left hand and walked out onto the sidewalk. He checked left and right.

  Seeing nothing, he returned to the Charger he’d left on Mott Street. As he walked, it seemed at first that little had changed. The sidewalks were busier and, despite the cold, the shops had filled with customers, and all kinds of people were entering the restaurants. And yet everything was different. When he glanced above the roofs of the old buildings, he saw several condominium towers. They didn’t seem like an improvement to him, they seemed menacing. He wondered if their foundations were built on the bones of murder victims.

  Once inside the Charger, he fired it up, locked the doors, and put the Glock into his shoulder holster. He thought for a moment, took out his phone, and texted Ward: Injuries show Long Island couple jumped or were pushed off bridge.

  Then he put the car in drive and headed north toward home. Using his right thumb, he dialed a number on his phone and switched on the speaker feature. As he listened to the line ring, he focused on Broadway, clogged as usual in the middle of the day.

  The line clicked. “Mingo.”

  “Mario, it’s Buddy. Would you run a Chen Sung and Lily Sung through the system?”

  “No problem. Anything else?”

  “Not now, thanks,” Buddy said, ending the call. He was thinking about what Henry Lee had told him, and about what Lin Wong had said about holdouts at the Nanjing building. As Broadway became Park Avenue South, the traffic opened up. He switched on WBGO and listened to some new jazz. He didn’t recognize the artist or who was playing in the trio, but they worked tightly, improvising but keeping the forward motion of the piece. He liked that about it and turned up the volume. As he made his way north on Park, passing Twenty-First Street, he glanced out his window.

  He saw banks, a FedEx store, a CVS, to his left the Health & Racquet Club, to his right Saint George’s Gothic façade in dusty red limestone. New Yorkers and tourists filled the sidewalks, bundled up in heavy winter coats and jackets, boots and scarves plain and outlandish. Others had their parka hoods pulled up over their heads. Some wore expensive wool or cashmere overcoats and gloves, their heads hatless and their faces pink in the gray afternoon. Ahead were the lights of the intersection at Park and Twenty-Third. In that moment, he also noticed the headlights of a large SUV speeding toward the intersection from Twenty-Third Street.


  The SUV flew toward him at about forty miles per hour. It didn’t halt or swerve. It kept coming, shooting into the intersection straight toward Buddy’s car.

  He didn’t react. He didn’t lean away from the headlights. He had no time to do anything except begin to turn his head to the right.

  He didn’t hear the smash of steel against steel.

  Or feel the impact of two and a half tons crushing the Charger.

  His eyes closed. He stopped breathing.

  37

  After dinner, Mei and Ben decided that getting out of the house was worth the risk. Not wanting to spend all day and all evening in the small house, they once again climbed into the Audi.

  They drove down into Rockridge, parked on Main Street, and walked up one side of the street, crossed to the other side, and walked back down.

  They tried the door of the coffee shop and bakery, but it was locked. Ben peered inside, his breath fogging the windowpane. They passed a bar that was open, then came to a theater that was showing the latest Star Wars movie.

  Ben looked up at Mei. “Can we see it?”

  She had no interest in Star Wars. Not usually. But tonight she decided she could use an escape. “Sure,” she said, and held open the door.

  Inside the theater, they walked down the sloped floor to a row halfway to the screen. The house lights were bright, and the previews hadn’t begun. As they sat down, Mei glanced around the theater. About thirty or forty people were there, all watching them as if they were insects under glass.

  Sliding down into her seat, she turned to Ben. Yet she saw only the back of his head, only the dark hair that was definitely too long. She made a mental note to schedule a haircut for him when they returned to the city. Her eyes traveled beyond him. In their row, not more than five seats away, sat a young couple. High school kids who were watching them. Mei stared at them for a few seconds until they looked away. And then the lights went down.

  Ben seemed to like the movie. Mei thought it might be too violent for him, but given all he’d endured the past month, it was a tame fantasy. More importantly, he enjoyed the escape, and so did she. This was the thing about children, she’d learned. You do something for them, and it ends up being good for you.

  Later they drove up the bluff toward the small house. At the driveway’s steepest point, she stomped on the brakes.

  The Audi dug into the pavement, coming to a rapid halt, the seat belts holding Mei and Ben in place.

  In the headlights ten yards in front of the car stood a coyote. The animal was the size of a medium-sized dog, with pointed ears, a narrow snout, thick body, and fur that was gray and black along its back and rust-colored farther down until becoming light gray at its belly. The coyote stared into the headlights, seemingly confident and unafraid, its breath rising wraithlike around its head.

  Mei and Ben sat in silence.

  She thought they should have been more like the coyote when they were observed at the movie theater. Not caring that others watched them. But this was a wild animal, a predator.

  Ben lowered the passenger window. “Go away!” he shouted, motioning with his right arm. “Get out of here!”

  The coyote’s ears twitched. Then it turned its head and trotted off the drive and into the trees to the west.

  Mei let up on the brakes and pushed on the accelerator. The car shot forward up the hill. As she steered to the patch of asphalt by the front door, she realized she was shivering.

  38

  Buddy lay facedown. His head hurt like hell. Something was pulling at him. Something hard. At his stomach, shoulder, chest, and side. With some difficulty, he brought air into his lungs. The air burned hot.

  He opened his eyes.

  He was looking up at the Charger’s roof. He moved his eyes right and left. To his left the car door pushed against his shoulder, elbow, hip, and leg. Parts of the door and seat were crumpled against him like an accordion. Part of the window, too, its fragments spilling into the car like shattered ice.

  He realized the thing pulling at his shoulder, side, and stomach was the seat belt. He was hanging upside down, trussed up like a deer.

  Now he remembered. The SUV coming fast through the intersection toward him.

  He jerked his head left, so he could look out at the upside-down pavement. He saw the SUV. Twenty feet away, its chrome grill and front bumper were bashed in. But it was upright. Its headlights were blazing at the Charger, at him.

  Shit.

  He knew he needed to move. He guessed the driver of the SUV was unhurt and mobile.

  Shit!

  Buddy shifted his body. Nothing seemed to be broken, but he was woozy. He had a vivid headache that threatened a complete mental shutdown. He thought he might pass out. But he knew he had to act now.

  He reached down to the Charger’s roof and pushed on it to ease the weight on the seat belt. With his right hand, he pressed the seat belt release.

  It was jammed.

  He tried again. And again.

  On the fourth try, the latch came out. He fell to the roof of the Charger, landing on his left shoulder.

  Jesus. That hurt.

  He pivoted and lay sideways. He pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster and scanned the pavement around the car.

  To his right he saw a set of feet approaching. To his left, from the direction of the SUV, a second set of feet, these in black boots. He again looked right. He tried to make out the shoes. These were nearer. Black shoes. He aimed the Glock.

  The feet grew closer.

  He got ready to fire, and saw the shoes were loafers.

  Not dangerous, he decided.

  Swiveling left, he saw the boots were approaching too slowly, too carefully. Now the feet stopped. At some risk to himself, he pushed his head—just a little—toward the space where the car window had been.

  With the SUV’s headlights in his eyes, his vision was blurry, but he could see the faint outline of a man who wore dark clothes and large boots and held a gun in his right hand. The man’s stance widened as he raised the gun.

  Buddy was faster. He shot at the man’s chest but knew the bullet had gone low.

  Two rounds.

  The man shouted in pain and collapsed onto the asphalt and stared at Buddy, who was lying sideways on the overturned roof of the Charger.

  Now Buddy could see the man wore a black mask over his face. Buddy took a breath and gulped at air. He felt his consciousness slipping away, so he bit his tongue until he tasted blood. He raised the Glock and tried to aim.

  The man he’d shot crawled and slithered hurriedly behind the SUV’s left rear tire. Buddy had no shot. He saw the driver’s side door open and the man climb inside. He heard the door slam.

  The SUV backed up.

  Shit, Buddy thought. He’s going to ram me again.

  Yet the SUV continued in reverse. Five feet. Ten. Fifteen. Threading between the stopped traffic. The SUV’s headlights washed over Buddy lying in the overturned Charger before the SUV sped away, heading uptown, fast.

  Buddy rested his head on the roof and blacked out.

  39

  Buddy woke, opened his eyes, closed them again.

  A brutal pain throbbed above his left ear. He breathed deeply and again opened his eyes.

  He lay in a hospital bed, the end of an IV tube taped to the back of his right hand. A blanket on the chair to the side of the bed read Bellevue Hospital.

  His left wrist throbbed, though not as badly as his head. He moved his hand sideways, flexing his fingers as if he were playing octaves on the piano. The pain was bad. His movement was restricted. He wondered if he’d be able to play the piano as well as he had in the past.

  Goddammit.

  He shifted his weight in the bed. Nothing was broken, he determined. But the main problem was his head. Emanating from the area above his left ear was an overwhelming ache unlike anything he’d experienced.

  Blinking away the faint nausea and the urge to curl into a ball, he looked around the room and t
hrough the partially open door. He saw people coming and going. The ICU was supposed to be secure, but he knew it wasn’t. He doubted the access would keep out a hit man. Nobody, he realized, could protect him here. He was a sitting duck.

  A nurse with a name tag that read “Juan” entered the room, gave him a quick once-over, and checked the monitors next to the bed. Juan asked, “Any dizziness or disorientation?”

  “No.”

  “Feeling okay?”

  Buddy stifled a laugh. Laughing would hurt more than coughing or even breathing. He said, “Never better.”

  Juan adjusted the IV drip and began to leave.

  “How long?” Buddy asked. “How long do I have to stay here?”

  Juan turned to face him. “You’ve been in a major accident, Detective Lock. You’ve got a concussion and a bruised rib, and you need to be under observation.”

  “But for how long?” Buddy pressed.

  Juan raised his eyebrows. “You’ve been here for only two hours.”

  Buddy thought: Juan doesn’t know that people have tried to kill me today. He said, “How long?”

  Juan shrugged, said “Ask one of the doctors,” and left the room.

  Buddy hated not knowing. Hated sitting here like a turkey on a platter, ready for someone to carve up.

  That image convinced him.

  He wouldn’t stay here waiting for his attackers. They had resources and possible connections to the NYPD. They were everywhere and they were ruthless.

  He swiveled his legs around, pulled the IV out of his wrist, yanked the blood pressure and pulse monitors from his arm and right forefinger, and stood.

  The monitors next to the bed emitted loud beeps and something resembling a siren.

  At the same time, he put a hand on the mattress to steady himself. Dizziness and nausea swept over him.

  Christ.

  But instead of climbing back into bed, he went slowly over to the chair, removed the hospital gown, and began putting on his suit and overcoat. He found his wallet and the medallion in a plastic bag on a hook.