by Sharp, Tracy
Cal was still standing next to me, his posture straight and rigid. He was expecting the worst.
“Why don’t you leave before I arrest your ass? I’m an officer of the law.” Finn’s speech was slurred.
“Oh really? And I suppose your superiors would be just thrilled by your off-duty behavior,” I shot back at him.
“That’s it!” he said. “Down on your knees.”
“Oh, in your dreams, pal.”
“Turn around and get down on your knees!” he screamed, yanking handcuffs from his blazer pocket.
This was strange. How many off-duty cops carry handcuffs in their jacket pockets?
“You’re getting way out of hand, Finn.” I looked at his girlfriend, so scared, dreading the punishment she’d get when they got home. I scanned the gathering crowd, looking for something specific. Then my eyes found it and I knew I had him. I grinned.
“Not only are you not going to arrest me, fella, but you’re not going to have a ride home tonight.”
He looked at me blankly, the hand holding the handcuffs kind of suspended in mid-air. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“You haven’t been making your car payments, Finn. Your car is being repossessed as we speak.”
He regarded me with slanted eyes, not believing what I was saying.
“Go ahead.” I tilted my head toward the parking lot. “See for yourself.”
He hesitated a moment, looking toward the parking lot then back to me. It was as if Cal wasn’t even there. He completely focused on his hatred toward women.
Without a word, he stalked away from us. Then he started a kind of running walk, lurching one way then the other. I had my doubts as to whether he was even capable of finding his car, let alone driving it out of the lot. He was clearly way over the legal alcohol limit. I wondered how many drunk drivers he’d pulled over and hauled in during his career as a State Trooper.
He’d be back in a minute and he wouldn’t be as friendly as he’d been before. I was counting on it.
I turned to the girlfriend. “What’s your name?”
She sniffled, eyes darting from her charming boyfriend to me and back again. It was as if she was scared to let him out of her sight. Like as long as she knew where he was, she could see him coming. “Amanda.”
“Look, Amanda. You’re really not going to want to be around Daniel tonight. He’s not going to be in a loving mood when he discovers his baby has gone.”
She looked at me for a moment, then nodded quickly. “Yeah. I know.”
“Can we take you anywhere?” Cal’s voice was gentle when he spoke to Amanda. “Do you have a friend or relative you can stay with?”
She shook her head. “He knows where they all live. He’ll find me.”
Cal put his hand on her arm, gently steering her toward the parking area. “Come on. We’ll take you somewhere safe. He won’t find you.”
Amanda hesitated. “Not to a shelter. He’s a cop. He knows where they all are. He brings women to them all the time.”
Cal shook his head, disgusted.
“Don’t worry. We have a friend you can stay with.” I turned and looked at Cal. “Bring her to the Jeep. Hurry, before he comes back.”
“I’m not leaving you—”
“Callahan. He’s drunk and he’s slow. Don’t worry about it. I can handle it. Besides, look at all these people. What’s he gonna do?”
“He just smacked Amanda in front of all these people.”
“Oh, I’d just love for him to try that with me. It would make my damned day.”
He grinned despite himself. “Okay, come on, Amanda. Let’s get you safe.”
Just as we started back toward the parking lot, good old Daniel lurched and staggered his way back. He was screaming obscenities and I would’ve said that I could easily have kicked his drunken ass, except that he was waving a gun around. And I was pretty sure it was loaded.
Amanda’s eyes were as big as quarters. “Oh, my God!”
“Get her out of here,” I said to Cal.
Cal reached for his gun.
“Don’t!” I said. “Just get her out of here.”
Callahan looked at me as if I were insane. I’d become accustomed to this look since he and I’d begun working together.
“Trust me,” I said.
He hesitated only a moment longer then gave in and led Amanda away but stayed within watching distance.
“I’ll kill you, you bitch!” Finn screamed. He was about four feet from me now, pointing the gun at my face. His hand was wavering to and fro and I was more worried about someone in the crowd getting shot than I was for myself.
I shook my head. “More of the same dialogue. It’s really getting boring, Finn.”
“You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”
“Oh really? Who’s waving a gun in a public place, Finn? I wouldn’t exactly consider that to be a sane move.”
Finn looked around, seeming to see the crowd around him for the first time. It was finally starting to dawn on him.
“I’m an officer of the law.” He was talking to the crowd, some of the punch having gone from his voice.
“Sure you are.” I nodded. “You’re a drunk, off-duty officer who hit his girlfriend in public and who is now waving a gun in a crowded area.”
He stared at me, speechless.
I continued. “You’re an officer who is about to be suspended at the very least, but an officer of the law nonetheless.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you!” he shrieked, spittle flying from his mouth. He cocked his pistol and used both hands to steady his aim. He glared at me, murder in his eyes.
“No?” I said. “Then how about explaining yourself to the news crews?” I gestured to the reporters and news cameras that flanked us on either side. Somehow, Finn hadn’t noticed them in the midst of his drunken rage.
Even though I’d never been to the Saratoga racetrack, I’d often watched it featured on the news. This was the last day of track season. I was not the only one who’d known that news crews would be crawling all over the place.
It certainly did look like State Trooper Daniel Finn had some explaining to do. I’d counted on it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
We pulled up in front of Jack’s place and sat for a moment, giving Amanda some time to compose herself. She’d wept softly for most of the ride there and she was having trouble stopping.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was barely a whisper.
Cal handed her a tissue. “Hey, it’s okay. If I were dating Daniel Finn, I’d be crying too.”
“Thanks.” She gave him a little smile. “You’re not his type.”
“Neither am I,” I said. “Darn.”
“He wasn’t always like this.” Amanda regarded me with large, brown eyes. “He was really nice at first.”
“Of course he was,” Cal said. “You wouldn’t have gone out with him in the first place if he’d shown you his true colors right off the bat, right?”
She nodded. “He’s been under a lot of stress lately.”
“Sure, so take it out on you. Makes perfect sense.” I said.
“I know, I know. I have to get away from him. I’m just scared he’s going to go after my family. My little sister.”
That got me. Something opened up in my chest and the ache I felt was so strong I had to catch my breath. “Look, Amanda. You can’t stay with him and be his punching bag to protect your family. It’ll hurt them more if he kills you, which believe me, he’s well on the road to doing.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I know you’re right.”
“We need to get you away from him. Don’t worry. We’ll be watching him pretty closely. You’re not the only one he’s been hurting.”
“He’s involved in something, isn’t he?” Amanda looked from me to Cal several times. “I knew it.”
Cal glanced at me before asking her, “What do you mean?”
Amanda shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s more of a
feeling, I guess. He gets lots of calls on his cell phone and then he has to take off for a while.”
My interest was peaked. “When he’s off-duty?”
She nodded. “Yeah. We’ll be out somewhere, or even just hanging around, you know? And he’ll get a call and has to leave. He never tells me where he’s going. There were a couple of times when he took me with him to this house. He made me wait in the car. I don’t know what he was doing in there. It wasn’t a nice area of town. Once he took so long I wanted to go in there and see what was keeping him but there were two pit bulls guarding the door.”
Cal looked at me. “Woodard’s.”
“Uh huh.” I wasn’t surprised.
Amanda’s eyes were wide with rising panic. “I don’t want to know what he’s been doing.”
“No, Amanda,” I told her. “You really don’t.”
Jack had more than enough room for Amanda and he didn’t have any problem with her staying at his place. In fact, he wanted to go a step further and give Finn the same facial treatment he’d given Sharon Laporte’s ex-boyfriend when he’d found out her ex had been beating her up.
“Well, just hold off, there, cowboy,” I told him. “We just want to figure out what’s what. We might come back to you if the offer is still good.”
“Oh, it’ll still be good,” Jack said. “You just say the word.”
Jack had a pretty nice view of the Hudson River from his backyard. In a less shoddy part of town, one that wasn’t so rough around the edges, this place would’ve been worth a lot of money. I doubted that Jack had paid more than sixty or seventy thousand for it.
We’d gotten Amanda settled in one of Jack’s guest rooms. Turns out he had four of them. She was exhausted and had decided to take a nap. Jack, Cal and I were sitting around a plastic table on matching chairs, sipping from cold bottles of beer. The water was calm and there were a few ducks paddling around in front of us.
Cal was watching the ducks. “Peaceful place.”
Jack nodded. “It’s home. Sharon and I like it here. Nobody bothers us except to buy a bike.” He turned to me and grinned. “Until now, that is.”
“Oh come on, Jack. You can’t fool me. You can’t stay quiet for too long. It’s not in you.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I know. So what’s the plan with Woodard and Finn?”
I knew we couldn’t keep Jack out of it now. It was too late for that. So I decided to tell him who Woodard really was. I knew he’d remember him. He’d rescued me on more than one occasion back in juvie when Sebastian Blacklock had followed me and gotten me alone. It was then that Jack started teaching me how to fight.
When I finished, his jaw was set and his face hard as stone. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
I shrugged. “Because I wanted to take care of it myself. You came to my rescue so many times when we were kids. I wanted to kick his ass myself this time.”
“Where is he?”
“We’ve got a friend watching him right now.” I looked at Cal. “Why don’t you call Will and find out what’s what?”
“We’re going to watch them.” Cal pressed Will’s speed dial button on his cell. “Hopefully without getting caught this time.” He looked sideways at me.
“He doesn’t know what I look like. I’ve changed a lot since juvie.” Jack’s gravelly voice was soothing me. I’d always loved his voice. It was what my mother would’ve called a whiskey voice. I could fall asleep listening to him, and I had, many years ago. “I always knew that kid would grow up to be way too dangerous. He was a fucking psycho back then.”
“You really want in on this, don’t you?” I said to him.
“Hell, yeah.”
“You’re supposed to be watching my brother.” I didn’t really mean it. I knew there was no keeping Jack from getting Woodard now.
“Patrick and Sean can watch him,” he said. “He’ll be okay.”
“Well, I trust Patrick. I don’t know about Sean.”
“Sean’ll watch his back. He’ll be there if it comes down to it,” Jack said.
I knew he was right. Sean might be a bit of a space cadet but he wouldn’t let anything happen to Jesse without putting up a hell of a fight to protect him. We had a bond together. Me, Jack, Patrick and Sean. No matter what, we’d always step in to help each other.
Cal closed his cell phone. “Will says Woodard’s pretty pissed. He could hear him screaming and yelling from the back lane where he was watching the house. Just as soon as his friends got the dogs into the backyard so he could get to his car, he took off to post bail for his buddy Finn.”
“Awww, I’m touched. What a swell guy,” Jack said.
“Okay, listen up.” I sat forward, placing my beer on the table. “I have an idea.”
* * *
We borrowed Sharon’s car and left it few streets over in the parking lot of a pizza joint. A mid-nineties grey sedan, it wasn’t going to draw a lot of attention. Jack’s shit-box of a pick-up wouldn’t have drawn much attention either but it wouldn’t fit all three of us comfortably with Jack’s gun. Well, I wasn’t comfortable being that close to Jack’s gun.
He carried a .44 magnum. His shells were nestled in a nifty belt built just for such an occasion. You don’t want to have to waste time fishing around for your shells or pretty soon you’ll be looking down the barrel of a gun yourself.
He’d also brought some choice cuts of sirloin for Woodard’s guard dogs, over which he was carefully sprinkling a rather liberal amount of crushed Dramamine.
I cringed. “I can’t say that I really agree with drugging the dogs, Jack. But I can’t think of a better way to get anywhere near the house without getting our guts ripped out.”
“They’re just motion sickness pills. Just enough to put ‘em out. It won’t hurt ‘em.” He glanced at me. “You know me, Leah. I’d never hurt an animal.”
“Yeah, I know. I just hate doing it.”
“It’s better than shooting them, which would’ve been my first choice,” Cal said.
I stared at Cal, horrified. “Didn’t you ever have a dog as a child?”
“Yeah, a poodle,” Cal replied. “Not one of those man-eaters guarding Woodard’s house.”
“It’s all in how you raise the dog,” Jack explained. “A poodle can be just a vicious as a pit bull if you kick it around enough.”
“Yeah, well I’d rather take on a vicious poodle than a pit bull any day of the week.”
“Well, tonight you won’t have to, thanks to this.” Jack grabbed the handles of the plastic grocery bag that held the spiked meat and opened the car door. “You guys ready to rock?”
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
We took the back lanes, staying low and cutting through yards without dogs. There weren’t many in this neighborhood. It did seem, though, that pit bulls had become a staple in ghetto American life. There was the occasional Rottweiler and an old, rickety Doberman who’d obviously done his time as a ferocious guard dog. Mostly we came across pit bulls. And a couple of times I found myself praying that the dilapidated fences, which barely kept them in their yards, wouldn’t break apart under the weight of their frenzied body checks.
We followed the dark laneway leading to Woodard’s house looking for Will. I knew he wasn’t going to be lingering in the open where any druggie or mugger would see him standing alone. As soon as we got close to the house, a figure stepped out of the bushes. Even though I knew it was probably him, I tensed and put my hand on my gun just the same. Jack and Cal did the same thing but Jack had his already drawn and ready. He wasn’t one to take chances.
“Finally!” Will let out a deep breath. “Shit, it’s been creepy sneaking around back here. I’ve already been propositioned four times and none of them were women.” He shuddered. “Place is giving me the willies. I figured it was only a matter of time before they got together and decided to take me by force.”
“What were you doing? Just hanging out back here in the open?” Cal said.
“It’s a dark
lane, man. I didn’t think anybody came back here.”
Jack snickered and shook his head. “You didn’t grow up around here, did you? You had to wear one of those fancy little uniforms as a kid, right?”
Will looked at Jack, clearly not amused.
I took the opportunity to introduce them then we all crouched in bushes Will had been hiding behind. I checked my watch. It was nine-thirty.
We were quiet for a few minutes before Will’s stage whisper broke through the silence, making me jump. “This kind of reminds me when my friends and I used to raid gardens when I was a kid.”
“Boy, you were a real bad-ass as a kid, huh?” Jack said. “Did you egg cars too, or was garden raiding the extent of your crime spree?”
“Prank phone calls.” Will grinned. “But I still do those from time to time when there’s nothing on T.V.”
Jack chuckled and shook his head. “How long has he been gone?”
Will shrugged. “About a half hour, I guess.”
“He’ll be back soon, if he’s coming back here.” Jack watched the house through squinted eyes. He was calculating. I’d seen this look many times. Nothing would turn him back once he was in this mode.
“He won’t be back,” I said. We’ve watched him on and off and Will here’s watched him plenty—”
“Yeah, without getting caught, I might add.” Will gave us a cocky smile. I wanted to knock that stupid fedora off his head.
“Yeah, thanks for pointing that out. The night isn’t over,” I told him. “And maybe we’ll leave you out here for your night buddies if you don’t cut the shit.”
Will clamped his mouth shut and lifted both hands in surrender.
“Anyway,” I continued. “He usually goes out to a dance club at night.”
Cal nodded. “Usually the same one. Once in a while he’ll go to a different one not far from here.”
“Yeah, these guys are like spiders. They don’t stray far from their food,” Jack said. “Anyway, I want as much time as we can get to do this thing. So, with that being said…” He stood up and started toward the chainlink fence. He grabbed the top of the fence and began climbing.