In Shadows

by Chandler McGrew

Reever’s grin reminded Jake of one he’d seen on a burn victim in the morgue, skin peeling away from widely spaced yellow teeth, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that something grotesque was growing inside Reever’s mouth.

  “They’re fine.”

  Reever knew perfectly well that Jake was unattached. Jake wondered if he used similar banter on people he was about to off. He didn’t believe the guy would be stupid enough to try to murder a cop in such a public place. But that was the trouble with Reever. He was unpredictable.

  “What have you got for me?” asked Jake, keeping his eyes on Reever’s hands.

  “I took a big chance coming here.”

  “Me, too. So cut the crap. Do we have a deal or not?”

  “How you gonna protect me?”

  “Come on, you know the skit. If what you have is solid enough for convictions, then I’ll go to bat for you with the Houston DA, and you’ll probably go into witness protection. New name, whole new identity.”

  Jake had no way of knowing if the DA would go for anything of the sort, and he was sure Reever was street-savvy enough to know that. They were both kidding themselves and each other, Jake because he wanted the bust so badly, Reever because he wanted the cash.

  “And a lot of money,” said Reever, grinning.

  “I don’t know what you mean by a lot. I’m not Bill Gates.”

  Reever’s laugh sounded like the screech of a head-on collision. “Shit! You’re not even my cleaning lady! If I thought you were going to pay me I’d still be in my hotel room in San Antone getting blown by that blond whore. If your bosses want to put the Torrios away, then they’ll come up with the money.”

  “How much?”

  Reever laughed again. “We’ll talk once I go into protection.”

  “That’ll be a little late for negotiation on your end. And maybe way too late for me to get the info I need.”

  Reever shook his head, and Jake noticed something in his eyes, like an errant thought tightening the laugh lines at the corners, but then it was gone.

  “That’ll be plenty of time,” said Reever. “I got a lot to tell. You can buy it word by fuckin’ word. Ain’t that the way they pay magazine writers?”

  “I guess.”

  Jake glanced out his window as a microburst of pebblelike rain struck the glass. He hated the other car blocking his view. But he turned his attention quickly back to Reever.

  “Nervous?” said Reever, laughing. “Big-city pig like you? What you got to be afraid of?”

  “Double-crossing a cop is not a good thing.”

  Reever frowned. “You threatening me?”

  “Should I be?”

  Reever shook his head. “You got no cause to jack with me. We’re each other’s insurance. I don’t play straight with you, you got nothing, zip, nada. You don’t play straight with me, I’m dead.”

  “You got that right.”

  But there was still something bothersome in the way Reever held his head, in the way his finger kept sliding back and forth on his thigh just a millimeter, as though squeezing a nonexistent trigger. Jake had had a lot of hunches over the years, and Cramer had drilled it into his head to listen to them.

  A bad hunch don’t cost you much. Maybe somebody will laugh at you. Being laughed at alive is a hell of a lot better than being laughed at dead. It’s bad mojo ignoring hunches.

  There it was again. Reever almost turned toward his window. What was he looking for? Who was he waiting for? Jake gave the car some gas, listening to the engine race, resting his hand casually on the gearshift lever again.

  On your gun, insisted Cramer’s voice. But Jake ignored it. Cramer was always giving Jake a hard time for not being quick enough on the draw.

  “So talk,” he said, playing the game. “Give me something to prove you’re not full of shit.”

  “The Torrios are in with the Zinos.”

  Jake frowned. That was news, if it was true. The Zinos were big in Vegas and LA. What the hell would they be doing in Houston? “You mean the Zinos are here?”

  “Here, there, everywhere.” Reever chuckled. “Where ain’t they?”

  “The Torrios wouldn’t share with the Zinos. They have no reason to.”

  Reever shrugged. “Pot’s big enough, you don’t mind sharing.”

  “There’s no pot big enough for Jimmy and José Torrio to share. This sounds like a crock.”

  “Banks,” said Reever.

  “Now I know you’re full of shit,” said Jake, relaxing a little. Maybe that’s all this was, Reever bullshitting, playing him, seeing if he knew enough to even deal with. “Neither of the Torrios is stupid enough to rob banks.”

  “I didn’t say they were going to rob them,” said Reever. “They’re going to buy them. Then they can do what they want with the money. The Torrios have the local connections with crooked bankers. The Zinos have the laundered money in mutual funds to do the transactions clean.”

  Reever wasn’t a Harvard economist, but Jake got the picture. The Torrios’ group was muscle. The Zinos had finesse. They were used to dealing in figures where the zeros strung out right to the horizon. The Zinos probably had plenty of people on their payroll who had graduated from Harvard. If they and the Torrios got together and ended up owning controlling interests in Houston banks, installing their own people inside, who knew what kind of billion-dollar mischief they could concoct?

  Jake heard the loud roar of a powerful engine and splashing water behind the car. A dark sedan skidded sideways, almost striking the rear bumper, blocking him in. A hazy pair of figures leaped from the car, and Jake glanced over just as Reever was reaching under his coat.

  “You son of a bitch!” spat Jake, backhanding Reever hard, crushing his nose.

  Reever’s head snapped back and then forward, and Jake backhanded him again. He jerked the gearshift down into drive and floored the car. The sedan crashed into the low concrete retaining wall just as a shotgun blast sent shards of glass ricocheting around the interior. Jake ducked, jerking the lever into reverse, and floored the car again, ramming the sedan. He jerked his pistol out of the shoulder holster just as the man with the shotgun prepared to pump off another round.

  “Not me!” screamed Reever, coming to and finding himself staring through what had been the windshield right into the barrel of the shotgun.

  The guy blew Reever’s head off, and Jake shot the gunman twice in the chest, causing the second shooter to drop down out of sight. But there was no way Jake could make a getaway in the car now. His sedan was wedged in the pocket between the seawall, Reever’s car, and the attackers’ sedan like a bad parallel parking job. But at least he’d opened a little space on the driver’s side.

  He whipped open his door and rolled onto the pavement in time to see a set of shoes approaching the other side of the sedan. So he scrambled toward the back bumper. As he crabbed alongside the open rear door of the attackers’ sedan, he was surprised to find himself face to face with José Torrio. The door started to slam shut, but Jake jerked it open and snatched Torrio’s coattail to stop him from exiting the car on the other side. He jammed his pistol into the small of José’s back and shouted at the top of his lungs.

  “Drop your weapon. I have your boss!”

  The steady thrumming of rain on the roof of the car drowned out any answer and also kept him from seeing where his attacker was positioned.

  “You’re fucked, man,” spat Torrio as Jake released his jacket and wrapped his free arm around the man’s throat, dragging him out into the rain where they both crouched between the cars.

  “If you don’t drop your weapon I’m going to shoot this asshole!” shouted Jake.

  “You aren’t shooting anybody,” said a husky voice behind him.

  Huge hands grasped his shoulders, dragging both Jake and José to their feet. Jake’s fingers clawed across José’s throat, latching onto a thin chain that snapped in his hand as José twisted away. Jake felt a pistol barrel pressing into his side, and he knew that in a split second
a bullet was going to follow. Without thinking he spun, snapping the man’s pistol aside even as he shoved his own gun into the man’s gut. He pulled the trigger, and the man went down.

  Whirling, he found himself face to face with Torrio again, but this time José had a hideaway gun in his hand. Jake lurched to one side as the pistol fired near his face. He jerked the trigger of his own pistol again, and a neat hole appeared on José’s forehead. A bullet whined across the top of the sedan, and Jake spotted another gunman leaning out of the window of a car barreling into the parking lot. He dropped to the ground and scuttled back to the front of his car, crawling along the narrow space between the bumper and the concrete embankment. As a pistol barked again he grabbed the top of the low wall and vaulted over. He hit the sand running. Almost instantly he spotted another set of headlights paralleling the beach, and he knew instinctively that it was yet another batch of Torrio goons trying to cut him off. Either José really thought he was dangerous, or he had intended the killing to make a showing for all his boys.

  He shoved José’s chain into his pants pocket and dug his cell phone out of his jacket, punching the autodial for the Houston police. When the dispatcher answered, Jake told him in three-word sentences where he was and what was happening. If nothing else they might be able to triangulate the phone and find his body. But with any luck sirens would sound any minute, and that would drive the shooters off. At the moment, he couldn’t do anything but race along the surf through rain as thick as a wool curtain, trying to put distance between himself and the killers on foot.

  Reever had known something was up. But then the guy with the shotgun took point-blank aim and blew his head off. So maybe Reever was playing both ends against the middle and got caught, or maybe the Torrios or the Zinos just wanted to kill two birds with one stone.

  Jake’s shoes were saturated with water and sand, and he kicked them off. The beach felt cold beneath his bare feet, even as sweat mixed with the rain. There was a flash of light ahead as a car slipped into a hidden drive and headed straight toward the shore to cut him off.

  It would take a minute or two for the dispatcher in Houston to get hold of the Galveston police, then another few minutes at least for them to respond. In two minutes he could be dead. The car turned in his direction, and he could hear the engine grumbling as the tires dug into the sand. Maybe the assholes would get stuck.

  But the headlights bounced and whipped from side to side as the big sedan roared ahead, and Jake turned to stumble headlong into the pounding surf. The piss-warm water slowed his advance, and chest-high breakers lifted his feet off the sand and drove him back. He glanced over his shoulder. The car was close now.

  He dove.

  The current was strong but not overpowering, and he swam beneath the waves for all he was worth. He broke the surface on his back, gasping—the pistol cradled on his stomach—praying the car had driven on past. But it had pulled right up to the waterline. He felt a splash beside him even as he heard the dull pounding of a shotgun. He aimed for the lighted interior of the car—he could barely make out anything else through the deluge—and pulled the trigger again and again. He didn’t expect to hit anything, but at least the fucking goons would have to keep their heads down.

  As he fired he continued back-kicking into the surf, and every time he disappeared over another breaker he paddled to one side or the other so that when the next wave took him he didn’t pop up like the same old target in a shooting gallery. If he could make it to deeper water, he’d be safe until the cops arrived. But where were the sirens?

  As he squinted through the darkness, rain, and waves, still kicking and paddling wildly, a shadow moved across the beach, as though a cloud even darker than the solid overcast above had swept between the shore and the sun. Another wave caught him, and a stinging sensation lightninged up the right side of his chest, paralyzing him for an instant. The pistol dropped away into the water, and Jake heard the delayed crack of the shot that had hit him. Horror-stricken, he felt himself rising upward, spread-eagled, flopping like a landed fish. Blood spread across his sodden jacket. Twisting to face the beach, he could only watch as gun barrels flashed repeatedly, and he held his breath, waiting for the shot that would kill him.

  But through the haze of the saltwater and rain it appeared as though the guns were firing up and down the beach. Had the cops finally arrived? Had he missed the sirens? Surely they wouldn’t have come without them.

  Then, abruptly, the firing ceased. Jake counted off one minute. Two. He was hesitant to swim back toward shore, but with only one good arm he was afraid of being dragged out by the tide. Finally he heard the wail of sirens, but it seemed like hours before he spotted a cruiser’s high beams barreling down the beach with lights flashing overhead.

  When he reached water shallow enough to stand in, he staggered through the waves toward the cops who were approaching the sedan with drawn pistols. One of the patrolmen saw him and blinded Jake with his flashlight.

  “Detective Crowley!” shouted Jake, fumbling for his shield.

  The cop signaled Jake in with the flashlight. But it wasn’t until he got a closer look at Jake’s badge that the officer relaxed. In the glow of the headlights the cop’s red hair shone like neon. But then all of Jake’s senses seemed heightened. By that time a second cruiser had pulled up alongside the sedan, and all the cops were flashing their lights up and down the beach. A flurry of footprints muddled the sand. Jake peered at the tide pools around the car and noticed that they were more blood than saltwater.

  “Where are they?” he asked a burly officer with a black mustache and a beet-red complexion.

  The man shrugged. “Two down in front of the car. One more down the beach. All shot to hell.” He glanced at Jake’s shoulder. “You hit?”

  Jake gingerly pulled aside his jacket. From the hole in his shirt it looked like he should have a bullet in his right lung. But he felt okay except for the damned stinging. Feeling was working its way back into his arm and fingers at least. The cop eased Jake back against the sedan and ripped open his shirt.

  “Lucky sonofabitch,” said the mustachioed cop, whistling through his teeth.

  The hole was low because he’d been lying on his back in the surf. But the bullet had only torn some skin as it bounced over his ribs, skittering off his collarbone, now exposed like one of the white shells on this beach.

  “Come on,” said the redheaded officer as the other policeman left to join the other cops near the shooters’ sedan. “Hop in my car. I’ll get you to the hospital.”

  Jake shook his head. “I want to see the men that were shooting at me.”

  “You need stitches.”

  “I’m not going to bleed to death,” said Jake.

  The cop finally shrugged. “Want to tell me what happened?”

  When Jake had finished recapping the attack, the cop just stared at him. “You didn’t kill these guys down here with any handgun,” he said.

  “They’re all dead?” said Jake, shaken. He recalled the shots going down the beach. Who had they been shooting at if not him or the arriving police?

  “They’re dead, all right.”

  Jake staggered around to the front of the cruiser where the other officers held their flashlights on the corpses.

  Jake had seen plenty of bodies before. Auto accidents, murder victims, suicides. Harris County wasn’t LA, but Texans didn’t like being outdone by Californians. They had their own host of serial killers, bar fighters, and road ragers. And of course shoot-’em-ups were as traditional as rodeos. But these guys looked like they’d been in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Their bodies were riddled with bullet holes and shotgun wounds.

  The redheaded cop ambled close enough to question Jake with his eyes.

  “What I told you was what I saw,” Jake croaked, swallowing a giant lump in his throat.

  “How long ago did the shooting stop?”

  “Maybe four, five minutes.”

  “Nobody else with you or on the b
each but Torrio’s men?”

  “No one I saw,” said Jake.

  Lights and sirens were coming from both ends of the beach now. Jake started to say that the cars were going to destroy any footprints or tire tracks, but the rain was already accomplishing that.

  “Okay, then,” said the cop, coaxing Jake toward his car. “There’s no sense us standing here getting pummeled.”

  Jake slid into the passenger side of the cruiser, and the officer dropped into the driver’s seat, flipping on the heat.

  “There’s bandages in the console. You want me to put something on that wound?”

  Jake shook his head, ripping open one of the packs of cotton gauze. He smeared the cloth with an antiseptic and pressed it against the gash, grimacing not so much in pain but at the awful sensation of some alien substance oozing into his flesh.

  The radio crackled. “Looks like we got another one washing up.”

  Jake nodded into the wall of rain. “Let’s go.”

  The car dug into the sand, then slid and slithered along the beach to a second dark sedan bogged down near the surf. The cop was out first, trotting toward the headlights of the other cruisers. Jake followed slowly, ignoring the pain that was beginning to radiate from his ribs.

  One body lay on the sand, and two uniformed officers were up to their waists in the breakers dragging another corpse toward the beach.

  Jake felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach.

  “You okay?” said the redheaded cop. “You’re looking pretty pale.”

  “I’m all right,” insisted Jake.

  But he wasn’t and he knew it. For fourteen years he had miraculously managed to avoid violence in a job where gunfire was an accepted hazard. Now, in a matter of a few moments, he had slaughtered three men in the parking lot, and Reever and at least four others were dead as well.

  He nudged his way past the cops to stare at what was left of the corpse on the beach. It looked as though the man had tried to eat one of the shotguns. Jake turned quickly away, striding out into the surf toward the oncoming cops and their grisly baggage.

  One of them managed a macabre grin, lifting the last body out of the water by its arm. Again, there were bullet holes everywhere. “This all of ’em?”