Rocks Beat Paper

by Mike Knowles

  “We will,” I said. “But, not yet.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  Miles put a hand on my shoulder and moved me back a few steps. When he turned to Saul, his voice was calm. “You know why, Saul. We don’t want to bust these guys for stalking you. We want them for David’s murder, and the only way we are going to get them for that is if we think big.”

  “So I’m just supposed to let them follow me.”

  “Yes,” Miles said. “But I promise you won’t be in any danger. We’re going to assign a security detail to you. They will stay close enough to you to make sure that no harm comes to you. They will also do a little tailing of their own. If these guys show up again, we will follow them and find out everything we can about who they are.”

  Saul smiled. “Alright. I can live with that.”

  “Good,” Miles said. “I know how stressful this is for you, sir, but it will be all over soon.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “If they’re tailing you, they must be getting ready to do the job. That means we need to be ready for them.”

  “Oh, I’m ready for them. After what they did to my poor David, it’s all I can think about.”

  “Make sure to stick to your schedule,” I said.

  The old man jabbed a finger into my chest. “I’ll do my job. You just make sure you do yours.”

  “Great,” Miles said. “We’ll take the first shift tonight when you leave. Don’t look around for us. Just drive home the way you do every night.”

  Saul smiled at Miles. “No problem, Detective.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  That night, we sat inside our faux police car a block from Saul’s Long Island home. He lived upscale, and the car stood out. The obvious modifications that gave the car the impression of being a law-enforcement vehicle kept the residents from calling the real cops. All of the dog-walkers who passed the car gave us pleasant nods; some even waved. The wealthy loved and trusted the law as much as the poor disliked and distrusted them.

  “What time you got?” Miles asked.

  “The same as you,” I said.

  “My watch says Saul is late.”

  I nodded.

  “We told him to take the usual way home.”

  “We did,” I said. “Maybe he forgot.”

  “Did you get the feeling that today was an off-day? He wasn’t the same sharp old guy. I don’t think he even recognized us at first.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “And he should have. I mean, it’s not every day the cops show up and tell you that you are the target of armed robbers.”

  “It jives with what David told us. Saul is forgetful and confused. He’s also angry.”

  “Only at you,” Miles said.

  “I seemed to have touched a nerve.”

  “Oh, you definitely touched a nerve. I don’t know what you did, but that old man hates your guts.” Miles took a sip of coffee and made a noise in the back of his throat when he realized it was cold. He put the cup back in the cup holder and went into his pocket for gum. “Maybe there was traffic.”

  I turned the key in the ignition and found a news station on the AM dial. We were nine away from traffic and weather on the tens.

  “I’m going to call her,” Miles said. He punched her number into one of the burner phones I picked up the week before. Monica had a matching phone, but she wasn’t picking it up.

  “We can rule out traffic,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “If there was traffic, she would be able to pick up her phone.”

  Miles frowned. “So where are they?”

  I pointed. “There.”

  Saul’s BMW braked at the stop sign for the appropriate two seconds and stayed there for an unnecessary thirty.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s looking for us,” I said.

  “We said we’d be watching.”

  “Maybe he didn’t believe us.” I flashed the headlights a few times and the BMW responded by turning in our direction. Saul eased to a stop next to our car and rolled down the window.

  “Glad you changed your mind,” he said.

  “Thought you might be,” Miles said without missing a beat. “What did you see?”

  Saul laughed. “The blue four-door was following me again. I did what you said and kept driving as though nothing was happening. Your guys got it just before we got on the on-ramp.”

  Miles leaned across my seat so that he could get closer to Saul and his story. “How’d it go down?”

  “A car — it didn’t look like a police car, but I imagine that is the point — boxed the blue car against the curb. That was all I saw; I was getting onto the freeway.”

  “We saw how worried you were, so we decided to act,” Miles said.

  “But what about what you said? Won’t this tip them off? I don’t want them to get away — not before they pay for what they did to David.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “The traffic stop will be a case of mistaken identity. The cops who pulled over the car will let whoever was inside walk, but not before they get their identification.”

  “By tonight, we’ll have everything we need on the car and whoever was driving it. You’ll be safe now, sir; they won’t want to risk tailing you again after this. We’re hoping this will push things forward, so we need you to be ready to move when the time is right.”

  “I know what I have to do,” Saul said. “You don’t have to keep telling me that.”

  “We’ll be in touch, sir,” Miles said.

  Saul nodded and said, “Alright,” before rolling up his window and driving away.

  “You think it was the cops? Maybe the plates weren’t as clean as she said they were.”

  I thought about it. “It wasn’t the cops.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “When Saul told you about what happened, did he mention lights or sirens?”

  Miles was uncharacteristically quiet. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost all trace of confidence. “If it wasn’t the cops, who was it?”

  “I don’t know. But if they took her, I know where they’re going next.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The drive back to the motel took an hour longer than it should have. Thirty minutes went into retracing our steps in search of Monica’s car — it was gone. The remaining half hour went towards finding another ride. We found a rusted white Ford Econoline van parked on a side street and boosted it. Miles drove the van back to the motel parking lot and waited. He put in fifteen minutes of surveillance and then called me to tell me that there wasn’t anyone waiting around.

  I drove the fake police car back to the motel and parked it on a street a block away. I walked to Miles and got inside the van. The van belonged to a dedicated smoker intent on pushing the ashtray to its limits. The seats were torn where they weren’t stained, and the rear compartment was picked clean of anything that didn’t come directly from the factory.

  Miles had been trying Monica’s phone every fifteen minutes without success. The unanswered calls had him on edge. “What do you think happened to her?”

  It was the seventh time he had asked the question; I gave him the seventh, “I don’t know.”

  I had no idea what happened to Monica, but I was sure the motel room was burned. It didn’t matter if Monica came back today, tomorrow, or never — the motel was no longer clean.

  “How much longer are we going to stay here?”

  “Another hour,” I said.

  “Then what? We just call it and move on? We need to find out who took her and get her back.”

  I gave it some thought. The timing bothered me. We were closing in on the job and one of our crew suddenly gets pulled off the street. It could have been the cops — maybe Monica ran afoul with one of the f
ew cops who gave a damn about traffic violations or maybe she did something the cops couldn’t ignore, like hit a pedestrian. It was possible, but not likely; she was a professional driver and that kind of bad luck didn’t happen to really good drivers. Ruling out bad luck, that left bad intentions. Someone found her and snatched her because they knew what she was doing. But whoever did it doesn’t know everything — at least not yet. If they knew everything, they would have just killed her on the street. They took her because they wanted information about the job.

  “Did you hear me?”

  I didn’t answer because I didn’t have one yet. If someone took Monica to learn about the job, the job was off. Monica knew everything and that knowledge was more than enough to make us easy pickings for someone looking to take the take.

  “She’s part of our crew,” Miles said. “We can’t just sit here, waiting. We should start with Saul. He has to know more about what happened.”

  I nodded. “We’re not just waiting on her; we’re waiting on whoever might be inside. We’ll give it the rest of the hour and then we’ll take our chances and go in for the gear.”

  “And then Saul,” Miles said.

  “Yes.”

  “He must know more than he told us,” Miles said.

  “We’re not going back for answers,” I said.

  “What? If we’re not after answers, then why the hell are we going back?”

  I turned my head and looked at Miles. I had his full attention.

  “We’re going back because the job is tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  I laid out everything I had been thinking.

  “So you think someone did this to get to us.”

  “Not us . . . the job.”

  “And you want to do it anyway.”

  “We lost our driver and it’s too late to find a new wheelman. But if we move fast, we don’t need to. Saul saw her today, and he saw her go down — we can use that. We need to spin what he saw to our advantage. We’ll tell him that we found out the job is happening sooner than we thought. That gives us another advantage. Monica thought we had another week before the job — whoever took her will think the same thing. Doing the job tomorrow will make whatever Monica gives up useless.”

  “Jesus Christ, you are an asshole. Do you hear yourself? I’m serious. Do you hear what you are saying? You don’t care about her at all, do you? I knew you were cold, but —”

  I stopped listening to Miles. Something else had stolen my attention. I put up a hand to shut Miles up. He swatted it away. I brought my hand up again, but this time I didn’t try to silence Miles; instead, I pointed to the parking lot entrance.

  Miles looked out the windshield. “Is that —”

  I nodded.

  A blue four-door had just pulled in and was headed our way.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Holy shit,” Miles said as he went for the handle of the van door.

  I grabbed a fistful of the con man’s shirt and pulled him away from the door before he could push it open.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Wilson, that’s her.”

  “Call her phone.”

  Miles started to argue, but I cut him off. “Call her phone.”

  He dug out the burner and dialled the matching unit; he got no answer.

  “Doesn’t mean anything. It could be off. It could have died.”

  “It’s her car, but it might not be her,” I said. “Wait.”

  This time, Miles didn’t put up a fight. Together we watched the blue four-door pull up to the motel room and park in the centre of two spaces. The car idled, headlights on, for a full minute. The lights stayed on while the driver turned off the engine and opened the door.

  Monica got out of the car on shaky legs and walked, doubled over, to the motel room door.

  Miles said, “She’s hurt. Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Wait? She’s alone and she’s hurt.”

  Monica rested a forearm on the door to keep upright and knocked. I quickly checked the street and then focused on Monica as she knocked again. I wanted to see what happened when the second knock didn’t work.

  Monica leaned against the door, her breathing laboured, waiting to be let inside. When nothing happened, she didn’t look back at the car; she steadied herself with two hands on the door and then gave up on standing and sank to her knees.

  Miles lurched for the door. I grabbed him by the shirt front before he pulled the handle. “Wait.”

  “She’s fucking dying. What are we waiting for?”

  “To see if anyone else is,” I said.

  No other cars had come into the lot or stopped on the street, so anyone watching Monica had either gotten there before she did or rode in the car with her. Putting someone in the motel ahead of time would have meant leaving Monica to drive there on her own; that was too much control to give a hostage — the car was the more likely place to keep a leash on Monica.

  Monica fell sideways to the pavement in front of the motel room door. We did nothing and the parking lot did the same. Miles tried to move, but my hand around his throat kept him in the van. As one minute stretched to five, I watched the motel lot and listened to the soundtrack of angry curses and indignation playing from the seat next to me. No one came for Monica. I let go of Miles’s neck and he exploded out of the Ford and sprinted across the parking lot. I walked behind him with a pistol in my hand. When Miles got within five feet of the brown motel door, I brought up the gun with two hands. I let Miles deal with Monica while I circled the car; there was no one inside. I went from the car to the motel door. I stood to Miles’s side as he hovered over the body on the ground. With one hand, I fit the key into the lock and turned the handle. I butted Miles out of the way as I went into the room with my gun up. The living room and kitchen were empty. I went backward instead of forward and took hold of Monica’s elbow.

  A moan escaped the driver’s lips.

  “What the hell are you doing, man?” Miles barked.

  I dragged the barely conscious woman into the room with Miles at her heels.

  Inside, I let Monica down and closed the door behind her. Miles knelt beside her. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Get your gun up,” I said.

  I stepped over Monica and crossed the living room. “Miles, take the bathroom.” The con man nodded, went to the other door, and entered when I signalled. I timed my step across the threshold to the bedroom to match Miles’s entry into the bathroom. Both rooms were empty — there was no one waiting for us — at least, not inside.

  I checked the parking lot through the window before I checked on Monica.

  “How is she?”

  “Don’t act like you care.”

  “Can she move?”

  “Why, you gonna drag her again?”

  I looked down at the woman lying at my feet. Someone had done a number on Monica’s face and head, but my eyes didn’t linger there. I used a finger to open the heavy army jacket she was wearing over a grey sweater. There was a large puncture wound low on her left side. The blood that had seeped into the fabric of her shirt and jacket was a wicked-looking black. It was a calculated wound. Someone had thought about where to stick her. The blows to her face that had split her lips and broken her nose were questioning wounds. Someone had wanted to know something. I put my gun down and lifted Monica’s sweater. The hole in her side was round, but it wasn’t a gunshot wound; the hole was neater than something a gun could produce. For a second, I wondered if someone had stabbed her because she wouldn’t talk or because she had talked enough.

  “Get some towels from the bathroom,” I said.

  “We need to get her to a hospital.”

  “Towels,” I said.

  Miles got up and went into the washroom. When he came back, I was at the window agai
n.

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Wipe down everything,” I said.

  “What? I thought you wanted the towels for her. We need to get Monica to a hospital.”

  I looked back at Monica. Something wasn’t right; there was no symmetry to her wounds. They had battered her face and head with seemingly no focus, but then used a precision stab wound to leave her dying but mobile. The hole in her guts gave her time — time to run all the way back to us.

  “We need to wipe down everything and get out of here. People are coming and we don’t have much time.”

  “She’s going to die on the floor if we don’t do something.”

  I grabbed a towel from Miles’s hands and went to work on the kitchen. He went back to the floor and put a towel on top of Monica’s stomach. A minute later, I was in the living room working my way towards the bathroom. I finished the bathroom quickly and moved immediately to the bedroom. I didn’t have to worry about the garbage cans; I had learned early on never to leave pocket litter lying around. I circled the final room and picked up the bags I had left packed and under the bed.

  I put the bags down next to Miles and Monica and checked the parking lot.

  “We are not leaving her.” Miles’s voice was low and serious.

  Nothing in the motel lot had changed. It was like looking at a painting of rock-bottom America. It didn’t make sense. The body was a trap — it had to be — so where was the hunter?

  “You hear me? We are not leaving her here.”

  I ignored Miles and checked the lot again. The same cars were still in the same spots — nothing had changed. Then, something did.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Red and blue lights strobed over the surface of the cars in the lot. The flashes quickened and the intensity of the light increased. In seconds it was no longer dark outside the door. The lights of the police car gave the motel a new electric sun twenty feet from the peephole.