The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust Book 5)

by Craig Schaefer

  I squeezed the phone until my knuckles turned white.

  “Seven pm,” came Cesar’s response. “Rockahoola.”

  “Rockahoola?” Pixie said. “That’s…not Spanish, I’m pretty sure.”

  I glanced at the time. It was five minutes past eleven. We had just under eight hours to save Jennifer’s life.

  * * *

  “Rock-A-Hoola,” Bentley said, leaning against the counter at the Scrivener’s Nook. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Remember, Cormie? It was called Lake Dolores, back in the day.”

  “Yep,” Corman said. “Stupidest damn thing I ever saw.”

  Bentley looked my way. “It was a water park, just off Interstate 15, between here and Los Angeles.”

  “I-15 goes through the Mojave,” I said.

  “Correct.”

  Pixie squinted at him. “Somebody built a freakin’ water park in the middle of the desert?”

  “That’s what I said the first time I saw it,” Corman told her.

  “It was first built in the fifties,” Bentley said. “Then it closed. Reopened. Closed again. Last time it shut its doors was…ten years ago, perhaps? It’s just a ruin now, sitting dry in the Mojave.”

  “In the middle of nowhere,” I mused. “The perfect place for what they’ve got planned. All right. We’ve got a few hours. Jennifer’s safe until the Outfit’s thugs get there. Which means we need to make sure they don’t get there. Pix, you said any call from this phone will look like it’s coming from Cesar?”

  “As far as the network is concerned, it is coming from him.”

  “I think we need to bring in a little backup,” I said.

  We didn’t just have the Chicago liaison’s number; thanks to Gary putting a scare into Cesar, we had Gabriel’s number too. He answered his phone with a rapid-fire stream of irritated Spanish.

  “Gabriel,” I said, “my name is Daniel Faust. I’m a friend of Jennifer’s. Do not react strongly to anything I say. You may be in danger.”

  No answer for a moment. Then he said, “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Nope,” he replied.

  “We’ve found Jennifer. She’s being held hostage by one of your men. You’ve been betrayed, and it’s possible your own bodyguards are in on it. They’re planning to kill her, and they’re coming for you next.”

  A long stretch of silence. I could hear footsteps and faint thumping bass from a distant room.

  “Aw, man,” he said as casual as if he were discussing the weather. Still, I could hear his voice tighten. “That…that sucks. Real sorry to hear that.”

  “Can we meet, in private? Until this gets sorted out, you can’t trust anybody in your crew.”

  “Yeah, that’s a—that’s an interesting proposal you got there. I’d like to hear more.”

  “Come to Our Lady of Consolation in half an hour,” I said. “I’ll be in a pew on the right-hand side of the church, alone and unarmed.”

  “Yeah, a’ight. Sounds good.”

  He hung up the phone.

  “Alone and unarmed?” Caitlin frowned at me.

  “For all he knows, I’m leading him into a trap. He’d be dumb not to be wary.”

  “Well,” she said, “he certainly won’t notice the woman sitting by herself in the back of the church, keeping an eye on you. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  I didn’t know why I’d picked Our Lady of Consolation when I needed a spur-of-the-moment meeting spot. It wasn’t odd to hold a low-profile meeting in a church—I’d done it once or twice myself—but that particular church had history for me. That was where I’d met a priest named Alvarez, a man hunted by feral half-demons.

  Turned out Father Alvarez, who I risked my neck and my home to protect, was a spy working for the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. I was normally a good judge of character, but that was not one of my shining moments.

  Nothing had changed since the last time I set foot inside. Same old weathered and splintered pews, same anemic wreaths and shimmering votive candles in dusty red glass. Desolate, except for an elderly man with a bad comb-over slumped in the last pew, snoring loud as a vacuum cleaner. And Caitlin sitting across from him, waiting patiently, a trapdoor spider.

  I took a seat right up front and waited.

  I shifted in the pew. Rapped my fingers on my knee. Checked Cesar’s phone for the fiftieth time. I picked up a hymnal and leafed through it, though I wasn’t sure why. There were beautiful words inside, words of comfort and hope, but they weren’t written for me. I felt like a trespasser, so I closed the book and put it back.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gabriel kneel down, cross himself, and slide into the pew behind me. He was hard to miss, built like a linebacker after a three-steak meal, with a sculpted and pencil-thin goatee.

  “I know your name,” he said softly, leaning forward in his seat. His voice didn’t match his girth; it was high-pitched, smooth, almost musical. “JJ’s talked about you.”

  “All good things, I hope.”

  “Says you’re solid, but I dunno. You talked some crazy shit back there. And why’s my caller ID say you’ve got Cesar’s phone?”

  “Magic,” I said. “And Cesar’s the one to watch. He stabbed you in the back. He ambushed Jennifer, and once he gets every last bit of info out of her—her grow houses, her bank account codes—he’s going to kill her. Then he’ll be gunning for your head.”

  “You got proof?”

  I showed him the phone, calling up the texts from the Chicago liaison. Even as I did it, I knew what what his answer would be.

  “Pretty flimsy, ese. Doesn’t even say her name. That could be about anyone.”

  “Look, this guy he’s texting with? He’s representing Chicago. The mob wants to muscle in on Vegas, and they made Cesar an offer. He’s gonna take his boys and jump ship.”

  Gabriel folded his thick arms.

  “Anybody can tell a story.”

  I was losing him. I needed to take a chance. While he watched, I tapped out a new message, directing it at the Chicago contact.

  “After we ice JJ,” I wrote, “might need help taking down Gabriel. Can you lend some firepower?”

  The answer came back in thirty seconds.

  “We’ll discuss it at the meet. Not on the phone, please.”

  Storm clouds brewed behind Gabriel’s eyes as he leaned forward in his pew, reading over my shoulder.

  “When’s this all supposed to go down?” he asked.

  “Tonight at seven.”

  “Hold on.”

  He took out his own phone and launched into fast Spanish patter, pausing now and again. Asking questions. And from the way his eyes narrowed, he wasn’t liking the answers.

  “Well,” he said, hanging up. “What do ya know. I just asked some of the guys if they wanna hang out tonight, around seven. Turns out Cesar has stuff to do. So do about five other guys. Everybody’s got stuff to do.”

  “They’re meeting in the desert, about two hours along I-15. That means they’ll have to leave by five.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “So,” I said, “at a quarter after five, call your entire set. Anybody who shows up is still loyal to you.”

  “And anybody else,” he muttered, frowning, “anybody out in the desert, like that backstabber Cesar, is gonna get buried out there. I think we’re all gonna have to take a nice drive and see what’s what. Drop in on our homies unexpected.”

  “Take it easy,” I told him. “They’ve got Jennifer, and if you go in hard, they might kill her.”

  “You got a better solution?”

  “I might.” I turned the phone over in my palm, weighing it along with my options. “Can we work together on this? Give me a chance to get her out safe before you curb-stomp these guys?”

  “Hey, she’s a friend of mine too. If you got any ideas for getting her back in one piece, I’m down. Just say when and where I gotta be.”

  He reached his hand over the pew. I
half turned, and we shook on it. His grip felt like granite.

  “So what about these fools from Chicago?” he added.

  “We need to take them out before they get to the meet. Fewer bodies and less guns in the mix that way.”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “You know where they’re at?” he asked. “If you’ve got an address, let’s ride. I’ll round up some soldiers and we’ll light their asses up.”

  Tempting, but brute force didn’t feel like the right play. This was our chance to send a serious message back to the Outfit, letting them know we were ready to dance. Bullet-riddled bodies were a message, all right, but they were also easy. There had to be a way to outclass them, to show we had more than guns on our side.

  “I’ll take care of that part,” I told Gabriel, an idea forming. “Just one thing…can you get me some pot, real fast?”

  He patted his shirt pocket. “Sure, like what, a dime bag?”

  “Oh,” I said, “I need a little more than that.”

  46.

  “Problem,” I texted the Outfit contact, “Rockahoola is hot, cops sniffing around. Gotta move the meet.”

  “When and where?” came the reply.

  I put some thought into that. Nicky Agnelli owned a half-built and vacant subdivision out in Eldorado, in North Vegas. Eventually he’d been planning to flip the lots and make a bundle on legitimate real estate, but for the time being he mostly used the display homes as kill-houses and body dumps.

  Someday, some suburban pioneer was going to dig out a swimming pool in the wrong spot and unearth a whole bunch of nasty secrets.

  “Eldorado,” I typed and gave him the address. “Let’s do this ASAP, don’t wanna wait until tonight.”

  “On our way,” he replied.

  Two model homes stood at the tail end of the subdivision, gathering dust in the autumn heat. Caitlin and I crouched on pristine carpet the color of desert sand, watching through the window in an empty living room.

  A black Mercedes with tinted windows and Illinois plates rolled up slow. It pulled into the driveway across the street.

  Four men got out of the car. I couldn’t tell which one was supposed to be the “Doctor.” I knew muscle when I saw it though, all hard eyes and bulges under their tailored pinstripe jackets. They marched up the walk and the man in the lead, a wispy blond, rapped his knuckles on the front door.

  It swung open under his fist.

  Terse conversation. Two of them drew pistols, holding their guns close to their chests as they peered inside. The blond took out his phone and sent a quick text.

  “Where are you?” flashed across my phone.

  “I’ve got her in the basement,” I replied. “Come on in when you get here, I can’t hear the front door from down here.”

  Across the street, the blond shrugged and tucked his phone back in his jacket pocket. He followed the others inside and shut the door behind him.

  That was my cue. I bolted out the front door just as Bentley’s silver Cadillac rumbled down the street. As I ran past his open window, he passed me a pair of latex gloves, a rubber doorstop, and a long, slender metal rod with a cherry-red tip. I felt like an Olympic sprinter in a baton race as I ran up on the Mercedes, keeping low and watching the house. I’d have five minutes—maybe—to get this done, and no room for mistakes.

  I tugged on the gloves and studied the driver’s-side door, thinking fast. The sedan was an older model, but it came standard with automatic locks. I could work with that. I jammed the thin end of the doorstop into the top of the door, rocking it back and forth, working it into place one centimeter at a time. The door bulged, buckling on its frame. After a minute of work I’d opened a hair-thin crack.

  Next step, the metal rod. I slid it through the opening, biting my bottom lip as I fumbled the tip back and forth, feeling for the lock-release button. A new wave of nausea hit and I fought through it, struggling to keep my focus. After three near misses, and a harrowing second where the rod nearly slipped from my fingers, the lock released with a gratifying click.

  I let myself in and pulled the release for the rear trunk. Bentley and Corman were already on the move behind me. They had the Caddy’s trunk open too, and they were busy unloading half of Gabriel’s present: two thick bales of marijuana, pressed into fat bricks and sealed in plastic wrap. We loaded the goods into the Mercedes’s trunk and shut the lid.

  I passed the break-in tools to Corman and waved them off. They jumped back into the Cadillac and pulled a U-turn while I sprinted back across the street and into the other model home. I met up with Caitlin in the living room, hunkering down behind the plate-glass window, just in time to hear the sirens.

  Fifteen minutes ago, I’d made a quick call to Gary.

  “This is a friendly anonymous tip,” I told him. “I just saw a bunch of guys, probably carrying unlicensed firearms, making a drug deal in an empty model house out in Eldorado.”

  “Is that so?” he said.

  “Yeah. You should probably check their trunk. And you might find another twenty or thirty pounds of pot down in the basement, too. Move fast.”

  Fun fact: getting caught with that much marijuana constitutes the intent to distribute, which moves the crime from a minor misdemeanor to a class-five felony.

  The Outfit thugs figured out what was up, about thirty seconds too late. They bolted out the front door just as four squad cars came screaming up the street, screeching to a stop outside the model house. The thugs froze, grabbing air as their guns clattered to the sidewalk.

  “As frame jobs go,” I said to Caitlin, “this was pretty quick and dirty. Charges might or might not stick, and in any case I can guarantee they’ll be bonded out by morning.”

  She frowned at me. “Then why do it? Why not just kill them?”

  I watched as the wispy blond went down hard against the hood of one cruiser, his hands wrenched behind his back as the cuffs slapped on. I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Beyond the satisfaction of doing unto others as was done unto to me? It’s all about sending a message. Chicago thinks that with Nicky gone, the Vegas underworld’s in chaos.”

  “It is.”

  “Yeah, but four of their boys just got set up and rolled by Vegas’s finest. It’s gonna look like we’ve got the cops in our pocket.”

  “Making the city appear to be a harder target than it really is,” Caitlin said, putting it together. “Or that perhaps Nicky isn’t really missing after all.”

  “And hopefully providing food for thought.” Across the street, the cops popped the Mercedes’s trunk, one holding up a brick of pot like it was a hunting trophy. “That thought ideally being, ‘Let’s find a different city to pick on.’”

  “Do you think they will?”

  My shoulders sagged. “Realistically? No. This war is coming. Doesn’t mean we have to make it easy for ’em, though, and the more misinformation and confusion we can hit them with, the better.”

  Eventually the cops finished their search, bundled the thugs into backseats, and headed out. As the last cruiser rumbled down the street, I gave a salute through the window.

  “Happy birthday, Detective Kemper,” I said. “Enjoy your cake.”

  Caitlin glanced down at the slim platinum Chanel watch on her wrist. “Four o’clock, pet. Cesar will be expecting that delegation’s arrival in three hours.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. Let’s head back to the Nook and rally the troops.”

  The Mercedes sat abandoned across the street, waiting for a police tow to haul it to the impound lot.

  “But first,” I said, “give me a hand. I want those license plates.”

  * * *

  Pixie had aerial maps of Rock-a-Hoola up on her laptop screen. As we walked into the bookstore, the door chime jingling, she and Margaux were shaking their heads at each other.

  “You’re right,” Margaux said, “there’s no way.”

  “There’s always a way,” I replied, locking the door behind us. “But what spe
cific impossibility are we talking about?”

  “Getting in there without getting, well, shot.” Pixie turned her laptop to show me the screen, gesturing with the cap of a pen. “Look: the way in from every direction is completely open. No cover, no way to sneak in. If they put sentries here, here, and especially here, up on top of this old water slide, they can cover every possible approach to the park.”

  “We do have the Calles on our side now,” Bentley said, emerging from the back room with Corman in tow. “And that Gabriel gentleman sounded quite eager to settle scores. If we let them attack first and supplement their firepower with a bit of subtle magic…”

  “And then Cesar shoots Jennifer.” I held up an open hand. In my other, I cradled the two license plates we’d stolen off the Mercedes. “No. The bullets don’t start flying until after she’s secure.”

  “But we can’t get to her,” Margaux said.

  “I’ve been thinking about that.” I showed them the Illinois plates. “Look, I’ve only been to Jennifer’s fortress once. So the Calles might know my name, but only a few of them have ever seen me, and they’ve got no reason to remember my face. And I know Cesar doesn’t know me.”

  Corman’s brow furrowed. “I don’t like where you’re going with this, kiddo.”

  “They’re expecting the mob’s torture specialist to show up, and they’ve got no idea the guy just got busted. If I roll in and take his place, they’ll lead me straight to Jennifer. All I have to do is take out Cesar and anybody standing watch and set her loose. The two of us can hunker down and hold out while Gabriel and the Calles blitz the park.”

  Caitlin curled her lip. “When the doctor told you ‘no unnecessary physical activity,’ which of those words was unclear?”

  “It’s the definition of necessary. Look. Margaux, Bentley, Corman—you’re the best at what you do, but this isn’t what you do. The only person here more qualified than me for this job is Caitlin, and she can’t do it either.”

  She put a hand on her hip. “And why not?”

  “Because the Outfit is old-school organized crime, and old school means all the macho bullshit that goes with it. Unlike Nicky’s organization, they don’t hire women, period. No chance Cesar would believe you. Me, though? I can waltz right in.”