GRAVE WALKER: A gripping noir thriller (Thomas Blume series of Hard-Boiled Mysteries)

by PT Reade

  “About two years. And we were engaged for about a month before I called it off.”

  “You called off the engagement?”

  “I did.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  He sighed, and I again saw the look of a heartbroken man. A look I knew well. “Because people were starting to find out about us,” he said. “No one important, you understand, just people at her work and associates that I am close with. It was getting too risky. I did not want to see her hurt by my father. He saw her as the reason for my ‘weakness’ as he called it.”

  “Why would Victor do that?”

  “Because he’s a power-hungry sociopath,” Mickey said. “Understand that he would not have just killed her. He would have made her suffer, as a lesson to me. So I did the hardest thing I had ever done. I pushed Darcey away. I lied to the woman I loved, but it was the only way to keep her safe. Or so I thought.”

  “Speaking of your father, there’s another reason I needed to speak with you. Someone else I’m looking for that seems to be a ghost. A name that keeps cropping up, maybe someone working with him.”

  “Who?” Mickey asked. “I know basically everyone who is anyone in this city.”

  “Do you know a man named Walker?”

  Mickey’s facial expression gave him away again. Yeah, he knew Walker. And he was just as wary of him as anyone else. Although there was something else there too, not just fear but respect.

  “Why are you looking for Sam Walker?”

  “Because he’s the most likely suspect right now,” I replied.

  “Oh,” Mickey said. “Well, in that case, I’m afraid I can’t help. Well…not in the way you think.”

  “I take it you’re sacred of him, too?”

  “Scared is not the word,” Mickey said curiously. “But I am not about to get tied up in his affairs.”

  “Not even if he killed Darcey?”

  Mickey ignored this question and handed me a plate that matched his own. It had a finely cut, triangular sandwich on it, with a glob of dressing on the side…not exactly the sort of lunch you would expect a crime boss to enjoy. I took a bite and found it was good. He then walked to a large cupboard and pulled free a yellow, legal-sized envelope.

  “Detective Blume, do you believe in fate?”

  “Not really.”

  “Are you open to the idea of it?”

  “I’ve seen a lot of bad things happen to good people—life can screw any of us at any time. Fate is just an excuse. Why do you ask?”

  Mickey handed me the envelope and regarded me carefully. “When I was told you wanted to speak with me, I saw it as fate, a meeting of destiny. You see, while you have been seeking me out, I have, for much longer, been keeping an eye on a mutual friend of ours.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Me, my father, Walker, and poor Darcey. It’s all connected, Mr. Blume, and your appearance has just confirmed it. I don’t have all the answers, but the man in the envelope will.”

  I opened the envelope slowly and reached inside, a sense of dread coming over me.

  “It seems that you and I were destined to meet,” Mickey said. “Too many of our paths seem to be crossing lately. It’s good that I do my research before going into business, I think.”

  I pulled out the contents of the envelope. Inside were four photographs that each hit me like a punch to the gut. The pictures showed two men speaking, one of which I recognized from my research into Victor Lem. In the first image, they were inside a car at night. In the other three, they seemed to be huddled closely beneath an underpass. The shadows were thick, but the appearance of the men was unmistakable.

  One man was without doubt Samuel Walker.

  The other was Rey Sanchez.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I left Mikhail Lem’s place the same way I had arrived there; blindfolded and in the back of an unfamiliar car. Neither of the drivers spoke as they delivered me back to my rental. When they dropped me off and I watched them make their exit from the parking lot, I found it hard to believe that my meeting with the enigmatic Mickey Lem had gone so well and without the threat of my life.

  Of course, I reminded myself, I thought the same thing about my meeting with Victor, too. That resulted in being shot at and chased down by motorcycle assassins.

  Relieved but still uneasy, I pulled out from behind the old building, trying to come up with my next course of action. There were many threads to follow now, but they all seemed to come to a dead end. I needed to tie them together before making any real leaps.

  I thought I knew of a good place to start, though. I picked up my phone and pulled up Zoe’s number. She answered right away with a sultry tease to her voice.

  “Hey,” she said. “Couldn’t stop thinking about me, huh?”

  I ignored the flirtatious attempt, trying to be as professional as I could, pushing down memories of last night. “Zoe, I have something I need to ask you. It may seem small, but I think it might be bigger than you think.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Shoot.”

  I hesitated, knowing the question was full of accusation. “When I was asking you about your sister before, why did you never mention that she was dating Mickey Lem?”

  She was silent for a moment, and I thought I heard an intake of breath. “I don’t know,” she finally replied. “I never met the guy. She mentioned him only a few times.”

  “How often?”

  “Not like obsessively or anything, but enough for me to pick up on the fact that she was seriously seeing a guy.”

  “Do you know for how long?” I asked.

  “I’m not quite sure. Three or four months for sure. Maybe longer. But really…I don’t know much about him. If you want to talk about it we could meet up, I’m –”

  “But she did mention a guy named Mickey or Mikhail?” I cut Zoe off, knowing she was trying to derail the conversation.

  “Yeah…I guess.”

  I was quiet for a moment, seeing if she’d reveal anything else. Apparently, the silence unnerved her because she seemed anxious to stop it.

  “Who is he?” Zoe asked, sounding nervous.

  “An old boyfriend is all,” I said. And as much as I hated it, I simply couldn’t shake the fact that I felt like Zoe was hiding something. She had been taken off guard when I’d brought up Mickey.

  “Have you spoken with him?”

  It was an odd question, given the situation. It made me even more suspicious, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Zoe would have any reason to lie.

  “I have,” I said. “And if I learn anything else about Darcey, I’ll let you know. But for now, I have to go.”

  “Is everything okay?” She sounded worried, more on-edge than since I’d caught her off-guard at Darcey’s apartment two days ago.

  “Yeah, it’s fine. I have to go, though. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Okay,” she said uncertainly.

  I killed the call and tossed the phone in my passenger seat. It landed on the envelope that Mickey had let me keep, the envelope with pictures of a man who had once been a very close friend and another man who, as far as I could tell, was basically a specter.

  Something was definitely not adding up here, and I found myself thinking of Amir back in London. We had worked out our differences temporarily after he had betrayed me, and now here I was in a new city facing the same betrayal.

  I wondered if there was anyone I could trust, and if I was destined to face the same betrayal over and over, punishment for my sins.

  There was only one way to find out.

  ***

  I thought about calling Rey and having it out there and then but decided not to. The last thing I wanted was for him to think that I was on to him. More than that, I figured that he was probably also wondering where the hell I was. I could only imagine how angry Kinsey was at my disappearance and wondered if she was taking it out on Rey. I pulled up an e-mail Rey had sent me yesterday with Stein’s contact information. I dialed h
is number, and the young detective answered on the second ring.

  “This is Stein.”

  “Stein. This is Blume.”

  “Oh. Hi. Um, Mr. Blume, you should…well, you should come in. Chief Kinsey really needs to speak with you.”

  “I know,” I said. “And I’ll be there soon enough. But look…I’m trying to get in touch with Rey, detective Sanchez. It’s pretty important, and his damned cell phone goes straight to voicemail. Is he in the building?”

  “No. He went out about an hour ago. He said he had something to take care of.”

  “You know where he was headed?”

  “No, I’m not sure.”

  “Take a guess?”

  “I don’t know,” Stein said. He sounded very uneasy, like he was afraid he might get into trouble for speaking with me and not immediately transferring the call to Kinsey.

  “Stein, Roger, it’s really important.”

  “Well, let me switch you over to the Chief.”

  “No, I don’t have time for that,” I said, trying to inflict some urgency into my voice.

  Stein sighed, and I could tell the kid was trying to figure out the right thing to do. Luckily, he apparently held about as much loyalty to Kinsey as I did.

  “It’s almost lunchtime,” Stein replied. “Check Vito’s. Rey and some of the other guys eat there practically every day. I’ll try to call him for you. It’s weird about his voicemail.”

  “No, that’s okay, don’t call. I’ll head over,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, sure. But, look…you need to come in soon and–”

  I hung up, cutting him off. I was about twenty minutes away from Vito’s, and although I was getting hungry, I knew that this time, I wouldn’t be joining my old partner for chicken parmesan.

  I had another plan instead…a plan to get to the bottom of this case once and for all.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  When I saw Rey, it took everything within me not to just get out of the car and confront him at the restaurant. But I knew that would be a mistake. He’d have police friends in there; people who had maybe once been my friends, but in the course of one short year, had become distant strangers. More than that, I was interested to see where Rey would go after lunch. If he was up to something, it would be best to keep my distance. And the fact that he had not been blowing up my phone to ask me questions about yesterday’s melee made me think that he was in no real rush to talk to me. It made me think that he was hiding something.

  I parked on the end of the street opposite Vito’s and sat there for twenty minutes before he finally came out. A few other cops were with him, but they split up and went their separate ways after a few quick words in front of the restaurant. I watched Rey get into his car—a dark gray Dodge—and let him get ahead of me. When he passed by and came to a stop at a light, he nearly spotted me, but traffic helped keep my cover.

  As I pulled out and began my slow but deliberate pursuit, I was briefly grateful for the unremarkable rental car I was driving. It was a car Rey wouldn’t notice. Hell, it was so dull it wouldn’t draw a glance if it was on fire.

  I made sure to keep at least three vehicles between Rey and me as he wound his way through the city. It became obvious at once that he was not heading back to the precinct. I followed him across streets that I had once been intimately familiar with and many more I had never seen before, still not able to piece together his destination. After fifteen minutes, the gray Dodge finally meandered away from the thick lunch-hour traffic and down a two-lane road that would eventually lead to the interstate. But just before the interstate approached, he took a right. It was then that I knew where he was headed—an area not too dissimilar from where I had met with Lem’s goons.

  The road wound down into a dead neighborhood where neglected industrial buildings loomed like dead giants along the waterfront. A couple of warehouses were still in operation, with barges offloading their cargo from the Hudson River, but most had seen their last days of operation in the early nineties. All they were good for now were drug dens, shelters for the homeless, and whatever business Rey was up to.

  When his car started creeping along ahead of me, I knew he’d be stopping soon—there was no-where else to go. To avoid suspicion, I took a side street and parked in the shadow of a derelict factory with a crumbling jetty that stretched out into the water. I climbed out of my car and was instantly hit by the humidity again. The electricity in the air was palpable now, and the looming dark clouds pressed down across the city. In the distance, I thought I heard the faint threat of thunder.

  Now on foot, I dashed along the other side of the block parallel to where I assumed Rey would be. But when I came out along the next building, I saw no sign of his car.

  Damn.

  I cut across to the next building, staying close to the side of the towering brick structures. When I came out, peeking my head around, I looked just in time to see the Dodge crawl beneath an old barrier and drive slowly into an area marked “NO ENTRY”.

  I dashed across the street when he was out of sight and slunk along the side of the nearest wall. Peeking around once more, I watched Rey ease his car to a stop in the abandoned parking lot. It was bordered by vacant factories on all sides, most of which were at least three stories tall, hiding it perfectly. There was no sign of life anywhere, and only the raucous cry of seagulls broke the eerie silence.

  “What are you doing here, Rey?” I muttered.

  I paused for a moment, giving Rey enough time to park and get out. This area of the city was so desolate that I could actually hear the soft noise of his car door closing when he got out. I gave him another few seconds and then jogged up the street. The somber clouds overhead mottled the ground with shadows, covering my progress.

  When I reached the edge of the parking lot, I watched Rey enter the furthest warehouse at the end through what appeared to have once been a loading dock of some kind. There was no door on the dock entrance, so actually getting into the place was not going to be much of a problem.

  The only issue would be the lookout guarding the entrance.

  Interesting.

  A single, bored-looking man paced around the loading dock puffing on a cigarette. He was dressed casually, much like Rey, but a bulge underneath his jacket told me he was armed.

  Why would a derelict factory need an armed guard? I wondered.

  Rey nodded to the man and disappeared inside. I knew I would have to follow.

  I quickly glanced at my watch, wondering how long I had left to wrap things up before my real target was released at the police station.

  Less than an hour. Shit.

  I didn’t have time for the slow and subtle approach.

  I waited a moment against the corner of the building until the guard had his back turned. Bursting into action as quickly and quietly as possible, I sprinted to the loading dock. My feet pounded across the ground, and I was careful to avoid the gravel or broken glass that would give me away. I bounded up the steps and raced toward the guard.

  “What the –”

  The guard heard my footsteps just as I was on top of him. He instantly turned to shout a warning to whomever was inside, but in a flash, I had moved behind him and locked his head in a hold. I squeezed around his neck, cutting off the blood supply. He gargled a couple of words and struggled for a few seconds before he became limp and slumped to the ground.

  I gently lowered his body out of sight and listened. He was still breathing.

  Leaving the unconscious man outside, I entered the building. I could hear distant footfall coming from somewhere ahead.

  I quietly made my way up the loading ramp and into the dark and dusty interior. Indoors, the warehouse was made up of crumbling concrete walls and exposed beams. The old windows were coated in dust, casting a rusty glow across the interior.

  To my right, behind one of the old concrete walls, I heard footsteps that sounded as if they were going up. I rounded the corner in a large hallway and saw a set of wooden stairs.
Trash and debris was strewn across the floor—chip wrappers, cigarette butts, broken glass, a condom wrapper, an old crack pipe.

  Come to New York, see the sights, I mused

  I saw the shape of a man reaching the top of the stairs and then taking a left. When I was sure the figure (assuming it was Rey) was not coming back, I slowly started up the stairs in pursuit.

  As I stepped as silently as possible, I drew the Glock that I had nearly forgotten I had on my hip. Having worked overseas for about a year, I’d almost lost what the feel of a gun was like.

  I was halfway up the flight of rickety stairs when I heard two men start to speak. The first one was unmistakably Rey. I pinned myself against the wall and listened. “Hey,” he said. “Are we all set?”

  “Not quite yet,” another man said. There was a silence, and then this same man said, “What gives, Sanchez? You alright?”

  “Yeah,” Rey answered. “This is just a lot, you know?”

  “You were able to get the file?”

  “Yeah, but I still don’t like doing this.”

  “You having second thoughts, Rey?”

  “Come on, Walker, you know it’s not that. It’s just…I want to make sure this is done right.”

  Walker, I thought. Samuel Walker. The killer!

  That was enough for me. That was all I needed to hear.

  Rey had been working with the elusive Walker all along. Whatever scheme they had in mind, I doubted it was good.

  I took the rest of the stairs up as quickly and as quietly as I could. When I reached the top step, I took a deep breath.

  I knew there was two of them but I had the element of surprise…and I was armed. I decided it was time that I crashed the party.

  Deep breath.

  I raised my gun and pivoted around into the open.

  “Freeze!”

  I opened my mouth to say more, but I was the one frozen in place.

  Rey was standing closest to me. I realized that the man standing next to Rey matched the photos I’d seen. This was definitely was Sam Walker.