by Ryan Stygar
“They shot two witnesses,” Ramirez protested, pointing to the two dead Russians being investigated by Wyatt’s entourage. “Then they shot at us. I had no choice.”
Wyatt pursed his lips into a frown and curled a single finger in a ‘come hither’ motion. Ramirez joined him and in silence they walked several yards away from the subordinate officers. That didn’t stop them from hearing every word of the apoplectic tirade Wyatt spewed. His face burned bright red, he stamped his feet, he screamed and cursed and swore that he ought to have Adrian Ramirez expelled from the force.
Ramirez took abuse like a rock. Wyatt ranted on without taking a moment to breathe. He swore that a sergeant should know better than to provoke the Sumatras; that Ramirez endangered not only his own officers but every member of the LVMPD. He accused Ramirez of being a foolhardy, glory-mongering, trigger-happy bastard. He loudly questioned Ramirez’s mental competence and his fitness to be a sergeant in the LVMPD.
All the officers fell silent at the sight of the Sheriff laying into Ramirez like that. Ramirez said nothing, his military bearing holding firm. When he was dismissed he simply bowed his head and returned to his officers in silence.
Sheriff Wyatt stormed off to confer with his own men, screaming “Where is it? Where the hell is it?” even as they held out empty palms. Furious, Wyatt spat yet another string of curses directed at Sergeant Ramirez and retired to his Suburban.
A long, uncomfortable silence followed. Finally, it was Garrison who spoke first. “He’s wrong about you, Sarge. You didn’t deserve that,”
“It’s not over,” Ramirez said, ignoring him. “Those bastards just killed two men right in front of us. And they even had the balls to shoot two uniformed police officers. It’s not over,”
Ramirez rubbed his tired eyes and walked away. “It’s not over,”
Jacob’s driver was speeding toward the Sumatra using surface streets to avoid being tailed. Up ahead, the amber-gold, S-shaped tower of the Sumatra Hotel loomed over the Vegas skyline. Jacob massaged his temples and turned to the men who were counting out the money in the backseat.
“How much is there?”
He received a grim look from the men behind him. “We’re short by over half.”
“Dammit,” Jacob cursed. “Mr. Jordan’s not going to be happy about that. You’re sure the police didn’t have the rest?”
“Positive,” one of them answered. “We searched their vehicles; if they were hiding something then it has to be someplace else.”
“No…” Jacob said, leaning back in his seat and looking out toward the Sumatra. “I think they were telling the truth. Whoever has the rest of the stuff, it’s not them.”
“What do you want to do?” the driver asked.
“Retribution,” Jacob answered. “Those assholes killed two of our guys. I don’t care who they are, they need to feel the weight of what they’ve just done,”
“What about the book? Mr. Jordan said –
“We’ll worry about the book after we settle the score with the police,” Jacob interrupted. “Sumatras are off-limits, they ought to know that.”
His phone rang and he picked up. “Hello?”
“We have the name and address of that sergeant,” Watson’s voice said from the other end of the line.
“Nice work. Early tomorrow morning I want you and four of your guys to pay that cop a visit. I’ll provide the hardware.”
13
Adam’s Truck, 3:00pm
A dam looked at his watch again and groaned. The deadline to call Joe expired hours ago, which meant that the mysterious Russian gangster was undoubtedly hunting for him. An unsettling chill trickled down his spine.
He couldn’t just cut and run, not until he could figure out how to take care of his daughter first. Hiding made the most sense in the short term, especially since he was likely to be a person of interest for the LVMPD by now.
He was scheduled to work that afternoon. At first he was convinced he’d bail but then he had another idea. Joe was much less likely to try hurting him if he was in public, so work would be a safe place. Also, any unannounced absences would likely draw unwanted attention from his boss, which was the last thing he needed while trying to get away with murder. He figured he would just leave now and get there early, what else could he do?
He fumbled about in the enclosed cab of his little truck to piece together the components of his spare work uniform. Khaki slacks? Check. White button up shirt and khaki vest? Check. Nametag?
Son of a bitch. He burned it. Just like Joe’s card. The whole situation just kept getting better by the minute.
Cursing himself all along the way, Adam Friend drove his beat little truck down the glamorous Strip and parked in the garage under the Sumatra Hotel and Casino. Adam had worked in the concrete labyrinth beneath the Sumatra for nearly four years without a raise or promotion, but the tips were enough to help him scrape by while he took care of his daughter.
The walk to the valet room felt like the longest of his life. Every few steps, Adam peaked over his shoulder to see if any homicide detectives were closing in on him. He tried not to think about what life in prison might be like as he made his way to the employee lounge and swiped his time card.
The lounge was a small place; only three or four plastic chairs surrounded an old card table at the center of the white linoleum kitchen which contained an old refrigerator and a coffee pot. Adam was happy to see that Vince, his childhood friend and favorite co-worker, was already there. A little conversation was what he needed to get his mind off last night’s events.
Adam greeted him and reached into the fridge for a soda.
“Hey what’s up man?” Vince replied, his face buried in a fitness magazine.
“You want a Coke?” Adam offered.
“Sure I’ll take a … whoa!” Vince dropped his magazine at the sight of Adam’s bruises. “What happened to your face man?”
“It’s nothing.”
“That isn’t nothing, what happened to you?”
After a moment Adam made a scandalous grin. “Your mother likes it rough, Vince.”
Vince laughed and shook his head. “You’re such a smart ass.” Vince and Adam had always gotten a kick out of teasing each other, and the two had been close friends since elementary school.
“How’s Lily doing?”
Adam shrugged. “She’s ok. The caretakers say she’s socializing normally with the other kids, but she’s still underweight. She has a nice place at St. Judith’s for now but these bills are killing me.”
“I’m sorry, Adam. I’m praying for you.”
Vince was a gentle giant. Standing at an even six feet and packed with rock-solid muscle, he liked to think of himself as an amateur bodybuilder. Vince was Adam’s number one cheerleader. While Adam tried to figure out how to be a single father on a shoe-string budget, Vince was always there to offer a helping hand or a shoulder to cry on. When the bills piled up, Vince did everything in his limited power to help Adam stay afloat. He even offered Adam and his little girl a place to live – rent free. But Adam insisted it was a kindness he could never repay, so he refused it every time.
Vince cracked open his soda and took a sip. “Seriously, what happened to you?” he asked. “You look like someone worked you over with a wrench or something.”
Adam forced a sigh. “I… uh, got jumped by a bum on my way home last night,” he said. “Really dirty guy… came outta nowhere.”
“Geez there’s a lot of creeps out there,” Vince said with a look of grave concern. “I’m glad you’re ok. He didn’t make off with anything did he?”
“No… no he didn’t take anything. Roughed me up a bit but he took off when I fought back.”
“Thank God he didn’t have a gun or something! Be careful where you walk at night Adam,” Vince broke eye contact and pointed to the noticeably bare portion of Adam’s vest where a nametag should have gone. “Speaking of getting jumped, Keith is gonna flip when he sees tha
t.”
“Yeah,” Adam gulped down the rest of his soda. “God forbid I do anything to upset our fearless leader.”
“Honestly he would probably have a lot more friends around here if he just let things go once in a while,” Vince suggested.
Adam laughed. “You know what? He’s already let himself go; he might as well just let everything else go too.”
Vince’s eyes lit up at the joke but then immediately shot to the floor. Adam could sense someone standing behind him. “Shit,” he said under his breath.
“How about I just let you go, Mr. Friend?”
Keith’s shrill voice was enough to make Adam cringe. Adam opened his mouth to recover but Keith held up a pudgy pink hand and pushed past him. “Save it! You can make up for your insubordination by getting your ass outside, or I’ll have no choice but to write you a scathing demerit.”
“A scathing demerit?” Adam chuckled. “I didn’t realize this was the army, Keith.”
“Beg your pardon?!” Keith’s beet-red face swelled up. His beady eyes shot to Adam’s bare vest and he scowled hard at him.
“Where is your nametag?”
Adam rolled his eyes. “If I knew where it was, I‘d be wearing it. I probably left it in the laundromat,”
“You’re lucky I’m short-staffed tonight! I’m writing a demerit for your improper uniform and placing it in your file! Now get out of here!”
Keith turned his wide, red face and glared at Vince. “You too, Vincent. I’d better not catch you in here till mid-shift.”
Adam couldn’t help laughing to himself. Here he was getting barked at by a fat kid with an ego problem while a bag filled with two million dollars was sitting in the cab of his truck. It was kind of funny when he thought about it, but until he had a plan for how to make a clean getaway, nothing made sense except to just continue his normal routine.
The friends quietly shuffled out of the breakroom. When the door closed behind them, they immediately resumed jeering at their obnoxious boss.
“Always a pleasure right?” Vince said, taking out his stud earrings and placing them in his vest pocket. Vince had sandy blonde hair that he kept deliberately messy, or at least as messy as Keith would allow it to get. He had the look of a muscular surf-bum that girls seemed to delight in, but his best quality was that he had a big heart to go with his big muscles. Vince hit the gym twice a day, and although he admitted to using steroids to get the extra edge, he always stayed humble and jumped at the chance to help people get in shape.
The friends stood side-by-side at their valet post and chatted idly while they waited for the evening rush to pick up.
After an hour, Adam pointed to a black Escalade that was awkwardly lurching toward them. From outside he could see the beleaguered driver was alternating his attention between the road and some kind of raucous going on in the seats behind him.
“Keith can be a real pain in the ass,” Adam observed, “But I doubt he’s worse than what’s about to come out of that SUV.”
Right on cue, the doors flew open and a gaggle of squawking middle-aged women wobbled out on perilously unstable six inch heels. The drunkest and loudest of the bunch was wearing a tiara and a white sash with the words Birthday Bitch bedazzled on it.
Keys flew toward them and Vince instinctively caught them before they collided with Adam’s face. “Thank you,” Adam mouthed to his savior. The “Birthday Bitch” stumbled up to Adam and planted a sloppy kiss on his cheek. “You uh… much handsome guy,” she slurred. “Happy burffday,” she slapped a soaking-wet five dollar bill against his vest and wobbled into the hotel.
“They aren’t gonna make it past sunset at that pace,” Vince observed pitifully. Adam was visibly grossed out by the dripping wet bill as he held it out between his thumb and fingertip.
“You want five bucks?”
Vince chuckled and shook his head no.
14
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters
“I ’ll let him know. Yes, thank you doctor, thank you very much,” Officer Brett Li hung up the phone on his desk and looked over to Sergeant Adrian Ramirez, who was tapping away at his computer. “That was the hospital. Thomas Garrison and Janet Kinsey are gonna be just fine.”
“Thank God for ballistic vests,” Ramirez said with relief. “I can’t wait to see the look on those thugs’ faces when we bring them in.”
Li leaned back in his office chair and took a long sip from his thermos. Around him, the ultra-modern offices of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department hummed like a beehive from its daily activities. In the central bullpen of desks, Li and Ramirez had a degree of privacy simply because everyone around them was too busy working on their own tasks to take notice of their conversation.
“Have you heard from Wyatt since this morning?” Li asked, sipping his coffee.
Ramirez shrugged without looking up from his computer. “He’s been giving me the silent treatment since ripping me a new asshole in front of everybody,”
“If I was him I would be embarrassed about that outburst,” Li said. “That was a close call, and it was scary shit, but what happened to Kinsey and Garrison wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah…” Ramirez drawled, focused on his computer.
“Something wrong?” Li asked.
Ramirez pointed at his computer screen. “I don’t know, come take a look at this.”
Li stood from his chair and walked around to Ramirez’s side of the desk. “What’s up?” he asked as Ramirez clicked open the Incident Reporting Database.
“Did you submit your report for the incident with those Sumatra guys?”
“Yeah, right when we got back,” Li said, looking closer. “It should be there.”
“I can’t find it.”
Li leaned over and took the mouse from Ramirez. “Try searching Sumatra…” he tapped on the keyboard and then grunted when his inquiry came up blank. “That’s weird…”
“You’re sure you filed it correctly?” Ramirez asked.
Li gave him a sideways look. “This database is so easy to use, it literally takes more effort to mess it up than to use it correctly.”
Ramirez held up a palm. “Alright, alright, I still had to ask. So where’s the report?”
Li typed a few more commands on the keyboard. “Is it under the Sunset View Incident? The Russians we detained were part of a separate case so –
He stopped short. “Dammit. Nothing.”
Ramirez shook his head. “Sumatra Incident and Sunset View Incident are both gone?”
“It says ‘File Not Found’.”
“Try Andrew Kremenski.”
Li typed into the keyboard. “… nothing.”
“What the hell is going on?” Ramirez whispered. He stood up from his desk and waived at a captain with poster-perfect, all-American good looks and thick blonde hair.
“Captain Williams,” Ramirez called, “Is there something wrong with the IRD?”
Williams strolled up to Ramirez’s desk. After politely greeting the two officers he asked what was going on.
“I can’t find any of my data on the Sunset View Motel homicides or the shooting involving Officer Kinsey and Officer Garrison,”
Williams looked down at the computer screen. “Are you sure you filed it all correctly?”
Li and Ramirez exchanged a glance.
“Positive,” Li said. “We’re missing a file on a person of interest too; Andrew Kremenski,”
Captain Williams hummed in thought. “Well, I’d say that is pretty odd.”
He studied the screen for a few seconds and then stood up. “I’ll have the IT guys look into it,”
He then put a hand on Ramirez’s shoulder. “Listen, you two have had a rough day, I’d like you both to take the rest of the afternoon off.”
“I’m fine,” Ramirez protested, but Williams held up a hand.
“That’s not a suggestion, Sergeant,” he said in a firm but kind voice. “Your health and your safety are pri
ority number one. Go home and take care of yourselves.”
Li thanked Captain Williams for the R&R and then gathered his things and left. Ramirez was a little slower to get out the door. Williams wished Ramirez a good afternoon before retiring to his private office on the far end of the Gangs and Narcotics Bureau. Once inside his small office, Williams dropped down the blinds to cover the window that faced the central bullpen and then dialed a number on his cellphone.
A gruff voice answered the phone. “Wyatt here,”
“It’s Williams,” the captain said. “The database is clean, but the missing files didn’t go unnoticed.”
“Ramirez?” Wyatt guessed.
“Brett Li as well, they were asking a lot of questions. I sent them home for the day,” Williams pulled down one of the blinds to keep an eye on the sergeant.
“Very good,” Wyatt replied. “Make sure no new files pop up.”
Williams snapped the blinds shut when he saw Ramirez walk out of the office. “That won’t be a problem.”
Upstairs, in his office, Wyatt hung up the phone at his desk and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Too much bullshit was getting in between him and his money; it was starting to seriously piss him off. How many hours was it going to take to clean this up? Worse yet, how was he going to make sure the Russians paid him without stirring up another shit-storm like that morning’s little shootout?
Wyatt swirled a packet of sugar into a glass of iced tea. Sipping his drink, he rechecked the IRD for any remaining documentation related to Andrew Kremenski, the Petrov Crime Family, or the Sumatra gang. Wyatt found that Captain Williams had done a thorough job of bleaching the system. Satisfied, he was about to relax when someone rapped against his office door.
“Come in,” he called.
His secretary, a recent college graduate hand-picked by Wyatt for her efficiency as much as her youthful good looks, brushed aside a strand of walnut-brown hair as she cracked open his door.