by David Grace
“I’ll watch myself,” Virgil called out over his shoulder as he unlocked the Dodge.
* * *
The difference between Fred’s Place and Club Bang was like the difference between a night and a nightmare. Two spotlights the diameter of salad plates randomly patrolled the room while dozens of red and green lasers wove a colored mesh across the patrons’ bodies. The only other illumination was from two blindingly lit bars that spanned lengths of the western and southern walls. Their fluorescent glare spilled across the floor and gradually died off into shadows and gloom. In the dark, far corner people danced, drugged, groped and occasionally copulated against vacant sections of the wall. Prostitutes and drug dealers drifted through clots of writhing bodies, selling their wares. Above it all, a spinning, mirrored disk a yard across reflected a snow storm of colored lights.
Given the level of intoxication, both alcoholic and pharmaceutical, for a moment Virgil wondered how management avoided having to deal with half a dozen rapes and a couple of killings every night, then he spotted the security men in fluorescent orange t-shirts roaming the floor. They wore black gloves and had stun guns dangling from their wrists on six-inch cords. When Virgil pushed up to the southern-side bar he got a good look at one of the weapons. It had been modified with a little plunger that stuck up half an inch beyond the ends of the barbs so that just pushing the gun against a shoulder or arm would trigger a flow of lightning across the prongs. Of course, it was the amps not the volts that incapacitated a person and Virgil wondered if Club Bang’s stunners were running at the typical wimpy one or two milliamps or if they’d been cranked up to four or five.
The sound system poured out a continuous WAKKA WAKKA WAK WAK WAK beat. A bartender was stationed every ten feet behind the fluorescent-lit counters, all young, all dressed the same, open-necked, short-sleeved white shirts and black pants, all dull-eyed and looking as if half-numbed from sensory overload.
“OJ,” Virgil shouted at the blank-faced kid in front of him.
“One chip,” the kid shouted back.
“Chip?”
The bartender pointed to a sign on the wall behind him: “We Only Accept Chips Purchased From The Cashiers At Each End Of The Bar.”
Well, that’s one way to keep the employees from stealing, Virgil thought. Chips were $5 each and in order to prevent the bartenders from pocketing a handful and having their friends turn them in for real money at the end of the night they were not redeemable in cash. If you had some left over you’d have to come back another day, a policy that not only stimulated repeat business but also encouraged massive amounts of binge drinking as closing time drew near.
“OJ,” Virgil repeated a minute later, sliding an eight-sided, red, plastic chip across the bar with one hand and holding up a twenty-dollar bill with the other.
The bartender was a tall, white kid who looked like he had been a finalist in a contest to select the next cover model for a Master-Race wall poster.
“What’s that for?” the kid asked, pointing at the twenty.
“I’m looking for anybody who hung out with this guy,” Virgil shouted, pushing Paulie’s picture across the bar a few inches behind the chip. “He’s dead and I’m trying to find his family.”
The bartender stared at the picture for half a second.
“Don’t know him,” he said, giving Virgil a blank stare.
“That’s OK, I do. His name is Paulie and, like I said, he’s dead. I’m just trying to find his friends or family.” The kid’s face remained as expressionless as a white plate. “My name and phone number are on the back,” Virgil continued. “Show it around. I’ll pay for any information I get about him.” Virgil pushed the picture a couple of inches forward. The kid hesitated then slipped it under the counter on his way to serving another customer. Virgil put the twenty back in his pocket and moved on to the next bartender down the line.
It took him half an hour to make it all the way to the end of the western bar. Nobody took the bait. The security guards were equally unhelpful and a lot more hostile. Given Paulie Sturdevant’s profession as a cold-blooded killer Virgil hadn’t expected anything else. But somebody knew something and nobody worked in a place like this just for the fun of it.
Given the obsession people had with their phones and the boiler-factory noise on the dance floor, Club Bang provided a balcony “quiet area” running along the eastern wall twenty feet above the main floor. Up there corrugated baffles and sound-cancelling speakers reduced the cacophony to only a mild roar. Virgil wandered between dozens of people with electronics pressed against the sides of their heads and waited for a call. After fifteen minutes he was about to give up when his cell buzzed.
“Virgil.”
“That guy you’re looking for, he came in here a few times.”
“OK.”
“Sometimes he hung out with another guy. What’s that worth to you?”
“Do you know this other guy’s name?”
“All I’ve got is a nickname.”
“Describe him.”
“How much you paying?”
“Twenty for the description and the nickname. A hundred for a real name. Two hundred for a real name and an address.”
“You want me to risk my life for twenty bucks. Shit man, these are bad guys.”
“I won’t tell them if you won’t. You want the twenty or not?”
The phone was silent for a couple of seconds. “Leave the money in the empty toilet-seat thing in the last stall in the men’s room,” the guy said finally. “I’ll call you when I get it.”
“Sure, and then you can tell me the one about the three bears. What’s the guy look like and what’s his name?”
This time the phone stayed silent for almost five seconds. “Johnny Chains, that’s all I know about him,” the voice said in a harsh whisper. “‘Nothing but the best for my man Johnny Chains,’ the guy said once when he was shit faced. That’s it.”
“What does this Johnny Chains look like?”
Again another pause, then, “Black dude, about six feet, maybe thirty years old. His face is kind of, shit I don’t know, wedge-shaped, like a triangle with a pointy chin. He had crazy eyes, like he was thinking how much fun it would be to stick a knife in you.”
“Hair?”
“A black guy’s normal hair,” the caller said in an exasperated voice.
“Beard or mustache?”
“No, neither.”
“Any scars or tattoos?”
“In this place? . . . No, wait, he had like a line, maybe an inch long under his left, no, his right eye, real jagged, like he’d been cut with a beer bottle or something. Shit man, I gotta go. You gonna pay me or not?”
“I’ll leave the twenty in the last stall. Keep my number. If you can find out anything more call me and I’ll give you more money.”
“Yeah, right,” the guy said and the phone went dead.
A couple of minutes later Virgil passed one of the bartenders at the bottom of the stairs and wondered if it was his informant watching to see if he would actually leave the money as he’d promised.
“That’s the guy who was asking questions,” the bartender shouted into the ear of the man standing next to him once Virgil had disappeared into the crowd.
“Did anybody take his money?” Kyle asked.
“Not that I saw, but the only reason people go upstairs is to use their phone. Somebody could have called him.”
“Do you think someone told him about Paulie being tight with Johnny C?”
The bartender shrugged.
Kyle watched Virgil enter the men’s room then examined the back of Paulie’s picture in the glow from his phone.
“Virgil Quinn,” he read aloud.
“He claimed Paulie’s dead,” the bartender said. “That true?”
Kyle shoved a c-note into the bartender’s shirt pocket and headed across the floor. He had just reached the restrooms when Virgil brushed past him on his way out. Kyle held back, then followed Quinn to the
exit. He thought about just walking up behind him and blowing a hole in his spine but restrained his natural inclination. Once outside he saw that Quinn was being careful, staying away from doorways and checking the street behind him. Just like a cop, Kyle thought. A couple of minutes later Quinn got into an unmarked police car and hit the lights. Kyle slipped deep into a doorway and watched the car pull away.
Had somebody talked? Kyle wondered, then tried to calculate the pros and cons of killing this Virgil Quinn before he could cause them any real trouble.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kyle and his partner had an arrangement – Kyle handled the night work and Danny Cathcart worked the jobs during business hours, if you could call robbery, rape, murder and extortion “work.” Kyle called his partner a little before noon and Danny reluctantly agreed to meet him on the seventh floor of the Millennium Garage. At five after one Kyle parked his S500 near the stairs and jogged over to Danny’s Range Rover a few spaces away.
“What’s the big hurry?” Danny complained as soon as Kyle climbed inside. “I had to cancel lunch with a very doable intern at First National Trust.” Today Daniel Dawson Cathcart wore a dark gray, almost black, Zenga suit over a pale-rose dress shirt with French cuffs secured by heavy yellow and white-gold links. Candy ass, Kyle thought and, not for the first time, fantasized about smashing Danny’s nose and knocking out a couple of his teeth just to show him who was the boss, but no trace of that thought reached Kyle’s face.
“Where are we with the next target?” Kyle asked instead.
“I’ve narrowed it down to three possibles. Say another week or two.”
“We need to move faster. Pick one now.”
“Do I tell you how to do your job?” Danny complained.
“You don’t have the balls to do my job.”
“And you don’t have the training or the contacts to do mine,” Danny said in a smarmy tone. “It’s not as simple as shooting a housewife in the head. There are a lot of factors involved. First–”
“Just fucking pick one!”
Danny took a breath, waited two seconds, then continued, “First, I have to confirm how much cash they have. We’ve laid the groundwork but this is going to be our big score. They need to have at least five million available on no more than eight hours notice. Rich people don’t leave millions sitting around in checking accounts or stacks of hundred dollar bills you know.” Danny paused a moment to confirm that Kyle was listening, then continued. “Second, the target needs to have multiple sub-targets locally available. The more there are, the less likely he is to call the police. Third, we want someone who doesn’t have their own security that might get in the way. Fourth, the target needs to have unfettered decision-making power – no boards of directors or family members that might be able to interfere with him making the payment or who might call the police.”
“I don’t like being lectured,” Kyle said in a voice like ice.
“I’m not lecturing you. I’m explaining why it’s not like I just stick a pin in a list of names,” Danny said in a tone that brought Kyle dangerously close to smashing Danny’s face. Perhaps sensing that he had gone too far, Danny continued in a more conciliatory voice.
“Of the three families I’ve identified, the target with the most cash available is likely to be the most trouble to deal with. His wife is the power behind the throne and the kids are his from a previous marriage so she’s likely to resist making the payment without involving the authorities.
“Our best bet is the second man on my money list. His wife is dead and his company is privately held so his board will do whatever he tells them. He also has a girl friend, four kids, three of them married with children of their own, plus his parents are still alive. That gives us at least six separate sets of sub-targets, too many for him to have protected 24/7 for the indefinite future.”
“So, go with him then.”
“I agree, but there’s a problem. Right now he’s in the south of France with his girlfriend and one of his kids. He’s due back late next week. After that it’ll take a few days to pin down his schedule and find a way to have a private conversation with him. I don’t expect him to pay up without an argument. I figure we’ll need to kill one of his friends or executives to convince him that we’re serious and that we’re not going away empty handed. After our demonstration I think he’ll come around.”
“How much?” Kyle asked.
“Ten million. On top of what we’ve already collected I think five million more each will give us a nice retirement fund. Now, do you understand why we have to wait?”
“You’re saying two, maybe three weeks until we get the money?”
“More or less. It depends on how much persuading he requires. What’s the rush?”
“The cops got onto one of my men. I had to take him out before he could talk.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Danny asked.
“They’re asking a lot of questions about who his friends were.”
“So what? Questions aren’t proof.”
“If they know who we are we’ll be out of business. And there’s always the risk that somebody might talk.”
“But so far they don’t know about you?”
“No,” Kyle said, “but they might have the nickname of one of the guys in my crew.”
“Then get rid of him before he becomes a problem,” Danny said as if suggesting that Kyle empty a bag of trash.
“I’m already down one man. I can’t afford to lose a second.”
“Is there a shortage of killers in Detroit?” Danny asked with a laugh.
“It’s not that easy to find guys who can do what we do and are disciplined enough to keep their mouths shut about it. You can’t tell people that you’re looking for a stone-killer. It has to be someone you already know or a friend of somebody you know. Then you’ve got to try them out, make sure that they can do the job and that they’re not informing for the cops. On top of that, if two of my guys suddenly go missing the other two aren’t just going to go back to work like nothing’s happened.”
Danny tapped his fingers on the steering wheel then turned back to Kyle.
“Fine, take a vacation for a while. Go to Atlantic City or someplace for a week and by the time you get back I’ll be ready with the next name.”
What are you, a fucking moron? Kyle thought. Aloud, he said, “That just gives the cops more time to figure out who my guy is and where they’re gonna grab him up, or maybe they’ll lay low and watch him and follow him back to me.”
“Fine,” Danny said with a frustrated sigh. “What’s your plan?”
“We get rid of the cop who’s causing the problem. They’ll be running around so much trying to find out what happened to him that they won’t have the time to come after us.”
“Kill a cop? Are you nuts? They’ll send every guy they’ve got after us.”
“Not if he just disappears or gets killed in a traffic accident or something. If we can send them chasing their tails going after some drunk driver or car jacker or whatever that should buy us a week or two to make the score.”
Danny thought about that for a second then shook his head.
“I don’t like it. Killing a cop will bring too much heat.”
“So, we should just let him keep on coming and hope he doesn’t find us?”
“What good will killing him do? One cop dies, another one takes his place.”
Kyle frowned and for a moment stared out the window at the concrete wall then turned back to Danny.
“No,” he said, “This guy’s on to us and we gotta smack him down. Somebody comes after you, you have to get him before he gets you. He needs to go away.”
“Kyle, we can’t–”
“I said he has to go away,” Kyle repeated in a soft voice.
Danny looked at his partner’s flat, hard eyes and swallowed his complaints.
Chapter Twenty-Four
By the start of the Tuesday morning shift the squad had given out almost a hund
red pictures of Paulie Sturdevant to waitresses, hookers, bartenders, grifters and drug dealers. It didn’t take long for calls to begin trickling in. They fell into the standard tip-line categories: “I saw a strange man who looked like the kind of person you’re looking for. Can I have my money now?”; “I saw your guy yesterday at the Walmart in Troy. How much is that worth?”; “I saw that guy in the picture talking with my ex-boyfriend, the scumbag, drug-dealing bastard. Here’s his address. Oh, and how much are you going to pay me?”
Each of the detectives wrote down the particulars on the calls arising from the pictures they had given out and passed them over to Harvey Renfrew to prioritize. Sooner or later every call had to be checked out, though it might take a week or more to work their way down to reviewing the surveillance tapes at the Walmart in Troy, Michigan.
Leads that looked like they might have some chance of being useful were doled out to Virgil, Stan Kudlacik, and Carl Montgomery for a direct follow-up. Janet and Craig Van Buren began work on the long process of trying to find out who Johnny Chains was.
First, they ran the name through the department’s “moniker” database then they submitted it to the State Police and NCIC. After that they got on the phones and called their contacts in the various DPD divisions: the Gang Unit, Major Crimes and the like, to see if the name “Johnny Chains” rang any bells. By early afternoon they had gotten thirty-nine hits from over Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois.
Narrowing the search to just the Detroit area reduced the list to six names – Russell “Chainsaw” St. John, John “Chainsaw” Sawtell, Johnny “Chains” Chang, Latwan “Chain Boy” Monroe, Frank John “Chainsaw” Stihl and Jon Richard Chain. The thirty-three out-of-town candidates were pushed down to the bottom of the list. Johnny Chang was Asian and Frank John “Chainsaw” Stihl was white so that reduced the list to four. Janet re-ordered them to (1) Jon Richard Chain, – armed robbery, bank robbery; (2) John “Chainsaw” Sawtell – Home invasion robbery, carjacking; (3) Russell “Chainsaw” St. John – armed robbery; (4) Latwan “Chain Boy” Monroe – carjacking, rape, murder (arrested but charges dismissed for lack of evidence). By the time Virgil drifted in at a little before seven p.m. Janet was the only detective left on duty.